We lingered in the living room, not to enjoy the stone fireplace, in which a fire would have been nice on a cold night, nor to admire the Oriental carpet that must have been worth a small fortune. I hoped the carpet wouldn’t be ruined by that dead man sprawled on it, with his brains spilled out in clumps caught in now-congealed blood like inappropriate vegetables in your grandmother’s Jell-O-mold delight.
This was another ex-soldier badass, now not nearly the threat he would once have been. In black, like his dead cohort and me (and Lu for that matter), he too was in a state of rigor mortis. Both watchdogs had died some time ago, but not long ago enough for the rigor to give way.
Lu whispered, though neither of us was sure why. “What do you make of this?”
“Somebody killed them.”
That made her smile. Gotta love a girl with a sense of humor.
She said, “I have a hunch our host won’t have much to say for himself.”
“Me, too. He’s either lammed or gone to the Happy Hunting Ground with his two braves.”
She had no argument with that assessment.
The living room had been substantial. The den, however, was small for this cathedral of capitalism. It was a book room with no built-in bookshelves, its windowless walls lined with more leather-cushioned furnishings and decorated with those framed photos of Chicago political figures that Lu had reported. Also, hanging perfectly straight, were some pics taken of professional golfers and celebrities at Vanhorn’s country club, posing with him.
The desk was a massive mahogany cube, the slab-like top of which indicated a man who wanted everything in its place — folders, papers, pen holder, reference books. A neat freak, this guy. Kind of ironic that he had wound up on the floor near his perfect work area, in a tailored suit and a red-and-blue striped silk tie, in a rumpled sprawl of brains and blood, his mouth open, tongue lolling, eyes wide with as much expression as billiard balls.
“I’m gonna take a leap,” I said, “and say this fucker is dead.”
“What the hell, Jack? You’re sure you didn’t do this?”
“No, I sneaked out while you thought I was sleeping, drove over here using the drawings you made of this place, and wiped everybody out like the goddamn plague. Why don’t you tell me what you think happened here? Who you think did this?”
“No fucking clue,” she said. She was shaking her head. Said, “No fucking clue” again and sat on a couch under framed photos of the bald man on the floor back when he was alive, with Bob Hope and Arnold Palmer smiling next to him, each with an arm around his shoulders.
I paced. This little home office, overwhelmed by the king-size desk, was just large enough for that. “Could this have nothing to do with me?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. A guy like the Envoy would have enemies.”
I stopped. “Don’t call him the Envoy. It’s stupid. He’s not the Joker and he’s not the Penguin. He’s a mobbed-up prick named Vanhorn. A dead mobbed-up prick named Vanhorn. And he was waiting to get a phone call from your pal Simmons about me being dead.”
“So?”
“So?” I stopped in front of her where she sat, as she looked up blandly at me. “Are you kidding? What’s been happening lately in the life of Charles Vanhorn, respectable Chicagoland citizen?”
“What?”
“Jesus, Lu, just that he found out some asshole called Quarry has spent the last ten years killing people whose agent he’s been, an annoying asshole who has taken real money out of his pocket, and the pockets of other middlemen in murder like him. For ten years!”
She stood. Her tone was firm. No nonsense. “We should go. It’s a house with three murdered criminals in it, Jack. Get ahold of yourself. We should go.”
“Not just yet. You sit back down. I can handle this.”
Her eyes got big. “Handle what?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
I went over and started looking through things on that fussily neat desktop, standing on the visitor side, facing the dead man’s empty black leather-cushioned swivel chair, as if it were supervising me. Though my gloves fit snug, it was kind of awkward. A notepad was perfectly positioned in front of his telephone. The note paper on top had something written on it.
Neatly, almost prissily inscribed, one above the other, were four names. But then, scrawled at an angle alongside, a note: “Attend sem.”
I asked Lu, “Any of these names ring any bells? George Callen?”
She shook her head.
“Henry Poole?”
She shook her head.
“Alex Kraft?”
She shook her head.
“Joseph Field?”
She shook her head.
“Might mean something,” I said, shrugged, and pocketed the slip of paper. “Might not. Might be guys he goes golfing with.”
“Not this time of year,” she said, crossing her legs as she sat there, bored in my presence and that of the stiff on the floor. “Unless he was heading south, or somewhere warm, anyway.”
“He may have gone someplace real warm.”
I poked around some more and came up with an address book. A fairly sparse listing of contacts gave up phone numbers and addresses. These may well have been golfing pals, and others in respectable Wilmette circles. Some numbers lacked area codes, indicating locals. A few had area codes elsewhere in Illinois.
The final page, however, had four disparate area codes attached to four names, phone numbers only, no addresses. Only four names at all on the page. You probably already know what they were: George Callen, Henry Poole, Alex Kraft, Joseph Field.
“Now,” I said, looking down at the notebook, “isn’t that interesting?”
Suddenly Lu was up and off the couch and looking over my shoulder. She was tall enough to do that. I glanced back at her and the almond-shaped eyes were slivers.
She asked, “The other brokers?”
“Maybe.” I ripped the page out, folded and pocketed it. “We’ll look up the area codes later. For now let’s keep at it.”
We got behind the desk. She worked on going through the drawers and I went through mail in his IN AND OUT box. Nothing seemed significant, no bills or bank statements — mostly charities he was generously supporting to keep people from realizing he was a no good rat bastard who dealt in other’s people’s deaths.
Then a color brochure jumped out at me.
I knew the location at once — the pictures were of the Lake Geneva Golf and Ski Resort. And while the colorful shots were indeed of the lodge in its summer months, when golfing ruled, I knew a golfing trip to my back yard had not been why Charles Vanhorn — yes, the fucking Envoy — had kept this on his desk.
Or was he just planning ahead, for a getaway weekend a few months from now?
I tried to take that notion seriously. Tried to make this just an odd coincidence, when the invitation slipped out. Of heavier stock, with genuine engraving, it said:
The date below was this weekend, coming up.
I showed it to her and asked, “What do you make of that?”
“That’s not far from you,” she said, frowning, “is it?”
I admitted it. Then I said, “If these four names are Vanhorn’s fellow brokers... maybe I’m on the agenda of this seminar.”