Dead and Gone (11 page)

Playing with her in the park. Coming home to her and never being alone when I did.

Looking out at the dark, my hand on her neck, together against whatever might be out there.

The vet telling me her arthritis just meant she was getting old. Telling me she didn’t have forever; at seventeen, Pansy was way past the limit for her breed.

Knowing that I might prolong her life with a special diet, but that she’d rather go out earlier and keep getting the treats she loved so much. The only change I’d made was that I never let her near chocolate anymore. The vet told me chocolate was toxic to dogs, could even be fatal. So I’d switched her to honey-vanilla ice cream.

Glad I had made that decision now.

But so fucking sad that, some nights, I was afraid to sleep.

I
was getting used to my reflection in the mirror. Michelle had made all the cosmetology decisions. “Your hair changed color, baby. I was going to touch it back to black for you. But you know what? I think steel’s your color. And keep it very short—that’s so very severe.” I never got it together enough to ask her what the hell that meant.

I was going to grow a beard, just to let it cover the bullet-scar. But it was a failure. The damn thing grew in black, streaked with red and white—called a lot more attention to my face than the scar would.

Michelle fixed that, too. She gave me some stuff that came in a tube like lipstick, but once on, it blended with my complexion. “One girl’s scar is another’s beauty mark,” she had explained. I never asked her what that meant, either. I’d heard enough when she said that I was lucky to have lost an eyebrow to the surgeon’s pre-op razor because it would grow back in neat and clean and men never pay attention to their eyebrows and they’re what set off the eyes and …

The outside sky was dark. Couldn’t get a clue about the weather. Checked my watch, the white-gold Rolex now. “It’s not ultra-ultra, like Patek Philippe or Piquet,” Michelle had counseled, “but it goes with the look. Yellow gold would be tacky, and stainless would be too down-market. This is perfect.”

I didn’t feel perfect, but it was time to go.

Clancy was in the lobby when I came down, chatting with the girl at the front desk. He took out a small notebook, wrote something down. I didn’t think it was a license number.

He strolled over to where I was standing, said, “You got a coat with you?”

“Just what you saw yesterday. It wouldn’t go with this.”

“Traveling light, huh?”

“Yep,” I said. Thinking of the twin to the Python that had totaled Dmitri, now taped inside the toilet tank in its waterproof wrap.

“Well, it’s no big deal. We’ll be indoors.”

I followed him outside, where he handed something to a guy in a hotel uniform. Whatever he handed him was wrapped in green.

The Lexus SUV that rolled up to where we were standing was green, too. At least, I’d call it green—Lexus probably calls it something like Rainforest Morning Mist Emerald. Clancy walked around to the driver’s side. I climbed into the front bucket seat.

“You’ve got a valid driver’s license?” he asked, as he pulled onto an eight-lane divided highway and hit the gas.

“New York,” I told him. Thinking how the photo wouldn’t exactly be a perfect match now.

“Good enough. This is the car you’re borrowing. I have to teach a class today. Turns out it’s right in Winnetka. You come along, get a chance to scope out the area, right?”

“Sure. What’s the tariff on the car?”

“There isn’t any. It’s a police impound, seized in a drug bust. It’s already been vacuumed and tagged. The plan is to use it as an undercover vehicle in a few weeks. The plates will trace right back to my department, so, if you get in a jackpot, tell the arresting officer to call up and ask for me. They’ll make you for a CI.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Well, you can’t cruise around the neighborhood you want in a Chevy. This one, nobody’ll notice.”

I made a sound to indicate I understood. He drove in silence for a bit, then said: “We’re on Lake Shore Drive. That’s Lake Michigan out there. When it’s on your right, you’re heading north.”

“I thought you were a Chicago cop,” I said.

“I am.”

“But you’re teaching a class in Winnetka?”

“Believe it or not, Winnetka’s still part of Cook County. We wouldn’t patrol there, of course, but it’s inside our jurisdiction for the classes.”

“What kind of classes?”

“It’s called Licensed for Life,” he said, a deep, rich vein of pride in his voice. “The idea is to give kids interactive information about drunk driving, try to save a few lives.”

“Does it work?”

“Well, I can tell you this, we taught thirteen hundred classes last year, all by request. And from the feedback we get from the kids, we believe they’re really taking it in. There’s no way to give you statistics, not yet. The program is too new. But there’s no question that tons of kids have contacted us
after
the classes, telling us about situations where they took action to avoid
becoming
a statistic. We don’t give grades, we’re not part of the faculty, so there’s no point in brown-nosing us. And, besides, all these years in the business, I can tell when somebody’s hosing me. They’re not.”

The highway narrowed a lane or two. Still heading north, near as I could tell, but I couldn’t see the lake anymore to orient myself.

“We’re on Sheridan now,” Clancy said. “Ahead of schedule.”

I restrained myself from saying that, the way he drove, we’d be ahead of
any
damn schedule.

“First class isn’t till eight,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I know a place where we can get some coffee.”

“W
ho pays for the classes?” I asked him, sipping my hot chocolate.

“That’s a good question,” he said, chuckling ruefully. “We live on small grants. Sometimes they come in, sometimes they don’t. It takes a long time to train an officer to give the classes. They get paid for every one they teach, but it doesn’t even cover their travel expenses—sometimes you have to drive a three-hour round trip to teach a one-hour class. Everyone who’s observed the program, everybody who’s checked it out, they all love it. If we had a way to turn promises into dollars, we’d have the endowment we need. But, for now, we just scramble and hope.”

“How come the insurance companies don’t fund you? It sounds like a great investment for them. One drunk driver alone can cost them millions.”

“We get a little from them. Not enough. Not near enough. We can’t take tax money to do it—no way to get that past the city council. What we need is a commitment,” he said, his tone saying he had already made one himself. “Some foundation to promise they’re going to give us support for maybe ten years. Long enough for them to do their double-blind studies, prove on paper what we already know from actually
doing
it.”

“You fancy your chances?”

“I’m Irish.” He grinned.

T
he guard at the school entrance smiled and waved us in … once he made sure I was with Clancy. The teacher greeted us outside the classroom. He was a middle-aged, middle-sized man who looked tired. “Detective Clancy,” he said, “thanks for coming.”

“My pleasure,” Clancy replied. “Let me introduce Mr. Askew. He’s going to be working with us for a few days.”

“Are you a police officer, too?” the teacher asked.

“I’m a filmmaker,” I said quickly, before Clancy could respond. “We’re interested in the possibilities of making a docudrama about Licensed for Life.”

“Well, that’s a wonderful idea!” the teacher said, enthusiastically. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about it.”

“I’m sure,” I said, my tone implying that I’d need to make that decision for myself.

“Y
ou think I’m standing up here as a
joke?”
Clancy barked at the class, reacting to some giggling over in one corner. “You think all cops care about is taking bribes and eating donuts? You need to pay attention to this.
Close
attention, understand? This is serious business.”

He reached in his breast pocket, took out a large white napkin that said DUNKIN’ DONUTS in big red and orange letters. He began to clean his glasses with it as he glared at the students. The first student to spot it cracked up. In a minute, the whole class was laughing.

Somehow, Clancy took them from there through a series of anecdotes about drunk drivers that started out funny and ended ugly. By the time he got to a story about a “two-car, five-body” crash he was called out to investigate … and found his fifteen-year-old daughter in the back of a squad car, not badly injured herself, but assaulted by the image of her best friend’s face splattered against the windshield … they were rapt, totally focused.

He backed off then, playing them expertly, like a professional angler giving a fish some line. He asked them questions they should have known the answers to—the penalties for driving under the influence, for instance—then provided the answers when they dropped the ball.

The finale was a pair of goggles he called “Fatal Vision.” He told the class the glasses would show them what the world looked like through a drunk’s eyes. One kid volunteered to try them out. Clancy walked him through the whole routine—fingertips to nose, walking a straight line—and the kid flopped like a fish on a pier. Then he asked the kid some simple problems—counting backwards, naming the last four presidents—and you could see the kid struggling before he came up with the responses. “Easier with your eyes
closed
, right?” Clancy asked him.

“Right!” the kid agreed.

“Some drunks try to
drive
that way,” he said, harshly, offering the kid a high-five. The kid missed by three feet and would have fallen on his face if Clancy hadn’t caught him. The class roared.

Clancy finished strong, telling them one truth after another. Some of them
were
going to drink. This wasn’t about preaching abstinence—this was about survival. When he stopped talking, the class was dead silent. “Scared Sober,” I thought, sarcastically. But then they broke out into spontaneous applause, their faces serious, some teary.

The teacher’s face was a study in surprise—these kids were way too cool to clap, especially for a cop.

The bell rang for the next class. Clancy was surrounded by students, all trying to tell him something. Or ask him something.

The teacher just watched, his mouth gaping.

“D
oes it always go like that?” I asked Clancy, watching as we drove through a neighborhood so lush it seemed to bloom in the dead of winter.

“Pretty much,” he said, smiling. “It’s more art than science, and there’s horses for courses. Some of the guys, they can work anywhere. Others, you have to pick their spots. But I’ve never done a class where I didn’t get
some
response. Some … engagement.”

“You really believe in this, don’t you?”

“It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said, conviction braided through his words. “I took out a second on my house to keep the program going while we wait on the foundations.”

Wolfe had set this whole thing up like a blind date. I didn’t know what she’d told Clancy about me, but she’d told me a lot about him. A karate expert, he’d once taken down two armed robbers without drawing his gun. He was
the
man when it came to coaxing confessions, practicing a different martial art there, combining his Irish charm with a cobra’s interior coldness. He’d broken dozens of major cases, earned enough commendations to fill a file cabinet, graduated from the FBI National Academy. Gold medalist at the World Law Enforcement Olympics four straight times. Three kids, all top students.

“I get it,” I told him. Telling him the truth.

He gave me a look. Held it. Then nodded as if he was agreeing with a diagnosis. “What do you feel comfortable telling me?” he asked.

I knew we were done talking about his dreams. “I’m looking for a couple, man and wife. I’ve got an address.”

“You came all the way here to see if they’d be home?”

“No. They know something I need to know.”

“You carrying?” he asked abruptly.

“No,” I said, limiting my truth to handguns, not mentioning the Scottish sgian dubh—Gaelic for “black knife,” a weapon of last resort—in my boot. The knife was a thing of special beauty; a gift from a brother of mine, a nonviolent aikidoist who knows there are situations where a man needs an edge.

“What’s your cover?”

“I’m going to tell them I’m the law,” I said. “Federal. You know their kid was—”

“Yeah. It’s cold-cased now. But it’s not closed.”

“Right.
Supposedly
, the kidnapper made contact with them, told them he’d sell the kid back. They went to this guy in New York—”

“Why New York, if they live here?” he interrupted.

“Supposedly,”
I said, emphasizing the word again, making it clear that I wasn’t buying any of the story—not anymore, “it was because they’re Russians, and the guy they contacted, he’s a big player in the Russian mob. They wanted a transfer-man.”

“We’ve got no shortage of Russian gangsters here.”

“I know. And it gets worse. What I found out
—after
the wheels came off—is that they came to the guy in New York insisting on me. That was part of the deal—I had to be the transfer-man.”

“And the guy in New York, he told you …?”

“Nothing. Made it seem like a regular handover situation, me getting paid to be in the middle. I’ve done it before.”

“I know,” he said, surprising me a little. I hadn’t put any restrictions on what Wolfe could tell him, but she’s usually real clingy about information.

“I didn’t know they were from Chicago. The way it was rolled out to me, I figured they were local.”

“So why not ask the local guy?”

“He’s dead,” I told him.

“Natural causes?”

“Considering his business, I’d say yeah.”

He didn’t blink. “Why is it so important? I mean, something was fishy, sure. But you’re out of it, whatever it was.”

“The transfer-money was half a million dollars. Plus another hundred for me to handle it. And whatever else they had to spread around.”

“And …?”

“And there
was
no kid. It wasn’t a handover. I met them where they wanted, and they came out shooting.”

“Is that where …?” he asked, touching a spot on his own cheek.

“Yeah. Just a fluke they didn’t total me.”

“So it was all about you.”

“Only about me. Whoever wanted me spent heavy cash, took some risks.”

“But they missed.”

“So?”

“Yeah. You figure they’ll just try again, right?”

“I don’t know how deep their connect runs. They can’t be sure I’m
not
dead. I was down when the hit men took off. And they’d put one in my head before they left. I was on the hospital computer as a John Doe, but the cops knew who I was—they visited me a few times.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I lost my memory. From the head trauma. I had no idea who I was, much less what happened.”

“They must have loved that.”

“No. But the hospital backed me up—the story was plausible. They had nothing to hold me on, anyway. One night, I just walked away.”

“So there’s no way of knowing what
they
know.”

“I guess that’s right. This is a new face for me. And I’ve been underground, even deeper than usual, for months. This happened back in August.”

“Tell me again why you need to talk to these people out here.”

“They wanted me done. Or they work for someone who does. Whoever that is, they may not know if I’m dead or alive, but sooner or later, they’ll find out. I want to find them first.”

“You’re not here to take them out?” he asked, the warning clear in his tone.

“No. No way. Whoever went to all that trouble, it
couldn’t
be people I don’t know. I figure the ones out here for branches, not roots. Anything happened to them, my last door would be closed. You want to go back, get your own car? I can find the address myself, no problem.”

“We’re already here,” Clancy said, pulling into a long driveway between stone columns.

“H
ow much would a house like this go for around here?” I asked Clancy.

“Somewhere between three-quarters of a million and one-point-five, depending on the grounds, what they got inside, like that. It’s high-end, but not cream-of-the-crop. Not for this area.”

“It doesn’t look deserted.”

“Let’s see,” he said, opening his door.

The driveway had been shoveled. Professionally, it looked like, the edges squared. The double doors set into the front of the house were massive, bracketed by tall, narrow panels of stained glass. A faint light glowed behind the glass.

“No bell,” I said.

“There’s got to be a tradesman’s entrance around the side. This one, it’d only be for guests. And they’d use this,” he replied, lifting a heavy brass knocker and rapping three times against the strike plate.

We waited a couple of minutes. If the cold bothered Clancy, he gave no sign. Me, I wasn’t so sure.

“Come on,” he finally said.

He strolled around to the side of the house as if he belonged there. I followed, keeping my mouth shut. Sure enough, there was a sort of outcropping off the house, with a single door set into it. And there was a bell. Clancy pushed it. We could hear its two-tone chimes from where we stood. Clancy moved so that he was taking up all the optic room the peephole offered. A metallic voice asked, “Who is there?” and I spotted the tiny speaker set into the door frame.

“Police,” Clancy said.

“What is wrong?” the voice asked. A woman’s voice, strongly accented. Sounded nervous. But maybe it was a tinny speaker.

“Nothing at all, ma’am. We’re conducting an investigation and we thought you might perhaps be of assistance.”

“Who are you investigating?”

“Could you please open the door, ma’am?” Clancy said, a trace of impatience in his voice.

I could sense decisions being made inside. Suddenly, the door opened. The woman was short, with dark hair cropped just past her nape. She was wearing a denim skirt and a man’s white button-down shirt. Looked around late thirties, maybe younger.

“You are the police?” she asked, hovering between obsequiousness and challenge.

Clancy didn’t flash his badge like most of them did. He took it out slowly, flicked the leather case open, held it out to her, palm up. “You can write down the number,” he said gently. “Close the door, call the station, ask if I am actually a police officer. My name is Clancy. This is Rogers.”

I didn’t react to the instant name-change he’d conferred, just waited to see what would happen.

Clancy smiled. The woman’s mouth twisted as if she couldn’t make up her mind. “Please come in,” she finally said.

We entered a kitchen big enough to be a New York studio apartment. “Do you want coffee?” she asked, gesturing toward a breakfast nook built into a bay window.

“That would be lovely,” Clancy replied. “It’s cold out there.”

“That is not cold,” the woman said, taking a ceramic pot from a fancy coffeemaker and pouring two mugs, apparently accepting that Clancy would be doing all the talking. “Where I come from, this would be springtime.”

“Would that be Russia, then?” Clancy asked her, a brogue creeping into his voice.

“Siberia,” the woman said, with the kind of pride you see in earthquake survivors.

“Ah. Well, here, when the wind comes off the lake, the temperature gets all the way down to—”

“It is not temperature that makes cold.”

“You’re right,” Clancy said, gesturing with his coffee cup to make a salute, dropping the argument.

The woman made a sound of satisfaction. “You said you are investigating …?”

“I did, indeed. But you are not the …”

“Owner? No. I live here. To work, I live here. My name is Marja.”

“And the people who own the house?”

“They are traveling. In Europe.”

“How long have they been away?”

“Oh, maybe couple of months. I don’t keep track.”

“They travel a lot, then?”

“Oh yes. Always they travel.”

“Hmmm … How long have you worked for them?”

“I work for them since I come to America. It will be six years on February third.”

“It must be hard on their work, to travel so much. A doctor has patients.…”

“No. Not anymore. They are retired. No more work.”

“There’s no such thing, is there? No more work,” Clancy asked softly, closing the space around himself and the woman, moving me out to the margins. It was seamlessly beautiful technique, like the six-inch punch you never see.

“No,” she said, sadness somewhere in her voice. “For some people there is always work.”

“It must be difficult for you,” he said, moving me even farther away from the two of them. “So much responsibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, even if they don’t work anymore, they still have to have money. To pay bills. The electric, the phone. The cars. Food. Credit cards. Even to pay you, yes?”

“Sure, they need money. But they
have
money. And I take care of all the bills,” she said, a different sort of pride in her voice.

“I see,” he said, impressed. “Well, what we really need to do is talk to the people who own the house, you understand. So if we could have the address of wherever they’re staying, we’ll just …”

“I do not have the address,” she said. “When they travel, they go with the wind. They have no plan. I never know where they stay, or when they are coming back. My job is to care for the house.”

“But, surely, if there was an emergency …?”

“There are no emergencies. If something happens to the house, I have numbers to call. The plumber, the electric people, the insurance company. And I know 911,” she said, her mouth twisting again in what I guessed was a smile.

“I was thinking of children. You know how they can …”

“Ah. They have no children.”

A fat cat the color of marmalade pranced into the kitchen. It ignored us disdainfully. The woman got up, opened a tiny can of something, and delicately forked it onto a white china plate. The cat approached, sniffed gingerly, then deigned to take a few queenly bites.

“Katrina is mine,” the woman said, stroking the cat’s lustrous fur. Answering a question nobody had asked.

“Y
ou scope the system?” Clancy asked me.

“Windows are wired. Probably to a central-station system. I’m guessing no motion sensors—that cat’s got the run of the joint, I’d bet anything on it.”

“She has to have separate quarters.”

“Yeah. Hard to tell from that kitchen, but I think the space to the left from where we sat, that’s the owners’ area. To the right, that would be off toward the back. Hers …?”

“Let me check a few things. I should have what I need by tonight. You got any in-between outfits?”

“I’m not sure what you—”

“This place where we’re going, you don’t want to look homeless. But you don’t want to look like a lawyer, either, understand?”

“Tell me what kind of place it is, I’ll buy some stuff.”

“Good enough. It’s a blues bar, off Rush Street. Not far at all.”

He gave me the address, said he’d be there by ten.

T
he side door was rusted out, or else some fool had painted it the color of dried blood. Overhead, a little blue light winked from inside a steel-mesh cage.

I stepped inside, found myself in a two-man bracket: one average-looking, the other sumo-sized. The average-looking guy held out his hand, said “Ten.” I forked it over.

The joint was long and narrow, with a small raised stage at the far end. And crammed so full of people the owner must have bribed the Fire Department. More black than white, but more mixed than most blues clubs. Places I’d been, the high-end spots had mostly all-white audiences, and the juke joints were almost all black. Maybe Chicago was different.

Clancy appeared out of the mob. “Come on,” was all he said.

I followed him to a table right near the front but so far to the right that it was almost against the wall. A woman with corn-rowed hair surrounding a hard face was sitting there. When she saw Clancy, she flashed a killer smile, showing off a gold tooth. She stood up, gave Clancy a kiss. He introduced us, calling me Rogers. Her name was Zeffa.

“Son’ll be on in a minute,” she said to us both. “Should have been on already, but the first set ran long.”

We took seats. I was thinking … 
Son?
 … but didn’t get my hopes up.