‘Trouble?’ I asked.
‘You could say that, yeah.’ He flicked his cigarette butt into the nearby woods, where it could have ignited the trees if the ground wasn’t still so damp from snowmelt.
‘Where’s the restaurateur?’
Confusion crossed his otherwise guileless features. ‘The who?’ Like most of the force, he was related to the lizards that ran Rivertown. The least crafty of them got to drive the patrol cars.
‘Leo Brumsky,’ I said. ‘He leased this place from Kutz for a few hundred years.’
‘Ah,’ he said, nodding. ‘He’s around back with the other officer.’
‘What’s around the back?’
‘The other officer,’ he said, looking at me like I was crazy.
‘And the back of the trailer,’ I said, prolonging the foolishness because I really didn’t want to go around to the back.
‘Uh, that too.’ He smiled, no doubt delighted that we were on the same page, geographically.
‘I better wait in my Jeep, then,’ I said, because my teeth had begun to chatter.
‘Nah,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘Everything’s gone, anyway. Nothing to see now.’
His eyes, clear since it was not yet time for the free shots and beers along Thompson Avenue, had narrowed, going wary. For sure, I felt them on the back of my neck as I walked around to the rear of the trailer.
Leo and the other cop were staring down at the bank of the river. Both heard me and looked up.
‘You saw, right?’ Leo asked me.
The cop gave him a pat on the back and me a nod, and walked away.
‘Saw what?’ I asked.
Leo pointed vaguely at the ground between the side of the trailer and the woods.
I snuck a look at the freezer enclosure instead. Its wood lid rested down but the padlock was angled in such a way that I couldn’t be sure it was snapped closed.
‘Gone now,’ he said.
‘Forensics?’ I asked, meaning crime-scene folks, summoned to work the freezer and the corpse found inside. Gone now, with Herbie.
‘Forensics?’ He laughed, but for only a second. ‘That’s a good one. That’s what’s needed: good forensics. But nah, nobody’s going to take it seriously.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘No goats,’ Leo said.
‘No goats?’ I repeated, totally confused. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you babbling about your goats?’ I shouted, snapping at the leisurely way he was unraveling what might be my own unraveling. Cops didn’t come because of goats.
He looked at me like he was seeing someone he’d never met before. He pointed again at the space between the side of the trailer and the woods. ‘You didn’t see?’ he demanded. ‘You really can’t see?’
I looked and saw. His coral was empty, his goats gone.
‘It was Gregorio,’ he said. ‘I know it was Gregorio.’
‘Gregorio?’ I asked, sucking air deep in relief now that he wasn’t going to mention Herbie.
‘Gregorio found a way to lift the latch.’
‘Gregorio …’ I said, still not grasping.
‘Gregorio, the brown-and-white, the master.’
‘The big goat,’ I said.
He nodded.
I remembered Gregorio. He did have an aura, I supposed. ‘You think he nudged up the gate latch to let them all escape?’ I asked, wanting to laugh long and loud at nothing at all.
‘Now the cops are ticketing me for letting them run free. I told them they should ticket Gregorio.’
‘The damned cops!’ I said with gusto, because Leo was my friend. ‘Still, it’s tough getting goats to pay fines, I imagine.’
He frowned. Clearly it was not the time to offer humor.
The sounds of cars pulling away came from the front of the trailer. ‘Rivertown cops!’ I said. ‘Never any good when you need them.’
‘They managed to go through the motions, waltz through the woods, but they’re too slow to catch up with my goats.’ He made a dismissive motion with his hand.
A head peeked around the corner of the trailer. It was a familiar head, sort of, and then I recognized it as belonging to the man I’d seen earlier, patting the dancing goats. The veterinarian.
‘Mr Brumsky,’ he said.
‘You saw?’ Leo asked him.
The man nodded slowly, properly mournful. ‘Best you wait them out. They might come back on their own.’
‘Want me to go into the woods?’ I asked Leo.
‘You might scare them,’ the vet said.
‘But we’ve been waiting since we discovered them gone at noon,’ Leo said, walking over to the vet. They stepped around the corner.
It was the break I needed. I gave the padlock on the freezer enclosure a tug. It was securely closed. I bent down and pulled the freezer plug out of the trailer’s electrical receptacle.
Herbie needed to thaw to become pliable enough for easy removal.
‘We’re going into the woods,’ Leo said, coming back to me.
I killed the hours until dark walking through the woods with them, ostensibly helping to look for Leo’s goats but, more important, I was hanging around to make sure Leo didn’t notice the freezer was unplugged and plug it back in.
None of the four goats had wandered back by the time the sun began to set. The vet made to leave and I made to follow.
‘Time to head home, Leo,’ I said. ‘They’ll come back on their own.’
‘I’m staying,’ he said. ‘I want to latch them in securely when they do return.’
And thus was Herbie assured of spending another night in the freezer.
THIRTY-NINE
Booster’s mystery man called at three the next afternoon. I was back at Elvis Derbil Park, practicing aeronautics and reviewing the night’s plan to return the hopefully thawed Herbie to the Vanderbilt Supply building. I’d just gotten off the phone with Leo, who reported that the goats had still not returned and that he was going home, to sleep.
‘I’ve been observing your building,’ the synthesized voice said. ‘It’s quite heavily guarded.’
‘Too much for it to be a legitimate enterprise.’
‘One would think,’ he said. ‘Nonetheless, I contacted an acquaintance at city hall. A building permit was issued to renovate the structure into a cabinet-making workshop.’
‘Cabinet makers don’t need armed guards.’
‘I counted four – one at each corner.’
‘And yet the place is still not in operation,’ I said.
‘You’ve become proficient with the drone.’ He’d been watching me, too, not just my target.
‘I believe I can land it on an isolated roof in a clearing.’ I’d been practicing simulated landings in the park.
‘I believe so, too. You’re navigating above the trees quite nicely.’
I looked at the edges of the park. There was a Shell gas station and a strip mall that held a dry cleaner, a bankrupt movie rental store and an investment counselor who was related to the tribe that ruled Rivertown. Booster’s man could have been anywhere, watching me, being careful, double-checking.
His synthesized voice laughed, shrill and tinny. ‘You won’t see me, Mr Elstrom. You won’t spot the glint of binoculars or the odd man, standing behind a tree.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘You have a small woodpile at the river’s side of your, ah …’ He paused.
‘Turret.’
‘Perfect! Yes, turret. Inside the stack, you will find a small box. Inside is another small box with both sides of a Velcro strip attached to its top. Press it firmly onto the underbelly of your drone. You will see I have also left you a remote transmitting device. Be very careful to not press its button until you have landed onto your target. Activation will trigger nothing that is immediately visible. Three slow-burning flashes will commence in precisely ten minutes – more than enough time for you to drive safely away. Call the fire department from a
n untraceable phone. Best of luck.’ He hung up.
I spent another twenty minutes practicing landings, trying not to think of the corpse that had to be dropped out of sight of the Vanderbilt guard, the fire that had to be set to the drug lab, and the darkness of a night that would make doing them doubly dangerous. When the batteries gave out, I drove back to the turret.
The cardboard box in my woodpile was green. The one inside of it, glued securely shut with Velcro on top, was black. The remote signaling device next to it was also black.
I took them inside to get ready for the darkness.
Eleven o’clock. A night full of clouds. A night dark enough, I hoped, to obscure.
I cut the headlamps and crept the Jeep down the river road in the darkness. Kutz’s trailer was faintly white in the clearing, barely visible against the few silvery ripples of the Willahock. I backed up between the paddock and the trailer, got out, unzipped the rear plastic curtain, reached down and opened the half door.
Around the back, I aimed the narrow beam penlight directly at the combination lock on the wood enclosure, dialed the numbers and tugged. It didn’t pull open. I spun the dial, found the numbers again. The lock stayed shut. It made no sense. The lock was a standard chrome Master with a black dial, the kind that sells in the millions because they never fail. I dialed the combination for a third time. The padlock would not open.
I hurried back to the Jeep for the small bag of tools I keep for when random parts fail. It only took three strikes with the hammer and steel chisel to splinter the wood surrounding the lock and hasp. I lifted the broken wood top, reached in and opened the freezer, ready now to touch the cold plastic shrouding the thawed corpse of Herbie Sunheim.
Nothing.
I plunged my hand all the way in and jammed my fingers on the bottom. Herbie was gone.
I would not think, not yet. I had to focus on the simple next things. I went back to the Jeep, leaned in the open rear door, put the bag behind the front passenger seat.
He hit me hard at the back of my knees as I straightened up. Falling, I banged my head on the Jeep’s rear bumper as I dropped to the ground. I rolled onto my knees and looked up. I had to stand, to fight, to run.
Yellow eyes looked down at me from just inches away, its breath hot and foul on my face. He pawed at the ground, watching, waiting.
Leo’s goat – one of them.
I scrambled up and lurched the few feet to unlatch the paddock gate. It pleased the goat. He ambled into the enclosure. I reached to close the gate and stopped. More yellow eyes had appeared in the darkness. Four of them.
I held the gate open, as would any doorman wise to the ways of goats, and the two followed the first goat into the fenced enclosure. I eased the gate closed but did not latch it, instead standing stock-still to listen. There was one more goat out in that night, somewhere. But the only sound I heard was my own blood thudding in my ears. I let another minute pass, and then I latched the gate.
There was no telling, in the darkness, if one of the three returned goats had been the crafty Gregorio, he of the deft touch with the latch. I reached into the Jeep, found a short piece of wire in the tool bag and looped it twice around the gate and the post, to be sure the goats stayed put.
The night had gone insane. I’d come for a corpse, found it gone, and stayed to usher goats into a paddock. I started up the engine and sped back up the river road. Only when I got to Thompson Avenue did I think to turn on my headlamps.
FORTY
Despite running the Jeep’s heater full blast, I’d been shaking like I was fevered ever since I left Kutz’s clearing. My gut had known that I’d been tailed the night I took Herbie, like my head knew now that it had been someone who’d snapped on an identical Master lock to replace what they’d cut off, to delay the discovery that Herbie had been snatched back. What neither my gut nor my head could figure now was why.
I parked three blocks short of the Triple Time lab and came up on foot, tightly clutching my parcel, wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. The industrial and storage buildings that loomed above the sidewalk were dark. Some were vacant, some were not. The clouds that hung low over Rivertown had stretched to darken that south part of Chicago as well. I thought that was a mercy.
And then I was there. My target stood high and alone in the center of the clearing across the street, a shade darker than the night sky. There were no lights anywhere around, but there were guards there, professional men with guns, likely standing outside, straining to hear sounds in the darkness.
I knelt at the base of a burned-out street lamp, took the drone and its control out of the bag and set them on the ground.
Car lights flashed on in front of the drug lab, just a half-block away. Headlamps, coming fast toward me.
I left everything on the ground, scuttled back into deeper shadow, safe from the sweep of the car’s lamps, and lay face down on cinders and stones and crushed glass. The lights had appeared too fast for happenstance. It was like they’d known I would come, like I’d been watched ever since I took Herbie.
The car slowed and then stopped at the intersection. It was a black Impala. A cop’s car. A detective’s car.
The wind picked up and rustled gently at the empty garbage bag I’d left by the lamppost, raising it up an inch then dropping it down, as if beckoning to be noticed in the lights of the stopped car.
The car’s engine idled low. Just ahead, the drone’s silver metal rotors glinted dully next to the rippling bag, not twenty feet from the Impala’s windshield. Impossible to be unseen.
I pushed backward on my belly, desperate for more darkness.
The car eased forward and stopped again, right in the middle of the intersection. The drone was less than ten feet from the driver’s door now.
Their high beams flashed on as if they’d seen something in the night, and the Impala revved up and shot through the intersection, passing the drone, passing me, speeding down the block, through the next intersection and into the block after that. I scrambled up to my feet to see.
Its tail lights brightened. The Impala had braked at the Jeep. Those in the car would know I was there, in the night. There were no other red Jeeps with green tops.
I stood, unsure. I should run like I had that night in Austin, run through that ruined district for a bus or a cab, come back for the Jeep sometime later when I could summon a lie that would hold. But then the bright red lights went off, disappearing entirely. The Impala had gone dark.
With luck, it was gone. With no luck, it was there, parked by the Jeep, waiting. Either way, I couldn’t very well run around that neighborhood, carrying an armed drone. And what needed to be done would only take a few more minutes.
I ran out from the deep shadow, grabbed the drone and set it directly in line with the building. Thumbing the control sent the drone up into the sky.
I’d practiced dark maneuvering with the new weight snugged to the drone the night before at Elvis Derbil Park, and felt comfortable navigating by the little yellow light at its underbelly. But last night had been clear. This night was cloudy. The light was growing faint too soon as it angled toward the building across the street.
I had to follow the light. I stepped onto the street. If the black Impala came, I’d be lit up with nowhere to run.
Glass crunched beneath my shoes as I stepped over the opposite curb. I stopped. There were no other sounds in the darkness to mask mine.
The little yellow light had shrunk to a pinprick now. I’d have to guess, use dead reckoning from where I stood. Getting closer meant being heard; being heard meant being shot by men who’d have high-powered flashlights as well as guns.
I pulled back on the little joystick to send the speck of light higher. From so far away, it seemed to move only an inch at a time. I tried not to blink, for fear I’d lose the light in the darkness.
The roof, in the Internet satellite photos, was broad and flat. I told myself it was a big target, that I just had to come close.
I pulled b
ack on the little joystick, leveled the little light’s trajectory and descended it inch after maddening inch.
And then, high up, the light disappeared. I could only hope I’d crashed it onto the roof.
I aimed the detonator an inch below the spot in the sky where I’d last seen the light, pressed its red button and ran back across the street, down the block and the one after that. Booster’s man had said nothing would happen for ten minutes.
I slowed to a walk as I approached the block where I’d left the Jeep, afraid that the Impala was waiting with its engine silenced and its lights switched off.
I crossed the last intersection. The Jeep stood in the darkness halfway down the block, alone at the curb. There were no cars parked along that deserted street, but that meant nothing. The Impala could have been left around the corner, out of sight.
I took a fast, last look behind me. The sky was black. I didn’t know how many of my ten minutes were left, or whether the device had even gone off.
I pulled my ignition key out of my pocket, aimed it ludicrously like a sword and ran to the Jeep, expecting shouts at least, shots at the worst. But nothing came: no shots, no shouts. I jumped in behind the steering wheel, twisted the key into the ignition, and was away.
I drove in the dark for two blocks, afraid to turn on the headlamps, then ducked up a side street and wheeled around. The sky glowed faintly orange.
I pulled out the burner phone I’d bought for cash at a Wal-Mart far from Rivertown and used it to make its one and only intended call, to 911. And then I turned on my headlamps and sped west, to Rivertown, uncertain of what I’d set off, but certain that I’d been seen doing it.
FORTY-ONE
My phone rang at two-fifteen the next afternoon, jerking me out of the deepest sleep I’d had since Herbie Sunheim first called.
‘Huh?’ I probably answered, fumbling the phone to a place at the side of my head.
Tagged for Murder Page 19