Final Stroke (28 page)

Jan sat in the corner of the well-furnished bank lobby, hiding behind a large foldout bank brochure she held up before her. Within the bank brochure she held a Chicago area map she brought in from the glove compartment. While she waited, she began marking the intersections from Marjorie’s U.S. Routes litany written down in her notebook. The sofa on which she sat was soft and deep and she knew that, with all the other people in the bank filling out deposit and withdrawal slips and waiting in line, she would more than likely be overlooked back here even if Tony Gianetti looked directly at her.

She’d entered the bank carefully, watching for Tony. She covered her cautious entry by pretending to search for something in her purse, while at the same time scanning the bank lobby. Now, because she had not seen him, she sat waiting, and working on her map. Either Tony and this guy named Buster Brown, who was probably his attor
ney, were somewhere in the bank, or they had met a third party and driven elsewhere. If that were true … but it wasn’t, because suddenly they appeared through an opening to her right. They were behind a waist-high door in the counter that had to be buzzed open. She real
ized they had been back in the alcove containing the vault holding the safe deposit boxes.

Although Buster Brown’s hair was dark brown, Jan thought it looked dyed and figured he was older than Tony, probably upper for
ties, her age. Tony wore a sport coat over his Sierra Club sweatshirt while Buster wore a suit. Both men carried briefcases and umbrellas.

If they had come to retrieve something from a safe deposit box, it was in one or both of their briefcases.

Because they faced the counter she could watch them carefully. Buster said something to Tony and Tony reached into his pocket and showed Buster a key. This made Buster smile and nod. When a teller approached the counter where they stood and handed Tony another key, Jan noticed that he put this key in his right jacket pocket, whereas the key he had just shown Buster was in his left jacket pocket. Tony and Buster thanked the teller, then headed for the door.

Jan imagined herself asking the teller what Tony and Buster had been doing in the safe deposit box vault and had to laugh. Not be
cause such a move would be pointless, but because it was this kind of thinking Steve had always said to never overlook. “Think the obvi
ous and even the absurd and often you’ll come up with things float
ing just below the surface,” he’d said. Well, if there was anything she could uncover here, without getting arrested, she could do it later. For now, she knew what Steve would do is follow Tony to see where he went next.

They left together in Tony’s Prius, leaving the BBROWN Mercedes behind. As she drove out of the parking lot, careful to keep at least one car between them, but close enough so she wouldn’t get caught by a stoplight, she thought how appropriate the jingle seemed.

Hi, my name’s Buster Brown. I live in a shoe. Here’s my dog Tag. Look for him in there, too.

As she followed the Prius, she was aware they were heading in the direction of the next intersection from the litany.

South on U.S. Route 45 out of Orland Park, the highway become
s

divided before it intersects Interstate 80. The speed limit is fifty-five, but traffic often travels faster near the interstate as if the sixty-five
mile-per-hour speed limit of the interstate were a living organism able to spread onto this U.S. Route. As if speed has fingers reaching out to grasp motorists fearful of being rear-ended. As if Tony Gianetti and Buster Brown might be aware they are being followed and want to lose her. That’s what she thought about when the huge red semi passed her.

She was doing over sixty when the truck barreled past. The spray of grimy water lifted from the pavement by numerous groaning tires blinded her. She turned her windshield wipers on high speed, but it made little difference. The air horn on the truck sounded long and loud, frightening a slower car out of the left lane. She cursed aloud at the driver of the truck, recalling a recent accident in which a brake part had dislodged from a truck and caused the death of a family. Didn’t the trucker realize she was working on an important case? What was so important to this trucker that he had to drive like this?

When the truck moved far enough ahead so she could again see, three cars were between her and the Prius. The Prius was barely vis
ible, riding alongside the truck within the spray from its tires. The Prius shot ahead for a moment, Tony apparently speeding out of the blinding spray. Then the truck’s brake lights came on while it blasted its air horn and another frightened driver escaped into the right lane and dropped back.

The truck was on fire with speed, a tidal wave of steel and rubber, the driver in his perch above traffic able to see while everyone else is blinded. On a rise ahead she saw the Prius just beyond the truck in the right lane. She moved to the left lane to catch up, passed cars that had slowed, intimidated by the actions of the truck driver. When she moved back to the right lane, the truck and the Prius were side by side
about a hundred yards ahead.

Then it happened. A guardrail that narrowed the shoulder where the road bridged a creek helped it happen. The guardrail was there and the Prius could not get over it when the truck suddenly moved over, whipping like a snake striking. The center of the trailer straddled the Prius for an instant as it disappeared beneath the trailer.

She thought the Prius might be low enough to come out the other side. But it was not low enough. Sparks spewed from beneath the truck as it crossed back over to the center lane. It was insane, like children racing cars and trucks willy-nilly across a floor. The truck’s rear wheels locked up, smoke billowed, the Prius turned sideways, and the rear wheels of the trailer rolled over the Prius causing the trailer to bounce high into the air as if it had been rolled at high speed on kitchen tile and had suddenly hit the edge of the living room carpet. The effect was complete when the Prius rolled like toy into the weedy flooded median beyond the bridge.

She slammed on her brakes and pulled off onto the left shoulder. Bystanders, who had moments earlier been in their cars, materialized from the mist. The truck was some distance ahead, stopped on the left shoulder. The driver, a large man wearing a baseball cap, jumped down from the truck and started to run back, then stopped and cov
ered his face with his hands. Those running to the wreck in the medi
an from both sides of the highway were men and boys. A nurse would come running soon, she thought, picturing the nurses at Hell in the Woods. But no nurses were in sight unless …

Yes! Unless one of the men who arrived at the scene first was a nurse, or a doctor.

It seemed a group of men had taken charge already, two of them bent low reaching into the crushed and steaming wreckage, while three more did their best to hold the curious back. She expected the Prius to
burst into flame, and some spectators kept their distance as if it might, but it did not burst into flame. As she watched the scene, Jan lowered her window slightly despite the rain. She wished she could do more, but did what she thought best. It was an automatic reaction. While the men reached into the wreckage and others surrounded them and eventually blocked her view, she realized she had already retrieved the phone from its mount on the center console between the front seats. She dialed 911 and gave the location of the accident in a remarkably calm voice to the operator.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEE
N

Steve’s physical therapist was not a fuckhead. Percy
was gentle and understanding no matter how much the victim com
plained. Steve did not complain at all that day because the stretching exercises and range-of-motion exercises and resistance exercises felt good. He knew part of the reason they felt good was because, instead of trying to think about the past as he sometimes did while exercising, he thought about something that had happened quite recently. He thought about the janitors’ closet, and in so doing, mentally included a bigger and rougher black guy than Percy in on whatever exercise he was doing. When Percy had him stretch one of the giant rubber bands, Tyrone’s neck would be there and he’d be stretching it until poor Tyrone thought it would break. When Percy had him do range-of-motion twists, he made a fist and would give Tyrone a good clout on each turn. Any time he got hold of the handgrips and squeezed the hell out of them with his good left hand, he imagined he had hold of Tyrone’s throat. Pretty childish stuff, he thought, after thanking Percy and heading to the elevator.

In his room, Steve stared into the paper cup Betty-who-talks-too
much had just placed on the bedside table. Tegretol, Coumadin, Hep
arin, Amitriptyline. “That Amitriptyline’s the antidepressant,” said Betty. “It’ll turn up the corners of your little old mouth even more than it usually is, Mr. Babe. It surely will. I’d stay and talk more, but I’ve got to run.”

After taking his lunchtime medication he rolled out into the hall, took the elevator back down to the second floor and headed for the cafeteria. In the hallway on the way to the cafeteria, Linda and Frank, the two right-brainers who talked incessantly, were arguing. Frank kept referring to rehab as childish, saying they treated them like “god
damn little shit kids.” Linda answered by saying it felt good to be ba
bied sometimes. Of course what they really said wasn’t that simple. There were all matter of adjectives and adverbs tossed in at random in their strange conversational brew, and he’d heard this argument be
fore, so he moved on.

A little farther down the hall he saw the new nurses’ aide. He couldn’t think of her name, but she had red hair and was in her early twenties and cute as hell. For a moment he recalled the redheaded aide down on the first floor Marjorie claimed was fired for being rough on residents. Marjorie had said the aide was a bull dyke. Well, this new one was certainly not a bull dyke. He elbowed Phil, his across-the-hall neighbor, as he rolled to a stop outside the cafeteria, pointing to the new redhead and saying, “Cute kid.”

Phil nodded appreciatively and whispered, “Jesus fuck.”

The floor-to-ceiling windows in the cafeteria were streaked with rain. Instead of letting in sunshine, the windows brought in the gloom and cold. Thick rain clouds made it dark enough to force drivers to switch on their headlights. He could see the line of headlights in the distance on the main road through the naked trees bordering the
entrance road.

As Steve ate he looked forward to hearing Jan’s voice. They’d be practicing using the phone again in occupational therapy today and he’d take a moment to call his own number so he could hear Jan’s cheery voice on their voice mail. Since finding out he called their voice mail during therapy, Jan had changed her greeting quite often, keep
ing it general, yet between the lines he was able to sense the cheeriness in the message was not for the person from the long-distance company or credit card company, but just for him. One thing he had never told Jan was that he sometimes called their voice mail service number and keyed in the access code to bring up the maintenance program that would allow him to change the personal greeting. Of course he never changed Jan’s greeting. All he wanted to do was listen to it. And, in the middle of the night, if he called their number, he would have awakened Jan. So, instead, he sometimes called the voice mail service number for a shot in the arm in the middle of the night.

During the free time after lunch, he took the elevator back to the third floor. In his room he freshened up in the bathroom, then went to his phone. He called home, and when there was no answer after four rings, Jan came on. “Hi, you’ve reached the Babe residence. All of us Babes and our security guards must be cleaning our weapons or on the phone right now. Leave a message and one of us will call you back.
B
-ye.”

The “
B
-ye” was for him. He could hear it in the way Jan had start
ed the word on a high pitch and ended it on a low pitch. After hearing her voice, he considered calling Jan’s cell number, but she usually left the phone in the car instead of carrying it with her. Besides, he didn’t know whether they’d taken Jan’s or Lydia’s car to Wisconsin.

He hung up and called the voice mail service number and keyed the access code to get to the mailbox. There were four messages: One
hang up, another from a woman at the billing department here at Hell

in the Woods, the third from Phil Hogan.

“Jan, this is Phil. Give me a call. I might have something.”

Have something? Phil Hogan? He pictured Phil. Always in the same lousy suit, a wrinkled shirt, his tie askew, his face red from too much booze.

What the hell was going on? If a cop was checking into something for Jan, it had to be about Marjorie’s death. But why would Jan ask a loser like Phil for help? And why now when she’s not even around? Damn it Jan! I told you not to mess with this!

The fourth message was from Lydia Jacobson.

“Hi, Jan, having a great time. Guess who I met up with? Remem
ber that girl in the Black Power group who changed her name to Gwen Africa? Well, she kept the name all these years and we’ve been hanging around together and she’s a riot. She teaches here and has this bitch of an apartment. Anyway, I’ll get off before my time runs out. Gwen says she remembers you and wants to visit us down there. Sorry you couldn’t come. Say hi to Steve. See ya.”

“Sorry you couldn’t come?” he said aloud. “Jesus fuck, Jan!”

He called Jan’s cell and got a busy signal, which meant she was using the phone. When he called back thirty seconds later, he got the canned message saying the cell phone customer was unavailable or had traveled beyond the service area. He’d told Jan to leave the phone on when she wasn’t with him. He’d also told her to sign up for all the other services like messaging and call waiting. When was that? Not too long ago. Wait, a new cell phone. She’d gotten a new cell phone and said she hadn’t bothered setting everything up on it. But he’d gotten a busy signal earlier which meant she’d just been on the phone, and if she was just on the phone …

Maybe if he kept calling back. But when he called back less tha
n

a minute later, he still got the unavailable message, and kept getting it again and again each time he called. He must have tried calling Jan twenty or thirty times. While he punched the numbers and lis
tened to the message again and again, he felt as if he’d just recently had the stroke and was going through a strange repetitive therapeu
tic exercise. He knew he probably wouldn’t get through, but he kept calling anyhow.

As had happened in the past during stressful times in rehab, he recalled how Jan had, from the beginning, immersed herself into the bizarre mystery of who he was, or who he had been. And now he wondered if, because of his arrogance—thinking he’s still a damn detective and knows something’s fishy about Marjorie’s death when he probably doesn’t know shit—he had gotten Jan into trouble. He’d made her do it. He’d been a selfish bastard, wanting even more atten
tion than he was already getting. He cursed himself out loud. “Bas
tard! Selfish bastard!”

While he continued cursing himself, he looked around his room for something that might help the situation. His computer was on the small desk near the window. He knew that inside the single desk drawer was the plug-in modem and the telephone cord. He wheeled to the desk, opened the drawer and began frantically unraveling the cord while at the same time backing the wheelchair toward the baseboard plug where the phone on the bedside table was plugged in. He’d plug into the world, get on the Internet and …

And what? Send an e-mail to the state police to look for Jan’s Audi? Sure, they’d do that. They probably dropped everything when
ever they got an e-mail from an idiot on the Internet.

“Crazy bastard,” he said, as he sat with the tangled telephone cord in his lap.

There must be someone he could e-mail. Get his message down ex
actly the way he wants it so the situation is crystal clear. But that would take time, and if Jan were in trouble, which she probably wasn’t …

No. Not e-mail. No other choice. No other choice but to open his mouth and let some words come out and hope for the best. There was only one person who would listen and, perhaps, do something. Only one person outside this place, besides Jan, who wouldn’t hang up on the creep on the other end of the line who sounded drunk or de
mented because he couldn’t get his words right.

He put the tangle of wire aside, sat back in his wheelchair and took several deep breaths with his eyes closed. When he felt he was calm enough, under control enough to use everything he’d learned in rehab, he opened the bedside table drawer and took out the sheet of phone numbers he kept there. Then he picked up the phone and called Central Division Homicide, Chicago Police Headquarters.

“Homicide.”

Breathe in, concentrate, talk. “Detective Harris.”

“Which Harris? Sergeant Bob or Lieutenant T?”

“Lieutenant T.”

“You can dial direct to 6466, but I’ll put you through.”

A pause, then, “Lieutenant Harris.”

Her voice was so smooth it threw him for a moment. He pictured her face, her skin dark and smooth like her voice.

“Hello?”

Breathe in, concentrate, talk. “Tamara. Steve.”

“Hey, Steve. How you doin’? Jan called the other day and said you had a seizure. Everything okay there?”

He could hear the concern in her voice. Breathe in, concentrate …

“Take your time, Steve. Didn’t mean to sound rushed. I’ll bite my lip and shut up so you can talk.” She paused for a while, then said, “I’ll only interrupt once in a while, like I just did. I’ll try to keep my
mouth shut like when I visit. You want to say ‘repeat’ or something

like that to cue me like we did last time I visited?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’m here with my lips zipped.”

Thank God for Tamara. But don’t bother thanking her. Concen
trate on what’s got to come out.

“I love you, Tam. Shit. Okay, take it easy.”

Breathe in, concentrate, speak slowly. “It’s Jan. Something fucked up. I mean, maybe gone, maybe trouble, I don’t know. Should be with Lydia, university reunion. Not there.” He paused a moment, then said, “Repeat?”

“Okay, Steve. I’ve written it down. I’ll talk it back to you slow so you can think about it. I guess what you’re saying is Jan’s missing. Or at least you don’t know where she is. She was supposed to be with Lydia at a reunion. I assume that’s Jan’s friend Lydia Jacobson?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Steve, but just because she’s supposed to be with Lydia but isn’t, you can’t know she’s in trouble.”

Silence, his turn to speak. But what to say? “I … I do.”

“How do you know?”

“Fuck! I do!”

“Okay, all right. Just had to make sure … you know, with drug side effects and all. You don’t need to comment on that last comment. I’m just being straight with you. I know that’s what you want. So if you need to try this out on me, let’s get back to what you know, and what I know. I’m aware that Jan and Lydia met a long time ago when they were at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The reunion Jan’s supposed to be at must be there. It that right?”

“Right. More. Gwen Africa.”

“Was that a name? Did you say Gwen Africa?”

“Right. Teacher. Call. Talk to Lydia. Where the hell’s Jan?” He was about to say more, but lost his train of thought and said, “Repeat?” instead.

“Okay, take it easy, it’s no big deal. You want me to call a teacher at the University of Wisconsin named Gwen Africa. You figure she’ll know how to get in touch with Lydia. Then when I talk to Lydia, if I can find her, I’ll ask if she has any idea where Jan could be. Is that about right?”