The Dead Caller from Chicago

Twenty-four

Benny was sure to ticket the dead man’s car.

Rivertown had funny parking restrictions. There was no side-street parking, anywhere, between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M., unless exempted by a special residents-only, hundred-dollar parking permit. The lizards passed off the fee grab by saying it would prevent nonlocal commuters from leaving their cars on the side streets, in order to dodge the exorbitant parking-lot fee at the train station. Residents knew better. It was a way of sucking more money into city hall. Still, so it went. Every year, residents had to shell out a hundred dollars just to leave their cars parked in front of their houses during the day.

It was bare windshields Benny Fittle was looking to ticket that morning, cars that displayed no street parking permits. That would include the dead man’s automobile, since he must have parked nearby. Which was a problem, because later, maybe not for a day or two or even a week, someone from the sheriff’s department would think to instruct the Rivertown coppers to keep their eyes open for an abandoned vehicle, especially if the blood DNA they’d recovered from the bungalow hadn’t turned up the dead man’s identity. The Rivertown cops would search through their unpaid parking tickets for any car sitting abandoned on a local street, and from that trace the name of its owner, who would be found to have disappeared. Alarms would go off.

I had to find the car and make it disappear, but I couldn’t risk anything in broad daylight. Benny Fittle was loose on the streets. He knew me, and he’d remember me lurking around a car he didn’t recognize.

I had hours to kill until dark. I started cleaning, beginning with myself. All morning, I’d been fighting the irrational thought that the dead man’s blood was embedded in more than my peacoat. I felt like it was inside my skin.

My bathing system is rudimentary. It consists of a garden hose rigged from a tiny two-foot-high water heater to a fiberglass shower enclosure. A second hose, much larger, runs from the shower to a drain. The system is not elegant, but so long as one is speedy, it’s functional.

That day, speed didn’t matter. I scrubbed long after the water ran cold. Only after I’d gone through a whole bar of soap, making sure I scrubbed each of the eight million goose bumps I sprouted, did I dry off. Then, dressed and chattering, I threw my laundry, along with Leo’s coat and jacket, into a cardboard box, which is way more elegant than the black garbage bag I usually use, and drove to a Laundromat. I dumped my washables in, added soap and quarters, and hit play.

There was a two-hour dry cleaner three blocks down. They took my blazer, my peacoat, and Leo’s coat and jacket and said I could come back in two hours.

I went back to the Laundromat. It was wonderfully warm inside, though damp right down to the magazines littering the dirty yellow plastic chairs. No matter. I settled back to catch up on the lives of Hollywood celebrities I’d never heard of.

Apparently, their lives were wonderfully damp, too. They spent lots of time on various beaches and on yachts, and lots of time, if the court papers were to be believed, sweating it up with people who were not their spouses. I had the thought that celebrities could get just as damp and be better off financially if they simply took to hanging out in Laundromats with people like me.

One story in particular was fascinating. A married movie star had an affair with the family nanny. Apparently, the nanny had film aspirations of her own. She’d secretly made a documentary of the affair, certain the film would become a financial success. Unfortunately, she was indicted for blackmail before she could realize any profit, though the film did attain some popularity with the aggrieved wife’s divorce lawyers and everyone on the Internet.

“Dek?” It was Endora on the phone, shouting over a vacuum cleaner and the sounds of an irregular loud pinging. I knew that pinging.

“You must not be in Rivertown, Endora,” I shouted, hoping I’d guessed wrong at the vacuum cleaner sounds.

“Listen, there’s a reporter-”

“It’s not safe,” I yelled.

“I told Ma Leo was all right. Next thing I knew, I caught her trying to start the LTD. She hasn’t driven in years.”

“So you drove her home?”

“She was hyperventilating. I was worried she’d pass out.”

“The reporter; it’s a woman?”

“The one that used to be on Channel 8. Very nice, not at all pushy, but I’m making her wait outside. I told Ma to vacuum everything again while I called, so the reporter can’t hear through the door.”

“Did your mother ever call McNulty on Eustace Island?”

“Yes. The police think some drunk shooting out into the water from Mackinaw City accidentally shot Arnie Pine.”

“Did McNulty tell you about any missing boats?”

“No-”

“Arnie Pine had a passenger. After he found out we were gone, he left Eustace in a boat that’s going to be found missing.”

“He’s still after Leo?”

“Not him, maybe, but one of his friends might come. You and Ma have to get out of there now. Tell the reporter you’ve talked to me and I said she should go. She’ll leave without any trouble.”

“You’ll call me tomorrow and explain this better than you have.” It was a demand, not a request.

“I’ll try.”

“Do better than that,” she said and hung up.

My clothes were dry. I tossed them in the Jeep, picked up the coats down the street, and started back to the turret.

I called Jenny. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Angering you, apparently. I left. Who’s the brunette?”

“Leo’s girlfriend. She knows nothing.”

“I saw her and an old woman inside. I went up the stairs and knocked. By the way, what were you doing hunched over on a sidewalk in that neighborhood last night?”

“We must have dinner sometime.”

“You keeping your laces tied, Dek?”

Without waiting for a response, she laughed and hung up. At another time, it might have been musical.