The Dead Caller from Chicago

Fifty-five

I’d just balanced the little television on my lap, about to let the noon news entertain my recovering solar plexus, when Leo called.

“I’m going to take a cab if you don’t come to pick me up,” he said, “and I’ll instruct the cabbie to bring me to your cylinder to collect the cartage charges, since I have no cash.”

Lester Lance Leamington’s smiling face appeared on the tiny screen, likely about to advise me to embrace my future. Without thinking, I turned the volume down.

“What about the two hundred I gave you as an unsecured loan?” I inquired.

The television screen switched to a wider shot. Lester Lance Leamington was being perp-walked in handcuffs from an office building.

It was no infomercial. “Shush,” I said, dialing up the volume.

“… where today,” an announcer intoned, “he was arrested and charged with multiple counts of money laundering and distributing pornography. Sources say he needed the money to cover the losses he incurred in the stock market…”

“Get me out of here,” Leo yelled into my ear.

“Have you heard anything about Lester Lance Leamington?”

“Busted this morning for covering his past with dirty money and dirty movies.”

“Ma and her friends aren’t involved, right?”

“Right now,” he yelled.

“Robinson’s still loose.”

“I’ve already checked myself out, and I have another of Pa’s guns hidden at home.”

There was no arguing with that, and so I drove north.

Leo was waiting inside the front door. “What’s the matter with your stomach?” he asked, getting into the Jeep.

I must have been hunched over the wheel. I leaned back, with pain, and gave his outfit the fisheye. The glare was almost overwhelming. He wore an orange shirt festooned with silver and green flamingos and lime-colored pants beneath his orange traffic officer’s jacket.

“Slight indigestion, though it’s nothing compared to the pain in my eyes.”

“You got slugged in the gut.”

I drove us away, in need of something to do.

“I think I’m on the verge of remembering what sent me here,” he said, watching the side of my head. When I stayed rigidly focused on the road ahead, he said, “OK, so instead tell me how you got slugged.”

“I have to make a call,” I said, and I did. Jenny hadn’t returned the call I’d made, though it had only been a couple of hours.

Once again, I got transferred straight to her voice mail. This time I said nothing.

“The press?”

I nodded.

“Who slugged you?” he then asked.

There would be no dodging Leo. If he didn’t know something, he stayed at it until he pried out the truth. “Two guys who I think are not friends of Robinson’s.”

“Don’t obfuscate.”

“Remember that little parade I led through the woods, before coming up to see you?”

“Where you so cleverly gave three cars the slip?”

“That would be the one, yes, except now I think my cunning wasn’t involved.”

“Makes sense.”

“Robinson’s van was found in a shed in those woods, with a fresh scrape indicating it may have been run off the road.”

“Meaning that the drivers of those lagging two cars were anxious not to catch up with you, but rather Mr. Robinson?”

“There’s more: There was an old revolver on the front seat.”

“Just like Pa’s?” He turned to look at me. “Or was it exactly like Pa’s, right down to the fingerprints?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll testify you were institutionalized under a false name, loony as a bluejay, when it got stolen.”

“How much are you holding back?”

“I cleverly staged a burglary,” I said.

“You’re talking in circles.”

“Once more around and you’ll be too confused to care. Those two guys tailing Robinson might be the ones that just found me at the health center. The one who spoke sounded Russian. The other was nonverbal.”

“What does this have to do with Pa’s gun?”

“I think Robinson had it when he was chasing me beside the woods. The Russians left it in the van.”

“You’re leaving too much out. This is all going right past me.”

“I believe they’ve done him wrong, which is the only reason I’m bringing you home. I think Robinson’s angered the wrong people, and he’s out of the picture, for forever.”

He turned to look out the window. “I don’t get any of this. All I know is, Mr. Robinson was always so nice.”

“Something made him desperate to get out of Rivertown.”

“Something more than greed for a valuable painting?”

“Jenny tells me nasty things are percolating in Rivertown. I need to talk to her.”

He gave it up, and we drove in silence until we got to his block.

“Police tape?” he asked.

He was looking at the bungalow where he’d killed Robert Wozanga.

“Cops found blood on the steps. The tape’s a precaution to keep the curious out.”

He shifted in the Jeep so he could look directly at me. “That’s where I was hiding. How do I fit with that blood?”

“You don’t.”

I parked in front of his house. He made no move to get out. “You told me you had my gun. How did Robinson get it?”

“Remember that clever staged burglary I just mentioned?”

“Damn it, talk sense.”

“Trust me awhile. There’s a lot I don’t yet understand.”

“Then how about this: There’s nothing going on at the new house. Is that because of the blood where I was hiding?”

“No. Our town fathers have been hassling the contractor, and that’s part of what I don’t understand.”

I got out before he could ask more questions, and we went inside.

“Jeez Louise. What’s that smell?” he asked, stopping in the tiny foyer.

I gave a theatrical sniff. “Essence of Pine-Sol.”

“Ma doesn’t use Pine-Sol. You had the place cleaned.”

“You had intruders.”

“Cassone, looking for his painting. Who else?”

“Maybe Robinson, looking for the same thing. I figured you and Ma would feel better if any traces of them were washed away.”

“What else?” he asked. He used to say that all the time, when we were kids. He was relentless then, and he would be relentless now. He was going to bombard me with questions until he understood exactly what had sent him to a clinic with amnesia.

We walked into the kitchen. “They even ran the dishwasher,” he said.

“Actually, I needed the practice. I aspire to owning one myself someday.”

“You’d need dishes that won’t dissolve in hot water.” He continued down the hall. Just inside his room, he bent over. “Odd,” he said.

“What?”

He dropped to his knees and sniffed the carpet. “There was a stain here, but it’s been shampooed away.”

“The cleaning service was most thorough.”

“It wasn’t just a simple cleaning. You had this place scrubbed,” he said, standing up.

“I told you: I thought it would make Ma feel better.”

His eyes were unblinking. “Ma said she and Endora cleaned the place before you made them go away again.”

“I told you that Rudy Cassone was in here. Likely Robinson, too.”

“And the bat with yours and Robinson’s fingerprints on it, along with Cassone’s blood, is where?”

I beamed, as though to a dull child. “A police lockup. I’m hoping that since Cassone was killed by gunshot, and not clubbing, no one will think to print the bat. Even if they do, thanks to clever me, there will always be that burglary I reported, to explain away a missing gun and bat.”

“Want to know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you’re worried there were even more fingerprints in this house, fingerprints that would implicate me in something I can’t remember.”

Like Wozanga’s death, but I hoped to spend the rest of my life never having to say that.

We walked down the basement stairs.

“You even cleaned the mound of things Brumsky?” he asked, pointing at the orderly pile against the wall.

“Top to bottom, professionally wiped. No telling where Cassone was.”

We went into his office. Everything sparkled in the light from his desk lamp and, like the rest of the house, stank sickeningly of Pine-Sol. I took the green overstuffed chair; he sat behind his desk.

He pulled a pencil out of the cup and began walking it between his fingers as he looked around the comforting familiarity of his office. Surprise lit his face in a half-smile when he got to the space above the mismatched file cabinets. He got up and went to finger the lavender barn. “You really left it here?”

Perhaps later, on a summer night, sipping a Czech beer, I’d give him more partial answers.

For now, I said, “No one dangerous knows its history. Cassone’s dead; Robinson’s missing, likely dead; and the Bennetts don’t know about you at all, or where I came from. It’s yours to do with what you want, with impunity.”

His face had gone sly, an expression I’d seen plenty of times, right before he pulled a figurative ace from his sleeve. “I so love impunity,” he said.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Perhaps one last step, to be sure,” he said.

“Sure of what?”

“Sure of that last step.”

Then he laughed.