The guard led us through a series of paths to an elevator. She rode up with us to the fifth floor.
The doors opened to a marble floor that covered an office that must have encompassed a quarter of the entire floor. Two rows of sleek steel and aluminum desks sat in front of us. Most seemed to have computers and plants prominently displayed on their tops. To our left and right, huge rubber trees in enormous pots flanked the entrance. Just beyond them on each side were paintings by Rene Magritte, an odd surrealistic touch in this modern office.
Except for the humming of neon lights and the whir of what I presumed was the heating system, there wasn’t a sound.
The guard prodded our elbows gently, and we followed her through a door at the far side of the room. We entered a twenty-by-twenty-foot room. Against the old brick wall on the far end, rows of plants nearly engulfed a teak desk at which a woman sat.
Mrs. Proctor wore her hair cut straight to the sides, almost shoulder length, with nary a curl. Flecks of gray peeked from among the light brown. I doubted if she colored her hair. She wore a Tahari beige silk sarong jacket and trousers and matching Nine West shoes. She rose from the desk. The guard left. Mrs. Proctor met us halfway across the room.
She led us to a small seating area of low-slung black leather chairs and couch with a chrome coffee table in between. The gray light of October seeped through a skylight directly above us. After we were seated, she asked if we wanted refreshments. We both said no.
Bernie and Angelo stood against the door.
Mrs. Proctor nodded in their direction. “You need bodyguards?”
I said, “After we explain, you’ll understand.”
She nodded, then said, “I’ve been trying to get back to you since you phoned. Something is wrong.”
“Mrs. Proctor,” I said, feeling awful to be the one telling a mother that her son was dead. “Glen was staying with us. When we came in early yesterday morning”—I stopped and gulped. Telling Bill or Mr. Proctor had not made this moment any easier—“we found him dead.”
She rose slowly to her feet. Her eyes never left mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She seemed to totter. Scott jumped up and rushed to her side. She leaned heavily on his arm. She covered her face with one hand.
“Please,” she said. “Please. This can’t be true. He was … I want to … He’s in … He’s supposed to be”—she moved her hand away from her face—“this can’t be true.”
“I saw him,” I said. “I touched him. I wish it weren’t true.”
“Why haven’t the police called? What is going on?”
She sat back down. Scott stayed next to her. Mrs. Proctor’s hand trembled as she pointed at me. “Tell me what happened.”
I told her the story from the beginning. I left out a great deal about the tunnels, figuring she wasn’t interested. When I described our reentry to the penthouse and finding the body gone, she rose to her feet.
She disdained Scott’s proffered arm. “And what did my husband say yesterday when you told him?” she asked. She had enough cold in her voice to freeze all the moisture on the planet in seconds.
“He claimed we were wrong,” I said.
She strode behind the couch and leaned against it. I have never seen a more self-possessed, more controlled, and more furious person.
“Oh, he’d say you’re wrong because he’d know he’d somehow killed his son. If one of his idiotic schemes has gone haywire and it killed my son, I will not rest until every bone of my husband’s body has endured pain.” A tear started at the corner or her eye, but her voice did not waver. “I will break him. I will destroy him. All the devils in hell will not have suffered as much as my husband when I am through with him.”
I didn’t dare interrupt her spectacular diatribe. She pulled a lace hankie out of her jacket pocket and dabbed at her eyes and nose.
She said, “I loved Glen so much.” Her fury spent, she now leaned against the back of the couch propping herself up with both hands. She lowered her head and shook it back and forth as she said over and over, “It can’t be.”
I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing.
When her voice had run down and she’d stood for some time in silence, I said, “Is there something we can get you? Someone we can call?”
She looked up at me and shook her head. “I want to sit down,” she said. She matched the action to the words. Scott reseated himself in the chair next to me.
With her hands folded in her lap and her eyes shut, she breathed deeply for several minutes. Without opening her eyes, she said, “Tell me again what happened.”
I did so, slowly and carefully, including what had happened to us since we found her son.
When I was finished, she spoke so quietly that we had to strain to listen.
“Glen was my favorite,” she said. “I know mothers aren’t supposed to have them, but I couldn’t help it. He always wanted to be independent and free. Always had a mind of his own. Rebelled against being under his father’s thumb, as I did against my father when I was a child.” She sighed. “He had so many gifts. He could have been so many things.”
I didn’t add that something in his upbringing had contributed to his drinking and drug addiction, and that her little boy was hardly a saint. I suppose she knew that. I hesitated bringing up the drug lords. I wasn’t sure who we could trust with what knowledge.
“We’ve been trying to find out what he was doing in Mexico,” I said.
She looked startled. “Working for me.”
“Mr. Proctor told us Glen was working for him.”
“He couldn’t have been,” Mrs. Proctor said. “Glen had specific people to meet for me. Information to gather and on-site inspections to make.”
“Do you have contacts down there who could give us information?” I asked.
“I have several business offices. What kind of information?”
“He must have been doing something down there that led to his being killed here.”
“Possibly.”
“Why Mexico?” Scott asked.
“Huge potential for growth,” Mrs. Proctor said. “Lots of possibility for rapid expansion. We’ve got mall deals that would make anything in this country look like peanuts. It’s practically virgin territory down there.”
“Why send Glen?” I asked.
“Why not?” she countered.
I tried to phrase this delicately. “I never heard of him having the best head for business.”
The edges around her lips almost pulled up in a smile. “I was always trying to find something for Glen to do. Anything that could give him a sense of worth. Distract him from his vices. I wanted to help him, give him a sense of responsibility.”
Mr. Proctor had said nearly the same thing. Both seemed eager to help their son.
“Glen would never have worked for my husband,” Mrs. Proctor said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“We were bitter rivals, and Glen took my side in the family disputes. He disliked his father and didn’t trust him.”
Her husband had given us no indication of this attitude, and what she said contradicted what Bill Proctor had told us. I wondered what the father’s and brother’s opinion on her comment would be.
“Why was there so much rivalry?” I asked.
She snorted. “Jason is a jerk, but a lucky jerk. He came from money, but my family is old money. Yes he’s wealthy, but I’ve built an empire larger than his, and I didn’t need his help. He hated my being richer than he, that I made better investments than he, that I was more respected around the world than he ever could be. Our marriage was tempestuous, to say the least. The heights were wild, but ultimately we couldn’t stand each other.”
“And you used the kids as pawns in your rivalries,” Scott said.
“How dare you say such a thing!” she exploded.
“Because you didn’t really know your son at all. You’re angry at your husband, but neither you nor he seem really worr
ied that something happened to your son.”
“How dare you!” she demanded.
“I was his friend,” Scott said. “Which he needed very badly. We used to talk a lot when he was going through his suspensions. He wanted to succeed in baseball so badly, he told me, because his talent was something neither you nor your husband could touch. If Glen weren’t dead, I’d feel sorry for you. You and your husband might not have pulled the trigger, but you helped drive him to his vices and his destruction.”
Her icy cold was turned on us. “I don’t have to listen to this.”
“I don’t care what you listen to,” Scott said. “We’re leaving.”
He got up and walked toward the door. In silence we retraced our steps back to Willard Court. As we turned onto Elizabeth Street, I grabbed Bernie.
“Look,” I said. I pointed at a car parked in front of ours. A nondescript gray sedan with two men in dark clothes sitting in front. “I think they were the ones out front of our hotel,” I said.
Bernie and Angelo thrust us into a nearby doorway. They put their hands near their weapons and advanced carefully on the duo in the car, who continued to sit almost casually. Seconds later, two very confused and angry maintenance men from a nearby factory had their legs spread and hands on top of the hood of their car.
Meeting Scott Carpenter, famous baseball player, mollified them enough that they weren’t going to press charges.
“I’m sorry,” I said when we got back in the car. “I’ve gotten so paranoid.”
“Forget it,” Angelo said. “Better to be safe.” They uttered no word of reproof.
“Where to?” Angelo asked.
“We’ve got a few belongings at that hotel,” Scott said. “We can pick them up, and then, with you along, make it back to our place. Maybe we’ll be safe with you there.”
7
“That was a complete fiasco,” I said as we drove to the hotel.
“Rivals for their kids’ affections.” Scott shook his head.
“Oedipus would have had a field day,” I said.
As usual, we had a hell of a time finding a parking space around the hotel. On a Friday or Saturday night, you could drive around for hours before you found a space. At this hour on a Monday, the nearest illegal space was two blocks away. We took it.
The lobby of our demented hotel was filled that afternoon with what looked like a transvestite convention. The last time I’d seen so many hairy legs under dresses was in a bar in Istanbul five years ago. Strangest gay bar I’d ever been in.
On a table on one side of the lobby was a silver tea set with elegant blue china cups and real silverware. The crowd may have looked weird, but they murmured in low voices and sipped their beverages with as much propriety as you’d find at high tea with the queen of England.
Edna motioned us over. She wanted to know how much longer we planned to stay. We told her we’d settle the bill now.
“Convention in town?” I asked her.
“It’s their day off. I give the boys a little late-afternoon buffet every Monday. Not the kind of thing to advertise in the paper, but they like it. Been doing it for years. Good for business.”
Suddenly one of the party goers gave a muffled screech. I saw one of them in a slinky red dress fanning herself with a well-manicured hand. A man in leather pants led her over to the desk. “Mandy needs help,” he said.
Mandy looked plaintively at Edna. Between comforting her and handling our checkout, Edna seemed to take forever.
During all this, Bernie and Angelo made no comment. They simply accompanied us to our room. I wanted to get our few possessions and get out. As I swung open the door to the room, I glanced back into the hall. An old man holding onto the arm of a young prostitute tottered down the hall. The four of us were in the room and I was closing the door when it burst out of my hand.
Bernie and Angelo had their guns half out, but the old man stood with two very unpleasant-looking black holes staring at us from two very large guns. His companion had a very lethal-looking machine gun pointing out of her satchel.
With a raspy voice, the old man said, “Drop your guns on the bed, gentlemen.”
Our bodyguards might have taken on the old man, but the machine gun was another matter. They put them on the bed.
The woman wore a bright red dress, and she carried a black leather satchel over one shoulder. Her spiked heels must have been at least six inches high. When I looked closely at her face, I noted wisps of mustache.
I examined the man with the raspy voice. He had to be in his mid-seventies, with lush gray hair on the top of his head. In either hand he held a silencer-equipped gun pointed at the four of us.
Scott threw up. That the residue that hit the carpet did not disfigure it says a great deal about the state the floor covering was in. The guy with the machine gun moved out of the doorway to the bathroom. I tried to follow Scott inside, but the black hole at the end of the gun caught my movement and held me still. I heard Scott heave several more times. Then I heard the swirl of water. Scott emerged several moments later, looking very white. He sat on the floor.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Are you going to kill us?” Scott asked. He had rested his head against the wall. His paleness had deepened to green at a few spots on his face. He shivered and began to sweat.
The old man pointed at Bernie and Angelo. “Tie them up.” Minutes later our guards were bound in torn sheets from the bed.
“All done.” I thought someone else had entered the room, but it was a deep male voice coming from the person wearing the red dress.
Our elder captor instructed us that we would leave the hotel, making no sudden moves. “If you attempt to escape,” he said, “we will shoot you.” I believed him.
Outside, the guy in the red dress, who fit right in with the gang in the lobby, disappeared around the corner to the alley running alongside the building. Moments later, he returned driving a Ford Taurus with rental plates on it.
The guy with the raspy voice directed us into the backseat of the car.
“Your friend is not well,” the raspy voice said.
“You got that right,” I said. “Are we going to be alive or dead?”
“Alive, probably.” The old man looked back at us. He gave an almost-impish grin. If I’d had the gun he was pointing at us, I’d have shot him. We crossed Halsted Street and continued west. This was a quiet residential street through the up-and-trendy DePaul area.
“Who are you?” I asked again.
“I am Equelle Ramirez. This is my son Jose. We came to America to get our jewels back.”
“The necklaces,” I said.
“You know about them?” Jose said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why didn’t you just ask? You’re welcome to them.”
“We weren’t sure you had them,” Jose said. He took off his hat and wig to reveal a brush haircut and flawlessly smooth skin.
“Not sure we had them,” Scott croaked.
“Yeah,” Jose said. “You haven’t been the easiest people to locate, and we couldn’t find Proctor.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“I thought as much,” Equelle said.
Jose said, “We knew he was coming to see you. He’d bragged about knowing a Mr. Carpenter, the great baseball player, and said he would visit you first. This was before he took the necklaces or before we discovered them missing.”
“It is my fault he knew about them,” Equelle said. “I was careless when I was working on them. I am old. I had to come here to correct my mistake. Those necklaces were special-ordered and paid for already. We couldn’t afford not to have them back.”
“How did you find us?” I asked.
“We were in the crowd outside the police station. We guessed about a rear exit. Jose followed you. He called me after you entered the factory complex.”
“You followed us from there?” Scott asked.
“Yes. Back at the hotel, we were fortunate to find a closer illegal p
arking spot than you. While you settled your bill, Jose importuned a costume from an unlucky young man. Then we simply followed you upstairs.”
“If you didn’t kill Glen, who did?”
“His killers came from my country. They are probably from Frederico Torres, since Glen told us he had information on him.
“Glen told you?” I asked.
“We’ve done business with his family for years. I remember him from when he was a child. The boy was a thief and a sneak even then. I never dreamed he’d steal from us. If that was Torres’s crowd, and they got hold of you and the necklaces, we would never have gotten them back.”
“Where are the necklaces?” Jose asked.
“Scott has one on,” I said. “The other is at the penthouse.”
“We will go there immediately to retrieve it,” Equelle said.
“It will be guarded and watched,” I said. “If not by the police, then certainly by those people who want to catch us. There have to be more people on the lookout. A smart person would have our place constantly under surveillance, assuming we’d have to come back sometime to get our stuff.”
This gave them pause for a minute. It would be nice to believe that they would take what they wanted and let us go.
“You also need the key to the penthouse, and you’ve got to get past the guard,” I said.
“Why did you think Glen would be dead?” Scott asked.
“He talked like a fool,” Jose said. “He claimed he had a lead on a big drug shipment, but that he had the key to even more valuable riches in his hand. He claimed he knew something about drug safe houses in major cities in this country. Certainly there was one in Chicago. Who knows if what he found out was true or not? He also said he’d found the location of Frederico Torres and was negotiating to get the reward or trying to figure out a way to collect on the reward without the police of your country or mine getting it away from him.”
“How did he find out?” I asked.
Jose shrugged. “There are those like Glen Proctor who seem to be able to stumble onto vast quantities of luck. They run con games on themselves, hoping the string of good fortune will renew itself constantly. They never understand when it runs thin. It is never their fault; and somehow, before they hit bottom, another miracle tumbles into their lap, until finally the miracle crushes them.”
An Echo of Death Page 12