Body of Evidence

6

Mark wasn't listed in the Chicago directory. There were five Mark Jameses and three M Jameses, and after I got home I tried each number and either got a woman or some unfamiliar man on the line. I was so bewildered I couldn't sleep.

It didn't occur to me until the next morning to call Diesner, the chief medical examiner in Chicago whom Mark had claimed to run into.

Deciding being direct was my best recourse, I said to Diesner after the usual pleasantries, "I'm trying to track down Mark James, a Chicago lawyer I believe you might know."

"James…" Diesner repeated thoughtfully. "Afraid the name's not familiar, Kay. You say he's a lawyer here in Chicago?"

"Yes." My heart sank. "With Orndorff amp; Berger."

"Now, I know Orndorff amp; Berger. A very well respected firm. But I can't recall, uh, a Mark James…"

I heard a drawer opening and pages flipping. After a long moment, Diesner was saying, "Nope. Don't see him listed in the Yellow Pages either."

After I hung up, I poured myself another cup of black coffee and stared out the kitchen window at the empty bird feeder. The gray morning threatened rain. I had a desk downtown requiring a bulldozer. It was Saturday. Monday was a state holiday. The office would be deserted, my staff already enjoying the three-day weekend. I should go in and take advantage of the peace and quiet. But I didn't care. I couldn't think of anything but Mark. It was as if he didn't exist, as if the man was imaginary, a dream. The more I tried to sort through it, the more tangled my thoughts became. What the hell was going on?

To the point of desperation, I tried to get Robert Sparacino's home number from Directory Assistance and was secretly relieved to find it was unlisted. It would be suicidal for me to call him. Mark had lied to me. He told me he worked for Orndorff amp; Berger, told me he lived in Chicago and knew Diesner. None of it was true! I kept hoping the phone would ring, hoping Mark would call. I straightened up the house, did the laundry and ironing, put on a pot of tomato sauce, made meatballs, and went through the mail.

The phone didn't ring until five P.M.

"Yo, Doc? Marino here," the familiar voice greeted me. "Don't mean to be bothering you on the weekend, but been trying to find you for two damn days. Wanted to make sure you was all right."

Marino was playing guardian angel again.

"Got a videotape I want you to see," he said. "Thought if you was going to be in, I'd just drop it by your house. You got a VCR?"

He knew I did. He had "dropped by" videotapes before. "What sort of videotape?"

I asked.

"This drone I spent the entire morning with. Interviewing him about Beryl Madison."

He paused. I could tell he was pleased with himself.

The longer I knew Marino, the more he had begun subjecting me to show-and-tell. In part I attributed this phenomenon to his saving my life, a horrific event that had served to bond us into an unlikely pair.

"You on duty?" I asked.

"Hell, I'm always on duty," he grumbled.

"Seriously."

"Not officially, okay? Knocked off at four, but the wife's off in Jersey visiting her mother and I got more loose ends to tie up than a damn rug maker."

His wife was gone. His kids were grown. It was a gray, raw Saturday. Marino didn't want to go home to an empty house. I wasn't exactly feeling contented and cheery inside my empty house, either. I stared at the pot of sauce simmering on the stove.

"I'm not going anywhere," I said. "Drop by with your videotape and we'll watch it together. You like spaghetti?"

He hesitated. "Well…"

"With meatballs. And I'm getting ready to make the pasta now. You'll eat with me?"

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I can do that."

When Beryl Madison wanted a clean car, it was her habit to visit Masterwash on Southside.

Marino had found this out by hitting every high-class car wash in the city. There weren't that many, a dozen at most that offered to roll your driverless car automatically through an assembly line of "hula skirts" gyrating over sudsy paint as spray jets fired needle streams of water. Following a quick hot-air drying, the car was manned by a human being and driven to a bay where attendants vacuumed, waxed, buffed, dressed the bumpers, and all the rest of it. A Masterwash "Super Deluxe," Marino informed me, was fifteen dollars.

"I was lucky as hell," Marino said as he guided spaghetti onto his fork with a soup spoon. "How do you track down something like that, huh? The drones wipe off, what, seventy, a hundred rides a day? And you think they're gonna notice a black Honda? Hell, no."

He was the happy hunter. He had bagged the big one. I knew when I had given him the preliminary fiber report last week he would start hitting every car wash and body shop in the city. One thing about Marino, if there was one bush in the desert, he had to look behind it.

"Hit pay dirt yesterday," he went on. "Buzzed by Mas terwash. Was close to last on my list because of its location. Me, I figured Beryl would take her Honda to some West Endy joint. But she didn't, took it Southside, and the only reason I can figure for that is the place has a body and detail shop. Turns out she took her car in shortly after she bought it last December and had one of those hundred-buck jobs done to seal the undercoating and paint. Next thing, she's opened an account there, made herself a member so she could get two bucks knocked off each wash and the perk of the week thrown in free."

"That's how you found out about it?" I asked. "Because of this membership deal?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "They don't have a computer. Had to look through all their damn receipts. But I found a copy of when she paid for her membership, and based on the condition of her car when we found it in her garage, I was guessing she had it washed not long before she ran off to Key West. Been rooting through her paperwork, too, looking at her charge-card bills. Only one listing for Mas-terwash, and that's the hundred-buck job I told you about. Apparently she paid cash when she had her ride cleaned after that."

"The car wash attendants," I said. "What do they wear?"

"Nothing orange that might fit with that oddball fiber you found. Most of 'em wear jeans, running shoes-all of 'em have on these blue shirts with 'Masterwash' embroidered in white on the pocket. I looked over everything while I was there. Nothing hit me. Only other fabric-type shit I saw was the barrels of white towels they use to wipe down the cars."

"Doesn't sound very promising," I remarked, pushing away my plate. At least Marino had an appetite. My stomach was still knotted from New York, and I was debating whether to tell him what had happened.

"Maybe not," he said. "But one guy I talked to made my antenna go up."

I waited.

"Name's Al Hunt, twenty-eight, white. Zeroed in on him right away. Saw him standing out there supervising the busy beavers. Something clicked. He looked out of place. Clean-cut, smart, like he ought have been wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase. I start asking myself, 'What's a guy like him doing in a dead end like this?' "He paused to sop his plate with garlic bread. "So I wander his way and start shooting the breeze. I ask him about Beryl, show him her picture from her driver's license. Ask if maybe he remembers seeing her there, and boom! He starts getting antsy."

I couldn't help but think I would start getting antsy, too, if Marino "wandered" my way. He probably ran over the poor man like a Mack truck.

"Then what?" I asked.

"Then we go inside, get coffee, and get down to serious business,' Marino replied. This Al Hunt's a first-class squirrel. To start with, the guy's been to graduate school. Gets a master's degree in psychology, then goes to work as a male nurse at Metropolitan for a couple years, if you can friggin' believe that. And when I ask him why he left the hospital for Masterwash, I find out his old man owns the damn place. Old man Hunt's got his fingers in pies all over the city. Masterwash is just one of his investments. He also owns a number of parking lots and is a slumlord for half of Northside. I'm supposed to automatically assume young Al's being groomed to move into his daddy's shoes, right?"

I was getting interested.

"Thing is, though, Al ain't wearing a suit even if he looks like he should be, right? Translated, Al's a loser. The old man don't trust him in pinstripes and sitting behind a desk. I mean, the guy's standing out there in the lot telling drones how to wax cars and dress the bumpers. Tells me right away something's off up here."

He pointed a greasy finger at his head.

"Maybe you should ask his father that," I said.

"Right. He's going to tell me his great white hope's a dumb ass."

"How do you plan to follow up?"

"Already did," he answered. "Witness the videotape I brought, Doc. Spent the entire morning with Al Hunt down at HQ. This guy will talk the wood off a door, and he's overly curious about what happened to Beryl, said he read about it in the papers-"

"How did he know who Beryl was?" I interrupted. "The papers and television stations didn't have any photographs of her. Did he recognize her name?"

"Said he didn't, had no idea it was the blond lady he'd seen at the car wash until I showed him the picture on her driver's license. Then he put on the big act of being shocked, real tore up about it. He was hanging on my every word, wanted to talk about her, was real intense for someone who supposedly didn't know her from Adam's house cat."

He placed his rumpled napkin on the table. "Best thing's for you to hear it yourself."

I put on a pot of coffee, gathered the dirty dishes, and we went into the living room and started the tape. The setting was familiar. I had seen it numerous times before. The police department's interrogation room was a small, paneled cubicle with nothing but a bare table in the middle of the carpeted floor. Near the door was a light switch, and only an expert or the initiated would notice the top screw was missing. On the other side of the tiny black hole was a video room equipped with a special wide-angle camera.

At a glance, Al Hunt didn't look frightening. He was fair, with receding light blond hair and a pasty complexion. He wouldn't have been unattractive were it not for a weak chin that caused his face to disappear into his neck. He was wearing a maroon leather jacket and jeans, his tapered fingers nervously fidgeting with a can of 7-Up as he watched Marino, who was sitting directly across from him.

"What was it about Beryl Madison, exactly?" Marino asked. "What made you notice her? You get a lot of cars in your car wash every day. Do you remember all your clients?"

"I remember more of them than you might think," Hunt replied. "Regular customers in particular. Maybe I don't remember their names, but I remember their faces because most people generally stand out in the lot while the attendants are wiping down their cars. Many of the customers supervise, if you know what I mean. They keep an eye on their cars, make sure nothing is forgotten. Some of them will pick up one of the cloths and help out, especially if they're in a hurry-if they're the kind of people who can't stand still, have to be doing something."

"Was Beryl that kind of person? Did she supervise?"

"No, sir. We have a couple of benches out there. It was her habit to sit outside on a bench. Sometimes she read the paper, a book. She really didn't pay any attention to the attendants and wasn't what I would call friendly. Maybe that's why I noticed her."

"What do you mean?" Marino asked.

"I mean she sent out these signals. I picked up on them."

"Signals?"

"People send out all kinds of signals," Hunt explained. "I'm attuned to them, pick them up. I can tell a lot about a person by the signals he or she sends out."

"Am I sending out signals, Al?"

"Yes, sir. Everybody sends them."

"What signals am I sending?"

Hunt's face was very serious as he answered, "Pale red."

"Huh?" Marino looked baffled.

"I pick up signals as colors. Maybe you think that's strange, but it's not unique. There are some of us who sense colors radiating from others. These are the signals I'm referring to. The signals I pick up from you are a pale red. Somewhat warm but also somewhat angry. Like a warning signal. It draws you in but suggests a danger of some sort-"

Marino stopped the tape and smiled snidely at me.

"Is the guy a squirrel or what?" he asked.

"Actually, I think he's rather astute," I said. "You are sort of warm, angry, and dangerous."

"Shit, Doc. The guy's goofy. To hear him talk, the whole friggin' population's a walking rainbow."

"There's some psychological validity to what he's saying," I replied matter-of-factly. "Various emotions are associated with colors. It's a legitimate basis for color schemes chosen for public places, hotel rooms, institutions. Blue, for example, is associated with depression. You won't find many psychiatric hospital rooms decorated in blue. Red is angry, violent, passionate. Black is morbid, ominous, and so on. As I recall, you told me Hunt has a master's degree in psychology."

Marino looked annoyed and restarted the tape.

"-I assume this may have to do with the role you're playing. You're a detective," Hunt was saying. "You need my cooperation at the moment, but you also don't trust me and could be dangerous to me if I have something to hide. That's the warning part of the pale red I sense. The warm part is your outgoing personality. You want people to feel close to you. Maybe you want to be close to people. You act tough, but you want people to like you…"

"All right," Marino interrupted." What about Beryl Madison? You pick up colors from her, too?"

"Oh, yes. That struck me right away about her. She was different, really different."

"How so?" Marino's chair creaked loudly as he leaned back and crossed his arms.

"Very aloof," Hunt replied. "I picked up arctic colors from her. Cool blue, pale yellow like weak sunlight, and white so cold it was hot like dry ice, as if she would burn you if you ever touched her. It's the white part that was different. I pick up the pastel shades from a lot of women. Feminine shades that fit with the colors they wear. Pink, yellow, light blues and greens. The ladies passive, cool, fragile. Sometimes I'll see a woman who sends out dark, strong colors like navy or burgundy or red. She's a stronger type. Usually aggressive, may be a lawyer or doctor or businesswoman, and often wears suits in the colors 1 just described. They're the type who stand out by their cars, their hands on their hips as they supervise everything the attendants are doing. And they don't hesitate to point out streaks on the windshield or any spots of dirt."

"Do you like that type of woman?" Marino asked.

He hesitated. "No, sir. To be honest."

Marino laughed, leaned forward and said to him, "Hey. Me, I don't like those types either. Like the pastel babes better."

I gave the real Marino one of my looks.

He ignored me as on-screen he said to Hunt, "Tell me some more about Beryl, about what you picked up."

Hunt frowned, thinking hard. "The pastel shades she sent out weren't all that unusual except I didn't interpret them as fragile, exactly. Not passive, either. The shades were cooler, arctic, as I've said, versus flower shades. As if she were telling the world to keep away from her, to give her a lot of space."

"Like maybe she was frigid?"

Hunt fidgeted with his 7-Up can again. "No, sir, I don't think I can say that. In fact, I don't think I was picking up that. Distance is what came to mind. A vast distance one would have to travel to get to her. But if you did, if she ever let you get close, she would burn you with her intensity. That's where the white-hot signals came in, the thing that made her stand out to me. She was intense, very intense. I had the feeling she was very intelligent, very complicated. Even when she was off sitting alone on her bench and not paying anybody any attention, her mind was working. She was picking up on everything around her. She was distant and white-hot like a star."

"Did you notice she was single?"

"She wasn't wearing a wedding ring," Hunt replied without pause. "I assumed she was single. I didn't notice anything about her car to tell me otherwise."

"I don't get it." Marino looked confused. "How could you tell from her car?"

"I think it was the second time she brought it in. I was watching one of the guys clean out the interior and there wasn't anything masculine inside. Her umbrella, for example-it was on the floor in back and was one of these slender blue umbrellas women usually carry, versus the black ones with big wooden handles men carry. Her dry cleaning was also in the back and it looked like women's clothing in the bags, no men's garments. Most married ladies pick up their husband's clothing when they pick up their own. Also, the trunk. No tools, jumper cables. Nothing masculine. It's interesting, but when you see cars all day long, you start to notice these details and make assumptions about the drivers without really thinking about it."

"Sounds like you did think about it in her case," Marino said. "Did it ever cross your mind to ask her out, Al? You sure you didn't know her name, didn't notice it on her dry cleaning slip, maybe on a piece of mail she left inside her car?"

Hunt shook his head. "I didn't know her name. Maybe I didn't want to know it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know…" He became uneasy, confused.

"Come on, Al. You can tell me. Hey, maybe I would have wanted to ask her out, you know? She's a good-looking lady, interesting. Hey, I would have thought about it, probably would have gotten her name on the sly, maybe even tried to ring her up."

"Well, I didn't." Hunt stared down at his hands. "I didn't try any of that."

"Why not?"

Silence.

Marino said, "Maybe because you had a woman like her once and she burned you?"

Silence.

"Hey, it happens to all of us, Al."

"In college," Hunt replied almost inaudibly. "I went out with a girl. For two years. She ended up with some guy in med school. Women like that… they look for certain types. You know, when they start thinking about settling down."

"They look for the big shots."

Marino's voice was getting sharp around the edges. "The lawyers, doctors, bankers. They don't look for guys working in car washes."

Hunt's head jerked up. "I wasn't working in a car wash then."

"Don't matter, Al. The blue-chip babes like Beryl Madison ain't likely to give you the time of day, right? Bet Beryl didn't even know you were alive, right? Bet she wouldn't have recognized you if you'd run into her damn car on a street somewhere…"

"Don't say things like that-"

"True or false?"

Hunt stared at his clenched fists.

"So maybe you had a thing for Beryl, huh?"

Marino continued relentlessly. "Maybe you was thinking about this white-hot lady all the time, fantasizing, wondering what it would be like to get with her, date her, have sex with her. Maybe you just didn't have the guts to talk to her directly because you figured she'd consider you a low-life, beneath her-"

"Stop it! You're picking on me! Stop it! Stop it!" Hunt cried shrilly. "Leave me alone!"

Marino stared unemotionally across the table at him.

"Sound just like your old man, don't I, Al?"

Marino lit up a cigarette and waved it as he talked. "Old Man Hunt who thinks his only kid's a fuckin' fairy because you're not a mean-ass-son-of-a-bitch slumlord who don't give a shit about anybody's welfare or feelings."

He exhaled a stream of smoke, then spoke gently. "I know about the Almighty Old Man Hunt. Also know he told all his buddies you was a pansy, was ashamed to have his blood in your veins when you went to work as a male nurse. Fact is, you came over to his damn car wash because he said if you didn't, you'd be disinherited."

"You know that? How did you know that?" Hunt stammered.

"I know a lot of things. Also know, as a matter of fact, the people at Metropolitan said you was topflight, had a real gentle way with patients. They was sorry as hell to see you leave. Think the word they used to describe you was 'sensitive,' maybe too sensitive for your own good, huh, Al? Explaining why you don't date, don't have no ladies. You're scared. Beryl scared the shit out of you, didn't she?"

Hunt took a deep breath.

"That why you didn't want to know her name? Then you wouldn't be tempted to call her, try anything?"

"I just noticed her," Hunt responded nervously.

"Really, there wasn't anything more to it than that. I didn't think about her in the manner you've suggested. I was just, uh, just very aware of her. But I didn't cultivate it. I never even talked to her until the last time she came in-"

Marino hit the Stop button again. He said, "This is the important part…"

He paused and looked closely at me. "Hey, you all right?"

"Was it really necessary to be so brutal?" I answered emotionally.

"You ain't been around me much if you think that was brutal," Marino said.

"Sorry. I forgot I was sitting in my living room with Attila the Hun."

"It's all acting," he said, hurt.

"Remind me to nominate you for an Academy Award."

"Come off it, Doc."

"You absolutely demoralized him," I said.

"It's a tool, okay? You know, a way to shake things loose, make people say things maybe they wouldn't have thought of otherwise."

He turned back toward the set and added, as he hit the Play button, "The entire interview was worth what he tells me next."

"When was this?" Marino asked Hunt. "The last time she came in was when?"

"I'm not sure of the exact date," Hunt answered. "A couple months ago, but I do remember it was a Friday, uh, late morning. The reason I remember is I was supposed to have lunch with my father that day. I always have lunch with him on Friday so we can discuss the business."

He reached for his 7-Up. "I always dress a little better on Friday. I was wearing a tie that day."

"So Beryl comes in late morning on this Friday to have her car washed," Marino prompted him. "And on this occasion you talked to her?"

"She actually talked to me first," Hunt replied as if this was important. "Her car was coming out of the bay when she walked up to me, told me she spilled something on the carpet inside the trunk and wanted to know if we could get it out. She took me to her car, opened the trunk, and I saw the carpet was soaked. Apparently, she had groceries in the trunk and a half-gallon bottle of orange juice broke. I guess that's why she decided to drive her car in to be washed right away."

"Was the groceries still in the trunk when she brought her car in?"

"No," Hunt replied.

"Do you remember what she was wearing that day?"

Hunt hesitated. "Tennis clothes, sunglasses. Uh, it looked like she'd just played. I remember because I'd never seen her come in like that. In the past she was always in street clothes. I also remember her tennis racket and a few other things were in the trunk because she took these things out when we started shampooing. I remember she wiped them off and placed them in the backseat."

Marino pulled a datebook out of his breast pocket. Opening it and flipping back several pages, he said, "Is it possible this was the second week of July? Friday the twelth?"

"It could have been."

"Do you remember anything else? Did she say anything else?"

"She was almost friendly," Hunt answered. "I remember that well. I assume it was because I was helping her out, making sure we took care of her trunk when I really didn't have to. I could have told her she'd have to take her car to the detail shop and pay thirty dollars for a shampoo. But I wanted to help her. And I was hanging around while the guys worked when I happened to notice the passenger's side of her car. The door was messed up. It was weird. It looked as if someone had taken his key and gouged a heart and some letters on the door right below the handle. When I asked her how it happened, she went around to the door and inspected the damage. She just stood there staring. I swear, she turned white as a sheet. Apparently she hadn't noticed the damage until I pointed it out. I tried to calm her down, told her I didn't blame her for being upset. The Honda's brand new, not a scratch on it, about a twenty-thousand-dollar car. Then some jerk does something like that. Probably some kid with nothing better to do."

"What else did she say, Al?" Marino asked. "Did she have any explanation for the damage?"

"No, sir. She didn't say much of anything. It's like she got scared, was looking around, really upset. Then she asked me where the nearest phone was and I told her there was a pay phone inside. By the time she came back out, the car was finished and she left-"

Marino stopped the tape and popped it out of the VCR. Remembering coffee, I went into the kitchen and fixed two cups.

"Looks like that answers one of our questions," I said when I returned.

"Oh, yeah," Marino said, reaching for the cream and sugar. "The way I'm picturing it, Beryl probably used the pay phone to call her bank or maybe the airlines to make a reservation. Finding that little Valentine scratched in her door was the last straw. She freaked. From the car wash she heads straight to her bank. I've checked out where she had her account. On July twelfth at twelve-fifty P.M., she withdrew almost ten thousand dollars cash, cleaning out her account. Was a top-drawer customer. Didn't get an argument."

"Did she get traveler's checks?"

"No, if you can believe it," he said. "Tells me she was more scared of someone finding her than she was of being robbed. She pays cash for everything down there in the Keys. No one has to know her name if she's not using credit cards or traveler's checks."

"She must have been terrified,' I said quietly. "I can't imagine carrying that much cash. I'd have to be crazy or frightened to the point of utter desperation."

He lit a cigarette. I did the same.

Shaking out the match, I asked, "Do you think it's possible the heart was scratched on her car while it was being washed?"

"I asked Hunt the same question to see how he reacted," Marino replied. "He swore it couldn't have been done at the car wash, said someone would have seen it, seen the person doing it. I'm not so sure. Hell, you leave fifty cents in your change box at those joints and it's gone when you get your ride back. People steal like bandits. Change, umbrellas, checkbooks, you name it, and no one saw a thing when you ask. Hunt could have done it, for all I know."

"He is a little unusual," I conceded. "I find it peculiar he was so vividly aware of Beryl. She was one of a very large number of people through that place every day. She was coming in what? Once a month, maybe less?"

He nodded. "But she stood out like a neon sign to him. Could be perfectly innocent. Then again, maybe not."

I recalled what Mark had said about Beryl's being "memorable."

Marino and I sipped our coffees in silence, darkness settling over my thoughts again. Mark. There had to be some mistake, some logical explanation for why he wasn't listed with Orndorff amp; Berger. Perhaps his name had been left out of the directory or the firm had recently become computerized and he was improperly coded, and his name didn't come up when the receptionist keyed it into her computer. Maybe both receptionists were new and didn't know many of the lawyers. But why wasn't he listed in Chicago at all?

"You look like something's eating you," Marino finally said. "Been looking like that ever since I got here."

"I'm just tired," I answered.

"Bullshit." He sipped his coffee.

I almost choked on mine when he said, "Rose told me you skipped town. You have a productive little chat with Sparacino in New York?"

"When did Rose tell you that?"

"Don't matter. And don't go getting hot at your secretary," he said. "She just said you had to go out of town. Didn't say where, who, or what for. The rest of it I found out on my own."

"How?"

"You just told me, that's how," he said. "Didn't deny it, did you? So what did you and Sparacino talk about?"

"He said he talked to you. Maybe you should tell me about that conversation first," I answered.

"Nothing to it."

Marino retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray. "He calls me the other night at home. Don't ask me how the hell he got my name and number. He wants Beryl's papers and I'm not about to hand them over. Maybe I would have been more inclined to be more cooperative, but the guy's an asshole. Started giving orders, acting like King Tut. Said he's the executor of her estate, started threatening."

"And you did the honorable thing by sending the shark to my office," I said.

Marino looked blankly at me. "No. I didn't even mention you."

"You're sure?"

"Sure I'm sure. The conversation lasted maybe three minutes. That was it. Your name didn't come up."

"What about the manuscript you listed in the police report? Did Sparacino ask about it?"

"He did," Marino said. "I didn't give him any details, told him all her papers was being processed as evidence, gave him the usual about not being at liberty to discuss her case."

"You didn't tell him the manuscript you found was receipted to my office?" I asked.

"Hell, no."

He looked strangely at me. "Why would I tell him that? It isn't true. I had Vander check the thing for prints, stood there while he did it. Then I took it back out of the building with me. It's in the property room with all her other shit even as we speak."

He paused. "Why? What did Sparacino tell you?"

I got up to refill our coffee cups. When I returned, I told Marino everything. When I was finished, he was staring at me in disbelief, and there was something else in his eyes that thoroughly unnerved me. I think it was the first time I had ever seen Marino scared.

"What are you going to do if he calls?" he asked.

"If Mark does?"

"No. If the Seven Dwarfs does," Marino said sarcastically.

"Ask him to explain. Ask him how he can work for Orndorff amp; Berger, ask him how he can live in Chicago when there's no record of it."

My frustration was mounting. "I don't know, but I'll try to find out what the hell is really going on."

Marino looked away, his jaw muscles flexing.

"You're wondering if Mark's involved… tied in with Sparacino, involved in illegal activities, crime," I said, barely able to put into words this chilling suspicion.

He angrily lit another cigarette. "What else am I supposed to think? You haven't seen your ex-Romeo for more than fifteen years, haven't even talked to him, heard a word about his whereabouts. It's like he fell off the edge of the earth. Then he's suddenly on your doorstep. How do you know what he's really been doing all this time? You don't. You only know what he tells you-"

We both started at the clangor of the telephone. I instinctively glanced at my watch as I went to the kitchen. It was not quite ten, and my heart was tight with fear as I picked up the receiver.

"Kay?"

"Mark?" I swallowed hard. "Where are you?"

"Home. Flew back to Chicago, just got in…"

"I tried to get you in New York and Chicago, at the office…" I stammered. "Called while I was at the airport."

There was a pregnant pause.

"Listen, I don't have much time. I just wanted to call to tell you I'm sorry about how it went and to make sure you're all right. I'll be in touch."

"Where are you?". I asked again. "Mark? Mark!"

I was answered by a dial tone.