The Dead Caller from Chicago

Twenty-seven

I was fresh with new inspirations early the next morning. I drove to Leo’s, smashed his back-door glass, called the cops, and settled back smug in the Jeep.

Delightfully, I had a cement truck to watch while I waited. It had beaten me to Leo’s block and was churning in front of the excavation as two workers set up chutes to pour the foundation walls. After that, it would only be two or three more days before they did the basement floor. Then I could breathe deeply, free from the worry that Robert Wozanga might get jostled out of the gravel and point a frozen finger at Leo and me for having put him there.

A burgundy Escalade roared up to the excavation and skidded to a stop. Robinson jumped out and started waving his arms at the cement truck, the chutes, and the excavation. Worse, he was shaking his head.

It was over in a minute. Robinson stormed back to his Escalade and drove off, one of the workers made a slashing motion to the truck driver, and the cement truck rumbled away. The workers took apart the chutes, and they left, too. There’d be no pour. Wozanga, the unknowing Leo, and I would have to wait for another day.

Two of Rivertown’s rarest-cops in uniform-arrived thirty minutes later. “I’m the one that called,” I said, getting out of the Jeep.

The two officers stayed in the car. They smelled of whiskey.

“You go in?” the driver asked, looking up through the open window.

“No.”

He nodded but made no move to get out.

“Aren’t you going to investigate?”

He shut off the engine, and they got out. Both of them had mud on their shoes.

“Sloppy morning?” I asked.

“Up all night. Floater, by the dam. Took forever to snag him out.”

The buzz in my brain came from remembering the blue lights I’d seen the night before, as I’d stood by the Willahock, throwing in guns. The tingle in my neck came from remembering Jenny saying that bad things were beginning in Rivertown.

“Drowning?” I asked.

“Guy had a bad smash to the head that could have come from banging against the dam.”

“Who was it?”

“Medical examiner’s working on that.” The driver turned to scrutinize the front of Leo’s bungalow. “Everything looks OK,” he ventured, his eyes shifting nervously between the front porch and the gangway.

It was a wrong response. They should have been moving toward the house.

“The break-in occurred around back,” I said.

“You go in?”

“Not on your life. I saw the broken glass and said to myself, this is evidence of a crime. The perpetrator might still be inside, armed and dangerous. Being unarmed and not dangerous, I called you.”

The driver looked at his partner uneasily.

“Surely you can’t think this relates to Tebbins,” I said. It was a wild shot, but something more than the possibility of confronting a burglar had to be making them so nervous.

“No one knows shit around here anymore,” the partner said.

I recognized him. A few years back, he’d been a thumper, one of the junior-grade punks hanging out at the health center. He’d had a spiky haircut that made him resemble a porcupine, aroused. Certainly it was nothing that would fit under a normal cap. Yet here he was, in uniform, wearing a glossy-brimmed police cap. I shifted to see if there were any spikes pushing up at the fabric.

He looked at me, alarmed by such an odd, obvious inspection.

“Let’s go around back.” I started toward the gangway.

They had no choice but to follow, both of them looking up as though someone dangerous might be in the windows, watching. I led them to the flimsy wood door that went to the wood porch and stopped.

“This is as far as I go, gents,” I said.

“You’d best come in with us,” the former porcupine snapped. “You’re the one who called. Besides, we might need you to identify stuff.”

I put on a look of horror. “You mean like corpses?”

“He means like damage,” the driver said.

I winced appropriately and shook my head, a coward through and through. “I’m staying outside, back by the garage.”

“Just exactly what is your relationship to the people who live here?” the porcupine asked. It was a legitimate cop question, but I wondered if he’d asked it simply to delay having to go up into the house.

“Leo Brumsky lives here with his mother. He is a friend of mine. They’re gone on a trip, and I’ve been keeping an eye on the place. I came over this morning, saw the shattered back-door glass, and called you brave young men.”

The neighbor’s door banged open. “What the hell’s going on?”

We stepped back into the yard. The ever-vigilant babushka from next door had come out, done up in her black down coat and a red watch cap.

“Nothing, ma’am,” the former porcupine said.

“Well, what about down the block? Bad enough there’s an empty house just sitting there, waiting to attract prostitutes, thieves, and drug dealers, without you using yellow tape to advertise this block as being unsafe. And just this morning, a cement truck drove up and took off, too afraid to stay long enough to deliver its load. I watch TV. I know when a whole block’s gone bad.”

“Precautions, ma’am,” the driver cop said. “We were only inspecting unusual stains in that empty bungalow.”

“I heard blood,” the woman said.

“Probably nothing to it,” the former porcupine said.

“What about those bullets dug out of the front-room wall, and that gun they found?” she asked, no one’s fool.

“Sounds like a crime wave to me,” I said, smiling at her.

“Damn it.” The former porcupine’s eyes flashed as he bit his lip, looking at me

“Don’t forget Tebbins,” I went on. “And now a floater’s been found murdered in the Willahock.”

“I left my front door unlocked,” the babushka said, hotfooting it back inside. I’d ruined her day. It was wonderful.

“Thanks a bunch, Elstrom,” the driver cop said, half tugging his partner through the flimsy door and up into Leo’s porch.

I went across the yard to the garage, but wasn’t alone for more than a minute when my cell phone rang. “Mr. Elstrom?” It was my new insurance client, the fellow that was about to set me on the same road as Lester Lance Leamington. “We’d like you to go to Lincoln, Nebraska, as soon as possible. We’ve got an insured that’s reporting unusual inventory losses. They think it’s internal-”

I cut him off. “Employee theft?”

“That’s the supposition, but we’ll wait for your report.”

“I’m tied up.”

He cleared his throat. “Pardon me?”

“I’m tied up,” I said again.

“We discussed putting you on retainer,” he said.

“I’d like that, very much.”

“But?”

“But I’m tied up-”

Now it was his turn to cut me off. “Retainer means you drop everything for us.”

“Ordinarily-”

He gave me a long, loud sigh. “We’ll get back to you, Elstrom,” he said and hung up.

Maybe he would, when pigs flew. Right now, the only things flying were my prospects for further income from that client, right out the window.

The cops came out in less than five minutes.

“When’s the last time you were here?” the former porcupine asked.

“You mean, do I know how long the door glass might have been broken?”

He nodded.

“Not long; a day at most.”

“We can’t tell if anything is missing,” he said. “Best you look around, and best you get that window glass replaced.”

They left like rockets.

Other than my financial future vaporizing, the morning had transpired magnificently. Leo had had no keys when I hauled him out of the abandoned bungalow. Yet he’d used a key when he snuck home for food. If he’d left his keys or anything else in the empty house, the cops had it by now. A phantom burglar was ideal for explaining away anything of Leo’s they might find there.

I’d also had another objective for my faked burglary: bait.

I drove to the hardware store for a new lock and glass for the back door. Next up was the signage shop in a suburb south of Rivertown. The rush order I’d phoned in, for two outdoor-quality signs, was ready. Back at Leo’s, I drove both into his small front yard. I’d gotten the idea from Robinson, recalling Tebbins’s little side business.

The signs were big, the same size Realtors used. The first was ordinary, and read ELSTROM SECURITY SYSTEMS. AFFORDABLE PROTECTION. I’d been more creative with the second: BURGLED ONCE? SHAME ON THE THIEF! BURGLED TWICE? SHAME ON THE HOMEOWNER… FOR NOT USING AN ELSTROM SECURITY SYSTEM!

I went inside and installed the new lock and door glass.

My tool bag contained small spools of different-colored wire, black electrical tape, and the doorbell I planned to hook up one day at the turret. I hoped they looked like the components of a security system. I left it on the kitchen table and went home, to think about my vaporized financial future and wait for someone to call.