The Confessors' Club

THIRTY-SEVEN

My wait for inspiration wasn’t long.

The younger agent who’d sat wordlessly with us in the IRS conference room, before Krantz sent him out for something, stopped by before noon. He opened a large white envelope and took out a sheaf of photocopied calendar pages. ‘All we have is this year’s. We think he destroyed the previous ones.’

It was Lamm’s calendar. I flipped through the sheets. ‘He’s got the same notation for each of those second Tuesdays,’ I said. ‘“Sixty-six.”’

‘As you can see by his other entries, he noted all his appointments with numbers, sometimes followed by a letter or two.’

‘Abbreviations for addresses?’

‘We think so. Lamm didn’t use a driver. He drove himself around. Those entries were the properties he visited. On those second Tuesdays, his last stop was always a place with a number sixty-six street address. It’s meaningless and irrelevant to our investigation, but Special Agent Krantz thought you’d appreciate a first-hand look.’

He held out his hand, I gave him back his copies, then he said, ‘Mind giving me a quick tour of one more floor? I’ve never been inside something like this.’

It surprised me. Unlike most first-time visitors, he’d paid no attention to the craggy walls. ‘Sure,’ I said, and led him up to the second floor.

‘That cabinet isn’t quite level,’ he said in the kitchen. He was looking at the one that had been vexing me for days.

‘I’ll get it right,’ I said.

He stepped out into the large area that would one day be something more specific, like a living room or a study or maybe both.

‘This is your office?’ he asked, walking up to the card table where I keep my computer.

‘Things are simple here,’ I said.

He touched the torn vinyl covering on the card table, smiled, and said, ‘I’d best be going.’

I don’t remember whether it was Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison or Bozo the Clown who said genius was one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. I’m guessing it was Bozo, because he had to stomp around in huge shoes, something sure to make him sweat like crazy. Stomping around, sweating, was all I could think to do next, though mercifully I wouldn’t have to do it in two-foot-long floppy red footwear.

I drove to the corner of Michigan and Walton in Chicago, where Jim Whitman had been dropped off that last evening of his life. I parked the Jeep two blocks over, just off State Street, and headed west on foot. State Street is the dividing line for east and west addresses, and I figured Arthur Lamm’s number sixty-six would be a block or two east or west of it, and similarly, only a block or two north or south, since it had to be within easy walking distance for Whitman, a dying man.

North of Walton, I walked east and west along Maple, Elm, and finally Division Street. There were four properties numbered with a sixty-six address: a Thai restaurant, an adult bookstore, a day spa and a private, three-story graystone residence.

I turned around and walked the streets south of Walton. There were only two properties numbered sixty-six down there. Both were three-story graystone homes.

I’d seen nothing, but I knew somebody who might know somebody who knew more. I walked west to Bughouse Square. Its real name is Washington Square Park, but to generations of Chicagoans it’s always been Bughouse Square, the place where soapbox orators used to stand on crates to rant about the inequities of the day, real or imagined. For decades it was a welcoming place for activists, lunatics and those who simply liked to watch.

Then the neighborhood went upscale, like so many in Chicago. Some of the old graystones were renovated, but more were bulldozed to make way for concrete towers of condominiums, beige and bland inside and out. Sadly, Bughouse Square became gentrified along with everything else. Its worn, grassy expanse was professionally landscaped and cut with diagonal concrete walks, its loonies chased away to AM talk radio where they wouldn’t have to stand on boxes – or for that matter, even wear pants – to orate.

Fortunately, the Newberry Library, across the street from the north of the square, remained untouched. I sat on one of the new benches the city had installed for trendy ladies and well-clipped dogs to share with homeless people and looked up at the fine old building.

I called Endora’s cell phone. ‘Who do you know that’s a wiz on finding obscure private clubs in Chicago?’

‘Me, of course. I have access to wonderful computers.’

‘I know it’s Saturday, but would you care to swing over to the Newberry?’

‘I’m already there.’

Her office faced the park. ‘Look out your window,’ I said, waving.

‘I see.’ She laughed and said she’d meet me in the third-floor reading room in fifteen minutes.

I tell Leo that the reason Endora adores him can be fathomable only to aliens from more twisted civilizations. She is in her early thirties and has magna cum laude degrees in history and anthropology that she’d financed by modeling upscale clothing in national women’s magazines. At graduation, she’d turned down longer contracts with the big New York agencies to work at the Newberry. Beautiful, brilliant and quirky, Endora was devoted to two things: the study and preservation of historical documents, and Leo.

That she loved Leo pleased me immensely.

That she worked at the Newberry assured me that occasionally there is perfect symmetry in the universe. For the Newberry Library, too, is quirky. It was planned on a promise of funding in the 1880s by a Mr Newberry, one of the richest men in Chicago. Unfortunately, before ground for the new library could be broken, Newberry died on board a ship en route to Italy. His traveling companions persuaded the captain not to deep-six the influential Newberry, as was the custom then for on-board expirations, but instead to preserve him in a barrel of whiskey. And so it went. Newberry completed his journey, to Italy and back to America, bobbing in a cask. In fact, even returned to Chicago, Newberry never left his barrel. He was rolled up the hill to Graceland Cemetery and buried in it, pickled and, by then, undoubtedly puckered.

Newberry’s heirs squabbled over honoring his commitment to build the new library. Compromise was reached: exactly half of the library would be built. And so it became. Its front and sides are ornate, built of fine stone exactly as planned, but the detailing along its sides ends abruptly, like an ornately frosted rectangular cake sliced smack down the center. The upper cornice work stops crudely, and the back of the building is walled with the cheapest common bricks. Half was half.

Such rudeness aside, there is nothing half-finished about the Newberry’s resources. It is renowned for its collections of arcane history, especially about Chicago.

The third-floor reading room is a great old hall of golden oak, arched windows and massive tables lit by pull-chain, green glass lamps. It is a sturdy, safe place. I pulled out a book of old maps of Europe, brought it to a table, and looked at ancient geographies while I waited.

Ten minutes later, a hand lightly touched my shoulder. Endora wore her usual dark, concealing work clothes. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and she wore no makeup. Even dressed so sternly, she was lovely, and I had no doubt that many of her male colleagues spent much time each day imagining what naughtiness with Endora might be like.

‘What’s up?’ she whispered, sitting down.

I handed her the piece of paper on which I’d written the addresses of the buildings I’d just checked out. ‘What information do you have about these locations?’

‘For ownership or tax records?’

‘I’m trying to find a private club.’

We went to one of the computer kiosks where she typed in a query. A moment later, she keyed in another question, and a couple of minutes after that, she motioned for me to follow her out into the hall.

‘There might have been such a club, a hundred years ago, at Sixty-six West Delaware, though I can find no current description of it. There’s someone else who may know more, and he’s in today, too.’

We went through the double doors leading to the private offices. At the end of the corridor, Endora knocked on the wall next to an open door, and leaned in to speak to someone inside. After a second, she stepped back and motioned for me to go in ahead of her. ‘Mickey Rosen, Dek Elstrom,’ she said.

The office was the size of a utility closet. It was crammed with bookshelves, a small metal desk and a tiny old man seated on a swivel chair. Mickey Rosen was at least eighty-five, and dressed in a pilling orange polyester sweater and maroon pants. He stuck out a small, leathery hand. ‘Any male friend of Endora’s is an enemy of mine,’ he said, leering up at her.

‘Dek’s got a question about properties around here,’ Endora said. ‘Specifically, private clubs, with street addresses numbered sixty-’

‘Stop!’ Mickey held up a liver-spotted hand to silence her, then moved it to his forehead like a psychic. He closed his eyes as a big grin split his face, exposing yellowed teeth. ‘Nobody say anything. I’ll divine what your friend wants to know.’

I glanced at Endora. She looked stricken.

I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Rosen, all I’m looking-’

He moved his hand from his forehead, opened his eyes, and finished my sentence. ‘You’re looking for an organization of influential people that meets only six times a year, does so secretly, is named with a word that begins with a “C” and has a street number of sixty-six.’

He dropped his hand and looked at Endora. Satisfied with her look of stunned admiration, he asked her, ‘Will you sleep with me now?’

‘No.’ She laughed.

‘Just as well,’ he sighed. ‘My heart beats best in boredom.’ He turned to me and winked. ‘Do you know a man named Small?’

I shook my head.

‘Certainly there’s nothing small about him. A heavy man, heavy breather, destined for a coronary event,’ he said. ‘Anyway, this Mr Small came to see me. Edward, I think he said his name was, or Edwin.’ Mickey shook his head. ‘He too wanted to know about a property around here numbered sixty-six.’

‘How recently?’

‘Late February, or maybe the beginning of March.’

‘Was he a cop?’

‘He didn’t show a badge.’

Small might have been the investigator Wendell had hired. ‘Were you able to help him?’

Mickey Rosen smiled. ‘The Confessors’ Club,’ he said.