Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

Thirty-six

Aggert returned my call at ten the next morning, just as I was leaving the turret to meet Leo. Down the side street, the one-eyed orange Maverick sputtered and wheezed to life.

“You got your body now, Elstrom; two of them, in fact.” He cracked a mint. “I just got a visit from Lieutenant Dillard at the Sheriff’s Department. He told me they just found Louise’s-excuse me, Carolina’s-body, and wanted to know how I was told of her death.”

Dillard hadn’t even told him Carolina’s real name. “That must have been a fast conversation,” I said, high-stepping through the snow across the spit of land.

Fifty yards to my left, the orange in my peripheral vision that was Benny Fittle’s Maverick was sputtering. He would need time to catch up. I stopped when I got to Thompson Avenue and acted like I was admiring the view of the tonks.

“Fast conversation; you got that right,” Aggert said. “I told him the house and car keys had been slipped through my mail slot and a message left on my machine.”

The Maverick’s engine was smoothing, and a break in traffic big enough for both of us was coming. “Things are heating up,” I said as I crossed Thompson Avenue.

Aggert sighed. “Our concern is only with the estate. Did you call with news of the key?”

Benny Fittle, subtle surveillance man, had pulled to a stop across the street and was staring at me through the side window of the Maverick. I stopped on the sidewalk. I didn’t want him to know where I was going.

“Forget the key. I called to warn you that you might get a visitor. Someone’s backtracking Carolina’s trail, and that might lead to you.”

“Why me?” he said quickly.

“You were her lawyer. People who don’t know much think lawyers know everything.”

The mint clattered against his teeth, unoffended. “I only held her will and notified her executor.”

“I just called to warn you.”

“That damned key, Elstrom. It comes down to that damned key.”

“You can call Dillard, ask him to protect you. Or you can go away for a couple of weeks. I’ll call you when things cool down.”

“You’ve got to find that lockbox, Elstrom. I’ve called every damned bank in the state, as Louise Thomas’s lawyer. They’ll only talk to her executor. You find that lockbox. I’ll escrow the money for the Feds. Then your killer will have nothing to go after.”

“I’m going to give the key to Dillard.”

“Are you crazy? No one will believe you just gave it up. That key keeps us safe.”

“Carolina bet on that, too. It got her dead.”

“It’s our only bargaining chip.”

“Whoever is hunting the money doesn’t bargain; he kills. The key goes to Dillard.”

His voice sagged. “When are you going to see Dillard? Today?”

“I’ve got stuff to do first. Next couple of days.”

“You’re screwing with our lives.”

“I called to warn you. Get out of town for a while, Mr. Aggert.” I thumbed him off of my cell phone. There was no time.

I was tempted to wave at Benny, but he was eating something round-a doughnut, maybe, or a bagel-and I worried that when he saw his cover was blown, his embarrassment might cause him to spit up all over what was surely the last Maverick running. So I gave him no hint he’d been spotted as I went into the liquor store. Inside, I hurried past the display of two-dollar pints and went out the back door. The owner kept it unlocked during business hours, as a service to those customers who lived in the alley. I ran to a building three doors down and climbed the exposed wood stairs to the second floor.

“What’s Benny eating?” Leo asked when I opened the door. He was at the double window facing Thompson Avenue, washing years of grime off the glass in the tiny kitchenette apartment.

“A doughnut or a bagel. It ought to keep him occupied until I come back out.”

Leo had moved fast. First thing that morning, he called a banker who knew a landlord who’d been happy to take a fast three hundred for a few days’ use of the place above the shuttered hardware store. Leo had the keys by ten o’clock.

The room had been painted pale blue, then layered with cooking grease, cigarette smoke, and despair. The decor didn’t matter; we were after the view. The double windows looked across Thompson Avenue and the little spit of vacant land to the timbered door of the turret.

“It’s going to be a while before I can pay you the whole rent on this.” I’d brought one hundred and eighty dollars, all that remained of Maris’s seven hundred.

“I’m doing this for Maris, not you.”

I moved closer to the window.

“Not too close, Dek. This won’t work if you’re spotted here.”

I stepped back.

The paper towel squeaked on the glass. “You sure we’ve got forty-eight hours?” he asked.

I couldn’t see his face, but there was no mistaking the nervousness in his voice.

“Dina called me right before I came over here. She said the Kovacs brother just left the Scupper with my card. He was driving an old heap with Indiana plates. That means no rental car, no flying.” I checked my watch. It was ten thirty. “Assuming no breakdowns, he’ll arrive sometime tomorrow. My guess is he’ll wait until dark, tomorrow night, to come at me.”

He stopped rubbing on the window. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t ask Dillard to have the surveillance start now.”

“Our county sheriff doesn’t have jurisdiction.” I pointed at the window. “The surveillance would get passed to Rivertown’s finest. When they find out it involves the turret and me, they’ll tell Benny to stock up on more doughnuts because he’s going to be working late. Dillard said he can get a one-shot accommodation from the Cook County sheriff. Two coppers will be waiting for your call, starting tomorrow night. You alert them, they’re here in five minutes to nab Kovacs.”

“He’ll come tomorrow night, for sure?”

“For the key to a lockbox that holds over a million dollars? You bet.”

I bent to look at the long lens camera he’d mounted on a tripod.

“Good enough to pick out the wood grain on your front door at night, so long as you don’t jiggle the camera,” he said. “With luck, I’ll be able to give them a license plate number along with the description of the car.” He set the Windex on the floor beneath the window and turned to look at me. “What if he doesn’t come tomorrow evening?”

“Then the next night, or the one after. We’ve got the key to over a million dollars.”

Benny Fittle chugged away at nine thirty-five that evening. He might have been convinced I was tucked in for the night. More likely, he was out of doughnuts. Either way, we could now set things up. Leo hoofed it across Thompson Avenue to the turret.

He’d insisted that we fine-tune the view through the long lens by maximizing the lighting that would fall outside the turret. After we each got something to eat, I was to watch from the kitchenette and report improvements as he adjusted lights on the first, second, and third floors. Then we would switch locations. He would come to the kitchenette, to satisfy himself that the lighting on the timbered door was the best we could get.

“This is a waste of time,” I said as he stomped the snow off his boots outside my door.

“Dare I bring up the last time you did night surveillance with a long-lens camera?” he asked, coming in. He was referring to a night when I’d staked out a Dumpster.

“I was looking for something that wasn’t there.”

“You fell asleep.”

“Allegedly. And that had nothing to do with lighting.”

“We make sure everything’s right tonight.” Leo fluttered his fingers at the floor of the turret. “Want to take some sawdust to breathe so you’ll feel at home?”

I fluttered a finger of my own, told him I’d call him at eleven, and headed over to what used to be a Dog ‘n Suds drive-in. Nowadays, nobody drove in; they mostly staggered up, exhausting ninety-proof fumes. Still, the hamburgers were decent enough, if only for the truly undiscriminating, and they were fast. I got two, wrapped in foil to minimize their flammability, and hustled back to the shiny walls of the kitchenette.

At ten fifteen, as I was finishing my first hamburger, a rusty red Honda Civic pulled up to the front of the turret. I trained the long lens on it to see a kid in a red shirt and matching ball cap get out. Leo had said he ordered one of his grunge pizzas from Mama Pasta’s, a fogged-window joint that had been hardening arteries in Rivertown since before I was born. Through the camera, I watched Leo comically smack his lips as he paid for the pizza-his usual abomination of pineapple, spinach, and double Polish sausage-and wave off the change.

I finished the second hamburger at ten thirty. Then, for a time, I played the long lens up and down Thompson Avenue, looking at the cars and the girls and the johns.

At eleven, I called Leo’s cell phone, as we’d agreed. I was going to begin by complaining that I could smell his pizza through my window.

He didn’t answer. After five rings, his cell cut over to voice mail. I clicked off and squinted through the long lens. Lights burned brightly through the slit windows on the first and second floors. They were too narrow to see through, but I supposed he was in my office, where I kept my four-inch television and the electric blue La-Z-Boy.

I tried his cell again. Still no answer.

I called my landline, which rings in my office. It rang five times and then switched over to my machine.

I swung the long lens down to the first floor, focused on the timbered door, but thought he’d stepped outside.

A faint sliver of light ran down the opening edge of the timbered door. It was slightly ajar. I moved the lens down the sliver of light.

Something lay at the bottom, at the threshold.

It was a hand, fingers splayed. Not moving.

I ran down the stairs.