A Safe Place for Dying (8 page)
Read A Safe Place for Dying Online
Authors: Jack Fredrickson
There was nothing to say because he was right. We got to Endora's purple Grand Am.
Leo's worried eyes scanned my face. “You're sure it's wise to watch the drop behind their backs? What if you scare the guy away, and that causes him to blow up another house?”
“What's my alternative?”
“Let it alone. You've done what you were hired to do, which was to have the letters examined.”
I held out the keys to the Jeep. He shrugged, shook his head, and gave me the keys to Endora's Grand Am.
I got to the parking lot behind Ann Sather's at five thirty. Though the temperature was still in the upper eighties, I wore my blue Cubs cap, dark Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a tan jacket with the collar turned up. I looked like a pervert.
I pushed up the overhead door, drove the car in, got out, and pulled the door down. The mold cultures in the garage were fetid from steaming in the sun all day. I took off my jacket, cracked open the service door for some air, and tried not to breathe. Stanley had said he would make the drop right at dark. I had three hours to kill.
I'd done a couple of dozen surveillances. Most of them were for insurance companies, on people who'd filed false injury claims, but
two were for runaway kids, and one was on a guy suspected by one wife of having another wife. All were agonizing, hours and hours of looking at nothing. I like surveillance like I like warts.
two were for runaway kids, and one was on a guy suspected by one wife of having another wife. All were agonizing, hours and hours of looking at nothing. I like surveillance like I like warts.
I pulled out a small, old wood kitchen chair from Endora's trunk and sat in the shadows of the side window with my beat-up college copy of Thoreau's
Walden.
I need to read Thoreau every few weeks because he chucked it all and went to a rustic cabin in the woods to think. For him, life got understandable when he realized that rich people were herd animals. I wondered what he would have thought of people lumbering along in mammoth S.U.V.'s, chatting on cell phones about luncheon plans or tennis games with other people lumbering along in their own big S.U.V.'s. Thoreau was a pacifist, an environmentalist, and a nonviolent person, but I like to think that he would have been mightily tempted to drive the whole herd, still chattering, into Walden Pond.
Walden.
I need to read Thoreau every few weeks because he chucked it all and went to a rustic cabin in the woods to think. For him, life got understandable when he realized that rich people were herd animals. I wondered what he would have thought of people lumbering along in mammoth S.U.V.'s, chatting on cell phones about luncheon plans or tennis games with other people lumbering along in their own big S.U.V.'s. Thoreau was a pacifist, an environmentalist, and a nonviolent person, but I like to think that he would have been mightily tempted to drive the whole herd, still chattering, into Walden Pond.
I read Thoreau until eight thirty, when it got too dark to see the words. I put the book back in the car, took out my ancient Canon F.T.Q.L. with the long lens, set it on the folding tripod I'd brought, and checked the focus. It was just about dark. I pulled the chair closer to the window to wait.
At nine, a big, square light went on behind Ann Sather's, likely from a timer. It flooded the area around the Dumpster with bright light, and I wondered if the bomber had thought to check out the back of the restaurant at night before he sent the note. When he came for the money, he was going to be lit up like Wrigley Field during a night game. It was dumb, and he hadn't made dumb moves before.
At nine twenty, two kids came out of the shadows of the side alley, bouncing a basketball. It echoed loudly off the brick walls of the buildings. The kids moved diagonally across the empty parking lot, passing the ball back and forth in one-bounce shots, and disappeared down the main alley.
At five minutes to ten, a blue full-sized Chevy van fitted with a
wheelchair side lift pulled into the east edge of the lot. It cruised slowly behind the buildings until it nosed to a stop next to Ann Sather's Dumpster, right under the light. The driver's door opened, and Stanley Novak, wearing red plaid shorts, an untucked dark knit shirt, and a yellow baseball cap, got out. He reached back into the van and pulled out a filled black garbage bag. He carried the bag slowly around the van to the Dumpster, lifted the lid, and set the bag inside. The bag didn't go all the way down. He bent into the Dumpster and moved things around until the bag disappeared. He closed the Dumpster lid, got back in the van, and drove out of the lot.
wheelchair side lift pulled into the east edge of the lot. It cruised slowly behind the buildings until it nosed to a stop next to Ann Sather's Dumpster, right under the light. The driver's door opened, and Stanley Novak, wearing red plaid shorts, an untucked dark knit shirt, and a yellow baseball cap, got out. He reached back into the van and pulled out a filled black garbage bag. He carried the bag slowly around the van to the Dumpster, lifted the lid, and set the bag inside. The bag didn't go all the way down. He bent into the Dumpster and moved things around until the bag disappeared. He closed the Dumpster lid, got back in the van, and drove out of the lot.
All of his actions had been slow and easily visible in the bright light. Stanley had made sure that the bomber, wherever he was hiding, had gotten a good look at him leaving the money.
I peered through the lens to check the camera focus once more and sat back to wait.
At eleven fifteen, an old green Ford sedan with a faded cardboard temporary license taped inside the rear window pulled into the lot and rolled to a stop in the shadows a hundred feet from the Dumpster. I swung the telephoto lens on the car, but it was too dark to read the numbers on the temporary license. I turned the lens back to the Dumpster sitting isolated in the white light, double-checked the focus, and lifted my head to watch the Ford.
No one got out. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. I left the camera aimed at the Dumpster but kept my eyes moving back and forth between it and the green Ford. Another thirty minutes passed. Then, suddenly, a woman's voice yelled out angrily in Spanish. A Hispanic girl, nineteen or twenty, clambered out of the Ford, furiously tugging at her skirt. She spun back to the open door, screamed something else, and stomped off, hips swinging, across the lot. I watched the Dumpster through the telephoto lens, my index finger resting lightly on the shutter button. Nothing moved. A couple of minutes later, the engine of the old Ford started
up. I spun the camera on the tripod and tried to change the focus to the car, but the Ford had disappeared into the dark at the end of the alley before I could snap a picture.
up. I spun the camera on the tripod and tried to change the focus to the car, but the Ford had disappeared into the dark at the end of the alley before I could snap a picture.
Nothing happened for the next three hours. Everywhere else, people made love, argued, slept, worked night shifts, as the planet turned. But in my little part of the universe, a rotting garage across a parking lot from a Dumpster, time stood still. Nothing moved. I'm sure of it.
At least until sometime past two in the morning, when I got the nods.
No honest person who does surveillance will say it doesn't happen. It does, and often. Surveillance is grinding monotony. For someone like me, who doesn't sleep well at night anyway, it's impossible to stay awake for extended hours.
That night, in that molding garage, I fought it. I sat tilted on the back legs of the chair I'd brought, my best old trick, knowing that when I nodded off, the chair would start to move and that would wake me.
I remember I looked at my watch at two fifteen. At two eighteen, I checked the view of the Dumpster through the telephoto lens. I checked it again at two thirty. Then I leaned back on the rear legs of the chair, steadying myself with the back of my head against the garage wall. It wasn't comfortable, but I didn't want it comfortable.
The big diesel engine boomed off the brick walls of the entry alley, jolting me awake. My chair crashed down on its front legs as the headlights swept the parking lot. The garbage truck turned and rumbled to a stop next to the Dumpster. I pushed out of the chair, my neck throbbing from being jammed against the wall, and hobbled on stiff legs into a contorted run across the broken garage floor. I ran out the service door, pulled at the chain-link gate, then sprinted across the empty parking lot, my legs loose now, shouting at the man in coveralls standing by the open lid of the Dumpster.
He stopped, surprised.
“I put something in the garbage by mistake,” I yelled out, slowing to a walk.
The driver must have heard the commotion, because he had shut off the engine and was coming around the side of the truck. I pulled out a twenty and handed it to the tailgate man standing by the Dumpster.
“It'll only take me a minute.”
The driver and the tailgate man looked at each other and shrugged. The tailgate man stuffed the twenty into his overalls and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. The driver climbed back in the truck cab.
I looked in the Dumpster. And lost the air in my lungs.
Three white bags, lumpy with food garbage, lay at the top. I pulled them out, threw them on the ground. But the bags underneath were white, too.
The black bag of money was gone.
I ripped open the top bag in the Dumpster. Pork chop bones, dinner rolls, half heads of rotting lettuce embedded in strands of blood red spaghetti, glistening and exposed in the glare of the back-door light like the viscera of a corpse. I tore at the second bag. More garbage, just as wet. Frantic, my heart banging, I bent in and tore at the rest of the bags in the Dumpster. Every one was filled with decomposing food. I dropped to the asphalt and pulled at the tops of the bags I'd thrown on the ground, ripping at them like a crazy man. It was no use. There was nothing there but food waste.
I rocked back on my heels. Something bright glinted high, to my right, above the rooftop. The sun. I stared up at it, uncomprehending. Until, disbelieving, I thought to look at my watch. It was five fifty-eight in the morning. I'd been asleep for over three hours.
And the five hundred thousand dollars was gone.
I drove out of Ann Sather's alley fast, and angry, with the windows down. I needed the fresh air to force away the stench of damp-rot garage, spoiled food, and failure. I'd slept right through the one opportunity to stop the bombings at Gateville.
I got to the health center at seven, put a quarter for a towel on the counter next to the greasy head of the sleeping attendant, and headed for the showers. I wanted a long soak to draw the disaster out of my pores. I turned the water on hot and reran the night.
A couple of kids bouncing a basketball, Stanley Novak, an angry Hispanic girl, two men in a garbage truckâand a Dumpster bathed in white light the whole time. Everything had been in plain sight, and that's what nagged. He had to know someone would be watching. Sure, he could have come at the Dumpster from the back of the restaurant, moving low to stay hidden from anyone at the fringes of the parking lot, the garages, or the four-flats beyond, but why take the risk at all? It had been a lousy place to pick up extortion money, too well lit for someone who'd been as cautious as a church mouse with his delays and his careful, ruler-printed letters.
I toweled off and got dressed. None of that mattered anyway. I'd fallen asleep. I still stank of failure.
At the turret, I made a cup of weak coffee and called the Bohemian because he would have been suspicious if I hadn't.
“How did Stanley do with the drop?”
The Bohemian sounded ebullient. “He called me from his van about ten thirty last night. Everything went smoothly.”
“Now what?”
“Now we pray the matter is over.”
“It might take more than prayer.”
“Vlodek, Vlodek.” He paused. “You don't sound like your usual chipper self. Been getting enough sleep?”
If it was a veiled inference that he knew I'd been watching the Dumpster, it was either daring or astute. I let it go because I was too tired to think. I mumbled something about staying in touch and clicked off before he could pick up on anything else.
I went upstairs to the cot and dreamed of nothing at all.
Loud banging woke me at one thirty. I threw on a T-shirt, paint-splattered Levi's, and Nikes, and clanged down the metal stairs to open the door. Leo stood outside in the bright sunshine, wearing an enormous purple shirt and khaki shorts. In the glare of the midday sun, the purple made his white skin look translucent, like he'd been bled out in a medical experiment gone wrong. He hurt my eyesâbut he had hot dogs from Kutz's. I grabbed sunglasses, and we walked down to the bench by the river.
“I brought back your Jeep to save you the trip,” he said as we sat down. “But I really came to find out how the surveillance went.” He handed me a hot dog and pointed at the smaller of the two soft drinks on the bench.
“I think I slept through the pickup.”
He set down the hot dog he was unwrapping and stared at me. “Jeez, you must feel stupid.”
“Thank you, Leo, for the salt for my wounds. I was worried I might not have enough of my own.” I took a bite of hot dog. Stupid people need to eat, too.
“What happened?”
I chewed for a minute before I spoke. There was no good way to put it. “I don't know. Stanley showed up behind the restaurant a little before ten and put a black garbage bag full of money into the Dumpster. He did everything nice and slow under the light. Then he drove away.”
“And then you fell asleep?”
“No.” I told him about the couple in the beater Ford. “My guess is the guy dipped a little too deep, the girl took off on foot, and the car pulled away a few minutes later.”
Leo chewed through two more hot dogs, looking at the river. “You're thinking the girl was a diversion, to draw your attention while somebody else made a move on the Dumpster?”
“Could have been, but the car was close enough to the Dumpster to keep both in sight. Even so, I didn't take the chance. I kept my telephoto lens on the Dumpster, ready to take a picture. But nothing approached it. I suppose a pickup man could have come from behind the restaurant then, low, but with all that light from the back door, he took a big risk getting spotted.”
“Did you get the license number of the Ford?”
“No plate, just a sun-bleached temporary tag in the back window. I turned the telephoto lens on it as the car pulled away but couldn't get it focused in time to snap a picture.”
“Jeez, Dek, if you're going to do this kind of work, you need to get a rig with an automatic lens.”
“Too expensive right now.”
“It's cheaper than guilt. Why won't you let me loan you money?”
I said nothing to that.
“When did you start falling asleep?” he asked after a minute.
“Sometime after two thirty.” I shifted on the bench to look at
him. “I'd planned for it, Leo. I brought a chair, sat tilted on the back legs so I would wake up instantly if I dozed and the chair started to move.” I paused, going over it again in my mind.
him. “I'd planned for it, Leo. I brought a chair, sat tilted on the back legs so I would wake up instantly if I dozed and the chair started to move.” I paused, going over it again in my mind.
“And?”
I shrugged. “The night passed. I got the nods, but plenty of times the chair wobbled and woke me. The problem is that I don't remember checking my watch until after a garbage truck showed up just before six. Since I'd seen nobody approach the Dumpster, I broke my cover and hoofed it across the parking lot to grab the money before they could haul it away as garbage. But when I opened the Dumpster, all I saw was white bags. The black bag wasn't there. I slipped the back-end man a twenty to let me go through the bags anyway. I ripped every one of them apart. The money was gone.”
Leo looked across the water. “Did you tell Chernek?”
I looked at the water, too.
He turned on the bench. “You've got to tell him, Dek.”
“I don't like him keeping out the cops and the Feds.”
“You don't like him having money problems, either, but none of that puts him behind the bombs.”
“I don't like that he's using someone like me instead of a pro.”
Leo waited for a minute, then spoke softly. “You've considered, of course, that you were spotted before the money was picked up?”
“Sure, but that doesn't explain how he got away with it. My eyes were on that Dumpster all night.”
“Except for lapses.”
I turned to look at him, ever Leo, ever my friend, trying to spin my screwup.
“Is that what I can call falling asleep for three-plus hours? A lapse?”
He shrugged.
“It gets worse, Leo.”
“Worse?”
“It could have been the garbage guys, inadvertently. They might
have already tossed the top bag from the Dumpster into the truck as I was charging out of the garage. I didn't think of it at the time.”
have already tossed the top bag from the Dumpster into the truck as I was charging out of the garage. I didn't think of it at the time.”
“Jeez.”
“Exactly. That money might be landfill now.”
Leo spoke slowly. “Chernek is your client, Dek. He needs to know all this, regardless of your concerns about him. Unless ⦔
The word dangled. Leo took a slurp of his Coke and picked up another hot dog, but it seemed like a forced move. He didn't look hungry anymore.
I looked over at him. “Unless what, Leo? Unless I'm worrying about more than the Bohemian? Like about the
Tribune?
”
Tribune?
”
Leo didn't answer. He was too good a friend.
There's a Guy Clark tune that compares life to taking candy from a gorilla. Grabbing the candy's not tough when the gorilla's not aroundâbut get used to the easy grabbing, start taking easy pickings for granted, that's when the monkey shows up.
I'd gone to a city college in Chicago, majoring in getting out of Rivertown. I hustled for nickels and dimes, busing tables, washing city trucks, cleaning classrooms. And I started a gopher service, mostly for lawyers, picking up take-out dinners, or going for pizzas. They worked late; I worked cheap. It was a perfect marriage, and soon I was getting enough daytime work, running documents between law offices and courthouses, photographing accident scenes, and looking up information in the newspaper morgues, to quit my other part-time jobs.
At graduation, the best my marketing degree got me was an offer to sell toilet components for half of what I'd been making as an undergrad, so I rented a third-floor walk-up office four blocks beyond the fringe of what was respectable real estate in downtown Chicago, got some raised-ink letterhead, and expanded my list of services to include document traces, missing persons location, and a bunch of other things I hoped I could do. It was an odd-job little
research business, not all that far removed from the pizza pickups I'd begun with, but by the time I met Amanda, I had three employees, a heavily mortgaged condo overlooking Lake Michigan, a five-year-old Mercedes ragtop I'd bought used, a stainless Rolex, and comfortably diminishing memories of Rivertown. It might not have been much by rich-folk standards, but from my Rivertown-fed point of view, the candy grabbing had been good enough.
research business, not all that far removed from the pizza pickups I'd begun with, but by the time I met Amanda, I had three employees, a heavily mortgaged condo overlooking Lake Michigan, a five-year-old Mercedes ragtop I'd bought used, a stainless Rolex, and comfortably diminishing memories of Rivertown. It might not have been much by rich-folk standards, but from my Rivertown-fed point of view, the candy grabbing had been good enough.
But then, two months after Amanda and I married, the monkey showed up.
She came named Evangeline Wilts. She was the mayor of a small suburb just outside of Chicago, and she was on trial for taking kickbacks for steering city funds into a mob-controlled insurance company. Her lawyer hired me to trace canceled checks that he said would prove his client's innocence. The checks showed the proper endorsements. I testified to that in court, and based on my findings, Mayor Wilts was acquitted.
But I'd been set up. The checks I'd traced were dummies, processed by a bought-off bank vice president with a fancy set of rubber endorsement stamps he'd used to mask the path of the real checks.
A
Tribune
reporter discovered the scam. There were rearrests and more charges, and a new trial was scheduled, this time sure to convict Ms. Wilts. Because of the egg I'd left dripping on the prosecutor's face in the first trial, I was charged briefly, as an accomplice. Nobody believed I was involved in the deception, but it was a way for the prosecutor, a Republican appointee, to vent angerâand get a lot of press. For I was, as was pointed out on the front page, the son-in-law of that Democrat powerhouse Wendell Phelps.
Tribune
reporter discovered the scam. There were rearrests and more charges, and a new trial was scheduled, this time sure to convict Ms. Wilts. Because of the egg I'd left dripping on the prosecutor's face in the first trial, I was charged briefly, as an accomplice. Nobody believed I was involved in the deception, but it was a way for the prosecutor, a Republican appointee, to vent angerâand get a lot of press. For I was, as was pointed out on the front page, the son-in-law of that Democrat powerhouse Wendell Phelps.
I hired a lawyer, who hired experts. The prosecutor dragged out the pretrial period, milking the publicity until the press got weary of it, at which point he dropped the charges against me. I was guilty, thoughâof being a fool. It didn't matter that the setup had been professional, virtually undetectable. I was in the accuracy business; all I had to sell was accuracy. Without that, I wasn't in business.
After the
Tribune
stories, none of my lawyer clients would risk using me, and my little company blew away like a twig hut in a tornado. The Lake Shore Drive condo, the Benz, the Rolex, and anything else I could sell went for to pay the legal bills and the remaining months of the lease for an office where the phones no longer rang.
Tribune
stories, none of my lawyer clients would risk using me, and my little company blew away like a twig hut in a tornado. The Lake Shore Drive condo, the Benz, the Rolex, and anything else I could sell went for to pay the legal bills and the remaining months of the lease for an office where the phones no longer rang.
So, too, went my ability to function. The sudden loss of my business and my money, my public humiliation, and maybe most of all the shame I'd brought on my new wife left me a zombie, prowling the empty rooms of my bride's house. Amanda tried as hard as she could, offering to fund a restart of my business, but we'd been a whirlwind thing created by two people from vastly different cultures. She was inherited rich. I was stained Rivertown, with all the resentments that could bring to a suddenly untethered mind. I started drinking and did stupid things like giving away my books and most of my good clothes. I needed to shed everything I used to value, like I was no longer worthy of anything. And, with the perfect clarity of a newly practicing drunk, I started rearranging facts. In a matter of days, I had my downfall blamed on the fact that I'd married a big Democrat's daughter.
In my disorientation, I needed to shed her, too.
Amanda tried. She hugged me and screamed at me and hugged me some more. When that didn't work, she invented a reason to go to Europe, hoping I'd snap out of it if left alone. But she came back to a house littered with empty whiskey bottles, discarded pizza boxes, and a husband, beached and numb, alternately yelling and staring at the walls.
She got me sobered up enough to talk. She told me she loved me enough to throw me out while I could still leave on my feet. I loved her enough to know she was right. She went back to Europe. I packed what I hadn't sold in garbage bags. Then I sat, until I went trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Leo pulled me out, spoon-feeding me charity assignments he could have skipped altogether. At first, he had to work like a man
tugging a mule from a tar pit, coaxing and pleading, and when I began to stagger on my own, he put the arm on a few lawyers who needed him more than he needed them, and I started photographing accident scenes and running down addresses again. It was a beginning.
tugging a mule from a tar pit, coaxing and pleading, and when I began to stagger on my own, he put the arm on a few lawyers who needed him more than he needed them, and I started photographing accident scenes and running down addresses again. It was a beginning.
But if the good, gray, Republican
Tribune
ever got wind that Wendell Phelps's ex-son-in-law was somehow involved in a bombing extortion at Gateville and had slept away the stakeout of the money drop, the news would get sprayed on the front page, and everything would start spinning again. No lawyer would ever dare think about hiring me again.
Tribune
ever got wind that Wendell Phelps's ex-son-in-law was somehow involved in a bombing extortion at Gateville and had slept away the stakeout of the money drop, the news would get sprayed on the front page, and everything would start spinning again. No lawyer would ever dare think about hiring me again.
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