The Dead Caller from Chicago

Six

The Newberry Library had sat a few blocks north of the Chicago River for over a century, half of what it was meant to be. According to legend, it was planned to be Chicago’s main library, but its benefactor, Mr. Newberry, expired en route to Europe before it could be built. No sooner had he been returned to Chicago and rolled up the hill to the cemetery, still in the same barrel of rum in which he’d been preserved aboard ship, than his wife and daughters began squabbling over his financial remains. By all accounts a parsimonious lot, they ultimately agreed to fund only half the proposed construction. Chicago’s city fathers, already exhibiting the sensibilities that would make them famous for centuries, grabbed what they could-and then built half a library. The front facade was erected as specified, but the sides were stopped exactly halfway back, and the rear was sided with cheap common brick. Instantly unsuitable as a central library, the quirky building became a repository for obscure old manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. And Leo’s girlfriend, Endora.

Though never quite a superstar, she’d been a popular model from the time she was eighteen and had appeared frequently between the covers of most of the major national magazines. Her brains matched her beauty. During her modeling years, she was a top student at Northwestern, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history.

When the fashion assignments slowed to a trickle, Endora quit modeling, used a fraction of her cash to buy an upscale condo, and took a low-paying job as a researcher at the Newberry. It was there that she met Leo. She towered over him physically, but their massive intellects and slanted views of the world were perfectly paired. If she’d thought to hang model airplanes from her bedroom ceiling, she’d have painted them with psychedelic brightness, too.

I was Leo’s best friend, but Endora was his life. If anyone knew where Leo had gone, it was she.

But she wasn’t answering her phones.

As I climbed the wide stairs into the Newberry, I thought of when, just a few years before, I’d gone to that library to hide from the press. My reputation was trashed, my marriage was collapsing. All I could think to do was to hide out in the deep quiet of one of the upstairs reading rooms and look at old maps of places that no longer were. It helped to calm my pounding head.

She’d watched over me those days, checking on me frequently, bringing me up to the employees’ rooms for lunch and coffee. She’d showed me her cramped little cubicle and introduced me to her boss. He weighed over three hundred pounds and shook all of it when he laughed, which as I remembered was quite often.

He remembered me but was guarded. “Tell me why you’re looking for her?”

I was guarded, too. “I called here yesterday. They said she wasn’t in. I tried again today. They said she wasn’t in. I thought I’d swing by, hoping she’d returned.”

“You also tried her cell and home numbers?”

“Of course.”

“And without her having returned your numerous calls, you still thought stopping by would be productive?”

I tried giving that a shrug.

“Cut the crap, Dek.”

“I’m trying to find Leo. A neighbor told me he’s on vacation, with his mother. His mother doesn’t vacation. Leo does, with Endora. Nobody’s around; not Leo, not his mother, not Endora.”

He studied my face for a long moment and said, “She phoned a few days ago, saying she needed personal time. She didn’t mention anything about a vacation.”

“You found that odd,” I said.

“Endora has never asked for personal time.”

“Have you noticed anything else strange going on with her?”

“That call, so sudden, was enough. She’s got a major exhibit starting in two weeks, and this is absolutely the worst time she could take off. Endora is never vague about anything. She’s precise, factual, and succinct. But the day she called, she was vague as hell about everything, including when she’d be back. Obviously there was something going on in her life, but since she’s never asked for anything before, I let it alone.”

“She mentioned once she had family in northern Michigan. A mother, I think.”

“The Newberry never releases personal information about its employees.”

“No need. You can find some pretext to call her mother to make sure Endora is safe.”

He kept his face blank, noncommittal.

“You’re a research man, right?” I asked.

“This is the Newberry, dear sir.”

“This morning, I tried researching a name on the Internet: Snark Evans. I found nothing on the criminal background and general sites. That was no surprise; Evans is a common name, and for sure Snark is an earned name, not a given one.”

“Who is he?”

“A small-time punk, a burglar, who died years ago.”

“How does this concern Endora?”

“Someone calling himself Snark Evans upset Leo with a phone call, right before he and his mother and Endora disappeared.”

He said he could promise nothing.

Like the builders of the Newberry, I said I would take what I could get.

It had started to snow. I stepped out of the Newberry into great sticky clumps of it, coming down as though some maniac upstairs were sitting in the dark, shredding wet white felt. March was like that in Chicago. It teased with sun and a warming day, promising spring, and then slammed down a sticky blanket so wet and thick people could only think winter would never end. On such days, everyone plodded. Traffic crawled; pedestrians dragged themselves across intersections like they were shouldering lead. It took me an hour to get south to the expressway, another to get to Leo’s block. By that time, it was dark.

Two men were getting into pickups at the big hole between the houses. The pile of cement forms at the front of the excavation didn’t look any smaller. They’d made no better progress than I had, that day.

Leo’s house was another big hole between bungalows lit against the night. I pulled to the curb and shut off the engine, thinking of the lights that weren’t there. There’d been no time to set lamps on timers. Absolutely, they’d run.

A pair of headlamps came down the street behind me. One of the pickups passed by. The second followed a moment later.

A third pair of headlamps switched on, back at the construction site, and the vehicle started coming down the street. Halfway to Leo’s, it swung sharply to the curb and its lights were switched off.

Someone had stopped to make a call, perhaps, or check directions, or simply to park closer to a house. I rolled down my window to catch the sound of a car door slamming as someone got out. I heard nothing. I waited in the dark, watching the rearview mirror for five minutes, maybe ten. No door slammed. No headlamps came back on.

I started my engine and pulled out. Turning right at the corner, I saw the headlamps start up behind me. It didn’t have to mean anything.

I pulled onto the bright carnival that was Thompson Avenue, and for a moment, there were all kinds of headlamps behind me, slow-cruising gents checking out the meat winking through the snow. I turned off onto the side street, then onto my street. Getting out, I looked back. A car had pulled off onto the side street that led to mine and stopped. Men used that stub of a street sometimes, with the less demanding of the girls that worked the curbs.

Invariably, though, the johns cut their headlamps. Not so the car that had pulled off Thompson. Its headlamps remained on.

I stepped into the cold that was the turret, but I didn’t turn on any lights. I found my way up the wrought-iron stairs and turned past the kitchen to the slit window that most directly faced the street. The headlamps were moving toward the turret. The snow was too thick to see what kind of car it was.

It stopped in front of the turret. Its lights went out. I swore at myself for not turning on the outside light. It would have helped me see.

Nothing happened for two or three minutes. Then the car door opened and was shut quickly. I couldn’t make out anything in the brief flash of the car’s inside light.

I waited at the top of the second-floor landing.

Someone started beating on my door.