The Dead Caller from Chicago

Thirteen

Lightning flashed as I got up to the row of cottages. I turned and looked around. Only the two men stood in the sleet, staring at Pine. The bulky man I was looking for had already made it to the shadows.

I ducked behind the first cottage in the row and waited for lightning. When it came, I edged out to watch the path. No one was coming up.

The sky went dark. I ran to Theodea’s cottage and pounded on her door. “It’s me,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. She opened the door, and I ducked in.

Theodea had kept her slicker on, its vinyl still dripping rain. Her gun was in her hand. “Arnie Pine?”

“Anybody got a big boat on this island?” I asked.

“He’s come?” Endora asked. “The man by the ticket shack?”

“It can only be him,” I said.

“McNulty has a boat,” Theodea said, her face drawn with fear. “He fishes,” she added, like that mattered.

“We need to get away now.”

No one demanded another word; they could read everything on my face.

“No bullshit,” Theodea said. “Everyone follow me.” She started toward the candles burning on the blank table.

“Leave them,” I said. “He needs to think we’re still inside.”

“They might burn the place down.”

“Worse things will happen if he sees the line of light below the door go dark and thinks to search for us outside.”

“Of course,” she said, moving to bundle Ma in the old wool coat she’d worn since Leo and I were in high school.

We followed Theodea out the back door and up the slope, away from the cottages and the men below. With luck, the man who’d come to Eustace Island had started searching for Leo or me at the old hotel, several hundred yards away.

The fierce sleet had iced the rocky path, and we had to move slowly. Even with Endora on one side of her and me on the other, Ma’s steps were tentative, unsure on the slippery granite.

Worse, jagged bolts of lighting cut through the sky every few seconds, lighting us up to be seen with every slow step. I had no idea where the bulky man might be, but I was afraid he was inside the hotel, on the top floor. One look out the window, he’d see us trudging along the path.

After what seemed like an hour, we started down the backside of the island. Lightning struck five times in succession, lighting up a cottage not much bigger than a maintenance shed down below.

Theodea beat on the door. An enormous bearded man in jeans and a red flannel shirt opened it. We huddled in close, under the overhang.

“Theodea.” His voice boomed, big like him. “Please, all of you come in.” One lone candle burned behind him.

“No time. We need to get to Mackinaw City,” she said.

“We’ll go at dawn,” he said without hesitation. “Storm will be done by then.”

“We can’t wait,” Theodea said.

He looked at her for the briefest of seconds before he picked up the largest black oilcloth slicker I’d ever seen from the back of a chair. It looked like it weighed twenty pounds. “All right, then,” he said.

“McNulty?” Theodea said.

“Yes?”

“You’ve got a gun?”

“Two, actually. One for the hand, one for the arm.”

“Bring both.”

He walked to a closet across the room. He put a revolver in his pocket, took out a rifle in a vinyl case, and came back. “We’re off, then,” he said.

We followed a gravel path to a solid-looking pier resting between thick metal posts. Tied to the pier was a stubby fishing boat, twice the size of Arnie Pine’s Rabbit. A dozen plastic coolers were lashed to the open deck behind the wheelhouse. We climbed aboard.

There was barely room in the wheelhouse for Ma to stand next to McNulty. Theodea, Endora, and I hunched behind it, out in the rain.

His engine roared to life. “Best keep the lights off?” McNulty shouted back to Theodea.

“That would be appropriate,” she called up.

“No problem. No one else will be out.”

The water was rougher than when I’d crossed with Pine, but McNulty’s boat, or maybe it was McNulty himself, handled the chop more smoothly. I kept my eyes on Ma. She stood upright, barely swaying at the boat’s incessant shifting, rolling from side to side.

“I didn’t know you were on the island, Theodea,” McNulty shouted.

“I’ve had guests.”

“Fine time of year for entertaining,” he said.

“The balm of spring,” she said. They both laughed.

Endora leaned to the side and whispered to me, “I think my mother shares a secret life with that man.”

“I’ll bet it’s marvelous,” I said.

She grinned.

McNulty didn’t fight the waves; he used them, so expertly that in no time he slowed his engines, approaching the faint lights at the shore.

I stepped forward. “Someplace secluded, and as far away from the ferryboat dock as you can,” I said. The man who’d killed Arnie Pine would still be back on Eustace Island, but there was no knowing if he’d left a sharp-eyed accomplice in Mackinaw City to watch the piers. Theodea looked at Ma, then at me. I shook my head. Better to have Ma wait in the rain for me to pick her up than to chance us all walking through town, even though it was past midnight.

McNulty nudged the side of his boat against a small pier two hundred yards from the ferryboat dock. Endora and I jumped out, and while McNulty revved his engine to keep the boat solid against the dock, we helped Ma up onto the deck. McNulty tried to give Theodea his handgun. She shook her head, gave him a kiss, and jumped onto the dock.

“I miss our chess games,” he shouted.

“We’ll play when I get back,” she called back.

“And here all I thought you did on that rock was read poetry,” Endora said to her mother.

“McNulty’s that most enjoyable of the male species, a quiet one.”

Only Ma Brumsky didn’t try to laugh.

My genius for avoiding a tail, tarnished though it was by leading a killer to Eustace Island, offered up a new inspiration: Endora would drive the LTD out of Mackinaw City. I’d follow immediately behind. Gradually, I’d lag back, increasing the distance between us, until she was at least two miles ahead. That way, I could keep watch for anyone attempting to join us. If no one did, she could continue safely south, or east, when I turned west to go back to Chicago.

“What if your bulky friend does tuck between us?” Endora asked.

“I’ll run him off the road,” I said.

“In a short-wheelbase, lightweight Jeep?”

“The theory needs polishing.”

“We’ll shoot him, then,” Theodea said to her daughter, patting the hip where her holster was. I had no doubt that she was serious.

Endora and I walked quickly through the deserted town, got the two cars, and drove back to pick up Theodea and Ma. They piled into the LTD, I stayed in the Jeep, and we rolled out of town a little before two in the morning. The temperature had risen enough to change the sleet over to rain and keep ice from building on the roads.

We maintained a steady sixty miles an hour, keeping track of the mile markers by cell phone. By the time we got ten miles south of Mackinaw City, I was passing their markers a full two minutes behind, which meant two miles separated us.

Thirty minutes after that, the rain stopped. I could see more clearly behind me now, but it didn’t much matter. It must have been the bulky man who followed me down to Center Bridge, and he didn’t mind running without lights. I dropped back another half mile. The road stayed free of cars.

“This is working well,” I said into my cell phone.

“Unless we’re being tailed by someone running without lights, like that car in Center Bridge you told us about?” Endora asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that, yes.”

“Have you also been thinking about what you’re going to do when you get back to Rivertown?”

“My head is already being bombarded with more inspirations.”

“Meaning you don’t have a clue about your next step?” she asked.

“It’s a long drive back to Rivertown. Surely it will be productive.”

When she got to Grayling, where 75 veered southeast, she made her last call, as agreed.

“You’ll stay on 75 to points unknown to me?” I asked.

“My mother has thought of a place. Not even I know where we’re going.”

“You won’t return to Illinois until I give the all clear?” I asked. I needed to be sure.

“Find Leo, Dek.”

I told her that surely would be a piece of cake.