The Dead Caller from Chicago (34 page)

“Can I use your car? I want to check what I've got on professional equipment.” I assumed she was talking about what she'd recorded earlier at the excavation but figured, too, that she wanted to get far away from Rivertown.

“Of course,” I said. “I'll run in and get your camera.”

I started to get out but sat back when she didn't move to come around to the driver's seat.

“Did I get a man killed tonight, Dek? Should I have known not to call the Rivertown police from the bridge?”

“You mean to protect the man who abducted you and took you to that bridge to kill you and dump you in the river, for what he thought you knew? You think you should have protected that man, Jenny, so he could try to kill you again?”

“I should have known to call the sheriff, not the Rivertown cops.”

“That was my instinct, too, until I realized they'd simply have passed it on to Rivertown. That's why we're lucky you called anonymously. Rivertown's city hall will do anything to hush this up, including bringing in dirt movers in the middle of the night. They'd kill you, Jenny, for what you know about what's been going on.”

“You're sure of the voices at the excavation?”

“J. J. Derbil and brother Elvis, dumping Mr. Red.”

“And it was J. J. and Elvis who went to the bridge tonight, not the cops?”

“You'd never be able to prove it, because no one will ever get permission to dig at that excavation site again.”

“I'll see you later,” she said.

“I'll get your camera,” I said.

She managed a small smile as she patted the pocket of her coat. “I kept it low so no one would see.”

*   *   *

A clatter outside woke me at noon.

The Jeep had been returned. A stake truck was parked behind it. Two men were off-loading firewood and carrying it around to stack in back.

I dressed, went down, and, thinking that everything in life was temporary, used fresh grounds for the coffee. By the time I had two cups the truck was gone.

I went outside. The day was gray with the promise of new snow, perhaps lots of it. I was cheered by the hope that Jenny had seen brightness in so much gloom, and by the prospect of so much new wood.

I drove to Leo's neighborhood, anxious to see amazements. Which I did. The excavation and the bungalow were no more. The entire three-lot property had been overfilled with new dirt swept into gentle mounds.

Leo answered the door wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt adorned by a SpongeBob SquarePants holding a surfboard.

“Come in. We're having coffee and apricot Danish,” he said.

I followed him into the kitchen. Two Rivertown lieutenants, still wearing their tan trench coats, sat perched on Ma's gold-flecked vinyl chairs.

Pa's revolver lay in the middle of the table, next to the Danish.

“I love impromptu parties,” Leo said, pouring coffee into another of the scratched porcelain Walgreens mugs Ma had liberated, back when she'd been a full-time working girl and part-time lunch counter thief. He set a matching Walgreens plate, like the ones the officers had, on the table next to it. Ma liked everything on her table to match.

“I was just telling my friends here that they ought to go over to your place and arrest you, for your fingerprints are surely on Pa's revolver, along with mine,” he said.

One of the bruisers smiled as he brought the last of a four-inch slice of Danish to his mouth.

“That true?” his partner asked me, because he could. His mouth had cleared.

“I've held that gun several times since I was a kid. You're aware I reported a burglary here, while Leo was on vacation?”

The partner nodded, but it might have been in anticipation. His eyes had drifted to the remainder of the Danish.

They were big men. Quick as lightning, I cut off two inches and dropped it on my plate.

“You got my fingerprints from the index?” I asked. My fingerprints had been on file since the Evangeline Wilts trial.

The first cop raised his eyebrows, surprised. “No,” he managed, chewing.

The partner's plate still held only crumbs. He looked at Leo. Leo nodded. The second man cut off another wide slice of Danish. There was but an inch left. Wide slices can kill a Danish in no time.

“Any other prints on the gun?” I asked.

The first cop reached over and stabbed the last inch with his fork. “This is really good Danish,” he said.

“Where'd you find the gun?” I asked, as though Jarobi hadn't already told me it had been in Robinson's minivan. I wanted to know what Rivertown's cops knew

“In some woods, I heard.” That was the way it would go down: A gun with nobody's prints was found in nobody's car in nobody's woods. The two bruisers came to return it, so nobody would think to wonder what nobody had been up to. Robinson needed to be erased.

They finished their Danish and stood up. They left the Colt on the table.

Leo walked them out and came back. “Pa registered the thing, can you believe it? All I can think is a cop must have lifted his head off the bar one of the nights Pa brought it in. He liked to wave it around the tavern. It was a real antique.”

“A Peacemaker,” I said.

“A what?”

“A Colt Peacemaker, the gun that won the West,” I said slowly, savoring the fact that I knew an irrelevant bit of minutiae that he did not.

Standing, his eyes were at the same level as mine, though I was seated. His didn't blink.

“So far as anyone need know, it was stolen in the supposed robbery here?”

“Sure,” I said.

“How did Robinson get the Colt, Dek?”

It was time to give him another installment. “He kidnapped Amanda.”

His face got stricken. “She's all right?”

“She's fine, off on a vacation, actually,” I said quickly. I told him everything about the kidnapping.

“How could you drop the gun in Mr. Robinson's basement?” he asked when I was done.

“It was a time of some nervousness. Now, thanks to Robinson getting pushed off that highway alongside the woods, you got your gun back. I'm so tired of being chased.”

“Where he was abducted by those two hoods?”

“Russian hoods, exports from New York.”

“Why?”

“It has to do with that excavation that just got filled in, and a floater they found in the Willahock. To understand that, I need to talk to Jenny.”

“Those Rivertown lieutenants said nothing when you asked about other prints on Pa's revolver.”

“Robinson's were all over that gun. By wiping it down, they distanced city hall from anything he'd been up to, on their behalf or his own. They brought it back and blew you off. Now it's something stolen in a robbery, nothing more,” I said.

“I think you want me to forget about that gun, too.”

He was right, of course. I never wanted him to wonder about that gun either.

“I know you, Leo,” I said.

“Yes?” he asked, about to be victorious.

“I know you never buy just one Danish.”

He sighed and went to a cabinet, coming back with a long white bag. Opening it to reveal a second Danish, truly a miracle of golden crust, bright orange apricot, and sweet white drizzle, he said, “There are so many holes in the stories you're telling me.”

I cut a fine wide slice of the Danish.

“My second night at the clinic,” he said, “I had a vague dream about someone chasing me into that empty bungalow. I shot him with Pa's gun. I've had the same dream four more times since then.”

“You should fantasize about better things,” I said, raising the Danish to my mouth.

“You know what they say about dreams,” he said.

“What?” I stuffed the tip of the Danish into my mouth so nothing unnecessary would come out.

“Ultimately, they tell the truth.”

 

Sixty-one

That evening, Jenny answered on the first ring.

“I've been thinking about you,” I said.

“More than our friend by the bridge?” she asked.

“Lustful thoughts pushed him away.”

“I'm batting my eyelashes furiously, trying not to blush.” Her voice was high, tight, working at trying to be funny.

“Want to have dinner?”

“Oh, be still, my beating lashes,” she said, still tight.

“I could pick you up, wherever you live.”

“I'm closer to you.”

“How close?”

“I'm just turning off Thompson Avenue.”

I ran upstairs, found a reasonably unwrinkled shirt and an unstained pair of khakis, and was out the door in no time flat. She was waiting in a black Ford Edge.

“You look…” she began.

“The same?”

“Always.” She laughed. This time it was genuine.

“Since you're driving, I'll give the directions?”

She agreed, and we took off in silence, both of us edgy, I thought, planning responses and defenses to the terrors and the wonders of the previous night.

“Where are we headed?” she asked, after several turns and fifteen minutes.

“A medium-fancy place I know.”

“What's that mean, medium-fancy?”

“Unstained tablecloths and uncrusted silverware, but still affordable.”

“It's got logs on the outside,” she said when we arrived.

“But, one hopes, no wood-boring beetles.”

She laughed, but only a little.

We ordered unfashionable Rob Roys and food that didn't matter: fish for her, a small steak for me.

“Your camera?” I began, in lieu of small talk.

“The camera's fine enough, but what I got at the excavation is too dark. You can't recognize anyone. So the last of it, the bulldozing, is meaningless.”

“You'll just have to stay close to Rivertown, waiting for the next chapter,” I said, trying for light and serious at the same time

Our food came, and we talked of the corruption in Illinois and the mop-headed former governor who, just a few days before, had flown to Colorado to begin a fourteen-year stretch in a federal prison for being a mop-headed greedy jackass, and how he'd driven right past the gates so he could stop at a hamburger place to do one more meet-and-greet by the soda machine with people who had no idea who he was. Things like that kept us in Illinois from becoming excessively prideful.

“Speaking of confluence,” I said, when we were done eating. It was the word I'd tried out on Leo, what now seemed like light-years before.

“Confluence?”

“A joining together of two or more—”

“I know what confluence means, you naughty man. This morning was lovely.”

“I was referring to the not so happy confluence of Russians and lizards in Rivertown, which is your cue to answer questions.”

“Does medium-fancy mean we can order tiny after-dinner drinks?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

I only had to raise my hand an inch before the waiter who'd been eyeballing her all night raced over.

“Double Scotches, no ice, please,” she said.

He was back with them in an instant.

“Pray ask away,” she said, taking a small sip. “I'm enthralled.”

I went for the unanswerable first. “It was Elvis Derbil who called you in San Francisco?”

“Nice try. An unnamed source tipped me that something odd was afoot in Rivertown. A Chicago lawyer, representing an anonymous owner, had purchased three houses in your bungalow belt, all in a row, and had applied for permits for their demolition. More mystifying, the lawyer applied for only one building permit, to construct an enormous pillared Greek Revival mansion of some nine thousand square feet. My unnamed source was quite concerned, because such temples are never built in Rivertown. I thought it intriguing enough to ask for a short leave.”

“So it was that, and not the thought of a certain heartbroken eccentric, hopelessly fluttering his handkerchief out his turret, that enticed you back?”

She mock-slapped a giggle. “That's the Scotch, not me. Anyway, I worked backward from the lawyer and found he was representing a New York lawyer, who was involved with Russian mobsters, both there and here in Chicago.”

“Complicated.”

“Tortuous, designed to obscure.”

“Too complicated for your source to be Elvis Derbil?”

“Have you read your Capone?” she asked, by way of not answering.

With that, I began to understand. “You mean when reformers made Chicago too hot for the Scarface, he moved his operation to Cicero because it was cheesy and small and he could take control of the whole town quickly?”

“Yes.”

“Russians coming to take over Rivertown?” I almost laughed—it sounded like a bad play on an old Alan Arkin movie—except her expression was serious.

“They were going to go Capone one better,” she said. “They knew no one in town would welcome a foreign gang. On the other hand, so many people in Rivertown were out of work, they might welcome the devil himself if he could raise home prices, create any kind of new jobs, and otherwise bring boom times. To calm the natives about their arrival, perhaps even enthuse them, they decided on a very big and visible first step.”

“Build a mansion in Rivertown that everyone in town would see as signaling a coming prosperity,” I said.

“A nifty plan, yes?”

It was starting to sound brilliant. “Still, Rivertown's such a cheesy place. Our crime is so tawdry.”

“That's what represented the opportunity. Let me tell you about a friend of mine, a weatherman out east. He liked to go down to Miami to blow off steam. The first night, he goes into one of their grubbier little bars, meets two girls who only have eyes for him. They drink, and drink some more. It's a happy place; people are singing; the bartender is snapping pictures; everyone's having a great time. My weatherman blacks out, something he's never done before, and wakes up in his room the next morning with a small memory and a big hangover.”