by Tracy Clark
I really had told Marta everything I knew about Darby; everything else I’d learned about Jung and Ganz, I held back, at least for now. She’d have her leads to pursue, and I had mine. There had been an e-mail from C.D. waiting for me on my phone, showing a copy of his discharge papers. He actually had been admitted the night Tim died. The blackmail—well, there were extenuating circumstances involved with that. The elder Ayers paid up, Tim accepted C.D.’s apology, and Ganz got what Tim promised him in the first place. I considered the whole thing done and done. It was Nick Spada who deserved a closer look. He hadn’t struck me as odd when I met him, just obstructive, but our encounter had been rather brief. Even psychopaths can hold it together the length of an elevator ride. Had he killed Darby, or had Darby’s past finally caught up with him? Mobsters make creative presentations of their victims: They fit them with cement shoes and toss them into the river; they cut out their tongues and shove them down their throats; they cut them up into little pieces and stuff them into a box. But nothing I’d uncovered so far hinted at Darby having any ties to these types of monsters, Mob connected or otherwise.
I glanced out the window at the rain. It was coming down hard, not in gentle droplets meant to caress flower petals, but in torrential sheets of angry projectiles heavy enough to dent dirt. Biblical rain—rain a person could drown in. I swiveled in my chair, staring at all the wet. A car horn sounded from the street below; my view of the apartment building across the street was muddied by a blanket of rolling fog as dense as chimney smoke. I needed to move. I needed to turn over rocks, push my way in a door, knock something loose, but Marta had warned me away from anything having to do with Darby. That wasn’t what was holding me back, though. She likely knew even as the words were coming out of her mouth that I had no intention of backing off. I had a case I hadn’t yet solved, a client I couldn’t find, and a sinking feeling that both were now closely connected to two dead men. What Marta didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
I grabbed my keys, my bag, and locked up. I needed air, even if rain came with it. I took the stairs at a fast clip, two at a time, toward the ground floor, but stopped when my cell phone rang. For a moment, I considered not answering it, but I did. It was Barb.
“What are you doing?”
“Heading out. Why?”
“Important?”
“It could be.”
“Then never mind. It can wait.”
There was something in her voice. “What can wait?”
“I thought maybe if you had time to meet, but that’s okay, it’ll keep.”
This was it, I thought. She was finally ready to tell me why she was suddenly back from Africa. I checked my watch. I really needed to keep going. The longer Jung wasn’t where I could see him, the greater the chance he was doing something dumb. “Where?”
“The church.” She didn’t have to say which one. I knew. “I know,” she said in answer to my silence. “But it’s this place I want to talk about. If you want to meet somewhere else, we can.”
“It’s raining like crazy.”
She paused. “The sun’s already peeking through over here. I’m taking it as a good sign.”
I descended the last few stairs, flicked up the hood on my jacket, and pushed through the lobby door out onto the sidewalk. “I’m on my way.”
* * *
Sure enough, the sun was out by the time I pulled to the curb in front of St. Brendan’s. I parked and sat there for a moment, peering through the window, watching Barb pace the small courtyard, the top of her wild red hair moving left, then right, and back again over the top of the shrubs. I eyed the rectory, the gray stone church, an overwhelming ache of absence echoing through me. It was like coming home and not finding a single thing there you loved anymore; and though every brick and window sparked a fond recollection, the place felt hollow, foreign, no longer mine. I got out of the car, headed over, flexing my hands to warm them. It was June, but my hands were like ice.
“Told ya. No rain. You made good time.”
I shrugged, my eyes on hers, not on the church, not on the rectory. “It sounded important.”
Barb tilted her face skyward, saw the sun, unzipped her yellow slicker. We might have talked about the weather, but Barb had as little patience for small talk and circuitous conversation as I did. If we had something to say, we said it . . . usually, which was why her secretive behavior over the last couple days was so out of character. I gave her the room, though it wasn’t easy. Obviously, now she no longer needed it.
“I owe you an explanation,” she said.
“Okay.”
She rocked on the soles of her feet, watching, stalling. “How’s your case?”
“Someone sent me a dead man.”
She started to laugh, then realized I wasn’t joking and went ghostly pale. “What?”
I shrugged. “I’m over the shock of it.”
Her mouth twisted into a pained grimace. I waited some more, by all outward appearances patiently, though my insides would tell a different story. I could tell Barb was thinking about the dead guy, but I needed to move things along. Jung was out there somewhere stuck on stupid.
“You had something to tell me,” I prodded gently.
She breathed in, let the breath out slowly. “I’m not going back to Tanzania. I’m going to be teaching here.”
The news surprised me. I’d been expecting something awful, something dire. But it was just like Barb to gush it out like that, no toying around with it. “How’d that happen?”
She eased down onto the stone bench behind us. The very spot where I’d met Pop. “After, well, you know, I couldn’t get this place out of my head. Father Ray put a lot of years into this parish, into us—you, me, Whip, hundreds of others. He left a lot undone. I know I can help.” She looked up at me. “I called Father Pascoe.”
I frowned, but made no comment. Pascoe and I had gotten off to a rocky start. He’d tried to stop me from investigating Pop’s death, and then slipped seamlessly into his job, his office. Too soon, I guess.
Barb registered my reaction. “He’s a nice man, a little stiff, but it takes a variety of flowers to make a garden. Anyway, he was short a teacher and I jumped at it. I figured if I could teach halfway around the world, why not teach right here in my old neighborhood?” Barb stood, dusted off the seat of her jeans. “It’ll be like reclaiming this place for good after so much bad. What do you think? You’re not saying anything.”
“The neighborhood has changed a lot since we were here. Gangs, guns. You won’t have an easy time of it.”
“I’ve run up against African warlords.”
“You’re also very white. You’d be like a radish amongst a sea of onions.”
Barb surveyed her arms as though her complexion was a new thing she hadn’t yet noticed. “Only on the outside.”
“Then there’s the other thing.”
She was getting testy. “What other thing?”
“You’re as obstinate as a mule, and you’ve never met a rule you didn’t try to break.” I thought for a moment, then smiled. I’d just described Pop to a tee. He was a constant thorn in the archdiocese’s side, and in Father Pascoe’s, a man who always colored inside the lines. “Pascoe has no idea what he’s done.”
She nodded, her eyes dancing, her grin wide. “No, he doesn’t.”
The church bell sounded overhead, as if on cue. I glanced up at it, back at Barb. I wondered if she took the ringing of the bell as a good sign, too, a nod from Pop. “When do you start?”
“I taught my first class yesterday. Summer school. I’ll teach sixth-grade English when regular classes start up again after Labor Day. Till then, I’ll spend some time with the family . . . work up my lesson plans . . . unless you need another investigator? I think I’d be good at it.”
“Thank you. No,” I said, smiling.
She shrugged. “Your loss.”
Barb glanced around the tiny courtyard, the look on her face lovingly proprietary, as though she were the ke
eper of everything she laid her eyes on. “It looks a lot smaller than I remember it, but I’m feeling good about my decision. This is where it all started. This is my spiritual home.”
“Spiritual home” sparked a recollection. “Of course. Swami Rain.” I could have kicked myself for forgetting it. “I think I know where Jung is.”
“Back up,” Barb said. “I’m still on Swami Rain.”
“Jung’s yogi. I was afraid maybe Darby had taken Jung, but Darby’s dead. He’s got to be hiding at the yogi’s.”
“You don’t look too happy about it.”
“Oh, I’m happy. I’m very happy, but if Jung is there, he won’t be for long.”
Chapter 34
I leaned hard on the bell at the sad-looking yoga center tucked into a converted brownstone a block from the U of C. The door was locked, the blinds drawn, but I could see light shining through between the slats. When the bell didn’t bring anyone to the door, I started pounding on it, which sent the wind chimes dangling from the top of the door frame into hyperdrive. When a brown eye finally peeked warily through the blinds, I smacked my PI’s license against the glass and waited for the door to open. When it did, a short white man, who looked an awful lot like Bill Maher, stood facing me. He was dressed in cotton yoga pajamas, and his long sandy hair, flecked with gray, was neatly pulled back from a receding hairline into a paltry ponytail.
“Swami Rain?”
He smiled serenely. “When I’m working.” He held out a hand for me to shake. “Jeff Wilbourne, otherwise, and you are Jung’s detective. He’s been expecting you.”
He slowly stepped aside and led me into a large airy room with yoga mats on the floor and posters of waterfalls and rain forests on the walls. The room was empty except for little Bill Maher and me. I should have felt relieved, but despite all the tranquility and smiles, all I could think about was the time I’d wasted looking for Jung. I’d begun to think he might be dead, that somebody might mail me his head. Then I’d begun to think he was a cold-blooded murderer playing me for a fool. I couldn’t kill him, could I? No, of course not, but what if I did? What jury would convict me after I’d explained what I’d had to deal with?
Swami Rain led me past the yoga mats to a back room with a closed door. He opened it, stepped aside, and I walked in to find Jung Byson, my client, in the middle of downward dog, his scrawny behind pointed toward nirvana. He was safe. He was alive. He wasn’t on the lam. I took a moment to let all that sink in, then walked up to the mat and snatched it out from under him, sending him toppling over in a surprised heap.
“What? Hey.”
I slung the mat against a wall and pushed the door closed, stranding Swami Rain in the hall. Jung took one look at my face and scrambled to his feet, backing away, fast. He was dressed in yoga pants and a black Coldplay T-shirt, his hair plastered to his head with sweat. Despite that, he looked well rested and well fed, which was more than I could say for myself.
I advanced. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been doing to find you?”
There was an old couch shoved aside. Jung jumped up and over it, using it as a buffer.
“One frantic phone call, and then nothing,” I said. Jung skittered farther away, taking the couch with him. “Stop moving.”
He froze, his eyes wide, scanning the room, as if looking for an escape route. He was out of luck. I stood between him and the door.
“Have you been here ‘downward dogging it’ this whole time?”
“I figured no one would think to look for me here, except you. Though you kind of took a long time with it, didn’t you? Swami’s running out of provisions. I’m literally down to his last bag of kale chips.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “And just as a side note, not cool, your harshing my mellow like this.”
I caught myself before I took another step. “Sit!”
Jung hopped over the couch and sat, his lips pressed tightly together, a petulant child caught playing hooky. Swami Rain rapped lightly on the door.
“Hello? Is everything okay in there?”
I jabbed an angry finger at Jung. “Move and I use my keys to scoop out your liver.”
I opened the door for Swami Rain. He looked around, saw Jung sitting there, then turned to me. “I can see you’re in distress.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jung twitch and I reeled to face him. He stopped cold.
“Maybe I can help?” Swami asked.
He had already, I thought, more than he knew. I’d come close to smothering Jung with a yoga mat.
* * *
Swami Rain offered green tea in an earthen mug, which I took him up on. The aspirin from earlier in my office had long since worn off, and I couldn’t get Darby’s dead eyes out of my head or the queasy thought that I may have pushed too hard in the wrong place, resulting in his murder. The tea was supposed to fill me with calming energy. Frankly, it would have to be a magical brew to accomplish that, but I sipped it, anyway, while seated at a small round table beside Jung’s moveable couch barricade, glaring at him. Jung and Swami Rain sat across from me, a united front. I was at the table to find out what Jung thought he was playing at; Swami Rain was there in case the tea didn’t work.
I set the mug down, folded my hands in my lap, right reason restored. The chase was over. I’d found Jung. Even the desire to tighten my hands around his scrawny neck was dissipating. “Okay, let’s have it.”
Jung leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table, the picture of conviviality, like this was a routine social call and we were here to chew the fat. I glowered at him and he slowly eased himself back again.
“I’m feeling a little under pressure here,” he said.
I managed a weak smile. “I’ll start you off. You called me in the middle of the night, for the second time, making no sense, babbling something about the police, the marina, and your innocence, and then you hung up on me, leaving no forwarding number. Days went by. Days. And nothing. I checked your apartment, I badgered your friends. I called hospitals, I checked the morgue. The morgue.” I stopped, took another sip of tea, waited for it to settle in my stomach. “A witness saw you on Tim’s boat. The police now think you burgled it. And, were they inclined to believe Tim was murdered, you would likely be their prime suspect for that, too.”
Jung’s eyes got as big as dinner plates and he lost what was left of his coloring. Swami Rain gasped, turned to him. “Dude, major karma kill.”
“Suspect? Me?” Jung screeched. “Are you serious? Why would I hire you to find out what happened to Tim if I’m the one who killed him? That’s crazy. Okay, I didn’t exactly have a key to the boat, but it was totally innocent. It had nothing to do with anything. The place was wrecked when I got there. Honest. I could hardly find anything in that mess.” His words tumbled out, one over the other; it was difficult to keep up. “I’ve never killed a thing in my life—okay, maybe a bug, but that’s it—nothing with feet, nothing human. I’m a peaceful guy.”
“What were you looking for?”
Jung turned to me, a blank look on his face, a deer caught in headlights. “What?”
“You said you could hardly find anything in that mess. What were you looking for?”
He tugged on the collar of his sweaty shirt. “Nothing, but if I had been looking, I’d have had a hard time finding anything. That’s what I’m saying.”
I sat watching him, the tea coating my gut, keeping me calm. Jung was lying, badly. I glanced at Swami Rain, a potential witness to Jung’s homicide.
“We’ll come back to that,” I said. “Tell me about Vincent Darby.”
For a second, it didn’t look like he recognized the name. “Wait. That guy from the party? What’s he got to do with anything?”
“He turned up dead. Shot and cut to pieces. We may both be on the hook for that one.”
Jung blanched. “Me? Why would I kill him?” He ran his fingers through his hair, then grabbed tufts of it in his fingers and pulled. It was an act of utter frustration. He was over h
is head, out of his element. “I’m living a nightmare.”
Swami Rain raised a timid hand. “Excuse me, could we get back to the part about him being a murderer?”
Jung reeled on him, anger flaring. “What’s wrong with you, dude? I’m no killer.”
Rain pointed to me. “She said you’re a suspect in two murders and that the police are looking for you right now.”
“And I said I’m almost completely innocent.”
Swami Rain’s hands flew up. “What does that even mean?”
I took another sip of tea. It was amazing how quickly transcendental gobbledygook fell away when you were accused of murder. I cleared my throat, silencing the back-and-forth.
“We’re going to start at the beginning, with the break-in, and then work our way all the way through to the moment I walked in here and found you exercising in your pajamas. Understood?”
Jung gulped. He nodded. Swami Rain nodded.
“Okay. Good. Why were you on Tim’s boat? And why did you steal one of his paintings?”
Jung shook his hands out, as though trying to work the circulation back into them. “I guess I have to tell you. I guess he’d give me permission, considering the circumstances.” He began to wring his hands. “It was my solemn duty as his best bud. We made a pact. His number came up first is all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need to stand up first.” Jung didn’t move.
“Then stand up,” Swami Rain barked. “What the hell, man?”
“Dude, you heard her. She told me not to move.”
I didn’t say anything, just gestured for Jung to stand, which he did, slowly. He then lifted his shirt to reveal layers of plastic wrap wound around his hairless middle. There was a white envelope under the wrap. I stared at it, at Jung, watching as he unwound the plastic. When he got down to the last layer, the one plastered against his skin, the pain of the extraction showed on his face. When he was done, he handed the soggy envelope to me.
“There. This is what I went to get. It was taped to the back of his Fender. He paid serious money for it at some silent auction years ago. It’s actually signed by Jimi Hendrix. Tim was into retro stuff, me too. Retro’s way cool.”