Monroe tossed the receipts onto the desk and Raj picked them up. Raj looked at them like he was trying to figure out what he was seeing, trying to make sense of it. Then he said to Monroe, “Where did you get these?”
Monroe nodded at me, grim faced. “Joe did some private work. What do you make of them?”
Raj looked at me long, without expression, and I figured this was it-he would tell Monroe that he’d seen me with Bill, they would call Johnson into the office, and then someone would get hurt or worse. I figured that someone would be me. The Ruger rested against my side and I wondered if I had enough energy to reach for it when the moment came.
Raj turned to Monroe. “That fucking Johnson!” he said.
Monroe nodded.
I almost laughed. I looked at Raj, hoping he would give me a glance, a gesture, that told me we were in this together.
He kept his eyes on Monroe. “What now?”
Monroe thought. “It’s an opportunity,” he said.
Raj thought so too and nodded.
“I’ll call a meeting for tonight,” Monroe said. “Let’s make sure everyone’s there.” He turned to me. “It’s an opportunity for you too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to make some changes around here.”
I shook my head. “I’ve known Johnson since he started at the department. He’s tough-you don’t want to underestimate him.”
Monroe waved that away. “I’ve seen what he can do and I know who he is. But you know what? He shits out of the same hole I do. And right now”-Monroe allowed himself a little smile-“he’s deep in it.”
I shrugged. “Can I have the receipts?”
“No,” he said and held his hand toward Raj, who gave them to him. Monroe folded them and stuck them into a pocket. “Right now we need them.”
Raj and I left the office together and walked into the lounge. It was empty. The men had finished their breakfasts. The hostess was gone from her desk, probably in a back room with one of the men.
I stopped Raj. “Why are you helping me? Why didn’t you tell Monroe?”
“Tell him what?”
“I know you saw me yesterday.”
He glanced at the empty lounge. “This whole thing is about to come down, isn’t it?”
I nodded, said, “Maybe.”
He thought about that and looked defeated. He said, “I don’t know what you’re up to. But when it comes down, you’re going to say I did the right thing, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
TWENTY-THREE
I SPENT THE MORNING driving around the city in Raj’s SUV. Raj said every patrolman in the city knew about my Skylark, down to the scratches on the bumpers, so my car stayed in the parking garage fourteen floors below The Spa Club.
I cruised for awhile through the side streets near my house. The sun was burning through the clouds. The light played off the last leaves hanging on the tree branches and glared off the windshields of parked cars.
At 9:30, I called Lucinda. “Hey,” she said when she heard my voice. “Is this your one call from jail?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Have the police been there?”
“Still here-parked on the street. Last night they came in and tried to sweet-talk me into helping them find you.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I offered them coffee and talked sweet to them too.”
“Yeah?”
“So they stopped the sweet talk and threatened me with everything in the book and a little that they made up. They seemed to forget that I used to be a cop. I threatened them back and kicked them out of my apartment, and now they’re sitting outside in the cold.”
“Can you slip away from them?”
“Are you kidding? Where do you want to meet?”
I told her and added, “Bring a pen and paper.”
“You going to write your last will and testament?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll see you in a little bit,” she said.
“Hey, how was dinner with Peter Finley?”
“He spent the whole time trying to convince me to work at The Spa Club. He said selling me as an ex-cop would bring in big money. Guys would like that, girls too if I was willing. He said I could make five times what I made in the department.”
“I believe it. Did you find out anything useful?”
“Nothing new. He’s got little love for Bob Monroe, less for Raj, and none at all for you. I think he’s got ambitions to replace Monroe as number two, behind Johnson.”
“Anything else?”
“No, he was too busy looking down my shirt and putting his hand on my thigh.”
“At least he’s got good taste. When are you going out again?”
“Not funny,” she said.
Next I called Corrine. She answered on the third ring and sounded like I’d woken her.
“Hi,” I said.
She was quiet, then asked, “Where are you?” She said it like she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Driving around.”
That was enough of an answer. “They’ve got you on the news. And in the papers.” She sounded as if she was holding back tears.
“I know.”
“Are you going to turn yourself in?”
“No,” I said. “Do you think I should?”
“I don’t know.” Then, “Are you going to come over here?”
“No,” I said again. “Not right now.”
We were both quiet for awhile. She said, “Why did you call?”
Because I’d wanted to hear her voice. Because I’d wanted to ask where she’d been last night. I said, “To tell you I love you.”
She said nothing to that.
“Corrine?”
She said, “I love you too, Joe, but I don’t know if I love you this much.”
At 10:30, I walked into the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a four-room greenhouse that looked like an enormous glass-roofed pagoda. A concrete path snaked through gardens of ferns and tropical flowers, under palm trees, past hanging baskets of orchids, and past an artificial waterfall. The air was warm and moist-the weather from a tropical rainforest. Lucinda was sitting on a bench under a palm tree.
I sat next to her.
“It’s nice here,” she said.
I nodded. “I’m thinking of taking off my clothes and swimming in the waterfall.”
“I can see the headlines now.”
“Any trouble getting away from your apartment?” I asked.
She smiled. “I left the cruiser boxed in at a stoplight two blocks from my place.”
“You’re good,” I said.
She looked me in the eyes. “Yes.”
“Did you bring the pen and paper?”
She reached into a brown leather bag and handed them to me.
I told her about the meeting that Monroe was scheduling for the evening, and, as I did, I drew a sketch of The Spa Club.
The sketch showed the front lounge with the hostess desk, the hallway that extended behind the desk, and the two offices and the conference room that the hallway led to. I drew another hallway too, which led to a lobby and then the back rooms where you could get anything that money could buy, the room with television monitors, and the door to the emergency exit at the end of that hallway. I put an X on the conference room and another on the emergency exit. The meeting where Monroe confronted Johnson would happen in the conference room, I figured. If Lucinda was willing to take the risk, I wanted her to get into the building and up to the fourteenth floor, and to be standing in the stairwell outside the emergency exit when the meeting started.
I said, “I can think of about a dozen ways this meeting could blow up. If it does, I wouldn’t mind having backup-the more the better. Drive a tank up the stairs if you can. Or at least bring a couple guns and be ready to use them.”
Lucinda studied the diagram. “Do any of the TV monitors show the stairwell?”