The Dead Caller from Chicago (11 page)

Leo and I were first for the new season. Again.

“I could say I'm pleased to see you jerks, but I'm not, so I won't,” Kutz had said, as Leo and I trudged across the snow.

As always, a scowl creased his grizzled, unshaved face. Young Kutz, as he was most formally known, was on the wrong side of eighty and looked every bit of it. That day, he was bundled up in thick coats and a sagging knit hat, as shiny with old grease as the hot dogs he served up.

Charitable people said his lack of social grace stemmed from his advanced years. Others, who'd known Kutz for many of those eighty years, said it was less complicated: Kutz had always been a mean son of a bitch.

“Happy to see you too, Mr. Kutz,” Leo said, effervescing at the thought of the delights to come. He ordered his usual six dogs, cheese fries, and huge root beer.

“And you?” Kutz fixed his beady eyes on me.

“My usual as well. One hot dog, and a small Diet Coke to soften part of the grease.”

Waiting for Kutz to snag the hot dogs from the muck of last year's water, we stomped our feet and studied the peeling paint on the menu board. The items were the same, but he'd lined out last year's prices and marked in new ones.

“Your prices have gone up twenty percent,” I said.

“Ain't you heard? There's been a depression.”

“Recession.”

“Recession, depression, whatever. They all mean the same thing: hard times.”

“Exactly. And that's why you raised your prices, because people are having a harder time getting by?”

“Some TV asshole says I got to embrace my financial destiny. That means I charge more. I keep the recession away from me, it spreads. Pretty soon the whole planet is doing better.”

Clearly, Kutz hadn't been idling over the winter. He'd been watching Lester Lance Leamington, same as me.

Our lunch was slid out beneath the scarred Plexiglas window in less time than would be needed if he served things hot, and we stomped around to the picnic tables in back. We brushed the snow off a table and two benches and sat down.

Surrounded by drifted snow that was almost knee deep, Leo lined up his six hot dogs like torpedoes in a row. “Ah,” he said, as he took his first bite of the season. With Leo, so much was ritual.

That had been less than a month ago.

“Where's the other jerk, the tiny one?” Kutz asked now, as I walked up alone.

“In the hospital, with tubes in every orifice, draining what he ate here the last time.”

His face lit up with joy. He loved compliments.

I pretended to examine the unmarked snow around the trailer. “Business good?”

“Word's getting around. We got celebrities coming here now. We're going to be on the news, any day.”

“Board of Health?”

“Laugh your ass. That broad from Channel 8, she came around.”

“Jennifer Gale?”

“That's the one. Nice rack, though you can't see much when she's wearing a coat.”

“She was here to eat?”

“She said she didn't have time, but she heard I was real popular with the construction trade, and was they coming around, now that they was building that new mansion? Millionaires is coming for sure, I told her. I'm going to be busting my butt real soon, with all the new houses going up.”

I took my hot dog and diet around to the back. Most of the snow was gone off the same table Leo and I had used that first time this season. I sat there. With me, things could be ritual, too.

I took a sip of the Coke and tried to think. Stumbling around, I'd exposed Endora and Ma to a bulky killer. Stumbling around, I'd turned one of Rivertown's building inspectors purple at the mention of the only new construction to come to town in years. Stumbling around, I was seeing Jennifer Gale everywhere.

I took out my cell phone and called her. She didn't answer. I left a message and took a bite of the hot dog. It was cold. I was cold.

I downed the last of the Coke, left the hot dog on the table for the pigeons, and got out of there.

 

Fifteen

The simultaneous ringing of my cell phone and the thunder of someone pounding on my door jerked me out of the La-Z-Boy the next morning. I'd fallen asleep with my clothes on, sometime in the middle of the night, when my nerves had at last become exhausted.

I grabbed my phone and ran down the wrought-iron stairs to the front door.

“Dek?” Jenny Galecki was saying, simultaneously to her cell phone and to me as I pulled open the door.

“You're returning my call?”

She was out of breath, and her face was flushed. “What?”

“I called you yesterday.”

“Five times.” She pushed past me and pulled the door shut. “You know Tebbins at city hall?”

“A lizard,” I said. “You want coffee?”

“Where were you this morning?”

“Sleeping.”

“Alone?”

“I have intimacy issues. What's with Tebbins?”

“You were screaming at him yesterday.”

“He wasn't being productive. Neither were you. As you said, I called five times.”

“Leo Brumsky? Was he screaming at him, too?”

“Leo, with Tebbins? What are you talking about?”

“Snark Evans, for openers. Remember him? That guy I checked out for you? Who is he? Was he there with Tebbins, Leo, and you?”

“You're talking riddles. I need coffee.” I feinted a turn to go up the stairs.

“Tebbins's secretary said she heard you yelling at him. Leo's name came up, along with your vanishing man, Snark.”

“You're really not going to tell me what's going on?”

“I'll buy you breakfast, but only if you move quickly.”

“Why's that?”

“So we won't be interrupted by the police arresting you. Someone, if not you or Leo or Snark Evans, just killed Tebbins.”

One of the advantages of falling asleep in one's clothes is it takes no time to get ready to go out. I followed her to her Prius, fast.

“How do Snark Evans, Leo Brumsky, and you relate to Tebbins?” she asked, pulling away from the curb.

Things had just gotten elevated. I'd have to trust her if I wanted to get any new information.

“Back when Leo was in college, he and Snark worked for Tebbins at the city garage. Years passed, and then, a few days ago, Snark called Leo, looking for something he supposedly left with him, back in the day.”

“What was it?”

“I have no idea.”

“And now Leo has disappeared?”

I said nothing.

“And that's why you were questioning Tebbins? Don't be coy, Dek. I followed the cops to Leo's next-door neighbor this morning. They're looking for him like they're looking for you. The neighbor told them Leo and his mother went on vacation. She also told them Mrs. Brumsky never goes on vacation, and Leo never forgets to have his snow removed. And she said you acted quite surprised when she told you all of that.”

“Perhaps he simply forgot to tell me.”

“That nice neighbor lady said you broke into his garage, and then his house.” She pulled to a stop in front of a small coffee shop.

The murmuring started as soon as we walked in. Unlike the barbecue joint we'd gone to, the coffee shop was well lit and had only one large room. The hostess recognized Jennifer Gale right off and walked us to a table in the middle of the restaurant. No doubt she'd take a cell phone photo: Celebrities ate there.

I pointed to a booth in the corner. “That one,” I said.

Jenny appeared not to notice. I knew her well enough to know acting nonchalant was just that—acting. She didn't like being watched. The hostess frowned when Jenny sat facing the wall, and me the craning necks. A waitress fairly raced over with coffee. Jenny ordered whole wheat toast, dry. I ordered Cheerios and skim milk.

“Cheerios?” she asked, but she was only trying to calm herself down.

“Tebbins?” I countered.

“Found dead by the cleaning lady in his rec room. He was tortured with cigarettes, and shot, probably late last evening.” She took a fast sip of coffee. “Where's Leo?”

I looked around the restaurant, at the faces trying not to look at us.

“I don't know,” I said and told her only about Leo's phone call. “I think Snark Evans is key to Leo's disappearance.”

“And Leo's vanished, Dek?”

“Tell me what's going on in Rivertown.”

“It can't fit with Leo disappearing.”

“Not long ago,” I said, “you first came to Rivertown to cover our illustrious zoning commissioner, Elvis Derbil, being busted for changing stale-dated labels on bottles of salad dressing.”

“Yep.” It was old ground.

“The Feds dropped that case, along with the next thing you looked into, our lizards using citizen committees to extract phony expense reimbursements,” I said.

“Old news, too.”

“Something bigger than dead-ended stories about salad oil schemes and expense report hustles brought you back. When I asked about it, you gave me pap about boredom and features, but I've done some Googling, now and again, since you left last fall.”

“Keeping track of me?”

“You've been getting great press in San Francisco, Jennifer Gale. They love you. Yet you requested a leave, rather abruptly. You returned to Chicago, but not to Channel 8. Instead, you've been sniffing around the construction site in Leo's neighborhood, a hot dog stand where the construction workers might have lunch, and who knows where else. And now, wonder of wonders, you've become Johnny on the spot in the Tebbins killing.”

“
Jenny
on the spot,” she corrected with a forced smile.

“Tebbins was Rivertown's junior building inspector, the guy who monitors construction compliance with the city's building codes. You've been staking out the only new construction the town has seen in years. What gives?”

Our waitress came then, with our microbreakfasts.

“I still don't see how Leo can fit into any of it,” she said, reaching for the toast.

“But…?”

“But I think Rivertown's going wrong, big-time wrong. I got a tip that something was going on in your lovely little town, and that even more doors than usual were being kept closed at city hall.”

“A tip out of the blue about closed doors was enough to kiss off San Francisco?”

“I hadn't seen my mother since last fall, and I thought I'd spend some time with her and maybe take a fast look around.”

“What have you learned?”

“Things I don't understand. Your town fathers are nervous about that new house going up.”

“Who's building it?”

“The owner is being anonymously represented by a lawyer downtown.”

“Your source is Elvis Derbil. He's the one you know best in Rivertown.”

“Robinson and Tebbins have issued work-stop orders, citing problems with permits and performance bonds and everything else they can think of. The architect is constantly revising the blueprints to meet the city's objections. It's a real battle.”

“You think Tebbins is dead because of that construction?”

She looked at me with unblinking eyes. “You think Leo is missing because he lives right down the block?”

 

Sixteen

No cops were waiting at the turret.

“I don't understand,” she said, looking down the street at city hall.

Jenny's lines into law enforcement throughout northern Illinois had never been the ordinary wires reporters worked at keeping taut. Hers were thick, like bundled high-speed information cables. It wasn't like her to have gotten wrong information.

“Look,” she said, “your priority's your friendship with Leo. I understand that. But the Tebbins murder is going to get big. You're sure Leo couldn't have killed Tebbins?”

“Leo's no killer.”

“I like Leo. I hope you're right.”

She drove away, and I walked down to city hall. The police department was out of sight, around the back. In Rivertown, law enforcement wasn't so much a civic necessity as it was a payroll to feed lizard relatives. I walked past a municipal Dumpster adorned, like so many things, with the image of my turret, and up to the door.

It was locked.

I peered in the window. There was no desk sergeant inside, but that was normal. There were very few uniformed officers in Rivertown. The department had lieutenants, mostly, because the pay grade was higher. Almost always, they were to be found safeguarding the taverns along Thompson Avenue, no matter what the hour.

The locked door, though, was odd, even for Rivertown.

There was a doorbell, just like a house. I rang it twice.

Nothing happened.

I tapped it two more times. A little speaker scratched to life. “Huh?”

“Dek Elstrom,” I said, like I was delivering pizza.

“Who?”

“Isn't this a police station?”

“Who is it?”

“Dek Elstrom,” I shouted.

The electric lock clicked open, and I stepped inside.

A chair scraped in back, and feet landed hard on the linoleum. Footsteps started up the hall, grew louder, and stopped. Someone was pausing to make sure it was I before coming further.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Dek Elstrom here to see somebody.”

The footsteps resumed, and finally Benny Fittle emerged from the gloom of the hall. He was about thirty, short and big-bellied. He wore his usual cold-weather outfit of a hoodie sweatshirt, sagging cargo shorts, and scuffed running shoes. It was the same as his hot-weather outfit, except then he swapped the hoodie for a T-shirt.

Everybody in town knew Benny. He patrolled the city's parking meters—one dollar for fifteen minutes—bagging the quarters and making sure the timers were running fast. Though he was naturally slow moving, the lizards prized Benny for his efficiency. He rarely paused to distinguish between meters that had already expired and those he was certain were likely to do so sometime soon.