‘This is a police station?’
‘We’re using a freelance sketch artist. Ours got cut back to part-time.’
We got out, went through a tiny, brown-painted lobby to a door marked ‘Art School of Chicago.’ Adjacent to it was a door marked ‘Hair Salon School of Chicago.’
‘Budgets,’ Pawlowski said.
Looking sorrowful, Wood dropped the empty white food container in an open trash barrel, wiped his hands on his pants, and pushed open the door. The foyer had been converted into a break room, and we took a moment to select those scuffed orange plastic chairs that contained the smallest residues of dried colas.
‘I’m still not understanding the fuss about these Tuesdays, and Barberi, Whitman and Carson,’ Wood said. ‘Heart attack, self-administered overdose, hit-and-run.’
‘All three men died after getting together on second Tuesdays,’ I said. ‘That can’t be coincidence.’
‘You’re saying where?’ Wood asked.
I hadn’t yet mentioned the Confessors’ Club by name, though I figured by now everyone in law enforcement knew it, since Krantz had said it at lunch. He’d also said there would be a heavy police presence there that evening.
‘An old graystone at Sixty-six West Delaware,’ I said, to be sure. ‘You need to have people there tonight.’
‘This private dick you mentioned – Small?’ Wood asked. ‘Who hired him to watch these rich guys?’
‘I have no idea,’ I said, ‘You should send a guy up to sweat information out of Lamm’s caretaker, a guy named Herman Canty.’
‘And this young punk cop imposter, the one you’re going to help us draw a picture of, who hired him?’
‘I think Small did. Then the kid started working for himself.’
‘He’s a killer, this kid?’
‘He could have killed Small.’
‘Why?’
‘To get Small out of the way, so he could shake down someone, likely Arthur Lamm.’
‘The kid tricked you into finding this Delaware Street meeting place?’ Wood grinned.
‘Only the outside. I tricked him back by not finding out much else.’
Pawlowski shifted on his chair, fixed me with the beady eye they teach at police school. ‘What’s Wendell Phelps, your father-in-law, going to tell us?’
For sure Krantz had passed along Wendell’s name. I gave Pawlowski my own beady eye back, the one I practice in the mirror. ‘Ex-father-in-law,’ I corrected.
‘Come on, Elstrom.’ Pawlowski smiled. ‘What’s Wendell Phelps going to tell us?’
‘Same thing he tells everybody: his daughter is well-rid of me,’ I said.
FORTY-NINE
The sketch artist, an instructor at the art school, finished a passable cartoon of Delray at four-thirty. Pawlowski and Wood took it and disappeared out the door without offering to give me a ride. I didn’t object. The Corner Bakery, where I was to meet Amanda, was just a few blocks away.
Jenny had called while I’d been inside. I returned her call once I got out.
‘A huge story is coming out of Chicago,’ she said, right off. ‘A secret society in a creepy old mansion, and dead rich guys exactly like your father-in-law.’
‘Ex-father-in-law,’ I corrected.
‘Is this the case you’re working?’ she asked fast, still in a rush.
‘I blew the whistle.’
‘You didn’t call me?’
‘You’re in San Francisco.’
‘This story is going national.’
‘Conflicting obligations,’ I said. ‘Old father-in-law.’
‘Ex-father-in-law,’ she corrected, laughing.
We were well. I told her everything, on deep background.
‘And Amanda? You’re protecting her, too?’ she asked, when I was done.
‘Of course.’
‘Are you wearing the purple bow tie I sent you?’
‘Not at this moment, but I’ll put it on when I get back to the turret.’
She said she had to take another call and that we were not done.
‘I hope so,’ I said.
I walked north. I wanted to feel good. I’d rung the alarm bell, alerted everybody to the danger up on Delaware Street. Cops would soon mobilize there, and every one of the Confessors, wherever they were, would be on guard from now on. Arthur Lamm might be on even greater guard, too, though for different reasons. I still couldn’t fathom why that exceedingly rich man would resort to killing for insurance money, if indeed he had. But that was for cop minds to determine, not mine.
With luck, too, the investigations would prove that Jim Whitman had been fed pills. And that might make Debbie Goring the recipient of some insurance proceeds, at last.
And some of that might trickle down on me, but it would feel like dirty rain. Wendell was playing too tight with Lamm. He’d driven Whitman home an hour or so before he died; he’d hired a private detective who’d gotten killed. Wendell’s secrets put a darkness over everything, and that might well envelope his daughter. Damn the man, Wendell Phelps.
Keller called. ‘I’m going to make you a star, Elstrom.’
‘I’m tapped out. You’ve gotten everything I’m going to give you.’
‘Who came knocking after this morning’s column?’
‘Ours was a one-shot deal. We’re done.’
‘You’re sure you won’t need me again?’
‘You’ll always bite at anything sleazy.’
‘The Chicago police?’
‘And the IRS,’ I said, folding like a paper tent.
‘Give me the agent-in-charge.’
‘Krantz.’
‘What’s with Wendell Phelps, your father-in-law?’
‘Ex-father-in-law,’ I corrected, ‘and he’s not involved.’
‘Wendell’s involved; his daughter Amanda is involved.’ He laughed, though it was more like a cackle.
‘You’re a bastard, Keller.’
‘Details to follow,’ he said, and hung up.
Amanda was waiting in the Corner Bakery at what had been our favorite table, farthest from the window counter, before we got married. She’d gotten me a roast beef sandwich on a jalapeño roll, a Diet Coke and a brownie – my dinner of choice, back in the day.
A copy of the morning’s Argus-Observer, opened to Keller’s column as Krantz’s had been at lunch, lay on the table next to her salad.
‘This unnamed “agent for a prominent businessman” is you?’ she asked as I sat down. Her voice was calm.
‘Should I eat the brownie first in case I have to run?’
She didn’t smile.
‘You’ve talked to your father?’ I asked.
‘Mostly he apologized for being absent when I was growing up.’
I touched the newspaper with my forefinger. ‘Your father is furious with me, but I had to sound an alarm before someone else died.’
‘That club.’
‘It needs to be exposed.’
‘My father has placed all voting authority of his common and preferred stock in my name. Worse, he’s begun transferring ownership of the stock itself to me as well. He says it’s in accordance with some tax plan his accountants and attorneys had long been planning to put in place, but I don’t believe him. He’s acting like a man about to die.’
I looked again at Keller’s column lying open, a battlefield I’d strung with landmines that even I couldn’t see. ‘It’s going to come out that your father is a friend of Lamm’s.’
‘I figured Arthur was Keller’s “insurance biggie.” How exactly is my father involved?’
‘I think your father belongs to what’s known as the Confessors’ Club, a group of wealthy, influential men. I think he hired Eugene Small to tail some of the other club members because he was afraid some of them were being targeted, like Barberi, Whitman and Carson had been. When Small got killed, your father got truly scared. He hired bodyguards. You noticed that anxiety, and pressured him to hire me. He agreed because he still wanted answers, and he could control my investigation. When he realized that Lamm, his closest friend, might be behind the killings, he fired me.’