The Big Score

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Move fast, Matthias. George S. Patton. You get where you’re going with a lot fewer casualties.”

  In the Rolls, driving her home, Matthias asked Sally what she thought of the evening.

  “They’re not exactly North Shore, but he’s really exciting.”

  That was what Matthias felt. Excited. For the first time in years.

  Poe, another cigar in hand, went out onto his terrace and stood looking out over the lake. Diandra came to the doorway behind him.

  “Do you want me to stay, Peter?”

  “He liked you.”

  “I like him. He’s very different from most of your business associates.”

  “He likes art.”

  “He’s a painter.”

  “Diandra. Sometime this week, call him up and ask him to take you to a museum. The Art Institute, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, Diandra. Be nice to him.”

  “All right, Peter. If that’s what you want.”

  Upon returning to his hotel room, Zany called his wife, who told him that the dishwasher had broken and that her brother had called from Wyoming to say he’d be bringing his family out for a two-week visit again that August. A call to Sergeant Hejmal had produced the news that the radio had gone out in one of the police cars and that the State Police were going through some of the beach towns to the north and south looking for prospective fiends who might have killed the girl in the boat. Also, the district attorney had been on the phone three times asking if Zany had found out anything in Chicago.

  “Tell him no arrests yet,” Zany said, but Hejmal didn’t get the sardonic humor.

  After that, Zany took a shower and put on a clean shirt, then went out for a walk and dinner. The neighborhood was full of restaurants, but few he could afford. He settled on a pizza joint, ate more than he should have, had two beers instead of one, and then continued with his walk. Something was worming around in the back of his mind but he couldn’t bring it forth. He wished he had his computer. He had come to use it in his work, feeding into it his thoughts and ideas and suspicions and mixing them up with evidence. He’d been able to locate and bust up that marijuana operation in Grand Pier that way.

  Returning to his hotel, he found a message in his box from Detective Plotnik in Area Six Burglary. Zany went immediately to the pay phone in the hotel lobby.

  “I think I may have something for you, Zany,” Plotnik said, after another cop had fetched him from the men’s room. “I thought it would be weeks before anything turned up, but sometimes you get lucky. You know, life is fucking strange.”

  It was Plotnik’s favorite saying.

  “How fucking strange this time?”

  “Remember that weirdo burglary call I told you about? The broad in Old Town who thought one of her apartments might have been gone over by cops? Well, she called in a missing persons earlier tonight. Her tenant. Gone more than twenty-four hours. I mean, you know we wouldn’t put something like this real high on the stack. I mean, shit. Gone twenty-four hours? A single broad? In Old Town? Wowee. But the description she filed. The tenant works for an art gallery, and she’s supposed to be a looker. It made me think of the case you’re working. I tried to get Mulroney and Stacek on it but they’re out on this O’Rourke thing, looking for hookers.” He laughed, a rumbling chuckle.

  “Did you show her the photo I left you?” Zany asked. “The girl who turned in the missing persons?”

  “Well, you know, it took awhile for the report to get over to us. I called the broad with the apartment as soon as I put it together, but there was no answer. I had a beat patrol stop at the residence address, but same thing. No one on the premises. Maybe she got spooked or something. Who the hell knows? You know, it’s Old Town. Anyway, let me give it to you. Maybe you can stop by in the morning.”

  Zany wrote down the name, phone number, and address. Ruth Anne Mazureski. The missing girl’s name was Jill Langley. She worked for the Laurence Train gallery on Michigan Avenue, and had been on her way there when the Mazureski woman had last seen her.

  “You still have the photo, right?” Zany asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Right here on my desk.”

  “I’m going to borrow it back,” Zany said. “I’ll be right over.”

  He drove his car fast, wondering if one of his former colleagues would dare hit him with a ticket. Not all Chicago cops were his friends. Plotnik had nothing more to report. He put the photo, embellished now with a small catsup smear, into a Chicago Police Department envelope, and handed it to his old pal.

  “I’m off at midnight. You want to stop for a cold one?”

  “Better not,” Zany said. “I’ve got a lot to do and they want me back in Grand Pier tomorrow.”

  “Next time, maybe.”

  Mulroney and Stacek were still out on their big case. Zany used Mulroney’s phone to try the Mazureski girl again, but got no answer. Speeding again, he went to the Old Town address, but got no response then, either. For a tempting moment, he thought of working the lock and taking a look inside, but decided against it. For all he knew, the Mazureski woman was sitting inside in the dark, scared shitless and holding a gun. Or she might come in and find him there, and he’d end up having to talk the Chicago P.D. out of breaking and entering charges.

  Next he went over to the Curland house on Schiller Street, wanting the museum guy to take a good look at the photo, but no one answered and all the lights were out. As he headed back toward Lake Shore Drive, the half-formed thought at the back of his mind suddenly came to the fore. Stopping beneath a street light, he pulled the photograph out of the envelope.

  It was her. The girl in the photo was the girl he had seen in the painting in the man’s dining room. The nude. Painted by him. Matthias Curland.

  He started to turn back toward the house, then stopped. He might end up waiting around outside Curland’s door all night. Guys who painted nudes must pass their nights at all kinds of places. Instead, he drove over to the Train gallery, which upon arriving he realized was completely stupid. At this hour, it was of course closed. He stared at some of the paintings on display in the windows, then sighed in resignation and headed for his hotel. Everything would have to wait for morning, and why not? None of these people were going anywhere, least of all Jill Langley, if that proved to be who was lying in his county morgue.

  He was a very tired man by the time he swung open the door to his hotel room, but the longtime cop in him came instantly to life. Something was wrong. Things had been rearranged. His closet door was open. He recalled closing it before he left. One of the dresser drawers was open. His briefcase on top of the dresser was wide open.

  His tape recorder and Polaroid camera had been taken. So had his pocket calculator and an expensive pen and pencil set his wife had given him as a birthday present but he always left in his briefcase unused for fear of losing them.

  And the bloodstained painting—Das Rot Turm—was gone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sally had stayed the night, having somehow persuaded her baby sitter to do the same at her place. She lay cozily in Matthias’s arms and talked for a long time after their lovemaking about the future. She saw Peter Poe as a turn of fortune for the both of them. Matthias had not noticed, but sometime during the evening Poe had suggested to her that she might quit her little boutique and come to work for the foundation he had established earlier in the year. It was only in its formative stages, but he said he had great plans for it, and needed someone like Sally to help organize the various charity events he intended to hold under its auspices. He had mentioned a salary more than three times what she was earning at her shop. Matthias had drifted into sleep as she was going on about how they both could now resume their proper place in Chicago society.

  His own visions were of buildings and, for a fleeting moment before total slumber, of Diandra Poe, walking, turning, her clothes flowing around her. Beauty in motion. Beauty as motion.

  And that mind, thoughts as cool and clear as her
words, thoughts shared only with the sky so splendidly reflected in her light-blue eyes.

  Sally left him shortly after sunrise, waking him gently to say good-bye. Matthias was back to sleep before she closed the door behind her, not stirring until hours later. When he did get up, he was perspiring, and found the advancing day filled with heat. He was quite groggy and dizzy, having had two more brandies after the one he’d accepted at the Poes’. No crime in that, except that he had promised himself he’d have only one, and had gone to bed wanting yet one more.

  Zany had to ring the bell of the Schiller Street house several times before someone finally came to the door. It was the fair-haired older brother he had talked to the day before, looking about as pleased as someone opening their door to a swarm of bees.

  They stood staring at each other briefly, both of them blinking. The sunlight was intense.

  “Sorry to bother you again, Mr. Curland,” Zany said, “but I’m afraid I need to talk with you some more.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t know what more I could possibly tell you.”

  “I think a lot, maybe. Could I come in?”

  His eyes went from Matthias’s unshaven face to his rumpled bathrobe to his bare feet.

  “If it’s that important.” He opened the door fully and admitted Rawlings, gesturing for him to go on into the living room.

  “Thank you.”

  “Let me get a little more presentable,” Matthias said. “I’ll be right down.”

  While he waited, Zany went into the dining room to look again at the nude on the wall. Curland joined him there, now clean shaven and wearing a white shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. His feet were in a well-worn pair of boating shoes. His legs and ankles were very tan, as tan as the dead woman’s, what you’d expect from someone who did a lot of sailing.

  Zany took a large white envelope out of the briefcase.

  “That girl in the painting,” Zany said. “Is her name by any chance Jill Langley?”

  “Yes, it is. How did you know that?”

  Rawlings took a photograph from the envelope, handing it to Matthias.

  “Is this Jill Langley?” he said.

  Curland stared at the picture. He seemed truly horrified.

  “Yes,” he said. There were tears in his eyes.

  “I guess you get the idea, then. She’s the girl we found in the boat.”

  Curland’s hands were trembling. “Yesterday, after you said it was a young woman who’d been killed, I had this strange feeling that it might be her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I called her. There was no answer. I told myself I was being ridiculous. I thought, if something had happened to her, we would have heard. She worked for a friend of my brother’s. She used to work for us.”

  “You look kind of pale. Are you all right, Mr. Curland?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Curland looked about, then went into the living room, still clutching the picture. He seated himself clumsily on the couch, then managed to put the photo down on the coffee table before him.

  “You knew her pretty well?”

  “Yes. Where—where is she?”

  “In a morgue back in Michigan. It’s part of the local hospital.”

  “Do you want me to come out and identify her? Officially?”

  “You’ve kind of done that already, Mr. Curland. Anyway, I got a hold of her family this morning. Her father’s coming out.”

  “They’ll be devastated. Devastated. She was their only child. A very special girl. Very special. Lovely.”

  The last words were mumbled. Rawlings studied him with great seriousness.

  “I’ve been pretty busy, Mr. Curland,” he said finally. “I’ve learned that Miss Langley worked for an art gallery, owned by somebody named Laurence Train. Is that your brother’s friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “She apparently went there the night she was killed. Train doesn’t know why she came in or where she went afterward. He said he doesn’t know anything about any missing paintings, or copies of paintings. How long did she work for you?”

  “More than five years.”

  “Did she have access to your vault, the one we were in yesterday?”

  “Yes. When she worked for us.”

  “Do you own a sailboat, Mr. Curland?”

  “Yes. Technically, that is. While I was in Europe, my brother leased it to someone—a lease with an option to buy. I had no control over it.”

  “The boat’s named the Hillary?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve got it over at Grand Pier. It’s a little shot up, but it floats. Time of death we figure to be sometime after midnight on Friday. Were you in Chicago, Mr. Curland?”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was in New York. I stopped off to see my ex-wife. I didn’t get here until early afternoon.”

  “You have a plane ticket receipt to show that?”

  “Yes. I’ll get it if you want.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Still shaky, Curland got to his feet and went into the library, digging the receipt out of a desk drawer.

  Zany examined it carefully, then handed it back. “Your brother, Christian Curland. Do you know where he was that night?”

  Matthias was staring at the photograph. “I’m not sure. Possibly with some friend—a woman, probably. Mr. Rawlings, please. We were the closest friends Jill had in Chicago.”

  “Right. Did Miss Langley have a key to the boat or something? The hatch cover was unlocked, not broken open.”

  “I used to keep a spare key in the bilge, in one of those plastic cases with a magnet. She knew about it. She had the use of the boat while I was gone—when I moved away, I left it here so she could use it—until my brother leased it.”

  “She was from Wisconsin?”

  “Yes. Her father’s a doctor. She studied art history here at Northwestern. She went to work with us after she got her master’s. She could have done better. We were very grateful to have her, but she was wasting her life with us. She was wise to move on. It would have been better if she had left Chicago.”

  “So it would seem. Why did she go to work for Train?”

  “I think for more money. My family has experienced some reverses.”

  “You seem real upset, Mr. Curland. How well did you know this girl?”

  “Very well. As I said, we were very close.”

  “How close?”

  Curland’s eyes went back to the picture. “I should be honest with you. We had a love affair. If it had happened at a different time, a better time … I was fond of her. Very fond of her.” He wiped at his eyes. “But I haven’t talked to her in a long time. We wrote some letters, but that’s not quite the same.”

  Zany took out a notebook and jotted down something. “Well, Mr. Curland, I’m a little curious about all this. We found her on your boat. She had one of your—she had that copy of one of your paintings, if that’s what it is. Best we can determine, she had it wrapped around her body, like she was stealing it. Or hiding it.”

  “But it was only a copy. The Red Tower’s still in the museum vault. You saw for yourself.”

  “Yeah. Curious as hell. What’s even more curious is that someone broke into my hotel room while I was out last night. They took a bunch of stuff, but they took the painting, too.”

  “Why would anyone want it?”

  “I don’t know. Usually when thieves work a hotel, they hit several rooms. Make the risk worth their while. But the hotel security guys told me they had no other incidents—and seldom do. Kind of strange. Where were you last night, Mr. Curland?”

  “I went to dinner with some people. The Poes. Peter Poe.”

  “The billionaire?”

  “I guess he’s that.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Just Poe and his wife. And a friend of mine. Sally Phillips.”

  Zany wrote all this down. “Did you happen to ment
ion to anyone that we’d talked? That I had the painting? Where I was staying?”

  “As a matter of fact, I think I did.”

  “How long did you stay there?”

  “I’m not sure. Until after midnight.”

  “No one left before that? While you were there?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Zany studied his notebook a moment, then put it away and stood up. “Thanks. I guess that’s all for now. Is your brother coming back soon?”

  “I’ve no idea where he is.”

  “I’d really like to talk to him.”

  “Is there somewhere he can reach you?”

  “I’m kind of moving around. I’ll call him later.”

  “Should I go back with you? To Michigan?”

  “No need of that. Probably not a good idea. Her father, well, he didn’t speak too highly of you people.”

  Curland stared at the floor a moment, then rose, following Rawlings to the door.

  “It’s funny,” Zany said, glancing at Matthias again. “You’re dressed exactly the same way she was, when we found her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s nothing. Just an observation. I’m paid to notice things. You get in the habit. Well, thanks again, Mr. Curland. You really don’t look too well. Maybe you ought to lie down or something.”

  When Rawlings had gone, Matthias did as the man suggested, falling back on his couch, but sleep did not come. His compulsion to do something—anything—agitated him. His overwhelming need was to talk to Christian, but there was little point trying to find him. He’d return soon enough from wherever his indulgence had taken him. This wrenching news was nothing he wanted to share with Sally. The myriad unanswered questions batting around his brain were beyond his capability of sane thought.

  He needed escape, distraction. He considered a long, hard walk along the lake, but the heat was too forbidding. In the past, when he was upset, he would throw himself into work, but there wasn’t any.

  Or was there? Poe had written him a check for two thousand dollars—a week’s wages for services as yet unrendered. He was still unsure that he wanted to be the man’s sailing instructor. But the prospect of the new building had hooked him deep. His mind had been shaping lines and forms even as he had gone to the door to answer Rawlings’s ring. He’d been given a week to produce a drawing. He had work—and then some.