On Wednesday, Tim went out to Grayson at 5:30 a.m. Whatever deal Cass and Sofia had made with the press seemed to have stuck. The camera vans were all gone. Around six, Sofia in her older Lexus rolled out of the garage, undoubtedly headed for surgery.
Tim stayed put to see if Cass’s Acura would emerge, as it did around 8. It was clear to Tim after following Cass about five minutes that he was looking for a tail. He’d go two or three blocks, then back into a driveway and come out going the other direction. Tim avoided Cass the first time he used the maneuver, but when Tim turned the corner moments later, the Acura was at the curb, facing the other way beside the heavy old trees in the parkway. Cass actually smiled at Tim and lifted a hand to wave.
Tim called Evon.
“I’m gonna have to rent a new car every day,” he told her. “I’m curious as hell to know where Cass is going.”
“Do we care?” she asked.
“Maybe it’s just because I don’t have something better to do, but I look at all these stories about Cass and Sofia. You see one that says what kind of job he’s got?”
“He’s opening a charter school, isn’t he? He’s trying to get an exemption from the state Board of Education, because he has a felony record. Didn’t I read that?”
“Where’s this school? When’s it open? And what kind of schoolteacher gives a damn about being followed?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re just sick of the reporters. Hal hasn’t asked me anything for a week. He’s in a big melee with his bankers.” Apparently, within days of the YourHouse closing, Hal’s lending consortium had decided to mark down the portfolio of unsold single-family houses ZP had just bought. The lawyers on both sides were fighting like minks, and negotiating around the clock.
“I’ll pay for the rental cars myself, if you want,” Tim offered.
“No, he still wants dirt on the Gianises. There are columnists and bloggers all over the country writing about getting ‘Krononed,’ meaning having some big-money maniac destroy you politically with phony charges. He’d be happy to have any information that shows there’s something fishy with Paul. And what about Brünnhilde? Any sign of her?”
He was driving by Beata’s house on Clyde every day, but the mail was piled up on the concrete lip under the mail slot in her front door, so much of it that the winter storm door was ajar.
On Thursday morning, in a rented Ford Escape, he lay two blocks off the Gianis house, but still lost Cass in the traffic as he headed into Center City. With no better alternative, Tim went down to the three hundred block on Morgan, where the letter carrier had said she was forwarding Paul’s mail, to see what he could suss out.
Two new high-rises took up the block, here on the edge of Center City. When Tim was in the orphanage this part of town was all industrial, with huge square warehouses of unfaced brick and factories with looming smokestacks. It was a big trip in those days to come into DuSable. Each class went once a year, riding in on the Rock Island Line. He remembered the excitement, feeling queasy on the rolling carriages, then frightened by the size and might of the city, but the sight that most amazed him was at the other end, where a railroad turntable spun the locomotives around in the days before the engine cars were built to run backward.
Both new buildings had large banners in the windows, red lettering three feet tall, offering units for sale and rent. He entered each to see if there might be a directory of residents, but door-persons were stationed at security desks in both lobbies, and he decided to wait before calling any notice to himself. Sooner or later, the Gianises were going to accuse him of stalking and seek an order of protection. He spent the day eyeing the doors and driveways to the buildings, listening to a tape he’d gotten at the library of the same book of Greek myths he’d been trudging through.
Friday morning, he was there again early, hoping to catch sight of Paul leaving one of the buildings on his way to work. Instead, he saw Cass’s Acura arrive at the 345 Building about 8:45 and slide down the ramp into the private parking garage underneath. Tim left the blinkers on in his rented Corolla, and dodged traffic to cross the street, thinking it might be worth it now to check the directory. He had just opened the outer glass door to the lobby when a blue Chrysler convertible came up the same driveway. The vehicle was no more than thirty feet away, and he got a good look at the driver, who stopped at the top to check the cars in the street coming from both directions before turning right onto Morgan. It was Paul.
Tim limped back across the avenue to the rental car. He was lucky. Paul got caught at a light two blocks down and Tim managed to follow him all the way to a seven-story concrete parking structure across from the LeSueur Building. Paul soon emerged with his briefcase as he headed in to work.
Tim drove back to 345. When he’d wandered by yesterday, he’d seen visitors poking around at a small screen built into the security desk, using an attached telephone handset. The guard was gone for the moment and Tim lifted the receiver and followed the instructions on the screen, pressing the pound key to bring up a listing of residents. There were no Gianises, but he scrolled through and found T. Wisniewski in unit 442. He called for the hell of it, but there was no answer after eight rings.
He stood there sorting out the possibilities. Beata had a house, so she’d probably rented this place for Paul, but that had to be before he split with Sofia. There wouldn’t be much point to putting things in her name now. Paul was still a famous face and word that he was living here would get around. Maybe it had been what the rogues would call their ‘stabbin cabin,’ although it seemed to Tim that Paul would have risked a lot less attention going through the back door of Beata’s house. And what all was Cass doing here? The two brothers didn’t figure to be on the best terms right now.
“Help you?” asked a portly middle-aged lady, who’d emerged from the package room and resumed her post on a high swivel chair behind the rosewood security desk. She wore a sport coat with 345, the building logo, emblazoned above her heart. He could see from her squint that she’d been warned to watch out for somebody like him.
The 345 building, like the competitor down the block, was developed to meet all the needs of a busy urbanite. Here on the first floor, there was a gym and an overpriced organic grocery, and a couple of other small shops behind them.
“I was just looking for the dry cleaner,” Tim said, expecting her to direct him to the cleaner whose sign he’d seen next door. Instead, it turned out there was a dry cleaning establishment here, too.
“Right down the hall.” She pointed to the granite corridor. He could feel her watching as he gimped off, and for safety’s sake he entered the store with its steamy smell of starch. An Asian lady asked if she could help. She had quite an accent, and he needed to get her to repeat herself twice, what with the noise of the pressing machine behind her. In the interval, an idea came to him, just a way to confirm that Paul was living here now.
He turned every pocket in his sport coat inside out as the lady watched.
“Supposed to pick up my boss’s dry cleaning. But I don’t have the ticket.”
“What name?”
He told her Gianis and spelled it. She looked in her receipts and then threw the switch to start the merry-go-round of garments shimmering in their plastic wrappers. So Paul was here. Tim was about to go through the routine of telling her he’d forgotten his wallet, too, but she hung two suits from the hooked stainless arm that extended over the counter.
“You forgot one suit t’ree week,” she said.
“Really?” He looked at the second garment. It was exactly the same as the one in front of it, a lightweight blue wool with a faint herringbone. He hoisted the plastic sleeve for one second, as if trying to be sure the suit was his, and looked inside to see the label of a bespoke tailor, Danilo. If it was the guy Tim was thinking of, Danilo made clothes for athletes and mobsters, a clientele for whom he kept his mouth shut.