The Dead Caller from Chicago

Thirty-one

I’d started the day establishing a burglary explanation for anything of Leo’s the cops might find in the empty bungalow. Then I’d stuck signs in Leo’s yard, hoping to lure one of Wozanga’s compatriots, or maybe even his boss, into revealing himself.

I’d won. I could explain anything of Leo’s that popped up anyplace inconvenient, and I’d flushed out Rudy Cassone.

I’d lost, too, because the picture that had caused Leo to get lost, and Snark Evans to get dead, was likely to get stolen away before I could use it to figure what was going on.

Traffic was a gnarled nightmare southbound on 294, a twisted jumble of obstinate idiots hell-bent on keeping me from Rivertown. I bobbed, weaved, and swore, and none of it did any good at all. It took over an hour just to get to O’Hare, and another thirty minutes to thread east through the last of the day’s rush on the Eisenhower Expressway. By the time I charged onto Leo’s block, it was dark, and it had started to snow.

A corner of my eye took in the unchanged excavation. Every day that passed without progress meant another day that Wozanga’s corpse might be discovered. It was a worry for later. My fear now was I was getting to Leo’s too late to act on the only signal he could send me.

I cut my lights and coasted to a stop across the street. The lamp on Ma’s timer was on, casting a soft, semitransparent glow in the front room behind the lace curtains. I could make out the shape of part of the big-screen television, just to the right, and the high back of the sofa that Ma had kept pristine with so many generations of white-piped clear plastic slipcovers. I wanted to hope that the light from the front-room lamp, or the threat of my make-believe security system, or even the potential of drive-bys by the Rivertown cops would keep Cassone away.

I’d kept him out of Leo’s office. Surely he’d not yet seen the supposed child’s fanciful drawing of a lavender barn, pink and green cows, and red-leafed trees.

Still, my gut said to stay in the Jeep for a time, be cautious, and watch. Cassone, after all, was likely a killer, just like his man Wozanga. So I stayed behind the steering wheel and squinted at the light behind the lace. I watched for five minutes, and for ten more.

Then the faintest of shadows moved quickly by the big-screen television, right where I’d hidden the night my friend killed Wozanga.

The shadow retreated from the light behind the lace.

I’d been a fool. I should have brought Leo’s gun. Not to fire, but simply to use to threaten.

I remembered the aluminum baseball bat I’d picked out of the snow the morning after Ma and her friends had gone berserk trying to open pistachio nuts. I reached behind the passenger’s seat, felt its cold opportunity.

I grabbed it and eased out of the Jeep.

Every room in the babushka’s house next door was lit up brightly, an old woman’s defense against the night. I moved low through the gangway, trying for invisibility. I turned the corner at the porch and moved to the shadows next to Leo’s outer door to wait. There were no basement windows back there, so I could not see the movement of a flashlight, but surely he’d go down there, and into Leo’s office at the front. He’d look behind the cabinets and under the desk and behind the huge overstuffed chair. He’d look at the walls, at Bo Derek. At some point, he’d notice the painting above the file cabinets, with its oddly colored cows and barn and leaves. He’d know it not by the colors it was now but simply by its size. I didn’t understand why, but I knew: The intruder would smile.

A half hour passed, in minutes each longer and colder than the one before. I huddled against the back of the building, ten feet from the door to the porch, too afraid to stomp my feet to keep warm. The snow was falling harder, big flakes, wet flakes.

The kitchen door creaked, cracking the hushing cover of the falling snow. Footsteps thudded across the porch floor. He paused at the steps, and then he came down, softly because the babushka next door might be in her backyard, having sensed a disturbance in the night.

The flimsy wood door at the bottom groaned as he slowly pushed it open. He came out, carrying the rectangle.

I swung as he turned toward the gangway, slamming the tip of the bat square between his shoulder blades, at the base of his neck. He dropped onto the cushion of snow with a soft thump and was still.

I dropped the bat. I tugged to roll him over, to be sure of the face. He wheezed, unconscious, a sack of live bone and meat that was Rudy Cassone.

I grabbed the rectangle. He’d wrapped it in layers of cloth, a sheet torn from one of the beds.

He moaned and shifted a little on the snow.

I ran through the spill of light in the gangway, across the parkway. Grabbing at the Jeep’s door handle, I jumped in. My trembling fingers searched my pocket, found the keys, and dropped them like they’d been greased. Fumbling, frantic, I ran my hands around the floor. Surely the babushka had heard me pounding through the gangway and raced to a front window.

I found the keys, poked the rubber-headed one into the ignition, and was off. It was only when I reached the corner that I thought to switch on the headlights.

I saw the black Mercedes as I made the turn. Cassone had parked on the side street. He’d known to be cautious.

I unwrapped the rectangle on the card table, on the second floor. As I expected, several pink, green-spotted cows were standing in front of a lavender barn, looking right back at me.

They didn’t look like they knew anything at all.