“Or he’s a shakedown artist on Valium. What else?”
Leo came back to sit behind the desk. The smile was gone. “Why hand-print the letter at all? Why not type it on the library computer, or wherever, when he did the envelope? Why fool with a pencil and ruler to write the words and risk finger or palm prints?”
I thought for a minute, came up with nothing.
“It’s a huge clue,” Leo went on, tapping again with the yellow pencil, “but we’re not smart enough to figure it. This needs to go to the police.”
“The Bohemian thinks the problem’s over. If the letter’s not from a nut, it was a ruse to keep the focus off the Farradays, and they’re gone.”
“How fortunate for the Farradays,” Leo said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“No, I don’t think the Bohemian hung them out to dry. He said he showed Farraday the note, let him decide whether it should go to the cops. He said Farraday declined.”
Leo shook his head. “Somebody’s got to take this to the cops.”
“The Bohemian won’t allow it unless he’s convinced the threat still exists. There are twenty-six homes still at Gateville. Figuring conservatively at three million each, that’s seventy-eight million worth of real estate that could become close to worthless overnight.”
“Including Amanda’s.” Leo watched my face.
“I need a roof, Leo.” I pushed myself out of the folds of the green chair and picked up Stanley Novak’s tan envelope off the desk. “As for Amanda, sure, I want her house to keep its value. Nobody takes a three-million-dollar whack easily.”
“You betcha,” he said, standing up.
We went up the stairs. On television, Ma was watching a deeply tanned woman wearing a white towel say something to a deeply tanned man wearing a white towel. It’s always nice when people with similar interests find each other.
Leo opened the front door. “Will the Bohemian listen to you?” he asked as I stepped out.
“I don’t know.”
“He’d better. He’s got to call the police,” he said through the screen.
I checked my phone for messages as I pulled away from Leo’s. Amanda had returned my call a half hour earlier and had left an international phone number. I swung back to the curb, shut off the engine, and called. She answered right away. It was a lousy connection, but there was no missing the wariness in her voice. It was the third time we’d spoken since our divorce. The two earlier times had been the previous October. I’d been drunk.
“I’m not pickled this time, but I’m going to sound just as foolish.”
In the background, I could hear cars and trucks, and people shouting in another language.
“Amanda, where are you?”
“Paris, in a little café across the Seine from the Louvre, drinking American coffee from a yellow cup on an orange saucer.”
The tight spot in my neck relaxed. She was nowhere near Gateville.
“What time is it there?” It was all I could think of to say.
“Just past five in the afternoon. Dek, are you all right?”
“Are you going to be over there long?” I asked, counting on the background noise to make my question sound casual.
“Through the fall. I’m doing an art history book for middle schoolers. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is your business coming back?”
“Slowly. You know lawyers, cautious as mice. I sent them all copies of the exoneration story in the Trib. It was two paragraphs long. You’re sure you’ll be away for a while?”
“Yes.” She paused, waiting. She was tensed, afraid I’d suggest I come to Paris.
When I asked a couple of quick questions about her book project instead, the relief in her voice was louder than our words. We filled another minute talking about the crowds of summer tourists, and then she asked, “What were you going to say?”
“What?”
“You said you were going to say something that would sound foolish.”
“I did? That was foolish. I just called to hear how you are. Paris for the summer sounds great. I’ve got to run.” I clicked off. There was no need to fumble with an explanation of why she should stay away from Gateville; she was going to be safe in Paris. Still, I wouldn’t have minded talking some more. There were plenty of other foolish things I wanted to say.
It’s the little stuff that haunts. The sound of her laughter, as it made something I’d said sound wittier that it was, or the way the burgundy highlights in her dark hair caught the fire of the sun. Little stuff, that comes at me in the middle of the night.
I first saw her on an unseasonably balmy February evening the year before. Chicago weather does sometimes, tosses out a lily of a springlike day in the middle of winter to lull everybody before burying them in a ton of snow in April. That night, the false spring made the walls of my tiny condo so tight they almost touched. I’d gone outside and walked west, restless, to Michigan Avenue.
She was standing just inside one of the small art galleries, a beige trench coat draped over her arm, frowning at an oil painting on the wall. She was about my age but wore it better. She had short,dark hair, a pale complexion, and lips that looked like they could offer salvation.
She must have felt my eyes. She turned, smiled, pointed at the oil on the wall, and surprised me by motioning me to come in. I did, not pausing to wonder why she’d beckoned. Opportunity of that sort rarely knocked on my dusty door.
“What do you think?” she asked, pointing again at the painting she’d been staring at. Her voice was soft, lilting.
“My taste in art runs to blues festival posters.”
“Does that prevent you from forming an opinion of other art?” Her brown eyes sparkled mockingly.
I pretended to study the painting. It was abstract, I supposed; a mess of indeterminate shapes, mostly green.
“There’s a lot of green,” I offered finally.
She laughed. “Anything else?”
I bent closer to the frame. The little card said it was being offered for one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. “It’s obviously very good green.”
“Actually, it’s not very.”
“Very what?”
“Good green. It’s just very expensive.”
“Do you want to have a drink?”
She surprised me again. She said yes.
We drank beer in a dark booth in an empty ersatz Cockney pub on the ground floor of one of the shopping towers. She told me she wrote art history books that were too expensive to sell anywhere but to libraries. That was good enough for her, because of the potential that some kid might pick up a copy and get a switch turned on that would lead to a lifelong interest in art.
I told her I ran an information service, chased down records and photographs for lawyers and insurance companies. That was good enough for me, because it got me out of Rivertown wheremost of the art was spray-painted in four-letter words, on the walls of abandoned factories.
We talked until the Cockneys threw us out at midnight. By then, I’d been enchanted, captivated, bottom-line crazy-in-love for three hours.
We met the next four times by the bronze lions in front of the Art Institute. She was teaching a class there that semester. We’d walk to one of the small places for dinner and we’d talk. We didn’t do the theater, or the movies, or the clubs. There wasn’t time; we were both in too much of a hurry chasing something we’d each thought had passed us by. And we had too much to say about not much of anything, before we ended up at my condo closet on the lake, where we wouldn’t talk at all.
I proposed on our fifth date, at a little trattoria three blocks west of Michigan Avenue.
“I want you to have dinner at my place before I give you my answer,” she said.
Things froze in my mind then. It had been too fast, too wonderful. She read it on my face.