The Dead Caller from Chicago

by Jack Fredrickson

  The envelope Amanda had left for him was still there. I jammed it in my pocket.

  My call to Amanda’s cell phone got sent to voice message. She set it that way, when she was driving.

  “False alarm,” I said. “Sorry for my irrational behavior tonight.”

  It felt odd, as it had for some time, to hang up without telling her I loved her.

  Thirty-seven

  Once before, I’d expected someone to come for me in the night.

  It had been cold then, like now, and the ground had been covered with snow then, like now. Back then, my genius had told me to string sensor lights around the first and second floors. Someone might break through the timbered door, but that would trigger the big lights, and that would send him away. If it didn’t, my genius added, I’d deal with him with impunity. Snugged up on the top floor, with the trapdoor bolted and the ladder pulled up behind me, all I had to do was watch the snow below. When light shot bright out of the slit windows, I’d know to call the cops, then wait, safe at the impregnable top of the turret.

  I figured wrong, several ways. First, I forgot to bring up the phone. Then, when my visitor did arrive, he brought a helper. Neither of them was afraid of strong light, and they proceeded up through the second, third, and fourth floors like they were being welcomed at an overlit party. Finally, when they ran out of stairs and saw there was no ladder to get up to the top floor—because I’d so cleverly pulled it up behind me—they found a way to make me come to them. It was a mess. Only through blind luck did my genius, such as it was, survive to think again.

  This time, I didn’t have to risk an occasionally misfiring brain. I had Leo’s gun. There’d be no need to scuttle up to the top floor and hunker down with a cell phone. My timbered door was thick, perhaps the strongest in town except for the mayor’s. At the first sound of someone trying to break in, I’d simply call the cops and wait, prone on the second floor, with the long barrel of Leo’s gun aimed downward, straight at the doorway. Even if the cops took their usual leisurely time to amble over, and my intruder did get through the door, I had the gun. It was like a cheesy camera, Leo once told me. There was no safety to unclick, nothing to cock: Just point and pull the trigger, was all there was to it.

  So I waited, stretched out on the floor above the door, gun at the ready.

  Caffeine and adrenaline and the sounds of the night along Thompson Avenue kept me jittered and alert until well past four in the morning. When the tonks began to close and the last revelers shuffled away, bent double by bad booze or unrequited lust, the wind took up its cue and started to howl along the Willahock, sweeping up bits of bramble and branches to slam against the turret’s slit windows. The noise of the night kept me ready, waiting for a killer.

  He never came.

  Then it was eight o’clock and it would be safe to sleep, at least for a time. He wouldn’t try to break in with cars passing right by the turret on their way to city hall. I climbed up to the third floor and was asleep in an instant.

  * * *

  Someone at the door woke me too few hours later. Sunshine streamed in through the slit windows, making long, narrow ribbons of bright light on the wide-planked wood floor. It was late morning.

  I hustled down the stairs and kept the gun in my hand out of sight, up against the inside wall as I opened the door.

  A short, gray-haired man in a dark green trench coat stood outside. He flashed a Chicago cop’s badge. “My name’s Jarobi. Mind if I come in?”

  He wasn’t holding a gun, but he looked as though he could, in a hurry. I nodded.

  “Mind putting that away, son?” he asked, giving the gun in my hand a slight nod as he gently pushed past me.

  He headed toward the table saw, the centerpiece of my conversational furniture grouping. Sitting on one of the white plastic chairs, he made a show of eyeballing the saw, and the nothing that was in the rest of the room. “Lived here long?” He was sizing me up for a flake suit.

  I took the other chair. “I’m fixing it up to sell.”

  “A table saw does a lot to liven up a room.”

  “What have I done to interest the Chicago police?”

  “Nothing, officially. Wendell Phelps is a friend of my chief’s. Mr. Phelps asked for an informal review of those people closest to his family, prior to a federal audit he’s about to undergo. I imagine it has to do with Mr. Phelps’s foreign interests.”

  “I fit in because I used to be married to his daughter?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll answer a few questions.” He took out a little notebook, flipped it open, and asked me questions he could have gotten answered off the Internet. Mostly, he kept his eyes on my face.

  “You don’t look stupid, Captain,” I said, when he closed his little notebook.

  His face didn’t change. “Why, thank you.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I told you, Mr. Wendell—”

  I stood up. To his credit, he stood up, too. I walked him to the door.

  I wondered if he was even a cop. Perfect badge copies could be bought in Chicago, in the wrong neighborhoods for the right price. I looked at the revolver I’d left lying on the table saw.

  He’d followed my eyes and pulled out a business card. “Call my district, describe me. Hell, you can ask them to e-mail my picture.”

  He opened the door but paused before going out. “I did have someone fill me in. You’ve got an interesting history.”

  “Interesting enough to warrant a look-see, in person?”

  “I’ve written my cell phone number on the back,” he said, handing me the card. “Call me anytime.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About anything.”

  “You have no jurisdiction.” The words came out too stupid, and too fast.

  “Over what?”

  “Over anything in Rivertown,” I said.

  He shook his head with affected sadness. “Men like your ex-father-in-law have jurisdiction everywhere. Best you realize that.”

  Thirty-eight

  I watched Jarobi drive away, but not so a man in a black Chevy Impala. He was parked across the spit of land on Thompson Avenue. He might have been a guy taking a break in his car, or an innocent, of sorts, readying to murmur desire to one of Rivertown’s noontime belles. He might have been Wozanga’s successor, sent by Cassone to find the right time to storm into the turret, or he might even have been Cassone himself. The car windows were tinted just enough to obscure the driver.

  I wondered if there was another possibility. The man could have been a Chicago cop, left behind by Jarobi to keep an eye on me. The captain’s story about a security audit was a fairy tale. I’d been out of Wendell’s life too long, and the cop had asked too few good questions. What I couldn’t imagine was why I’d matter to a cop.

  I called Amanda’s office. Her direct line sent me to voice mail. I tried her assistant, Vicki, and got voice mail there, too. Finally, I called Amanda’s cell phone. I clicked off when her recorded voice asked me to leave a message. Amanda’s life had gotten busy since she’d gone to work for her father.

  I switched on my computer. I’d received three new e-mails. The first was from a pharmaceutical organization, offering me enhancement pills that would make me a bigger man than I’d ever been known to be. The second was from a Nigerian prince, offering the opportunity to become a wealthier man than I’d ever been known to be. The third was from Jenny, saying Rudy Cassone had never filed a police report for burglary.

  I went to Google. The Hollywood couple battling for control of the three extant flower paintings was named Bennett. The producer was Henny; she was Mindy. She was a foot taller, but he was the titan. He’d produced a couple of thrillers I’d watched on late-night television, after I’d gotten tired of infomercials about effortless miracle polishes, sticky things that attracted lint, and Lester Lance Leamington, before he’d gone big-time. I remembered Henny Bennett’s films as being cheesy, though I supposed it was unfair to judge the quality o
f anything viewed on a four-inch screen, where film artistry rarely registers without magnification.

  Both Bennetts were very tan and had extremely white teeth. Her lips were plumper than most, as though she’d been exercising them by sucking on eels. Her chest was plumper than most, too, but I didn’t think that had anything to do with eels.

  They looked happy in their online photos. That could have been because, allegedly, they’d each been getting damp with others. The bottom line, though, was the bottom line: She wanted half of what he had. He wanted to give her two hundred thousand a month, flat. She said she couldn’t live on that. He said she’d have to learn. Lawyers and accountants were called in. All agreed, billably, that there was much to discuss.

  Two of the online sites mentioned that the couple’s Velvet Brueghel Rose, when combined with the purchase options they jointly controlled on the other two Flowers known to exist, constituted a princely asset. The lawyers and the accountants disagreed, also billably, about which Bennett should retain control of the painting and the options.

  Only one account mentioned, and then only in passing, that the combined value of the three Flowers would multiply exponentially if ever the long-lost Daisy was combined with the others into one collection. Nothing in the account pointed to such a likelihood.

  I called Robinson at city hall. “That floater they pulled out of the Willahock?”

  “Bad business,” he said. His voice was shaky. “He’d been in the water for some time.”

  “There’s been no mention of it on the radio or in the papers. Any ID?”

  “His teeth were hammered out. Why are you asking?” His own teeth had started chattering.

  “Curiosity. Are you all right, Mr. Robinson?”

  “The floater’s a … he’s a John Doe.”

  “Are you all right, Mr. Robinson?”

  “No, damn it,” he said, his voice rising. “Someone is following me.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea. I’m just a building inspector. All I can think is it might have something to do with Tebbins. He got into something here, then he got murdered, or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or it has something to do with you and your questions, supposedly on behalf of Leo Brumsky.”

  My cell phone beeped. A call was waiting. I pulled the phone from my ear to check the screen, hoping it was Amanda, but it was an unfamiliar number.

  “You’re sure you’re being followed?”

  “Too much is happening in Rivertown.” He clicked me away.

  I thumbed on the new call. “Elstrom?” the new voice whispered, perhaps through a cloth.

  “I’ve been expecting you.” Indeed I had, the whole of the previous night.

  “We’ll meet. Public place.”

  It was a surprise; he was being too refined. I told him six thirty, before things in Rivertown got too rowdy, and named a bar.

  Thirty-nine

  The bar I’d named was on Thompson Avenue.

  It had small tables jammed in the front window, a rarity in a town where people didn’t much like to be seen, and had a good view of the turret. From one of those tables I’d see my sensor lights go on if someone smashed down my front door while Cassone had me otherwise engaged.

  It made me feel clever until I realized I was not about to go speeding home to confront an intruder, even with Leo’s revolver tucked in my peacoat.

  Rudy Cassone came into the bar dressed immaculately, in a dark gray topcoat, navy business suit, white shirt, and muted blue tie. He sat across the table, three feet from my nose. A waitress came over, a big blowsy blond in her early sixties. I’d heard she used to work Chicago’s Viagra Triangle off Rush Street when she was young. When she got older, she came west, to the curbs along Thompson Avenue. When the glare of the headlights became too unflattering, she moved to the alley behind the bowling alley. Now she served beer in small glasses. A lot of careers in Rivertown followed that trajectory. We ordered beer.

  “Cop company?” Cassone asked, cocking his head toward the street. One of his elbows was moving. He was feeling under the table for a microphone.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “A man in a car seems to be very interested in you sitting here.”

  “Black car, Impala?” I hadn’t noticed it, coming in.

  He shook his head. “Crown Victoria. Chicken shit, if you’re attracting cops and you lead them into this. Chicken shit, like a baseball bat.” His eyes were steady on mine but, strangely, not angry. There was too much money at stake to give in to rage, at least for the time being.

  I looked out the window. “I’ve got nobody watching us.”

  The waitress came with our beer. He held up his glass to the little light that came from the bar. A smear of lipstick was on the glass. He set it down, apparently concerned about where that lipstick had been previously.

  “You took something of mine,” he said. “I want it back.”

  “You were stealing it from somebody’s house.”

  He turned his beer glass so that the lipstick stain faced me. It was only the lower lip, but it looked angry.

  “I got robbed, years ago. Brumsky knows it; you know it.”

  “You never filed a police report.”

  “Why are you talking so stupid?”

  “How about your insurance company? Did you file a claim?”

  He raised his wrist and slid back a French cuff to check the gold Rolex. “We’re wasting time.”

  He stood up, turning suddenly to look at the people standing clustered at the bar. A man in shadow, at the far end, abruptly turned away.

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, you will come to 15 Falling Star, where I live. I will tell the guard that you’re expected, as I do when any friend comes to visit. You will bring a picture, a gift from you to me.”

  He went out the door, leaving me alone with the two untouched glasses of beer.

  I got up, too, and put a ten between the two untouched glasses.

  “Something wrong with the beer, honey?” The blowsy blond had come up, anxious to clear the table.

  I felt a chill on the back of my neck. Someone else had gone out.

  “Everything’s fine, for you and for me,” I said, and it was. Cassone hadn’t tried to kill me, and the blond would be able to re-serve the beer.

  Outside, I looked up and down the street. Every parking place was taken, even in the loading zones where the short-skirted women liked to lean into stopped cars. I didn’t see a black Impala or a Crown Victoria. No one else seemed interested in me.

  I called Jarobi. He picked up before the second ring. “Have you got people following me?” I asked.

  “You mean at the request of your father-in-law?”

  “Ex-father-in-law.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Black Impala or a Crown Victoria?”

  He made a laugh, but he didn’t sound amused. “Such obvious cop cars? We’re more cunning than that.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.”

  “Why is Wendell Phelps interested in me?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. I pose no threat to Wendell. I pose no threat to his daughter, as she’ll tell you. So what’s the interest?”

  “Maybe it’s time for you to tell me about your jitters, Elstrom. Why so nervous? You’re in a bar, and all of a sudden you’re seeing spooks, shadows in the night? Maybe it’s your own shadow you’re seeing … and that’s becoming interesting.”

  “Jarobi?”

  “Yes?”

  “How do you know I was in a bar?”

  He said nothing.

  “Call them off anyway.”

  “What do you mean ‘them’?”

  “At least one outside, and the one at the bar.”

  “I told you: I had no—” I clicked him off. It was early enough, and I had things I needed to do.

  I drove north, to a strip mall. I’d bought my box of Cheeri
os there, back when Amanda and I were still married. Tonight, it wasn’t the supermarket I was headed for. I went into the giant craft store next door. I’d never before thought to enter such a place, because I’d never had the urge to get crafty with glitter and glue, or clay, or tubes of colors and brushes. That night, though, they had what I needed, and all for less than a hundred dollars. I had them partially disassemble the largest piece, so its shape would not be apparent when I strolled artily out, in case one of Jarobi’s men had followed me. I ducked into the supermarket next, to make it look like a normal shopping trip, bought a small jar of olives and a large box of cupcakes, and drove back to the turret.

  I had three of the olives and three of the cupcakes for dinner and went across the hall. I propped Leo’s painting up at the back of the card table and put together the wood stretchers I’d had the craft store people disassemble. I now had a canvas the same size as Leo’s.

  I glued another piece of canvas to the back, careful to leave a slightly opened seam like Leo’s original. I laid out all the tubes of acrylic colors and unscrewed their little caps.

  Beyond primitive, Amanda had called Leo’s repainting of the supposed Velvet Brueghel. I wished he were there at that moment, so I could laugh at him, but things had gone to hell. He was in an institution, fumbling to unscramble his brain.

  I painted a new lavender barn and pink, green-spotted cows. I dabbed red leaves all over spindly black trunks and limbs, and I made orange rolling hills. I tried to work fast, but I had to work carefully, measuring everything on Leo’s original before doing my own. There was no way of knowing how closely Cassone had looked at Leo’s painting.

  The person at the craft store said the acrylics would dry quickly. To make sure, I aimed a box fan at the painting before I went up to bed.

  Though I was dead tired, sleep wouldn’t come. I kept imagining a black Impala and a colorless Crown Victoria parked along Thompson Avenue. If they hadn’t belonged to Cassone or Jarobi, one or both might have been a rental, picked up at Midway or O’Hare by someone fresh off a plane from L.A.