That threw me off slightly. “Police business-we’re conducting an investigation.”
He nodded affably. “Sounds real good-for who?”
I paused, weighing my options, knowing he’d nailed me. Finally, I just shrugged, pulled out the badge again, and dropped it in front of him. “Sorry-trying to cut corners. For the Brattleboro Police Department, in Vermont. I’m on assignment, working with your local police.”
The smile faded to mere politeness. “I work with the local police, too. I just moonlight here.”
“Call Norm Runnion in Area 6 and ask about me.” I said this with as much joviality as I could muster, since I sensed my interrogator was losing his humor fast. If I didn’t become legitimate quickly, I suspected I’d be a host of the city in a whole new way.
He dialed the phone before him and spoke into it briefly, eventually hanging up with a doubtful expression. “Okay-he says you’re straight.” The emphasis was on the he.
I leaned over and retrieved my disreputable credentials.
He gestured at them as I did so. “I wouldn’t pull that stunt again. You want to know where they park, right?”
“Yeah, I just want to keep an eye on someone here.”
“Who?”
He had me there. It was a question I didn’t need to answer, and another phone call would have made that clear, but the unwritten rules said differently-he’d caught me red-handed, and I owed him one. “Dr. Kevin Shilly.”
He raised his eyebrows and grunted, checking a three-ring binder by the phone. “Mr. Beautiful. Take the elevator to the second basement-slot 2-318. It’s a brown Mercedes-two-seater. There’re enough empty slots that you can park pretty near and keep an eye on it.”
“Thanks.”
He stopped me as I turned to go. “What’s Vermont like?”
“Lots of mountains, lots of trees, lots of bullshitters like me.”
He laughed and waved me off.
The parking basement was typical of its kind-gray, low-ceilinged, with drumlike acoustics, spotty fluorescent lighting, and a regularly spaced army of squatty cement pillars holding the roof up. The Mercedes was where the guard said it would be, and I was able to park my rental behind one of the pillars, but in clear view of slot 2-318.
Why I did so was another matter, and it underlined the uneasy vagueness that had plagued this case from the start.
I had nothing on “Mr. Beautiful.” He, and Fred Coyner, and the defunct Abraham Fuller, and even the left-handed skeleton with the all but perfect teeth could have played different roles from the ones we’d ascribed them, simply because we had no solid proof to make ours the unchallenged truth.
So for now they remained in an orderly row-Shilly, for all his denials, being merely the latest one in line. But sooner or later, I knew one of them would break ranks and lead us in the right direction, and then the entire line, as if by the wave on parade, would follow. It was just a matter of time and perseverance-and maybe a little encouragement.
18
I hadn’t been waiting for more than half an hour before I heard footsteps echoing through the garage, approaching from the elevator bank. I slid down in my seat, waiting for whoever it was to pass by.
The sounds stopped opposite my front bumper. I waited for a minute longer, feeling increasingly foolish, and finally lifted myself up just enough to peer over the dash. Norm Runnion was standing there, a grin on his face, wiggling the fingers of one hand at me in greeting.
With all the dignity of an embarrassed eight-year-old, I struggled to straighten up nonchalantly.
Runnion came around to the side door and slid in next to me. “Catch any bad guys yet?” He pulled a half-empty bag of Fig Newtons from his pocket and handed it over.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked, gratefully biting into one of the cookies.
He chuckled. “I think you got Jeffers nervous. When I told him you were waving funny credentials in front of building guards, he had visions of a country cowboy running amok. We waiting for Shilly?”
“Yeah.” I liked his approach-relaxed, friendly, one of the boys, and yet very sharp. That he had traced my whereabouts was no remarkable feat, but that he had apparently taken the time to watch me after I’d left his office to see what kind of car I was driving-just for future reference-struck me as the workings of a careful, calculating mind.
“What’d you have on him?”
I told him, along with how I’d gathered my information. I finished with a question I’d been planning to ask him later. “Do you have any contacts inside the University of Chicago hospital?”
“Sure.”
“Could they get us a look at Shilly’s old files there?”
He was quiet for a time, bouncing a thumbnail against his lower lip. I was worried he’d end by downplaying my interest in Shilly, claiming I was grabbing at straws. But either he saw no harm in examining straws-especially when we had little else-or he was homesick for a good chase, because he finally said, “Maybe. We’d have to watch out for patient confidentiality, though, unless we got someone similar to your Dr. Yancy. My connection’s more on the administrative side.”
I thought of another angle. “How about tracing the metal knee? That’s administrative-pure inventory. I have the make and model number; we connect that to a specific operation, then maybe we can get a warrant if we need it-the knee does connect to a homicide, after all.”
That made him much happier. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I checked my watch, reluctant to abandon my planned tail of Shilly. “Your contact still there? It’s almost quittin’ time.”
“Yup-staggered shifts. Besides, I hate stakeouts-bad for my butt. We can find out where Shilly lives from the tax assessor’s office in the morning.”
I headed out into traffic, following Runnion’s advice on which streets to take. It was nice having him along-he was open and conversational, totally lacking in the inbred mistrust many of my Vermont colleagues might have displayed had the roles been reversed.
I began asking him about his background-where’d he’d been born, where he’d gone to school, whether he was married. He’d attended Chicago City College night school, he’d informed me, and yes, he was married, with two kids. His replies came in elliptical, anecdotal, humorous monologues that blended his biography with those of thousands of others like him who’d spent their entire lives helping to make the city what it had become.
“Chicago’s different. It’s neighborhoods, family ties, and the Catholic Church-at least for people like me. That’s the old-style Chicago. There’re lots of new people, new trends, but the old ways-the politics, the who-knows-who way of doing business, that sense of everybody knowing the other guy’s roots-that’s still real strong.”
He spoke of the ward politics, the old Daley Machine, the huge black and ethnic populations, the hapless Cubs, supported with the exaggerated weariness of fatalistic in-laws. He spoke of the city’s energy, its raw nerve, the source of its renowned, almost belligerent self-confidence, and he talked of the bars, restaurants, and music clubs, examples of which he pointed out now and then as we drove.
It was a rambling, disjointed, free-for-all tour, fueled by questions I fed him to keep it going. It made the long, traffic-clogged trip go more quickly and helped me to understand both my new and sometimes overwhelming environment and my affable, temporary host.
Norm Runnion, it turned out, was three months shy of retirement. At age fifty-five, he had spent thirty years on the force; he had been disappointed in promotions after making detective ten years back-late in life by modern hyperactive standards-and now was resigned to spending the rest of his life on pension, taking on odd jobs to keep himself sane.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m glad you came along,” he explained. “They won’t let me out on the street anymore-not officially. Afraid I’ll screw up ’cause I won’t give a damn anymore, as if I could just turn it all off after thirty years. Typical of the brass, I suppose; they think all this time you been faking it-doing it just for the money and not really caring.” He looked out the window at the endless blur of buildings and people, each half mile exhibiting enough sights, sounds, and energy to fuel the entire state of Vermont.