Unknown Remains

by Peter Leonard

  She walked half a block, stopped, moved close to a building, and waited a few minutes. The street was lined with cars, the sidewalk packed with people. She looked again and saw him coming toward her, carrying dry cleaning wrapped in plastic draped over his arm. Diane ducked into a cluttered indie bookstore, saw Cobb walk past the window, gave him thirty seconds, and went after him.

  Cobb disappeared in his building and Diane went back to her car. The hard part was waiting, not knowing what he was going to do.

  It was getting dark when someone tapped on the side window. A homeless man was saying something she couldn’t understand. There was a shopping cart filled with plastic bags, his meager possessions on the sidewalk next to him. Lights were on in the shop behind him.

  She lowered the window a couple inches and now caught a whiff of the man and had to breathe through her mouth. He mumbled something unintelligible. She had to get rid of him. As she reached for her purse on the passenger seat, Cobb appeared again in front of the building.

  Diane took out her wallet, grabbed a ten-dollar bill, and fed it through the opening at the top of the window. She climbed over the center console onto the passenger seat, opened the door, and saw Cobb walk past his car still parked where he’d left it hours earlier. She waited for traffic to clear, and ran across the street and down the sidewalk dodging pedestrians.

  She didn’t see Cobb again till he was ten yards ahead of her. She followed him into a restaurant and saw him sit at the bar. Diane ran back to his apartment building, stepped into the vestibule, and pressed the button for the super, Z. Korab.

  “Yes? Hello.” He had an Eastern European accent.

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Diane, Duane Cobb’s girlfriend. Duane was supposed to leave a key to his apartment in my mailbox, and I guess he forgot.”

  “He say nothing about this.”

  “I just need you to let me in his apartment.”

  The super didn’t respond, and in the silence, she thought he had cut her off, disconnected, but then the door buzzed. She slipped inside and saw a man coming out of a ground-floor apartment to meet her. “You have identification?” He was bald down the middle of his head and suspicious and smelled of BO, garlic, and sharp spices like paprika and cumin.

  Diane opened her wallet and showed him her Connecticut driver’s license, now glad she hadn’t given him a fake name. He stared at the license and then at her. “Live in Connecticut,” he nodded, “very nice.” She put her wallet away and the super pressed the button for the elevator. The doors opened and he swung his right arm toward the open car like an impresario.

  Riding up to the third floor, he said, “I never see you here before.”

  “That’s because I’ve never been here.”

  “You don’t mind my saying, I don’t see you and Mr. Cobb together.”

  “Sometimes opposites attract.”

  He gave her a look that said he didn’t believe it. They walked down the hall to 312. The super unlocked the door. “You need anything else, pretty lady, come see Zoltan Korab.”

  She went in and closed the door. She was able to hide her nervousness with the super and now felt relieved to be alone. She had no idea when Duane Cobb would come back or what he would do if he found her in his apartment.

  There was a cheap blue leather couch facing a Sony Trinitron on an end table, and a coffee table cluttered with newspapers and copies of Playboy and Penthouse and a paperback titled The Seven Stages of Grief.

  Across the room there was a PC and a printer on a desk. Diane walked over and booted up the computer. She checked Cobb’s e-mails but didn’t see any familiar names. She checked the drawers and found a manila envelope full of photographs. There were shots of Jack taken at various locations in the city, close-ups and long shots. Jack getting out of a cab; Jack crossing the Trade Center Plaza; Jack getting off the train in Darien and pulling into the driveway at home.

  There were shots of Jack and Vicki laughing, hugging, holding hands, kissing—the man she married and thought she knew, captured on film in the arms of another woman. The images seemed surreal. This wasn’t really Jack; it was someone who looked like him.

  There were also shots of the funeral procession and shots taken at the rainy gravesite, everyone huddled under umbrellas. The last one was a close-up of Ruben Diaz scowling at the camera or, more likely, Cobb. She put the photographs back in the envelope and left it on top of the desk. She would take it with her, show Detective Brown. He wanted proof, well, here it was. Maybe now he would believe her.

  In another drawer, she found a notebook that had Jack’s contact information, e-mail address, home address, and phone numbers, including Diane’s cell, and there was a piece of note paper with an address in Florida: 300 Briny Avenue, Pompano Beach.

  Diane and Jack had gone to Pompano before they were married and stayed in a motel on Briny Avenue. Was it a coincidence? She didn’t think so. She put the notebook back and closed the drawer. In the printer next to the computer was a piece of paper that Cobb had probably forgotten about. It was from the Delta Airlines website, a morning flight from LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale scheduled to leave the next day at nine thirty. For weeks she’d been grief-stricken, thinking Jack was dead, and now she believed he might be alive.

  Cobb ordered a 7 and 7 and sipped it sitting at the bar, eating pretzels, studying the profile of a blonde in a gray business suit, sitting next to him. “How was your day?” Cobb said, trying to be friendly.

  She turned and glanced at him. “What’re you taking a poll?”

  Her body looked okay; it was her face that needed help. She’d look better after a couple more drinks. “What’re you having, let me buy you one.”

  She sat there frozen, pretending he didn’t exist. Cobb finished the 7 and 7 and signaled the bartender. “A refill for me, and get my stressed-out friend one.” She was drinking white wine in a stemmed glass.

  “I’m not stressed out and I’m not your friend,” she said with the same angry tone.

  “I was gonna invite you back to my place, offer to give you a back rub, but not now.”

  The girl gave him a nervous grin. “You’ve got to be kidding. Does that lame come-on really work? Women fall for that, I can’t imagine. How gullible do you think I am?”

  Cobb had her full attention now. “You want to be cranky and unpleasant, go right ahead, be my guest.” He turned and looked away.

  The bartender came with the drinks, put a 7 and 7 on the bar top in front of Cobb and a glass of white in front of the girl.

  “You’re right,” Cobb said. “This is out of character for me. I was being a little forward, a little bold. Usually when I see a girl as good-looking as you, I freeze up.” She picked up her wine glass, and he noticed the engagement ring on her finger. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were betrothed.”

  “What’re you talking about?” she said in a softer voice.

  “Engaged. Someone’s fiancée.”

  The girl frowned. “I’m not. This is my mother’s ring.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have surprised me.”

  The girl smiled.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over, what do you say? I’m Duane.” He offered his hand.

  “Mara.”

  “No kidding? That’s a great name. Mara, what do you do?”

  Diane walked through the apartment looking at things: a framed photo of a little boy dressed as a cowboy, and another of a teenager driving a tractor. There were four yearbooks from Carbondale Community High School. She took out the one from 1984 and found Cobb’s senior picture. He was named Class Flirt and had been a member of the band and choir club. She closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and went into the bedroom.

  Duane Cobb was neat, she had to give him that. The apartment, although weak in decor, was immaculate. He even made his bed, a queen with a green comforter. There was a small suitcase on one side of the bed that he had started to pack with shorts and golf shirts for the tri
p to Florida.

  She checked the closet, looking at Western shirts on hangers lined up next to oxford-cloth button-downs, cowboy boots sharing the floor with penny loafers, cowboy hats next to sport caps. In the top drawer of the dresser, she found a matte black semiautomatic. It was a Ruger Lc9. Diane ejected the magazine, removed the cartridges, flushed them down the toilet, and put the gun back.

  Cobb unlocked the building door and held it open for Mara, the editorial assistant who seemed like she had a stick up her ass when he first met her, but after two glasses of wine had mellowed, turned into a different person. “I’ve never done this before,” she said as they waited for the elevator. Yeah, Cobb was thinking. Next she’d tell him she was saving herself for Mr. Right. Jesus. His plan was to take Mara upstairs, skip the foreplay, bang her, and say good night.

  Mr. K., the super, came up behind them, glanced at Cobb, and said, “I let girl in apartment.”

  Cobb had no idea what this crazy Hungarian was talking about. “What’re you saying?”

  “Girl come to see you, I open door for her.”

  “What girl?”

  “Diane from Connecticut.”

  “How do you know her name’s Diane?”

  “I see driving license.”

  He knew only one Diane from Connecticut. How in the hell’d she find him? She must’ve followed them and he hadn’t noticed, wasn’t paying attention. That seemed hard to believe. Now Mara made a face, gave him a dirty look. “You have a girlfriend? I knew this was a bad idea.” She moved past him and walked out the door.

  He fixed his attention on Mr. K. “You’re saying you let her in my apartment?” Cobb couldn’t believe it. “What’s she look like?”

  Mr. K. made a curvy female shape with his hands and grinned, something Cobb had never seen him do, not that Cobb saw him that often.

  “What color hair?”

  “Blonde.”

  “You think she’s still up there?”

  Diane was conscious of the time and felt she had been in the apartment too long already. She picked the envelope full of photos off the desk and moved to the door, opening it a couple inches, glancing right down the empty hall to the elevator.

  She was about to walk out, go left to the stairs, when she heard something and hesitated. The elevator bell sounded and the doors opened and Duane Cobb charged down the hall. Diane ran into the bedroom, went in the closet, and closed the door but left it open a crack.

  She heard him come in and move through the main room, shoes clicking on the hardwood, and then he stood in the doorway to the bedroom, three feet away, looking in the room. She moved deeper into the closet and got on her knees behind a row of jeans on hangers.

  Cobb thought he smelled perfume when he came in, a hint of it still in the air. Who’d this bitch think she was, coming to his place, fucking with him? He went through the apartment, looked in the bedroom, checked under the bed, looked in the closet. He went in the bathroom, pulled the shower curtain back. She wasn’t there, and there was no other place to hide.

  After the drinks, he had to piss so bad his eyes were yellow, his teeth were floating—things his father used to say when Duane was a kid and had to go. He stood in front of the toilet and let fly, and Jesus if he wasn’t there a good three minutes.

  Cobb went back in the bedroom, opened the top drawer of the dresser, and grabbed the Ruger. He knew guns and could tell something wasn’t right and ejected the magazine. It was empty. He had a strange feeling he was being watched, moved to the closet, swung the door open, and smelled perfume. Cobb grabbed the softball bat leaning against the wall and brought it to his shoulder, took a beat, and swung through his Western shirts on hangers, sending them sideways. Now he parted a row of Levis on hangers with the barrel of the bat, looking behind them. She wasn’t there.

  He went back through the apartment to the front door. It wasn’t closed all the way. Did he do that, or was Diane McCann in the apartment when he came home? He took the stairs to the lobby and went outside, looking down the sidewalk in both directions and at the cars on both sides of the street and saw a silver BMW pull out of a parking space. Didn’t Jack have a car like that?

  Back in the apartment, Cobb closed the door and locked it. He sat at the desk, opened the top drawer, and noticed the photographs were missing. He’d have sworn he left the envelope right there. He went through the other drawers but didn’t see it. He was tense till he reasoned that the photos, without the negatives and the camera, didn’t prove anything, didn’t implicate him or Ruben.

  There was a piece of paper in the printer he’d forgotten about. Cobb pulled it out, looking at the flight information, wondering if Diane had seen it. What if she had, it wasn’t gonna help her. She didn’t know where they were going.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Diane slid what was left of her turkey sandwich into the sink and saw Detective Brown coming around the back of the house. He nodded at her in the window, walked to the patio, and knocked on the French doors. Shit. What did he want? She unlocked the door and opened it. “Don’t tell me: you were in the neighborhood, decided to stop by, say hello?”

  “Your gun wasn’t the murder weapon.”

  “Isn’t that what I said to you when you took it?”

  She felt a blast of cold air hit her in the face. “You want to come in, or is that it?”

  He stepped into the breakfast room, the stale smell of cigarettes on him as he walked past her, and she closed the door. “Winter’s on its way, huh?” He reached into an overcoat pocket and brought out her Beretta in a Ziploc bag. “Here you go.”

  Walking into the kitchen, she took the gun out of the bag, ejected the magazine.

  Coming behind her Detective Brown said, “Think we took your cartridges? They’re all there.”

  “Have you arrested anyone?”

  “Not yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Did you talk to Ruben Diaz or Duane Cobb?” He slipped off the overcoat and folded it on the back of one of the chairs. He was wearing a wrinkled brown suit.

  Diane was already tired of his low-key delivery, waiting for him to get to it.

  “They still contacting you, still hanging around?”

  “Cobb came by yesterday and for the first time admitted he worked for Frank DiCicco.” She was about to offer him their addresses, but caught herself. She didn’t want Cobb and Diaz picked up and detained.

  “Frankie Cheech, huh?” Detective Brown held her in his gaze for a couple of beats. “Tell me what’s going on. I think you know more than you’re saying.”

  “Cobb asked for Jack’s life insurance money to cover the debt. Then Cobb said Jack’s alive, got out of Tower One before it collapsed.”

  “Is that what you think, or do you know?”

  “I thought so on nine-eleven, watching it on TV. I prayed Jack was okay and he was going to walk through the door any minute. After a couple days, I knew I was kidding myself. He wasn’t coming back.”

  “But now you think it’s possible, huh?”

  “I don’t know what I think.”

  “Let’s say Jack’s alive. Where would he go?”

  Diane shrugged.

  “You have a cottage somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your husband from?”

  “A suburb of Detroit.”

  “He have any sibs?”

  “Jack was an only child. His mother had him when she was forty-seven.”

  “How ’bout his parents? They still around?”

  “Both passed away. Jack’s dad had a heart attack when he was ninety, and his mom died of a brain aneurysm, a massive stroke.”

  “Anywhere you talked about moving when you all retired?”

  “Jack liked Charleston.”

  “South Carolina, huh?”

  “And he liked Captiva, talked about maybe living there part-time.”

  “Where’s Captiva at?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ruben was hungry, thinking about what he was go
ing to have for dinner, seeing a plate of grilled octopus and then roast chicken stuffed with chorizo, and flan for dessert. He looked out the window at the blur of taillights ahead of them, traffic still heavy at almost seven o’clock.

  Cobb’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his shirt pocket, flipped it open, and listened, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. Ruben could hear a man’s voice talking but not what he was saying.

  “Uh-huh. Okay. We’ll be right there.” Cobb closed the phone and slid it in his shirt pocket and glanced at Ruben. “Frank wants to see us.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” Cobb said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “I don’t want to see that asshole. I want my dinner. Drop me off. You do it.”

  “He wants us both.”

  “What you gonna tell him?”

  “We don’t know anything, remember?”

  “We know Jack McCann’s alive. You gonna say that?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not gonna tell him a thing. We’re gonna find Jack, get the money, split it, and live happily ever after.”

  “Well, here they are,” Frank said as they walked in the living room of his townhouse, “the hillbilly and the spic.”

  Frank’s bodyguard Val, a big dude with a ponytail, was a Hollywood heavy. But the other one, Santo, looked like he just walked out of an olive grove. Ruben pictured him in a beret with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. The bodyguards stood at attention on opposite sides of the couch, Frank sitting between them.

  “Hey, Ruben, look at you. Trying to dress like a white man, huh?”

  In his high-waisted Italian pants, hiked up near his armpits, Val grinned. He grinned at everything Frank said. He was a professional grinner. Ruben had spent nineteen years fighting tough guys and now had to listen to this, the man talking down to him, treating him like a fool. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ruben, with that skin, you must have some native blood, uh? Who was the eggplant, your mother or father? Next time, I’m gonna have you come to the back door.”