Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (5 page)

I started up the stairs to bed. Then someone began pounding on my door. It happens in the late evening, occasionally. Fun lovers, boozed and woozed along Thompson Avenue, sometimes lose sight of their neon guideposts and stagger across the spit of land to the turret, thinking it might be a place for more amusement, or at least a secluded spot to urinate.

This time, though, it was no drunk. It was Jennifer Gale, dressed in a tight-enough pink sweater and considerably well-tailored blue jeans. She carried a laptop computer.

“This is a sort of ambush journalism,” she said. “I have what you want, and I have questions. I am hoping I caught you late enough that you are not at your sharpest.”

“I don't sleep well,” I said, holding the door open for her to come in. “I am never at my sharpest.”

She paused as soon as she got inside. First-time visitors do that. The turret's curved, rough limestone walls cast dramatic shadows, no matter what the time of day or type of light. Respecting that, I'd furnished the first floor simply, so as not to detract from the architecture, with two white plastic lawn chairs and a table saw.

“Neat,” she said, staring up at the dark beamed ceiling.

“The chairs I found in an alley,” I said, drawing her attention to my own contributions. “The table saw came from Sears, originally. I bought it used.”

She walked over to the enormous stone fireplace. There is one on each of the five floors.

“This has never had a fire,” she said. She leaned in to look up at the flue.

I looked away, so as to not stare at her leaning in, in those considerably well-tailored blue jeans.

“Until me, this place never had a human occupant,” I said, my thoughts almost under control.

She pulled a small digital recorder out of her pocket. “For notes, not for broadcast?”

“You've brought me pictures?”

“As you requested.”

She set her laptop on my table saw, and we sat on the plastic chairs.

“Let's begin with your background, and the history of this place,” she said.

“My grandfather, trained as a brewmaster in the old country, was transformed by Prohibition into becoming a minor bootlegger. He had no Outfit aspirations; he merely sought to brew premium beer for the Slavs and the Czechs who worked at the Western Electric plant in Cicero. The big gangs that controlled whiskey and beer in Chicago didn't mind him much, because his operation was so small. However, they did begin to mind each other, and for a time, they quit brewing and distilling and distributing to concentrate on killing each other. Which left my grandfather's business to blossom. Money rolled in. With his newfound wealth, he did what anyone with a lunatic sense of grandeur would do: He started building a castle along the Willahock River. Sadly, the big guys soon came to an accommodation and resumed deliveries. My grandfather's business tanked. He died, after having finished only this one turret.”

“How did this place get zoned municipal?”

“How many pictures did you bring?”

She pointed at the laptop on the table saw. “Every one the
Tribune
received, though they published none. I would imagine they're the same ones the
Argus-Observer
got.”

I went on. “After my grandfather died, the title for the land, the pile of limestone, and this turret went to my grandmother. She tried to sell it, but no one wanted part of a castle. After she died, title passed to her daughters, who did not think it necessary to pay the property taxes. Years went by, no taxes were paid. Then, right after World War II, it occurred to the lizards—”

She held up her hand to interrupt. “You keep calling your city administrators lizards.”

“They operate low to the ground, and out of sight.”

“Ah.” She motioned for me to continue.

“After the war, it occurred to the lizards that they'd need a thick, dark, soundproof place to collect graft from what they were hoping would be a postwar business boom. They appropriated most of my grandfather's land and his mountain of limestone for nonpayment of taxes and built the magnificent temple of enormous offices and tiny public rooms you see across the lawn.”

“They didn't want the turret?”

“No. It sat for another sixty years, accumulating rodent excrement and more unpaid tax bills, until the last of my grandmother's daughters was near death. My last surviving aunt didn't want to burden her own children with old tax bills, so she cut a deal with city hall. They wouldn't come after her estate for the unpaid taxes if she would approve changing its zoning to municipal. The lizards didn't want to own the turret; they merely wanted control of its exterior to use as a city icon.”

“So, zoned as a municipal building, which made it worse than valueless, she left it to you?”

“She never liked me. It was her last flush, on her way out of the world.”

“You moved right in?”

“I ignored it for a few years. Until I needed a place to live.”

“After your life with Amanda Phelps fell apart.”

That was new territory, beyond our agreement. I stood up and moved toward the laptop on the table saw.

“Fair enough, for starters,” she said, coming over to join me.

She switched on the computer. The first dozen photographs appeared on the screen. “As you asked, every one, on the roof and going down.” She grimaced. “Plus some of him on the sidewalk, after he hit.”

“I need copies of my own.”

“This is merely an insurance liability issue?”

“As I said, I got hired by an intermediary.”

“You'll tell me eventually?”

“No.”

She sighed and bent over the laptop. “Your e-mail address?”

I gave it to her. She typed it in and forwarded the pictures.

She smiled then, closing the laptop. It was a lovely smile—and probably made of the hardest steel.

“I'm going to be mad as hell if John Keller scoops me on this clown story,” she said at the door.

Of course she would have known about Keller's taunt to the cops. She would have researched the Internet, after I'd asked for the pictures.

“What's the matter with geese?” I asked.

She looked up at my face in the light of the outside lantern, taking a last measure of her odds of extracting more information from me. Then, gently, she shook her head in mock resignation.

“Entirely too slippery,” she said.

CHAPTER 7.

“I almost phoned when I got your pictures,” Leo said when he called the next morning. It was late enough that his voice shouldn't have been muffled and scratchy.

“You were up at three in the morning?” I'd stayed up long after Jennifer Gale had left, studying every picture that showed the rope trailing behind the clown. Then I realized I could study them for decades and still not be able to learn what I needed to know. So I did what I do sometimes when a problem gets too thorny. I dumped it on Leo. I e-mailed him the pictures.

“Ma's friends didn't leave until after two,” he said now.

“Double-feature dirty movie night?”

“No. They were exercising.”

“No doubt healthier than dirty movies, but until two in the morning?”

He yawned. “The ladies didn't arrive until nine. Then they had to have vodka. Then it took them an hour to make it down to the basement. Then they had to have more vodka—”

“Vodka? To do stretches, partial knee bends, the occasional pirouette?” I made a noise that sounded like a giggle, but then, I was short on sleep, too.

He yawned again. “Come over, and bring your tools.”

“For what this time?”

“Two of the poles fell down.”

“How energetic did they get?”

“It was the vodka, and Mrs. Roshiska's CD of Polish folk tunes. Very spirited.”

“What about the questions I sent with the pictures?”

“Come over with your tools. We'll tighten the poles so none of Ma's friends will die, and I'll show you what I learned.”

As he hung up, I thought I heard another yawn.

I put my toolbox in the Jeep and drove to Leo's.

*   *   *

Leo's basement had undergone more change. Curtain rods had been hung on the walls, and the floor, good enough as bare concrete for almost a century, had now been covered with red tiles flecked with specks of gold.

“All this for exercise?” I asked.

“Ma got the handyman in yesterday. She said she wants to soften up the place.”

“Nice television,” I said, pointing to the other big change in the basement. A new big-screen television, slightly smaller than the monster in the living room, sat on a long table at the end of the room.

“Ma decided they need instruction videos to exercise right.”

I stepped over the two poles that lay on the floor like trees felled by a tornado and looked up at the ceiling. “The bracket screws came right out of the wood joists?”

“A couple of Ma's friends tip in well over two hundred and fifty.”

“I thought they were going to just lean against the poles, to steady themselves.”

“Apparently, vodka and Polish folk tunes really rev the metabolism.”

I wished I could laugh, but it wasn't going to be that kind of morning. Not with what I feared he was going to tell me about the rope.

I reattached all the brackets, top and bottom, with stronger screws. It was only after I took a turn on each pole that he pronounced my work satisfactory.

“Ma's having the handyman back today to give me a door,” he said, as we walked through the rough-framed entrance to his office.

“Considerate of her,” I said.

He yawned.

I dropped into the huge green overstuffed chair he kept in his office for visiting elephants. He pulled down a projection screen and keyed something into his computer. A picture of the clown falling appeared on the screen.

“You asked about the length of the rope.” He pointed a yellow pencil at the screen. “There were actually a dozen shots, taken from far enough away to be good for our purpose. I began by establishing the dimensions of everything in the background, the bricks, the windows, the mortar joints. From those known factors, I calculated how far your unfortunate Mr. Stitts was from the building as he was falling, so I could adjust for the depth of the field in the photograph.”

“You mean, how far the rope was from the background of bricks?”

“Yes. Every dimension in the picture has to be known. Once I had those, it was easy to calculate the approximate length of the rope.”

“And?” I asked.

“Forty-three feet, maximum.”

“You're sure?”

“Give or take a foot, to allow for miscalculations of the slight curves of the rope as it trailed, but yes.”

“How about my other question?” I asked after a pause.

“The condition of the trailing end of the rope? I couldn't see any frays, but I can't tell if it had been dipped in something at a factory to prevent it from unraveling. You'll have to inspect the rope itself for that.”

He hadn't confirmed it all, but he'd confirmed enough.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, after I'd said nothing.

“A fifty-foot rope, wound and knotted around a thirty-inch door.”

“Subtract a little more than five feet for the loop, another two for a double knot? Leaves forty-three feet, exactly what I calculated.”

My mind jittered over the scenario. One second the rope was taut, securing the clown as he danced high at the edge of the roof. The next, it was falling behind him, cut away by someone hiding in the small rooftop hutch. Best of all, the unseen killer would have taken the evidence—the seven feet of rope that had been cut off—away with him.

Leo's voice intruded from somewhere distant.

“It means a cut rope?” he was asking.

“It means murder,” I said.

CHAPTER 8.

I threatened Duggan from the Jeep. “I'll come to your office, give you my report.”

“Tell me on the phone.”

“I need to report in person, to you…” I paused, then added, “And your client.”

“Impossible,” he snapped.

“Necessary,” I said.

“Tell me, damn it.”

“You mean like John Keller told you?”

It had been no coincidence that Duggan had hired me just a few hours after Keller's taunt to the cops came out in the
Argus-Observer
. Keller had turned up the burner under the clown's death, and Duggan's client had felt the heat. Enough to send Duggan to hire me, that same day.

The question I wanted answered was why.

“You, and your client,” I repeated.

“This is unprofessional, Elstrom.”

“Damn right,” I agreed, affably enough.

He swore. “Hold for a minute.”

It wasn't for a minute; it was for five. When he came back, it was only to say, “I'll call you,” before he hung up.

Maybe he hadn't gotten through to his client. That was fine; he'd already not said enough. He hadn't asked the one question he should have, right off the bat. He hadn't asked if the clown had been murdered.

He hadn't asked, because he already knew.

*   *   *

A green Toyota Prius was parked at my curb when I got back to the turret. Jennifer Gale was parked on the bench down by the Willahock.

I didn't recognize her at first. Gone was any trace of makeup. Gone were the on-camera clothes, and the well-tailored jeans she'd worn the evening before. This day, she wore a long-sleeved Chicago Bears jersey, baggy denims, and scuffed running shoes. Without makeup, the lines on her face were pronounced, and I adjusted her age upward by another five years. I thought that made her more beautiful.

“A newspaper reader,” she said, looking at the
Argus-Observer
I'd stopped for on the way home. “I thought you were all extinct.”

“I don't subscribe, for fear of commitment. I buy from the box, once or twice a week, and then usually the
Tribune
.”