The Dead Caller from Chicago

Sixty-one

That evening, Jenny answered on the first ring.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” I said.

“More than our friend by the bridge?” she asked.

“Lustful thoughts pushed him away.”

“I’m batting my eyelashes furiously, trying not to blush.” Her voice was high, tight, working at trying to be funny.

“Want to have dinner?”

“Oh, be still, my beating lashes,” she said, still tight.

“I could pick you up, wherever you live.”

“I’m closer to you.”

“How close?”

“I’m just turning off Thompson Avenue.”

I ran upstairs, found a reasonably unwrinkled shirt and an unstained pair of khakis, and was out the door in no time flat. She was waiting in a black Ford Edge.

“You look…” she began.

“The same?”

“Always.” She laughed. This time it was genuine.

“Since you’re driving, I’ll give the directions?”

She agreed, and we took off in silence, both of us edgy, I thought, planning responses and defenses to the terrors and the wonders of the previous night.

“Where are we headed?” she asked, after several turns and fifteen minutes.

“A medium-fancy place I know.”

“What’s that mean, medium-fancy?”

“Unstained tablecloths and uncrusted silverware, but still affordable.”

“It’s got logs on the outside,” she said when we arrived.

“But, one hopes, no wood-boring beetles.”

She laughed, but only a little.

We ordered unfashionable Rob Roys and food that didn’t matter: fish for her, a small steak for me.

“Your camera?” I began, in lieu of small talk.

“The camera’s fine enough, but what I got at the excavation is too dark. You can’t recognize anyone. So the last of it, the bulldozing, is meaningless.”

“You’ll just have to stay close to Rivertown, waiting for the next chapter,” I said, trying for light and serious at the same time

Our food came, and we talked of the corruption in Illinois and the mop-headed former governor who, just a few days before, had flown to Colorado to begin a fourteen-year stretch in a federal prison for being a mop-headed greedy jackass, and how he’d driven right past the gates so he could stop at a hamburger place to do one more meet-and-greet by the soda machine with people who had no idea who he was. Things like that kept us in Illinois from becoming excessively prideful.

“Speaking of confluence,” I said, when we were done eating. It was the word I’d tried out on Leo, what now seemed like light-years before.

“Confluence?”

“A joining together of two or more-”

“I know what confluence means, you naughty man. This morning was lovely.”

“I was referring to the not so happy confluence of Russians and lizards in Rivertown, which is your cue to answer questions.”

“Does medium-fancy mean we can order tiny after-dinner drinks?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

I only had to raise my hand an inch before the waiter who’d been eyeballing her all night raced over.

“Double Scotches, no ice, please,” she said.

He was back with them in an instant.

“Pray ask away,” she said, taking a small sip. “I’m enthralled.”

I went for the unanswerable first. “It was Elvis Derbil who called you in San Francisco?”

“Nice try. An unnamed source tipped me that something odd was afoot in Rivertown. A Chicago lawyer, representing an anonymous owner, had purchased three houses in your bungalow belt, all in a row, and had applied for permits for their demolition. More mystifying, the lawyer applied for only one building permit, to construct an enormous pillared Greek Revival mansion of some nine thousand square feet. My unnamed source was quite concerned, because such temples are never built in Rivertown. I thought it intriguing enough to ask for a short leave.”

“So it was that, and not the thought of a certain heartbroken eccentric, hopelessly fluttering his handkerchief out his turret, that enticed you back?”

She mock-slapped a giggle. “That’s the Scotch, not me. Anyway, I worked backward from the lawyer and found he was representing a New York lawyer, who was involved with Russian mobsters, both there and here in Chicago.”

“Complicated.”

“Tortuous, designed to obscure.”

“Too complicated for your source to be Elvis Derbil?”

“Have you read your Capone?” she asked, by way of not answering.

With that, I began to understand. “You mean when reformers made Chicago too hot for the Scarface, he moved his operation to Cicero because it was cheesy and small and he could take control of the whole town quickly?”

“Yes.”

“Russians coming to take over Rivertown?” I almost laughed-it sounded like a bad play on an old Alan Arkin movie-except her expression was serious.

“They were going to go Capone one better,” she said. “They knew no one in town would welcome a foreign gang. On the other hand, so many people in Rivertown were out of work, they might welcome the devil himself if he could raise home prices, create any kind of new jobs, and otherwise bring boom times. To calm the natives about their arrival, perhaps even enthuse them, they decided on a very big and visible first step.”

“Build a mansion in Rivertown that everyone in town would see as signaling a coming prosperity,” I said.

“A nifty plan, yes?”

It was starting to sound brilliant. “Still, Rivertown’s such a cheesy place. Our crime is so tawdry.”

“That’s what represented the opportunity. Let me tell you about a friend of mine, a weatherman out east. He liked to go down to Miami to blow off steam. The first night, he goes into one of their grubbier little bars, meets two girls who only have eyes for him. They drink, and drink some more. It’s a happy place; people are singing; the bartender is snapping pictures; everyone’s having a great time. My weatherman blacks out, something he’s never done before, and wakes up in his room the next morning with a small memory and a big hangover.”

“His money and credit cards are gone?”

“Wrong. His wallet is intact, alongside his Cartier watch on the nightstand. His sport jacket is hung neatly in the closet, his shoes placed at the foot of the bed. All that’s missing is his glasses.

“Now get this, Dek: There’s a message on his phone. One of the girls has left her number, apologizing about those glasses. Apparently, he’d set them down on the bar, and she was afraid they’d get broken. So she put them in her purse and forgot to leave them with his other things, when she and her friend brought him safely back to his room. These girls are wonderful, right? He calls her, and suggests they meet up again that night. She’s thrilled, tells him they’ll be at the same bar at eight o’clock.”

She took another sip of the Scotch. “Guess what? Things go swimmingly that night, too, though the girls did say they were leaving town early the next morning. Again there is much drink; again our hero passes out and wakes up the next morning with a huge hangover and an equally large gap in his memory. No bother. His wallet, watch, and glasses are safely resting on his nightstand. He never sees the girls again, drinks his way through the rest of his vacation, and heads home. A month later, his credit card bill arrives.”

“He’s had an expensive time?”

“Forty-five thousand dollars at that one bar alone.”

“What?”

“Obviously, there’s been a mistake, right? Who can spend that much on booze in a grubby small bar, two nights? He contacts his credit card company. They investigate and report back that it’s no mistake. They’ve got credit card receipts for Dom Perignon and other very, very fine champagnes. Fifteen hundred, two grand per bottle. Not only that, but because that grubby little place prided itself on its hospitality, the bar owner produced photos of the glassy-eyed weathercaster holding aloft all sorts of different bottles of that very, very fine champagne. According to the owner, the weatherman bought for the house.”

“Bottles with fake labels.”

“The photos were a little blurry.”

“And his tongue was too thick to taste fine champagne, even if he did know good stuff?”

“They made sure he wasn’t wearing his glasses the second night either, just in case. Very smart, very clever; they thought of everything.”

“He got stuck for the whole forty-five thousand?”

“He threatened to sue. There was a settlement. He didn’t tell me much more, because he was embarrassed about getting so fleeced. He only told me as much as he did because we go way back.”

“The girls would have been part of a rotating team, working with ever-changing owners of that bar,” I said. It was a marvelous scam.

“Want to guess what kind of accents everyone had?”

“Slavic.”

“They’re creative, Dek. Rivertown is close enough to O’Hare and Chicago for conventioneers to find good times. Your infrastructure is already in place; you’ve got many little bars. My weatherman’s champagne story is just one example of how creative the new gangs can be.”

“That new house on Leo’s block was big for both sides,” I said.

“For the Russians, the propaganda would be their best first toehold. For Rivertown’s rulers, it was something to be stopped quickly, before they lost control of their town. An epic battle was brewing.”

“With your unnamed source stuck right in the middle of it.”

“He cared about Rivertown.”

“Now it’s my turn to admire your loyalty,” I said.

She drank the last of her Scotch. “I told him I couldn’t do much, but I was too late anyway.”

“There was absolutely nothing you could have done.”

Her eyes had filled with tears. “These are me, not the Scotch,” she said, trying for a smile.

“You got it wrong,” I said.

“What?”

“Your man wasn’t killed by Russians,” I said.