The Dead Caller from Chicago

by Jack Fredrickson

  She agreed, and we took off in silence, both of us edgy, I thought, planning responses and defenses to the terrors and the wonders of the previous night.

  “Where are we headed?” she asked, after several turns and fifteen minutes.

  “A medium-fancy place I know.”

  “What’s that mean, medium-fancy?”

  “Unstained tablecloths and uncrusted silverware, but still affordable.”

  “It’s got logs on the outside,” she said when we arrived.

  “But, one hopes, no wood-boring beetles.”

  She laughed, but only a little.

  We ordered unfashionable Rob Roys and food that didn’t matter: fish for her, a small steak for me.

  “Your camera?” I began, in lieu of small talk.

  “The camera’s fine enough, but what I got at the excavation is too dark. You can’t recognize anyone. So the last of it, the bulldozing, is meaningless.”

  “You’ll just have to stay close to Rivertown, waiting for the next chapter,” I said, trying for light and serious at the same time

  Our food came, and we talked of the corruption in Illinois and the mop-headed former governor who, just a few days before, had flown to Colorado to begin a fourteen-year stretch in a federal prison for being a mop-headed greedy jackass, and how he’d driven right past the gates so he could stop at a hamburger place to do one more meet-and-greet by the soda machine with people who had no idea who he was. Things like that kept us in Illinois from becoming excessively prideful.

  “Speaking of confluence,” I said, when we were done eating. It was the word I’d tried out on Leo, what now seemed like light-years before.

  “Confluence?”

  “A joining together of two or more—”

  “I know what confluence means, you naughty man. This morning was lovely.”

  “I was referring to the not so happy confluence of Russians and lizards in Rivertown, which is your cue to answer questions.”

  “Does medium-fancy mean we can order tiny after-dinner drinks?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  I only had to raise my hand an inch before the waiter who’d been eyeballing her all night raced over.

  “Double Scotches, no ice, please,” she said.

  He was back with them in an instant.

  “Pray ask away,” she said, taking a small sip. “I’m enthralled.”

  I went for the unanswerable first. “It was Elvis Derbil who called you in San Francisco?”

  “Nice try. An unnamed source tipped me that something odd was afoot in Rivertown. A Chicago lawyer, representing an anonymous owner, had purchased three houses in your bungalow belt, all in a row, and had applied for permits for their demolition. More mystifying, the lawyer applied for only one building permit, to construct an enormous pillared Greek Revival mansion of some nine thousand square feet. My unnamed source was quite concerned, because such temples are never built in Rivertown. I thought it intriguing enough to ask for a short leave.”

  “So it was that, and not the thought of a certain heartbroken eccentric, hopelessly fluttering his handkerchief out his turret, that enticed you back?”

  She mock-slapped a giggle. “That’s the Scotch, not me. Anyway, I worked backward from the lawyer and found he was representing a New York lawyer, who was involved with Russian mobsters, both there and here in Chicago.”

  “Complicated.”

  “Tortuous, designed to obscure.”

  “Too complicated for your source to be Elvis Derbil?”

  “Have you read your Capone?” she asked, by way of not answering.

  With that, I began to understand. “You mean when reformers made Chicago too hot for the Scarface, he moved his operation to Cicero because it was cheesy and small and he could take control of the whole town quickly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Russians coming to take over Rivertown?” I almost laughed—it sounded like a bad play on an old Alan Arkin movie—except her expression was serious.

  “They were going to go Capone one better,” she said. “They knew no one in town would welcome a foreign gang. On the other hand, so many people in Rivertown were out of work, they might welcome the devil himself if he could raise home prices, create any kind of new jobs, and otherwise bring boom times. To calm the natives about their arrival, perhaps even enthuse them, they decided on a very big and visible first step.”

  “Build a mansion in Rivertown that everyone in town would see as signaling a coming prosperity,” I said.

  “A nifty plan, yes?”

  It was starting to sound brilliant. “Still, Rivertown’s such a cheesy place. Our crime is so tawdry.”

  “That’s what represented the opportunity. Let me tell you about a friend of mine, a weatherman out east. He liked to go down to Miami to blow off steam. The first night, he goes into one of their grubbier little bars, meets two girls who only have eyes for him. They drink, and drink some more. It’s a happy place; people are singing; the bartender is snapping pictures; everyone’s having a great time. My weatherman blacks out, something he’s never done before, and wakes up in his room the next morning with a small memory and a big hangover.”

  “His money and credit cards are gone?”

  “Wrong. His wallet is intact, alongside his Cartier watch on the nightstand. His sport jacket is hung neatly in the closet, his shoes placed at the foot of the bed. All that’s missing is his glasses.

  “Now get this, Dek: There’s a message on his phone. One of the girls has left her number, apologizing about those glasses. Apparently, he’d set them down on the bar, and she was afraid they’d get broken. So she put them in her purse and forgot to leave them with his other things, when she and her friend brought him safely back to his room. These girls are wonderful, right? He calls her, and suggests they meet up again that night. She’s thrilled, tells him they’ll be at the same bar at eight o’clock.”

  She took another sip of the Scotch. “Guess what? Things go swimmingly that night, too, though the girls did say they were leaving town early the next morning. Again there is much drink; again our hero passes out and wakes up the next morning with a huge hangover and an equally large gap in his memory. No bother. His wallet, watch, and glasses are safely resting on his nightstand. He never sees the girls again, drinks his way through the rest of his vacation, and heads home. A month later, his credit card bill arrives.”

  “He’s had an expensive time?”

  “Forty-five thousand dollars at that one bar alone.”

  “What?”

  “Obviously, there’s been a mistake, right? Who can spend that much on booze in a grubby small bar, two nights? He contacts his credit card company. They investigate and report back that it’s no mistake. They’ve got credit card receipts for Dom Perignon and other very, very fine champagnes. Fifteen hundred, two grand per bottle. Not only that, but because that grubby little place prided itself on its hospitality, the bar owner produced photos of the glassy-eyed weathercaster holding aloft all sorts of different bottles of that very, very fine champagne. According to the owner, the weatherman bought for the house.”

  “Bottles with fake labels.”

  “The photos were a little blurry.”

  “And his tongue was too thick to taste fine champagne, even if he did know good stuff?”

  “They made sure he wasn’t wearing his glasses the second night either, just in case. Very smart, very clever; they thought of everything.”

  “He got stuck for the whole forty-five thousand?”

  “He threatened to sue. There was a settlement. He didn’t tell me much more, because he was embarrassed about getting so fleeced. He only told me as much as he did because we go way back.”

  “The girls would have been part of a rotating team, working with ever-changing owners of that bar,” I said. It was a marvelous scam.

  “Want to guess what kind of accents everyone had?”

  “Slavic.”

  “They’re creative, Dek. Rivertown is c
lose enough to O’Hare and Chicago for conventioneers to find good times. Your infrastructure is already in place; you’ve got many little bars. My weatherman’s champagne story is just one example of how creative the new gangs can be.”

  “That new house on Leo’s block was big for both sides,” I said.

  “For the Russians, the propaganda would be their best first toehold. For Rivertown’s rulers, it was something to be stopped quickly, before they lost control of their town. An epic battle was brewing.”

  “With your unnamed source stuck right in the middle of it.”

  “He cared about Rivertown.”

  “Now it’s my turn to admire your loyalty,” I said.

  She drank the last of her Scotch. “I told him I couldn’t do much, but I was too late anyway.”

  “There was absolutely nothing you could have done.”

  Her eyes had filled with tears. “These are me, not the Scotch,” she said, trying for a smile.

  “You got it wrong,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your man wasn’t killed by Russians,” I said.

  Sixty-two

  “I should have figured it, by the way he tried to help Snark,” I said. “Your source was Tebbins, not Elvis Derbil.”

  “He was a decent guy. He believed so long as the crime in Rivertown stayed small-time, the town could make a comeback.”

  I signaled for two more Scotches, singles.

  “Trying to get a lady drunk?” she asked.

  “Trying to get a lady to understand how a painting could salve desperation.”

  “Finally we get to talk about Leo?”

  “So long as neither he nor Amanda appears in any of your accounts.”

  The waiter came with the Scotch. After he left, I walked her through as much of the story as I’d ever admit.

  I raised my drink, a third Scotch on top of the Rob Roy with dinner, and set it back down. The boundary had been tested enough for one night.

  “You have questions at this point?” I asked.

  “We’re agreed Robinson and Tebbins saw an epic war brewing in Rivertown,” she said, “and that’s why Tebbins contacted me in San Francisco. They saw themselves as the first foot soldiers in a war Rivertown wasn’t going to win.”

  I nodded. “They were desperate; they wanted to stay alive. Then, by a stroke of what they could only think was good fortune, Cassone shows up, asking about that old painting Snark Evans stole. Tebbins and Robinson do some research, find out the painting they saw in Snark’s locker is now worth millions. Best of all, it might still be in Rivertown; Snark’s old buddy from the garage might still have it. Pretending to be Snark, they call Leo and hear him obviously lying.”

  “Desperate times demand desperate measures, these two good men tell each other; they’re going to steal that painting, save their own lives, and leave town rich men in the bargain.” She shook her head softly, marveling.

  “Then Leo goes into hiding, and I come around, out of the blue, asking about Snark Evans. Surely they thought I was on the trail of the painting, too.”

  “Adding urgency to their mission,” she said, “but then Tebbins gets killed.”

  “By Russians, Robinson and the rest of city hall naturally think, as pushback for stopping their construction. Someone at city hall, maybe Robinson, maybe someone else, retaliates by killing Kostanov and dumping him in the Willahock.”

  “Now Robinson has to get out of town, fast,” she said. “He starts watching Leo’s house, maybe waiting for Leo to return, maybe just trying to determine the best way to break in.”

  “He’s scared of the constant vigilance of that nosy neighbor,” I said.

  “And who comes around? Rudy Cassone. Only one way Cassone could have known about Leo.”

  “Cassone tortured it out of Tebbins.”

  “He then sees you club Cassone and take something that’s wrapped like a painting back to your place, but you leave behind a bat that Robinson thinks may be useful later on,” she said.

  “He grabs the bat, yes.”

  “Now he switches to watching the turret, because that’s where the painting is now. Then, much later that same day, up drives Amanda Phelps?”

  I nodded.

  “She stayed the night?” Jenny’s eyes took on an intensity that didn’t have much to do with the story I was telling. Of course, that might have been the Scotch, setting me to thinking wishfully.

  “A couple of hours,” I said, “just enough to examine the painting, but long enough for Robinson to think she fit into my life somehow. He grabbed her when she left and took her back to his place.”

  “Hitting even more pay dirt when he went through her purse?”

  “His original intent would have been to ransom her directly to me, for the painting. When he found out she was the daughter of one of the richest men in Chicago, he contacted Wendell Phelps instead, demanding not only that Wendell get the painting from me but that he throw in two million dollars as well. Then he continued watching me to make sure I turned over the painting to Wendell. I didn’t, though, because I didn’t yet know anything about the kidnapping. Instead, I met Cassone in a bar, and Robinson assumed I was about to turn over the painting to the mobster. He had to stop that. While I was buying painting supplies at the craft store, he followed Cassone from the bar, shot him, and then clubbed his corpse with the bat I’d left at Leo’s. It was perfect; I’d be the suspect.”

  “The next morning, he sees you carry out a painting, tails you to Cassone’s place, and then watches you emerge some time later. He sees you give that painting to someone who he assumes is Wendell Phelps’s agent.”

  “Jarobi; yes. Now all he has to do is get the painting from Wendell. Robinson then made up a story about his being followed.”

  “Are you sure he made it up?”

  “I thought he was trying to make himself appear as an innocent, perhaps even about to be a victim, so I wouldn’t look too closely at him. Now I think he might have been telling the truth. I think Mr. Red and Mr. Black were following him. Anyway,” I went on, “I messed up his plan. I started following him, thinking the tail might lead me to catching Amanda’s kidnapper.”

  “Those pesky tattoed Russians again,” she said.

  “Plus me, all of us intimidating, all of us on his tail at one point or another, though I think the Russians were only at it sporadically, just enough to make him nervous now and again.”

  “Confluence all to hell,” she said. “He couldn’t arrange to exchange Amanda for the painting and the two million with you watching his every move.”

  “Until I told him I was going out of town. That solved his biggest problem: me watching him. As soon as I headed to the airport, he called Wendell, probably from Wendell’s office garage, and told him to get the painting and the money ready immediately. Soon enough, Jarobi arrived with the painting, and Wendell put it in his trunk. Then, amazingly, Jarobi left and Wendell, ever the believer in his fortresslike Mercedes, went up to his office, leaving the painting untended in his trunk. Christmas had come. All Robinson had to do was jimmy the lock on Wendell’s car, press the trunk release, and grab the picture. He’d gladly forgo the two million if he could avoid the risk of getting caught at the exchange. The painting was what he really wanted.”

  She’d finished her Scotch and reached for mine. “You messed that up, too?”

  “I told him that somebody was watching him that morning and that I was back and on his tail. It must have been too much; people were watching him all the time. Instead of keeping him penned in his office, at least long enough for me to grab Amanda, it triggered him to flee. He raced home to grab the painting.”

  “And discovered you escaping with Amanda? Why didn’t he just run at that point?” she asked. “Why take off after you and Amanda?”

  “I can only assume that the gasoline I was sloshing down the stairs got onto the painting as well, and it caught fire. Now the two million, waiting at Wendell’s, mattered. He took off after us to g
et Amanda back.”

  “Why paint a fake in the first place, Dek?”

  “It wasn’t my place to hand over something Leo had hung on to all those years.”

  “Speaking of loyalty,” she interrupted, “Amanda Phelps is appreciative?”

  “Very. She went to Europe.”

  “Ah?”

  “No; not an ‘ah?’ as in a question. Amanda has moved on. I have moved on.”

  “A man of free will,” she said.

  “Totally unencumbered,” I said, answering what she hadn’t quite asked, adding, “Especially these past few hours.”

  “Ah,” she said again, though this time without the lilt of a question.

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, and we left. She decided I’d drive, since she’d finished my Scotch as well as her own. It would be some time before she’d get past her guilt over Mr. Black.

  When we got to the outskirts of Rivertown, she asked me to drive down Leo’s block and stop in front of the excavation site.

  “Leo heard it’s to be a park,” I said.

  “I suppose that’s fitting,” she said. “Two men are buried there.”

  I saw no need to correct her.

  Sixty-three

  “What’s next?” I asked, as I slowed to turn off Thompson Avenue.

  “For the story?”

  “OK,” I said.

  “It isn’t a San Francisco story, and I’m no longer tethered to any station here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get traction from this.”

  “A book deal?”

  “Or better, a career-enhancing hour of true crime television. The story’s got the right ingredients.”

  “Once it’s out there, they can’t do anything to you. In the meantime, be careful.” Then I said, “The Russians will give up on Rivertown?”

  “They may retreat for a time, but they won’t give up.”

  “Neither will the lizards.”

  “Good deal. More news from Rivertown.”

  “Thank goodness I’ve got all that new wood.”

  We’d both started to laugh at the cheesy double entrendre, giddy as kids, when I slammed on the brakes.