“Not until after he was gone a month or two. Someone saw a newspaper clipping saying he’d died out of state somewhere. Why would a nice guy like Leo be interested in that greaseball after all these years?”
“Leo never forgets the past. He remembers people and gets curious about what’s happened to them.”
“So he hired you to indulge that curiosity?” He’d cocked an eyebrow, too smart to buy the lie. “I wouldn’t have thought he had any real fondness for Snarky,” he went on. “Nobody did. Whatever is on Leo’s mind, you tell him to be careful about Snarky. The kid’s no good, even dead.”
I asked him some of the same questions again, and he gave me the same answers again. He didn’t know much.
Then he said, “Heard you stopped in to see the big boss, J. J.”
“Word gets around?”
“Some folks in city hall got nothing to do but talk.”
“I need to get my zoning changed.”
He laughed. “Good luck on that. City thinks of your place as its own.”
“We’re not done, J. J. and I.”
“Best you mind yourself there. She’s smart, not like Elvis, that brother of hers. Word is, J. J.’s going to be mayor, and soon. Don’t trifle with her.”
I had one more thought. “Leo’s leaving had nothing to do with Snark Evans, right?”
His eyes were steady on mine, knowing there was plenty I was wasn’t saying. “Not to my knowledge, but maybe you should ask your good buddy Leo that.”
“I will.”
He shook his head. “It was a bad summer, all around.”
Walking back to the Jeep, I had the thought that perhaps that bad summer had come around again.
Six
The Newberry Library had sat a few blocks north of the Chicago River for over a century, half of what it was meant to be. According to legend, it was planned to be Chicago’s main library, but its benefactor, Mr. Newberry, expired en route to Europe before it could be built. No sooner had he been returned to Chicago and rolled up the hill to the cemetery, still in the same barrel of rum in which he’d been preserved aboard ship, than his wife and daughters began squabbling over his financial remains. By all accounts a parsimonious lot, they ultimately agreed to fund only half the proposed construction. Chicago’s city fathers, already exhibiting the sensibilities that would make them famous for centuries, grabbed what they could-and then built half a library. The front facade was erected as specified, but the sides were stopped exactly halfway back, and the rear was sided with cheap common brick. Instantly unsuitable as a central library, the quirky building became a repository for obscure old manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. And Leo’s girlfriend, Endora.
Though never quite a superstar, she’d been a popular model from the time she was eighteen and had appeared frequently between the covers of most of the major national magazines. Her brains matched her beauty. During her modeling years, she was a top student at Northwestern, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history.
When the fashion assignments slowed to a trickle, Endora quit modeling, used a fraction of her cash to buy an upscale condo, and took a low-paying job as a researcher at the Newberry. It was there that she met Leo. She towered over him physically, but their massive intellects and slanted views of the world were perfectly paired. If she’d thought to hang model airplanes from her bedroom ceiling, she’d have painted them with psychedelic brightness, too.
I was Leo’s best friend, but Endora was his life. If anyone knew where Leo had gone, it was she.
But she wasn’t answering her phones.
As I climbed the wide stairs into the Newberry, I thought of when, just a few years before, I’d gone to that library to hide from the press. My reputation was trashed, my marriage was collapsing. All I could think to do was to hide out in the deep quiet of one of the upstairs reading rooms and look at old maps of places that no longer were. It helped to calm my pounding head.
She’d watched over me those days, checking on me frequently, bringing me up to the employees’ rooms for lunch and coffee. She’d showed me her cramped little cubicle and introduced me to her boss. He weighed over three hundred pounds and shook all of it when he laughed, which as I remembered was quite often.
He remembered me but was guarded. “Tell me why you’re looking for her?”
I was guarded, too. “I called here yesterday. They said she wasn’t in. I tried again today. They said she wasn’t in. I thought I’d swing by, hoping she’d returned.”
“You also tried her cell and home numbers?”
“Of course.”
“And without her having returned your numerous calls, you still thought stopping by would be productive?”
I tried giving that a shrug.
“Cut the crap, Dek.”
“I’m trying to find Leo. A neighbor told me he’s on vacation, with his mother. His mother doesn’t vacation. Leo does, with Endora. Nobody’s around; not Leo, not his mother, not Endora.”
He studied my face for a long moment and said, “She phoned a few days ago, saying she needed personal time. She didn’t mention anything about a vacation.”
“You found that odd,” I said.
“Endora has never asked for personal time.”
“Have you noticed anything else strange going on with her?”
“That call, so sudden, was enough. She’s got a major exhibit starting in two weeks, and this is absolutely the worst time she could take off. Endora is never vague about anything. She’s precise, factual, and succinct. But the day she called, she was vague as hell about everything, including when she’d be back. Obviously there was something going on in her life, but since she’s never asked for anything before, I let it alone.”
“She mentioned once she had family in northern Michigan. A mother, I think.”
“The Newberry never releases personal information about its employees.”
“No need. You can find some pretext to call her mother to make sure Endora is safe.”
He kept his face blank, noncommittal.
“You’re a research man, right?” I asked.
“This is the Newberry, dear sir.”
“This morning, I tried researching a name on the Internet: Snark Evans. I found nothing on the criminal background and general sites. That was no surprise; Evans is a common name, and for sure Snark is an earned name, not a given one.”
“Who is he?”
“A small-time punk, a burglar, who died years ago.”
“How does this concern Endora?”
“Someone calling himself Snark Evans upset Leo with a phone call, right before he and his mother and Endora disappeared.”
He said he could promise nothing.
Like the builders of the Newberry, I said I would take what I could get.
It had started to snow. I stepped out of the Newberry into great sticky clumps of it, coming down as though some maniac upstairs were sitting in the dark, shredding wet white felt. March was like that in Chicago. It teased with sun and a warming day, promising spring, and then slammed down a sticky blanket so wet and thick people could only think winter would never end. On such days, everyone plodded. Traffic crawled; pedestrians dragged themselves across intersections like they were shouldering lead. It took me an hour to get south to the expressway, another to get to Leo’s block. By that time, it was dark.
Two men were getting into pickups at the big hole between the houses. The pile of cement forms at the front of the excavation didn’t look any smaller. They’d made no better progress than I had, that day.
Leo’s house was another big hole between bungalows lit against the night. I pulled to the curb and shut off the engine, thinking of the lights that weren’t there. There’d been no time to set lamps on timers. Absolutely, they’d run.
A pair of headlamps came down the street behind me. One of the pickups passed by. The second followed a moment later.