“I’m not generally a window peeker,” I said with a laugh, hands in my bomber jacket pockets, rocking on my Reeboks. “I just saw the ‘for sale’ sign, stopped, and knocked and... nobody home.” I shrugged. “So I thought I’d take a look-see.”
“No harm done,” he said, like maybe there had been. Under the topcoat was a t-shirt. He’d seen me out a window and threw the coat on and came out to check on me.
With a nod toward the rustic two-story, I said, “You don’t happen to know how much they’re asking?”
He grunted a laugh. First sign he was warming. “Too much.”
“How much is too much?”
“Hundred and fifty K. Been sitting for months. They moved to California. Maybe they like having two house payments. I sure wouldn’t.”
“Me neither! What do houses go for around here, generally?”
“Round a hundred. I paid eighty, but that was five years ago. What do you for a living, son?”
Tiny bit skeptical still, but pretty warm now.
I said, “I’m a teacher, but so is my wife, so we have two incomes. I think we could make it here.”
“I’m a teacher myself,” he said, grinning. “And so is my wife. I’m a coach. Football.”
Am I good?
Hands on his hips now. “Where are you teaching, son?”
“You familiar with St. Charles?”
“Yeah, of course. Nice little town. Don’t really know anybody up that way, though. Not in our conference.”
I was glad of that, because that meant I didn’t have to pull any other names of Illinois towns out of my ass.
“Well,” I said, “St. Charles is where I’m teaching. English. Assistant swimming coach, too.”
“Very good.”
We chatted a while, about how long my commute would be — half an hour to forty-five minutes — and other small talk. His wife was a history teacher. And so on. That he’d seen me was a bit of a problem, but not enough to make me change my plans. He was a nice guy. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him.
With that my only misgiving, I walked around to the front where my car was parked in the drive. My hand was on the key in the ignition when someone came out of the house across the way. Down two doors.
The name he used here was Bruce Simmons. He was about my age, my size, similar build, but with dark hair longer than mine, kept neatly in place by what people insist on calling “product.” His eyes were dark, too, his face narrow but handsome, nose and chin pointed but not in an aggressive way. Tan, either sunning bed or vacation. He wore a gray topcoat but it only came to mid-thigh and under it was a black turtleneck. Maybe a gun, too. Maybe not.
But for sure he carried a good-size brown canvas travel bag.
This he stowed in the back seat, and as he did, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties came out — not dressed for the weather, just to say goodbye — with a cute little boy of maybe four tagging along at her side, tugging on her nearest sleeve.
She was a looker. Her hair was big and black and frizzy, and her nice slim body was in a denim pantsuit. Her face was pale and her mouth was wide and red with lipstick, white with teeth. The little kid, also with frizzy black hair, was wearing — hell, I don’t remember. Whatever little kids wear. He was cute. Leave it at that.
Anyway, Simmons had apparently forgotten his shaving kit, because she brought it out to him. He took it and smiled at her and they kissed. Nothing too elaborate — what would the Homeowner’s Association say? But it was warm and real. The kid was dancing, his eyes on daddy.
Who picked him up and gave him a kiss on the forehead and put him back down.
He got in the Caddy, tossing the shaving kit in the backseat with the canvas bag, and started the engine and waved at them over its throaty purr and backed out. They waved at him like he was the Titanic pulling away from the dock, and in a way, wasn’t he?
Because it was very likely I’d be killing him, and if you think I’m terrible for that — and I’m not saying I’m not — but if you’re feeling sorry for his little family, think about it. How many families had he ruined? For a living? How much better off would they be, without him but with whatever funds he’d stashed away for them?
She could do better. With him gone, nobody would come kidnap that little boy to get at daddy. Or rape and kill the looker mommy in denim in revenge for something daddy did. Daddy was a killer. Don’t feel sorry for him. If you’re smart, you won’t feel sorry for me, either.
I didn’t wait long to pull out of the drive and fall in behind him. Didn’t stay that way long, though — plenty of traffic even at off times in that part of the world, to make it simple enough to keep a couple or three cars between me and him.
He headed north. It was the tail end of rush hour and he took the tollway to Skokie, where he gave money to a cigar-smoking loud-jacketed used car salesman, leaving the guy the Caddy in exchange for a fake-woody Mercury station wagon, half a decade old. Great minds think alike, although I had to admit I hadn’t thought about ever picking up a station wagon. For a big vehicle, they didn’t come less suspicious.
And if you had to move a body, wow. Good choice.
He ate at Skokie, too — a deli diner, a mom-and-pop joint called Jack’s. I ate there myself, the place big enough for me to maintain a distance (Simmons in a booth, me at the counter) but still keep an eye on him. We both had the Reuben. This was a Jewish enclave, Skokie, and they knew their way around corned beef.
My distant dining companion did not seem to be looking around, surreptitiously or otherwise. He was just a guy having a sandwich with fries (hand-cut, very good). And why should he? He had no reason for care, beyond switching cars. He wasn’t on the job, he was on his way to a job. Why would anybody be following him?
Which did make my task somewhat easier.
But when he cut over to Highway 12, still heading north, darkness settling in, I began to have misgivings. If he was on his way to my part of the world for a gig, I couldn’t have any part of it. Too damn risky. Already this thing had started feeling risky — once the traffic thinned, past the Chicago area, keeping distance between my car and his while not losing him was no easy fucking task.
Then we were in Wisconsin. The Lake Geneva area isn’t very far over the border, maybe twelve miles. As we headed that way, still on Highway 12, I knew I would have to bail unless he kept on going north, maybe to Fond Du Lac or Oshkosh or Green Bay. Maybe some popular Packer got a contract taken out on him by some sore loser Bears fan.
But my man didn’t keep going north. He took a turn and then so did this whole goddamn mess. His turn took him through very familiar lanes lined with trees, many of them evergreen and holding onto the snow, and then he pulled into the parking lot of a rambling two-story establishment, open in off-season to serve the sparse population of locals.
Wilma’s Welcome Inn was a combination gas station, restaurant, grocery store and lodge, which was even shabbier now that it was run by the late Wilma’s husband Charley. Nothing terribly significant about this oddball establishment, except perhaps for one thing.
You could see my A-frame from there.
Three
The family man named Simmons from Ridgeview Lane in Naperville, Illinois, was clearly on my Paradise Lake turf now. What that meant wasn’t exactly clear, as the Buffalo Springfield song said, but pretty damn clear nonetheless, and while Wilma’s Welcome Inn had a good reputation for killer comfort food, I doubted this prick drove all the way to Wisconsin for the chili. He’d already eaten, after all.