A Picture of Guilt (18 page)

“Sure thing.” Vinny drove a few miles per hour under the limit.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He ignored the question. “You got a dog?”

Rachel had pestered me for one, but I didn’t give in. I saw
Old Yeller
. I know what happens when you let a dog into your life. I shook my head.

“Maybe you should. Keep you from bothering nice old men.”

DePalma.

We passed a church with a billboard advertising their Friday night fish fry and bingo. The man picked up Spike, letting the dog lick his cheek. “You can’t go up to people and ask them things like you done. These are quality people. They need peace and quiet.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Someone torched a place you were in, huh?”

DePalma had briefed him. Or else he already knew.

Spike settled down in the man’s lap, sinking his head on his paws. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

I let out a nervous giggle. The fact that I was in the back of a limo, expected to spill my guts to a wise guy was pretty far out, even for me. “Do you know Johnnie Santoro?”

“The one who offed his girlfriend at Calumet Park.”

My pulse sped up. He knew. “I was just wondering. Was he—”

“How ’bout you lemme ask the questions.”

We crossed into Lake County where Waukegan Road slows. They say it’s because of construction, but it’s been that way for years. The cost overruns had to be lining a few pockets quite nicely by now. We inched forward, surrounded by cars, delivery trucks, and a yellow school bus filled with children.

“You had that videotape of Santoro. You testified at his trial.”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think I know him?”

I took a breath and launched into an explanation. I told him what I’d heard about Santoro’s background, the men at the park, and Rhonda Disapio and Brashares’ deaths. The fire. But as the words spilled out, the series of events I’d strung together sounded flimsier and more elusive in the retelling than they had in my mind. Not as conspiratorial. Possibly even coincidental. I felt foolish, and I could tell from my companion’s expression, which changed from guarded to puzzled to exasperated, that he agreed.

“That ain’t a lot to go on,” he said.

I looked out the rear window. The dark-colored SUV was in back of us this time. I stiffened. “Are we being followed?”

“Of course.” He waved a hand. “The most elite crime-fighting organization in the world checks in every day.”

“The FBI?”

“You got it.” He twisted around and saluted through the window. “They got these new mikes can pick up anything they point ’em at.” The SUV dropped back and switched lanes. A few car lengths back was the gray sedan. It made for an odd procession. He twisted around. “Vinny, you can head back now.”

“Yeah, boss.”

We turned off Waukegan and started east. As if sensing the change in direction, Spike raised his head and sniffed the air.

“Listen.” The man paused. “There ain’t nothing there. This Santoro—he ain’t connected. He ain’t a friend. He ain’t even a friend of a friend.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “But I thought—”

“You thought wrong.”

“I know I don’t have what you’d call hard evidence. And I probably haven’t done a very good job explaining it. But three people are dead, and I almost died in a fire. Someone’s doing something.”

His mouth tightened, as if he was losing patience with me. “Look, lady, I don’t know who or what’s causing your problems. I don’t know who torched the place. And you know something? You’re probably better off not knowing.” He allowed his words to sink in. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should get out of town for a while. Go on vacation. A nice, long one. It’ll do wonders. You’ll have a whole new attitude.”

We turned south on Skokie Highway. Spike yawned and licked his hairless paws. The man picked him up and nuzzled his neck, oblivious to the flakes of skin that drifted down onto his pants. As we veered off on Sunset Ridge, I squinted against the glare of the sun. When we reached Voltz, we were a block closer to my house than where he’d picked me up.

“Vinny, let her out,” he said. The car slowed. “By the way, this conversation never took place.”

“How could it?” I said. “I don’t know who you are.”

He nodded. “Good way to keep it.” He motioned for me to open the door. I slid over and climbed out. He leaned to the side to close it, but I kept my hand on the handle.

“I hope it works out for Spike.”

He gave me a curt nod.

***

I trudged back to the house. The sidewalk was flecked with chips that glinted like diamonds. DePalma’s pal could be telling the truth; then again, he might not. But then, why come all this way to tell me the Mob wasn’t involved with Santoro? I kicked a stone on the path. Dad was right. I was building a house of cards with my theories about drug scams and double-dealing. I’d made a fool of myself. That wasn’t anything new, of course, but the fact remained that nothing made sense. If the Mob wasn’t involved, if there was no drug deal, why was Mary Jo Bosanick dead? And Rhonda? And Brashares?

I picked up the stone and rolled it between my palms. I supposed I could visit Santoro in jail and ask him point blank, but I shuddered at the thought of going down to Cook County alone. What was I going to say to him? Are you or have you ever been involved in dealing? If he was as big a jerk as Sweeney said, my odds of getting a straight answer were low. And if they framed him as well as I thought they did, he was just as much a victim as me. Or Mary Jo. Or Rhonda. No,
genug iz genug
. Enough is enough.

I looked both ways, then hurled the stone as far as I could. There’s never an open declaration that a conspiracy exists. They unfold gradually and subtly, through events that, if they’re connected at all, are often considered coincidental. Odd, perhaps, but not necessarily malevolent. It’s only in the revelation and retelling that one sees the intent, the planning, the duplicity.

It’s like a tree falling in the forest, I thought. If no one reveals it, is there still a conspiracy? Maybe Rhonda did die in a tragic accident, Brashares in a robbery. Maybe the fire was some type of insurance-related arson.

And maybe pigs can fly.

I called David at his hotel that night. It was about four
A.M.
London time, but he didn’t pick up. I turned out the light and stared at the wall in the dark.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

The chalk squeaked as the handsome young man wrote on the blackboard, adding the words “baby monitor” to a list that included

garage door openers

alarm systems

cell phones

walkie-talkies

satellites

GPS systems

television

“Very good.”

I crowded into the back row with the other parents, mothers mostly, all of us feeling the awkwardness of being in close quarters with strangers. The teacher turned around. Thick eyebrows and a pronounced chin made him look a little like George Clooney, and when he smiled, I realized why I hadn’t heard any complaints about Science Club.

“You can see—just from this list—how many things depend on radio waves. Everyday items as well as the exotic.” He picked up a chart and propped it against the blackboard. Across the top of the chart was a band of colors, identified by initials, such as VLF, LF, and EHF. Underneath were terms such as AM Broadcast, FM Broadcast, and Radar. At the bottom were numbers: 10kHz, 1MHz, 100 MHz, and 10 GHz.

“These are some of the frequencies of radio waves, and that’s what your children have been studying. Radio waves are just one part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes visible light, infrared, X-rays, gamma rays, and other forms of electromagnetic energy.”

I tried not to let my eyes glaze over. One of my biggest regrets is not having a better grounding in science. I thought I understood the concepts, but whenever I tried to apply them, I usually got it wrong. Apparently, speed isn’t the same thing as velocity, and acceleration doesn’t always mean speeding up. I had the poor grades to prove it.

It might have been my teachers. In high school, my science teacher was an Indian woman who wore beautiful saris but whose accent was so thick I could barely understand her. And in college, the TA taught us how to handicap racing forms but not much about physics.

Rachel, though, seemed to have lucked out.

“So. Bearing in mind that we were studying radio…” the teacher continued, “…we decided to build one.”

“I didn’t know that,” one of the mothers whispered to another.

The second woman mouthed back, “Me neither.”

“Don’t worry,” he added hastily. “I asked them to keep it a surprise. In case it didn’t work.”

The kids giggled, and the adults traded amused glances. “I’m Brian Matson, by the way. But this is really your kids’ class. They’re anxious to show you what they did.”

Several kids rose from their desks. A young boy introduced us to transistors, capacitors, and inductors. Another explained oscillating sine waves. Rachel got up to explain what a diode was and how it worked in a receiver. As I watched, I felt pride that this knowledgeable, confident young woman was my daughter.

The kids turned on a small receiver sitting on one of the desks and left the room. A few seconds later, we heard a click and some static from speakers on both sides of the blackboard.

“Afternoon folks, and welcome to WSCS. That’s WSCS, the Science Club Sensation. I’m Paul in the
P.M
., and I’m here to play your favorite tunes.”

We whistled, cheered, and clapped enthusiastically. The faces of the kids still in the classroom lit up. Two songs pulsed through the speakers: “Somebody to Love,” which, knowing my hero worship of Grace Slick, had to be Rachel’s doing, and something by U2. A girl handed out apple juice and cookies. When the songs were over, Paul signed off, and the kids returned to the classroom.

“That was an ultra-low power AM radio station,” Brian said. “Small. But real.” We clapped again. “Thank you. It’s been a great session. Your kids were terrific.”

The kids broke out in cheers of their own. I heard snippets of “Way cool,” “Best class I’ve ever had,” “Awesome dude.”

Brian waved an embarrassed hand. “Since we still have some time left, I thought you might want to take a look at other types of radio systems. I’m a ham radio operator, and I brought in some of my gear. I’d be happy to answer any questions.”

I munched on a cookie as we milled around, thinking back to my first job in college, tearing copy at an all-news radio station. It wasn’t glamorous, the pay was rotten, but I got hooked. Not just on the rush of breaking news, but also the thrill of shaping, in some tiny, insignificant way, the presentation of history.

The following semester, I signed up for a course on Edward R. Murrow, where I listened to his rooftop broadcasts from London during the blitz. By the time I saw his documentary on McCarthy, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I changed my major to film.

But that didn’t mean I knew anything about the technology of broadcasting. Happily, Rachel now did. Maybe she would become a techno-geek. Maybe we would go into business together: she the technical expert, me the content provider. Foreman and Daughter. It had a ring.

“What’s that?” I pointed to an object about the size of a cell phone that was plugged into a small black box with knobs on the front. A computer sat beside it.

Brian smiled. “That’s called a handie-talkie.”

“Is that like a walkie-talkie?”

“Well, it is both a transmitter and receiver. Like a walkie-talkie. But this is much more sophisticated. It’s part of a packet radio setup.”

“A what?”

“An amateur radio system. You know, ham radio. But this is digital. Packet combines radio and computers. The little box you’re looking at can transmit and receive both voice and data.”

“No way. That little thing?”

“Well, you need an antenna and a computer,” he said. “And there needs to be an unobstructed view—a direct line of sight—between the transmitter and receiver. You also need this piece of equipment.” He ran a hand over the black box with knobs on it. Now that I was closer, I could see a needle on a dial swinging back and forth.

“That looks like a VU meter,” I said. “You know. It measures audio levels when you’re working with video.”

“This is a TNC. A terminal node controller.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s kind of the brains of the packet system. It’s the interface between the computer and the handie-talkie. The chips inside have all the functions the equipment needs.”

“Are you saying that if you have this, and a computer, and that handie-talkie, you can run a radio station?”

“Absolutely. Like I said, you also need an antenna, but you can put one of those almost anywhere these days.”

“So, tell me something. If we already have the computer, how much would the rest of this cost?”

He laughed. “It’s not as bad as you think. You could probably get a basic setup for a few hundred.” He glanced over at Rachel. “Are we thinking Christmas?”

“Possibly Chanukah.”

He was about to reply, when one of the other mothers buttonholed him and asked whether her son ought to apply to MIT.

***

Back home, I turned on the news and boiled water for pasta. The trial of a suspected terrorist had begun on the East Coast, and, once again, they were replaying the video of the Twin Towers. I never thought I’d become inured to those images, but mindless repetition by the media had almost stripped away the horror. I snapped off the tube and turned on the radio. As Smoky warbled about the tracks of his tears, I tried to pretend I was fixing dinner for William Hurt and Kevin Kline.

Outside the fading light turned everything into shades of granite, but a bunch of kids were still playing outdoors, determined to keep dusk at bay. One of them booted a ball past my house. Two boys scrambled after it, but it rolled under a gray car that was parked a few houses away. I was watching them retrieve it when I noticed two figures inside the car. A twinge went through me. How long had they been there?