The Confessors' Club

SEVENTEEN

Whitman Industries occupied four floors in a high-rise office building just north of the Chicago River. Jim Whitman’s former secretary, a trim, efficient woman in her mid-fifties, came to the lobby carrying two blue leather desk calendars identical to the one I’d brought from Whitman’s house. We sat in a secluded corner next to a plant.

I opened the calendar I’d brought to December 13, the night Whitman died. ‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, pointing to the ‘C.’

‘I wondered about those,’ she said. ‘I wrote most of the appointments in his book, and knew almost all of the ones he entered. But those “C”s…’ She shook her head. ‘I never asked, of course.’

‘Were there many?’

‘Several a year.’ She opened one of the calendars she’d brought, the book for the year before last. Turning the pages, she made notes on a small pad. When she was finished, she said, ‘The year before last, he attended ‘C’ meetings on February tenth, April thirteenth, June eighth, August tenth, October twelfth, and then December fourteenth. They seem to have been regular enough, all on Tuesdays.’ She handed me the list.

‘How about the year before that?’

She opened the other book she’d brought, the one for the third year going back, and, turning the pages, read off the dates so I could write them down. ‘Regular thing,’ she said, when she was done. ‘Tuesdays, every other month.’

‘You have no idea where he spent those evenings?’

‘No.’

‘How did he seem, his last day here?’

‘For a man whose life was being cut short – a strong, powerful man who had to give up control of an empire he had constructed?’ Her lips tightened, then relaxed. ‘Actually, he seemed in remarkably good humor that day. He met with several people, dictated a few letters, mostly apologies for matters he could not attend to personally, and left around three o’clock.’

‘Did he keep any extra medication in his office?’ I asked.

‘You mean pills to kill himself?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I went through his office thoroughly. There was no trace of pills.’

I had no doubt she’d searched immediately, looking to destroy any evidence Whitman had taken a deliberate overdose.

‘You wouldn’t tell me if there were,’ I said.

‘I find it difficult to believe he killed himself. In any event, there was no trace of an extra supply in his office.’

I believed her like I believed Mrs Johnson. Whitman had no extra pills.

And that was enough for Wendell Phelps to call the cops.

I called his private cell phone number as soon as I got outside. ‘I’ve got something for you to take to the police. Jim Whitman loved his grandsons, and would have known his suicide would null the insurance policy he’d left for their well-being.’

Wendell said nothing for a moment, and then asked, in a surprisingly weak voice, ‘Insurance?’

‘He had a two-million-dollar life policy, benefitting his grandsons. Death by suicide nulled it.’

Again he paused. ‘Perhaps there were other policies…’ He let the question trail away.

‘If there were, his daughter, Debbie, does not know of them. She got nothing for the care of her kids. You have enough to go to the police, Wendell.’

‘The cops will say he was a sick man. Pain doesn’t make for high lucidity.’

‘He was lucid enough to arrange his other bequests.’

‘That proves nothing,’ he said, his voice stronger, almost combative.

‘Then try this: I can’t find the source of the pills he supposedly took. He had plenty at home, but he didn’t touch those. If he took his own life, he used pills from a secret stash.’

‘Cops will say a secret stash was easy to create.’

‘He could have been fed those pills. Murdered, as you suspect.’

‘Jim Whitman was dying, damn it. There was no motive for murder. Cops will laugh.’

‘Why fight me on this, Wendell? You suspected right away your friends were being murdered.’

‘I overreacted.’

‘The night Whitman died, he went downtown to a place that begins with a “C.” He went there every two months, always on a Tuesday. He was secretive about it. He had his driver drop him nearby, but never directly at the destination.’

He chuckled, but it sounded forced. ‘Whitman was a widower. Maybe he went down there to visit a lady friend he didn’t want anyone to know about. Hell, she could have been a high-priced hooker.’

‘His regular driver didn’t come back for him the night he died. Someone else drove him home, somebody in a light-colored Buick.’

‘This is all you’ve got?’ He exhaled disgust into the phone. ‘There are thousands of Buicks in this town, like there are thousands of places that begin with the letter “C.” I’ll get back to you if I want you to continue.’

‘Go to the cops,’ I said, but I was talking to dead air. He’d hung up.

Wendell had become too argumentative. He’d swatted away every red flag I’d waved. For a man who’d been so certain his fellow tycoons were being murdered, a man who’d been frightened enough to stand by his curtains to make sure they didn’t open even an inch, his behavior had transformed suddenly from fear to aggressiveness.

The day was breezy and sunny and good for a walk to mull my new confusion. I headed over to Michigan Avenue, where Jim Whitman had spent the last evening of his life.

Measured by glitz and geography, North Michigan Avenue is the middle sparkler in a three-diamond necklace, approximately equidistant from Rodeo Drive in California and Fifth Avenue in New York. Amanda and I used to walk the grand boulevard when we were new to each other. I was charmed by the way she’d look through the store windows for customers who’d mastered a certain curve to their backs and the oh-so-slight rise to their eyebrows that feigned unconcern to the ridiculous prices of the baubles they were inspecting. ‘Arch,’ the beautiful girl who’d grown up so rich used to call such false posturing. On North Michigan Avenue, Amanda said, life started and ended with false attitude.

I’d brought Wendell validation of his worries, at least about Jim Whitman. He should have pressed me to find out more. Instead he’d dusted me off with impatience and anger. And arch.

I got to Walton Street, where Whitman had been let off. It was one of the grandest intersections in the city, anchored on the northeast by the Drake Hotel. Upscale shops fanned out from the other three corners, lots of vogue for lots of arch. In the distance, past Lake Shore Drive, Lake Michigan rippled blue and calm, already dotted with the first of the season’s sailboats.

I stepped close to the curb to see better in all four directions. I wasn’t expecting anything obvious like a neon sign flashing a big orange ‘C’ or a raven-haired dame in a black dress slit to her hip, blowing C-shaped smoke rings from an upper-story window. I would have settled for even the tiniest of mental nudges, but I didn’t even get that. All I saw were sun-washed storefronts and restaurants offering subtlety at non-subtle prices, and not one had a name that began with a ‘C.’

I turned right, walked east on East Walton Place, toward the lake, then reversed, and came west all the way to State Street. I passed the Drake, shiny new storefronts and old three-story graystones – some housing fashionable boutiques and trendy bars, others housing those who hung out in the fashionable boutiques and trendy bars. It was a rich, hip, ever-evolving neighborhood, but mostly it was young, and a seemingly unlikely place for Jim Whitman to visit six times a year. I got back to the Jeep no smarter than when I’d left it and considerably less employed.

I drove south toward the expressway. Michigan Avenue across the bridge is a different place. Gone is the sunny glitz of the boulevard to the north. Michigan Avenue south of the river is dark. The buildings lining its west side are tall and close to the street and shut out the sun from the sidewalk early as it heads away from the lake. There are no strolling swells swinging little boutique bags south of the river, just art students and secretaries, store clerks and podiatrists; people hustling with their heads down just to stay even. And there are pigeons, often dozens of them, strutting and worse on the sidewalk. There is no pretense on Michigan Avenue, south of the river. There is no arch.

But there is often chaos. Unfamiliar drivers heading southbound are often made crazy trying to find the expressway; the signs pointing the way are small and placed too far down. Only at the last moment do the uninitiated comprehend that a left turn is needed to make the right-hand curve to the expressway. And then they swerve, panicked, across several lanes of traffic.

That’s what happened that afternoon. The driver in front of me shot across my bow, barely missing my front bumper.

I didn’t hit the horn; I didn’t raise a fist or a finger. I didn’t even remind myself to stay mellow, that this was normal road life Michigan Avenue, south of the river.

I did none of those things because the sight of the car veering in front of me seemed to demand more than that, like I was supposed to focus on what I’d just seen. It was an ordinary enough car – light-colored, beige or tan, swerving in the same stupid way that I’d seen a hundred times before. Yet somehow this car, at this time, seemed very much to matter.

I replayed the image over and over in my mind as I drove back to Rivertown, but I could make no sense of why the image nagged.

Just like I couldn’t make sense of Wendell’s arch behavior.