The Dead Caller from Chicago

Fifty-four

I waited until nine o’clock before I approached the turret. No one appeared to have tampered with the door lock.

Nor had the sensor lights been tripped. I went upstairs, had coffee from previous grounds, and called Jarobi for news about Robinson and his friends.

“What’s shaking?” I asked, trying to not sound like I was referring to my nerves, which would have been worse if I’d used fresh grounds, or spent the night in the turret waiting for someone to break down the door.

“A forest preserve worker found a Chrysler minivan in a storage garage, near that access road you described.”

“Green?”

“With serious scrapes along the driver’s side. It was Robinson’s car, like I expected.”

“Red scrapes or black scrapes on the minivan?”

“Black.”

“From an Impala?”

“Who knows, Elstrom? Forget the Impala; we don’t have the money to be CSI Chicago. There were other things, though. A revolver was found lying on the passenger’s seat. Want to know what kind of revolver?”

“Oh, why not?”

“Colt Peacemaker, buckaroo. The sheriff is running it down, like there’s a mystery to who owns it.”

I didn’t see any need to tell him it wasn’t mine, but Leo’s.

“What about Robinson himself?”

“Meaning was he found shot with a Peacemaker that had your fingerprints on it? He’s nowhere to be found, though two blood-soaked towels were found on the passenger seat. I suppose there could have been an accident, and he wandered off to get help.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course not. Robinson was already wounded, likely from that alley altercation earlier. Those cars weren’t tailing you; they were tailing Robinson, to wound him further.”

“Friends of Cassone’s?”

“Angered by the brutal way he was shot and then clubbed postmortem? Maybe, though I’m sensing Robinson had other issues.”

“What kind of other issues?”

“Floater issues, though I suppose all sorts of folks in your charming little town might have been responsible for that.”

“What about that guy?”

“It was a John Doe.”

“They have no idea who it might be?”

“It’s not Snark Evans, if that’s what you’re asking. The floater’s older, a white male in his midfifties. Apparently his fingerprints aren’t on file. They’re going to keep him cool for another week, then bury him.”

“Without knowing who he was?”

“They’re dead-ended, buckaroo.”

“And Robinson?”

“If he’s not buried in the woods somewhere, chances are he’s running from those two guys who were tailing him. Any ideas?”

I didn’t know. I knew who did, though.

I called Jenny. She didn’t answer. I left a message, saying I had questions and wanted to have dinner, but I didn’t mean it in that order.

The cleaning service was already waiting at Leo’s when I got there.

I’d asked for every person they could provide. Smelling meat, they’d sent ten. They sang in Polish as they vacuumed and scrubbed and polished. I didn’t sing at all as I killed time outside, scraping the last bits of snow from Leo’s walk. The glinting eyes of the next-door babushka, wondering what was going on, were too hot.

After the cleaning crew left, I took a casual, hands-in-the-pockets stroll down the alley. The excavation sat abandoned, its foundation forms upright and empty. The gravel blanket between them still appeared smooth and undisturbed, and I took that to be a small mercy until I realized that with Robinson gone, Rivertown was without a building inspector, and that meant no concrete work would be approved for quite some time. Surely Wozanga’s patience, cold though it was, would run out before that.

I needed to push back at the worries, and the Twinkies and Ho Hos that had fueled them through the night. I headed to the health center.

It was still early, and no thumpers lounged about. Still, after bumping my way across the parking lot to park next to the doorless Buick, I double-checked to be sure my Jeep was unlocked before going in. Prudence dictated that anyone be able to quickly see the dash had already been plundered of its radio, lest he begin ripping at the hundred silver curls of duct tape that made my Jeep look so like an aging Shirley Temple.

The locker attendant was nowhere to be seen, though two new locks, sparkling and freshly cut, dangled from lockers. I could only suppose he’d gone off to oil his bolt cutters. Like any good craftsman, he took care of his tools.

After changing into my gym duds and pocketing my wallet and keys, I left my locker door ajar for inspection and went upstairs.

As usual, the retirees were perched on the rusted exercise machines like kids at story time, as Frankie the Bridge Inspector held forth with the day’s repetition of his twelve-joke repertoire. The retirees listened not in hopes of fresh material but rather for the certainty that the old stuff would be spun up the same as every other day. In a rapidly aging world, Frankie’s old jokes were forever young. There was comfort in that.

I gave the boys a wave and ran the track. Two newcomers, no doubt the unknowing owners of the clipped locks downstairs, ran more haltingly, slowed less by the rips and the tears than they soon would be by the loss of their money, credit cards, keys, and cars. I quit after a mile, gasping, took my keys and wallet down for a shower, dressed, and went outside.

Two dark-haired, middle-aged businessmen, dressed ordinarily enough in tan trench coats and brown fedoras, stepped out from the side of the building. There was nothing ordinary about the speed with which they moved up on me, one in front, one behind.

They had fast hands. The one behind, whom I now think of as Mr. Red, pinned my arms back so that Mr. Black could hit me with a fast rabbit jab to the gut. I dropped to the asphalt, certain I’d never breathe again.

It was Mr. Red who bent down to speak, bracing himself with his knee on my back and his hand next to my face. He had a small tattoo, three stars in a tight cluster, just behind his thumb. “You done with Robinson.” His accent was Slavic, maybe Russian.

“Is he done with me?” I asked the crumbles of asphalt in front of my nose.

“Persistence bring pain.” He straightened up, and the two men disappeared around the corner of the building, presumably to where one of their cars, either the red or the black, was parked.

“What the hell did he mean?” I asked the asphalt, when I was able to take longer breaths.

The asphalt had deteriorated too much to offer up anything. I pushed myself to my knees, then to full standing, surprised that I could. Mr. Black was fast enough to have hit me two or three more times, going down, and those would have done real damage. Instead he’d only punched once.

He was a professional. He’d meant only to drop me, and to warn.

About what, I wasn’t sure.