“You cut his hair, right?”
“Yep,” Pooks confirmed sourly. “And turned that blond mop brown. Yep. Your little friend is a-okay, all right.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Art asked.
“I taught him how to play dominoes,” Pooks said. “And the little snot goes aheads and beats me!”
Art chuckled and half sat against the edge of the table. “He beat the Pooks.”
“Jefferson, if you tells a soul…” Pooks made a bony fist and held it toward Art.
“Not from me,” Art assured the old man. “How long did it take him?”
“First game!”
The chuckle rolled into a laugh as Art doubled over.
“Then he up and takes all my dominoes into the bedroom and starts playing alone with ‘em! You believe that?”
“Yeah,” Art answered, wiping his eyes. “Yeah, I do, Pooks. Is he still playing?”
“He’s doing something with ‘em,” Pooks said, waving a dejected hand as he turned away. “I don’t care.”
Art left Pooks to sulk in defeat, probably his first in a decade, and eased open the door to the bedroom, his smile draining away and his eyes bugging in wonder at what he saw.
“Jesus…”
Simon stood on a chair by the bedroom’s only window, looking out to the north, the stepped black form of the Sears Tower rising in the distance, and on the flat top of the dresser next to the window the same structure rose in miniature, constructed of dominoes. A near perfect replica at least three feet tall.
As Art came into the room, Simon’s head rolled his way, eyes more visible now that the blond locks were shorn. “Black is up.”
“Yeah,” Art agreed, marveling at the display. “Way up.”
“Beats me and then makes that thing,” Pooks commented from the doorway to the front room. “Where the hell did you find him, Jefferson?”
In a blue house on Vincent Street, where his mother and father were murdered. Art could have explained it that way, but he didn’t. He chose to offer no answer at all. Instead he had his own question. ‘Pooks, can you hang around a while longer? To keep an eye on him?”
“You got somewhere to go?”
“I’ve got something to do,” Art answered. Or try to do. Damn, there was so much to do.
“Hell, just lock the door and tell him to stay,” Pooks suggested. “He listens real good.”
“This could take a while,” Art said. “I don’t want him left alone too long.”
Pooks saw something strange in Art’s expression, a look he’d never thought the man capable of: helplessness. “What you gotta do?”
Art considered whether he should tell the old con man. But what could it hurt? “I’ve got to get word to my wife. They’ve got her locked up. I’ve got to let her know what’s going on. Why I’m doing this.”
“Your wife,” Pooks repeated thoughtfully, old, twig-like fingers scratching the stubble beneath his chin. His eyes narrowed, the same way they had when long ago he would dream of cons and how they could be played. After a moment he smiled. He hadn’t lost his touch. “Jefferson.”
“What?”
“Your wife…”
“Anne,” Art prompted.
Pooks nodded, creased lips twisting into a grin. “Anne. Does she have an uncle?”
Chapter Seventeen
Hoods, Inc.
Unlike the previous day, when a collective disbelief had brought many off day workers into the office, Nels Van Horn found it sparsely populated, even for a Sunday. Possibly the opposite was true today. Maybe people sought distance, like people fleeing and offending odor or an annoying sound.
One of the few agents there waved at Van Horn as he wheeled past on his way to the Com room. He returned the gesture and continued on, his eyes shifting nervously, wondering if anyone would note that he was in on an off day, and if they noticed would they care, and if they cared would they…
Geez, get a hold of yourself. You’re not robbing a bank.
No, you’re just committing another felony. That’s all.
After a moment, Van Horn convinced his little voice to shut up, and coded his way into the Com room.
He wheeled up to the main terminal, powered it up, and placed the slip of paper Art had given him above the F keys on the keyboard. When the screen came to life he began entering commands. Requests, actually. Normal, everyday requests.
He thought.
Even the guards had refused Breem’s request to have one of Anne’s ankles shackled to the interview room’s table, and so she sat across that flat surface from him now, the urge to strike out very real, even if only to inflict a minor, painful annoyance on him.
But then Anne suspected that Angelo Breem — who was turning out to be just what her husband had described him to be — was, probably believing it as gospel, just doing his job. He was not the one trying to destroy their lives. He was being used as much as she was. As much as Art was.
And he sure as hell was enjoying it.
“I’d advise you to say nothing,” Bertram Hogan, a lawyer to whom Chas had referred her, suggested. He sat by her side, relaxed, quite in contrast to her rigid, arms-folded-on-the-table posture.
“You don’t have to talk,” Breem said, writing something on a legal pad. “Let me remind you of the evidence so far. Bank records from three countries. Phone records showing calls from Kermit Fiorello to your husband’s personal cellular phone. And Kermit Fiorello himself. Where is he? We go to arrest him and he’s gone just like your husband. Both running at the same time. But, no, you don’t have to say anything. Just remember, however, silence can be incriminating.”
“That’s a bowl of cold soup, Breem,” Hogan said with just the right amount of bombast.
“Juries hate people who are afraid to talk,” Breem observed, continuing to make notes. “That’s a fact.”
Hogan leaned close to Anne, touching her on the elbow. “Don’t say anything.”
Anne considered the advice, then said, “I want to say something.”
“Good.” Breem stopped his scribbling, a ploy in any case to make his quarry think him disinterested, not in need of further evidence. He gave Anne his full attention. “I’m listening.”
“You can look under every trash can in this city, in this country, or in any country club, in any courthouse, in any jail, in any police station. You can look high and low. You can ask anyone any question you want to ask, and you can listen to their answers, even if those answers are lies. And after all that, you won’t have any more evidence against me or my husband than you do now. Because what you have is a lie. And you know the one incontrovertible fact about lies, Mr. Breem, don’t you?”
Breem sighed, disappointed that all he was getting was a speech.
“Lies have short lives, but the truth is always there, just waiting to be found.”
The sun was deep into its downward arc when Bob Lomax parked his car and decided to walk the remaining few blocks to the Green Oaks Social Club.
Not a gathering place for seniors on a canasta binge, Green Oaks had, for decades, been the place where the crème de la crème of Chicago’s mob elite came on occasion to socialize, to talk business, to complain, to make ever so subtle comments that would result in someone getting whacked. It had been raided a half a dozen times, and everyone there, from the bosses inside to the lowliest crew members standing a casual guard out front, had seen the inside of a prison.
And still it lived on, in a way with the blessing of the authorities. It was the place where a boss could always be found if a warrant required serving, or simple questions needed asking. It was a constant in Chicago’s long history with the mob.