The Dead Caller from Chicago

Sixty

Jenny was in a dark mood as we drove back to the turret. She didn’t speak until I pulled up in front.

“Can I use your car? I want to check what I’ve got on professional equipment.” I assumed she was talking about what she’d recorded earlier at the excavation but figured, too, that she wanted to get far away from Rivertown.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll run in and get your camera.”

I started to get out but sat back when she didn’t move to come around to the driver’s seat.

“Did I get a man killed tonight, Dek? Should I have known not to call the Rivertown police from the bridge?”

“You mean to protect the man who abducted you and took you to that bridge to kill you and dump you in the river, for what he thought you knew? You think you should have protected that man, Jenny, so he could try to kill you again?”

“I should have known to call the sheriff, not the Rivertown cops.”

“That was my instinct, too, until I realized they’d simply have passed it on to Rivertown. That’s why we’re lucky you called anonymously. Rivertown’s city hall will do anything to hush this up, including bringing in dirt movers in the middle of the night. They’d kill you, Jenny, for what you know about what’s been going on.”

“You’re sure of the voices at the excavation?”

“J. J. Derbil and brother Elvis, dumping Mr. Red.”

“And it was J. J. and Elvis who went to the bridge tonight, not the cops?”

“You’d never be able to prove it, because no one will ever get permission to dig at that excavation site again.”

“I’ll see you later,” she said.

“I’ll get your camera,” I said.

She managed a small smile as she patted the pocket of her coat. “I kept it low so no one would see.”

A clatter outside woke me at noon.

The Jeep had been returned. A stake truck was parked behind it. Two men were off-loading firewood and carrying it around to stack in back.

I dressed, went down, and, thinking that everything in life was temporary, used fresh grounds for the coffee. By the time I had two cups the truck was gone.

I went outside. The day was gray with the promise of new snow, perhaps lots of it. I was cheered by the hope that Jenny had seen brightness in so much gloom, and by the prospect of so much new wood.

I drove to Leo’s neighborhood, anxious to see amazements. Which I did. The excavation and the bungalow were no more. The entire three-lot property had been overfilled with new dirt swept into gentle mounds.

Leo answered the door wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt adorned by a SpongeBob SquarePants holding a surfboard.

“Come in. We’re having coffee and apricot Danish,” he said.

I followed him into the kitchen. Two Rivertown lieutenants, still wearing their tan trench coats, sat perched on Ma’s gold-flecked vinyl chairs.

Pa’s revolver lay in the middle of the table, next to the Danish.

“I love impromptu parties,” Leo said, pouring coffee into another of the scratched porcelain Walgreens mugs Ma had liberated, back when she’d been a full-time working girl and part-time lunch counter thief. He set a matching Walgreens plate, like the ones the officers had, on the table next to it. Ma liked everything on her table to match.

“I was just telling my friends here that they ought to go over to your place and arrest you, for your fingerprints are surely on Pa’s revolver, along with mine,” he said.

One of the bruisers smiled as he brought the last of a four-inch slice of Danish to his mouth.

“That true?” his partner asked me, because he could. His mouth had cleared.

“I’ve held that gun several times since I was a kid. You’re aware I reported a burglary here, while Leo was on vacation?”

The partner nodded, but it might have been in anticipation. His eyes had drifted to the remainder of the Danish.

They were big men. Quick as lightning, I cut off two inches and dropped it on my plate.

“You got my fingerprints from the index?” I asked. My fingerprints had been on file since the Evangeline Wilts trial.

The first cop raised his eyebrows, surprised. “No,” he managed, chewing.

The partner’s plate still held only crumbs. He looked at Leo. Leo nodded. The second man cut off another wide slice of Danish. There was but an inch left. Wide slices can kill a Danish in no time.

“Any other prints on the gun?” I asked.

The first cop reached over and stabbed the last inch with his fork. “This is really good Danish,” he said.

“Where’d you find the gun?” I asked, as though Jarobi hadn’t already told me it had been in Robinson’s minivan. I wanted to know what Rivertown’s cops knew

“In some woods, I heard.” That was the way it would go down: A gun with nobody’s prints was found in nobody’s car in nobody’s woods. The two bruisers came to return it, so nobody would think to wonder what nobody had been up to. Robinson needed to be erased.

They finished their Danish and stood up. They left the Colt on the table.

Leo walked them out and came back. “Pa registered the thing, can you believe it? All I can think is a cop must have lifted his head off the bar one of the nights Pa brought it in. He liked to wave it around the tavern. It was a real antique.”

“A Peacemaker,” I said.

“A what?”

“A Colt Peacemaker, the gun that won the West,” I said slowly, savoring the fact that I knew an irrelevant bit of minutiae that he did not.

Standing, his eyes were at the same level as mine, though I was seated. His didn’t blink.

“So far as anyone need know, it was stolen in the supposed robbery here?”

“Sure,” I said.

“How did Robinson get the Colt, Dek?”

It was time to give him another installment. “He kidnapped Amanda.”

His face got stricken. “She’s all right?”

“She’s fine, off on a vacation, actually,” I said quickly. I told him everything about the kidnapping.

“How could you drop the gun in Mr. Robinson’s basement?” he asked when I was done.

“It was a time of some nervousness. Now, thanks to Robinson getting pushed off that highway alongside the woods, you got your gun back. I’m so tired of being chased.”

“Where he was abducted by those two hoods?”

“Russian hoods, exports from New York.”

“Why?”

“It has to do with that excavation that just got filled in, and a floater they found in the Willahock. To understand that, I need to talk to Jenny.”

“Those Rivertown lieutenants said nothing when you asked about other prints on Pa’s revolver.”

“Robinson’s were all over that gun. By wiping it down, they distanced city hall from anything he’d been up to, on their behalf or his own. They brought it back and blew you off. Now it’s something stolen in a robbery, nothing more,” I said.

“I think you want me to forget about that gun, too.”

He was right, of course. I never wanted him to wonder about that gun either.

“I know you, Leo,” I said.

“Yes?” he asked, about to be victorious.

“I know you never buy just one Danish.”

He sighed and went to a cabinet, coming back with a long white bag. Opening it to reveal a second Danish, truly a miracle of golden crust, bright orange apricot, and sweet white drizzle, he said, “There are so many holes in the stories you’re telling me.”

I cut a fine wide slice of the Danish.

“My second night at the clinic,” he said, “I had a vague dream about someone chasing me into that empty bungalow. I shot him with Pa’s gun. I’ve had the same dream four more times since then.”

“You should fantasize about better things,” I said, raising the Danish to my mouth.

“You know what they say about dreams,” he said.

“What?” I stuffed the tip of the Danish into my mouth so nothing unnecessary would come out.

“Ultimately, they tell the truth.”