The Dead Caller from Chicago (30 page)

“Why not just quit using Snark on those installations?”

“Mr. Tebbins had a good heart and was trying to straighten Snark out with extra pay, but he'd also been too good a salesman. He'd sold more systems than he could handle. He needed Snark. He needed me, too. He never forgave me for bailing on him.”

“You never heard about Cassone?”

“Today's the first day I've heard the name. I must have been gone a week from the garage when Snark stole the painting.”

“Mononucleosis? Really?”

“It was the truth.” He put on a mock-offended look, adding slyly, “It's the kissing disease, you know.”

“Please continue.”

“Snark stopped by my house early on what I now suspect was the morning after he stole from Cassone. He said he'd done a painting for his mother. The dumb thing was still wet. He said he was going to a funeral and asked me to hold on to it until he came back. He said to tell nobody about it. I didn't believe his story, but no way I figured him for hot art, so I said sure. It was an ugly picture, just grays and browns and yellows. I put it out in the garage attic to dry and forgot about it.”

“You really think he planned to come back for it?”

“No, because he didn't know what it was worth. Snark wouldn't peruse art catalogs and stolen painting bulletins, and there was no Internet back then, don't forget.”

“I checked. It was never reported stolen.”

“I checked, too, but now I understand. Snark stole from a hood who didn't have good title. He wanted to disguise it, thinking it would buy him some more time to get away.”

“And for all these years, you had no idea the painting underneath was valuable?”

“Just for three years, Dek.”

“You learned it was the Daisy so soon?”

“I worked for Sotheby's right out of college, remember. One Saturday, I was up in the garage attic and came across Snark's painting. As I said, I'd forgotten all about it. I brought it down. In the sunlight, the back of the canvas looked way too old for something Snark would have. I brought it into work on Monday and examined it with their equipment. It only took the morning to learn Snark had slopped over the last of Brueghel's Four Flowers. Worse, my research showed who legally owned it.”

“The descendants of the Nazi?”

“He bought it legally, though for an impossibly low price.”

“The proper thing was to return it to the Nazi's heirs?”

“Properly legal, but not properly moral. The German was an engineer, suspected of helping to set up the death camps. He died at the end of the war, before he could be charged.” He shook his head. “I don't know how the family lost control of it. There's no subsequent record of title, so technically it still belongs to them.”

“That's what you asked Amanda to double-check, a little while ago?”

His face brightened. “You talked to Amanda?”

“Only briefly.”

“I wanted fresh eyes on my research. Anyway, what I learned wasn't really helpful, because I still didn't know where Snark stole it, or who stole it before that. Nor could I sell it and give the funds to survivors' groups, because there was no way such a sale could be done quietly, or anonymously. The Nazi's heirs were sure to hear about it, assert title, and get it back.”

“So you set it aside and tried to forget about it.”

“No. I went looking for Snark. He'd mentioned once that he came from Center Bridge, downstate, and that his sister had a sister-in-law who still lived there.”

“You hadn't heard he was dead?”

“I never ran in to Mr. Tebbins or Mr. Robinson after I left the garage.”

“I went down to Center Bridge.”

His eyebrows danced. “What did you learn?”

“Nothing about any sister's sister-in-law. Everybody's long gone.”

“When I drove down, I did find the sister-in-law. She told me she'd heard Snark got shot in some jerkwater, fifty miles from Paducah. I called their police. They put me on to a retired cop who remembered Snark, mostly because of his name. Snark was killed by shots to the head, just weeks after he left Rivertown.”

“Hood kill?” I asked.

“Sure, now that you've told me the picture was swiped from a mobster. I figured Cassone would have noticed the theft right away and come to Mr. Tebbins. Mr. Tebbins was a decent guy, but no way he'd cover Snark on a grand theft. Mobster or no, he would have told Cassone that Snark was gone, maybe headed for Center Bridge.”

“Why didn't Snark tell him you had the painting?”

“Snark was big-time dumb. He would have realized he'd left behind a very valuable picture, seeing as Cassone chased him all the way to Kentucky for it. To his last stupid breath, he must have believed he could con his way free and come back for it.”

“And so things ended,” I said.

“Until I got that call from someone who knew to pretend to be Snark. Right after you left, I got on the Internet and saw the news about the Bennetts and the Brueghels.”

“Did you suspect it was Tebbins or Robinson who'd called?”

“Never crossed my mind. I didn't see how they could know I had the painting,” he said.

“When Cassone showed up years later, to take another crack at what they might know about that painting, they realized Snark had never given it up before he got killed.”

“Remember I just told you they had a master key for the lockers?” he asked, excited now. “One of them must have seen the picture before Snark painted it over. They must have turned on a computer, Googled, ‘daisy painting, stolen,' and saw a picture they remembered.”

“With huge dollar signs attached,” I said. “That got them thinking about you and Snark having lunch together every day. It was enough to risk a whispered call to you.”

“Still, stealing a picture from me, even though it was stolen goods already, doesn't sound like them. These were low-level guys, Dek, content to wash cars, tune trucks, and spread salt.” He leaned back, thinking. “Besides, I told my whispering caller I'd gotten rid of the painting a long time ago.”

“You've never been much of a liar, Leo.”

“I suppose I knew that.” He sighed. “For sure I was scared enough to send Ma and Endora away and hang back to see who'd come sniffing around. I had to figure out how to make this problem go away.”

“Did you ever see anyone?” I asked, meaning the man he killed, Wozanga.

He straightened up in his chair so he could look directly at me. Usually Leo could see right into the center of my brain.

“No,” he said softly. “Did you?”

“No,” I lied.

“How about that man that followed you to Eustace Island? Casssone?”

Endora had told him everything she knew.

“Who else could it have been?”

“How did Cassone know to come looking for me?”

Endora would have heard about Tebbins, too. I had no option. “Cassone killed Tebbins.”

“Ah, jeez.” For a moment he looked off, toward the doorway. Then, “Cassone made poor Mr. Tebbins give him my name.”

“For sure, he would have said you hung around with Snark, back in the day. I'm guessing he also told Cassone you lied about not having the painting.” There was no need to mention Tebbins had been tortured and was begging for his life.

“Cassone then took the painting?”

“Yes, and I clubbed him in your backyard and took it back.”

“Mr. Robinson then killed Cassone?” he asked.

“He was watching your house and saw me drop Cassone and take the painting. After I left, he took the bat and later used it to club Cassone, after he shot him.”

“Why?”

“The shooting part was to get Cassone out of the way so he could sell the painting; the clubbing was revenge for Tebbins.”

“Whoa! That's too extreme. As I said, Dek, Mr. Robinson, like Mr. Tebbins, was a garage guy, not a killer.”

“The clubbing was also to get me arrested for the murder and out of the way. My prints were on that bat.”

“Mr. Robinson was a decent guy. I can't see him getting that desperate.” He rubbed his eyes. He was getting too much information, too fast.

I paused and asked the question that had been nagging at me the whole time we'd been talking. “You were never tempted to get the Daisy restored, quietly?”

“No point,” he said after a moment.

“Because it would be recognized and returned to the Nazi's heirs?”

“Just … no point.” His face got dark. “I need you to do something for me. I left Pa's gun in that vacant house. I want you to go get it, before someone gets hurt.”

“I grabbed it with your clothes.” It was true enough. I just couldn't go further and tell him I'd lost the gun, which might link him to a killing if it were ever found.

I stood up. The daylight was disappearing out the window.

“Oh no you don't,” he said. “There's a lot you're not telling me.”

“That's because there's a lot I don't understand. Plus, I don't have time.”

“When will it be safe for me to go home?”

“Soon.”

“Because Robinson's still out there?”

“Plus two others, one driving a red car, one driving a black car.” I told him about them chasing me through the woods.

“You're lying about something.”

I had to hurry to get back to the turret to barricade myself in before dark. “Whisper a call to me tomorrow,” I said and left.

There was a Burger King a mile before the Tollway and only Cheerios at the turret. I hadn't eaten since the In-N-Out in California, over twenty-four hours earlier. Say what one would about the In-N-Out, it had done no such thing; it had gone in and stayed. I hadn't felt hunger in over a day.

Of course, my loss of appetite might have come from being chased by a killer, twice in one day.

I got two Whoppers with cheese, a large Coke, and what surely were healthy vegetables: Cheerio-shaped onion rings. Whoppers can be tough to eat one-handed while driving, so I did the prudent thing. I savored it all in the parking lot and didn't get back to Rivertown until long after dark.

The turret was too dark and foreboding, ideal for Robinson and his two friends. I drove to a supermarket for Ho Hos and Twinkies and came back to sleep on Thompson Avenue. I would not be bothered. The Rivertown police were accustomed to seeing men slumped back behind their steering wheels, eyes closed, mouths opened, along that particular patch of road.

I switched off the key and slept sporadically until the sun rose the next morning.

 

Fifty-four

I waited until nine o'clock before I approached the turret. No one appeared to have tampered with the door lock.

Nor had the sensor lights been tripped. I went upstairs, had coffee from previous grounds, and called Jarobi for news about Robinson and his friends.

“What's shaking?” I asked, trying to not sound like I was referring to my nerves, which would have been worse if I'd used fresh grounds, or spent the night in the turret waiting for someone to break down the door.

“A forest preserve worker found a Chrysler minivan in a storage garage, near that access road you described.”

“Green?”

“With serious scrapes along the driver's side. It was Robinson's car, like I expected.”

“Red scrapes or black scrapes on the minivan?”

“Black.”

“From an Impala?”

“Who knows, Elstrom? Forget the Impala; we don't have the money to be CSI Chicago. There were other things, though. A revolver was found lying on the passenger's seat. Want to know what kind of revolver?”

“Oh, why not?”

“Colt Peacemaker, buckaroo. The sheriff is running it down, like there's a mystery to who owns it.”

I didn't see any need to tell him it wasn't mine, but Leo's.

“What about Robinson himself?”

“Meaning was he found shot with a Peacemaker that had your fingerprints on it? He's nowhere to be found, though two blood-soaked towels were found on the passenger seat. I suppose there could have been an accident, and he wandered off to get help.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course not. Robinson was already wounded, likely from that alley altercation earlier. Those cars weren't tailing you; they were tailing Robinson, to wound him further.”

“Friends of Cassone's?”

“Angered by the brutal way he was shot and then clubbed postmortem? Maybe, though I'm sensing Robinson had other issues.”

“What kind of other issues?”

“Floater issues, though I suppose all sorts of folks in your charming little town might have been responsible for that.”

“What about that guy?”

“It was a John Doe.”

“They have no idea who it might be?”

“It's not Snark Evans, if that's what you're asking. The floater's older, a white male in his midfifties. Apparently his fingerprints aren't on file. They're going to keep him cool for another week, then bury him.”

“Without knowing who he was?”

“They're dead-ended, buckaroo.”

“And Robinson?”

“If he's not buried in the woods somewhere, chances are he's running from those two guys who were tailing him. Any ideas?”

I didn't know. I knew who did, though.

I called Jenny. She didn't answer. I left a message, saying I had questions and wanted to have dinner, but I didn't mean it in that order.

*   *   *

The cleaning service was already waiting at Leo's when I got there.

I'd asked for every person they could provide. Smelling meat, they'd sent ten. They sang in Polish as they vacuumed and scrubbed and polished. I didn't sing at all as I killed time outside, scraping the last bits of snow from Leo's walk. The glinting eyes of the next-door babushka, wondering what was going on, were too hot.

After the cleaning crew left, I took a casual, hands-in-the-pockets stroll down the alley. The excavation sat abandoned, its foundation forms upright and empty. The gravel blanket between them still appeared smooth and undisturbed, and I took that to be a small mercy until I realized that with Robinson gone, Rivertown was without a building inspector, and that meant no concrete work would be approved for quite some time. Surely Wozanga's patience, cold though it was, would run out before that.