‘Because that’s where Grant Carson was killed?’ I shook my head. ‘Are you in Homicide?’
‘Special Projects.’
‘I’ve never heard of it. How many are in that department?’
‘Just me.’
‘Why isn’t Homicide looking into this?’
‘Not enough heat yet.’ Delray grinned. ‘My boss respects unofficial inquiries from powerful men.’
‘Someone asked your boss to look into Arthur Lamm?’
‘You got it.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going to take apart Grant Carson’s hit-and-run, because it’s the freshest death. I’m looking at Whitman, too, because his daughter, and you, can’t figure where he got those extra pills or even why he would have bothered. I’m saving Benno Barberi for last, because frankly, I see nothing in his death that suggests murder.’
‘And Arthur Lamm?’
‘I’m interested in him most of all.’ We walked outside. ‘Keep me informed, and I’ll do likewise. I’ll even put in good words to Debbie Goring, help you get a reward. But we do things my way.’
‘Who’s your rabbi?’ In Chicago-speak, a rabbi is a clout guy, somebody connected, a person who can take care of getting whatever a kid in a striped tie needed.
Grinning, he said, ‘The deputy chief,’ and got into his car.
As I watched him drive away in his long black cop sedan, I saw a young, brash, arrogant guy who knew how to get clouted into a job. He was ambitious, and he had power behind him. He’d be relentless; he’d learn things.
Some of which would lead him straight to Wendell Phelps and whatever he was hiding.
TWENTY-FIVE
The cell number Wendell had given me no longer worked. It must have been a disposable, discarded like me.
I mulled, but not for long. I owed Amanda an explanation for last night, and a warning about the cop who was likely to complicate her father’s life.
I called her cell phone six times in three hours and left no messages. She answered the seventh, angrily.
‘You dumped me,’ she said.
‘Your father had me thrown out.’
‘He said you stormed off.’
‘He accused me of calling the cops. One was just here.’
‘Why would you call the cops?’
‘I didn’t. You know I’d never rat out a client …’ I paused, a hypocrite, about to do just that. ‘It must have been someone else in the heavy cream who called—’
‘The heavy cream?’ she interrupted, almost shouting with impatience.
‘They’re the people who have risen to the very top, people like your father, who run Chicago. One of them must have gotten scared and called the Chicago police. Delray Delmar, a pup but earnest, caught the case, and came round to ask what I knew.’
‘Scared by what?’
‘Your father told you nothing last night?’
‘Only that you blew up and left. I tried to press him. He mumbled something about talking later and walked away. For the next hour, he kept himself surrounded by others. Obviously he was avoiding me, so I got one of the guards to drive me home.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘You could have waited out on the street, you know.’
‘I called you from outside, but your phone was switched off. Then I realized I’d been followed. It was safest to leave you with your father’s guards.’
‘You’re scaring me. Who was following you?’
‘Benno Barberi’s widow put a tail on me. She knows I’m chasing the case and doesn’t want to wait for information. I put a stop to it.’
‘Is Mrs Barberi frightened like my father? Benno died last year from a heart attack.’
‘Did you know Jim Whitman, or Grant Carson?’
‘Benno Barberi died of a heart attack, right?’
‘All signs point to that.’
‘And Mr Whitman and Mr Carson …?’ She stopped, understanding. ‘This is why my father hired bodyguards? He sees something sinister in their deaths?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Mr Whitman technically died of natural causes, though he may have swallowed too many pain killers. Mr Carson was hit by a car.’
‘There are wrinkles surrounding each death.’
‘I ask now for the third time: is my father in danger?’
‘He’ll be in less danger if he tells the cops what he knows. Do you know Arthur Lamm?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Arthur is my father’s closest friend,’ she said. ‘He handles our corporate insurance, and my father has invested in a couple of Arthur’s real-estate ventures. Is Arthur in danger, too?’
‘He’s dropped from sight. He might have gone camping, or he might be evading the IRS.’
‘I heard a rumor about the IRS investigation, but Arthur wouldn’t run from that. He’s got lawyers and accountants to take care of such things. If he’s not around, it’s because he’s gone camping … Right, Dek?’
‘I’d like to be sure he’s gone camping.’
‘You believe my father’s not delusional, that someone’s out to kill the men in the … whatever.’
‘Heavy cream,’ I said, supplying the words. ‘Wendell won’t tell me what he knows. Young officer Delmar has better resources than mine, and he’ll find out what that is.’
‘This can’t be real,’ she said, but she said she’d talk to her father.
On the stoop, outside his bungalow, Leo went straight for a vein. ‘You, pass for a rich guy?’ He laughed.
‘Just for a night, maybe two. I’ll breeze up to Lamm’s fishing camp and see if I can sniff out his whereabouts.’
‘Because you think that’s something Lamm’s friends, family, Wendell’s previous investigator, the IRS, and most especially your new young cop friend haven’t been sharp enough to consider doing themselves?’
‘Because I don’t know what to think.’
‘Your cop is OK with you pursuing this on your own?’
‘I promised I’d report anything I find out.’
‘Meaning you’ll report anything that doesn’t incriminate Wendell.’
‘I’m sure he understands.’
A sly grin lit Leo’s face. ‘Merely driving my car won’t pass you as rich enough to be a friend of Lamm’s,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to have the threads, too.’ He touched the hem of his tropical shirt like he was caressing imperial silk. ‘Red parrots and yellow flowers on blue rayon are the true signs of affluence. They make you look wealthy enough to not give a damn.’
‘I want to look like I own the Porsche, not like I stole it.’
He sighed and handed over the keys.
TWENTY-SIX
Two hours north of Milwaukee, the concrete highway softened into rippling blacktop and the barns began fading from freshly painted reds to chalking shades of rose. An hour north of that, the blacktop crumbled and so had some of the barns. Every few miles, I spotted one lying in a bleached gray pile across an abandoned field. Bent Lake was one more hour up. I arrived just before sunset.
It was a one-block town, anchored at the front by a Dairy Queen and the remains of a gas station. The DQ’s parking lot was empty, though the red-and-white wood hut was lit up bright with yellow bug lights and looked ready for commerce.
The gas station across the street did not. Its pumps had been pulled and the only visible reminder of its heritage was an oval blue-and-white Pure Oil sign creaking from rusty chains on a pole. The young man working inside on an old truck didn’t jerk up, startled, as I passed by, so I assumed the town was accustomed to some degree of traffic.
I drove slowly past storefronts that were boarded up. The only light came from a Budweiser sign in a tavern window in the middle of the block.
A cluster of old, clapboard motel cottages was curled at the far end. Its sign read: ‘Loons’ Rest. Rooms $30.’ The paint on the sign was fresher by a couple of decades than the white flakes peeling off the cottages. A new, shiny blue Ford F-150 pickup truck with a big chrome radiator and pimp l
ights on its roof was the only vehicle in the lot.
‘Forty dollars for the night,’ the woman behind the counter said as I jangled the bells above the door, coming in. She was wrinkled and her skin and hair were colored almost the same gray as the collapsed barns I’d passed, south of town.
‘The sign outside says thirty.’
‘Them’s off-season rates.’
I cocked a thumb at the window looking out at the parking lot, empty except for the truck and the Porsche. ‘Hasn’t snowmobiling season just ended?’
‘You from Illinois?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘I like to know how our clientele finds us.’ She smiled, showing me where she needed dental work.
‘In desperation,’ I wanted to say but didn’t. Loons’ Rest was the only place around, it was getting dark, and it wasn’t hard to imagine insects the size of antelope roaming the deserted old town. I pulled out my Visa card.
‘No credit; cash,’ she said.
‘American currency OK?’ I asked as I peeled off four tens.
‘That’ll be forty-four with tax,’ she said.
I added four singles. ‘Do you know where Arthur Lamm’s place is?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Illinoyance,’ she muttered.
‘Cheesehead,’ I said, but only after I’d stepped outside and banged the door shut on the woman and the jangling bells.
It was all so very adult.
My room smelled of the same strong pine cleaner the Rivertown Health Center sloshed about when a tenant expired, and I wondered whether the weak, twenty-six-watt bulb hanging from the stained tile ceiling was meant to conceal as well. Even in the dim light, the knots on the knotty pine paneling appeared troublesome, and I thought it best not to look at them closely, for fear some weren’t knots at all but rather shoe-heel marks on top of cockroach splats.
A tufted orange spread covered the mattress, and a disconnected gold pay box for a long-gone Magic Fingers electric bed massager was screwed to the headboard. It never boded well when the Magic Fingers fled a town. For sure I would only stay one night.
I sat on the bed to check my cell phone for messages. It had not rung. The reason was not that there had been no calls or texts. My display showed that no bars of service were available.
I left my duffel tightly zipped on the bed – in case any of the knots jumped off the wall paneling, frisky – and went out into the dusk. Across the street, several teenagers were running along the sidewalk, yelling as they raked broom handles under the ribs of the corrugated metal awnings of the vacant stores. The racket was deafening, reverberating along the deserted street as though monkeys were banging on pans. Every few seconds, shadowy things dropped from beneath the awnings, which set the teens to waving flashlights, jumping up and down, screaming and laughing with delight.
It made no sense. ‘What are you doing?’ I called across the street.
They stopped and stared at me. ‘Stomping bats, a course,’ one young girl, pretty in denim and a pale yellow jacket, yelled back.
‘A course,’ I shouted back. There were worse places to grow up in than Rivertown, I supposed.
I stepped into the center of the street, reasoning that bat splatter was less likely out there than on the sidewalks, and walked down to the neon Budweiser light. Three men in flannel shirts sat at the bar inside, jawing with a bartender who had a red beard.
‘Can I get something to eat here?’ I asked.
‘Pickled eggs which I prepare special myself, and Slim Jims,’ Red Beard said. ‘Anything fancier, you got to go to the DQ.’
I told him I needed fancier, and would be back for a brew after I’d eaten.
The Dairy Queen’s parking lot was still empty, since the town’s evening merriment remained underway beneath the metal awnings at the other end of the block. Inside the hut, a teenaged boy and girl were pressed together as tight as a double-dip of soft-serve ice cream jammed hard in a cake cone. The girl saw me appear in the glow of the yellow bug lights and broke the clinch. So long as I only wanted a hamburger, they could serve me dinner, she allowed. I asked what if I wanted two? That froze her face until I said I was making a joke. They both smiled then, sort of, though I suspected they’d discuss it later. No matter. Two hamburgers soon appeared, and I ate them with fries and a chocolate shake at a picnic table facing the road, so I could watch the cars that passed by. There were none. Afterward, I gave them back their plastic tray and walked down to the tavern.
The three flannel shirts and Red Beard stopped talking when I came in. I ordered a beer.
‘Up here for some early fishing?’ the bartender asked, skimming the head off the beer.
‘At Arthur Lamm’s camp. Know him?’
The six eyes above the three flannel shirts turned to look at me directly.
‘I don’t think he’s around,’ the bartender said.
I put on my confused face which, in truth, is never far away. ‘I came up from Chicago a day early. I hope I didn’t get the date mixed up.’
‘Lamm’s car is there, but no one has seen him,’ the bartender said.
‘Does anyone know where he’s gone?’
‘Herman says Lamm’s off camping. It’s caused a ruckus. You guys from Illinois …’ The bartender’s lower lip curled down, following the thought that was dropping away.
I bought beers for the men at the bar, the bartender, and another for myself. It set me back four bucks, not counting the single I left on the counter. It made everyone more talkative.
‘Us guys from Illinois, you were saying?’ I asked.
‘Cops,’ the bartender said.
‘There was only the one,’ said one of the flannel shirts – his was red.
‘Young sonofabitch,’ said the man next to him. His flannel was green.
‘What was he asking?’
‘I didn’t actually talk to him. I just heard he was up from Chicago, asking for Lamm.’
‘Nobody knows exactly where Lamm is, and that includes Herman,’ the third man at the bar said, speaking for the first time. His flannel shirt was plaid, half red, half green, which I supposed made him an excellent arbiter for the other two. ‘And if Herman’s been drinking, he wouldn’t have noticed Lamm being abducted in an alien spaceship.’
‘Herman works for Lamm?’ I asked.
‘Supposedly he takes care of Lamm’s camp,’ Green Flannel said, ‘but Herman Canty’s never done a lick of work in his life. Herman’s what you call an opportunist. He latches on to things.’
‘Like Wanda, over at Loons’,’ Red Flannel said. ‘Latched on to that some long time ago.’
‘Rockin’ the cot, God help him,’ Green Flannel said.
That got the three flannels and the bartender laughing.
‘She even lets him stay nights, sometimes, when his sister throws him out,’ Red Flannel said.
‘Not all nights. She’s not all dumb,’ the bartender said. ‘She knows Herman for what he is.’
‘A damned user,’ Red Flannel said. ‘Strikes at every opportunity.’
‘This Canty, he latched on to Lamm as well?’ I asked.
‘Big time,’ Green Flannel said. ‘Sooner than later, you’ll see a new blue F-One Fifty over to Loons’. That’s Herman’s truck. No one can figure out what he done for it, being as he’s never been useful.’
‘That truck come out of Chicago, according to the license plate frame,’ Green Flannel said. ‘He didn’t buy it up here.’
‘Either somebody died, leaving him an inheritance,’ the plaid man said, ‘or he’s got Mr Lamm paying him way too large for watching his camp.’
The bartender was giving me a long look. ‘You say you’re a friend of Lamm’s, yet you didn’t call ahead to say you were coming up?’
‘I’m more like an insurance client,’ I said, ‘but you’re right. It’s been a couple of months since he invited me. I should have checked before I drove up.’
‘
Cell phones don’t always work up here, anyway,’ the bartender said, shrugging. ‘We’re just yakking; nobody up here knows Lamm. He’s certainly been too good to set foot in here.’ He gestured at the murky shapes in the cloudy jar on the bar, as if to suggest that the eggs should have been reason enough to lure Lamm in. As if to warn me to not suffer the same loss, he slid the jar closer to me.
I resisted, saying it might incite the milk shake resting heavily on the hamburgers in my stomach, and asked for directions to Lamm’s camp.
The bartender drew a map on a cocktail napkin. ‘Mind that rickety old bridge on County M. It’s a one-laner. Hit it wrong, you’ll end up wet. And dead.’
I told them that if Lamm had indeed disappeared, I might want to speak to the sheriff. That got me another cocktail napkin map, and I left them to their pickled eggs and their flannel.
Outside, I envied their flannel. The night had turned frigid, and my pea coat was in Leo’s Porsche. I hurried down the center of the street, deserted now, squinting for glints on the dark pavement. Nothing sparkled, freshly splattered, and I got to Loons’ with shoes as dry as when I’d set out.
The inside of my cabin was as cold as the air outside. I spent five minutes looking for a thermostat before I realized that the cabin simply had no heat. I took a fast shower with what little lukewarm water could be coaxed from the pipes, dried myself with a towel that had a fist-sized hole in its center, bundled back into my clothes and pea coat, and slipped into bed.
I thought, then, of the newness of Jenny, waiting to warm me in San Francisco. And I thought of Amanda, and the easy, familiar way she’d warmed me, leaning against me in the Jeep, outside her father’s house.
I tried to push those thoughts away, finding it easier to think about what I didn’t understand about Arthur Lamm, the dead men in the heavy cream, and the frigid air inside the cabin. It wasn’t until the middle of the night that I was finally able to shiver and shake myself to sleep.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘I’m in real need of caffeine,’ I said to gray-skinned Wanda as I looked around the motel office for the coffee maker. It was six-thirty the next morning.
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