The Confessors' Club

by Jack Fredrickson

  Chuckling, he walked past the guard and disappeared into an elevator, and I headed back to a train not due to depart for another hour.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The outbound train was a midday plodder that stopped at every crossing on its way west. I could have used the time to review what I’d learned about the men in the heavy cream – the three who died, the fourth who’d gone missing, and the fifth, my ex-father-in-law, whose evasiveness clung to everything, blurring it like thick, black smoke – except I’d learned nothing. So mostly, I looked out the window and let my mind drift back to old times, when laundry was hung on lines and semi-chewable steaks could be served up with rock-hard potatoes and yellowed toast for two bucks.

  A black Chevrolet Impala, the kind of car Federal agents drive, was parked a few yards past the turret. There was nobody inside. It didn’t matter; I knew who it was. Such a car parked outside my turret was like old times, too.

  I headed into the kitchen to rummage in the cardboard box where I keep my dry food. For lunch, I had the choice between Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which I usually ate dry, or peanut butter, which I usually ate sticky. Sparks of culinary creativity, borne of financial deprivation, fired into my skull. I put two scoops of peanut butter into a plastic cup, shook in ten of the little sugared cereal squares, grabbed a plastic spoon, and went down to the river.

  ATF Agent Till, who’d just given me a bum’s rush downtown, had beaten me back to the turret and was sitting on the bench. A brown lunch bag was beside him. He was throwing scraps of a sandwich at a duck.

  It was no surprise that he’d remembered the way. He’d come around often, frequently and futilely, when I’d been recuperating from the lacerations and burns I’d suffered in the explosion Till was investigating. I hadn’t wanted to talk, for fear of incriminating those who didn’t deserve incrimination. Amanda and a friendly doctor kept him away from me, citing my need to heal.

  That did not deter Till. For two weeks, he came every day at noon, to sit on the bench and throw bits of his lunch at the ducks, and to threaten me with his relentless presence. New cases finally forced him to give it up, and he quit coming around.

  I sat next to him on the bench and ate the first of my peanut- buttered Cinnamon Toast squares.

  The sandwich Till was tearing had little green tendrils poking out from under the bits of wholewheat bread. Each time Till tossed a piece, the duck would circle it, floating in the water. The river was calm that afternoon, barely moving. Bits of sandwich surrounded the duck.

  ‘The duck isn’t eating, Till,’ I said, after a moment.

  ‘He’s waiting for the green things to wash off.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Alfalfa sprouts. My wife says they’re good for arthritis.’ He ripped off another piece and tossed it at the duck.

  ‘Are you going to throw away your whole lunch?’

  ‘It’s called recycling. I throw this into the water, the duck eats it, and converts it to something better: duck shit.’

  ‘But the duck’s not eating.’

  ‘Then it’s going to get arthritis.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I stopped for two chili dogs on the way here.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I spooned up more peanut butter and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

  ‘What are you eating?’ Till asked after a time.

  ‘What’s available.’

  ‘Ah,’ Till said.

  We sat silently on the bench until all of Till’s sandwich lay floating around the duck. Then he folded up his brown bag, put it in the jacket pocket of his brown suit, and stood up.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what I want to know?’ he asked, of that long-ago explosion.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Arthur Lamm is in big-time trouble,’ he said. ‘He took customer deposits from an escrow account holding insurance premiums.’

  ‘Embezzling?’

  ‘Absolutely. Sometimes clients pay their premiums to an insurance brokerage agency. That agency is supposed to put the money into a reserve account for forwarding to the insurance company. Lamm tapped the keg for personal expenses like upkeep on his mansion and beauty treatments for his lady friends, replenishing it with new escrow payments as they came in. The IRS also likes him for giving freebie insurance to his heavyweight pals in Chicago and for not returning client overpayments. They’re getting indictments ready.’

  ‘Sounds like reason enough for Lamm to run.’

  ‘Lamm’s on the lam.’ He laughed, delighted by his wit. ‘He hasn’t been seen for some time.’

  ‘Isn’t the IRS out looking for him?’

  ‘They need warrants first.’

  ‘You found all that out awfully fast,’ I said.

  ‘Only took one phone call. I did it in the car, between chili dogs.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That tree’s dead,’ he said, looking up at the ash.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘Soon,’ he said, and walked away.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Your information was correct,’ I told the Bohemian. ‘Arthur Lamm is being investigated by the IRS. He might be running.’

  He sighed into the phone. ‘That’s good news of a sort, if it means he’s hiding out and not dead, a fourth prominent man killed. Fears of a murderous conspiracy are unfounded?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your client knows, though, doesn’t he?’ By now I was sure he’d guessed that I’d been hired by Wendell Phelps.

  ‘Debbie Goring promised me five per cent of any insurance she collects if I can prove her father was not a suicide,’ I said.

  ‘You won’t tell me your client’s name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any chance of helping Debbie collect?’

  ‘Only if I can prove someone else gave her father an overdose.’

  ‘So we are back to imagining conspiracy?’

  ‘You’re familiar with very private, exclusive organizations?’

  ‘Some,’ he said, evading now himself.

  ‘I’m interested in something called a “C. Club”. It meets on the second Tuesdays of even-numbered months.’

  ‘That’s very specific.’ He paused so I could tell him why I was asking.

  I didn’t. I waited.

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ he said finally.

  ‘Perhaps you could contact a few friends.’

  ‘My God, Vlodek; I can’t call around and ask whether they belong to some secret organization.’

  ‘Barberi, Whitman and Carson each died on, or immediately following, one of those secret-meeting Tuesdays.’

  ‘This is for real?’

  ‘Real as death, Anton.’

  ‘Then I shall try,’ he said.

  The Bohemian called back early that evening. ‘No one admits knowing anything of a “C. Club.” More interestingly, two gentlemen whom I know very well, and who are ordinarily very voluble, actually blew me off by saying they had to take important incoming calls.’

  ‘Dodging you?’

  ‘These are men who talk confidentially to me about all sorts of things,’ he said, still sounding shocked, ‘but they clammed up, almost rudely, when I mentioned your club.’

  ‘I’m striking nerves.’

  ‘What’s going on, Vlodek?’

  ‘Fear. Where is Arthur Lamm’s primary office?’

  ‘He runs everything out of his insurance brokerage.’ He gave me the address.

  Lamm’s insurance brokerage was in a three-story building in Oak Brook, several towns of better income west of Rivertown. I got there at eight o’clock. Since it was Friday night, only a handful of cars remained in the parking lot. The back vestibule door was locked, but a woman was coming out.

  There was a FedEx box outside, next to the door. I opened the supply compartment, pulled out an empty envelope, and pretended to fill out the label. The woman came out, in too much of a hurry to notice I’d used my shoe to stop the door from closing behind her. I slipped i
nside and went to the directory by the elevators. Lamm’s insurance agency was on the top floor.

  My gut wanted the cover of the stairs, but my brain took the elevator because it reasoned I’d look more like I belonged if I rode up. Executives coming back for evening work don’t use stairs; they’re too tired from spending long days being executives.

  The top floor hall was empty, except for filled black plastic garbage bags piled outside several of the offices. Luckier still, Lamm’s office was one of them, and his doors were propped open by a metal cart filled with cleaning aerosols, more black bags and rags. I tucked the FedEx envelope under my arm and stepped inside, clever as hell.

  A vacuum cleaner was running close by, off to my left. I walked away from the noise, towards the row of offices in the back.

  The vacuum cleaner stopped. Footsteps approached from behind, padding softly on the lush carpet. I turned to smile, executive-like.

  The vacuuming man wore dark blue trousers and thick-soled black shoes. The pale blue oval on his white shirt said his name was Bill.

  I held up the FedEx envelope. ‘I forgot to leave this for Mr Lamm’s secretary.’

  He smiled and went back to the vacuum.

  It was that simple.

  The doors to the private offices had names lettered in black on their glass sidelights. Lamm’s was in the corner. Seemingly study-ing the FedEx envelope, I bumped up against the knob. It was locked. The glint of a square silver dead bolt showed in the gap between the door and the jamb, too solid for a credit card to pop.

  I sat behind the L-shaped secretarial desk closest to Lamm’s office, took my pen from my pocket and a yellow Post-it from the pad next to the phone, and pretended to write a note. I stopped to shake the pen like it was out of ink. It was more clever subterfuge, an excuse to riffle the top of the desk. There were phone directories, a dozen folders filled with insurance applications and a file of local restaurant takeout menus, but there were no pens on the desk. And there was no appointment book.

  I opened desk drawers, one by one. There were files and note pads, envelopes and paperclips, but there was no appointment diary inside the desk either. There was, however, a pen. I used it to pretend to finish the note on the Post-it, stuck it to the FedEx envelope, and turned it upside down so the cleaning person, Bill, wouldn’t see I’d written nothing. Lamm’s secretary would throw out the FedEx envelope the next morning, thinking only that somebody had accidentally dropped it on her desk.

  It had been a long shot, amateurish, and hadn’t yielded a thing about where Arthur Lamm spent six Tuesday nights a year. Nonetheless, I left his insurance agency warmed by the self-satisfied glow of a truly daring and clever sleuth.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  At seven-thirty the next morning I was lying in bed, admiring my half-built closet from across the room, when someone began banging on my door. I slipped on jeans and a sweatshirt and hustled down the stairs barefoot.

  Two men in dark suits and even darker neckwear stood outside. The older one, about my age, held up a glossy plastic card. Next to his picture were the letters ‘IRS.’

  ‘Can you come with us, Mr Elstrom?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s Saturday morning,’ I said, almost giddy with admiration for Agent Till. He’d moved quickly to get his contacts at the IRS to meet with me about Arthur Lamm, even though it was the weekend. I ran upstairs, put on shoes, grabbed my pea coat and was out to their sedan in less than three minutes, ready to be enlightened.

  The agents who’d been sent to drive me were close-mouthed. Heading to the expressway, I got only grunts in response to my questions. It was understandable; they were errand boys. Till must have arranged for me to meet with an agent-in-charge. I leaned back and looked out the window.

  Halfway into the city, I spotted a tagger high up beneath one of the overpasses. Graffiti artists work silently and anonymously, usually too high up to ever be noticed. Perhaps like a killer preying in the heavy cream.

  We got off at Wacker Drive, drove another few blocks and stopped in front of a black glass office building. The agent riding as a passenger got out, opened my door and walked me past the two uniformed guards in the lobby to the bank of elevators. We rode up to the eighteenth floor and went into a conference room that had no pictures on the wall.

  ‘I’ll be outside the door,’ the agent said.

  ‘I’m delighted to wait,’ I said.

  The building’s ventilation system wasn’t on, probably since it was Saturday, and the conference room was humid and stuffy. Faintly gasping for air, left to stare at walls that had no pictures, anyone with even the mildest sense of claustrophobia would cop to lying on a tax return, just to get out of that room.

  Five minutes later, the door opened and in walked two thin men, one in his thirties, one in his fifties. The younger man set a cardboard tray of three cups of black coffee on the table and sat down. He moved one of the cups toward me.

  The fifty-something-year-old had a disc in his hand and a mix of patience and distaste on his face. ‘My name’s Krantz,’ he said, walking to a gray metal cart in the corner that held a player and a television. He turned on the television, slipped the disc into the player, and pushed the play button.

  The video had been shot from a ceiling-mounted camera in the hall outside Lamm’s brokerage. A man wearing khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt, clutching a blue-and-white Federal Express envelope, came down the corridor and stopped at the open glass door of the insurance agency. Taking a slow, guilty look around to be sure the camera recorded that he was up to no good, he stepped inside.

  Another camera then recorded the man stopping to cock his head, listening, before turning to mouth silent words to someone out of the picture, undoubtedly a man wearing a white cleaning supervisor’s shirt with a name patch that read ‘Bill.’ After a minute, the cunning blue-shirted intruder smiled, obviously relieved. His shoulders relaxed, and he moved into the general office.

  A third camera recorded the blue-shirted man approaching the private offices. He moved jerkily, like an overly medicated person trying not to collapse in a tea room. After pausing several times to take more furtive looks around, he finally bumped to a stop against a door. He pawed the doorknob. The knob didn’t turn; the door was locked.

  The man walked to the nearest secretarial desk and sat down to write a note on a yellow Post-it. Shaking his own pen as though it had run dry, he picked through the items on the desk, pretending to be looking for another pen but clearly looking for something else. Finding nothing of interest, he opened the desk drawers and, after a prolonged search, came out with a blue ballpoint pen. He made writing motions on the Post-it and stuck the note to the FedEx envelope. The camera was high-resolution, and recorded that the Post-it was blank; the man had written nothing on it. The man turned the FedEx envelope upside down on the desk and sauntered away, a moronic smirk on his face. The screen went blank.

  There had been no sound accompanying the video. Clown music, especially if accompanied by a chorus of honking squeeze horns and an uproarious laugh track, would surely have made the video a contender in any short comic film contest.

  Krantz turned off the television, sat down and sighed. ‘Our man followed you down to the first floor and identified you from your license plates.’

  ‘Bill, the man operating the vacuum cleaner?’

  ‘Actually, his real name is Roger.’

  I gestured at the now blank screen. ‘You don’t see that kind of cleverness very often, do you?’

  ‘Sadly, no,’ Krantz said, looking truly mournful. ‘If criminals were that inept, we’d have them all behind bars in a matter of weeks.’

  He leaned back in his chair and made a come-to gesture with his hands. ‘Tell us.’

  I had to offer something, having been caught by Feds. ‘I think Arthur Lamm is connected to three murders.’

  I told him everything I knew, minus any mention of Delray and Wendell. By the time I finished, some of the lazy contempt in their eyes had gone.
/>
  ‘You think Lamm’s a killer?’ Krantz asked.

  ‘I can’t see a motive for that, but I think he might know plenty.’

  ‘You’re working for Whitman’s daughter?’ Krantz asked.

  Debbie Goring had become a superb justification for my snooping around, especially useful in keeping Wendell’s name out of the questioning. ‘She promised me five per cent of her father’s insurance proceeds if I can prove his death wasn’t a suicide.’

  ‘How will Lamm’s appointment book shed light on that?’

  ‘Each of the murdered men was secretive about where he went on the last night of his life. Lamm traveled in their same circles. His calendar might show exactly where they all went.’

  Krantz looked at the younger agent, who then got up and left the room. Turning back to me, he said, ‘You really think Lamm killed those other three men?’

  ‘That, or he’s another victim. What can you tell me about your investigation?’

  ‘Not a damned thing,’ he said.

  ‘But you do have men looking for him?’ I asked.

  ‘We don’t have enough to arrest Lamm yet.’ Krantz stood up and opened the conference room door. ‘No more illegal entering, Mr Elstrom.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  Down in the lobby, I realized I’d hustled out of the turret without grabbing my wallet or cell phone. I thought about calling up to Krantz, demanding a ride home, but his demeanor suggested he didn’t consider us to be pals. One of the guards in the lobby let me use the desk phone to call Leo’s cell.

  I hoped this was one of the mornings he’d slept at Endora’s, because her condo was close by. She is young and beautiful and his time with her is not to be interrupted, especially by someone who had recently trashed his Porsche and then slipped away without explanation. But this was no ordinary morning.

  He answered on the third ring. ‘This had better involve my winning a lottery.’ His voice was scratchy with sleep.

  ‘Even better. It’s your friend for life, abducted this morning by the IRS, now stranded downtown with no money in his jeans and a real hungry expression on his face.’ I gave him the address. ‘Come pick me up, buy me breakfast, and drive me home.’