She grabbed Dain’s arms and started trying to shake him. It was like trying to shake an oak tree.
“What you talkin’ ‘bout? Who you talkin’ about?”
“Maxton. His friends.”
She let go of his arms. A slow shudder went through her. She stared at the sidewalk. Dain gently took her arm and urged her along. The streetlights were on automatic, blinking yellow caution in four directions at each intersection. Somewhere far to the south a siren rose and fell, rose and fell.
“Straight she went off with Jimmy Zimmer? Mr. Creepo?”
“Straight. And they took—”
“I don’t wanna hear it.” She hugged herself as they walked, as if suddenly cold. “I don’t wanna be havin’ this conversation.”
They crossed on a crosswalk; there was no traffic.
“Vangie who? From where?”
She didn’t say anything for a quarter of a block, finally said in a rush, “Vangie Broussard. From I-don’t-know-where. Never talked about ‘did’ — only about ‘gonna.’” She gave her sudden deep laugh again, her fears for a moment forgotten. “That girl had the biggest collection of gonnas I ever heard.”
“Gonna what?”
“Gonna make a big score. Gonna get took care of right by Maxton. But that Christmas party...”
She fell silent. Dain prompted, “What happened?”
“Maxton wanted her to take some important client into the private office during the party and fuck his brains out.” She looked over at him, burst out, “She was in love with the dude, man, he say he love her, an’ he ask her to do that! Was a couple weeks after that she started hittin’ on Jimmy Zimmer — he already had his tongue hangin’ out down to his shoetops...”
They walked. Dain said, “Anything else you can tell me?”
“We roomed together, but she was a loner, didn’t do a whole lot with the other kids. I came home one afternoon, must be like two weeks ago now, she was gone. The place spotless, a month’s rent for her and me on my pillow, but not even a note...” She looked over at him, said suddenly, “We partied a couple times with Zimmer and his buddy, I never saw nuthin’ in either one of “em, but Vangie asked me.”
“Tell me about the buddy.”
“Bobby Farnsworth of Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. Mr. Cube.” Her sudden urchin grin shaved ten years off her age. “Boooo-o-o-ring. I’m not really into IRAs and all that jazz, but like to him, The Wall Street Journal is Rolling Stone.”
“Stocks and bonds?”
“Chicago Board of Trade all the way, baby.” She stopped in front of a run-down brick apartment building. “You walked me home after all. It’s six floors straight up unless they fixed the elevator, but if you want a cup of coffee and ain’t afraid of heights—”
“You don’t want to know me, Cindy,” said Dain. “I’m bad news. Even my cat won’t purr.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then nodded and leaned forward and up to kiss him on the cheek.
“Goodbye, Mr. Sad Man,” she said.
12
Before starting through the newspaper, Dain called Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. The receptionist sounded bored enough to be doing her nails behind the switchboard. He told her, “I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Farnsworth to discuss setting up a rather substantial investment account.”
“Mr. Farnsworth Senior or Junior?”
“Junior.”
“Mr. Farnsworth Junior is in our San Francisco office for three months’ training. If anyone else—”
“No. But his San Francisco home phone number might help.”
He wrote it down, hung up. San Francisco. Could Zimmer and the woman, Broussard, also be in San Francisco? No. They would be hiding in Broussard’s life, not Zimmer’s. But a good coincidence for Dain just the same. When the time came, Farnsworth would be Zimmer’s best bet for moving the bonds.
But first, Broussard. Cracking the Chicago police computer with his laptop would take longer than direct action, so he quickly scanned the morning newspaper, finally stopping at an item on the local news page.
When he got off-shift this morning at 4:00 a.m., plainclothes detective Seth “Andy” Anderson of Central Station made the mistake of stopping off at a coffee...
Dain’s ballpoint pen underlined Seth “Andy” Anderson and Central Station, then hand-scrawled a letter on a sheet of hotel stationery cut in half so it was memo size. Dain used the half without the letterhead, dating it five days earlier.
Andy:
I don’t want to go through channels on this one, since it’s about Vangie Broussard, that black-haired “exotic dancer” I been humping since she left Chicago. I think she was involved in a 187PC out here a couple nights ago, and if she was, I wanta bust it myself. I’ll be in Chi on the 14th, can you pull her package to give me a look when 1 get there? Thanks, pal.
He scrawled Solly below the note as a signature, then added a handwritten postscript:
P.S. I need a sweetener in the Department since you-know-what.
Dain addressed an envelope to Andy Anderson at Central Police Station, Chicago, then paused to run a mental check. It was okay. Randy Solomon wasn’t due back from vacation for two more days, so he put Solomon’s SFPD return address in the upper left corner, stamped it, set the date on a self-inking rubber stamp for five days previously, and canceled the stamp.
Finally, he put in the letter, sealed it, opened it again raggedly with his finger under the flap. He stuck the letter and an SFPD lieutenant’s shield in a leather carrying case into the side pocket of the cheap, rather shabby suitcoat he had bought at the Salvation Army, and left the hotel.
Chicago’s Central Police Station was old, ill-kept, angry-looking, as if it never got enough sleep and took a lot of Turns. At a booking desk from the days when Al Capone ran the city, Dain flashed his SFPD shield. In his off-the-rack suit and unshined shoes, an old-fashioned fedora mashed down on his head and an unlit cigar screwed into one corner of his mouth, he looked like fifteen years on the force.
“Yeah, welcome to Chicago,” said the booking sergeant. “How are things out there in fruit and nut land?”
“That’s L.A. We’re the cool gray city by the bay.”
“Yeah, Herb Caen. What can we do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Anybody awake in Vice at this hour?”
“Prob’ly ain’t gone home yet.” The sergeant grinned and handed him a visitor’s badge that he clipped to the breast pocket of his suitcoat. “Elevator to the third floor, turn left.”
Dain thanked him and rode the elevator up, not to Vice, but to the Detective Squadroom. Various plainclothesmen were at the battered desks, typing reports, interviewing complainants, witnesses, suspects. Off in a corner a black youth with dreadlocks was being fingerprinted by a Hispanic woman in a crisp blue uniform. Smoke blued the room. Dain’s eyes found an empty desk with a DET. ANDERSON name block on it.
Going down the room drew Dain no more than a casual brush of eyes from the busy cops. He hooked a hip over the corner of the desk, in the same movement slipped his letter, envelope clipped to the back, underneath the top folder in Anderson’s In box. He then leaned toward the man typing at the next desk. His nameplate read DET. KALER.
“Hey, pal.”
The cop kept on typing. Unlike the stereotype, he was good at it. Dain leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder. Kaler swung toward him, angry, pale eyes flashing.