Death on a High Floor (22 page)

“Perhaps so, although . . .”

His thought was cut off by the ringing phone. He picked it up, listened, and said, “Put him through.” Then he listened some more. “Robert Tarza? He was here earlier, but he left some time ago.” There was another pause. “Let me find out if we know that.”

He pushed the receiver against his pant leg, so that the caller could not overhear, and said, “It’s a Detective Spritz of the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s looking for you. I told him you had already left. Do you want me to tell him where you’re staying?”

“No.”

He picked the phone back up and said, “I’m sorry, but we don’t know where he’s staying. Yes, if I hear from him again, I’ll certainly let you know. Let me take your number.” He wrote it down, then hung up.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome. You seem to need a break, and I’m happy to help, even in a small way. Not to mention that I have no fondness for
les gendarmes
. But perhaps you’d better go. I’m not sure the good detective believed me, and I have the sense someone will be here soon to check it out. We can talk more about fake hoards later. And in any case, two counterfeit coins do not a fake hoard make.”

He got up from his desk and shook my hand. I said a quick goodbye and started to head for the door.

“Wait,” he said. “You’ll want this.” He put the second coin back in the red-tinted flip and handed it back to me.

“Thanks.”

I exited the way I had come in.

When I got down to the street, it was already past eleven. The temperature had dropped ten degrees or more since I had arrived, and the wind was blowing even harder.

I had planned to borrow a coat and some cash from Serappo, but in my haste to depart, I had forgotten. So now I faced the challenge of finding a place to stay with no coat, no suitcase, no working credit cards, and what was left of my one hundred dollars in cash.

I was beginning to shiver.

Finding a coat was job number one, because without a coat I was going to freeze to death. Once upon a time there had been a
Walgreens,
not too many blocks from the Medici, that stayed open till midnight. I took off in that direction and found to my shivering delight that it was still there and still open late.

I needed more cash to buy a decent coat. I crossed the almost empty parking lot to a cash machine that was right outside the main door into
Walgreens
. I put in my ATM card and punched in my password. A little message came up:
Account Is Temporarily Unavailable
. Somehow, I was not surprised.

I went into
Walgreens
anyway. Maybe they had something really cheap. As I went up and down the aisles, searching for the right section, I got a few odd looks. Maybe guys in pinstripe suits aren’t all that common in
Walgreens
. I found the right section and examined some seriously ugly leatherette coats for sixty bucks. Complete with fake fur lining. But even they seemed suddenly and remarkably out of my price range. Then I spotted a close-out on cheap ski jackets—twenty-five dollars each—hanging on four long racks.

The colors weren’t ideal. The best was a kind of puke green. I went through the racks and discovered that no matter the color, the largest size was a medium. I tried on one of the green ones. It was super tight under the arms, and the sleeves were way too short. When I zipped it up, it was so snug below my waist that I looked like a green sausage.

But I had no other options, so I took the jacket up to the checkout counter. With tax, it came to $26.75. The cab ride down to Hyde Park had cost me $15.00, so that left me with $58.25. I had not watched my money so carefully since college.

The checkout clerk was a slim young woman who looked like a college student. She stuffed the jacket into a large shopping bag and tried to engage me in small talk.

“Buying this for one of your kids?”

“Yes. My son,” I said.

“How old is he?”

“Uh, twelve.”

“Well, enjoy.”

I thanked her—after deciding not to remind her that “enjoy” is a transitive verb requiring an object—and went back out into the parking lot. As soon as I got outside, I swapped my suit jacket for the ski jacket, bunched up the suit jacket, and stuffed it into the shopping bag. I may have looked like a trussed-up sausage, but at least I was a warm trussed-up sausage.

With the funds I had left, I needed to find both a place to stay for the night and transportation to Midway in the morning. Going back to the
Drake
was out of the question. It was too expensive, and, in any case, didn’t seem like a good idea.

I considered going to the airport and sleeping on a bench, but I didn’t want to draw the attention of the authorities. I suddenly realized that I was shedding my self-image as a senior partner in a large law firm and adopting the mindset of a common criminal.

The motels in that area of Hyde Park, near the University, were going to be too expensive. So I walked west, into the poorer neighborhoods. I figured that sooner or later I’d find a cheap motel. Either that or I’d be mugged and put out of my misery, and the mugger would get himself a nice new ski jacket. After about ten blocks, I came to a half-decent looking place called
The Sleepaway
.
Its sign read
ROOMS $30.

I went in and rented one. When I unzipped my ski jacket to get my wallet, the desk clerk gave me an odd look. I couldn’t tell if it was because I was wearing a puke-green ski jacket with pin-striped pants and wing tips or because I was a guy wearing a
Turnbull & Asser
shirt who didn’t have a credit card. Since I didn’t have one of those, he asked me to pay in advance. He also reminded me that I would not be able to make long-distance phone calls from the room without a fifty dollar deposit.

The room, with lodgers’ tax, came to $33.00. That left me with $25.25. Just enough for a cab to the airport maybe, but nothing much beyond that.

“Is there a bus I could take to the airport in the morning?” I asked.

“Yeah, right out front. Can’t miss it. Says ‘Midway’ on it. Takes about twenty minutes. Runs every ten minutes starting at 4:30 a.m.” He paused. “Costs two bucks.” Clearly, the clerk had recognized that I was not a big spender.

“Thanks.”

The room was plain, but clean. I was just getting into bed when my cell phone rang. It was Jenna.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Don’t tell me where you are.”

“Okay.”

“I doubt they’d tape me talking to you, but you never know,” she said.

“Where are
you
?” I asked.

“At my law firm.”

“Meaning at my house.”

“Well, yes.”

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m okay. But I have almost no money. Somebody cancelled my credit cards and my ATM card.”

“Spritz got the bank to kill your ATM card. Maybe he got the credit cards cancelled, too.”

“Why?”

“Like I said before, he thinks you’re heading for Canada. He’s trying to make it harder for you.”

“I’m coming home tomorrow. That should show him I’m not.”

“He’ll just think he succeeded in blocking your plans.”

“Whatever. Why are you calling, Jenna?”

“Don’t be testy, Robert. I’m trying to help.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“I have a piece of information for you.”

“What?”

“You remember that little hiding place?”

“Hiding place?”

“Where the item was.”

“Oh, right.”

“The hiding place used to belong to Harry.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes, really.”

“That’s interesting. Maybe . . . well, we should discuss that later.”

“Yes, we should.”

“Jenna, do you really think we’re being taped?”

“If Spritz managed to cancel your ATM card, you never know.”

“You’re right. Will you pick me up at the airport tomorrow?”

“Sure. What time?”

“The flight number’s on the little scratch pad next to the phone in my study.”

“I’ll see you there,” she said. She hung up.

I fell into bed, and, surprisingly, slept the sleep of the dead. Maybe because I had actually learned at least a little something from Serappo. Or maybe because I finally realized my whole life was now firmly in the hands of others, and I had come to accept it.

I got up at six, showered, and dressed. I put on my suit pants, my shoes, and my increasingly smelly white shirt, then reached for the parka. But I couldn’t bear to put it on again. So I pulled my suit jacket out of the plastic bag and put the parka in its place. When I was done I contemplated my image in the mirror. My suit looked a little rumpled, especially the jacket, but nothing that was likely to be noticed on the bus. I hoped I wouldn’t freeze my ass off before it came.

I checked out and, in the process, bought an envelope and a stamp from the front desk. Fifty cents for the envelope and forty-four cents for the stamp, which left me with $24.31. Once out of sight of the desk clerk, I dropped my Drake claim check in the envelope and addressed it to
Law Offices of Jenna James
at my home address. Then I marked it
ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE
in large, underlined letters even though, of course, the claim check itself wasn’t privileged in the least because it wasn’t a lawyer-client communication or even attorney work product, being a pre-existing document. But maybe it would keep the envelope from being opened. It’s not that there was anything suspicious in my suitcase, but I was tired of other people going through my stuff, and I figured I could retrieve it when this was all over.

I got out front to the bus stop a little after six-thirty. There were about a dozen people waiting. There was no wind, and the bus came right away, so I didn’t even get cold.

To my surprise, the bus was crowded, and I had to stand, gripping one of the overhead straps as we bounced along toward the airport. I looked around, but it didn’t seem likely any of the passengers were tailing me. Most were clearly heading to blue collar jobs. A couple looked seedy enough, in tweed and ratty overcoats, to be U of C professors. There were, thank God, no student types with backpacks. No one seemed to notice that my suit was wrinkled.

It took about thirty-five minutes to get to Midway. I got off and walked over to the Southwest gates, still carrying the plastic bag. I wanted in the worst way to dump it. Then I wondered if I would look suspicious going through security with not a shred of carry-on baggage. So I hung on to it.

The bus had actually cost $2.25, not the two bucks the clerk had said, but it still left me with more than $20.00, plenty for a real breakfast. Assuming Jenna really made it to the airport to pick me up, and I didn’t have to bus it back to town in L.A.

I bought a
New York Times
and then sat down for breakfast at a little cafe just shy of the metal detectors. I ordered coffee, orange juice and scrambled eggs. It tasted damn good. As I finished, I realized I hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. I ordered again—two bagels and cream cheese—and ate those, too.

After paying for the paper and the breakfast, I was down to just under $4.00. The last time I had had that little money in my pocket was when I came back broke from Europe after the mandatory college graduation trip.

I went through security without incident, then looked for a trash can to dump the parka. As I was about to toss it, a paranoid thought intruded. It might look suspicious to dump something that big in a trash can after I’d already passed through security. The parka was going home with me. Maybe I could leave it on the plane. I looked behind me. So far as I could see, no one was following me.

No one bothered me at the gate. I just sat and read my
New York Times
. I boarded without incident, and the plane took off on time. The flight back to L.A. was routine, including the usual packages of peanuts, pretzels, and tiny Ritz cheese crackers. Somewhere over Colorado, I managed to cadge three extra of each—for a total of nine—plus two full cans of orange juice.

The college kid who was sitting next to me gave me an odd look when I asked for the extras, and I took the opportunity to strike up a conversation. Despite my penury, I was suddenly having an almost euphoric mission-accomplished kind of feeling and in a friendly mood.

“These snack packs are really surprisingly good,” I said.

The kid looked at me like I was seriously out of my mind.

“If you say so,” he said.

“So you a student?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What school?”

“University of Chicago.”

“I went to the U of C myself for a couple of years,” I said.

“Then what happened?” he asked.

“Dropped out. Too intense and intellectual for me at the time. Finished somewhere else.”

“Cool.”

I tried again. “Going home for Christmas?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Christmas is a nice time.”

“Um, yeah, sure.”

I don’t know exactly what came over me, since I almost never introduce myself to people on airplanes unless I have to because the other person’s gone first, but I stuck my hand out toward him. “Hi, I’m Robert Tarza.”

The kid looked at my hand, as if considering whether he could just ignore it, like one might step around a dead rat on the sidewalk. He apparently decided he had no choice and reached out to shake, mumbling his name in the process. “Clay Fierley.”