Dead Ringer

by Michael A. Black

  “No treats for Howie,” Iris said. “No treats no more.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s gone.”

  I knew that. “Gone where?” I asked.

  Her face crinkled into a frightening smile. “You’re the smart cookie. You figure it out.”

  Chapter 15

  Ron Shade

  Bright and early Monday morning I was heading north on the tollway once again, en route to MWO. I’d spent most of Sunday at my desk trying to sort out the who’s and why’s of this thing. I was convinced that the horse laugh Herb Winthrope had heard in that Vegas casino was indeed, the presumed dead Robert Bayless. He’d obviously set up his demise to start a new life in parts unknown, and somehow he’d managed to recruit a host of characters to help him. That was what was bothering me. How had he done it? Offering someone a cool million seemed like an easy enough answer, and his life insurance would have provided plenty of cash to spread around. But would it be enough? And what gave Bayless enough control or leverage over the insurance money distribution and everybody on board? How much dough had Bayless promised to spread around? And how much had he kept for himself and how would he arrange that? I kept thinking of the old maxim, crime always follows the dollars.

  The obvious defect in the plan was that he’d involved way too many people. Possibly the Manus Corporation flunky that I’d talked to and Dr. Colon for the false ID. And then there was the disposable, breathing, body that conveniently took Bayless’s place in the wrecked car. Who was he, and where did he come from? Since the corpse was picked up by some Russians, and it was most likely some Russkies who’d tried to take me out, the funeral-home guy who smelled like a cologne ad was probably in on the fun, too. And a funeral home like that one probably wouldn’t have too much trouble procuring a body, even if it was still breathing. That was a lot of people. Like any big conspiracy, it was only as strong as its weakest link. All I had to do was find that link and work on breaking it. Which I aimed to do.

  My answering service had relayed a call from Dick MacKenzie last night. He wanted a progress report.

  Well, let’s see, Dick, I imagined as I drove. I’ve been downstate, found a few holes in the scheme, and made some people nervous enough to try to kill me. How’s that for progress?

  Our real conversation was much more protracted, with me explaining just about everything I’d learned thus far.

  Dick scratched his forehead, which looked more wrinkled than a dried-out prune. He heaved a sigh. “So what you’re saying, in effect, Ron, is that you pretty much confirm our suspicions that this claim is fishy, but you’re lacking any cold, hard proof.”

  He hadn’t phrased it as a question, so I made no effort to answer him.

  His eyebrows rose in unison, exacerbating the prune effect. “Well?”

  “Well, I’m confirming your suspicions that this claim is a little fishy, and I’m lacking any cold, hard proof.” I grinned. “At the moment.”

  His lips worked together, like he was busy chewing something, or else trying to contain the mouthful of words he was thinking of spitting at me.

  “I need more time,” I said, figuring I’d better not go out of my way to antagonize him.

  “I expected more from you,” he said. “With all the business we toss your way, the big retainer fee we pay you, the least the company could expect is some exclusivity.”

  Exclusivity? I never liked that word. I wanted to ask him if he had other clients. Like it was okay for him to divide his time and make money, but for me it was violating some horseshit sacred trust called “exclusivity.” But, I took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled. “I could argue that this entire matter eluded your original adjustors, but I won’t. I could also mention that I was called in because the company screwed this one up, and now wants me to bail them out.” I paused. “But I won’t. What I will do is tell you that I’ve got a personal stake in this one now.”

  “Personal?”

  “I’ve made some people pretty nervous. Some guys tried to whack me the other night.”

  “My God.” His forehead crinkled again. “You don’t think they’d come after anyone here at the company, do you?”

  His concern for my welfare was touching, but I knew when to capitalize on an opening. “Not if I can run them to ground first. I’m working on it.”

  He nodded, his lips compressing inward now, like he was contemplating a trip to parts unknown until this was settled.

  “I’m pretty sure that dentist, Colon, is involved,” I said. “And some knucklehead who owns the funeral home that took care of the body. There’s still too many variables, though. We need to make an end-run play.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “I need some more time to bring Bayless back, alive and well. Or at least some kind of proof that it isn’t him in that cemetery plot pushing up daisies.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You think you can do that?”

  “I’m ready for round two, with your blessings, of course.” I’d already set a few things in motion, but I figured I’d give him the false pleasure of giving his imprimatur.

  “Go for it,” he said, using what he probably thought was his best Sylvester Stallone as Rocky imitation.

  When I got to my car I sat in the parking lot and called George on my cell. Luckily, there hadn’t been any murders, rapes, or robberies yet, and he was in the office.

  “I was just gonna call you,” he said. “Cate and Norris need to talk. Plus, I got that info you were looking for. Want to stop by and get it? I’ll buy you lunch.”

  Obviously, I was still riding the crest of the wave for the Bielmaster thing. I decided to press that advantage before it ran out. “Hey, how about running a couple more for me?”

  “All right.” From his tone I gathered that the golden goose was on precarious ice.

  I gave him the rest of the plates I’d collected from the Manus parking lot and asked him to see what he could find out about Candice Prokovis. I gave him the address Francis had given me.

  “Who’s she?”

  “Used to be the dead-guy-who’s-still-alive’s secretary.”

  I heard him chuckle. “I’m sure glad you’re handling this one. I’d never be able to keep all that crap straight.”

  “Believe me, I’ve got it all on a big flowchart. Think you could get me an I-Clear DL retrieval image of her? And one of my buddy Bob Bayless, too?”

  “Sounds like a violation of the Drivers’ License Privacy Protection Act,” he said.

  I hesitated. “Does that mean you ain’t gonna do it?”

  I heard him chuckle. “Nah, that’s a federal law. Nobody minds if you stretch them a bit, right? Look at your income tax return.”

  “A license to steal.”

  “Damn straight.”

  It sounded like the good mood lingered, so I figured why not push the envelope? “Hey, one more thing. I’m pretty sure her license is going to come back as surrendered to a foreign state. See if you can get me her new address.”

  “Anything else, Prince Ron?”

  “Nah, that’ll do for now,” I said.

  “You know,” he said, “on second thought, why don’t you bring your royal, high-maintenance ass over here so you can buy me lunch?”

  “What’s up with Cate and Norris?”

  “They spent the weekend checking all the hospitals and clinics for a guy with a gunshot wound.”

  “Any luck?”

  “Plenty, but none of them looks like our guy. They also talked to that Farnsworth asshole. He denies ever meeting you.”

  “Farnsworth? Who’s that?”

  “The fucking guy who owns the Sunset Manor Funeral Home,” he said. “Plus, he also says he don’t have no Russians working for him.”

  “He told me his name was Jones. The son of a bitch lied about that, he’s probably lying about the Russkies, too.”

  “No shit. But the guy’s father is a lawyer and told him not to say anything else.”

&n
bsp; “Shit. A lawyer.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m in the process of checking him out. I should have that info for you, too, by the time you get here to buy me the biggest, fattest steak sandwich we can find.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said, but what I was thinking was I needed to get hold of Ms. Alex St. James, pronto.

  Alex St. James

  The next day, after lunch, I struck out for Howard Rybak’s last known address. By the time I’d gotten home from the “reconnoitering” under the viaduct it had been after two. I’d talked with several other homeless folks, and come up mostly empty. So had Hal. Except for the occasional mention of teeth and gifts of food, nobody knew anything about their old friend Howie. And no one had a clue where he’d gone. Even after I’d pressed Iris for more information, she’d confessed that she didn’t know for sure, though she was convinced that his “escape” only served to set the dogcatchers after him again.

  Why hadn’t Nicky provided Rybak’s address when I’d asked for it? I pondered that question as I stood before a six-flat apartment building in a rundown section on Chicago’s North Side. What had once been a pristine neighborhood of well-maintained three-flats and bungalows, with the occasional apartment building thrown in, was now a collection of boarded-up homes with black soot from old fires, dirt front lawns and empty lots where someone had obviously said, “Enough!” and begun razing.

  This was not yet one of Chicago’s rediscovered gems waiting for gentrification. This was a slum. The apartment building before me set out like a very wide red brick “U.” Three stories tall, there appeared to be two apartments per floor on each of the building’s three sides. That meant eighteen apartments in all.

  At the center of the squared-off U was a courtyard that, at some point in the building’s history, probably boasted a carpet of grass, clipped shrubbery, and a sea of proud hostas. Now four small fields of dirt bisected by two broken sidewalks, with a tree in each of the area’s quadrants, made up the sum total of the landscaping.

  I made my way to the center door, the base of the U, hoping something in there would direct me to the building’s office. Just as I made it to the wood-framed glass door, a dark-haired man emerged. Pale, forty-ish, with salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, he looked clean-cut enough to not belong in this area. He waited in the doorway, chewing and cracking gum, until I walked up, his furry eyebrows upraised.

  “Excuse me, are you the landlord?”

  “How ’ju know that?”

  Despite the North Side address this guy talked like an original southsider.

  “Lucky guess,” I said.

  He gave me the once-over. “You ain’t wanting to rent,” he said. “You wouldn’t last a week in this neighborhood.” He made a show of looking up and down the street, still chewing the wad of gum. When I caught sight of his brown teeth, I started to wonder if it was tobacco in there. “You here by yourself?”

  I started to answer, thought better of it. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  He stopped, snagged the wad of white between his incisors. It was gum, after all. “You a cop?”

  “I want to ask you about Howard Rybak,” I said. “If you have a few minutes.”

  “Rybak? That shithead.”

  “He used to live here, didn’t he?”

  The landlord opened his mouth to answer, then stopped himself. “You got a name? What’s it to you? Rybak your uncle or something?”

  I introduced myself. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Joe Smeraldi,” he said. “My brother and I own the place. We share this, and another property and a plumbing business.” He shrugged and looked at the place over his shoulder. “We keep an apartment here between us in case we got to spend the night ever. It ain’t too bad. But we both live someplace else.” Giving a mock shiver, he smiled.

  So this is what an absent landlord looked like. For some reason I always pictured business-suited rich men in corner offices, ordering evictions between sips of caffeinated beverages.

  As though he read my mind, Joe added, “I ain’t no slumlord. We keep this place nice for the people we rent to. And we’re careful about who we let stay here, too. My brother Tony and I figure a couple more years and the yuppies are gonna move this direction. Then we’re gonna sell. Make a bundle.”

  “About Howard Rybak,” I began.

  “Hang on, you want a cup of coffee or something?” Joe stepped back into the miniature foyer that housed a broken tile floor and eighteen mailbox slots. He used a key to open the door immediately behind him. “I ain’t no masher, and I was just going out for another six-pack, ’cause I’m running low. ’Course, it’s not like I need it.” He patted his pregnant-size stomach. “I can’t tell you much, but you still ain’t told me why you’re looking for the guy.”

  Joe Smeraldi’s easy demeanor and pear-like physique reminded me that sometimes in this business it’s better to go with your gut. I said, “Sure,” and followed him in.

  The ground-floor apartment smelled of damp carpeting, cigarettes, and Lysol. There was no clutter. There was almost nothing. A fake-woodgrain, two-chair table sat atop green linoleum in the kitchen, a folded newspaper, crushed beer can and full ashtray dead center. “You want something?” He opened the fridge. “How about an Old Style? Got one left.”

  “No,” I said, too quickly.

  “I got a Diet Coke in here, too.”

  “No thanks.”

  He popped open the beer and took a swig, grabbing a chair and gesturing for me to take the other. The table wobbled when he planted his elbows on its edge. “So you never said why you’re asking about Rybak.”

  I started in, describing my plans for the feature story. I was interrupted twice when he found out I worked with Gabriela—is she really that pretty in real life? Is she single?—to which I answered yes, and yes.

  That apparently made his day. Grinning, he said, “Tell me what you want to know about Howard. You think I’ll be on TV? Maybe get to meet Gabriela?”

  I fingered my brown hair. Blondes did have more fun. “When was the last time you saw Howard Rybak?”

  Smeraldi rubbed his chin. “Dunno.”

  “A year ago? Six months?”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Definitely before he left. He was past due on his rent by about a week or so, and I stopped by here. Couldn’t find him. My brother, Tony, tried three times that week. We figured he was trying to ditch us, but . . .” he spread out his hands.

  “But . . . what?”

  “He was gone. Like gone for good, gone. There was food left on his table, like he was planning to come back, and when Tony and I finally decided we better come in and have a look-see, it was all maggoty. Looked like the inside of my garbage cans after a week in the sun.”

  Well, thanks for that visual, Joe.

  He continued, “I was thinking that maybe we were going to find old Howard dead in the bedroom or something, but Tony says that we would of smelled him by then.” Joe gave a little shrug. “Tony’s older’n me.”

  I wanted to ask him why Tony’s age had anything to do with it, but he went on. “I don’t know what happened to the guy. This had to be like around December. Yeah. It was around Christmas. I was thinking that maybe he was late on this payment because of the holidays and all, but then I was thinking that he didn’t have nobody to buy nothing for, so what was up with that? That’s when me and Tony went in.”

  “And found the old food?”

  “Yeah. All his stuff was still just where I woulda’ left it if I was living there, and so we waited a month, figuring he’d come back, but he never did.”

  “Why did you wait?”

  “Security deposit,” Smeraldi said. “We take a first and last month’s rent up front just in case of something like this. Usually when people skip out, they take their stuff with them, though.”

  “I thought he had a job in the area.”

  “Yeah, I thought so, too. He put it on the reference sheet, you know. Tony made me go over there to talk to
them.”

  “Who did he work for?”

  “Some funeral home.”

  “Sunset Manor?”

  He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that was it. How ’ju know?”

  Another lucky guess. This one felt a little bit too lucky. How come Nicky hadn’t mentioned this tidbit? “The guy who owns the funeral home, Nick. He supposedly arranged for Rybak to rent this apartment.”

  Smeraldi gave a snort. “That guy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Squint. “You ain’t here because he told you to come, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “In fact, I had to get this address from somebody else. Nick wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “Figures,” he said. “There’s something weird about that guy. And not just that he pumps blood out of dead bodies. When I went to go talk to him—to see if he knew anything about Rybak—he got all jumpy and said that the guy had taken off on him and left no forwarding.” Smeraldi shrugged. “I didn’t expect he was going to be any help. But then I asked him what I should do with all the stuff left in the apartment.”

  I sat up. “Do you still have it?”

  “That’s the thing,” Smeraldi said. “This funeral guy tells me to dump it all. Give it to Goodwill or toss it. But what if the guy comes back? I asked him. I figure if I hold onto his stuff, I got some leverage here. The place stayed vacant for three full months before I was able to re-rent. If Rybak wants his stuff, he’s going to have to fork over the back rent.”

  I could feel my excitement mounting. Something was wrong. Definitely wrong here. But there might be a chance of finding a clue in Rybak’s personal stuff. “So you kept it?”

  “You gonna go running to the funeral guy?”

  “No.”

  “I told him I dumped it all. He came here twice to make sure I did. I said yeah, and he went away. Haven’t seen him around since. But, I kept everything. I figure I’ll sell what I can. Make a few bucks. Not that there’s anything real good in there.”

  “Can I take a look?”