Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  The flight, luckily enough, was not full and I managed to find a window spot with an empty space between me and a fat man spilling out into the aisle. He had a bad cold and wanted to chat between wet coughs.

  ‘No habla ingles,’ I said, which I hoped meant, in Spanish, that I didn’t speak English. I closed my eyes. I needed to dare to think.

  I was being set-up.

  It now seemed so obvious. A woman behind a fake name and a thick mask of make-up and half-truths had played me for a chump. She wasn’t interested in learning much about Halvorson and Arlin and Runney so much as she wanted me noticed asking around about them. Clearly I’d been hired for my history and my susceptibility. I’d made a big splash in the Chicago papers, starring as a moron who’d gotten suckered into authenticating phony evidence for a crooked suburban mayor, Evangeline Wilts. That I’d been quickly exonerated made no ripple at all; it got one paragraph buried in the back pages of Chicago’s main newspapers and there’d been no mention at all on local television. Rosamund Reynolds had likely hired me for my ripeness to be made gamy again, perhaps for murder. After sending me away she could have filled my Jeep with something that might be the corpse of Gary Halvorson or Dainsto Runney. I’d even left her a cardboard box.

  But I’d gotten lucky. Leo Brumsky, my pal of pals, had alerted me. And that bought me time. Rosamund believed I was still on the west coast, headed up to Oregon. With more luck, I could dispose of whatever was in the box before she’d anonymously tip the cops that I was returning from doing bad out of town and that I had a surprise in my Jeep.

  It seemed so paranoid. It seemed so probable.

  The fat man on the aisle seat beside me coughed wet into the flesh of his fist. It seemed so wonderfully ordinary.

  I stepped out from Chicago’s Midway Airport terminal at two in the morning. Leo’s pale orange Porsche roadster was idling at the curb.

  I jumped inside. ‘How long have you been waiting?’

  ‘I came straight here … almost. I didn’t know where else to go,’ he said in too small a voice. ‘The cops keep making me move.’

  He stared straight ahead as he pulled us away from the curb. His hands were shaking, squeezing the steering wheel too hard. Two hundred yards down, the transmission whine was deafening; he’d not shifted out of first gear. I told him to pull over. He complied, a wooden man. We switched places and I started us up again.

  ‘I’ll take care of things, Leo.’

  ‘I already did.’

  I slowed down. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I dis-dis-disposed,’ he said, stuttering in that same small voice. His teeth chattered as though it were winter.

  He was in some phase of shock. I’d seen him that way once before, though that time had been more severe. He’d just fired a revolver at a killer.

  ‘Damn it, Leo.’

  ‘You’d have done the same for me,’ he said, shivering.

  ‘I would not.’ I reached to turn up the heater.

  ‘You al-al-already did,’ he said, still chattering.

  He was right, but I hoped never to confirm it. I’d done my own disposal of the man who’d come to kill him.

  ‘You returned the Jeep to the turret?’ I asked as we approached Harlem Avenue. I’d take it north, up to Rivertown.

  ‘Back again, okey dokey,’ he said in a strange, sing-song voice. He turned to look at me, working up a smile. As always when Leo smiled at night, his huge teeth lined up ghostly white, like cemetery markers in a row. That night, there was something wrong in his eyes. They were too dark, like black windows looking in on an empty room.

  I backed off from asking him anything more. One thing was certain: I couldn’t return him to his mother’s bungalow; he’d be too much for the septuagenarian Ma Brumsky. I turned around, caught I-55 east to Lake Shore Drive and headed up to the high-rent district north of the Chicago River. We rode in silence for ten minutes. I doubted he was aware that he was out in the night.

  I called Endora, his girlfriend. A former model and current researcher at the Newberry Library, she’s brilliant, like him. She’d be capable.

  She answered the phone sleepy-voiced. ‘I’m bringing Leo to you,’ I said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, instantly alert.

  ‘He did me too much of a favor. He needs a safe night’s sleep, out of sight.’

  All the while, Leo said nothing. I drove faster.

  She was waiting on the sidewalk outside her high-rise condo building when I pulled up.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he managed, getting out of the Porsche.

  ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow,’ I said. ‘We’ll have lunch. We’ll talk.’

  He nodded, uncertain. Endora smiled, uncertain.

  I headed west to whatever waited in the night.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘Rescue me, you cur.’ It was Leo calling, and it was ten-thirty the next morning.

  ‘You sound perky.’ It was a relief.

  ‘Deservedly. My swift brilliance saved your bacon.’

  It had, for sure. I’d gotten home to find the furnace box in the back of the Jeep blessedly empty.

  I was outside Endora’s building in thirty minutes. ‘Where’s my Porsche?’ he asked, through one of the newer rips in the passenger-side plastic curtain.

  ‘Parked in front of your bungalow. I slipped a note to Ma through the mail slot, saying you were with me.’ He got in and I pulled away from the curb.

  ‘How’d you get from my place to the turret?’

  ‘Hoofed.’

  ‘At four in the morning?’

  ‘The hookers were home; the cops were drunk. There was no one to notice.’

  He turned to look at the cut-down furnace box lying collapsed in the back. ‘The box is still there.’

  ‘You emptied it.’

  ‘Residual DNA. Get rid of it, you idiot.’ He closed his eyes.

  I am an orphan, of sorts – the product of a Norwegian sailor who might have been named Elstrom and an unstable high-school sophomore who’d taken off the day after I was born. Her three older sisters raised me haphazardly, passing me among themselves, bungalow to bungalow, a month at a time.

  Diminutive Leo Brumsky had been the one towering pillar in my life, growing up. He latched onto me in seventh grade, on a day when an aunt had again forgotten to pack me a sandwich. He brought me home for lunch, and from then on the three Brumskys: an always silent, rarely seen Pa; irrepressible, bustling, quirky Ma; and Leo were my backstop. Whenever one of my mother’s three sisters, meaning well enough but sullen about it, forgot it was her turn to get me to a doctor or to a dentist, or even to jam a sandwich into my coat pocket for lunch, the Brumskys were there. Every time. Always.

  ‘Care to tell me where you made your disposal?’ I asked.

  ‘Kutz’s,’ he said. Kutz’s Wienie Wagon was one of his most sacred destinations. It would be a calming place to decompress.

  ‘Tell me everything on the way over, so you don’t choke on the hot dogs,’ I said.

  He took a breath. ‘I dropped by your place last evening. The lights were off but I figured you were home because the Jeep was there. I even dared hope you might be in bed with your delectable former—’

  ‘Amanda and I aren’t edging back together that closely.’

  He sighed. ‘So I gather, since I caught you rutting out in San Francisco. Anyway, I banged on your door. No answer. Banged louder. Still no answer. I started to walk down to the bench by the river, to see if you were outside, stealing better clothes from the winos dozing by the river, when I saw the box in the back of the Jeep.’

  He made a vague motion at the box behind us and went on. ‘You’d been bragging about getting a furnace so I figured that was it, though it looked awfully small. And like I said, very much a target for thieves. When I didn’t find you by the river, I tried your door once more. Then I called you, thinking you’d fallen asleep in your La-Z-Boy. Surprise, surprise; you were in California, yelling at me to get the hell away from the Jeep.’ He
managed half a smile. ‘That piqued my interest, of course. I peeled back one of the many pieces of silver tape holding your rear window together, reached in and pulled back the top flap of the box.’

  ‘Get to it, Leo; what did you do?’ He was taking such a long time.

  ‘There was a large plastic bag inside, done up at the top with a twist-tie.’ He took another deep breath. ‘There was a smell, Dek, even through the bag. Still, to be sure, I undid it.’ He shuddered. ‘I felt hair; oh, jeez, I felt hair. You were in trouble, big time, and I could help. Since I keep the turret key you gave me in my glove box, I let myself in and got your spare Jeep key from the hook in your kitchen. I was thinking clearly; I was in control. I would drive far out to the woods, unload the cargo – minus the box, of course, which maybe had your name on it – and get rid of whatever was meant to burn you.’

  He slumped back in the seat and closed his eyes. He needed a break. We drove the rest of the way without speaking.

  At Rivertown, I turned onto the old river road that led down to the viaduct. Kutz has been selling hot dogs in a trailer down there for more than half a century.

  We drove onto the rutted ground, long bereft of gravel, that Kutz offers as a parking lot. Leo gasped. He’d turned to look at the river beyond the trailer.

  A white Cook County sheriff’s car was parked down by the Willahock. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a surprise. Cops, too, liked Kutz’s lukewarm hotdogs and soggy French fries.

  Not this day. The two deputies weren’t at the picnic tables; they were standing close to the water, looking down at the branches, empty anti-freeze jugs and other trash trapped along the bank.

  Normally pale, Leo’s face had gone faintly green. Big beads of sweat had popped up on his forehead. ‘Oh, jeez.’

  I focused on pulling to an easy stop well away from the trailer. ‘Please tell me the woods where you dumped the bag were far from here, Leo.’

  He jerked around to look at me, his eyes wild and wide. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’

  ‘And draw attention to ourselves? No chance. We’re going to stay and eat like nothing is wrong.’

  ‘I thought he’d be long gone by now, way downriver,’ he said, apparently meaning the previous passenger in my Jeep.

  ‘We’ll be calm. We’ll eat; we’ll leave.’

  ‘You can’t imagine,’ he said, his words coming high and fast, ‘driving with a corpse jammed behind my head. I was heading to the forest preserve east of us, in Chicago, but I swear he grunted every time I hit a bump. I freaked. All I could think was getting rid of the body. I swung in here, backed down to the water, opened the rear door and slid—’

  ‘Being careful to not pull out the box with it,’ I said, trying to sound approving, ‘because it had my name on it?’

  ‘See? I was thinking clearly. I slid the plastic bag out of the box and pushed it into the river.’

  ‘Right where those deputies are standing?’ I asked.

  He moaned. ‘That would be the exact spot.’

  ‘You saw the bag sink?’

  ‘It didn’t.’ His voice had risen even more. ‘It bobbed; the poor bastard bobbed like he was in a balloon. Body gases, maybe. Oh, jeez.’ He wiped at the saliva on his lips. ‘I told myself he’d bounce right over the dam and be long gone by now.’

  I looked down the river. Blue lights were flashing by the dam.

  He’d followed my eyes. ‘Oh, jeez,’ he said again.

  ‘Oh, jeez indeed,’ I said.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘We really, really can’t be here,’ he said as I got out.

  ‘We’re innocents, here for hot dogs. You’re going to consume your usual load.’

  ‘No chance,’ he said, but he did get out.

  ‘Find us a table before people start to stare.’

  He shot me a contemptuous look, for no one was sitting at the pigeon-strafed picnic tables. They’d carried their lunches to the Willahock and were lined up like crows on a telephone wire, watching the blue lights flashing down by the dam. And turning, occasionally, to glance at the two sheriff’s deputies just a hundred yards away, inspecting the river bank for marks.

  My cell phone rang as I walked up to the peeling trailer. It was Jenny. ‘What’s shakin’?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t talk,’ I said.

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Manageable.’ It was more wish than truth.

  ‘Call when you can,’ she said, and clicked off.

  Young Kutz lowered his grizzled gray head to see beneath the greasy film on the order window. ‘The midget can’t order for himself, Dickweed?’ he asked, watching Leo sit at a table.

  There was nothing young, or nice, about Kutz. He was on the wrong side of eighty and had seen little good along the way. Certainly there was little good in the food he served up. His hot dogs weren’t hot and his carbonated drinks had long lost their fizzle, but Leo and I had been eating there since we were kids, and that made it good enough for us.

  ‘Leo needs to sit down,’ I said. ‘His bowels knotted up as we drove in. They sensed the age of the grease surrounding this place and knew they were going to be punished.’ With Kutz, it was best to battle charm with charm.

  He looked over at Leo, sitting with his back turned resolutely to the river, glaringly uncurious. ‘He don’t want to know what’s going on?’

  ‘Obviously there’s been a drowning.’

  ‘Possible floater,’ he said, squirting a small cardboard tray of shiny red fries with the yellow stuff he passed off as liquefied cheese. I’d tried one of Kutz’s special barbecue cheese fries once and could only hope the yellow stuff was disinfectant, but Leo loved them.

  ‘Possible floater? No one’s sure?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone saw a big black garbage bag banging against the dam, all blowed up, maybe from rotting inside.’ Kutz slid the cracked plastic tray under the order window, with effort. The counter has been sticky for years.

  Leo looked away as I set down the tray and took my hot dog and diet cola. I’d bought his usual six hotdogs, barbecue cheese fries and the forty-eight ounce cup of semi-fizzed root beer that too strongly resembled the faintly bubbling water in the often fermenting Willahock River.

  ‘Eat,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Then turn around and pretend you’re interested in what everyone else is looking at down the river.’

  He picked up a hot dog instead. It was an achievement of sorts.

  The two sheriff’s deputies left the riverbank and walked up to the order window.

  ‘They gave up,’ I said. ‘I’ll bet the ground is too hard to find tire marks.’

  He nodded. In the instant I’d looked away he’d finished the first hot dog at his usual warp speed. ‘So tell me,’ he asked, his voice stronger as he picked up a second, ‘how does a body happen to get stuffed in your Jeep?’

  No doubt there was something restorative in Kutz’s grease, or perhaps in the secret red and yellow squirtable substances that were dissolving his fries. Leo had been resurrected and was looking at me now, normal and curious about the latest mess I’d gotten myself into.

  I started with Rosamund Reynolds, told him of my futile search for Gary Halvorson, the demise of David Arlin and the purportedly traveling Dainsto Runney.

  ‘You think the preacher’s the one I dumped in the river?’

  ‘Him, or Halvorson, since Arlin’s dead in Laguna Beach, for sure.’ I picked up my own hot dog and felt my youth in its reliable chill.

  ‘Why would the Reynolds woman want to get you arrested for murder?’ His eyes were unblinking. For sure, he was back in control.

  ‘I’m easy. I’m broke enough to work anywhere for a few thousand dollars and still tainted enough by the Evangeline Wilts trial to get readily blamed for something new and nasty. I like that explanation better than thinking that it’s personal, that someone’s really got it in for me.’

  ‘You’ll go back to the day-rate office where you met the Reynolds woman?’<
br />
  ‘I’ll start there but I’ll be unable to trace her. She was too careful covering her real identity.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not ready to risk going to Oregon, for fear of also getting linked to Dainsto Runney, especially if he’s met a bad end here. The bank where Rosamund got the cashier’s check won’t tell me anything.’ I nodded downriver. ‘The best I can do now is wait to see what pops up.’

  He winced at my word play. ‘Any chance the police from Tucson or Laguna Beach will ask the Rivertown coppers to pick you up for questioning?’ By now, red sauce and yellow cheese encircled his ample lips like clown’s make-up, but the set of his mouth was dead serious.

  ‘I didn’t leave my name in Tucson. I left a card with a lieutenant in the Laguna Beach police but I was careful to come across as a plausible insurance man, merely following up on Arlin’s policy.’

  ‘But …?’ He let the question dangle, unfinished.

  ‘That parcel left in my Jeep was only the first round. Someone, likely Rosamund, wants me tagged for murder. She’ll figure out a way to try again.’

  He’d started to nod glumly when a small ruckus rose among the people standing by the river. Several were pointing toward the dam. I got up and tried to look casual as I walked down to join them. Four flashing red lights had joined the blue ones.

  An ambulance had arrived.

  Someone had indeed popped up.

  SIXTEEN

  Even Rivertown cops know to scrutinize whoever shows up when a body is discovered, in case one might be an offender, so I pushed away any thought of going right down to the dam. I dropped Leo at his bungalow and headed into the city, to the building where I’d met Rosamund Reynolds. My footsteps echoed alone in the empty, glossy halls. Like before, it was a slow day for temporary rentals.

  The lock on the office she’d used popped easily with a credit card. A good lock wasn’t necessary; no one left anything in a day rental.