“It certainly did for Rudy Cassone,” I said affably. Cradling the cell phone against my ear, I eased into my thickest jeans, made even thicker in spots by dried paint, and reached for the last of my sweatshirts. It was an XXXL in blaze orange with DEPARTMENT OF PRISONS printed on the back. Leo bought it for me, saying that although he only paid two dollars for it, the owner of the Discount Den assured him it went for more when it was new.
“What?” Gare shouted through the tiny speaker of my cell. “You sound like you’re talking through a pillow.”
And a cloud of cocaine, I wanted to say, but I’d had a better inspiration, born of too little sleep and too much Mickey Gare. “Things have gotten more complicated,” I said.
“Speak up! I can’t hear you.”
I took a moment to enjoy his quickened breathing before whispering, “A third bidder.”
A horrific sound, akin to an entire forest being ripped loose, came through the phone. “You-you-there’ll be an enticement. Huge money for you alone.”
I clicked him away. Amanda was safe, and mending. Leo was mending, too, I hoped. I had other things to resume worrying about. A worthless canvas might have been destroyed in Bruno Robinson’s basement, but a gun most certainly had not-a gun that had been used to kill a man who lay under too little gravel. That gravel would have to be swept again, before the walls and the slab could be poured. Sweeping meant dislodging, and that meant discovering. Likely enough, Robert Wozanga would again see the light of day.
I walked to the window. Jarobi’s guard detail was gone.
I grabbed my regular cell phone. I’d gotten no messages, especially one from Jarobi saying Robinson had been found dead.
“Oh, boy,” I said to myself. Then, realizing that talking to one’s self is a sign of deteriorating mental health, I went down to talk to the coffeemaker.
While I waited for Mr. Coffee to embrace the day, I switched on the little kitchen radio I keep tuned to the news. I listened for ten minutes. There was no account of a building inspector being found shot to death on the West Side.
I called Amanda’s cell phone. I got jettisoned right to voice mail. Understandably, she was not taking calls.
I then tried the never effervescent Wendell Phelps at his office. His secretary said she’d have to take a message.
Finally, I called Jenny. Dinner with her seemed like the most important thing I could do, even though she’d have questions, not the least of which would be why I’d taken twelve hours to return her call. I got routed to her voice mail, too.
As I poured coffee, my phone rang.
“Good afternoon, buckaroo,” Jarobi said.
“Buckaroo,” I repeated, clueless.
“Buckaroos are cowboys, remember?”
“No.”
“Buckaroos carried Colt Peacemakers like yours. Got it?”
“All of life is about loss.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “How’s Amanda?”
“Her father put a wall around her. Without a complaint, I can’t get a warrant issued on Robinson.” He cleared his throat. “That is, if he’s still alive.”
I was awake now, and fully nervous. “He’s got to be dead.”
“You’re sure it was Robinson following you?”
“I recognized his burgundy Escalade.”
“And him? You recognized him?”
“I think so. He had a towel…”
“What are you saying?”
“He must have gotten burned in his basement and grabbed a towel to stanch the bleeding. I didn’t actually see his face.”
“The car, we found. The windshield was smashed in, and there was blood on the steering wheel and the front seat. No Robinson.”
“What’s Rivertown City Hall saying?”
“The Escalade was stolen. They don’t know when.”
“They’re covering up,” I said.
“You hope.”
“You bet. I don’t want Robinson alive anymore. We have issues.”
“If you were sure it was Robinson chasing you, I could summon up some actionable charge, here in Chicago. If all you saw was someone holding a towel to his head…”
“No corpses, no Caprice in that alley, either?”
“Some fresh scrapes on a garage but that’s all. Be careful, buckaroo.”
I put on my coats and went out. The sun was bright; the day had warmed into the low forties. No ice glistened anywhere.
On my way to Leo’s, I called Endora. “Amanda is safe,” I said.
“Thank goodness,” she said. Then, “It’s over?”
“Not by a long shot.” I braced for anger. She must have been going crazy, cooped up in some discount motel with Ma Brumsky and her own mother, sweating whether Leo would ever summon his head back to full life.
She said nothing. There was no anger, no rage.
“I’m going by his place to pick up some of his most outrageous clothes and a few CDs,” I said. “They might prod some memories.”
She forced a laugh that came out flat and hung up.
Leo’s neighbor was on her front porch with a broom. “About time,” she called out.
“For what? The snow is melting.”
“About time anyway,” she said.
I stepped through the slush to the back.
Grabbing clothes to bring to Leo took no time at all, because any combination of patterns and colors, no matter how unharmonious, always made him look normal. I grabbed shockingly colored shirts and pants from his closet, and a shockingly endowed Brazilian songstress’s CD from the Bose system on his dresser, and went back out to the Jeep.
Before heading north, I swung past Robinson’s bungalow. A Rivertown police cruiser and the fire marshal’s red sedan were parked in front. No fire damage was visible on the outside. I supposed that meant little had been destroyed inside, either, especially not the fingerprints on a revolver.
I drove to the tollway. As I was about to get on, I chanced a look in the rearview and saw an older green Chrysler minivan. It had been a hundred yards behind me on Thompson Avenue and was lagging the same hundred yards now.
Paranoia, I told myself. Paranoia from a hellish few days. Still, I drove past the northbound entrance ramp and headed west.
I passed Crystal Waters just as I had the morning I’d driven to Falling Star to deliver a canvas to Rudy Cassone. Now, though, the latest snow had made the gated community’s ruined grounds pristine and white. Even the enormous husks of the few houses that remained, waiting for last inspections by explosives experts before they could be torn down, looked whole and livable, as though their owners were snugged up safe inside. It was an illusion. Those houses sat on ground riddled deep with live explosives. Perhaps that’s what Crystal Waters had always been, a facade, an illusion of a good life that could be exquisitely and securely lived. It had certainly been that for the months Amanda and I had been married. Until we, and it, blew up.
The minivan was still behind me, and gaining. The gap between us was less than fifty yards.
Spider feet prickled up my neck. Only one hand gripped the steering wheel. The other held a white terry towel pressed to his face. It was splotched all over with red.
The driver was leaking. He was from hell.
Fifty-one
He followed my every turn, not caring if he was noticed. Even tipped into crazy, his head a wet mess oozing red into a towel, he was Superman. He survived fire and, somehow, an alley full of guns. Now he wanted only me. He wanted revenge.
I made more turns, and so did he. I pulled onto a main highway, three lanes running north, and so did he. He had to be thinking about a big move. So was I.
We came to a forest preserve. Thick old trees lined the shoulders on both sides of the divided highway. Traffic had thinned. Timed right, he could charge up now, if I got slowed by another vehicle, and cut me into a crash. Or perhaps he was simply looking for a clear line of sight for his gun.
His green minivan still filled the same two inches in my rearview. He must have been familiar with the road and known there was a better place, farther up.