The Dead Caller from Chicago

Thirty-seven

Once before, I’d expected someone to come for me in the night.

It had been cold then, like now, and the ground had been covered with snow then, like now. Back then, my genius had told me to string sensor lights around the first and second floors. Someone might break through the timbered door, but that would trigger the big lights, and that would send him away. If it didn’t, my genius added, I’d deal with him with impunity. Snugged up on the top floor, with the trapdoor bolted and the ladder pulled up behind me, all I had to do was watch the snow below. When light shot bright out of the slit windows, I’d know to call the cops, then wait, safe at the impregnable top of the turret.

I figured wrong, several ways. First, I forgot to bring up the phone. Then, when my visitor did arrive, he brought a helper. Neither of them was afraid of strong light, and they proceeded up through the second, third, and fourth floors like they were being welcomed at an overlit party. Finally, when they ran out of stairs and saw there was no ladder to get up to the top floor-because I’d so cleverly pulled it up behind me-they found a way to make me come to them. It was a mess. Only through blind luck did my genius, such as it was, survive to think again.

This time, I didn’t have to risk an occasionally misfiring brain. I had Leo’s gun. There’d be no need to scuttle up to the top floor and hunker down with a cell phone. My timbered door was thick, perhaps the strongest in town except for the mayor’s. At the first sound of someone trying to break in, I’d simply call the cops and wait, prone on the second floor, with the long barrel of Leo’s gun aimed downward, straight at the doorway. Even if the cops took their usual leisurely time to amble over, and my intruder did get through the door, I had the gun. It was like a cheesy camera, Leo once told me. There was no safety to unclick, nothing to cock: Just point and pull the trigger, was all there was to it.

So I waited, stretched out on the floor above the door, gun at the ready.

Caffeine and adrenaline and the sounds of the night along Thompson Avenue kept me jittered and alert until well past four in the morning. When the tonks began to close and the last revelers shuffled away, bent double by bad booze or unrequited lust, the wind took up its cue and started to howl along the Willahock, sweeping up bits of bramble and branches to slam against the turret’s slit windows. The noise of the night kept me ready, waiting for a killer.

He never came.

Then it was eight o’clock and it would be safe to sleep, at least for a time. He wouldn’t try to break in with cars passing right by the turret on their way to city hall. I climbed up to the third floor and was asleep in an instant.

Someone at the door woke me too few hours later. Sunshine streamed in through the slit windows, making long, narrow ribbons of bright light on the wide-planked wood floor. It was late morning.

I hustled down the stairs and kept the gun in my hand out of sight, up against the inside wall as I opened the door.

A short, gray-haired man in a dark green trench coat stood outside. He flashed a Chicago cop’s badge. “My name’s Jarobi. Mind if I come in?”

He wasn’t holding a gun, but he looked as though he could, in a hurry. I nodded.

“Mind putting that away, son?” he asked, giving the gun in my hand a slight nod as he gently pushed past me.

He headed toward the table saw, the centerpiece of my conversational furniture grouping. Sitting on one of the white plastic chairs, he made a show of eyeballing the saw, and the nothing that was in the rest of the room. “Lived here long?” He was sizing me up for a flake suit.

I took the other chair. “I’m fixing it up to sell.”

“A table saw does a lot to liven up a room.”

“What have I done to interest the Chicago police?”

“Nothing, officially. Wendell Phelps is a friend of my chief’s. Mr. Phelps asked for an informal review of those people closest to his family, prior to a federal audit he’s about to undergo. I imagine it has to do with Mr. Phelps’s foreign interests.”

“I fit in because I used to be married to his daughter?”

“I’m hoping you’ll answer a few questions.” He took out a little notebook, flipped it open, and asked me questions he could have gotten answered off the Internet. Mostly, he kept his eyes on my face.

“You don’t look stupid, Captain,” I said, when he closed his little notebook.

His face didn’t change. “Why, thank you.”

“Why are you here?”

“I told you, Mr. Wendell-”

I stood up. To his credit, he stood up, too. I walked him to the door.

I wondered if he was even a cop. Perfect badge copies could be bought in Chicago, in the wrong neighborhoods for the right price. I looked at the revolver I’d left lying on the table saw.

He’d followed my eyes and pulled out a business card. “Call my district, describe me. Hell, you can ask them to e-mail my picture.”

He opened the door but paused before going out. “I did have someone fill me in. You’ve got an interesting history.”

“Interesting enough to warrant a look-see, in person?”

“I’ve written my cell phone number on the back,” he said, handing me the card. “Call me anytime.”

“About what?” I asked.

“About anything.”

“You have no jurisdiction.” The words came out too stupid, and too fast.

“Over what?”

“Over anything in Rivertown,” I said.

He shook his head with affected sadness. “Men like your ex-father-in-law have jurisdiction everywhere. Best you realize that.”