The Dead Caller from Chicago (3 page)

Two vacuum cleaners sat in the middle of the floor. One was an upright, the other a canister on wheels. A broom and a dustpan were set against the big-screen television. Shells crunched beneath my shoes as I took another step into the room.

The needle-nosed pliers Leo had bought for Ma and her friends to manipulate their minds and hands into better mental and motor health lay loosely spilled out of the Home Depot bag, apparently untouched. More interestingly, different, heavier tools—three wood-handled hammers, a handsaw, two silver adjustable wrenches, even Pa Brumsky's huge pipe wrench—were scattered all over the floor.

Several twisted, smashed-in tray tables were propped against the wall, ruined.

I understood why Leo's short aluminum baseball bat was lying on the snow outside. It was another tool, grabbed from the basement.

“Ma and her lady friends decided heavier implements would be more efficient?” I asked, summoning up my own smirk as I imagined the sounds such heavy weaponry must have made, whacking at tiny nonsplit nuts.

He ignored me. Pointing to the two vacuum cleaners, he asked, “Upright or canister?”

I took the upright, since it required less bending.

Even though the front room was tiny, it took a full twenty minutes because the two vacuum cleaners kept sending bits of shells and meat zinging in new directions. Finally, he shut off his vacuum and took a last look around. Leo's five-six, and that day he looked every bit the perfect miniature of a general surveying the field of an earlier, disastrous battle.

“Movie night?” I asked.

“Movie night,” he agreed sadly, picking up an empty quart of vodka that had been kicked under a chair.

It had taken her less than a month, once Leo bought Ma the big-screen television, to discover soft cable porn. Only days after that, she found the harder, pay-per-view stuff. I could well imagine the rapid-fire chattering, in Polish, as Ma called her friends, all but one widows, with news of what could be summoned into her front room.

Gone was bingo at the church. Gone were rotating weekly bridge evenings. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays were now for new adventures, as Ma's circle of septuagenarians and octogenarians tottered over to Casa Brumsky to witness the slicked contortions on Ma's new TV.

I'd stumbled into one of those movie nights the previous summer. Eight old ladies sat primly in front of tray tables, sipping vodka from water glasses, munching from bowls of bridge mix, fried Wheat Chex, and prunes, staring at things on television they'd never previously dared discuss, in Polish, English, or any other language.

They'd looked up, red faced, when I knocked on the open screen door. The three that had walkers began banging their wheels on the floor, summoning Leo up from his basement office, where he'd taken to hiding on the nights when the girls came over. He charged up the gangway from the back of the house and yanked me off the front porch like I was explosive. He told me it was best to call before coming over; the girls liked privacy on movie nights.

“I still believe cracking the pistachios will spark them up a bit,” Leo said now.

“Don't movie nights do that?”

He shook his head at my lack of vision. “I figured by the time they worked through the barrel of pistachios, they'd have improved their finger dexterity, loosened their shoulders and necks, and be thinking at warp speed.”

I gestured at the heavy tools lying on the sculpted brown carpet. “They thought faster than you, for sure.”

“Ma even got her meat tenderizer, the big square one she used to use on whole sides of beef. And someone messed up the garage, looking for Pa's tire iron.”

“Your old baseball bat, too. It's lying on the snow outside.”

“Jeez, you should have heard them, Dek. They sounded like a highway crew jackhammering a road.” He sighed. “Let's bring coffee down to my office. Ma will be too embarrassed to show herself with you around.”

Leo's office was directly under the living room. It must have been deafening, beneath a loud cloud of moaning porn stars, banging walkers, and falling wrenches.

Leo read my mind as always. “I couldn't stand it and spent the night at Endora's.” Endora was his girlfriend. An ex-model and current Newberry Library researcher, she was a head taller than he was, though both their heads possessed the same oversized IQ. She lived in a condo, downtown.

His office was furnished with mismatched furniture, files, and equipment and was always orderly and neat. He sat behind the ancient wood desk, and I took the huge green upholstered chair his father had died in, all those years before.

“Tell me about this new client that's going to make you rich.” He took a yellow wood pencil from the cup on his desk and leaned back. Leo was amazingly dexterous and often walked a pencil up and down between his fingers.

“Offices in ten states. They've hinted that the twenty-eight hundred was just for openers, that there will be a retainer coming for a lot more work. Maybe I've hit a golden confluence—”

“Confluence?” he interrupted.

“Confluence. It means a joining of two or more streams, like—”

“I know what a confluence is, you jackass. I just can't let you throw around such words as though they're part of your regular vocabulary.”

“Confluence,” I went on. “Maybe I'll have the dough to finish the turret and get my zoning changed just as yups are a-gathering right here in Rivertown—”

His landline phone rang. “Leo Brumsky,” he said, holding the receiver with his left hand as his right kept finger-walking the pencil.

I tuned him out and looked around the office. As always, there was no sign of any current project, but I knew there had to be several. Leo Brumsky was highly regarded in the auction world.

On display, though, was Bo Derek. The movie goddess from the late seventies looked back at me from a poster above the light table. She sat in the surf and wore only a thin blouse, mostly unbuttoned. The blouse was wet. It was why Leo bought the poster when he was in high school. It was still the only work in his, an art examiner's, office. Even as adults, we agreed, it was all the art he needed.

The soft tap of his pencil hitting the tiled floor caught my ear.

“Snark?” His voice was higher than I'd ever heard.

I kept my eyes on Bo. The office had gone absolutely silent, except for Leo's breathing. It had quickened.

A moment passed, then another. Then he spoke, in a voice that was disbelieving. “Speak up, will you? You're whispering.”

I had to look. His normally pale face had gone absolutely white. He was staring at the blank place on the wall above his four-drawer file cabinets, seeing nothing.

“No. I ran into Tebbins, and he told me about you, and all, so I threw it out; I didn't figure you'd want—” he said, his own voice now barely above a whisper. “I tell you: It's gone.”

His free hand reached for another pencil. It snapped in his fist. He mumbled something that I couldn't make out and hung up the phone.

“Who was that?”

His head didn't move.

“Leo?” I said, louder.

He looked up at me, slowly, like his neck hurt.

“That first summer you were gone,” he said softly. “After first year of college…” His voice trailed away, and he again turned to look at the blank spot above the filing cabinets.

I remembered that summer. I'd left Rivertown at the end of the summer before, to begin college in Chicago, but really to get as far from Rivertown as I could afford. After freshman year, I stayed in the city because I had nowhere else to go. I took an early-morning summer session class, worked three part-time jobs, and waited for the memories to fade. A girl I'd known had died. For a time, I'd been suspected of killing her.

I'd never wanted to summon back those times, but now I realized Leo had never mentioned that summer, either, other than once he'd said he'd worked at the city's municipal garage.

“Who called, Leo?”

His eyes were glass, unblinking, as he turned back to look at me.

“A dead man,” he said.

 

Three

To my shame, I forgot about the strange call Leo had received. My new client called, offering a seventeen-hundred-dollar fee to document a fraudulent insurance claim in Cedar Rapids. I was packed and gone first thing the next morning, certain it wasn't Iowa I was headed for but Fat City.

Leo phoned a day later. I was in a meeting with two of my client's agents. The call went to message but he hadn't left any words, and I forgot about that as well. It was like that with Leo and me. When one of us—almost always Leo—got busy, calls didn't get returned, unless someone yelled “Important.” He hadn't.

I'd been back in Rivertown for two days, typing up reports, before I drove over to his neighborhood just before dusk. Even then, it wasn't Leo I was anxious to see, but rather that harbinger of coming good times, the new construction sprouting on his street.

They'd made good progress, in spite of the fact that it snowed three inches right after I'd left for Iowa. A huge hole had been cut square into the ground for a foundation sizable enough for what would surely be the largest house in Rivertown. I supposed the third lot, where the bungalow slated for demolition still stood empty, would be used for a side yard, and perhaps a detached garage.

I imagined some of the neighbors, good solid blue-collar types with sensible values, were appalled at what was sure to be a monument to an arrogant ego being plopped down smack in the middle of their neighborhood. I suspected more would be excited, like me, at the prospect of finally making out financially in a grub town like Rivertown.

I continued on down the block, thinking that if Leo were home, I'd blow off about having been traveling, as he so often did, on professional business, as he invariably did, and about how my professional life was just like his, except he had multiple clients, made huge money, and was generally well regarded in his profession. Since my business, and my life, had been trashed in a falsified document scheme some time back, that kind of talk would be good for half a laugh.

I coasted to a stop at his curb, surprised.

His house was dark, his sidewalk and front steps still covered with the three inches of new snow. For some people, uncleared snow didn't matter, and they took their time shoveling it away. Not so Leo Brumsky. He was fastidious to a fault about keeping his walks clean for Ma and her movie-loving friends, and he always attacked the task swiftly. When he was out of town, he had a standing deal with a snow removal service, paying them extra to put his bungalow first on their work list.

Snow lying on a walk, several days after it fell, was never allowed.

I trudged up the front steps and rang the bell. When there was no answer, I knocked, loudly. No one came.

I high-stepped across the tiny lawn to the gangway between his house and the neighbor's. Leo's office window, like all the basement windows, was barred. I knelt down. His office was dark, like every other room in the house.

Someone tapped on glass high behind me. I stood up. The gray-haired neighbor babushka looked down from her side window. She jabbed a finger toward the front. I walked back up the gangway.

“You're awful late,” she said, leaning out past her wood storm door.

“What?”

“I seen you enough since you were a kid to know you're Leo's friend. Get shoveling.”

“I just stopped by.”

“Leo's got to be more careful with his arrangements. We got three more inches.”

“No one's home. Did he take his mother someplace?” I was worried he'd rushed her to the hospital. Nothing else would explain snow sitting for so long.

“That's no excuse for not taking care of things so others won't fall. I use that sidewalk to get to the grocery. Now I have to walk clear around—”

I cut her off. “Is Mrs. Brumsky all ri—?”

Now it was her turn to cut me off. “They're away, but that's still no excuse. It always snows in Chicago in March, for pity's sake. Somebody needs to clear it off.”

“Away? Both of them?” I could only think there'd been a sudden emergency, though Leo had never spoken of a relative out of town.

“Vacation, for pity's sake.”

My mouth went dry. “Leo told you they went on vacation?”

“Fort Lauderdale, I think. Or maybe Miami Beach. Florida, for sure. Or maybe it was…” She scratched her head, confusion descending like a veil.

“You're sure: Leo took his mother on vacation?” I asked again, damning myself for not returning Leo's call when I was in Iowa.

“Of course I'm sure. They left right before all that snow came down. You going to shovel, or what?”

Something was wrong. Ma Brumsky's idea of a vacation was to cruise a shopping cart at Walmart. Even before she'd become tethered to her front room by the wonders of big-screen television, I'd never known her to want to travel. Leo, of course, took vacations, but only with Endora. They went to exotic spots like Gstaad or St. Barts. Leo was an obedient, loving son, but he'd never expressed any tolerance for vacationing with Ma Brumsky.

Then there was the uncleared snow. Leo was a meticulous planner. His removal service would have come around while he was away.

Unless he'd not thought to tell them they would be away.

I had my cell phone out before the neighbor slammed her door. Leo's voice answered, telling me to leave a message. I did. “This is Dek. Snow has accumulated all over your sidewalk. I'm going to shovel, but Lester Lance Leamington is advising me to embrace greed, not menial labor. I expect payment of at least a thousand dollars, along with a phone call explaining what's gotten into Ma, abandoning television to take off on vacation.”

I clicked off. Cracking wise hadn't made me feel any better.

A snow shovel leaned against the back porch. As I pushed the snow through the gangway to the front, I paused to look up and smile winningly at the neighbor's window. The curtain fluttered.