The Dead Caller from Chicago (5 page)

I started to turn, then stopped with a thought. “Good news about that new house going up, right?”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rivertown's building inspector asked, of the only new construction begun in years.

I named Leo's street. “Big one, too. Got to be a million dollars going up on that property.”

His face darkened. “I can't help you, Elstrom.”

I passed a larger private office on my way out. According to the nameplate next to the door, it belonged to Chief Inspector Robinson. His desk had a newspaper, too, but he acted a lot friendlier, giving me a smile and a wave as I walked by.

I'd walked halfway back to the turret when a burgundy Escalade passed by. I couldn't see the driver behind the dark tinted glass, but the Cadillac was dirty. Odds were good he was headed to the garage for a wash.

I'd struck out at the garage and struck out at city hall. I decided to try the garage one more time.

I had to laugh as I pulled up. The burgundy Escalade that had passed me on the road was indeed parked in front of one of the wash racks. The chief building inspector was just getting out.

“Get what you need from Tebbins?” he asked.

“Robinson, right?”

He stuck out his hand. “Call me Bruno. You didn't look happy, leaving our office.”

“Tebbins dusted me off about someone he might have known when he worked here.”

He smiled. “Try me. I was in charge of the garage back then.”

“I'm looking for someone named Snark.”

“Snark Evans?”

“I don't have a last name.”

“How many Snarks can there be? He worked here, part of one summer, years ago.”

“You remember him, even though it's been a long time.”

“Not just because of the name. He was a punk. Why the interest?”

“A friend of mine knew him.”

“And that friend would be…?”

I'd already decided I had to play some things openly to explain my interest. “Leo Brumsky.”

He grinned. “Now there was a good kid. Skinny, couldn't have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Worked hard every minute. It was lousy work, too, washing trucks. It was before we had the power wash equipment. How is old Leo?”

“Still lives in Rivertown. He's a provenance specialist—”

“A what?”

“Someone who authenticates things for auction houses.”

“Figures. He was real smart. He was here at the same time as Snark. They weren't exactly friends, I don't think, but they ate lunch together most every day, out back. You here asking on your own, or for Leo?”

“It's complicated.”

“I would have thought Leo had heard, but maybe not.” He scratched his chin. “Come to think of it, Leo left early that summer, too.”

“Heard what?”

“Snark Evans died, late that summer.”

The shock in Leo's voice, when I asked who'd called, came back:
A dead man,
he'd said.

“What did Evans die of?”

“No idea. Evans left here around the middle of July, and that I remember only because I had no chance to find another kid in a hurry. They were all working other summer jobs. With Leo already gone with mononucleosis. I was screwed. That summer, city vehicles stayed dirty. Anyway, later on, someone said Snarky was dead. Probably killed in some dumb-ass robbery.”

“Snark was a thief?”

“Like I said, a real punk. We had a master key for all the lockers—well, let me just put it to you this way: Tebbins found out Snarky was selling stuff out of his locker.”

“Hot stuff?”

“Earrings, and other ladies' jewelry, and men's watches. I figured he was breaking into cars or shoplifting stores. We figured the law was on him, the way he quit sudden.”

“Then he was killed?”

“Not until after he was gone a month or two. Someone saw a newspaper clipping saying he'd died out of state somewhere. Why would a nice guy like Leo be interested in that greaseball after all these years?”

“Leo never forgets the past. He remembers people and gets curious about what's happened to them.”

“So he hired you to indulge that curiosity?” He'd cocked an eyebrow, too smart to buy the lie. “I wouldn't have thought he had any real fondness for Snarky,” he went on. “Nobody did. Whatever is on Leo's mind, you tell him to be careful about Snarky. The kid's no good, even dead.”

I asked him some of the same questions again, and he gave me the same answers again. He didn't know much.

Then he said, “Heard you stopped in to see the big boss, J. J.”

“Word gets around?”

“Some folks in city hall got nothing to do but talk.”

“I need to get my zoning changed.”

He laughed. “Good luck on that. City thinks of your place as its own.”

“We're not done, J. J. and I.”

“Best you mind yourself there. She's smart, not like Elvis, that brother of hers. Word is, J. J.'s going to be mayor, and soon. Don't trifle with her.”

I had one more thought. “Leo's leaving had nothing to do with Snark Evans, right?”

His eyes were steady on mine, knowing there was plenty I was wasn't saying. “Not to my knowledge, but maybe you should ask your good buddy Leo that.”

“I will.”

He shook his head. “It was a bad summer, all around.”

Walking back to the Jeep, I had the thought that perhaps that bad summer had come around again.

 

Six

The Newberry Library had sat a few blocks north of the Chicago River for over a century, half of what it was meant to be. According to legend, it was planned to be Chicago's main library, but its benefactor, Mr. Newberry, expired en route to Europe before it could be built. No sooner had he been returned to Chicago and rolled up the hill to the cemetery, still in the same barrel of rum in which he'd been preserved aboard ship, than his wife and daughters began squabbling over his financial remains. By all accounts a parsimonious lot, they ultimately agreed to fund only half the proposed construction. Chicago's city fathers, already exhibiting the sensibilities that would make them famous for centuries, grabbed what they could—and then built half a library. The front facade was erected as specified, but the sides were stopped exactly halfway back, and the rear was sided with cheap common brick. Instantly unsuitable as a central library, the quirky building became a repository for obscure old manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. And Leo's girlfriend, Endora.

Though never quite a superstar, she'd been a popular model from the time she was eighteen and had appeared frequently between the covers of most of the major national magazines. Her brains matched her beauty. During her modeling years, she was a top student at Northwestern, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in history.

When the fashion assignments slowed to a trickle, Endora quit modeling, used a fraction of her cash to buy an upscale condo, and took a low-paying job as a researcher at the Newberry. It was there that she met Leo. She towered over him physically, but their massive intellects and slanted views of the world were perfectly paired. If she'd thought to hang model airplanes from her bedroom ceiling, she'd have painted them with psychedelic brightness, too.

I was Leo's best friend, but Endora was his life. If anyone knew where Leo had gone, it was she.

But she wasn't answering her phones.

As I climbed the wide stairs into the Newberry, I thought of when, just a few years before, I'd gone to that library to hide from the press. My reputation was trashed, my marriage was collapsing. All I could think to do was to hide out in the deep quiet of one of the upstairs reading rooms and look at old maps of places that no longer were. It helped to calm my pounding head.

She'd watched over me those days, checking on me frequently, bringing me up to the employees' rooms for lunch and coffee. She'd showed me her cramped little cubicle and introduced me to her boss. He weighed over three hundred pounds and shook all of it when he laughed, which as I remembered was quite often.

He remembered me but was guarded. “Tell me why you're looking for her?”

I was guarded, too. “I called here yesterday. They said she wasn't in. I tried again today. They said she wasn't in. I thought I'd swing by, hoping she'd returned.”

“You also tried her cell and home numbers?”

“Of course.”

“And without her having returned your numerous calls, you still thought stopping by would be productive?”

I tried giving that a shrug.

“Cut the crap, Dek.”

“I'm trying to find Leo. A neighbor told me he's on vacation, with his mother. His mother doesn't vacation. Leo does, with Endora. Nobody's around; not Leo, not his mother, not Endora.”

He studied my face for a long moment and said, “She phoned a few days ago, saying she needed personal time. She didn't mention anything about a vacation.”

“You found that odd,” I said.

“Endora has never asked for personal time.”

“Have you noticed anything else strange going on with her?”

“That call, so sudden, was enough. She's got a major exhibit starting in two weeks, and this is absolutely the worst time she could take off. Endora is never vague about anything. She's precise, factual, and succinct. But the day she called, she was vague as hell about everything, including when she'd be back. Obviously there was something going on in her life, but since she's never asked for anything before, I let it alone.”

“She mentioned once she had family in northern Michigan. A mother, I think.”

“The Newberry never releases personal information about its employees.”

“No need. You can find some pretext to call her mother to make sure Endora is safe.”

He kept his face blank, noncommittal.

“You're a research man, right?” I asked.

“This is the Newberry, dear sir.”

“This morning, I tried researching a name on the Internet: Snark Evans. I found nothing on the criminal background and general sites. That was no surprise; Evans is a common name, and for sure Snark is an earned name, not a given one.”

“Who is he?”

“A small-time punk, a burglar, who died years ago.”

“How does this concern Endora?”

“Someone calling himself Snark Evans upset Leo with a phone call, right before he and his mother and Endora disappeared.”

He said he could promise nothing.

Like the builders of the Newberry, I said I would take what I could get.

*   *   *

It had started to snow. I stepped out of the Newberry into great sticky clumps of it, coming down as though some maniac upstairs were sitting in the dark, shredding wet white felt. March was like that in Chicago. It teased with sun and a warming day, promising spring, and then slammed down a sticky blanket so wet and thick people could only think winter would never end. On such days, everyone plodded. Traffic crawled; pedestrians dragged themselves across intersections like they were shouldering lead. It took me an hour to get south to the expressway, another to get to Leo's block. By that time, it was dark.

Two men were getting into pickups at the big hole between the houses. The pile of cement forms at the front of the excavation didn't look any smaller. They'd made no better progress than I had, that day.

Leo's house was another big hole between bungalows lit against the night. I pulled to the curb and shut off the engine, thinking of the lights that weren't there. There'd been no time to set lamps on timers. Absolutely, they'd run.

A pair of headlamps came down the street behind me. One of the pickups passed by. The second followed a moment later.

A third pair of headlamps switched on, back at the construction site, and the vehicle started coming down the street. Halfway to Leo's, it swung sharply to the curb and its lights were switched off.

Someone had stopped to make a call, perhaps, or check directions, or simply to park closer to a house. I rolled down my window to catch the sound of a car door slamming as someone got out. I heard nothing. I waited in the dark, watching the rearview mirror for five minutes, maybe ten. No door slammed. No headlamps came back on.

I started my engine and pulled out. Turning right at the corner, I saw the headlamps start up behind me. It didn't have to mean anything.

I pulled onto the bright carnival that was Thompson Avenue, and for a moment, there were all kinds of headlamps behind me, slow-cruising gents checking out the meat winking through the snow. I turned off onto the side street, then onto my street. Getting out, I looked back. A car had pulled off onto the side street that led to mine and stopped. Men used that stub of a street sometimes, with the less demanding of the girls that worked the curbs.

Invariably, though, the johns cut their headlamps. Not so the car that had pulled off Thompson. Its headlamps remained on.

I stepped into the cold that was the turret, but I didn't turn on any lights. I found my way up the wrought-iron stairs and turned past the kitchen to the slit window that most directly faced the street. The headlamps were moving toward the turret. The snow was too thick to see what kind of car it was.

It stopped in front of the turret. Its lights went out. I swore at myself for not turning on the outside light. It would have helped me see.

Nothing happened for two or three minutes. Then the car door opened and was shut quickly. I couldn't make out anything in the brief flash of the car's inside light.

I waited at the top of the second-floor landing.

Someone started beating on my door.

 

Seven

The figure stood in the dark, outside my door.

“Jenny Galecki,” I said.

“Jennifer Gale, underappreciated media personality,” she corrected, raising her chin, sniffing, a parody of arrogant celebrity.

We stood as awkward as kids fixed up for a prom until I found the wit to say, “You followed me from Leo's block?”