Bloody Mary (2005)

by Konrath, Ja (Aka J Kilborn)

  "Can it wait? The trial is going to end any day now, and we have to finish cross-reffing these missing persons."

  "No, it can't wait. Some of us haven't gotten a day off in the past three months."

  I bit back my response, and hung up. I'd told him to file for reassignment out of anger, but now I was thinking it might be a good idea. I didn't like the person Herb had become.

  I tackled the project solo. Ruled out some names. Followed a few leads to nowhere. Cleared a small section of paperwork off of my floor.

  By dinnertime I had a headache. I called home and spoke to Alan, who was getting together with some old friends over at Mirabell's, a German place on Addison. Did I want to come?

  I didn't feel very social, but I agreed because I'd blown off Alan for the past few nights. Maybe being around company would help get me out of my funk.

  I couldn't have been more wrong.

  Chapter 40

  "Hi, Jack." Alan had been waiting in the bar, and gave me a hug when I entered the German place. He looked good, in black slacks and a gray cardigan. When I pecked him on the cheek I could tell he'd just shaved.

  "I'm not in the best of moods," I said.

  "It'll be fun." He took my coat and led me through the restaurant. "This is an old friend of yours."

  "What old friend?" Then I saw.

  Harry McGlade winked at me from his seat. He wore the standard Harry outfit: a wrinkled brown suit and a stained tie.

  "Hiya, Jackie. This is my new squeeze, Nora."

  "It's Dora." Dora was half McGlade's age, blonde with a streak of pink in her bangs, and the blouse she wore would have been tight on a Barbie doll.

  "Yeah, Dora. Sorry, honey."

  "Harry called earlier." Alan beamed like a schoolboy after his first kiss. "He wanted to thank you for something. Since you've been in a funk lately, I thought it would be nice if he thanked you in person. He's the guy who was in that made-for-TV movie with you, right? I mean, his character and your character?"

  "Yeah." I tried to sound upbeat and enthusiastic. I failed.

  Harry didn't have to fake it. "I just got my PI license in the mail this morning. The Illinois Department of Regulations takes their time, but you made good on your word, Jackie. Dinner is on me."

  "Great." That sounded even worse.

  The waitress came by, a woman in her sixties dressed in a dirndl. Her English was heavily accented with German. She made the mistake of starting with Harry.

  "Something to drink, sir?"

  "Got any German beer?"

  "We've got the largest selection of imported beer in Chicagoland."

  "How about Schlitzkreig?" asked Harry.

  "We don't have that."

  "Krautweiser?"

  She shook her head.

  "He'll have a Beck's," I told the waitress. "And so will I."

  "Make it three." Alan held up three fingers.

  "Diet cola with an orange slice, a lemon slice, a lime slice, and a cherry," Dora said.

  "Why not just order a fruit salad?" asked Harry.

  Dora giggled. I shot Alan a pained look, but his nose was buried in the menu and he didn't see it. I suppose I couldn't blame the guy. Alan didn't know Harry, and I'd never had any reason to mention him.

  "Would you like an appetizer?"

  "Swastikabobs." This from McGlade, naturally.

  "We do not have shish kebab."

  Harry shook his head. "No, I said--"

  "We'll think it over," I interrupted. The poor waitress loped off.

  Alan set the menu down. "I'm going with the wiener schnitzel."

  "What's that?" Dora asked in a forced-cutesy way.

  "It's veal."

  "What's that? Like pork?"

  "It's a baby cow." Harry pinched her cheek. "You're so adorable."

  Dora's face bunched up. "You're ordering a baby cow wiener?"

  "Wiener is German for veal," Alan explained.

  "Wanna see my veal?" Harry winked.

  Where was that beer?

  It came, eventually, and I ordered a second one before taking a sip. If you're stuck in hell, you might as well roast some marshmallows.

  Conversation, if it could be called that, centered around McGlade and the various cases he'd been involved in. Dora remained glued to every word. Alan laughed politely when it was called for. I drank.

  The food was wonderful, and I had to give Alan credit; he did manage to make me forget about Fuller for a few hours.

  "What's the deal with the Fuller trial, Jackie?"

  So much for that.

  "The deal is, he's going to get off, unless his partner confesses or we locate a runaway prison guard."

  "You gotta find someone? Why didn't you tell me?"

  "We've got every cop in Illinois, plus Feds, looking for him. What could you do, McGlade?"

  "I happen to be a world-famous private investigator, Jackie. And what do I do, Dora?"

  She giggled. "You investigate privates."

  "Indeed. And I also find people. Gimme the rundown."

  The beer had loosened my tongue a tad, so I gave Harry the scoop.

  "You got the file?"

  "In the car."

  "I'd be happy to assist you in this instance. And in return, I only ask a small favor."

  "I don't think I can handle any more favors, McGlade."

  "This one is easy."

  "What is it?"

  "I'll tell you when I catch the guard." McGlade winked at me.

  Dessert was black forest cake and incredibly strong coffee. Harry made good on his word and picked up the check. Alan tried to reach for it, but I gave him a vicious pinch underneath the table to squelch that idea.

  Afterward, McGlade invited us back to his place for a nightcap. Alan got another pinch as a warning, and he made up a nice excuse about having to get home early.

  McGlade got the file, Dora gave me a hug good night, and we went our separate ways.

  "I'm getting the impression that Harry isn't your favorite person." Alan grinned at me when we got into the car.

  "You picked up on the subtle nonverbal clues?"

  "That, and all night you kept muttering 'idiot' under your breath."

  "Was I right?"

  Alan laughed. "You were right. He's a character, though. Think he'll find that guard guy?"

  "He couldn't find snow in Alaska."

  Alan put his hand on the back of my neck. Rubbed.

  "You haven't been yourself lately. You okay?"

  "Everyone keeps asking me that. I'm a little tense, that's all."

  "Want to talk about it?"

  "I'm fighting with Herb. We're losing this case. I walked in on Mom and Mr. Griffin."

  Alan laughed. "You did too? He's spunky, for an old guy."

  "Spunky? The man's a jackrabbit. He's going to break Mom's other hip."

  "Anything else bugging you?"

  There was an implied, anything with us?

  I told him no, but that wasn't true. There was a problem with us. Every time I got home from work, I half-wondered if Alan would still be there. He left me once. He could do it again. So to protect myself, I was holding back.

  I had to. Until I was sure.

  "I'm glad." Alan moved his hand from my neck to my leg.

  "Don't start something you can't finish."

  "Oh, I may not be Jackrabbit Griffin, but I think I can finish okay."

  And when we got back to my place, he proved that he could.

  Chapter 41

  The call came at four in the morning.

  "I got him."

  I tried to open my eyes, but the Ambien wouldn't let me.

  "Who is this?"

  "It's Harry. Duh."

  "What do you want, McGlade?"

  "The bull. The guard. I got him."

  That got my eyes open.

  "You're kidding."

  "Why would I kid?"

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm in the lobby of the Four Seasons. He's in room 3604,
under the name John Smith. Real creative, huh?"

  I shook my head, tried to get my thoughts clear.

  "How'd you find him?"

  "I'll tell you when you get here. Bring a warrant."

  Judge Taylor wasn't happy about being woken up in the middle of the night, but because she knew the immediacy of the situation, she understood. I stopped by her place on Cumberland, and then went to the hotel.

  McGlade greeted me at the entrance with a canary-eating grin.

  "How the hell did you manage this?"

  "I told you. I'm a world-famous private investigator."

  "Spill."

  "Well, I knew you guys would have checked the airports, bus terminals, and train stations, and since the guy didn't have a car, I figured he'd still be in the city. You froze his accounts, so he couldn't use his credit cards. That meant he had to pay with cash. So I touched base with some of my friends at a few dozen local hotels, asking if anyone checked in lately paying in cash. Got a hit here, and confirmed it when the doorman saw the picture."

  "Harry, I gotta admit it, I'm amazed."

  "Yeah. Sometimes I amaze myself. You ready to crack some skulls, partner?"

  I nodded. We entered the building, all crystal chandeliers and polished marble, and I hit the button for the lobby.

  "So, you owe me a favor, right?"

  "Anything you want, Harry, as long as it doesn't involve either of us getting naked."

  "You wish. You remember my movie? Fatal Autonomy?"

  "Unfortunately."

  "Well, I'm talking with the producer, and he's considering turning it into a series."

  "That blows my mind."

  "Mine too. One of the Baldwin brothers is going to play me this time. They want to get that fat actress who played you to reprise her role. There's a little matter of permission, though."

  My good mood lost a smidgen of goodness.

  "Please, Jack? I found this guy for you, right? You owe me one. They love your character, and don't want to do a series without her."

  I sighed. "Fine."

  McGlade opened his arms to hug me, but I advised him against it.

  The elevator spit us out on the seventh floor. We passed a table stacked high with cut flowers, and made our way to the second set of elevators. McGlade pressed the number 36.

  "Nice hotel." He tapped the marble-inlaid floor with his shoe. "Reminds me of a HoJo I stayed at in Jersey."

  When the elevator stopped, we found the room without difficulty.

  "Mr. Rohmer! Chicago Police Department. Open up. We have a warrant."

  No answer.

  "Mr. Rohmer! Open the door, sir!"

  Nothing.

  "I'll get a manager." Harry trotted off. I continued knocking for another five minutes, before a desk clerk came over, smiling nervously.

  "We'd like to keep this as quiet as possible, so as not to disturb the other guests."

  "Sure. Just open up."

  He opened it. I went in first, gun in hand. The room was dark, but I noticed two things immediately.

  First, the television was on, playing the kind of movie that men watch when they're alone.

  Second, Mr. Rohmer was on top of the bed, naked and grasping his veal. He was also quite dead.

  "You could try mouth-to-mouth," Harry suggested. "He'd probably like that."

  I might have tried, too, but I'd been around enough corpses to know he'd been dead for at least an hour.

  Harry shook his head. "And they say pornography is harmless."

  I turned off the TV, cursing bad luck, fate, and timing in the same breath.

  "Oh, dear." The manager made worried mother-hen noises. "We can't let this get out."

  "It'll make a good headline." Harry put his arm around the clerk's shoulders. "Crooked Department of Corrections Employee Wanks Himself to Death at Four Seasons."

  "Oh, dear."

  "At least he died happy."

  I called it in, then flipped on the lights and spent ten minutes tearing the room apart. I found a few grand in cash, and nothing else.

  "Get anything?" I asked McGlade.

  "Just an almost new bottle of baby oil."

  "No tape?"

  "No tape. It's not here, unless he's hiding it in a body cavity. I'll roll him over if you wanna check."

  I rubbed my eyes. Cops came, and paramedics.

  "Probably a heart attack or a stroke," said a uniform.

  "More like a lot of strokes," Harry said.

  My cell rang. I went into the hallway to answer.

  "Daniels."

  "Lieutenant? This is Gary Pludenza, Derrick Rushlo's lawyer. Derrick would like to talk."

  "I won't testify!" Rushlo screamed in the background.

  "We need him to testify, Mr. Pludenza."

  "He won't do it, but I think he might be able to help you anyway. Can you come here?"

  "Where are you?"

  He gave me his address, a house in the suburb of Naperville.

  "How soon can you get here?"

  "Gimme an hour."

  I hung up, heading for the elevator. McGlade nipped at my heels.

  "You're still going to sign the permission form, right? Jackie? I'll be by in a couple of days, okay? Sorry this didn't work out for you--"

  The elevator doors closed, saving me from further pestering.

  I took Delaware to Congress, and hopped on 290 heading west. Rush hour was in full effect, and the stop-and-go traffic was a perfect setting for inducing a panic attack. My heart rate doubled, my palms became slick, and I chewed on the inside of my cheek while my brain kept sending me still pictures, like a slide show, of every mistake I'd ever made over my whole life.

  By the time I made it to Naperville, I was a wreck.

  Pludenza's house reeked of money. It sat in a cul-de-sac in a ritzy development, two stories high with four alabaster Doric columns supporting the roof overhang. The doorbell was hooked up to real bells.

  "Thanks for coming, Lieutenant." Pludenza looked about as agitated as I felt. He led me through a grand foyer, my short heels clicking on the terrazzo floor.

  "Bankruptcies seem to be on the rise."

  "Hmm? Oh. My wife comes from money. It's like living in the Taj Mahal. Derrick is in the den."

  The den was an expansive room with vaulted ceilings, black leather furniture, and a beautiful Prairie Wind pool table in colonial maple.

  Derrick sat in an armchair, hugging his knees to his chest.

  "Is he out yet?" he asked.

  "Soon. Closing arguments are today. If you want to keep him locked up, you have to testify."

  His head shook violently.

  "No. No testifying."

  "Then he's going to get out, Derrick. And then he'll come for you. He was a cop. He knows how to find people."

  Derrick began to hum, off-tune.

  "Did you want something to drink, Lieutenant?"

  I asked Pludenza for some coffee, and sat across from Rushlo.

  "Derrick, we need to keep him in jail. Do you understand that?"

  He nodded.

  "I know that you're scared. We can keep you safe. I promise. But you need to help us make sure he doesn't get out."

  He nodded again.

  "Tell me about Southern Illinois."

  His good eye locked on me.

  "You know about Southern?"

  "I know about you getting kicked out. I know that's where you met Fuller. I know about the body you stole."

  "I took her out into the woods, where no one would see. He followed me and watched."

  I ventured a guess. "Fuller turned you in."

  Rushlo looked at me like I'd just grown donkey ears.

  "Barry didn't turn me in. He was the one that told me to do it. He understood."

  "How did you meet him?"

  "He came up to me, after class. Wanted me to get him and some of his fraternity buddies into the morgue. For hazing week."

  "Did you let them?"

  "No. I would have got
ten kicked out of school. But for fun, I let them see my embalming book. The guys were making jokes, acting tough, because they didn't want to admit being grossed out. But Barry was different. He seemed . . ."

  "Interested?"

  "More like aroused. Not by the embalming pages. By the reconstruction pages. He liked the trauma pictures. Extreme disfigurement. Stuff like that. So a week later, he came by again, alone. We got to talking. We have a lot in common, you know."

  Yeah, I thought. You're both psychotic perverts.

  "Were you helping Barry with disposals while in college?"

  "No. That didn't happen until I had to leave. During my internship, at the funeral home in Champaign-Urbana. We stayed in touch, and one day he calls me up and says, 'Do you want a fresh one?'"

  "A fresh corpse?"

  "Yeah. He was still down at Southern. He told me she was untraceable, and he needed my help to get rid of her."

  "This was someone he'd killed?"

  "Yeah. So I drove down to Southern to pick her up. He'd bloodied her up pretty good, but she was still warm."

  Derrick got a faraway look in his one eye; the other one always had a faraway look.

  "You buried her in a closed casket with another body."

  He fixed both eyes on me, a first for him. "How did you know that?"

  "Do you remember the names, Derrick?"

  "The girl's name was Melody. Such a pretty girl."

  "Melody Stephanopoulos?"

  He nodded.

  "How about the name of the person you buried her with?"

  "Last name was Hernandez, I remember that. Skinny guy. Tongue cancer. Most of his jaw was gone. I put them both in the same coffin, planted them in Greenview Cemetery. It was a beautiful ceremony. Lots of flowers."

  I took out a pad and scribbled all of this down.

  "How many others were there?"

  "Kantner's Funeral Home in Urbana didn't have a crematorium. When I got a job in Chicago, it was much safer. I would still do an occasional two-for-one special, though, if I could get away with it. Cremation is such a waste. You might not believe this, but I think death is sacred. A funeral is a sacred ritual. I think everyone should have a wake, even if it isn't your family kneeling at the casket."

  "How many, Derrick?"

  "There were about eighteen women, total, over the last fifteen years. I buried nine of them."

  "You have names?"

  He smiled shyly.

  "Of course. I remember them all. Each and every one of them."

  "What if you didn't have to testify? What if you just made a statement?"