Calumet City (23 page)

Tracy eyes me, then returns to a ring of papers surrounding her on the floor. "Try a coffee, we’ll figure it out. I have ideas."

"Get me on the Internet."

Tracy points left without comment, toward a hutch with a flat-screen monitor and a backwards chair. I google "Le Bassinet Trousdale Elliot Evanston." Fifteen minutes of reading about them and their mission produces nothing on where they live. My face is hot. I need a break, help, something.

"Coffee in the kitchen. Bagels too."

Fuck bagels, I want to smash her fucking keyboard. And the monitor. My nails dig into the robe. Tracy isn’t paying attention or criticizing, which is real good ’cause…Then her on the floor with the papers makes a picture—she’s been up all night while I slept, poring over the Juvenile file and her files, and whatever other resources she has to help me. My fists ease open and for the very first time this century, or last, I’m forced to admit that Miss All-Everything may have a redeeming quality.

Her kitchen changes that. It has two redeeming qualities, both are goldfish. And her kitchen smells like a bakery…strange what calms you down, and I watch the goldfish until I’m someone I know. The coffeemaker by the Star Trek oven is one of those incomprehensible models that most restaurants can’t afford. New frustration starts to boil, but there’s coffee left and I pour it into a mug stamped BITCH in blood-red capital letters. I need milk; her refrigerator has three stainless-steel doors, the first one’s a freezer that contains only ice and three bottles of Grey Goose vodka. There’s very little food behind doors two and three, but there is milk.

Her onion bagels are Northside fresh, still warm, and I eat two, looking around without really seeing past my own poison and the two happy goldfish. Above the fridge are photos, like the ones on my mirror. I’m in hers too, as is Julie, and several men who could be movie stars. They must be from foreign countries or I’d know their names. In here I don’t seem to hate her as much. Must be the goldfish. Or maybe a kitchen makes you human. I resist the urge to check her laundry to prove it.

The stove has chef-size salt and pepper shakers, pepper is Mike Tyson; salt is…I have to pick it up to read: my old friend Carl Sandburg. To the stove’s left a book page is framed on the brick wall. The frame is nicked and scratched, either well traveled or hated by the cleaning lady.

"Patti?" Tracy’s voice from the living room. "Bring the coffee with you."

On closer inspection the page is from Hamlet. I know this only because it says so at the bottom. Part of the first line reads, "This above all, to thine own self be true…"

I wonder how well that worked for Mr. Hamlet and grab the coffee.

While I pour coffee into Tracy’s cup, I eye my foster-home history on the floor. Tracy says, "I’ve called the PI in Arizona every two hours. No answer. Nobody home at Arizona’s state and city offices either, probably closed till Monday. I called a reporter I know on the
Phoenix Sun
. He’s running Mr. Delmont Chukut, private eye."

Thunder hammers Tracy’s town house. We both balance our coffee to keep it off the papers and the rug. I scan the room instead of the papers; a grown-up lives here. On the low table to my right is a copy of her one and only book, a best seller that bought this place,
A Killing Condition
, nonfiction about a forty-year series of ritual homicides that had the city scared inside-out five years ago.

"Nice place."

Tracy shows me a page from the file stacks. "There were four of you in the foster home?"

Four. Counting Little Gwen. Her face turns me to the wall. Roland Ganz has her too; she and her son are in as bad a situation as imagination will allow. And my John is next. A hand rushes to my mouth to keep it shut; my abs flex tight and so do my eyes. When they open, Tracy’s prepping for another meltdown. I land my bare feet right next to her and grab at a stack. "What’s in that file about John?"

"Wait!" She swats at my arm. "Don’t mix ’em up."

"What’s in here?"

"Easy. Easy…easy." She locates a page she’s kept separate and hands it up to me. John’s birth certificate kicks me in the stomach. It’s a copy from the South Holland hospital I ran to; the hospital where I hid from Roland and contacted Le Bassinet. I frantically search for a mention of Le Bassinet. Not here; I check again and exhale when I find nothing. This is a match to the copy I have at home.

Panic jolt. But if John’s birth certificate is in
this
file—the Juvenile file—then at the very least Roland finally knows the hospital where I gave birth…and—

Heartbeats. Heartbeats.
So what?

I stare at the birth certificate, try to see Roland connecting the dots. If Harold and DeLay had reported the entire file, then Roland and/or the PI in Arizona—
assuming
they aren’t the same person—would’ve already been to the South Holland hospital; they would’ve snuck or bribed into the hospital’s files, found papers that
do
mention Le Bassinet, then gone to Evanston. Gulp. Le Bassinet would’ve been a bloodbath.

And as of late last Friday when I was there, it wasn’t.

Another exhale.
But why not?

Because the dots won’t connect, that’s why. Harold and DeLay might not have reported the entire file to Arizona PI Delmont Chukut—hoping to extract more money. Or they
have
reported the entire file, but Chukut hasn’t made the bridge from hospital to adoption agency. My shoulders relax. For three seconds.

Or what if Chukut
does
know about Le Bassinet?

But no one’s been to Le Bassinet…so if Chukut knows, then
he
didn’t tell
his
client, Roland Ganz, ’cause Roland would’ve marched into Le Bassinet with a chainsaw. Delmont Chukut could be running a game, too, just like Harold Tyree and DeLay, blackmail or info ransom,
Chukut’s
target would be upstream to the top direct to Roland Ganz.

Tracy says, "Earth to Patti."

Lots of possibilities. Two levels of crooked operators in the same chain; happens all the time in the sewer. I check a numberless clock embedded in Tracy’s wall. Less than forty-eight hours until Le Bassinet opens. Assuming no one blows the vault, John will be safe until then.
Swallow,
I think. But Gwen and her boy won’t; they’ll have Roland’s full focus…in some overheated basement. Poison rushes up my throat and I run to a door that just happens to be the bathroom.

   The storm hasn’t slowed and when I return, Tracy hasn’t moved. Being a rugby girl and a reporter, she’s seen strange behavior, some of it no doubt in her own house. I apologize and she chuckles to make us both comfortable. She actually looks sympathetic and not the fake brand I see on her face whenever she wants something. Although I know she wants something. We made a deal—my son’s life for mine.

"Ready to talk?"

"Got a bucket?"

"We’ll start slow." She shuffles papers. "Danny del Pasco left and you stayed…four years more?"

I sit on the floor across from her. "Four years, ten months. My parents died in ’79; I ran in early ’84."

"Richard Rhodes…he was eight or nine, you’re—"

We’re two questions into this and I want her to shut up. "I was twelve when I went in, sixteen when I ran."

"The other girl, Gwen…Smith?"

I don’t answer.

"The one who called you."

I know who she is.
"Gwen didn’t know her last name. She came just before I ran the second time…from the hospital…after the baby."

Tracy looks up at me and my tone. "This says she was eight when she arrived in ’84. Richard Rhodes would’ve been what, twelve or thirteen?"

I don’t care and don’t answer.

Tracy says, "Hey. We’re partners, remember? No different than your TAC unit." Auburn eyebrows float punctuation. "I’m sticking my damn neck out—physically and legally—to help find your son." Pause. "Before Roland Ganz does. In return, you answer the questions as agreed."

We share a short, violent silence interrupted by Tracy’s cell phone.

She flips, frowns at the screen and says it’s her assistant, finally returning a middle-of-the-night call on her day off. Tracy tells the assistant it’s no longer her day off, haul ass downtown and run Arizona PI Delmont Chukut’s name, PI number, phone number, his any and everything.

Tracy closes her phone and stares at me again. I’m guessing her assistant will use whatever newspapers use to chase stories, resources that are light-years better than what I currently have. Even without the newspaper Tracy has resources most spies and collection agencies would kill for. "Harold Tyree and Caseworker DeLay were freelancing, weren’t they?"

That’s a surprise. Tracy’s reading me better than I’d have thought possible; that and she’s likely suspicious of all living things. Tracy shows me the phone she just used. "And you’re telling me, right? Because we’re partners."

I shrug. "Find something your client wants, tell him half, ask for more money. Always follow the money."

She glances at the papers in her hand, then back to me. "
If
PI Delmont Chukut is actually Roland in disguise, then Roland/Chukut hires Harold Tyree and Caseworker DeLay to find you and your son in Chicago; Roland/Chukut also hires the Gilbert Court arsonists to clean up his past because…" Her eyes go distant, then sharp again. "Because Roland’s stepping back into the light after being missing for eighteen years." She nods. "But Tyree and DeLay in Calumet City decide that ransoming the information is more profitable and—"

"Nah." She’s correct, but my instant reaction is defense, hide from the light. "Why would Roland publicly murder Richard Rhodes if he’s cleaning up his past?"

Tracy bites her lower lip, a move I’ve seen make young men cover their pants. "Leaving a State’s Attorney’s body by the mayor’s lawn is not ’clean-up.’ Maybe the obvious was right: Richard Rhodes is part of the casino license and the election. The timing with Annabelle’s body is just a coincidence."

I check the clock, wishing it had numbers, wishing it would move faster or stop altogether, then change my mind about defense. Maybe Miss All-Everything will hit an angle I haven’t thought of. "No, you’re right. Roland’s cleaning up his past; he’s got something at stake. And if he doesn’t have something at stake, then something’s chasing him too."

Tracy brightens. "Then let’s go with that." She likes child sex and murder better than casinos and elections. Her enthusiasm falters and she looks at her papers. "But why clean up now?" She shuts her eyes and adds her facts out loud. "The mayor’s wife sold the building to a limited partnership owned by Roland Ganz, right? And in this same building is buried Annabelle Ganz."

"Roland Ganz also owned that building?
Bullshit
."

Tracy smiles and lets her eyelashes filter the praise. "We ran his and Annabelle’s tax returns. Roland had K-1s from three limited partnerships, all with corporate general partners. One of those LPs owned Gilbert Court from 1976 to 1983, then transferred it to a blind trust run by LaSalle Bank downtown."

"For real? He owned it?"

Tracy points to a stack of papers. "Hard to figure him investing in the ghetto, though. Or having the money."

Roland worked with numbers and adding machines, but I have no idea how he would’ve gotten the money. I know even less about tax dodges, other than they were popular in the ’80s with everyone from cops to cocktail waitresses.

"When I came on in ’88 that neighborhood was mixed, teetering. Still mostly white and not that poor yet. It had storefronts and streetlights and—"

Tracy riffles the file again. "Roland was an accountant, right? Hospitals. He disappears in 1987, and let’s guess that the Gilbert Court building is where he went. Gilbert Court’s only ten miles from Calumet City, but it’s ten miles into a metropolis of three million, all he’d need in civilized geography."

I finish her thought like we’re married. "And if he’s part of Annabelle’s murder in ’93, then he’s living there on Gilbert Court for six years while I was working the district."

"
Possibly
living there. Using the place at least. But what’s he do all day?"

I picture Roland in my district doing something all day. My stomach tries to roll but the muscles stop it. I see him, like I saw him at the home sometimes, bent over his desk, adding machine tape curled on the floor…"Storefront accountant. There were two on Halsted by the Jewel, Jackson Hewitt Tax Service and Flannigan’s."

Tracy points. "Hand me the phone book."

"Those places are toast at least ten years, probably longer."

Tracy circles a date in the papers. "When did Superintendent Smith move out of the building?"

I balk. We’re not discussing Chief Jesse as part of this case.

Tracy notices. "You want to find your son, right? Then we have to look everywhere we have to look."

We stare at each other again, not unlike how we do on the field. I relent, because it’s my son; I’m choosing John over a fatherly friend and mentor who’s been nothing but good to me.

"He said in the ’70s."

Tracy scribbles notes with a double underline. I can’t read upside down and ask. "What?"

"When were you born?"

"December 1967."

"And your son was born in…1983?"

"October."

"
Damn
." She frowns and tosses her pencil. "It’s in here, and it’s there on Gilbert Court,
I know it
. We’re wearing blinders."

Thunder tumbles overhead, but less threatening than an hour ago. The windows are still opaque with water. I see it as camouflage, not fall tornadoes, and stand up. "C’mon. We’ll go down there, run the neighborhood for his footprints."

Tracy fish-eyes her windows, then me, then looks at the papers.

Waiting on the weather isn’t an option for me. "Could be some of my folks in 6 remember something. You can think while I drive."

"Ah…" Tracy does not look excited. "From what I read and hear, the local citizens aren’t too happy with you."

I avoid the know-it-all, Northside liberal bullshit stamped in her face, then take the stairs two at a time toward my clothes. This partnership may not be the best idea I’ve had.