A Safe Place for Dying (7 page)
Read A Safe Place for Dying Online
Authors: Jack Fredrickson
We went through the door and down a row of cubicles, two of which had empty cartons set on their worktops. She stopped outside a small conference room with a single window, more dark green leather chairs, and a round walnut table. She told me Mr. Chernek would be with me shortly. I went in and sat down.
A large oil painting of an English hunting scene hung on the beige-papered wall. I studied the dozen red-coated riders, tensed astride their burnished black horses, their faces all purpose and concentration as they followed the pack of hounds. I tried to fit myself into the scene. The Bohemian would be the lead horseman, of course, his whip raised, his face confident and sure. Just as the rider immediately behind him, dutifully sounding the hunt with a curved brass horn, would have to be Stanley Novak. But I couldn't fit myself in with the rest of the riders; they looked too well born,
too comfortable in their riding clothes, too obviously suited to the hunt. They could only be the Board members of Crystal Waters. I stared at the painting until I finally decided I was the only dog straggling behind the riders, his head canted to the side, distracted by something in the underbrush. Yellow, green, and red snakes, maybe.
too comfortable in their riding clothes, too obviously suited to the hunt. They could only be the Board members of Crystal Waters. I stared at the painting until I finally decided I was the only dog straggling behind the riders, his head canted to the side, distracted by something in the underbrush. Yellow, green, and red snakes, maybe.
The Bohemian opened the conference room door and came in. For a big man, he moved softly, like a panther. He wore a charcoal chalk-striped suit, a soft blue shirt, and a muted burgundy tie. He had the same tanned skin and bright teeth I remembered from my divorce meeting. I got up, and we shook hands. His hand was big, the hand of a man who had done manual labor long ago. We sat down, and he folded his big hands on the table and waited for me to speak.
“Stanley Novak will not be joining us?”
“He's been delayed but will be here shortly.” The Bohemian glanced at the table and then shifted to look at the floor by my chair. “You've not brought the envelope and the letter back?”
“I thought it would be safer back at my place.”
His face remained calm. “You've not given it to the police.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Not yet.”
He leaned back in the chair and studied my face. “Vlodek, so little trust.”
“Why go through the charade of bringing the second note to me?”
“We have to make sure we're paying the right man.”
“You mean the same manâ”
The quick tap at the door cut me off, and Stanley came in. He didn't look well. His uniform was neatly pressed and his comb-over was intact, but he had dark smudges under his eyes and his lips were shiny. He sat down like he'd been carrying cement.
“How is your wife, Stanley?” the Bohemian asked.
“She'll be fine.” Stanley pulled out a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “What have I missed?”
“Vlodek spotted the reference in the second letter.”
Stanley nodded. “As you expected,” he said, looking at the Bohemian.
The Bohemian turned to me. “In April of 1970, just a few weeks before the first Members were scheduled to move in, the developers received a note demanding ten thousand dollars. It did not make a specific threat and said nothing about where to drop the money. We took it to be a prank because it was so vagueâsome Maple Hills resident, perhaps, upset about the development.”
“What did the letter look like?”
The Bohemian glanced at Stanley. “From what I remember, exactly like the two we've received this summer: double-lined child's paper, block printing, capital letters in pencil.”
Stanley nodded in agreement.
“And the envelope? Was it white like the ones you received this summer?”
“Yes ⦔ The Bohemiam hesitated, looked to Stanley.
“Except it was addressed in pencil, block lettered like the note. Obviously not ink-jet computer printed, not back then,” Stanley said.
The Bohemian went on. “A week later, there was an explosion at the back of the guardhouse. It wasn't a big explosion, nothing like the Farraday house, but it did enough damage to require rebuilding the rear wall. We assumed it to have been set off by the person sending the letter.”
“Why didn't you go to the police?”
“We did, Vlodek.”
“Mr. Chernek came to me,” Stanley said. “I was a patrol officer on the Maple Hills force, moonlighting at night as security on the construction site, but my hat was in the ring for the security chief's job at Crystal Waters. After the guard shack blew, Mr. Chernek called me in and showed me the note they received.”
“And you did what?”
“I told him hundreds of construction workers had access to the development, as did truckers delivering materials, utility company people, even Maple Hills cops, for that matter. Cops are like everybody else. Some of them get resentful at all the money in a place like Crystal Waters.”
“So there were lots of potentials. What did you recommend?”
“That he contact the sheriff's police.”
I looked at the Bohemian. “You didn't do that.”
The Bohemian met my gaze, said nothing.
“Let me guess,” I said. “If word got out, nobody would move in, and the developers would be out millions.”
“Tens of millions,” the Bohemian said.
“So you did nothing until the bomber sent you another letter, telling you where to leave the ten thousand.”
Stanley took out his handkerchief and wiped his mouth again. “The second letter said, âPut the money in a plastic garbage bag. Drop it in the Dumpster behind Ann Sather's restaurant after dark on Sunday night.'”
“Where was that?”
“On Belmont, in Chicago.”
“Same pencil printing, same double-lined kid's paper, same postmark as the first?”
Stanley nodded. “Like the two we've received this summer.”
“You delivered the ten thousand?”
“That next Sunday night.”
“And you never heard from him again?”
The Bohemian spoke. “That ended it.”
“Until now,” I said.
The Bohemian tapped his forehead with his forefinger in a vague salute. “Until now.”
“So you think that by paying him, you'll get him to leave you alone for another few decades?”
The Bohemian stood up and went to the window. The sun was getting higher, wiping away the morning shadows on the surrounding rooftops. “The objective was then, and is now, money, not murder,” he said, looking out. “Our bomber is a professional. He does his research. He knows when the houses will be empty. He knows the places outside the wall where no one will be standing. And, being a professional, he knows our resources are not limitless. He knows we can raise five hundred thousand; it's less than twenty thousand dollars per house. He also must know he can't keep coming back, that if he presses for more, we will be forced to consult the authorities. I think he'll leave us alone when he gets his money.”
“You speak of him respectfully,” I said to the Bohemian's back. “You might be giving him credit he doesn't deserve. The mailman and the paperboy could have known when the Farradays would be gone, too.”
The Bohemian turned from the window, the trace of a smile on his face. “You've forgotten. No paperboys, no mailmen. Everything gets left at the guardhouse. I'll say it again: This man is a businessman.”
“Like most of the men who live in Crystal Waters,” I said.
The half-smile on the Bohemian's face didn't flicker.
I went on. “As I told you before, this could be an inside operation.”
“I can't see how any Member would benefit as much as he would lose. The current demand is for a half million. That's onesixth of what the typical house in Crystal Waters is worth.”
“Another insider, then: a contractor, a landscaper, a housepainter.” I looked at Stanley. “A guard.”
“Vlodek, pleaseâ”
“I don't understand either of you.” I said to the Bohemian. “Why go through the charade of having me look at the second note? Obviously, it's the same as the earlier one this summer.”
Stanley answered. “We needed to be double sure it's the same
person. We knew you'd pick up on the reference to our 1970 payment, but we also knew we could trust you to keep this matter private. We have to be sure it's the same man.”
person. We knew you'd pick up on the reference to our 1970 payment, but we also knew we could trust you to keep this matter private. We have to be sure it's the same man.”
“The man who, if given what he wants, can be relied upon to stay away for years and years?”
“Exactly, Mr. Elstrom.” Stanley looked at the Bohemian. “We will proceed with payment, Mr. Chernek?”
The Bohemian turned to me. “Will you allow us to continue without the authorities, Vlodek?”
I didn't need much convincing, which was the shame of it. Playing it out, seeing if the half million would be enough to make the guy go away again, got me off my little moral hook. I wouldn't have to choose between what was left of my career and going to the cops, at least for a while.
“Fair enough.” I stood up. Suddenly, I was anxious to get out of there, away from both of them. I wanted to think. I told them I'd call Monday morning to find out how the drop went and left.
On the way back to Rivertown, I kept hearing the admiring tone in the Bohemian's voice when he talked about the man targeting Gateville. Professional, he'd called him. A businessman. A careful man, who does his research.
It sounded like he was describing himself.
Saturday morning, early, I drove to Ann Sather's restaurant on the north side of Chicago. I wanted to check out the place where Stanley Novak was going to leave half a million dollars on Sunday night.
Ann Sather's neighborhood was in the first grunts of going upscale. At nine o'clock in the morning, the parking places along Belmont were already taken, the sidewalks already teeming with pairs of slim young men and clusters of black-haired teenaged girls wearing resale-shop clothes. They are the forward guard, the anointers who can declare an area worthy. They have no money; they come for weak tea and candles and used compact discs. But from their terra-cotta perches downtown, the big-money urban developers watch them, and when the anointers come in sufficient numbers, the developers strike with the sureness of hawksâoptioning, demolishing, rehabbing, and sending the prices of real estate to the moon. The grungy, curtained incense shops and tiny, linoleum-floored groceries get pushed out by rents gone exponential, to make way for upscale boutiques and bakeries. And then the commodities traders, lawyer couples, and professional urban
trendies come to smile and pirouette on the sidewalks, and there are lattes and grandes and little square dessert items for everyone.
trendies come to smile and pirouette on the sidewalks, and there are lattes and grandes and little square dessert items for everyone.
I turned off of Belmont into the narrow side alley next to Ann Sather's. It led back to a parking lot. All the spaces were taken, and several cars filled with spaghetti-string tops, purple makeup, and hormones were circling, so I threaded past them and out the main alley that ran parallel behind the restaurant. I had to drive a mile west before I found a spot in front of a used furniture store. The proprietor, no fool he, had put a hand-lettered sign on an aluminum lawn chair in the window: AND ANTIQUES. I walked back east into the crowds tightening along the sidewalks.
Ann Sather's Swedish Diner looked like any of the blue-plate restaurants that dot Chicago's older neighborhoods, the kind of place that always has good meat loaf. It had a pale brick front with full windows facing the sidewalk, offering views of people in booths miming various levels of table etiquette.
I went in. Thirty people, waiting for tables, pressed around a glass case filled with cinnamon buns and loaves of fresh-baked bread, talking loudly to be heard above the clatter of plates and metal silverware. Every few seconds, the window-aisle waitress, who looked like she ate there for free, cut through the throng like Moses parting the waters, balancing plates of omelets and thick-cut potatoes.
I made my way into the long dining room. The back exit wasn't visible, which meant it was normally accessible only to employees. That, and the window card saying the restaurant was closed Sunday night, ruled out the possibility that the extortionist, posing as a patron, was planning to snatch the money from the Dumpster and come back through the diner to escape out the front.
I went back to the foyer and looked in the glass case. For camouflage, I bought a dozen cinnamon buns in a blue and yellow box, the colors of the Swedish flag. It was necessary that I look like a day shopper, and the expense might be tax deductible. Compelling reasons
like those don't come along every day. I tucked the receipt in my wallet and took the buns outside.
like those don't come along every day. I tucked the receipt in my wallet and took the buns outside.
I walked around back, taking out a cinnamon bun to activate my disguise. The bun was moist, fresh, nothing like the varnished, petrified, pseudo-cinnamon horrors sold at shopping malls and toll road plazas. I ate the bun slowly, a guy killing time, eating a lard pill, waiting for his wife. My favorite cover.
The small blue Dumpster where Stanley would drop the money the next night was just outside the back door of the restaurant. It looked like it would hold ten garbage bags. I took another bite of the cinnamon bun and let the last bit fall from my hand. I bent to pick it up, opened the hinged Dumpster lid, and tossed it in. There was one white plastic bag of garbage inside the Dumpster.
To maintain my cover, I ate another cinnamon bun as I scanned the backs of the buildings lining the main alley. All were classic Chicago four-flats, yellow-brown brick, with latticeworks of graypainted wood stairs hung on their backs like external vertebrae. Any of those buildings would offer a safe, hidden view of the Dumpster the next night.
I walked down the long back alley, turned the corner, and went around to the parallel street behind Belmont, the one fronting the four-flats. I was looking for an apartment for rent, a place I could put down a deposit to get a key, but there were no signs in the windows. At the end of the block I turned left and came back up the alley from the other end, almost full circle. And got saved.
An old woman in a faded beige housedress was hanging clothes on a line in one of the tiny backyards. I stopped at her chain-link gate.
“Do you know of any apartments for rent around here?”
She had four wood clothespins in her mouth. She shook her head.
“How about garages?”
The wet blue towel she was raising to the line went still. The clothespins came out of her mouth.
“Yah,” she said in a heavy Polish accent. “Mine.”
She dropped the towel into her basket and motioned me to come through the gate. She met me at the service door to the garage, pushed it open, and stepped aside.
I went in.
There was just enough light coming from the dirty side window to see. The cement slab was cracked into a dozen pieces, and the wood smelled damp from mildew and rot. I felt the wall along the side door for a light switch.
“No electric,” she said from outside.
I walked across the broken slab to the side window, took a quick casual look, and went on to the overhead door. The big door was swelled shut, probably from the rot I smelled. I jiggled it loose enough to muscle it up, as if I cared that it worked. I'd already seen what I wanted. The side window had an unobstructed view of the Dumpster behind Ann Sather's.
“How much?”
“Tree hunnert.” Her dentures clicked.
When a neighborhood is in play, when the developers come and start bidding everything up, garage rents are among the first to rise. Forget the faded housedress and fractured English; this babushka had her ear to the ground.
“I just want one stall.”
“Tree hunnert, cash.”
“I'll give you one seventy-five.”
She shook her head. “Tree hunnert.”
“Two hundred cash.” It was all I was packing.
“Two fifty, plus two fifty security. Five hunnert, up front.”
I pulled down the overhead door and walked across the cracked concrete. The hinges of the service door wiggled in the spongy door jam as I started to close it. “Two hundred cash, no security,” I said as I stepped out.
She nodded, put the clothespins back in her mouth, and extended her hand, palm up.
I gave her four fifties. It was all transacted Chicago style: no lease, no signed receipt. The money disappeared into the pocket of her faded housedress. We were done.
From the Jeep, I called Endora, Leo's girlfriend, at the Newberry Library. She usually worked Saturdays.
“You still driving that little purple '94 Grand Am?”
“My lilac-mobile.”
“Can I borrow it tomorrow night?”
“Got a date you want to impress, Dek? Some new lovely you don't want to bounce around in your Jeep?”
Endora had many interests. Resurrecting my love life was in the middle of her list.
“No. I need your car for surveillance.”
“No problem. Listen, there's a new lady who's been coming here, doing research for her dissertation. I think she'd be perfectâ”
“Can I just borrow the car?”
“Leo will switch with you tomorrow.”
Leo was a lucky man.
“A stakeout? Isn't that over your head?” Leo shot the basketball. It arched over the backboard, bounced off the top of a rusty metal upright, and rolled across the crumbled asphalt into the corner of the rusty chain-link fence.
“I should go to the Feds instead?” I called as I ran to get the ball.
“No,” he said as I came huffing back. “You rat out your clients, you're done working for lawyers.”
“Then what do I do?”
He shook his head. “I don't know. It's just that if you need a car your own clients won't recognize, you've got a problem.”
I'd called Leo after I talked to Endora, to arrange to swap cars and to ask him to make a few phone calls. He suggested a workout late Sunday morning at the outdoor basketball court behind Rivertown High School. We'd been shooting bull and hoops there since
freshman year, though neither of us had ever learned to drop a basket. A game of horse could run three hours and end scoreless. The workout came from fetching the ball.
freshman year, though neither of us had ever learned to drop a basket. A game of horse could run three hours and end scoreless. The workout came from fetching the ball.
I turned around for my over-the-head backward shot. Leo snickered, but I could hear the fear in it. I rarely dropped such a shot, but when I did, it was a marvel to behold. I leaned back and sighted upside down at the backboard behind me. Some poet had spray-painted EAT SHIT in neon green letters on the gray, flaking plywood. I aimed at the space just to the right of EAT, held my breath, and let the ball fly. It hit the underside of the backboard, banged against the fence, and skittered along a rut toward the far end of the blacktop.
“Haven't lost your touch,” Leo yelled, but it was in relief. He ran to stop the ball before it rolled into a puddle.
“People could die,” I said when he came back.
“And you staking out the drop site will prevent that?” He put the basketball into the small of his back and used it to lean against the rusty fence. A cut from that fence needed a tetanus shot. “Look, I checked around as you asked. Chernek's lost some clients, and a couple of his analysts have quit, but those things happen when the market takes a tumble. Financial guys get blamed, they lose clients, and the junior associates take off for other pastures.”
“The Bohemian is hurting for money.”
Leo wiped his forehead with his T-shirt sleeve. “Like almost everybody, including thousands of brokers. But they're not going around setting off bombs. Besides, you've got a direct link with the bomb that went off in 1970. Same paper for the note, same kind of explosive. Why not concentrate on that?”
“I don't like the way the Bohemian's so willing to fork over half a million dollars to whoever it is. Maybe he doesn't mind because he's giving the money to himself.”
“He's doing what he's told. He's taking his orders from the board of rich people, like you are taking orders from him.”
“What if the bomber is one of them?”
“One of who?”
“One of the Members. I told the Bohemian the bomber could be an insider, a Member.”
“I'll bet he loved that.”
“He brushed it off.”
“Of course he did.”
“I don't like it, Leo. The Bohemian should be looking at everybody as a potential suspect.”
“He's doing the obvious, paying off the guy like last time, hoping he'll go away for another few decades.” Leo shook his head and pushed himself off the fence. “What are you going to do tonight when it's collection time? Jump out of your garage and yell, âStop, bomber'?”
“I'm going to take a few pictures. Get the license plate number, maybe follow the car.”
“What if he spots you? What if he's got a gun?”
“I'll stay well back. The important thing is not the tail, it's the license plate and the description of the man.”
Leo stepped in front of the basket and prepared to shoot. “Dek, half the things I see are forgeries. I do my analysis, make my report to the people who hired me, and that's it. What they do with the information is up to them. Sometimes, a bad piece I've examined pops up later at a different house, with a fake attribution. I don't second-guess my clients, I don't rat them out, don't announce they've passed off a forgery. I just do what I'm hired to do.”
“No one dies because of that.”
Leo aimed the ball and fired. It hit the backboard and dropped onto the metal rim, where it teetered for a full five seconds before, incredibly, wobbling and falling through the hoop.
“Yes,” Leo shouted, waving his skinny white arms like a scarecrow on speed. “Game called on account of victory.” He snatched the ball before I could grab it, tucked it tight against his stomach
like a wide receiver hugging a miracle catch, and started running for the opening in the fence. I hustled to catch up with him.
like a wide receiver hugging a miracle catch, and started running for the opening in the fence. I hustled to catch up with him.
“Didn't you tell me Chernek has increased security at Gateville?” he asked as we slowed across the hard dirt and tufts of crabgrass.
“Yes.”
“Isn't that doing the right thing?”
“Of course.”
“Isn't paying off the bomber the most reasonable thing they can do? Especially since the last time they paid off, the guy stayed away for close to forty years?”
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