Jon pulled up a chair. Bess sat on the bed, and the springs squeaked. That did it. She began to cry. She cried quite a while. When it was out of her system, she opened her purse and groped for a mirror.
“I’m a mess, aren’t I? That lousy job. This crumby place…”
“We all,” Jon said softly, “suffered enough for the old days. You, me, Molloy…”
“That guy?” She scowled. “The all-American wreck? You know what he did?” She rose, went to a closet and opened it. Apparently, she’d decided to go back to Chicago after all. “He came to see me in Buffalo. Some nerve! He wanted me to marry him.”
She carried stuff from the closet to the bed. Her possessions were pitifully few. Jon would have to tell Eric, when he called later, to give Bess an advance for a wardrobe and to line up a place for her to stay.
“He loved me, he said. And he had a confession to make, how he sold out your father. How a contact man for Train got him drunk in Kansas City after a Wolves game, and bribed him into letting Train into the house to tap the phone and bug the study.”
“Skipper never discusses it,” Jon said. “But I know about it.”
“You still see him?”
“Fairly often. We’re good friends. He looked me up when I was in high school, and he’s done a lot for me. I don’t hold anything against him any more. When he did those things, he had problems of his own.”
“I still think he’s a louse, but never mind him. What’s the business that brought you to Florida, Jon?”
He was afraid she’d ask that. He’d have to tell her. At The Den, she’d hear it sooner or later.
“Selling dresses.” He paused. “For Schatzmueller.”
Bess straightened. “Schatz?” Hands on hips, she walked to Jon and loomed over him. “Look, I loved your father, but you’re no kid any more, let’s face it. He was a crook, something I found out too late. Schatz is a crook too, and if you’ve got a brain in your head you’ll break off with him.”
“Don’t worry. I never made a dishonest dollar in my life. Ask anyone.” Jon’s face began to burn. Now that Bess was reasserting herself in the maternal role she’d played in his childhood, he found it difficult to lie to her. “Schatz went legitimate. He owns a dress factory. I’m studying the business, to see if I want to buy a piece of it.”
Bess snorted in disgust. She strode back to the bed and sat down, hands in her lap. “‘A piece of it.’ You talk so much like Rudy that I’m scared to death. I hope you do know an honest dollar when you see one. And I hope this thing with Schatz has nothing to do with your father…”
An awkward silence grew. Finally, she said, “Sooner or later, I’ve got to ask. You ever hear from him?”
“Someone sends money on my birthday, but I’ve had no word.”
“I read about that. Little newspaper paragraphs, every August. I haven’t heard from him either, but I keep hoping he’s alive.”
“So do I.” Since Bess brought it up, Jon decided to pursue the subject. “You know, I can understand his not sending for me. If he decided to change identities, to lose himself so completely that even the gangsters couldn’t find him, he couldn’t be saddled with a child. But I always thought he’d have sent for you.”
“Don’t be so sure. Before I left for Buffalo, I told him that wherever he was going, I wouldn’t join him. He gave me a big sales talk. How in South America he’d marry me, but I said much as I wanted to be Mrs. Chakorian, I wouldn’t be a fugitive’s wife. I pleaded with him to stay here, to take his lumps and start over.”
“How’d he react to that?”
“He didn’t believe me. He was sure I’d join him anyhow, but I always hoped he finally realized I meant it.
That he did what you said—became a new person someplace. And that that’s why he never got in touch.”
“And Schatz? You think he’d double-cross Schatz?”
“To save his own skin, yes. That’s another reason you shouldn’t mess with Schatz. If he thought Rudy double-crossed him, he’d hate Rudy. He’d hate you. I know one thing. Schatz wants Rudy’s missing million. A woman and a teen-age girl brought him to see me, right after he got out of prison. He was in a wheel chair. When I wouldn’t answer his questions, he said Rudy’s missing million might be at stake, and if I could provide a lead to it, he’d cut me in. I was so sore that I wheeled him right out the door.”
Bess looked down at her fingernails. Her voice went chillingly flat. “And I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone. Lou Gardino wants Rudy’s million too. In Buffalo once, his men questioned me about it. My mother was out of town. They picked me up in the street, and took me to a cellar. It was part interrogation, part revenge, because I’d been Rudy’s woman. They were careful. No cuts, no bruises. But what they did—well, never mind that. At the end, they poured whisky down my throat until I passed out. I came to in a motel. The maid said I’d checked in the night before with a man, and that’s not all. Gardino’s people come back. Every year or so they walk in when I least expect them. They just ask, did I hear from Rudy. I say no, and they go away. The last time I saw one of those guys,” Bess added, “was eight months ago.”
“Maybe,” Jon said slowly, “it’s a mistake after all, your coming to work in Chicago.”
“Oh, no.” Bess was emphatic. “You can’t keep me away now. I want a good look at this place you have a piece of.
Meanwhile, beat it. If I’m flying to Chicago, I have to change clothes and fix my face.”
Jon went down to the lobby. Overhead, a big fan turned lazily. A few loungers sprawled around and gazed at him curiously.
He sank into a battered armchair, reflecting that Bess had just confirmed another portion of Schatz’s story—namely, that Gardino was still interested in his father. Until now, Jon had taken Schatz’s word for that. There was always the faint possibility that Schatz himself was working a con game. While his business was in Dun & Bradstreet, its rating wasn’t high, and the twenty thousand Jon had put up for the bribe kitty was a lot of money.
One thing, though, disturbed Jon. Thanks to Schatz, Gardino knew Jon and the old man were a team. He might assume, when Bess went to work at Levee Court, that Bess was in their confidence. If anything went wrong—if word of the diamonds got out, for instance—he’d probably send his men to interrogate her again…
To Jon’s right, a plate-glass window faced the street. A man in a rumpled white suit strolled by. Idly, Jon watched him.
The man stopped. Just as idly, he turned his head and gazed into the lobby. He was tall, heavy-set but not fat. Jon estimated his age at the late forties. In carriage and build, he seemed strikingly like Spook. His nose wasn’t crooked and bumpy, though. It was quite straight.
Still, his lips, twisted in an artificial, humorless smile, were as narrow as Spook’s had been. His features were squarish, but irregular. Except for the nose, in fact…
Their eyes met.
It was Spook.
For a moment, neither man moved. Jon sat frozen, his stomach gone hollow, the old fear coming back. Dammit, this was ridiculous. He couldn’t just sit here, while Spook watched from the other side of the window. And by now, Spook knew—he’d seen the recognition in Jon’s eyes.
Spook’s bizarre smile broadened. He raised his right hand. Slowly, he drew his index finger across his throat, a gesture with a meaning infinitely clear.
Then he turned and walked out of sight.
Jon lunged from the chair. Dodging furniture, stumbling once over a pair of outstretched legs, he raced through the lobby. The desk clerk yelled, a woman uttered a tiny scream.
He was too late, of course. When he reached the street, the sidewalks were empty, and in the shadows nothing stirred.
CHAPTER 9
“Hold tight,” Fogarty said. “I’ll take you past the old homestead.”
The red-headed Venus security man, Train’s observe
r at Jon’s press conference, drove them through an intersection just as the light changed. The wild ride had started at an exit to a subway station, where Jon climbed into Fogarty’s car after a dizzying series of transfers. They’d gone south to the Loop first, now they were on their way back. It was the day after Jon’s return from Florida. Train wanted a meeting, and since his home was being used as an informal headquarters for the Chakorian investigation, they’d hold it there.
The brownstone loomed on Jon’s right. A pretty girl in a short skirt descended the steps as they whizzed by. Two blocks further, they veered left, the wrong way on a one-way street. Fogarty braked with an awesome jolt, avoiding a head-on collision with a truck.
The trucker sounded an angry horn. Impassive, Fogarty turned right into an alley, drove a block and stopped.
“Here it is,” he said. “On your left. And if Spook followed us after that, he’s a magician.”
Jon was inclined to agree. He got out and walked into a yard behind a narrow, three-story house sandwiched between apartment buildings. A thin, lanky woman sunning herself there greeted him by name, introduced herself as Train’s wife, and led him inside.
Jon asked about the two boys whose picture Train had showed him years ago, unleashing a torrent of talk. They’re fine, she said, in business for themselves. After they married, Train bought this place to be near his job, but she wished they were back in the suburbs, it’s quieter. She was going to Maine tomorrow, for her hay fever. She also wished Jon would finish whatever he was doing. The storeroom under the front porch was jammed with the old Chakorian files, boxes trucked from a warehouse and piled on a tarp over the dirt floor, and a man was downstairs now, reading. The files had been shipped here instead of to the Venus plant because Train didn’t want clerks gossiping about the case opening again.
And, Jon wondered, have they found anything in those old records? Well now, she replied, I’m not supposed to know, but even if I did you’d have to ask Train.
* * * *
The investigator waited in his study. Mementos of his police days lined the walls, and he was in shirtsleeves, a can of beer in one hand.
After Jon delivered a brief report, Train swung his feet up to his desk and observed, “As an undercover man, you’re not exactly a howling success.”
“I’m doing my best.” Absently, Jon poked through a carton of reports on Felix Schatzmueller’s activities in New York in November, 1949. One of them, it seemed, had been a nineteen-year-old brunette named Cleo. “The old man’s still suspicious. He doesn’t trust me.”
“That’s your job, to make him trust you. We can’t help you find Spook until we know how Schatz assembled that list, but you don’t even know where he hangs his hat.” Jon got a little sore. “Stop riding me, Train. I know you don’t like me, but if we’re going to work together, you’ll have to put up with me. I’m not a professional agent, I’m an ordinary citizen, an amateur.”
“You’re telling me.” Train took a swig of beer, gazing at Jon in a speculative way. “At least you haven’t blown your cover yet. That’s something. I didn’t think you’d last this long. You say when you saw Spook in Florida he just stood there? Smiling?”
“Yes. And when he knew I recognized him, he beat it.”
“Suggestive, isn’t it. He’d straightened his nose, altered his most prominent facial feature, probably years ago. And he was smiling, showing you the face you’d see in a newspaper file. Doing what he did when he surprised you in the brownstone, seeing if you’d recognize him. But you’re a man now, he was more careful.”
“You think he knows what Schatz and I are up to?”
“The old man said Spook could have learned of his efforts to get the list, didn’t he? If so, Spook would check on Schatz. He’d learn he was going on a Midwest sales tour, with a stop in Chicago. That’s where you live, the one guy who could finger him. He’d want to know if you two got together. He tailed you to the meeting, but couldn’t hear anything. He searched the old man’s luggage in Peoria, seeking a clue, but no luck. He came back, heard you were selling dresses for Schatz, tailed you and saw you weren’t selling dresses at all. You were looking at people, so he back-tracked you, and got the names of some of the people you looked at. Those names don’t mean anything to us yet, but they might mean a lot to Spook. I think in a rough way, at least, he’s deduced the source of the list. He’s afraid he’s on it. That’s why the test in Florida—to see if you’d spot his new face after all these years.”
“He seems,” Jon mused, “to be going through a lot of trouble and expense. And if he tailed me that much without my noticing, he’s good at it.”
“You take precautions to shake a tail?”
“No.”
“From now on, start doing so. And when you’re in town, don’t let many people know where you are at any given moment. The guy can’t dog you twenty-four hours a day. He’s got to eat and sleep like the rest of us, don’t make it so easy for him to find you.”
“What,” Jon ventured, “do you think his next move will be?”
“There’s no telling. He’s in a spot, though. He knows you’re working with Schatz and Pearl, but doesn’t know what any of you three know. Probably he’s lost Schatz now too. He doesn’t know where the list is, how many copies there are, how Schatz got it, and whether anyone else could compile an identical list. At the moment,” Train added, “I think he has four choices.”
“Such as?”
“One, approach you before you learn his name. I don’t think he’d risk that, though. Two, run and hide, but he doesn’t seem the type. Three, sit tight and hope his name isn’t on the list; but if you do identify him, negotiate, if your father was murdered, or at least tell Schatz where he took your father if he wasn’t. If he’s heard the insurance policy story, I think that’s his most likely choice.”
“And the fourth?”
Train hesitated. “The fourth,” he said, “is to figure how to get the facts on that list. And then to kill all three of you—you, Schatz, and the girl.”
A wisp of breeze filtered in through the window. It was a lovely August day. What a fantastic suggestion…
“Triple murder?” Jon smiled. “For one man, that’s a big order.”
“It is. But don’t discount the possibility entirely. We don’t know who or what we’re dealing with. If Spook’s ready to kill, triple murder’s his only out. He’d be foolish to kill just you. Schatz or the girl might get scared and run to the police with the whole story, including a list that might have Spook’s name on it. That’s one reason I want to know where the old man’s holed up. We could watch from a distance, he’d never know. If Spook found those two, learned about the list and then knocked them off before anyone heard about it, he could try for you, too.” The investigator tipped the beer can again, draining it. “How’d Schatz take the news, by the way? When you told him you saw Spook?”
“He was jubilant. Said it proved we’re on the right track.”
“And the big trip west?”
“I leave day after tomorrow. I have to clean up some business first. He’s to contact me later, with details. All I know now is, I’m to go by car, checking names on the way, and when I get to Las Vegas, he’ll send more names. He also said that the next time we talked, he’d have a surprise for me. What he meant by that, I can’t imagine.”
“You want an escort west? People who’ll always see you, but you won’t see them? Since Spook knows you can recognize him…”
“No. If he spotted a tail, he might decide to disappear himself. I’ll have to risk it alone.” Jon paused. “Train, I sense a mild thaw in your attitude. At least you haven’t said a word today about me working a con game.”
Train lowered his feet. Inscrutable, he sat up and drawled, “I was getting to that. We’ve confirmed your story. Confirmed Spook’s existence, anyhow.” He nodded to the carton on the floor. “The old records
. Reports from every agent ever hired to work on your father’s case. Your description paid off. We found Spook mentioned twice. Him, or someone who looked a helluva lot like him.”
“In what connection?”
“He spoke to your father. The first time was in Houston, Texas, where you, your father and his woman went to see a football game.”
“I remember that trip,” Jon said. “It’s when my father hired Molloy.”
“I’d just come on the case then. I wanted to learn your father’s contacts, so I asked a private eye down there to watch him. The night before the game, your father went into the hotel bar. He talked to a guy who looked like Spook for about ten minutes. Tall and husky, in his thirties, with a crooked nose. Apparently, a casual meeting between strangers, but the agent took his description anyhow. He tried to learn his name, but couldn’t. The bartender had never seen him before, and he wasn’t a guest at the hotel.”
“And the second time?”
“In Chicago, a few days before the disappearance. In your father’s office, this time. Your father’s secretary was on our payroll. Spook and your father had a long talk in the Venus parking lot. She was watching from a window, it seemed unusual, so she took Spook’s description too.
We assumed then he might have been an emissary from Gardino or some other creditor, asking for money. The first report had been buried under a ton of paper, and nobody connected the two meetings.”
“That’s kind of tantalizing, isn’t it?”
“And how.” Train looked down at a big fist, as though he’d like to punch someone. Himself, maybe. “We had him under our noses at least twice. And since he first saw your old man four months before he disappeared, it could be your father planned a double cross all along. That he and Schatz sat down and did what Novak suggested once—worked out an escape plan he didn’t have the slightest intention of carrying out.”
* * * *
Business details had to be settled. Jon spent the remainder of the day arranging for another firm to manage Levee Court and handle the affairs of Chakorian Enterprises. While the shopping center was dead, there were other matters, small property sales for friends of Mike Bonella and Uncle Howard, that would need attention while he was out West.
The James Michael Ullman Crime Novel Page 49