‘Unless?’ he asked, grinning, certain now.
‘Unless there was,’ I said. ‘Someone wrote a policy on Whitman’s life that Whitman knew nothing about.’
‘Like with Barberi?’
‘And like the policy taken out on Grant Carson that named some anonymous entity as beneficiary.’ I raised my glass in salute. ‘Insurance motives, three times over: Barberi, Whitman and Carson.’
‘Arthur Lamm.’
‘Arthur Lamm, the insurance man,’ I said. ‘He owned his own brokerage. He could fake his own medical exams, write his own policies, name his own beneficiaries. Smooth.’
‘Why risk murder? Lamm’s one of the wealthiest men in the city. Why dose Whitman with Gendarin at the December Confessors’ Club when all he had to do was wait to collect on the policy he wrote on the man’s life? And why risk pushing Carson out of a car?’ He swirled the ice cubes in his glass. His whiskey had gone.
I had no answer for that. I went to the bar and bought us another round. It was the first time I’d had a second drink since I’d been tossed out of Amanda’s gated community one sodden Halloween a few years earlier. That Halloween, though, I’d had a lot more than two whiskies.
‘How do we find Lamm?’ he asked when I came back.
‘Let Homicide find him. You’ve got enough to get them interested.’
‘Recording machines discovered during an illegal search? They’ll freak.’
‘Tell them to start by squeezing Canty. You do remember Canty, up in Wisconsin?’ Delray had to be the cop from Chicago the flannel shirts in the bar had told me about.
Delray grinned. ‘Yep,’ he mimicked.
‘Canty had to be the accomplice Lamm needed to kill Carson.’
He shook his head. ‘It isn’t enough to get Homicide involved.’
‘Then call Krantz, tell him you’ve got a hunch Lamm and the three dead men are linked to that graystone. They don’t need to know we went in. They’ll get search warrants; you’ll still be the hero.’
‘No,’ he said, staring into his drink. ‘I want to find Lamm myself.’
‘Career and ambition?’
‘Having a rabbi means I have to work doubly hard to prove myself.’ He looked up. ‘You’ve got to squeeze Wendell Phelps about Arthur Lamm. Phelps might know where Lamm is hiding.’
I had no illusions about keeping Wendell out of the investigation forever. Sooner or later, Delray or another cop would tumble on to the fact that Wendell had hired a private investigator to nose into the killings before he hired me to do the same thing. They’d pull out all the stops on Wendell, then, and squeeze out everything he knew.
But that time had not yet come. ‘That kills the deal for me, Delray,’ I said. ‘You wreck Wendell Phelps, you wreck me.’
‘Because of loyalty to your ex-wife?’
‘I put her in the newspapers once. I’m not going to do it again. I’ll call Krantz, give him a heads-up on the graystone.’
He stared at me for a long minute, judging whether I’d carry out the threat. He knew as well as I that the Feds always trumped local cops. They’d chase Delray and the homicide cops right off the case.
‘OK; no Phelps and no IRS, for now,’ he said, backing down. ‘I’ll go to Homicide, but my way, and on my time schedule.’
‘You don’t have a schedule anymore.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Arthur Lamm might have another insurance policy we know nothing about. He might kill again.’ I took a last sip to finish my whiskey and stood up. ‘You’ve got seventy-two hours before the Confessors’ Club meets again,’ I said.
FORTY-ONE
Sunday went calmly before it went to hell.
I awoke late that morning, well rested from knowing that Delray Delmar had alerted homicide cops to the links between Arthur Lamm and the deaths of Whitman and Carson. I had no doubt they’d be all over the Confessors’ Club on Tuesday, to stop whatever killing was meant to go down.
And by the early afternoon, I’d achieved success with my troublesome tilting kitchen cabinet at last. I’d loosened every screw, re-shimmed, and re-tightened to get it to hang perfectly straight and level.
Even the butchered ash seemed to stand victorious, out the window, a headless man with both of his arms raised in triumph.
So I was feeling good, sipping coffee and more than occasionally sneaking admiring glances at my perfectly aligned cabinet, when Debbie Goring called.
‘Elstrom, you son of a bitch,’ she said, sounding almost jovial as she exhaled smoky carcinogens into her mouthpiece. ‘Guess what?’
Surely she was phoning about Delray’s call, trumpeting my worthiness, but I waited so she could say it and I could act pleasantly surprised.
‘I just opened yesterday’s mail,’ she went on. ‘Know what was in it?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘A cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars.’
‘From whom?’ I asked.
‘Come on, Elstrom. No need to be coy.’
‘Doesn’t the check show the remitter?’
‘No.’
‘It wasn’t because of me.’
‘A deal’s a deal. You shook some big bucks loose. I owe you five per cent, five grand.’
‘Hold the dough. It wasn’t my work. There’s no clue who sent it?’
‘One of my father’s rich friends, someone you made feel guilty. Stop by and pick up your check. Oh, and Elstrom?’
‘Yes?’
‘That cop who called me last night? Total unnecessary, pal. I’m good for paying you a commission on everything I get. I got faith that more is coming for both of us, Elstrom. You and the cops will prove my father was murdered.’
A faint squeak came from across the would-be kitchen. I spun around. And froze. The cabinet I’d just tightened so perfectly was starting to tilt.
‘Keep plugging, Elstrom; there’s big money—’
The cabinet gave up a mighty screech, a horrible, wood-ripping sound, and let go from the wall. I dropped the phone and ran but I did not get there in time. It slammed to the floor and split into a dozen pieces.
Some seconds later, I thought to pick up the phone from the floor and put it back to my ear. Debbie had hung up.
Coherent thoughts about anything in that kitchen were out of the question. I left the cabinet kindling on the floor and went across the hall to my computer and the numbing diversion of the Internet. I started off by Googling hardware sites, searching for miraculous advances in wall-mounting technology. Nothing wondrous appeared. I’d used the right anchors; they just hadn’t been right enough.
My mind wandered, then, to Wendell and what sort of investigator he’d hired before he hired me. As I expected, Edward Small was a common name, and there were many of them. A toymaker, a guy who studied earthworms, and another who offered to repair Disney collectibles were just some of those listed. There was no mention of any being a private investigator.
I thought back. Mickey Rosen at the Newberry had said the first name could have been Edwin. I keyed in the new first name, found three different salesmen, an antique car enthusiast, four college professors, and at least two Rotarians – though in different parts of the country – and still no private detective.
I wanted coffee, but not bad enough to face the carnage in the kitchen. I typed in a new first name – Eugene – to delay getting up. My computer screen lit up with listings of lurid stories from the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, dating back only several weeks, to the beginning of March.
Eugene Small had been murdered.
The Tribune’s website tersely summarized: ‘Eugene Small, a local private detective, was found shot to death in an alley on Chicago’s north side. His wristwatch and wallet were missing, leading Chicago police to theorize that Small had been robbed.’
Plenty of people get killed in Chicago: dope distributors arguing over deals; gang bangers fighting for turf; addicts slumped too far into a fix; and kids, lots of kids, and other just
plain folks dropped by drooling morons shooting wild, not aiming so much as looking to simply make a cry in the night. The robbery and death of a private dick didn’t need to mean anything.
Unless it came from the Confessors’ Club.
Delray could find out more. I called but got his voice mail. I figured he was still huddled with Homicide. I left a lie for a message, saying I’d known Small from another case, had just heard of his death, and wanted him to find out what he could.
The Internet gave me Small’s business address. Being Sunday, mid-morning, I breezed into the Chicago Loop in twenty minutes.
South Wabash struggles to find the sun even more than South Michigan Avenue, one block to the east. Tall buildings still smudged from Chicago’s sootiest days a century earlier line both sides of the narrow street, and the elevated train that gave the Loop its name runs high on rusting old scaffolding down its center, casting the pavement in ever changing grids of shadow. Even at midday, when the sun is directly overhead, South Wabash Avenue is perpetually in gloom.
It is a street of ancient enterprises. Second- and third-generation diamond merchants, beef restaurateurs, and seedy clothing merchants operate behind dark doorways. Eugene Small’s building was a rickety old warren of tiny offices, catty-corner and down from what used to be Marshall Field’s before Macy’s bought it, cluttering its aisles and dimming its lights.
The door to the faded gilt lobby was open. The directory on the wall just past a small pharmacy said Small’s office was on the fifth floor. I pressed the elevator button, unsure whether the rumbling I then heard came from the elevator or a train passing high on the tracks outside. I waited for a few minutes, then gave it up and took the stairs.
The fifth floor was hushed. Everybody was at home for the weekend. My footsteps slapped loud and alone at green-and-black tiles dulled by too few waxings and too many decades of shuffling feet. The lettering on the frosted glass door panels was old and chipped and hard to read; no lights burned behind them. Another elevated train rumbled outside, shutting out the sound of my footfalls. And then it had gone and the building went silent again.
‘Small Detective Agency’ was lettered on a door halfway down. The office to the right advertised loans for people who had no credit; the glass on the door to the left was blank.
I remembered how easy it had been for Delray to pop the lock at the Confessors’ Club, and realized I’d forgotten to give him back his picks. They wouldn’t have done me any good even if I’d thought to bring them. I was strictly zero-tech when it came to illicit entering; all I was packing that morning was a Visa card.
Nothing clicked as I pressed the card between the door and the jamb. I didn’t even turn the knob. The door simply swung open.
FORTY-TWO
I bent to look at the jamb. Orange chewing gum had been pressed into the recess to prevent the bolt from sliding shut. Someone wanted easy access for a return visit.
Small’s desk was old scratched oak, littered with papers, a Starbucks cup, and a tipped over Dunkin’ Donuts box. The green vinyl on the desk chair was cracked; the red vinyl visitor’s chair held an old blue IBM Selectric typewriter. A half-dozen cardboard file boxes lay in a ragged row on the floor near the wall.
I sat at the desk. The green desk chair had been dished by a substantial man, and groaned as I reached to move away the Starbucks cup that still stank of the cream, dried now, that Small must have used to keep his weight and cholesterol up. One doughnut remained in the tipped Dunkin’ twelve-pack. It was sprinkled with coconut and somewhat intact, missing one human-sized bite and a few hundred smaller rodent nicks. Probably a few mice or rats were anticipating coming back to finish it, as had Eugene Small, I supposed.
The papers scattered next to the black phone were copies of invoices sent to furniture stores and used-car dealerships. Someone had pawed through them.
I re-sorted them into numerical order, reading as I went. Eugene Small had been a small-time repo man, grabbing back patio furniture and reclining chairs when he couldn’t get work repossessing cars. The invoices charged flat rates, three hundred for a car, fifty for a sofa, and twenty-five for a patio set.
One invoice was missing from the sequence. Judging by the dates of the invoices preceding and succeeding, it had been dated around the first of March, a few days before Small was killed. It seemed likely that the man who’d jammed gum into the office door lock thought that particular invoice was worth taking.
There was nothing in the desk drawers except a stapler, a full box of red-capped ballpoint pens boosted from an Econo-lodge, and a small pad of note paper with a trucking company logo on it.
I scooted the chair to the ragged row of file cartons. Most of the folders had been used several times, their tabs erased and re-lettered in pencil. That they’d been jammed roughly into the cardboard boxes might have meant simply that Small was a slob, except they were not in alphabetical order. Likely they’d been hurriedly searched and jammed back by someone who knew Small was never again going to return to his office.
There was no file for the Confessors’ Club, no file for Arthur Lamm or any of the dead men. Most especially, there was no file for Wendell Phelps. I felt no relief at that. I was certain Small was the detective Wendell had hired. Whoever had searched Small’s office knew that now, too.
I stood up, went to the closet. Four wire hangers dangled empty on a rod. An enormous pilled polyester cardigan sweater hung on a fifth. It smelled of gin and sweat and, like the worn, reused files in the cardboard boxes and the empty desk, was another marker of a guy who’d haunted the poorer alleys of town, grabbing back unpaid-for used cars and discount furniture.
A guy who might have stepped out of his league and into the path of someone killing in the heavy cream.
I’d seen enough of nothing to be sure I’d seen enough. The office had been looted.
I paused at the desk on the way to the door. I don’t like creatures that scurry, and saw no point in making their dinner easy. I dropped the foul smelling Starbucks cup and the remains of the coconut doughnut into the trash basket and was about to toss in the stained, crumb-littered paper desk-top calendar when I noticed its corners. The top sheet, January’s, was blank – nothing had been written on it. But the pad’s corners were creased from being turned up. I shook the candy sprinkles into the wastebasket and flipped to February’s page.
For a big man, Eugene Small wrote tiny; the little numbers and initials scribbled inside the squares beneath the coffee rings were almost indecipherable. Only the dollar sign at the top of the sheet was big. He’d retraced it so many times that the tip of his black ballpoint had cut through the paper. I flipped to the next page.
He’d filled the first days of March with tiny numbers and initials, too. They stopped on March 8. Small had been killed the next day.
Many of the initials matched the Bohemian’s list of those in the heavy cream. One pair of initials – A.L. – appeared most of all. Arthur Lamm.
Something rustled inside the closet. It was feeding time at the rat ranch. I grabbed the desk calendar and left.
I called Delray when I got outside but again got his voice mail. ‘Eugene Small’s office was tossed,’ I said. There was more to say, but I’d say it when he called me back.
Small’s intruder, likely his killer, had missed something important.
FORTY-THREE
I studied the calendar for an hour back at the turret, and then I called Leo.
‘I’ve broken and entered twice more since we last spoke,’ I said.
He groaned. ‘As skillfully as you did at Arthur Lamm’s agency?’
‘Even stealthier.’ I told him about Arthur Lamm, and the recording equipment Delray and I had found at the Confessors’ Club. And then I told him about Eugene Small.
‘You think Small got killed because he was working for Wendell?’ he asked.
‘Everything else the man did was small-time repo, not worth being killed over. I need you to look at something of significance.
’
He said he was headed downtown to Endora’s, but always liked being delayed for significance. He told me to come right over.
Light showed from the window of his basement office. I tapped the glass six times with the toe of my shoe – three taps, a pause, then three more, our code since seventh grade – and went to sit on the front steps. He came to open the door a minute later, wearing a huge blaze-orange T-shirt with a black deer head on it, the sort a 300-pound hunter would wear on a warm autumn day. Pressing his index finger to his lips to let me know Ma was still asleep – Saturday night was late-night dirty-movie night on her favorite cable channel, and she often didn’t stagger to bed until almost dawn – he led me through the front room to the kitchen.
Leo poured coffee into Walgreen’s mugs and we sat at the kitchen table. I placed Eugene Small’s calendar between us and flipped past the blank January sheet to February, littered with small markings and the enormous dollar sign, traced and retraced, at the top. I pointed to a small, almost microscopic ‘W.P.,’ with an equally small huge dollar amount written next to it: ‘$5,900.’ I told Leo of the one invoice copy that was missing from the small pile on Small’s desk.
He laid his finger on the tiny markings. ‘These are Eugene Small’s billable hours?’
‘And surveillance record.’
‘You think the missing invoice was Small’s copy of one he sent to Wendell for fifty-nine hundred?’
‘It’s a good guess.’
‘Why would someone want to take the invoice?’
I pointed again to the most obvious mark on February’s page, the enormous dollar sign inked over and again, so obsessively that the pen had almost torn through the page. ‘I’m worried someone else besides Small sees big bucks in going after Wendell.’
‘Blackmail, over what Small learned about the Confessors’ Club?’
I could only nod.
Leo picked up the calendar. ‘Let’s put this under better light before we draw too many stupid conclusions.’
The Confessors' Club Page 17