A thin, sleek-looking guy in a black suit, with blond hair pulled into a ponytail, led me to a secluded nook and a table for two. I told him I was “Mr. Remorseful” and my companion would be along shortly. His complete lack of reaction made me wonder what kind of place I was in. I ordered coffee and a bowl of minestrone, which arrived almost at once, and then waited fifteen very long minutes before Flanagan showed up.
She’d have looked like an ordinary middle-aged woman in an expensive blue business suit—maybe silk—and a white blouse open at the neck, but there was an air of authority about her—or was it arrogance?—that kept “ordinary” out of the picture. Her hair showed just enough gray around the edges to convince you the black was natural. The manila envelope stuck up from a leather handbag slung over her shoulder. I could see it had been torn open.
The blond ponytail was escorting her over and when they got close I looked up, but didn’t stand, didn’t greet her at all. He held the chair for her and she sat down, smiling and telling me how happy she was to see me. I drank my coffee and stared at her. The waiter was already standing there, and she ordered a Diet Sprite with lime, and chicken salad. He turned to me and I told him the minestrone had been delicious and all I needed was more coffee.
When the waiter left there was a long silence and finally she said. “You really are crazy.”
“No,” I said, “really, the minestrone isn’t bad at all, and I hate to eat a large meal in the middle of the—”
“You listen to me, Mr. Foley. You’ve got a petition pending before the court. I could have you charged with attempting to tamper with a judicial proceeding.”
“Gee whiz,” I said, “and we were getting along so well.”
She shook her head. “My time is valuable,” she said. “If you have a point, get to it. Why did you ask me here?”
“I didn’t ask you. Read my note again. I required you to be here.”
“What do you want?”
“I see you opened the envelope.”
“Yes. Those are confidential documents. What is it you want?”
“Confidential?” I said. “Notices of IRS liens, subpoenas, releases of the liens? All public records. One just has to know where to look.” And, once I’d told them the sort of thing I was hoping for, Barney’s paralegals had known.
The waiter was back with her Sprite and chicken salad, and a refill of my coffee. When he was gone again, she said, “Tell me what you want, or I’m going back to my meeting at once.”
“Feel free,” I said, waving my hand in a dismissive gesture. “I got the important half already.”
She didn’t go anywhere. “I don’t understand,” she said, and for the first time there was a note of unease in her voice. “Important half of what?”
“I think you do understand.” I leaned forward. “You see, Maura,” getting personal, watching her flinch a little when I did, “I’ve verified what I thought, that those back taxes and interest and penalties you and your ex-husband owed, and the fact that you were able to pay them all off, at just the time you did … that that’s a worry to you. And that I, in particular, know about it, that’s an even bigger worry.” I leaned back in my chair and watched her.
She sipped at her Sprite while she thought. “Look,” she finally said, “you can’t—”
“Wait,” I said, interrupting to keep her off balance. “Time is short. You need to get back to your meeting. The worry’s the first half. The second half is … what are you willing to do about the worry?”
“This is starting to sound like blackmail.”
“See?” I said. “You do understand.” I realized Flanagan could have been wired, even if the table wasn’t, but that seemed a slim possibility. “Actually, though, it’s not your traditional blackmail.”
“Really.”
“Your traditional blackmailer demands something, in exchange for his promise to keep quiet.”
“And I suppose you’re not demanding anything?”
“Oh, I’m demanding something, all right,” I said. “But I’m not promising to keep quiet.”
CHAPTER
36
A FEW MINUTES LATER Maura Flanagan was gone, and the waiter hustled over at once. “I’m surprised,” he said, picking up her nearly untouched plate. “Most people really like our chicken salad.”
“She was late for a meeting,” I said. “She’s a very important person.”
I’d told Flanagan I knew that six or seven years ago her ex-husband had been the subject of a tax fraud investigation. The taxes had to do with his construction business, and she was listed as vice-president and secretary of the company and had cosigned all the tax returns. I said I knew her ex had made a bundle, mostly on public works projects, but had turned out to be a compulsive gambler who couldn’t stop to save his life—or hers.
I told her I knew the investigation dragged on and on and she became a target, too. The IRS was talking a couple of million dollars and, even though the fraud case was shaky and the couple had no money, the government had way too many auditor-hours invested to drop the case. Criminal charges were on the way. So, guilty or not, she’d been facing enormous legal fees to defend herself, and the result would almost certainly be some sort of guilty plea. That meant the loss of her law license and a very promising career, and maybe even some time at the women’s prison in Lexington, Kentucky.
Some of it I made up, of course, but obviously I was close enough, because she kept on listening. It didn’t take me long to get to the punch line: “Then you suddenly came up with almost two hundred thousand dollars. Not what the IRS was looking for, but enough so they could save face. So you settled up with them and got them off your back.” I paused, then added, “That was right after the Lonnie Bright shooting.”
If something showed up in her face just then, it was gone as quickly as it came, and she didn’t say a word.
So I gave her my demand. “I want to know who gave you the money to close out that O.P.S. investigation so quickly. If you tell me, I can’t promise to keep it to myself. I can only promise I’ll try to keep your part out of the public eye. I’ll do my best. That’s the deal.”
“You’ll try? You’ll do your best?” She took a sip of her water, then shook her head from side to side, slowly. “That’s it?”
“It’s the only deal you’ve got,” I said. “Otherwise, I keep pushing until I get what I want anyway, and I don’t have to worry about keeping you out of it. So…”
I let my voice trail off, and that’s when she’d leaned forward a little and smiled. Anyone looking on would have thought she was especially pleased with me. But her voice was taut with anger and something that might have been hatred blazed in her eyes. What she said was, “Your story is absolutely untrue, Mr. Foley. All of it.” She took her purse from the floor beside her and stood up.
“You have my card,” I said, pointing at the envelope sticking up from her purse. “Call any time. But call by noon tomorrow.”
“You’ll be goddamn lucky, you son of a bitch,” she said, still managing to hold the smile in place, “to keep your sad sorry ass out of jail that long.” Not exactly the language you’d expect from a supreme court justice, no. But I could understand. She was a little upset.
Besides, she was, as her campaign posters had once so boldly proclaimed: “One tough broad.”
* * *
I LEFT VINCENT’S and took the el to Diversey and walked west to where I’d parked that morning, in the lot of a Wonder Bread thrift store. I went inside and bought a package of day-old sweet rolls and took them out to the car. I was driving a two-tone—blue over rust—1990 Buick Electra that Barney Green had gotten for me from God knows where. It had Arkansas plates and Barney said it belonged to a shirt-tail relative of his. And maybe it did.
It wasn’t that the Cavalier had blown up. I’d had it checked out the day before and when they said it was clean I’d driven it home and parked it in one of the bays under the coach house. At its age it could use the rest. And dri
ving a different car gave me the illusion I could hide.
The Electra was way more confortable, too, and—rust notwithstanding—it drove like a dream. I went west to the Edens and then headed north.
Barney and his wife had taken the demolition of the LS400 pretty well. There was insurance coverage, of course. And, although Trish had loved her Lexus to death, it had been nearly a year old, after all. She’d been looking at a new Mercedes, maybe one of those cute little SUVs. Barney and Trish were a perfect match. They were both good parents, thoughtful, generous to a fault, and easy to get along with. On top of that, Barney loved to work his ass off twenty-four hours a day, and Trish loved to buy stuff.
I drove all the way to Lake Bluff, parked on the street, and walked about a mile to Inverness Clinic, where no one gave me any trouble at the guard house. The nurse let me peek through the door at Yogi, to prove he was there. “He’s asleep and you can’t talk to him,” she said. “He’s had a setback, but he’s much better today. I’m sure by tomorrow you’ll be able to visit with him.”
“You tell him I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said. “Tell him he has my word on it.”
* * *
AT FOUR O’CLOCK I was downtown again. I’d checked for messages and there was nothing from Maura Flanagan. The only call had been from Lieutenant Theodosian. He wanted a meeting.
It was a clear, warm afternoon and Theodosian was sitting on a park bench near Buckingham Fountain, reading the paper in what was left of the sunlight as the shadows of the tall buildings west of Michigan Avenue crept toward him. We were less than two blocks, actually, from where Yogi had intervened when the masked goon was pounding on me.
“This seat taken?” I asked. I was carrying two coffees and a paper sack and I set them down beside him on the bench.
He closed up the Sun-Times. “Feel free,” he said. He reached for one of the coffees. “Got any sweetener?”
I sat down at the other end of the bench and took a couple of packets of sugar from my pocket. “This natural stuff will have to do. And I couldn’t carry three coffees, so your friend Uh-Smith is out of luck.” I nodded toward another bench, about twenty yards away, where Theodosian’s state-cop partner was pretending to study his little notebook.
“He’s got a name,” Theodosian said. “It’s Frick. Which rhymes with prick. Which is what he is. But he’s a good copper. He started this cooperative task force thing, ICOP, five or six years ago. I’m just on loan, temporarily. Except for Frick being such an asshole, it’s interesting, a good break from the same old bullshit.”
“Always things involving bad cops and narcotics?”
“It’s confidential. I won’t say yes and I won’t say no,” he said. So it was yes, the first piece of information he’d given me so far.
“You wanted to see me?” I asked.
“Frick thinks we oughta touch base every few days. So … anything new?”
“Nothing.”
“Haven’t heard from anyone? More threats, beatings, whatever?”
“No such luck,” I said. I pulled the package of day-old sweet rolls out of the paper bag and tore it open. “Hungry?”
“Uh … sure.” He took a roll and bit off half of it, then made a face and tossed the other half on the sidewalk, where it was immediately pounced upon and fought over by about a hundred ravenous pigeons. “Kinda stale,” he said.
“The sticker on the package here says they’re only a day old. The birds sure seem to like ’em.” I washed down my second roll with some coffee. “They are a little dry, though.”
“You’re taking Jimmy Coletta’s deposition Friday.” I must have looked surprised, because he added, “You filed a notice. It’s a matter of public record.” He paused. “I thought we agreed you’d keep us up to date on anything happening.” So that was the reason for the meeting—to let me know they didn’t like being left out of the loop. “A deposition’s a pretty significant thing,” he added.
“Maybe you agreed I’d be an open book,” I said. “But I didn’t. Besides, depositions never go forward on the day they’re first set for. This one’s no different. Meanwhile, I’m trying to talk to Jimmy informally to see if he plans to testify against me. He hasn’t exactly told me to go screw myself, since that’s not in his new vocabulary. But he won’t talk to me, either.”
“Jimmy’s one of the things I don’t like about this investigation. I can’t help thinking those four guys—or some of them, anyway—were rotten. And if he was in on it … well, shit.” He shook his head. “It’s not just the wheelchair and all. I mean, I think he’s for real. Him and his wife are struggling just to keep the boat afloat and still, except for when he’s working out, he spends most of his time on that youth program of his.”
“I was out at that gym in Englewood,” I said. “Last week, Thursday. He wouldn’t talk to me then, either.” I didn’t mention my second visit, just two nights ago, or the car bomb. I’d have had to answer a lot of questions about that. And for what purpose?
“He’s got another site, too, on the West Side.” Theodosian sipped his coffee. “It’s not just wheelchair basketball, but helping kids get back in rehab who got discouraged and quit. He’s got a few back in school. He’s started a nonprofit corporation.”
“I know,” I said. I finished off another roll. “He really believes helping those kids is the work the Lord called him to do.”
“That’s why I don’t like it. Because if Jimmy Coletta was part of some deal to buy or sell dope, or rip off Lonnie Bright or kill the cocksucker, we’re taking him down with the rest. What do we have if we don’t have a police force people can trust?”
“That’s five years ago. Old news to most people.”
“Five years ago or last week, it’s all the same. It’s an open case and—” He stopped short, and nodded at me. “This ICOP thing, it’s confidential, you know?”
“Who would I tell?”
“The thing is,” he went on, “that other shooter, up in Lonnie’s apartment, your client mention him?”
“Nice try,” I said. “But what my client said is—”
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, someone must have been helping him. Otherwise, why couldn’t we find him? Scumbags like that aren’t exactly famous for being geniuses.” He shook his head. “This incident’s sure not old news to someone. They’re worried, which is why your petition is stirring up so much oppposition.”
“Maybe it’s simple. I want my license back, but I still won’t say what Marlon Shades told me. Maybe people aren’t worried; maybe I’ve just reminded them how I wouldn’t cooperate back then—and still won’t—and they don’t like it.” I looked at him. “Makes you mad as hell, doesn’t it?”
“Damn right it does,” he said.
I chugged down the last of my coffee. “Frick have a first name?”
“Yeah. Warren. Warren Frick.”
“What does he think about Jimmy?”
“He thinks Jimmy’s a lying, phony-assed piece of shit. He thinks everybody he targets on is a lying, phony-assed piece of shit.” Theodosian shook his head. “And you know what? In the time I been with him? The prick’s been right every goddamn time.”
“Yeah? What about me? Does he think—”
“Hold it.” Theodosian stood up. He was looking at Frick, who was on his feet now, too, with a cell phone to his ear. “Gotta go. Talk to you soon.”
I watched the two of them stride off, apparently in a hurry. I broke the last roll into four pieces and threw them toward the pigeons who’d been hanging around, beady-eyed and hopeful. Theodosian and Frick walked straight west, across Columbus Drive toward Michigan Avenue, until I lost sight of them. Then I walked in circles for a while before heading back to the Electra, hoping everyone had lost sight of me.
Interesting. I’d once gone through the police reports and listed everyone shown anywhere who had anything to do with the Lonnie Bright investigation. One name had appeared just once, on a case report filed by one of the first investigators to arrive. He no
ted that he’d been approached on the scene by a man in plainclothes whom he didn’t recognize. He’d asked for identification before he referred the man to the lieutenant in charge. The man had shown him an ID issued by the state police. The man’s name was Warren Frick.
CHAPTER
37
I STILL HADN’T TOLD THEODOSIAN about Maura Flanagan. I’d given her until noon the next day to respond and—whether she called me or not—if by then she hadn’t had me thrown in jail, I’d know I was on the right track. If she was smart, she’d call me. If she wasn’t smart, she’d call the person she got the money from.
I used a phone at a gas station and checked my answering machine. Two messages. One was from the Lady. It was Wednesday and she hadn’t seen me since Sunday and wondered how I was doing. The other was from Stefanie, asking “how things went with the wicked witch.”
Two callers. One was a woman old enough to be my mother and, though I felt closer to her than anyone else in the world, I’d just learned she had a life I knew nothing about. The other was a bright, attractive, available woman—who hoped to God I’d help her get out of town and far away.
I left a message with the Lady’s voice mail. I told her I didn’t realize I had to report to her on my whereabouts, then said I was kidding and not to expect me for a few more days. I called Stefanie and told her machine that I’d know by the next afternoon how the meeting had gone.
I walked back to the Buick, thinking it might be nice on occasion to have someone to tell the whole truth to. Then, taking side streets all the way, I went to church.
No Show of Remorse Page 17