Truck Stop (10 page)

“Most squads have a van or a truck with their equipment in it. They don’t like to leave dangerous materials at work. Too risky. So they take it home. Does you boss have one?”

Another nod.

“Truck or a van?”

“A van.”

“What sort of goodies are you boys packing?”

Lance opens his mouth but nothing comes out. His eyes are locked on the torch.

“Dammit, Lance. Focus. What kind of caps?”

“Bridgewire.”

“Sun cord?”

“Maybe three hundred feet on a spool.”

“Got a pigstick?”

“Yeah.”

“Rounds?”

“Two cases. Assorted.”

“How about initiators?

“Yeah.”

“It sounds like you’ve got a very well-stocked van, Lance. Now tell me about the big stuff.”

“My... throat’s dry.”

“That’s because you’re afraid I’m going to burn you again. And I will, Lance, unless you focus. What else you got?”

“PENO.”

“Nice. That’s Finnish, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“How many bricks?”

“Six.”

“Anything else? Tell the truth now, Lance, or we’re gonna have a weenie roast.”

“We... we got a few M18A1s.”

Alex raises her good eyebrow.

“Really? Wow. That’s impressive. So far, so good. Now, the moment of truth.”

Alex leans forward, peering into his eyes.

“Where’s the van?”

Lance doesn’t say anything.

“You sure you want to play hard to get, Lance?”

His Adam’s apple bobbles up and down like a tetherball.

“If...
if
... I tell you, what are... what are you going to do to him?”

“I just want to borrow his van.”

“I don’t want him or his daughter to get hurt.”

Alex sits on the bed, running her hand over Lance’s chest.

“What is he to you? Best friend? Father figure? Fuck buddy? Caring about people never leads to anything but pain, Lance. Trust me. I know from experience. That’s why I’m going to tell you the truth. Lieutenant Lucky Andringa is as good as dead. And if his wife and daughter are home when I stop by, they’ll die too.”

Alex lightly pinches one of his nipples. Lance begins to cry.

“No tears, Lance. I just gave you a gift. I freed you from having to worry about him. It’s not your fault he’s dead. I’m the one that’s going to kill him. And there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. Now tell me where he lives.”

Lance turns away, burying his face in the pillow.

“You sure you don’t want to tell me? You’re going to tell me eventually.”

Nothing.

“Okay. Your choice.”

Alex picks up the duct tape, tears off a strip, and sticks it over his mouth while he thrashes back and forth. She runs her fingers through his hair, still sweaty from their sex.

“Thank you, Lance. I was hoping I’d get to try this out. Will you look how cute this pink handle is? It matches my nails.”

She smiles her half-smile, then descends with the blow torch.

I
was merging from Harlem Avenue into mid-afternoon traffic on the Kennedy when word came in that another floater had turned up in the Chicago River.

“I phoned you first, Mr. Chapa.” Zach Bridges, an intern at the news desk, had taken the call. “Just like you always tell me to.”

I steered with my knee for a moment, one hand on my cell and the other fiddling with the air conditioning. There was a snowflake symbol on the dial, meant to indicate
frigid.
It was lying to me, blowing tepid breaths in my face that did little to combat the sticky summer air. I settled for lowering the window enough to get a breeze but not so much that it disrupted my conversation.

“That was good of you, Zach. Remind me to talk to Sully about getting you a regular news beat.”

The kid got all excited but there was no reason for him to. It was an empty hope, he just hadn’t figured that out yet. The newspaper industry was dying, slowly, painfully. The Suburban Herald, my employer for the past fifteen years, was just like all the other rags that had gone terminal before anyone realized what was happening.

Reporters have always fought over stories with front page potential, but at least there was usually enough space to go around. These days, we often spend our time wrestling over every precious column inch.

“Is Sully around?”

“No, Mr. Chapa, he’s in another meeting with the accountants, all the editors are.”

I thanked Zach for the tip, then called Matt Sullivan’s line and left him a voicemail. I took the next off-ramp, crossed over the expressway, and headed back toward the Loop. I’d be on the story before my editor had a chance to wonder whether someone else should be instead.

My office is located in the western suburbs, but I was in the city that day following a lead from Nina Constentino, a pint-sized woman in her late sixties who offered me a cup of green tea and a well-used chair to sit in while I drank it. I passed on the tea, and standing would’ve been the wise choice.

“You’re my last hope, Mr. Chapa.”

“Please call me Alex.”

From the looks of it, Nina was wearing the same makeup she put on the day her husband went missing.

“Emil would never disappear like this. Not without telling me. It’s been two days now, and I know something bad has happened.”

Truth is I normally would’ve given her a gentle brush-off. People do sometimes get lost for a day or two. These stories pop up all the time.

“You’ve tried the police?”

“They came by, took my information. But they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to do anything. Said he hadn’t been gone long enough.”

“I don’t want to cause you any more worry, but have you tried the hospitals? Maybe he got in some sort of accident.”

She raised her voice, probably as much as her frail frame would allow. “I’ve called every hospital and clinic in Chicago asking for Emil or anyone unknown fitting his description. I’m not a fool, Mr. Chapa.”

“Alex,” I said gently.

She nodded, sniffled, then I lost her face to a yellowed, embroidered handkerchief that I would have bet was older than I was.

“I’m sorry, Alex. Didn’t mean to snap at you. I haven’t been able to sleep, and I’m a wreck. But I’ve tried the hospitals, and everyone we know, and the police, and I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

The handkerchief returned to her face, but she continued.

“This isn’t the sort of big story you like to be involved with, I know that. But even after forty years of marriage Emil still makes my heart jump. He’s all I have.”

I leaned in to comfort her, but thought better of it when the chair crackled and squealed.

“There are private detectives.”

“I called one, but he wanted to be paid much more than I can afford. Our finances lately, because of the business—well, I just don’t have it, Mr. Chapa.”

I felt for her, but didn’t see what I could do. Sadly, this wasn’t really news. Maybe if I spun it, took the human interest angle, something about how no one cares for the senior citizens in our society.

“I can write a story, print his picture. Maybe someone will recognize him.”

“That’s not enough. I need to go looking for him. Do you have a car?”

“Yes, but Mrs. Constentino—”

“Please. I’d go myself, but Emil has our car. I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

I let myself entertain the notion, cruising around Chicago with an elderly woman. For a moment I pictured something resembling
All the President’s Men
meets
Driving Miss Daisy
, and I wanted no part of it. But lately it had been kind of slow in the suburbs, and I’d grown tired of writing about the wife beaters, gang bangers, and sexual predators that crowd the police blotter. This would certainly be something different.

“Mrs. Constentino, you need to stay here in case he calls or shows up.”

“Does that mean you will you do it?”

I’d already decided to write the story. What could it hurt if I checked out some of Emil’s haunts and talked to a few people? It would be a way of getting background information.

“I can try.”

That brought a cautious smile to her face, the kind that reminds you why you became a reporter.

The Constentinos had been antique dealers for more than a quarter century. They made a decent living through the eighties and nineties, until the collectibles bubble burst near the end of the last decade.

“At first we thought the internet would be a godsend for us dealers. But it didn’t work out that way.”

She explained that quality items had become hard to find as amateurs flooded the business, and that’s why Emil drove to the city.

“He goes once a month to check in with some people who buy stuff at garage sales and thrift stores. We used to do that too, but it’s hard to find the energy anymore.”

“Do you sell these things online?”

“No, too much competition. We stick to mostly flea markets, and collectibles shows.”

“Can you tell me who he was planning to visit on this last trip?”

“Sure. But I already tried to call them.”

“I should double check.”

She handed me a small piece of lavender paper with three names and addresses written on it in textbook perfect longhand, and a photo of her husband.

“The first one is a man he’s dealt with for a while, the other two are new, I think,” she said, then waited for me to respond with a word of hope.

I wasn’t going to lie to her.

“I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,” I said, then walked to my car and drove away without looking back.

As soon as I pulled onto the expressway I put a call in to the Chicago branch of the FBI and asked for Special Agent Joseph Andrews.

“I’m telling you right up front, Al, I do not have the time to be doing you any favors right now.”

“Busy, huh?”

“Very.”

“I understand, and you know I would never waste your time.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I just need access to some IPASS records from two days ago,” I said as casually as I could, referring to Illinois’ automatic toll system which can make it easy to track a car’s movement, as long as the driver is registered for the program, which Emil Constentino was.

“Al, that’s a favor.”

“Not really. The driver of the car in question has been missing for two days. His wife believes he was driving into the city from Batavia, which means he would’ve passed through at least two toll booths.”

I heard him sigh, then silence. I’d been friends with Joe Andrews for more than twenty years, been best man at his wedding, a pallbearer at his father’s funeral, so I knew what was coming next.

“Goddamnit, Al,” another sigh, “what’s the plate number?”

Half an hour later, I was driving through the tunnel beneath the old Chicago post office when Andrews called me back and confirmed that the Constentino’s ten-year-old Chevy Impala had indeed passed through two eastbound toll booths along I-88.

“But that’s it, there’s no record of a return trip,” he added.

I thanked him, promised to check in later that day, then drove to the first address on the list. It turned out to be a small curio shop on Clark, situated in a corner of an eighty-year-old building, just north of the river.

It had once been a drugstore, complete with a lunch counter and regular customers. The business space next door looked like it had originally been part of a larger whole, and the two still shared a display window. Now one half was a coffee shop catering to twenty-somethings and poseurs, and the other was the store, crammed with a mish-mash of old junk, some of it valuable, most of it not.

I walked past collections of movie memorabilia, baseball pennants, and a dozen stacks of men’s magazines, to the middle of the store. A tan, very muscular man in a St. Louis Cardinals cap and faded blue t-shirt was kneeling next to a box of old comics, flipping through them. The guy I needed to talk to was manning the counter.

“Yeah, sure, I’m Sam Preston, who are you?”

Preston was tall and narrow, and he might’ve been an athlete, but I got the sense he didn’t come from that kind of family. Long, thin black hair draped his pale face.

“My name is Alex Chapa, I’m a reporter, and I’m looking for Emil Constentino.”