Amanda’s condo tower is for the very rich. She’d called down to the guards in the lobby, and one of them whisked me right into an elevator. Amanda was waiting for me in the hallway outside her door.
‘I just don’t know what’s going on,’ she said, ‘but I figured I better get away from the office in case Krantz showed up.
‘Your father is stonewalling everybody.’
‘But why?’
‘Arthur Lamm is his best friend?’
She nodded.
‘I just came from Second Securities, a mail drop Lamm set up to receive insurance payouts like the Carson check. There was a girl there, a receptionist, who doesn’t do anything except wait for the mail and put it in a desk drawer. I don’t like the set-up; it’s crooked. I’ll go back after dark for a more thorough look around.’
‘You think this has to do with my father?’
‘I think I’d like to know how close he is to Arthur Lamm.’
‘Let’s go to Second Securities now,’ she said.
‘The girl will still be there. I’ll go alone, tonight.’
I didn’t want Amanda along. My mind, or rather my nose, had slipped back to that noxious smell coming from behind the locked door at Second Securities. It could have been rats. It could have been something else.
She stood up, grabbed her purse and her cell phone. ‘I have a plan for her.’
There was no mistaking the resolution on her face.
‘Good deal,’ I said.
Thirty minutes later I sat in the Jeep, waiting. I’d parked at the edge of a drugstore lot, mostly hidden but angled for a good view of Second Securities across the street. Amanda had gotten out a block away, so she could walk up to the drugstore alone.
Amanda came out of the drugstore. With her back turned to the building across the street, she stopped at the trash receptacle on the sidewalk to thumb off the price stickers before dropping the lipsticks into the small case she’d brought. When she was done, she turned and, without a glance at me, crossed Milwaukee Avenue. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, but we didn’t have time for sophistication: she was selling cosmetics, door-to-door, and anxious to hire an assistant, even a gum-chewing, glittered-up assistant, right on the spot.
She pulled the door handle at Second Securities, and stopped. It was locked. She pressed close against the glass to peer in and began knocking. After a moment she started to turn away, but as she did her purse fell out of her hand, spilling its contents against the door. Making a gesture of disgust, she knelt down, her back to the sidewalk, the street, and me. She took an incredibly long time to pick up her things. Finally she stood up, and walked down Milwaukee. I started the Jeep and followed her around to a side street.
‘Nobody home,’ she said, getting in. She was perspiring lightly.
‘Let’s drive around, check for a back door.’ I started to pull away from the curb.
She held her hand out. ‘We’ll use the front door, like we were invited.’
I hit the brakes. In her hand was a key.
‘I got lucky,’ she said. ‘I saw the key through the glass, lying on the floor. There’s a mail slot at the bottom of the door. It took me forever to fish it out.’
‘I scared the girl away,’ I said.
‘Enough for her to drop the key back inside the mail slot before she took off.’
‘You wait in the Jeep while I go inside.’
‘We’ll go together,’ she said.
‘Let’s check around back first.’ I drove around to the alley. There was a dented, gray steel garage door at the rear of Second Securities. I jumped out quickly and gave the handle a tug. The door was locked from the inside.
‘Likely enough, the garage is full of rats,’ I said as I got back in the Jeep.
‘I don’t care. We’re going in together,’ she said.
Remembering what had appeared to be a solid interior door leading to the garage in back, I drove to a Home Depot we’d passed a mile down Milwaukee Avenue and bought a short jimmy bar, a sixteen-ounce claw hammer and, after a second’s consideration, a pair of thin work gloves for her, a pair of thicker yellow rubber gloves for me. I wasn’t only thinking fingerprints; I was recalling smell.
I parked on the side street. Amanda put the Home Depot things in her purse and we marched up to Second Securities like we had an appointment. A turn of the glitter girl’s key and we were in.
The place still smelled of her spearmint chewing gum and cheap perfume, but the other smell – the dead smell – had grown stronger in the hours that the place had been shut up.
Amanda sniffed the air. ‘What is that?’ she whispered.
‘Rats, as I told you,’ I said. After a moment’s hesitation, I switched on the overhead fluorescents and pointed to the desk. ‘Sit at the desk like you belong and search every inch inside for an envelope with a check in it, even behind the drawers. Try to keep your hands out of sight because I want you to keep your gloves on. If anybody comes in, say your friend asked you to fill in for the day.’
I didn’t expect Amanda would find anything; Lamm would have grabbed the Carson check by now. But I wanted her away from whatever wasn’t right in back.
I took the hammer, gloves and pry bar from her purse.
‘Maybe I should first go with you, to the back, to help you…’ She stopped as I shook my head. She didn’t want to follow that smell, not really. She put on the thin gloves I’d bought for her.
I pulled on my own gloves and went to the door.
I slipped the jimmy bar between the door and the jamb, just above the lock, and struck it with the hammer. The solid-core door splintered around the lock at the fourth blow, releasing the scent of hell.
Behind me, Amanda caught her breath. ‘Oh, Dek, that’s not rats.’
I pushed open the ruined door. Enough light filtered in from the office to show a car shape at the center of the garage. I found the light switch and closed the door behind me. The overhead fluorescent fixture buzzed, sputtered and caught.
The car was several years old, a small, white two-door Ford made faintly green by the fluorescent light. It was filthy, except for the crumpled front fender that was strangely dulled.
I walked up to it. Fine scratches crisscrossed the damaged fender. Someone had flattened the car’s finish with steel wool. Likely, I thought, to remove Grant Carson’s blood.
The car’s doors were locked, and it had no license plates, no temporary dealer tag or windshield parking stickers. It could have been bought for cash in a bad neighborhood, or simply stolen.
The garage was stuffy and hot from being closed up. Trying to breathe in only through my mouth, I pressed against the glass to look inside. The interior appeared empty. Whatever was fouling the air wasn’t coming from the passenger compartment.
I turned away from the car and swung the hammer backwards, exploding the driver’s side window into a million tiny green-edged bits. I opened the door and was brushing some of the glass off the seat when Amanda stepped into the garage. She’d heard the shattering glass.
‘Dek?’
‘Go back. If anybody comes, keep them in front.’
She didn’t argue.
The dead smell was worse inside the car. A key was in the ignition. I took it out and went around to the back. The key didn’t work the trunk. I leaned back into the car, replaced the key in the ignition, and searched beneath the seats, under the floor mats and in the glove box. There was no second key, nor any interior trunk release.
I slid out. The trunk seam was narrow. Jimmying the bar into it only slightly bent the lid. I’d have to go in through the back seat to see what was dead in the trunk.
I climbed in behind the driver’s seat and began hacking at the back of the rear seat with the claw end of the hammer. The vinyl upholstery came away in chunks, still attached to its foam padding. The rank smell of death came at me stronger with each new blow, sticking thick in my throat and nose. I whacked faster at the seat back; I wouldn’t be able to stay in the car much longer.