‘He didn’t happen to mention where he was headed?’
Rudy Emerson shook his head. ‘Not for a heart attack, that’s for sure.’
Barberi’s secretary left me in the lobby. Walking out, I had the thought to turn around and look back. Like the last time I’d left Barberi Holdings, I caught sight of a young man in a dark suit watching me. It could have been Brad; it could have been Jason; it could have been someone else, similarly barbered. Whoever he was, he must have caught sight of me looking back, because he quickly moved from sight.
The Rivertown chip pressed down a little on my shoulder, suggesting a little show. I took a leisurely stroll down the rows of the cars parked in the lot.
There were six of the junior-grade black BMWs, each identical to the one that had tailed me at least twice.
A tailing car need not be driven by a killer, I told myself.
Nor did it need be driven by an innocent, either.
I spent a showy moment in front of each car’s license plate, writing its number in the little spiral notebook I always carry. Then, back in the Jeep, I checked my cell phone before I started the car, wanting whoever might still be watching to think I was running the plate numbers I’d just written down. And maybe later I’d get a cop friend to do just that. For now, I had other things to think about.
Amanda had left fresh, furious messages, demanding to know why I had not returned any of her calls. Leo offered to buy lunch. And the Bohemian had asked me to call right away. I thumbed his number.
There was no booming ‘Vlodek’ to begin the conversation, but there was a chuckle, of sorts. ‘Arthur Lamm is still missing,’ he said.
‘You don’t sound worried.’
‘Perhaps because his absence has become even more explainable. The IRS began investigating him last fall.’
‘For what?’
‘Unreported income from insurance irregularities.’
‘Insurance? I thought the guy was in real estate.’
‘Arthur might have the longest tentacles of those in the heavy cream. He acts as a broker, selling large office buildings. Then he negotiates to become its property manager. To top it all off, he gets the property owner to buy the building’s insurance from his agency.’
‘An IRS investigation wouldn’t make a guy like Lamm run into the woods,’ I said.
‘Of course, unless his battery of high-priced attorneys told him to get lost until they could work something out with the Feds.’
‘Or unless he committed big-time fraud?’ I asked. ‘Such things can attract long prison sentences. In which case, he wouldn’t run off into the woods of Wisconsin. He’d flee the country, go someplace where he can’t be extradited.’
‘Look, we already know his rowboat and fishing gear are all gone, and that his cottage is on a string of lakes,’ the Bohemian said. ‘I suppose we could see something clandestine in that. I guess it’s possible he could have headed north to Canada, and from there gone overseas.’
‘Or he’s staged things, leaving a false trail to buy time to leave the country another way.’
‘This might be of interest to some of his associates,’ the Bohemian said. ‘Those in the heavy cream often cross-invest in each other’s companies.’
‘You want me to look more deeply into it?’
‘I want you to be ready.’
TWENTY
Rikk, at Carson’s life insurance carrier, sounded half asleep when he picked up the phone.
‘Did anybody identify where Carson went, his last night?’ I asked.
He yawned, quite audibly. ‘You’re killing me, Elstrom. You already asked that. Our concern starts at the moment he got smacked. Dinner doesn’t matter.’
‘Didn’t your investigator ask, anyway?’
‘Maybe; probably; I don’t know. How does knowing where he ate help us?’
‘You never know,’ I invented. ‘Maybe he was fed something that disoriented him, made him step out in front of traffic.’
‘And we could sue the restaurant or his dinner companions to recover our payout? You think he was murdered? For what purpose?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You’re reaching.’ He yawned, and added, ‘As well as holding back.’
‘I’m wondering if someone was with Carson, in the car.’ I said, thinking specifically of the man in the tan Buick who drove Whitman home.
‘Listen, Elstrom, asking these questions helps us only if the passenger was wealthy, had a hand in forcing Carson in front of the kill car, and we could sue to recover. We discussed all this. Vehicular homicides are too chancy. There are better ways to kill.’
‘That’s what any right-thinking person would think. That’s what makes it a clever way to murder.’
‘Give me a motive.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘There were no witnesses, remember? Even if you found a motive, we can’t prove anything.’
‘At least find out where Carson went, before he got killed.’
‘If I call our investigator, will you leave me alone?’
‘If you will also check Grant Carson’s appointment books for the last two years, to see if he went to that same place on the second Tuesday evenings of every even-numbered month.’
That woke him up. ‘What the hell do you know that you’re not telling me?’ he shouted.
‘Help me here, Rikk.’
‘How can I rationalize asking for his calendars?’
‘With creativity.’
‘You’re nuts, Elstrom,’ he said, and hung up.
I called Leo after I’d gotten on the tollway, southbound. ‘You said you’re buying lunch?’
‘Yes, but I’m dieting.’
Leo’s metabolism runs as fast as his intellect. There’d been no change in his 140 pounds since high school. ‘You’re porking up?’ I asked anyway.
‘A pound and a half since Christmas.’
‘I can achieve that with a lone raspberry Danish.’
‘So I noticed on my front stoop, very recently. See you at Kutz’s.’
I’d saved the worst call for last. I thumbed on my cell phone directory and clicked Amanda’s number. ‘Hey, sorry I haven’t been returning your calls,’ I said. ‘I’ve been swamped…’
Her voice was barely audible in the headset I’d bought cheap at the Discount Den. Then again, I was surrounded by trucks.
‘I can’t hear you,’ I yelled, speeding up to get clear of the trucks.
‘Do you miss me?’ she shouted.
‘Like there’ll be no tomorrow, Amanda,’ I screamed, joking, at last getting free of the trucks.
‘Jenny,’ the voice yelled, horribly clear. ‘Jenny Galecki.’
‘Ah,’ I said, hearing too perfectly. For sure, jackasses should not be issued speed-dial features, or thumbs, or headsets. Or mouths.
‘Talking with Amanda, are we?’ she asked.
‘It’s that case involving her father that I told you about,’ I said, fighting the urge to say I wasn’t lying.
‘Did you get my little package?’ There was frost in the words that I couldn’t blame on the cheap headset.
‘Package? No.’
‘I sent you a little something, to keep you thinking of me. It seemed funny at the time.’ She clicked off.
In the eight months since Jenny went west, we sometimes went weeks without speaking. Still, an hour didn’t pass where I didn’t think of her, hoping an hour hadn’t passed where she hadn’t thought of me. And somehow San Francisco seemed closer.
Now I’d messed things for sure by fumbling my mention of Amanda. San Francisco felt like it had moved to another continent.
The phone rang again as I got off the tollway. ‘Listen, Jenny-’
‘Damn you, Elstrom,’ Gaylord Rikk corrected. It had only been twenty minutes since we’d spoken. I ripped the headset off and pressed the phone to my ear, in clear violation of Illinois law.
‘That seems to have already happened.’
‘I got intrigued, but only because I’m bored. In some disgusting way, you liven up my dreary existence.’