The Dead Caller from Chicago

by Jack Fredrickson

  He’d come to the settlement conference with her three-man team of lawyers. I came alone. The conference lasted barely ten minutes, and that long only because her lawyers brought a huge sheaf of papers for me to sign. I read none of them. I wanted none of her money.

  Chernek liked that. He also liked that I was half Bohemian and had been tagged with the thoroughly ethnic and quite unwieldy name of Vlodek. He enjoyed rolling it on his tongue: Vuh-lo-dek. We reached an accommodation: I let him call me something I wouldn’t name a dog; he offered his quite considerable resources when I got in a jam.

  “Vuh-lo-dek,” he said now, relishing the three syllables when we both knew there were merely two. “What sort of mess are you in, these days?”

  “I need a very private, very discreet medical clinic, for a friend.”

  His tone changed from kidding to serious. “To treat what?”

  “Amnesia, I think, and shock. Lots of other head stuff, potentially.”

  “How discreet?”

  “Discreet enough to admit him under an assumed name and to never tell anyone he’s a patient. Do you know of such a place?”

  “I must put you on hold.”

  He was back in five minutes. “As a matter of fact, I do know such a place. It’s very pricey.”

  “I have about forty-five hundred dollars.”

  “Amazingly, Vlodek, that is precisely what I estimate it will cost for an indefinite stay.” He chuckled. He’d find a way to take care of the balance, through favors he was owed, or merely his own considerable funds. Friendship with me isn’t always cheap.

  “Is there a capital crime associated with the amnesia?” he asked.

  “Yes. I think his life is in danger, too, but the immediate problem is his amnesia.”

  He did not hesitate. He’d heard worse, from the people who ran most of Chicago. “Does your friend require transportation?”

  “I don’t know how to do that. He is with me at the turret. It’s probably being watched.”

  “What does your friend look like?”

  “Five-six, one-forty, pale skin, bald as an egg.”

  “Do you own a hat, Vlodek?”

  I was probably the only one he’d ever had to ask such a question.

  “Chicago Cubs,” I said. “It’s one of two I own, the other being a knit.”

  “In about an hour, put your Cubs hat on your friend, along with your peacoat—”

  “You remember I have a peacoat?” I interrupted.

  “Every time I’ve seen you in cold weather, you’ve worn navy surplus. I assumed it’s your only outer garment.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Thusly attired, put your friend in your Jeep and drive to this address on Archer Avenue.” He gave me the street number. “It’s a spring coil manufacturer. They have a ground-level loading dock. They will be waiting for you. When they open the receiving door, drive in. Your friend will be immediately transported in a windowless service van to a clinic. You, however, will wait thirty minutes before driving out of the factory. You will be accompanied by one of their employees, who will be wearing your surplus coat and Cubs hat, sitting slouched down in your, ah, vehicle. That person will instruct you what to do. It’s the best I can offer on such short notice.”

  “Don’t tell me where you’re taking my friend.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. He’ll be admitted as John Smith. All communication will be done through me.”

  He hung up before I could thank him.

  I called Endora. “I have good news and some temporarily not so good news. I have him with me, but he’s suffered a mild concussion. It’s resulted in a bit of amnesia.”

  “We’ll leave now.”

  “Absolutely not. Leo wanted you out of town because he got into something bad. I don’t know what that is yet. He’ll be at a clinic, safe, getting his health back. You stay out of Chicago until I know what’s going on.”

  “Which clinic?”

  “Someone I trust made the arrangements. I told him I don’t want to know where Leo is.”

  She paused, then, “It’s like up at Eustace?”

  “Have you heard anything about how Arnie Pine died?”

  “I forbade my mother to call her friend.”

  I’d told her I’d call her later.

  I held out my peacoat, still damp, and Cubs cap. Leo put them on without asking why and followed me docilely out to the Jeep. I walked with my sport jacket open, his revolver tucked inside the waistband of my khakis. I didn’t like packing the gun, a murder weapon with his and my fingerprints on it, but I liked the idea of being defenseless against some friend of the dead man’s even less.

  The spring coil company was in an old factory building that took up most of a city block. The street-level dock door opened as soon as I drove up. I pulled in next to a beat-up panel van with the company’s logo on it. A man in a quilted down jacket with a reassuring bulge under his left armpit stood by the driver’s door. A woman who might have been a nurse got out of the van as soon as the dock door closed. She came over and led Leo to the sliding door at the side of the van. She came back with my peacoat, the Cubs hat, and what I took for a reassuring smile. She and the driver got in the van and backed out of the adjacent bay.

  I sat in the Jeep for fifteen minutes, watching shipping department people move large wood pallets of thick wire, until a small Latina, no more than twenty-five, came up to the passenger’s side. She put on the peacoat over her hot pink ski jacket, tucked her long hair up inside the Cubs hat, and gave me the whitest smile I’d ever seen. The transformation was good enough. She slouched down in the passenger seat like she was asleep, the dock door opened, and we drove away.

  She directed me through the old factory district. At the westbound entrance to the expressway, she told me to park between two cars in front of a crowded strip of stores. She tugged off the peacoat, dropped the Cubs hat, and slipped out. Even in hot pink, she disappeared into one of the stores in an instant.

  The Bohemian, that knower of all things, had done me well. Leo was in sharp, professional hands. Protected, for now.

  Only for now.

  Twenty-two

  I parked in the Rivertown city hall lot and went inside. Robinson was alone in his office. He wore a white shirt, a dark suit and tie, and a nervous face.

  “Tebbins’s funeral?” I asked.

  He leaned back in his desk chair and tugged at his tie like it was a noose. “Awful; just awful.”

  “Heard anything about the police investigation?”

  “Drifter is all anyone’s saying.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Sure. What else…?” His face changed. “No, no way in hell his murder was about Snark, or Leo, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shit. Why else would you be here?” He motioned me to the chair next to his desk. “Coffee? I just made the coffee. I make very decent coffee.” He was babbling, now even more nervous.

  “Coffee would be good.”

  He got up and went to a small table against the wall. “Our secretary said you and Tebbins had strong words. I told the police I was here, and you had no such things.” His hands shook as he set down my coffee on his desk. He dropped into his chair.

  I sipped the coffee. He was right. It was very decent coffee. Then again, my standards were compromised; I was used to reruns.

  “Look, you got to be straight with me,” he said. “You think Tebbins’s death had something to do with Snarky?”

  “Tebbins tried lying about not remembering him.”

  “Of course he did. He tried hard with that boy. He knew darned well Snark was fencing stolen stuff.”

  “How?”

  “Look, we wanted no drugs in that garage so, like I told you, we had a master key to all the lockers. Every time Tebbins found something small-time stolen in Snarky’s, he hauled him around to the back, where nobody could hear, and tried to yell some sense into the punk’s head…” His face lost focus as his v
oice trailed away. Then he said, “Son of a bitch,” but it was more to himself than to me.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Tebbins had a side business installing home security systems. They were half-assed little things, mostly hardware-store motion sensors and the like, but part of the setup was boxes with tiny flashing lights visible from outside the windows, and security system signs stuck in the flower beds. In those unsophisticated, predigital times, Tebbins’s little installations worked as well as any to frighten would-be burglars away, or so he told customers.” He cleared his throat. “From time to time, Tebbins would need extra help, and he’d hire guys from the garage to work after hours and on weekends.”

  He was watching my face, to see if I’d caught his drift.

  “Extra guys like Snark Evans?” I asked.

  “And a couple of mechanics from the garage. And your friend, Leo Brumsky.”

  “Snark stole from Tebbins’s customers?”

  “Until now, I never considered that. Tebbins never mentioned a connection between his after-hours jobs and Snark’s little inventories, but now that it’s come up, it’s something to think about. Maybe that’s why he was watching Snark so close. And right after Snark quit so sudden and left town, Tebbins never again worked on another security system.”

  “Cops ever come around?”

  “You mean cops from other towns, following up on reports of stolen goods?” He frowned. “Not that I know, but people came around sometimes. Customers of his, I think. I never paid it any mind.”

  “Snark died at the end of that summer?”

  “Tebbins was real broke up about it, when he heard.” Robinson’s face froze for an instant, and then he popped out of his chair like it was on fire. “You’re not saying Snark was killed for his thieving, are you? That somehow, Tebbins got shot for it after all these years?”

  “Anybody ever think Snark’s death notice was a put-up job, a faked notice in his local newspaper to shake the law off his tail?”

  “Nobody wanted to talk about Snark, period. He was bad news, and everybody was glad he quit.” He sat back down. “Listen, you got to tell me why young Master Leo is taking an interest in this, after all these years. Has he found out something?”

  “Not such a young master anymore,” I said, evading his question.

  “Leo absolutely hated us calling him a young master,” he said, relaxing into a laugh, “but we couldn’t help it. His mother packed him such precise lunches.”

  “Precise lunches?”

  “Two sandwiches every day: rare roast beef and yellow cheese on white bread. Cut on a diagonal and wrapped precisely in waxed paper folded, I swear, with hospital corners.” He started laughing again. “Get this: She always sent along exactly sixteen potato chips in a little Baggie.”

  “How could you know there were sixteen?”

  “Leo quickly became the object of much interest, as you might imagine. A college boy with such a doting mama wasn’t ordinarily found in our grimy garage. Somebody snatched his chips one day, held them up. Leo told him he’d give him eight. The guy said he wanted half. Leo said that was half, that his mother always sent sixteen chips.” Robinson was laughing so hard tears had begun to glisten in the corners of his eyes. “Know why?”

  I could only shake my head. I’d never heard anything about Leo lunching on a precise number of potato chips, but I knew Ma Brumsky, and Robinson’s story sounded right.

  “Leo said his mother figured he’d take four bites per half of sandwich, and that this way, he’d have one chip per bite.”

  That did it for Robinson. He started hugging his ribs because he was laughing so hard.

  I laughed hard, too. “A young master indeed?”

  “Absolutely, and that’s why I’ll always think of him as a nice young kid with two sandwiches and sixteen potato chips.” His face turned serious. “Why won’t you tell me why the not-so-young master is all of a sudden so interested in Snark Evans?”

  I lied by shrugging.

  “And how, after all these years, Snarky’s thieving could tie in to Tebbins’s death?”

  “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “I’ll call Leo myself. I can get the number, you know, even if it’s unlisted.”

  “He’s away,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Vacation.”

  He licked his lips. His nervousness had returned. “Remember the last time, I told you Leo got sick that summer?”

  I nodded.

  “It was just a few days before Snarky left,” he said.

  “What are you saying, Mr. Robinson?”

  “Bruno; call me Bruno.”

  “You think that Leo faked being sick so he could quit your garage?”

  “Now you got me wondering about everything.” He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Not one damned thing could have happened that summer that would be worth killing over. Not one damned thing.”

  “Tell me you’re positive that Tebbins was killed by a homeless man.”

  The outer door opened. “Robinson?” a woman’s voice shouted. “You in here?”

  I recognized the woman’s voice.

  Robinson jumped up and hurried out of his office to meet her.

  “You’ve got to stay on top of those bastards…” The woman’s voice dropped away. Robinson must have told her someone was in his office.

  A minute later, the outer door opened and closed again, and Robinson came back, carrying a topcoat. “I need to leave.”

  “J. J. Derbil?” I asked, getting up.

  “Smart as hell, or at least thinks she is. She’s ten times more dangerous than her fool brother.”

  I stopped us at the hall door to throw down a wild card. “I hear there are problems with that new McMansion.”

  His face went pale. “We’re not used to new construction, is all.” He led me through the empty office to open the outer door. “I think you can forget Snark Evans. Besides…”

  “Besides?” I asked, stepping into the hall.

  “Now that Tebbins is gone, I don’t know who’s left besides me who would even know about him,” he said, “except…”

  “Leo,” I said, walking toward the stairs.

  Twenty-three

  Robinson beat it down the hall ahead of me. I went into the zoning office, smiling.

  An attractive blond woman, a bit younger than me, turned from some papers on the visitors’ side of the counter.

  Her hands were trembling. “May I help you?” she asked.

  I recognized the voice. Again.

  “J. J. Derbil?” I asked. “Elvis’s sister?”

  “I tell people we’ve got different genes, Elvis and me,” she said squeezing one of the papers in front of her. Apparently I’d not completely masked my surprise.

  “You must have gone to private schools, away from Rivertown.”

  “Finishing up at Harvard, undergrad and MBA. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk about a building.”

  She took a deep breath. The trembling had stopped. “Dek Elstrom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make an appointment,” she said, moving around the counter to her office.

  “I’m curious about that big house that’s going—”

  That was as far as I got. She went in her office and slammed the door.

  Bingo, bango, bongo; I’d mentioned the new house to Tebbins, Robinson, and now J. J. Derbil. Each time, I’d set a head to bobbling.

  I went up the stairs and out into a world that felt even more tense, tired, and unsure. The temperature was around freezing, not quite above, not quite below. The sky was gray and vague and dribbling big flakes of snow mixed with tight drops of rain. Three men were dead—Tebbins, Arnie Pine, and the guy Leo shot—people were jittering about a house, and nobody seemed sure of anything.

  I drove to Leo’s block, hoping for good news of the flowing concrete variety. For an instant, I saw it. The wood forms had been lowered into the hole and set up on top
of the footings, ready to make the basement walls. A floor could come then, to cover the man I’d buried under too little gravel.

  Except there was a crowd. A hundred people milled about in the snow and the dirt and the muck that wasn’t quite either. Some of them belonged there, construction men in thick jeans and canvas coats and high rubber boots who should have been down in the hole, readying the foundation for a pour, instead of standing around, spitting and smoking and stomping their feet to keep warm.

  It was the others that dried my throat. Women in sensible long dark wool, housewives from the neighborhood, had been drawn from their houses and now stood talking in tight clusters, shifting uneasily.

  They were all looking at the same thing. Two Rivertown lieutenants in tan trench coats, their gin-joint complexions reddened even further by the cold, were stretching yellow police tape across the front steps of the vacant bungalow.

  I drove down to Leo’s, parked, and reached behind the passenger’s seat for my peacoat. Pulling it out, I saw faint smears of blood and mud on the dark wool that I hadn’t gotten out earlier. I stuffed it back behind the seat, pulled up the collar of my blazer, and walked back to the crowd. I told myself I looked normal, mildly curious, and not at all like someone who’d buried a body less than fifty feet from the cops pulling the yellow tape.

  Jenny was on the sidewalk, talking to a woman. Robinson was there as well, twenty feet behind her, talking to a man in a dress coat and a hard hat.

  Jenny noticed me coming up. She shot a quizzical look at my blazer. I shrugged like it was a balmy day in May. She said something to the woman and came over.

  “Where’s your peacoat? You’ll catch your death.”

  “I’ve built up a defense, living in the turret. What’s going on?”

  “I just got here. Any word on Leo?” she asked, by way of not answering.

  “I just talked to him. I was alarmed over nothing.”

  “Where was he?”

  “What’s the ruckus here?” I asked in as even a tone as I could manage.

  “See those steps?”

  “Police tape is always hard to miss.”

  “Look harder.”