The Dead Caller from Chicago

Fifty-two

Dr. Feldott was puzzled by what I was carrying.

“Flags, or rags?” she asked, smiling.

“Mr. Smith’s dress clothes.”

She pursed her lips. “That’s a shame.”

“I thought they might trigger a memory or two.”

“Why not? I’m afraid we’ve tried everything. We can only be patient. He doesn’t speak much, but we hear him whispering when he’s alone. Patients sometimes do that; it’s a means of trying to communicate, if only to themselves. He smiles a lot, though. We think he’s happy.” She motioned for me to go in first.

Leo wore a white shirt and tan trousers and sat at the small desk. He swept something small into his lap.

“Do you know me?” I asked.

He gave me a nod, of sorts, but his eyes had been drawn to the magnificent songstress on the CD. I set it on the desk.

“Would you like a player for that?” the doctor asked. She’d followed his eyes.

“Oh yes,” he said.

She nodded approvingly and left. It was progress.

I spilled the clothes out on the bed. Holding up one of his most atrocious Hawaiian shirts, a bright orange number decorated with red pineapples dangling from palm trees with pink fronds, I asked, “Excite you at all?”

He frowned. “Bright.”

“Excellent,” I said. “A lack of enthusiasm for this garment is surely a sign of a correcting mental attitude. You might become better than new.”

His brow wrinkled. “Huh?”

“This is one of your favorite shirts.”

He winced and turned to the CD on the desk. A leer spread across his pale features. “This is mine?”

“Yes.”

“I like this,” he said.

I sat on a chair next to the bed. “I came to tell you a story.”

“Good.”

“Once upon a time, in a crooked little village not so very far away…” I began. Then I stopped. “No, forget that. This isn’t funny.”

I began again. “Years ago, a young thief named Snark Evans worked at the Rivertown city garage for a man named Tebbins. He also worked for Tebbins after hours, helping to install residential security systems. One day, Evans stole some jewelry and a painting from a house where they were installing a system.”

Leo’s eyes had remained on the CD.

I cleared my throat loudly. He looked up.

“The painting belonged to a Chicago mobster named Rudy Cassone,” I said.

He showed no reaction.

“OK so far?” I asked.

“OK.”

“Almost immediately, Snark realized he’d stolen from a wrong guy, so he decided to get out of town quick.”

“Quick?”

I nodded. “The jewelry he could take with him, to hock later. He decided to leave the painting behind, maybe because it would be difficult to fence, or maybe because he thought it wasn’t worth much. He gave the picture to a friend, for safekeeping.”

I watched his face. Nothing changed.

“The burglary victim, Rudy Cassone, confronted Tebbins about the theft,” I went on. “Tebbins knew nothing about it. All he could tell Cassone was that Snark had taken off. So Cassone went away. Later that summer, Tebbins, or his boss, a man named Robinson, heard that Snark Evans was dead. But maybe Snark faked his own death, to throw Cassone off his trail. He could have changed his name and begun a new life somewhere far away.” I paused. “Until just a few days ago.”

Leo’s thick eyebrows rose, like always when he was surprised. This time, though, there was no crinkling around his eyes to show that his mind was keeping up with his eyebrows.

“Enter a couple of Hollywood types named Bennett,” I said.

“Types named Bennett,” Leo repeated softly.

I was speaking simply. His words were even simpler, childlike… and chilling.

“Henny Bennett is a very successful producer of B-grade horror movies. As near as I can tell, Mindy, his wife, was successful mostly at being beautiful, at least until recently. Sadly, like us all, she’s gotten older, so I think Henny started casting around for a younger model. He found one, and now he’s divorcing Mindy. Each of them, Henny and Mindy, wants that painting that was stolen from Cassone so many years before. OK so far?”

“OK so far,” Leo repeated in a monotone. He’d dropped his eyes back to the CD. I was losing him.

“The painting is called the Daisy, and it once belonged to a Nazi. Actually, it might still legally belong to his descendants.”

“Nazi?”

“Do you know what that is?”

“OK.”

“The Daisy has not been seen since before World War II. Both Henny Bennett and Mindy Bennett are willing to pay huge dollars for the Daisy because each wants it for his or her collection.”

“But it’s the Nazi’s.” His brow had wrinkled, but that could have been from squinting at the Brazilian goddess.

“Or his family’s. Still, each of the Bennetts is willing to buy the painting, no matter who legally owns it, no questions asked-”

He sighed and stood up. He walked to the bed and began taking off his white shirt.

I went on, though I was now talking to myself. “Snark Evans, who’s been living under another name all these years, read of the battling Bennetts in a magazine somewhere. That made him remember the painting he’d stolen and given to a co-worker that summer.”

A tiny noise came from the chair where he’d been sitting. I looked at him. He hadn’t heard it. He was putting on another of the shirts I’d brought, this a purple, orange, and yellow combination of trees, fruits, and birds wearing sombreros. He began buttoning the shirt.

“Snark Evans wanted that painting back, because it was so valuable, and so he called that long-ago co-worker…” I stopped to look at the chair. The low hum had come again.

“I’ve confused you?” I asked, standing up. I eased over to the chair and looked down. A cell phone lay on the seat, vibrating with a new message.

“Dr. Feldott says she hears you whispering when you’re alone,” I said.

He put on the orange slacks I’d brought and stepped to the mirror on the wall. His white teeth split his narrow head in two, smiling like he was breathing pure oxygen.

“Ah,” he said to his image.

“Damn it,” I said.

He spun into the ridiculous small dance he always used when he’d put something over on me.

“Samba,” he said.