Death on a High Floor (19 page)

“Interesting.” That was all I said.

Larson went back to sipping his vodka. I put my orange juice aside and ordered a vodka on the rocks, to which I added the orange juice. Then I did the crossword puzzle in
Spirit
, the
Southwest in-flight magazine
. It was neither hard nor easy, but it passed the time. Larson got off in Kansas City. He told me he was taking the next plane back to L.A. I flew on to Chicago. On the way, I ordered another vodka, straight up.

As soon as I got off the plane at Midway and turned my cell phone back on, it rang. It was Jenna. “Don’t say anything. Just listen.”

“Okay.”

“Spritz called to ask where you were. I think he wanted to arrange for you to surrender.”

“Surrender?” I felt momentarily light-headed.

“Just shut up and listen. We’ll worry about surrendering later. I told Spritz that you were on your way to Chicago. He’s pissed as hell. I told him I had your passport, but he didn’t seem mollified. You left your flight number on the notepad by the phone, so I gave it to him, just to prove you weren’t going to Mexico. I’m betting he’s going to have you followed. For some reason, he thinks you’re going to Canada. So you need to lose whoever it is they put on your tail there. It will be bad if they follow you to you-know-who.”

“What? . . . But how—”

“Bye.” She hung up.

I had not a clue how to lose a tail. Let alone figure out who it was. In movies, you can always spot them. There’s a clue of some sort. I looked around and saw no clues. Just a crowd of about a hundred people getting off the plane, another hundred or so waiting to get on, and maybe fifty assorted others. I gave up and went out to the cabstand.

There were at least twenty people waiting in the line. None of them looked suspicious. Most were men, most were wearing suits and overcoats. Most looked a lot warmer than I was. It was maybe 40 degrees out, and I had not bothered to bring an overcoat, even though it was December. There’s something about living in Southern California that puts you in denial about the fact that it might be cold somewhere else.

I stood in line for about fifteen minutes. When my cab finally pulled forward, I opened the door, tossed my suitcase on the backseat, and got in. “
Swissôtel
, please.”

Just then I saw a gentleman in a suit, who had very definitely not been in the cab line, cut to the front of the line and flash his open wallet at the guy in charge. He got into the cab immediately behind mine. Obviously, he was a cop. Obviously, he was going to follow me.

My cab had already started forward and was about to pull out into the moving lane of traffic. I’m not sure where I got the psychological wherewithal to do it, but I told the cabbie, “Listen, I forgot something, and it may take awhile to find it. Please let me out. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

We had moved only about twenty yards at that point. The driver put his foot on the brake, and the cab stopped with a jerk. I handed the guy a twenty, grabbed my suitcase, and scrambled out. I glanced back to see if the cop had managed to get out and follow me, but didn’t see him.

I headed back into the airport and was thankful for the milling crowd inside. I spotted a CTA sign that said
TRAIN TO CITY
It was the way to the “El”—the Chicago elevated rapid transit. I remembered that you could now get from Midway into the city that way. I followed the signs. First up a ramp, then through a parking garage past the rental cars, then down two levels of escalators into the station, still not looking behind me. I bought a ticket from one of the automated machines.

I was in luck, because a train was at the platform, ready to leave. I made it on board just as the doors closed and saw four people enter the same car through the other door. Two were wearing parkas and carrying backpacks. They looked like high school students. The other two were in suits and overcoats. One of them looked like he might be the cop from the cab, but I couldn’t be sure because I hadn’t gotten a good look at the guy.

The car was crowded. I sat down on the hard plastic seat next to a woman with a huge red suitcase on wheels. One of the students—a guy lugging a black backpack—plunked himself down on the seat in front of me. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to look inconspicuous. As the car began to move and sway, I considered my situation and hatched a plan.

I had been headed for
Swissôtel
, but it’s small, and its lobby wouldn’t likely e crowded enough for what I was thinking about doing. I needed someplace much bigger.

The
Drake
sprang to mind. It’s one of those oversized, early twentieth century hotels that was once elegant, then fell on hard and tattered times—when it had sometimes been called the ‘Dreck.’ It was finally restored to elegance in the 1980’s, and then restored again a few years ago. Its lobby was likely, even in early-evening, to be crowded with the bustle-creating tourists and convention goers who had become its stock in trade.

I asked the girl with the huge red suitcase, who was to my right, which stop I should use for the
Drake
. She mumbled that she didn’t know where it was and moved toward the window, despite the narrow seat. Apparently, my suit did not put her at ease as to my intentions. The student with the big black backpack, who had apparently overheard my question, turned his head around and said, “You’re on the Orange Line. Change at Roosevelt to the Red Line, then get off at the Chicago stop, go over to Michigan, turn left, and walk up to Walton.” I thanked him.

When I got off at Roosevelt, I noticed that the student also got off and transferred to the Red Line. I didn’t give it much thought at the time since Roosevelt was a major stop.

The entire trip, including the transfer, took only about thirty minutes. Once there, I got off, took the escalator up, and went out onto the street. The temperature had dropped further. I walked briskly towards Michigan and then turned left toward the
Drake
, trying not to be cold.

As I passed
Marshall Fields
at Water Tower Place—now unfortunately renamed Macy’s—I decided to go in and buy a coat. I wasn’t particular, and I picked out a long wool overcoat for about $300. I paid for it with my M&M American Express card. For years, I had put all my expenses on it. When the monthly bill came in, Gwen went through it, added up what was personal, and wrote out a reimbursement check to the firm.

The clerk looked up at me with some distress on her face. “I’m sorry, sir, but the card is coming up as cancelled.”

“That can’t be,” I said. “I used it this morning to buy airline tickets.”

Clearly, she had gone through this drill before. The look on her face left distress behind and went entirely neutral. I might be telling the truth, I might not be.

“Sir,” she said, “I’m sure there is some terrible error. But as you can understand, we can’t charge against a card that comes up as cancelled. Might you have another card that we could try?”

I looked in my wallet. Once upon a time, I had had a Visa card. And there it was. I gave it to her. She looked at it and said, “I’m sorry, sir, this card expired last year.” She handed it back and waited patiently for me to say something.

I had only one hundred dollars in cash in my pocket. God knew if my ATM card still worked. “Well, looks like a series of errors, eh?” I said.

I gave the coat back to her and walked away. I felt mortified. That was when I noticed that the student with the black backpack was also shopping in
Marshall Fields
, casually looking at men’s dress socks, which were in the next aisle. That seemed odd. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would need dress socks. He was at that very moment wearing white athletic socks and old tennis shoes.

I left the store and hurried toward the
Drake
, colder than ever. I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if there was any sign of the student. There wasn’t. When I got to the
Drake
, I realized that I had a major problem that was going to interfere with my plan. I had planned to check in before implementing the rest of the plan, hoping that they would have a room even though I didn’t have a reservation. But now I had no credit card that worked. I was going to have to improvise.

As I was pondering my problem, I saw the “student” come through the revolving door into the lobby. He was clearly looking for me.

I went over to the valet desk and addressed the man behind the counter. “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I’m going to be checking in later, but I need to meet a business colleague in the lounge first. Could I leave my bag with you in the meantime?”

“Of course, sir.” He took the suitcase and gave me a small yellow claim check. I tipped him a couple of ones.

“Can you tell me where the restrooms are?” I asked. He pointed to his left. “Just down the hall there.” I walked in the direction he pointed and then looked behind me. The student was still searching the large lobby for me.

At the end of the corridor that I had entered there was a set of revolving doors, clearly giving out onto the side street. I pushed quickly through them, looked around for a cab, saw one, and sprinted toward it. It slowed and stopped, and I jumped in.

“Hyde Park, corner of South Hyde Park Boulevard and 47
^th
please.” As the cab started to move, I looked through the rear window and caught the student bursting out of the revolving doors, looking around. He had focused on my cab. I hoped we were far enough away that he couldn’t read the license plate or the cab number.

Since cabbies keep track of where they pick up and drop off fares, I knew that sooner or later the cops would trace the records and figure out where I had gone. But I was getting smarter maybe. I had asked the cabbie to drop me a good ten blocks away from Serappo’s office.

As we drove down Lake Shore Drive, I kept looking behind us to see if we were being followed. I didn’t think so, although it had become painfully obvious that I wasn’t very good at detecting exactly who was following me. At least not right away.

The cab ride down to Hyde Park took only fifteen minutes. The cabbie dropped me off at the requested corner. I paid him and got out. Getting out reminded me of at least one problem with my plan. It was the wind, which was blowing steadily off the lake. Whatever the actual air temperature, the wind chill made it feel at least fifteen degrees colder. By the time I had walked the ten blocks to Serappo’s office, I was shivering badly, despite having my hands jammed in my pockets and my shoulders hunched up against the wind.

Serappo’s office had always been above the Medici, a bustling little restaurant on 57
^th
Street that’s been a University of Chicago student hangout since the beginning of time, and a favorite of President Obama’s, too. Serappo both worked and lived in the building, so it seemed likely he’d be in, even at nine o’clock in the evening. His office was up a stairway just to the right of the restaurant, accessed through a battered wooden door that was marked
NO SOLICITORS
in small, stenciled red letters.

The door was unlocked, and I took the rickety steps two at a time to the second floor, where there were three doors off the landing. Two were unmarked. The third was labeled
ACME MEET BROKER.
I knocked on that one, figuring it was Serappo’s current disguise for his coin business, although I doubted anyone intent on robbing him would have been fooled. The last time I’d been there, ten years before, the same door had said
ACME KITCHEN REMODELING
.

I stood there waiting, but got no answer. I knocked again, louder. As I was about to give up, a gruff female voice asked, “What asshole is calling this time of night?”

I identified myself and was answered with a grunt that might have been an acknowledgement. After a brief delay, I heard the sound of three chains coming off, and then two deadbolts being turned. The door opened a crack, and Smirna Prodiglia peered out at me.

Smirna is Serappo’s daughter. The first time I’d met her, ten years ago, she’d been about forty. The passage of a decade had not improved her. Her long brown hair, which I remembered as lustrous, was now matted and snarled. Her only makeup was vivid red lipstick, most of which had missed the mark. I couldn’t really see her body, but the puffiness in her face suggested that she had consumed far too many donuts since I’d last seen her.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Although the question was reasonably neutral in tone, I sensed that she hoped the answer would be no, so that she could slam the door and go back to whatever she had been doing.

“I’m Robert Tarza.”

“Yeah, that’s what you just said a minute ago.”

“Smirna, surely you remember me.”

She frowned. “Now that you mention it, I do. So what?”

“I’d like to see your father.”

“About what?”

“It’s a private matter,” I said.

“There are no private matters between Dad and me.”

“Okay. I want to talk to him about the
Ides
.”

She seemed to consider that. “The
Ides
d
enarius
of Brutus
?”