Krantz apparently wasn’t ready. He was late.
The WGN noontime anchor, a trim fellow with a tanned face that likely had never been smeared with a Ho Ho, began to ad-lib to fill time.
‘While we wait, we have some… ahem…’ He lit his tan-toned face with a slightly trembling, professionally whitened smile, as though he were about to be overcome by something momentous. ‘… rather bizarre footage, shot earlier this morning outside the residence of one of the people allegedly involved in the newly unfolding secret club mystery.’ He nodded at some unseen technician, and the screen switched to tape.
A videocam zoomed in on the window that was opening above the newsmen beating on the turret’s door. My face materialized from out of the gloom, pale as Marley’s ghost, followed by my hands, then arms, all struggling to tip a thin but obviously heavy wastebasket down at the ground below.
‘Vlodek Elstrom,’ Tan-tone narrated, ‘allegedly a source cited by John Keller in his newspaper column yesterday, apparently took offense to some news people seeking to interview him this morning…’ Tan-tone paused to let the video carry the spectacle.
On the screen, my arms swiveled to upend the gray plastic wastebasket.
‘Whereupon, as you can see, well…’ Tan-tone chuckled softly, professionally overcome by the ludicrousness of what was unfolding.
The water came. Soapy and glistening, it gushed down in a torrent of a million sparkling colors, drenching the two dark-suited reporters and setting them to jumping up and down and shaking their fists up at the window over their heads.
The usually stern voice of Tan-tone dissolved into perfectly modulated laughter, and was joined by the guffaws of his always jocular sportscaster and the station’s newest weather sweetie, a hip Latina. Normally the little news-at-noon band offered fake laughs at the end of the show, to leave their viewers happy despite the murders and war deaths they’d just reported. There was nothing fake about the howls that day. Real tears of laughter were running down their cheeks. I would have laughed too, if it hadn’t been me on the screen, starring as the perfect jackass.
‘Let’s… replay… that…’ the almost hysterical voice of Tan-tone managed. But the screen cut abruptly to a shot of Agent Krantz standing at a podium, and I was saved.
‘I have a statement, and then I will take questions,’ Krantz began, adjusting his reading glasses. ‘Approximately four months ago, we began investigating allegations of accounting irregularities at the Lamm All-Risk Insurance Company. Based upon the information we obtained during this careful and thorough investigation, we have now issued warrants for the arrest of Mr Arthur Lamm, charging him with failure to maintain mandated premium accounts, use of premium balances for personal expenditures, illegal reimbursement of political donations, providing illegal discounts, and falsifying policy applications. Other charges may follow.’ He took off his reading glasses and attempted to smile. ‘If there are any questions, I will be happy to take them now.’
He’d just announced charges for the sorts of business irregularities that never headlined the news and said nothing about what had drawn the reporters: the killings coming out of the graystone on Delaware.
Everybody shouted at once. ‘Is Arthur Lamm connected to the secret society?’
‘The so-called Confessors’ Club?’ Krantz asked.
‘Confessors’ Club?’ several people yelled. The name was new to them.
For a moment, Krantz appeared flustered. ‘It’s what some people call it, I’ve heard. Mr Lamm’s brokerage carried the insurance on the property.’
‘That’s the only relationship?’
‘We believe he also managed the maintenance of the property.’
‘Come on, Krantz; this isn’t important enough to hold a press conference.’
Krantz shrugged.
‘Lamm ran this Confessors’ Club?’
Krantz shrugged again.
‘Where is Lamm now?’
‘As I said, we have issued warrants for his arrest,’ Krantz said.
‘You’re not interested in the deaths of the businessmen and the private eye?’ the well-creased political reporter for the local ABC affiliate shouted.
The room went quiet as everyone strained to hear.
Krantz’s face acted confused. ‘Chicago homicides are never our purview.’
‘You’re saying you’re only investigating Arthur Lamm for income tax?’
‘We’re the Internal Revenue Service. That’s our job.’
‘And in this matter, you’re only interested in Arthur Lamm?’ someone shouted.
‘Well…’ Krantz said slowly, as coy as a young girl in gingham being asked on a first date. ‘There is another individual.’
‘Give us a name, Krantz.’
‘I’ll only say that he is a business partner of Lamm’s. We’re not ready to name him at this time.’
And there it was, squeeze theater, performed for an audience of one: me. Krantz would go public with Wendell’s name, and innuendo, unless I got more cooperative.
The shouting got louder. The press was ravenous for the new name and was yelling for more angles into the Confessors’ Club.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Krantz yelled, ‘you are asking me questions about murders.’ He flashed a humorless smile, tossed out a quick ‘Thank you very much’ and strode abruptly from the podium.
He’d completed his mission artfully. He’d used a bland statement about the ongoing IRS investigation to limit its responsibility to income-tax issues only. The IRS should not be blamed for any lack of progress in a murder case.
And he’d called out the name: the Confessors’ Club.
He was the only one who’d used it.
He’d used the name, too, during our lunch at the Chinese restaurant. I supposed that needed to mean nothing. Krantz was way out in front of Pawlowski and Wood and all the Chicago cops who hadn’t yet known the name. He’d been investigating Arthur Lamm for months.
Still, I wondered how Krantz had learned the name. He’d used it so easily, so familiarly, at our aborted lunch. He’d known its members met on the second Tuesdays of even-numbered months. He seemed to have known about Eugene Small, and about Delray Delmar, too.
He’d been investigating for months, I told myself again.
Still…
I thought then of how promptly Krantz had dispatched one of his agents to the turret with copies of Lamm’s appointments calendar. And the agent’s almost dutiful request to see a little more of the turret, and how I’d shown him the second floor, the floor where I worked at a card table, the floor where I did most of my talking on the phone.
I pushed myself out of the La-Z-Boy and went to feel under the card table.
It was just a little bump, a tiny piece of plastic no bigger than a nickel stuck to the underside. I left it alone.
The agent had also gone into the kitchen. The second little bump was stuck beneath a cabinet. I spent the next hour searching the second floor. I found no more.
Two bumps; two bugs. Krantz had been listening to what I’d said on the phone, mostly talking to Leo, but also to Amanda and Debbie Goring. I hadn’t said it much, but I’d said it enough: The Confessors’ Club, second Tuesdays, even-numbered months. No doubt I’d said other things, too.
I wanted to run down to the river and drown the little bugs, but that would tip Krantz that he’d been discovered, and might prompt him to pick me up to sweat me harder. Better to leave his bugs alone, so Krantz would leave me alone, in hopes he’d hear more.
I thought about spending the afternoon working in the kitchen, trying to soothe my nerves with working wood. But I didn’t have the calm for that.
I called Gaylord Rikk from outside.
FIFTY-TWO
‘You said you were going to help us recapture our payout,’ he said.
‘I’ve got a new lead, but I have to know where the money went.’
‘I’ve been reading between the lines in the papers, Elstrom, and watching television. You’re thick in the middle of everything, yet you tell me nothing.’