“And if he’s not dead?”
“It means job was not possible.”
“How do I know you won’t sit on your ass for two days and pocket the easiest fifty grand of all time?”
“Because one hundred thousand is prettier number. Therefore is ninety-nine per cent chance this poor bastard will die. And is one thousand per cent chance you rich bastard will die, if again you insult Zerbjka, hokay?”
Hokay. You got the right attitude, Zerbjka. You also better walk the walk, because if you botch it the Mastrizzis will barbeque the both of us.
• • •
Lou told Gianni, “We’ve checked every trailer park within an hour-and-a-half of downtown.”
“Look farther out.”
“Okay. But, Dad, I gotta wonder if Tesca would drag his fat ass two hours in and two hours back every time he comes to the city.”
“Don’t misunderestimate the fat fuck. Lookin’ to fuck us in the ass with no grease and he’s gettin’ away with it, so far,” Gianni noted.
Lou suppressed a grin; first time the Old Man ever utters a good word about Tesca, and what earns Dad’s approval is Tesca going on a suicidal revenge mission.
“True,” Lou acknowledged. “But not much longer.”
Gianni knocked wood. And his lips tightened into a cold, hungry grin.
Poor Cousin Tommy.
• • •
There was no TV news at this hour, so Tommy was scowling at porn with the sound off and listening to news radio.
Neither was providing satisfaction. Might as well turn them the fuck off and nod out. Tommy let go of his floppy dick and reached for the radio. The radio struck first, stopping him with the magic words: “A new development in The Art Critic case.”
Tommy’s hand returned to his crotch.
“Avant-garde sculptor JaneDoe hasn’t left her apartment since she became the prime suspect in the Art Critic murders. Yesterday, despite police declaring she’s no longer a suspect, JaneDoe remained in seclusion. But tonight, on our sister station, WPLZ–TV, JaneDoe will break her silence. The intriguing young artist will appear on the 6 P.M. newscast, giving an in-depth, exclusive interview to anchor Grant Mosher.”
“Atta girl,” Tommy rumbled, giving his dick a triumphant squeeze.
In depth. Smart. Second she finishes that interview she’s old news. All those hyenas around her place move on.
And Tommy moves in.
Yes. Finally. It’s gonna happen. Yes. Gonna. Gonna.
His meat woke up. Tommy sagged back against the pillows, contemplatively massaging himself, laying plans.
Sixty-Two | 2012
Mark’s phone rang at 7:01 A.M..
“G’morning, Mark! Which corner do I go stand on this time?”
• • •
This time Rarey was carrying a pack of cigarettes but no lighter.
“Couldn’t resist,” he grinned.
Mark chucked the cigarettes out the window.
“No need to litter,” Rarey scolded. “We weren’t going to risk you throwing away another expensive piece of equipment.”
Mark put the car in gear and headed for Lakeshore Drive.
Rarey continued, “But this does confirm you have even more trouble than I do resisting a good time. After hearing the recording, you have to admit that.”
Mark remained silent, eyes on the road. Like a man who was pained, conflicted, trying to delay the moment when he’d cave.
“Mark, us FBI pricks will use that tape. Or bury it. Up to you.”
Mark quietly asked, “What do you want?”
“Not that much. We want credit for breaking this case. We’d like to get there first, make the bust, if possible. You can help with that.”
Mark gave a small resigned sigh, like a man who’d just heard something which confirmed his suspicions. Which it did: this trivial gig was to saddle-break him, make him easier to ride where the FBI really wanted to go.
Mark, like a man acknowledging his freedom has just expired, informed his handler, “First thing I’m doing today is going at Dale Phipps.”
“Intriguing guy. But we haven’t found anything hinky on him, yet.”
“You’ve been looking at Phipps?”
“Dawg, a few weeks back you came up with an interesting theory. Has your art cop found any purchases of works by Gilson and Voorsts before they died, or sales since?”
“No.” Mark shot a hard look at Rarey. Sons of bitches had leads they’d been holding back.
“Hey c’mon, eyes on the road.”
“This is a fucking murder investigation,” Mark warned.
Rarey’s grin expanded. “And the Bureau has a little more reach than your one-woman art squad. Wanna take a guess what we found?”
Mark cut hard across two lanes of traffic, exited the Drive, stopped at the first empty stretch of curb and glared.
Unruffled, the youngster informed Mark, “In the past year dealers in this country and Europe purchased four Gilsons and three Voorsts. All on behalf of anonymous clients. When we asked for names, the European dealers politely advised us to piss off. However, a couple of patriotic American dealers didn’t want us FBI pricks or our IRS friends mad at them. The patriots slipped us the names of the buyers.”
Instead of telling Mark what those names were, Rarey glanced around the busy intersection. “Awfully public spot. Let’s get back on the Drive,” he ordered, asserting his authority, which, like most things, amused him.
Mark snapped a vicious chop to the bottom edge of Rarey’s kneecap.
“AH!” Rarey grabbed his knee and gasped percussively—“Ah-ah-ah! Shit! Ah! Goddamn it, Mark… Okay, okay,” Rarey conceded, massaging his knee. “The buyers were two shell companies. Not unusual. Except, one is named Lougian and the other is Gianlou.” He paused to see if Mark got the implications.
Mark nodded for Rarey to go on.
“They share a home address, in the Caymans. And all the payments were wired from two banks, one in the Caymans, one in Liechtenstien. And all the art was shipped to the same storage facility in Switzerland.”
“What about Horowitz?”
Rarey shook his head. “All recent Horowitz sales have been to respectable buyers who used their real names.”
“If the Art Critic didn’t invest in Horowitz, why bother killing him?”
“For art’s sake?” Rarey hypothesized.
“You able to trace ownership of the shell companies and bank accounts?”
A defeated shrug. “This is why the better class of criminal is so fond of the Caymans and Liechtenstien.”
“Dale Phipps have any links to these companies?”
“Not that we can find. When you question Phipps you should smack him with the names Lougian and Gianlou, see if he flinches.”
“I can’t do that unless—”
“We provide this info officially, otherwise you couldn’t explain how you know it.” Rarey grinned. “That memo will show up soon as I report how well our conversation went.”
Mark asked, “If I’d said no, would the FBI have kept these leads secret from us?”
“But you didn’t,” Rarey said. He flexed his knee. Grimaced. But kept flexing. “It’s fine, I won’t need crutches.” He straightened up and looked at Mark. “Just, one last detail.” His face went serious. “Don’t hit me again.”
“Don’t insist on it again.”
Rarey gave a wry nod. He eased himself out of the car. Limped down the block, pulling out his cell. Calling Ostergaard to let him know Detective Bergman was all theirs.
Sixty-Three | 2012
When Mark walked in, Doonie was already at his desk.
Doonie greeted him with, “You check your email the last ten minutes?”
Mark shook his head.
“Exciting shit.” Doonie swiveled his monitor to face Mark.
It was the promised FBI memo on the past year’s purchases of Gilson and Voorsts paintings.
“You called it two weeks back,” Doonie m
used. “Our guy ain’t some psychopath fuck.”
“No, he’s a Chicago psychopath fuck: a serial killer with a business plan. Any sightings of his Suburban?”
Doonie shook his head. “And this is the best Hsu’s witness could do, even after a session with Merlin the Hypnotist.”
Doonie tapped keys. The FBI report was replaced by a sketch of a generic fat guy with a slightly broad nose and a watch cap pulled down to his eyebrows.
Getting back to the exciting shit, Mark said, “So, Gianlou and Lougian?”
“Yeah,” Doonie agreed.
Gianni and Lou were the first names of the Mastrizzis, the Outfit’s boss and boss apparent.
“If the Mastrizzis were buying paintings then killing the artists, they wouldn’t put their names on the purchasing entities,” Mark said.
“The Art Critic did it in case we ever got this far. Point us at the Outfit, send us on a goose chase.”
“Yup.” Mark nodded at the uninformative sketch of the generic fat guy. “Who’s this lunatic who’s purposely getting Gianni Mastrizzi mad at him?”
“Let’s ask Dale Phipps and see if he farts.”
Before they left, Doonie put in a request to Gang Crimes for any info they had linking the Mastrizzis to Dale Phipps and/or the exciting world of fine art.
And Mark emailed Janet Claudel, the art squad, asking her to find out if any Chicago gallery had sold to Lougian or Gianlou.
• • •
Hoping to catch Dale before he left for work, Mark and Doonie got to Dale’s home at 8:15. It was in Logan Square, a semi-blue collar, semi-gentrified northside neighborhood where the continued presence of semi-active Hispanic gangs was keeping real estate prices semi-reasonable.
Dale lived in a 1950s walk-up brick building that had been surgically enhanced during the renovation boom of the 90s, its smallish A-cup apartments enlarged into C-cup condos.
Dale wasn’t in his. Or wasn’t responding to the intercom.
Mark and Doonie hung out in the vestibule of the building’s locked front door in hopes that a resident would exit the building.
One did. A young father with twin infants in a double-wide stroller. He propped the door open with one arm and was about to start wrestling the stroller through—
Mark grabbed the door and held it open.
Doonie smiled at the babies. “They’re beautiful,” he told the young dad. “And then they learn to talk,” he warned.
The young dad and his future tormentors went on their way.
Mark and Doonie went up to the fourth floor, where they knocked on Dale Phipps’ door. No answer.
Sixty-Four | 2012
Dale’s office door was as unresponsive as his apartment door had been.
Doonie checked his watch. Twenty after nine. “Maybe art guys don’t open at nine.”
“They do if their clients are corporations that keep business hours.”
“We’re open! We’re open!” a woman shouted. It was Phipps’ receptionist, hurrying down the hallway, rummaging in her purse. “Sorry, sorry, we usually open at nine.” She flashed a genuine grin. Mainly at Mark. “Nice to see you again, Detectives, uhh…”
“Bergman and Dunegan. Nice to see you too, Miss Doyle.”
Mark’s remembering her name had the desired effect.
She sighed, embarrassed, but twinkling with pleasure. Miss Doyle twinkled well; she was twenty-something, slim, with pixie-short red hair, stylish dark green eyeglasses, porcelain skin dusted with pale freckles, and a grin bracketed by deep dimples. As she resumed trawling the depths of her vast purse, Mark checked for the hopeful little leer Doon would be giving him. Yeah, there it was.
“Finally,” Miss Doyle murmured as she excavated the office keys. She ushered the cops in, asking, “Can I make you some coffee? We have an espresso machine. Please, because, not only was I late, but—Mr. Phipps won’t be in.”
“Is Mr. Phipps ill?” Mark asked.
“No, just a little intense. Not intense mean—he’s very nice—intense moody. Sometimes he just needs to be out of the office. Like, this morning, I got an email to cancel his appointments, he wouldn’t be in till this afternoon, or maybe tomorrow.” She gave Mark an adorable apologetic look.
“Do you know where he goes?”
“He never says.”
“Would you mind calling and letting him know we need to speak to him?”
“Of course—but it’ll go to voicemail. He doesn’t pick up during his—private times.”
“Does he get back to you?”
“Never. He’ll wait till he gets back to the office—oh—wait—one time, he did call back… There was all this clattering, and he apologized, said he was in the cafeteria at the Art Institute—sorry I forgot that.”
“But then you remembered,” Mark pointed out.
That earned another twinkle. “But I don’t know if the Art Institute’s where he usually goes. For sure he’s not there now—”
“Because it doesn’t open until ten,” Mark said. A shared moment. Mark handed her his card. “When you get his voicemail, please tell him to him call me, right away.”
Miss Doyle phoned. Left the message. Hung up. Said, “Sure you don’t want coffee—I make a reasonably awesome latte.”
“Very kind, but no thanks.”
“Well—here,” she said, offering his card back.
Mark said, “Keep it.”
Miss Doyle gave him a knee-buckling grin; no twinkle, just pure smoldering pixie.
“To make sure Mr. Phipps has my number, in case he deletes your voicemail,” Mark clarified, all business.
Miss Doyle’s grin faded.
• • •
Out on the street Mark explained, before Doonie could voice his disappointment, “I was only flirting with Miss Doyle to get her talking about Phipps.”
“But you didn’t have to break her heart there at the end,” Doonie complained.
“Better than breaking it over the phone if she called.”
Doonie raised an eyebrow. “So this thing with you and JaneDoe is fuckin’ serious.”
Mark didn’t reply. He got in the car, called in a request for a trace on Dale Phipps’ cell phone location.
No joy. The GPS was switched off, and Phipps hadn’t used the phone, so there were no cell tower hits.
“Any point going to the Art Institute when it opens?” Doonie wondered.
“No guarantee that’s his hang. And even if Phipps does go there today, you know how huge that place is… Don’t you? You have been there?”
“Sure. They made us go in sixth grade.”
“The bastards. Let’s visit Dale’s ex-girlfriend.”
Soosie Smith. Hyper-expensive Gold Coast address.
Sixty-Five | 2012
“Will this take long? I have Kabbalah class in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll keep it brief. We’re trying to locate Dale Phipps, and—”
“Dale?! Why?”
“We’re investigating the Art Critic murders, and—”
“Dale’s the Art Critic?!?!!!”
“No—no he’s not. We want to consult with him about the art business, but we can’t find him.”
“Oh. Well, I totally do not know where Dale might be, I mean, he broke, he destroyed my heart, we were together two years and four and-a-half months, then he just walked out, and the only time I’ve seen him since was a year ago, in the lobby at Victory Gardens during intermission. It was like a movie: our eyes meet across this crowded lobby, and we’re both like seriously freaked, and I’m thinking, Should I? but Dale runs out the door. Which was kind of a relief, ’cause, omigod, his face. Like too gross to look at, even if he’d been a stranger, much less this just elegant man I was deeply in love with and I’m still so mad at. Y’know?”
“Uh-huh. So Dale didn’t have any—facial issues, when you met him?”
“Dale was handsome—well except for his mangled hand, but his face was so intelligent and sensitive.”
“
What happened to his hand?”
“Some loan shark did it. Dale’s gallery got in trouble and he made some bad choices—I paid off the debt, I, I saved Dale, and then he…”
“Was this loan shark named…” Mark visualized booking sheet of the shark Phipps had traded calls with, “…Tesca?”
“Dale never said.”
“Is there anyone Dale’s close to, family or friends?”
“Nobody, his family’s gone, his best friend was Walt Egan, and Dale disappeared on Walt when he disappeared on me. By that point Dale had awful rashes, maybe that’s why, he was worried I’d be like, repulsed. But I loved him, and… Though, I’m not sure I could live with a face who looks the way Dale’s does now. Does that make me a bad person? I mean, he is soooo gross—almost as if that Dorian Black thing Dale said came true.”
“Dorian—you mean Gray? Dorian Gray?”
“Yes, thanks, right.”
“Who the fuck’s—pardon my French—who’s Dorian Gray?” Doonie asked.
“Later. You were saying, Miss Smith?”
“It was our last night together, which of course I had no idea at the time—I was telling Dale, look, I will take you to the best doctors in the world. But Dale was like, ’Wouldn’t help, this might not be a medical problem,’ and I was like, ’What else could it be?’ Dale says, ’Might be a Dorian Gray problem,’ and I knew what he meant because he’d streamed this old black and white movie. So I said, ’But you haven’t done terrible things like he did…’ Dale just gave me this weird little smile… And next morning, poof! Gone… Oh, God, re-living all this Dale drama—you guys are the first time I’ve talked about it with anyone besides my friends, my therapist or my Mom… I totally need to be at Kabbalah. Sorry I couldn’t help.”
“But you did. Big-time.”
• • •
“Big-time?” Donnie scoffed as they headed down the hall to the elevator. “How?”
“She reminded me about Dale’s loan shark—I’ll call Gang Crimes, see if Tesca worked for the Mastrizzis. And, much more important—Soosie just forced you to make a second visit to the Art Institute.”
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