The Confessors' Club

FORTY-EIGHT

I understood the moment I stepped out to the sidewalk. Two Chicago police detectives sitting in a dark sedan waved badges, motioning me over.

The driver gave a smiling Krantz a thumbs-up as he walked away with his little bag of lunch. He’d saved them the legwork of finding Keller’s source, even reeled me in by summoning me downtown. Such was his revenge for my calling Keller.

‘Mind if I check out your IDs?’ I asked the two cops, giving them what I hoped was the intelligent smile of someone newly smart about such precautions.

‘Might be a good idea, considering,’ said the cop behind the steering wheel, showing me his wallet ID. His name was Pawlowski. The cop riding shotgun was Wood.

I moved a few steps away and called the Chicago police main number. In seconds I received emailed photos of Pawlowski and Wood. I walked back to the car.

‘So now tell us,’ Pawlowski said, gesturing with his thumb at the back passenger door.

I told them just about all of it, in the car, by the curb, excepting anything about Wendell.

When I finished, Wood sniffed the air. ‘We’re missing lunch,’ he said to Pawlowski.

‘You need to work with our artist,’ Pawlowski said. ‘As we drive, you can give us a better description of this Delray Delmar.’

Wood turned his bulk to look at me sitting in back.

‘Chinese,’ I said, handing my brown bag forward. Wood opened it, took out the chopsticks, and began eating sweet-and-sour chicken from the white container. He was remarkably agile with the sticks, dropping little as we hit potholes that likely wouldn’t be repaired for months, since most tax money, by court decree, was now being given over to replenish the city’s looted pension accounts.

I described Delray’s thin build and boyish looks for Pawlowski.

‘A damned preppie?’ Pawlowski asked.

‘Right down to his polished Weejun loafers.’

‘You ever see other cops dressed like that?’

I couldn’t see Pawlowski’s tie, but Wood’s had a fish on it, right below a fresh speck of sweet-and-sour sauce. ‘I took Delray to be typical of your fine fashion expertise.’

Pawlowski glanced at the chewing Wood. Cops have heard most things, from fools, at least twice.

As we headed south across the Congress expressway, I asked, ‘How did you two happen to catch this case?’

‘Lots of people caught this case. You made us all look stupid.’ Pawlowski stopped the car at a nondescript office building a block down from Buddy Guy’s blues club. I used to go there, back when I was young, cool and financially stable, and had to look elsewhere to find the blues.

‘This is a police station?’

‘We’re using a freelance sketch artist. Ours got cut back to part-time.’

We got out, went through a tiny, brown-painted lobby to a door marked ‘Art School of Chicago.’ Adjacent to it was a door marked ‘Hair Salon School of Chicago.’

‘Budgets,’ Pawlowski said.

Looking sorrowful, Wood dropped the empty white food container in an open trash barrel, wiped his hands on his pants, and pushed open the door. The foyer had been converted into a break room, and we took a moment to select those scuffed orange plastic chairs that contained the smallest residues of dried colas.

‘I’m still not understanding the fuss about these Tuesdays, and Barberi, Whitman and Carson,’ Wood said. ‘Heart attack, self-administered overdose, hit-and-run.’

‘All three men died after getting together on second Tuesdays,’ I said. ‘That can’t be coincidence.’

‘You’re saying where?’ Wood asked.

I hadn’t yet mentioned the Confessors’ Club by name, though I figured by now everyone in law enforcement knew it, since Krantz had said it at lunch. He’d also said there would be a heavy police presence there that evening.

‘An old graystone at Sixty-six West Delaware,’ I said, to be sure. ‘You need to have people there tonight.’

‘This private dick you mentioned – Small?’ Wood asked. ‘Who hired him to watch these rich guys?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said, ‘You should send a guy up to sweat information out of Lamm’s caretaker, a guy named Herman Canty.’

‘And this young punk cop imposter, the one you’re going to help us draw a picture of, who hired him?’

‘I think Small did. Then the kid started working for himself.’

‘He’s a killer, this kid?’

‘He could have killed Small.’

‘Why?’

‘To get Small out of the way, so he could shake down someone, likely Arthur Lamm.’

‘The kid tricked you into finding this Delaware Street meeting place?’ Wood grinned.

‘Only the outside. I tricked him back by not finding out much else.’

Pawlowski shifted on his chair, fixed me with the beady eye they teach at police school. ‘What’s Wendell Phelps, your father-in-law, going to tell us?’

For sure Krantz had passed along Wendell’s name. I gave Pawlowski my own beady eye back, the one I practice in the mirror. ‘Ex-father-in-law,’ I corrected.

‘Come on, Elstrom.’ Pawlowski smiled. ‘What’s Wendell Phelps going to tell us?’

‘Same thing he tells everybody: his daughter is well-rid of me,’ I said.