The days flew by as I continued with my cases and a growing number of skip traces. I tried, on several different occasions, to make plans with Beth, whom I missed terribly, but between my unpredictable hours and her busy life with hubby, we never seemed to make a connection.
Lucie called me on Wednesday to tell me that the excuse her husband was using for this particular Thursday was a poker game with his golf buddies. The Barnetts lived in the Conrad Hilton Hotel—I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would be like—so it wasn’t going to be easy catching him leave. The hotel was on South Michigan Avenue overlooking Grant Park, and there was no place to park where I could observe him leaving the building.
At six-thirty the following evening, I drove into the Conrad Hilton parking garage, pulled a ticket, and rode around the multi-floor structure until a spot opened up near enough to the exit where I could observe who was leaving. Lucie had told me they were having room service for dinner at six o’clock. My task was to sit in the car and wait for a dark blue Mercedes with license plate number FT1033 to exit the garage.
I didn’t mind the waiting time—it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own case, which had been neglected lately. Minnie was the key to my learning more about what had gone on in the boardinghouse. Sure, I had gotten her to invite me in, but as I had witnessed first-hand, she could be a tough cookie. How much she revealed would depend on me. If I could glean more information about the boarders, especially the one involved in the “hanky-panky,” I was sure I’d be closer to knowing who Anna was and how she had died.
At exactly seven-forty, I saw the blue Mercedes exit, so I turned on the ignition, paid the attendant sixty-five cents, and away I went. He turned right out of the garage, toward the park. Then he turned right on Michigan Avenue, and before I knew it, we were on Lake Shore Drive, headed south.
Even though the sun had set an hour earlier, I could still see hear the waves of Lake Michigan rise and fall along the shoreline, creating a virtual playground for the noisy seagulls fluttering above them. I passed the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium, then Soldier Field, Burnham Harbor, and McCormick Place while keeping an eye on Barnett two cars ahead of me.
Right before the Forty-seventh Street exit ramp, I took my eyes off of his car for just an instant and lost sight of it. I figured he must have taken that exit, but I couldn’t get off the Drive until Fifty-first Street. At that point, I felt there was no use continuing. If he had gotten off at the last exit, he’d be long gone by now.
Tailing someone was not an easy thing to do, especially on the crowded streets of a major city.
I exited at Fifty-first Street and drove until I came to Drexel Boulevard, the first major road. In an attempt to circle back to the Drive, I turned right and then right again. I had no sense of direction, and it was poorly lit in that area. I hoped I was going the right way.
I was at the corner of Ellis and Fiftieth when I spotted a car just like Barnett’s parked in someone’s driveway. I drove past it and affirmed by the license plate that it was his car. What luck! I turned around at the end of the block and parked across the street several houses away.
The neighborhood was a mixture of unremarkable two-story single family homes, a small playground, and what may have been a church at the end of the block. I took out my notepad and jotted some things down and then pulled up closer to the house and snapped several pictures showing the address above the door, the draperied front windows, and Barnett’s lone car in the driveway. I observed no other cars parked on the street, so I snapped a few photos of the empty roadway to provide evidence as to the unlikelihood of a poker game going on where Barnett was spending his evening.
I proceeded to drive around the block, hoping there was an alley behind the house. There was none, so I returned to my original vantage point and waited. My mind drifted to Minnie. How would I get a chance to talk with her again? She wasn’t listed in the phone book. Then I remembered I had a connection to someone at Illinois Bell who could get unlisted numbers for me—in exchange for a few bucks. But after thinking on that a little more, I nixed the idea. Minnie would be suspicious as to how I knew her number. My best play would be to drop by her house again, this time with a better reason for being in the neighborhood.
After an hour, Barnett’s car remained the only one in the driveway. No one had even driven down the street since I’d arrived. I pictured him in the house with some woman, romancing her, telling her whatever he thought she wanted to hear, lying about having a wife, lying about—
In the midst of my rambling thoughts, the front door opened and Mr. Barnett walked out followed by another man whose face I couldn’t see very well. I picked up my camera and start snapping pictures. It was dark—a full moon would have helped.
Even under the best of conditions, taking surveillance photos was tricky. You had to position yourself so as not to be seen. You didn’t know what the suspect’s next move would be. You had no control over the field conditions. You had to take the photos at a distance. And you had to be prepared to back off if necessary.
The darkness helped me stay hidden but worked against my getting good photos. I took multiple snapshots with varying aperture and shutter speeds and hoped at least one of them turned out. I didn’t have very sophisticated equipment—just a secondhand 35 mm camera I had picked up at a pawn shop. I didn’t have a telephoto lens or anything like that. At least I was able to snap a few photos of the two men as they moved down the walkway away from the house.
When they reached the sidewalk, they turned left and headed away from me. I started my car and drove past them so I could get a better look at the other man, but Barnett was blocking my view of him. I raced to the corner, made a right, and turned around in the first driveway I could. I parked on the street where I could watch them approach the corner. Then I snapped several photos of them walking toward the church, up the steps, and into the building.
I couldn’t make out the words on the sign in front of the church from my position, so I drove closer to it. KAM ISAIAH ISRAEL. It was a synagogue. I snapped a quick photo and kept on driving down the block to park in my original spot where I would be able to see them exit.
Lucie had mentioned Christmas during our discussion, not Hanukkah, so I wondered about the Jewish connection.
I didn’t know what was going on, but it was a far cry from a poker party.
I waited and watched for thirty minutes, wishing my heater worked, as the temperature outside had dropped significantly since I’d left home on this adventure. Another thing I couldn’t afford to get fixed.
When they emerged from the synagogue, I turned on both my engine and headlights in order to get a better look at the other guy. He was wearing one of those Jewish caps, but I didn’t know enough about the religion to know whether that meant he was a rabbi or just Jewish.
The two men shook hands as I drove by. I went around the block headed toward home when I met up with Barnett in his car at the corner of Fiftieth and Woodlawn. He waved me through the intersection. I wanted him to go first, but he waited for me to go. For Pete’s sake, just go. I looked the other way, pretending not to see him, until he finally drove through.
Light from a streetlamp was shining into my car, and I tried to hold my head down as much as possible, but even so I was pretty sure he had seen my face. Time for a change in my appearance. After he turned onto Lake Shore Drive, I followed him, wearing the big floppy hat I kept in the car for such occasions.
I followed him to the garage of the Conrad Hilton, where he parked in a reserved space. My only option was to drive past him. I parked in the first vacant spot and headed toward the elevator.
Once in the hotel’s expansive lobby, I found a pay phone from which I called Lucie to tell her where I was and what I had seen. She said she knew of no one at that address and had no idea what her husband might have been doing there. The part about the synagogue really threw her. I had no theories to offer. After ten minutes on the phone, he still hadn’t returned
to their apartment. We talked for another few minutes, and when he still hadn’t returned, I told her I’d look around the hotel and call her back.
I walked through the lobby until I reached the lounge. At the far end of the bar sat Lucie’s husband sipping a drink. I sat directly behind him at a small cocktail table for two and ordered a soda. It was a nice bar—not too dark, sleek furniture, just a few patrons, and not very much cigarette smoke. The pianist was playing a Johnny Mathis song I liked.
It was obvious that the bartender knew Barnett. They chatted while he dried the glassware. When Barnett finished his drink, he said, “Put it on my tab,” and left. I followed him out at a safe distance until he disappeared behind an elevator door, and I took a final photo.
I gave him a few minutes and then called Lucie to ask if he had returned. When she told me she could hear him coming in, I told her I would write up my surveillance report and call her in the morning.
Heading home, I swung through the Portage Park neighborhood, scouting for an excuse to give Minnie on my next visit as to why I was in that area again, but I didn’t see anything, except maybe Portage Park itself, so I pulled into it. It was a sizeable park with a baseball field, swimming pool, tennis courts, and nice landscaping. I drove up to the Cultural Arts building and took a brochure from the display case in the outside vestibule.
When I got home, I turned on my twelve-inch black-and-white TV to see Granny Clampett trying to get Mr. Drysdale to eat possum stew on The Beverly Hillbillies. It was kind of a silly show, but it didn’t matter because my mind was on the mysterious Mr. Barnett.
I wondered what I would do if I knew my husband was cheating on me. Would I give him a second chance or leave him? It seemed a little unfair not to give someone a second chance, but how could you ever trust him again? And if you didn’t have trust, what did you have? Mrs. Barnett was set to leave her husband if he was being unfaithful. I wondered what their marriage was like.
I tried to fall asleep, but my mind drifted to the boarders who used to live in Anna’s house. Some of them could still be around and able to shed light on her—how she lived, who her friends were, what kind of landlady she was. I made a mental note to track down Flora Walsh the next time I was at City Hall and ask her if she could find Anna’s death certificate, something I had no luck in finding without an inside connection in that department. I made another mental note to thank Louise for putting me in touch with Flora.
* * *
The next day, when I arrived at my office, Elmer greeted me at the door.
“You have a visitor.” He gave me a look that said he was annoyed. It was one minute after nine. If he was going to freak out because I was late by one minute, it was too bad. Who did he think he was—my boss?
Seated in my office was Mrs. Barnett. “It’s nice to see you again,” I said as I sat down in my desk chair and scrambled for the Thursdays Out file. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the chance to prepare a report for you quite yet.” What did she think...that I worked through the night?
“That’s okay. You can put it in the mail to me. I’m always the one who gets the mail.” She gave me a quick smile. “I wanted to tell you in person what is going on with my husband.” She paused while she brushed an imaginary piece of lint or something off her lap. “My husband lost his mother when he was very young, and unbeknownst to me until now, she was Jewish. His father was a Lutheran, so Judaism was never part of his life. For the past six months, my husband has been studying Jewish history, its culture, and its religious practices under the guidance of Rabbi Ascherman, all in order to have a bar mitzvah.”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and when she opened them, they were teary. “It had always bothered him, but he had never said a word about it to me.”
“Was he eventually going to tell you?”
“He said he wanted to complete the process first before he said anything. Just his way, I guess.”
“Did you confront him when he got home? Is that how you found out about this?”
“I did. And he told me he wasn’t surprised I knew where he was because after he left the rabbi’s home last night, some crazy woman in a ridiculous-looking hat had followed him all the way to our apartment.”
“Oops.”
“Don’t worry. Everything turned out fine.”
“I’m glad it did.” It was clear I needed to work on my undercover disguises.
“What is the balance of my bill? I would like to pay that now.”
Lucie settled her account with me, and after she left I glanced at the check she had written—it was fifty dollars more than what she owed. She probably felt sorry for me, but I didn’t care. I was too busy thinking about the skirt steak I was going to attempt to cook on my beat-up hotplate that night.
SIX
Indigent, Unclaimed, and Unknown
The Millers, bless their hearts, had invited me to spend Thanksgiving Day with them. Otherwise I would have been stuck in the six hundred square feet of pathetic space I called home heating up a frozen turkey TV dinner in the toaster oven and then eating it from a tray on my lap. I had often missed the Millers during those first months on my own. Mostly I missed sitting around a table at mealtime, talking with other people. Or maybe it was just the table itself.
“Mom, Dad, there’s something we want to tell you,” Beth said.
Beth, her husband, her parents, and I had just finished a fabulous turkey dinner and had congregated in the living room. Beth was sitting in her mother’s rocking chair smiling from ear to ear. Her husband stood behind her. The Millers and I stopped our conversation and focused on the two of them.
“We’re going to have a baby.”
Mrs. Miller began to wail—whether in delight or horror, I didn’t know. Mr. Miller tried to calm her down. Then Beth began to cry, and her husband appeared like he was about to faint. The dog went crazy—apparently, he didn’t like to hear people crying. Beth’s father yelled at the dog. The dog got scared and bolted out of the room, almost taking a potted dieffenbachia with him. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I just sat there...like the fifth wheel that I was.
It took a while for everyone to calm down. By the end of the day, it still wasn’t clear to me how Beth’s parents truly felt about the baby—I knew they weren’t crazy about Beth’s husband. But I was happy for her, even if it did feel like it diminished our “best friends” status a little more. After all, it was natural for people to go on with their lives I kept telling myself.
* * *
Thanksgiving Day came and went, and I was left having to face the rest of the holiday weekend alone. I would have jumped in my car and gone somewhere, done something, but money was too tight. I would have visited a relative if I’d had one. Would have reorganized my only closet, but then what would I do seven minutes later when that was done?
On Saturday, I took the “L” downtown to watch the Christmas parade, something I’d never done as a child, even though Christmas had been my mother’s favorite holiday. We would start decorating the house weeks in advance. She’d always insisted on having a live Christmas tree, which my father grudgingly brought home at the last minute when they were cheaper. I hated when the Christmas season was over—that was when Mom always seemed the saddest.
The train was crowded, and I had to stand the whole way to Jackson Street. I went with the crowd—I had no other choice—toward State Street. I had heard on the radio that they expected more than 500,000 people downtown watching the parade. I believed it because at least half that many had stepped on my toes trying to get a good viewing spot.
The parade lasted two hours, about an hour longer than the younger children’s attention spans. I recognized a few people—Mayor Daley of course, Ray Rayner and Bob Bell from Bozo’s Circus, radio DJ Jerry G. Bishop, and Hugh Hefner. I wasn’t sure why Hugh Hefner would be in a Christmas parade, but there he was. I rode home on another crammed “L” car and somehow made it through the rest of the weekend.
I spent t
he following week working on my cases. I was unexpectedly busy: besides the Green Teen and Shady Lane cases and several skip traces, I was hired to conduct an asset check for someone who thought he might be the beneficiary of a large inheritance, and I had to pick up three subpoenas at the courthouse for process serving. Though I’d resolved to put my own case on hold until after the first of the year, I at least had Flora hot on the trail of Anna’s death certificate.
Flora called me the week before Christmas but not to talk about Anna.
“Erma called me,” she said.
“From Detroit?”
“Yes. She said she needed money to come home.”
“She called you and not her mom?”
“She sounded scared. Maybe she was afraid to face Louise.”
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing. She hung up before I could do anything.”
“Do you know why she hung up?”
“All she said was, ‘Forget it. I have to go.’ Louise and I are thinking about going there.”
“Well, I’m having no luck trying to find her with phone calls. Do be careful if you go.”
It occurred to me that maybe it should have my place to go to Detroit as soon as I had heard Erma had gone there. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that was what I should have done, and now I felt bad about it.
* * *
I was in the back room of my office in search of another box of file folders when something on the evidence table caught my eye. I was very organized and had all the documents for my case separated into nice neat piles. But one of the photographs—the one of the woman sitting in a rocking chair holding a baby—was out of place. And it wasn’t as though I might have brushed up against the table or something and it had moved a few inches. Someone had tampered with it.
I examined all the other evidence, and nothing else seemed out of place.
On the way back to my office, I heard the door tinkle and found a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, standing in front of the reception desk.
Regarding Anna Page 4