The Dead Caller from Chicago

Thirty-two

A nightmare jerked my hand off the side of Leo’s revolver the next morning.

I dreamed my feet were encased in hardened concrete, as tons of thick cement cascaded down from the chutes of a dozen monstrous churning trucks, into the excavation. Rudy Cassone was up above, running from truck to truck, working the levers, and laughing as I swung my bat futilely at the block of concrete trapping my feet. The block wouldn’t chip. It was too hard. And the concrete kept coming, a dozen thick rivers filling the hole like a tub, up to my ankles, up to my calves, up to my arms until I could swing no more.

I pushed myself out of bed and into cold clothes and went to the window still groggy enough to fear seeing cement trucks lined up, churning. Mercifully, there was only new snow, six inches of fresh fluff lying on top of the Jeep.

It had been a nightmare like all nightmares, built of a jumble of a few very real blocks. The cement, Cassone, the bat…

The bat.

I pounded down the stairs and out to the Jeep. I pawed through the Burger King wrappers, beneath the gym bag, and under the towel I keep to wipe the inside of the windshield when it’s raining and the defroster has gotten too bored to work. I searched everywhere. The bat wasn’t there.

I’d clubbed Cassone; I’d dropped it; and then I’d forgotten it, anxious only to get away, to protect the painting.

I hustled back into the turret, shivering from cold but more from fear, thinking that Cassone had likely regained consciousness in something of a foul mood and interested to know who clubbed him. He’d have grabbed the bat, and although Rivertown was small-town cheesy crooked, Chicago wasn’t. Outfit guys knew cops, and cops could check fingerprints. Mine had been on file since the court case that had ruined me.

Still, he might have hobbled away, without noticing the bat. There was the snow, too. Enough might have fallen to cover it up after I’d knocked him unconscious.

I sped over to Leo’s thinking I’d surely appear innocent, coming only to shovel the walk. No attacker, any right-thinking person would reason, would have the nerve to show up after beating a man senseless at that very place just a few hours before. With luck, I’d fish the bat out of the fresh snow and toss it away somewhere.

The babushka was on her front porch, dressed in dark clothes for another dark day. She moved her head back and forth, making a pointed comparison between her own neatly shoveled walk and Leo’s, covered thickly with new snow.

“Wonderful day, is it not?” I asked, pasting on what I was sure was a fine wide grin.

She frowned. “Last night was disturbing.”

I lessened my smile, fearing I might resemble a crazed jack-o’-lantern. “All the new snow?” I asked, hoping it was only the snow. “Not to worry; I came to shovel.”

“Odd soft noises, coming from the Brumsky place.” She pointed at Leo’s bungalow as though I didn’t know where it was.

“Noises from the snow?” I asked, an idiot, but an innocent.

“Not from the snow, you fool. There was a shout, like people were fighting in the backyard. By the time I could get to my back room to look out, someone was escaping up the gangway. I got to the front just as a car started. The snow was falling thick, and the sneak was crafty. He pulled away without turning on his headlamps. I couldn’t see dink squat.” Pausing for air, she stared at me, then, “Only one person’s been interested in coming around much, lately.”

“I’ve been working here, rigging up a burglar alarm, checking the furnace and the hot water.”

“That’s another thing about last night,” she said. “I didn’t hear any alarm.”

“I’m not done,” I said. “See anything else?”

“You’d best get shoveling, then,” she said.

“Oh, you bet.” She’d seen nothing, called no one.

I high-stepped to the back and saw that the snowfall had obliterated any signs of my clubbing Cassone. I got the shovel from the garage, came back, and began stabbing at the new blanket of snow, hoping to hear the clink of aluminum.

“What on earth are you doing?” the neighbor shouted across the chain-link fence. She’d made no sound coming out her back door, a true stealth-babushka.

“Chipping ice off the shovel.”

“Shoveling the walk will get rid of it quicker.” She went back inside.

I shoveled my way to the front, did the walk and the steps, and returned to the back to take more stabs at the snow. Nothing clanked; the bat was gone. He’d taken it with him.

I went up the back porch stairs. There was no broken glass, but the door was open. Cassone had jimmied the new high-security lock I’d installed. I went inside.

He’d not trashed the house. He’d known the dimensions of what he was looking for. The clothes in Ma’s and Leo’s bedroom closets had been pushed to the sides, so he could peer behind them, but he’d been unhurried and orderly, a professional.

I went down to the basement. The clutter had been spread farther out and gone through carefully. Nothing appeared to be broken.

He’d found what he wanted in Leo’s office, of course, on the wall above the file cabinets. I went upstairs.

“I suppose I should call the police,” the babushka said from her back step.

I stomped across the snow to her fence, one last probe for the bat. “About that ruckus last night?”

“They could search the property, like maybe you’ve just been doing.”

“I came to shovel and thought I might as well check the furnace and the hot water heater,” I said.

“Why are you standing in deep snow?”

“To hear you clearly,” I said, giving her my best smile.

She snorted and turned her back.