Sweeping down the street from the north through the mist was Lester Smitherton walking his two German shepherds. The dogs heeled one to each side while Lester held the leashes in limp wrists. He wore a shocking-pink jacket almost brighter than the sun rising about us. He wore fluffy blue warm-up pants appliquéd with pink lightning bolts. He wore bright white tennis shoes with tiny pink dots on them. He loved to wear this or even more outrageous outfits when he walked the dogs. He often expressed the desire for gay-bashers to try and mug him while he was in the company of Oscar and Wilde. He'd had them specially trained to defend him.
I'd met Lester ten years ago in a used-record shop up in Rogers Park. We'd been hunting through the folk-music bin. I'd been there first and picked up a long-out-of-print Bob Gibson album.
His first words to me were “I'll give you fifty dollars for that album.”
We'd wound up having a long discussion about collecting folk music. I was really just an amateur, trying to find artists I liked. Lester was an eclectic connoisseur, concentrating not only on folk music but on a wide variety of esoterica. One of his most prized finds was a ten-inch album by Blossom Dearie from the 1950s made by WVBR in Ithaca, New York. He also collected popular music of the
forties and fifties, especially Jo Stafford, whom I also liked. His absolute favorites, which he insisted on showing everyone who entered his home, were something I thought made him wonderfully unique. He had a collection of original albums with teen tragedy songs on them from the late fifties and early sixties. He loved nothing better than a group wailing a pathetically schmaltzy simple melody of hopeless love.
He never played any of the records but once, that to record them on tapeâand then he made a tape of the tape to store in a safe-deposit box.
We'd gone out for coffee that first day. Afterward, we'd kept up contact. Lester had invited us to a few parties and, over the years, the three of us had become good friends. Occasionally he gave investment tips to Scott, who passed them on to his accountant. Several had paid big dividends.
He lived in one of the few mansions still standing on Lake Shore Drive north of Oak Street just a block and a half from our place. His investments had been shrewd and immensely profitable. He was an investment banker in one of the big La Salle Street firms and had been for twenty years. He'd also inherited a substantial pile when a favorite uncle died.
As he approached us, the dogs began to wag their tails. Lester smiled and waved. When Lester stopped three feet from us, the dogs immediately sat down.
“What's wrong?” Lester asked us.
“I don't believe it,” I said.
“You both look exhausted. I'm about to make breakfast. You must come to my place and let me fix you something.” Lester was also a master chef.
Although I hadn't slept, I found that my nerves were still strung far too taut for me to fall asleep. I agreed.
“That sounds good,” Scott said.
We walked the short distance to Lester's. First he served us exquisite coffee in the living room. One dog sat on either side of Lester's chair. The living room was what one
of his ex-lovers had called the trash room. Lester had the money to indulge his whimsical tastes. All those little knickknacks you almost impulsively bought, but came to your senses in timeâLester had them in this room. In addition he attended conventions where thrift shops could purchase mounds of useless merchandise. This room was a trash nightmare. Among other things scattered along the shelves were a Dutch civil-defense urinal, a music box that played a funeral march, round plugs of Astroturf left over from the manufacture of putting greens, and a collection of parachute rings. This was not to mention the more mainstream debris of a 3-D View Master from the 1950s, a hubcap from a 1947 Studebaker, a Don King troll doll, and a glass case filled with his belt-buckle collection.
Lester was in his fifties with short grizzled hair, a deep cleft in his chin, and a slender although unmuscular body. He settled himself in his favorite canary-yellow overstuffed chair, drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and said, “Tell me all.”
I explained everything to him. When I finished, I summed up. “Somebody killed Glen Proctor. We got chased, but not shot at as aggressively as we could have been. Someone broke in and took the body away from the penthouse. These people got by security twice.”
Lester said, “While I make breakfast, we must think of a plan.”
I discovered I was ravenous. The night before, at the fund-raiser, we had dined on that peculiar form of dead chicken grown, I was sure, for just such banquets. The tasteless, dried-out bird that gives its life so you'll open your wallet and give your money.
I generally didn't like being in Lester's kitchen. I hate to cook, and you could barely look anywhere in this kitchen without observing clues that a gourmet lurked nearby. On the top of a set of cabinets and hanging on a wall was a vast collection of all the modern cooking gadgets sold at all the
trendier stores. The only ones I remotely recognized were the graduated wire whisks, whose function I could never understand. One simple fork did most of the mixing I needed.
Dangling from the ceiling were enough copper pots to obscure half the ceiling. What was worse, Lester knew how to use every device in the kitchen and loved to entertain with lavish dinners for small, intimate groups of friends.
Lester began yanking vegetables out of the refrigerator and placing them on the butcher-block table in the center of the room. “I know a Jason Proctor,” Lester said. “Filthy rich.”
“Same family,” Scott said. “Remember the time I got you passes to the field before the game?”
Lester nodded.
“Glen Proctor was the one horsing around with the baseball bat.”
“The one rubbing it up the butt crack of the dark-haired outfielder?” Lester's eyes shone.
“Him,” Scott said.
“Is he ⦠?”
“No,” Scott said.
“A practical-joke-playing, straight prick tease,” I said.
“He was very blond and sexy, like Scott,” Lester said.
“Was not,” I said.
Lester ignored us and asked, “Why are you in peril? You were not in jeopardy before Proctor came. You are now. Therefore, and quite obviously, you are in danger because of Proctor. What have you done?”
“We let him stay at our place,” Scott said.
“Not something to kill somebody for,” Lester said.
“It's not as if we were protecting or hiding him,” I said. “We didn't think it was some kind of secret.”
“Nor, evidently, was it a secret to whoever is bothering you,” Lester said. “They killed him. Leaving aside their reasons for doing him in, what makes it necessary to do you two?”
“We know something,” I said. “Or Proctor brought something into the penthouse that they want?”
“Why not just take what they want and leave you alone?” Lester asked.
“We'd be happy to give it to them, if we knew what it was,” Scott said.
“Did either of you see the contents of his luggage?” Lester asked.
I said, “I didn't see anything except him strutting around in his blue jeans, starched white shirt, and gym socks the first night, or yesterday prancing around in his underwear and then in a pair of the skimpiest gym shorts I've ever seen.”
While we talked, Lester's hands flew as he diced vegetables, whisked eggs, shook out spices, and sliced fresh bread.
Scott said, “I helped him carry his stuff in. I didn't see anything unusual. When I got up early to go to the bathroom yesterday morning, I ran into him. We sat in the breakfast nook for about an hour and talked before Tom got up.”
“Why didn't you tell me this?” I demanded.
“I don't report all my conversations to you,” Scott said.
“Did he tell you anything that might explain what's been going on?” The cold asperity in my voice matched the angry annoyance in his.
Scott glared at me, then said, “He told me nothing I can think of connected to all this. Do you think I wouldn't have told you if he'd said something that could help us?”
My good sense told me he would have, but the angry and frightened part of me wanted to throttle him for not telling me about their conversation.
“Gentlemen,” Lester said. “We need to stick to the questions at hand. One major concern is, did you see anything Proctor had that might have some value?”
Scott shook his head.
“He gave us presents,” I said. I explained about the necklaces Proctor had given us.
Scott unhooked the chain and handed it to Lester, who ran a critical eye over it.
“I have no idea whether these are real,” he said. “From what you say about him and his so-called deals that have turned out to be duds, I have my doubts. Although this is the most beautiful green.” He shook his head and handed it back to Scott. “Either he got taken, or he wanted to impress you with a little glitter and glass. These could be the crown jewels of King Otho the Insignificant or a national treasure of Mexico smuggled out of the country.”
“We've got to use logic and common sense,” I said. “Maybe it's really simple. You constantly see headlines about drugs flooding in from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean. This could easily be some kind of drug deal gone bad. Proctor has the reputation. Maybe he found the opportunity.”
“We never saw any drugs,” Scott said. “He certainly never mentioned it, but his suitcases were gone; so if he had any on him, whoever was after him took it with them.”
“He wouldn't necessarily mention it to you, if he was trying to use you in some way,” Lester suggested.
“Use us how?” I asked.
Lester shrugged. “I don't know. What I think is essential to figure out is, if they got what they wanted, why keep after you?”
“Proctor said he came straight to our place from the airport,” Scott said. “We have no proof of that. Maybe he took the stuff and hid it someplace in the city. Could be whoever is after us thinks we know where it is.”
“If they are still looking for something, then it would make sense to keep us alive,” I said.
“If they found it without the information they think you have, why waste the time to come back and kill you?” Lester asked.
“I don't know,” I answered.
“Did they ransack your place?” Lester asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then maybe they weren't looking for something.”
“Then why take the luggage?” I asked.
“Was it gone the first time you came back?” Lester asked.
“I don't know. We didn't have time to look in the bedroom.”
“So they could have killed him for the luggage or come back for him and the luggage.”
“That's what I don't get,” Scott said. “Why come back for him? They must have known we'd report it to the police.”
“Not if they made you dead first,” Lester said.
“But they didn't stay and wait for us to come home to kill us,” Scott said.
Lester rubbed his hands together with all-too-much eagerness. “What a wonderful series of puzzles!” he said.
I ignored my annoyance at his delight. “We've got to sort this out, or we could get killed,” I said. “They weren't looking for something, but they took the luggage. Proctor is dead, but they come back, and then take the body to make it look like nothing happened. That defies logic.”
“Not to the people who did it,” Lester said.
“They didn't want a particular thing the second time,” Scott said. “They wanted us. We didn't get shot at until we were in the tunnels. Maybe because they'd ordered us to be taken alive, but then why start shooting?”
“It's crazy,” Lester commented.
“We knew or know something,” I said.
“Or they think you do,” Lester added.
“A secret that Proctor was supposed to tell us?” Scott said.
“But what did he tell us? Except for the conversation you had with him this morning, we were both around when he talked. I didn't hear him say anything that somebody might kill him for.”
“He didn't say anything to me,” Scott said. “He mostly
talked about baseball, or how proud he was to be free of drugs and alcohol, and how he was sure he'd make a contribution to his team next year.”
“You're sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” Scott said.
Silence permeated the room for several minutes while Lester set a magnificent repast before us.
After slaking my appetite, I said, “I'd like to talk to the Proctor family. They have a right to know what's happened to their son. Also, they've got to have some idea of what's going on.”