“Such beautiful things you have hanging here.”
Menotti glanced around. “Some are better than others.”
“That portrait fascinates me.”
“It is not for sale.” His tone was playful.
“I could never afford it if it were.” He rose and stood before the painting. It was a young woman, standing, hands joined in a way that seemed to draw her shoulders down, and great eyes that looked directly at Carl. He had never seen such a painting described in any Menotti catalog.
“I call it Young Jane. I painted her nude and then clothed her later, on request.”
The flight home was uneventful, but on the drive from the airport Carl heard on WBBM of the murder in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
3
Tuttle had told Hazel to keep on the phone until she contacted Carl Borloff. When finally he had the art historian on the line, Tuttle explained that he had been on the scene when the body of J. J. Rudolph was found in her office at Argyle House. “Sources tell me that you had entered into an agreement with Randolph.”
Tuttle held the phone away from his ear while Carl Borloff sputtered in response. He seemed to be denying that he had dealt with J. J. Rudolph. “The police have found the file in her office, Mr. Borloff.”
“What happened up there?”
“It would be easier to discuss this face-to-face.”
A long silence. Thus Napoleon must have pondered after Borodino. Borloff, too, decided to push on to Moscow. “Where?”
Tuttle was about to give the location of his office, but he didn’t like the thought of all the intervening time when the fish might get away.
“I’ll come for you, and then we can decide where to talk.” Borloff agreed.
When Tuttle came out of the inner office, Hazel indicated her approval of the way he had handled it. “Bring him here.”
“We’ll see.”
“You will want a witness.”
“My dear woman, have you ever heard of the sanctity of lawyer-client communications?”
“I’ll be here.”
Tuttle skipped down the four flights to his car. Never had the nonfunctioning of the elevator seemed less of an annoyance. He held in his hand the slip of paper on which Hazel had written Borloff’s name and address. Printed, actually. Strange woman.
The address turned out to be an apartment building, and the figure huddled in the shadows Carl Borloff. Tuttle switched his headlights on and off, not an effective maneuver in the afternoon sunlight. He tapped on the horn. The figure jumped. Tuttle opened the driver door, got half out of the car, and waved his tweed hat. “Borloff! Tuttle.”
The figure emerged from hiding and hurried to the car. Tuttle was back behind the wheel when Borloff slipped into the passenger seat. Immediately he put the car in motion.
“You’re a lawyer?”
“That’s right.”
“You have to help me.”
“Mr. Borloff, that is why I am here.”
Borloff’s manner relieved Tuttle of any residual sense of shame that he had because he had pursued the client rather than vice versa. Every lawyer pursues clients. The argument is over method. Given the nervous anxiety of his passenger, Tuttle dismissed the Jury Box as a place where they might consult. The Great Wall of China? This restaurant was the scene of many happy moments for Tuttle, but somehow it seemed inappropriate.
“Unfortunately, the elevator is temporarily out of order,” he said when he had swung into the caretaker’s parking space behind his building.
He hopped out and rounded the car to release Borloff, who was struggling with the seat belt. Tuttle had meant to warn him about that belt.
They mounted the four flights to Tuttle & Tuttle in silence. Pausing outside the door to get his breathing under control, Tuttle reached for the knob, opened the door, and gently pushed Borloff inside. He followed with an expectant smile. Hazel wasn’t there.
“She must have left a message on my desk,” Tuttle said.
Borloff came to a stop after going into the inner office. Tuttle tried to see it with a stranger’s eye. He hoped that the disarray suggested a busy man. He got the foam containers from the Great Wall into the wastebasket, making room for them by putting his foot on top of the cornucopia of refuse and stepping down. His foot stuck in the basket. He hobbled around to his chair, waving Borloff to a seat. “Just put those things anywhere. On the floor.”
Borloff’s mental state made him unaware of these details. Once seated, he began almost immediately to speak, a veritable volcanic flow of words. “I have been robbed,” he cried. “You have to get that money back for me.”
No need to prod this fellow with questions. Tuttle, working the basket off one foot with the other, listened in fascination. Borloff wanted to begin from the beginning, to tell Tuttle of first coming to the Chicago area, how he had acquainted himself with the sacred art of the city and then the great decision to launch Sacred Art. No parent could have spoken more proudly of its child. The mention of the Devere Foundation caught Tuttle’s ear.
“They are your patrons?”
“I have others, of course. Small benefactors. Without the Deveres, though, nothing would have happened.”
He looked almost wild-eyed at Tuttle. “I did not tell them about Argyle House.”
Tuttle nodded noncommittally. He was still in the learning stage. Borloff had taken a document from his inner pocket and was caressing it. After hesitating, he extended it to Tuttle.
“What is that?” Tuttle asked, not moving.
“I suppose a copy was found at Argyle House. Like a fool I made them a copy.”
Tuttle took the document, flipping rapidly through it, from the letterhead of Amos Cadbury down to the signatures of Jane Devere and Carl Borloff at the end. On the way he had seen the amount the Devere Foundation was turning over to Borloff. Unless he was mistaken, the sum would be repeated indefinitely.
“Until I complete the project.”
“Is it described here?” Again Tuttle fluttered the pages, imagining Amos Cadbury composing the agreement.
“Only by name. The Angelo Menotti Project.”
Tuttle listened in disbelief. The money pipeline had been opened to Carl Borloff to produce a book of photographs of stained glass windows. The little lawyer’s mind reeled. Was it for this that early generations of the Devere family had labored and amassed wealth? Had Jane Devere ever taken a good look at the beneficiary of her largesse? Tuttle could see Borloff in a lineup. He might have been one of the furtive figures emerging from equivocal movie theaters of old. He did not instill confidence in the Tuttle breast.
“All that will come out, I’m afraid.”
“I gave him a check for one hundred thousand dollars.” Borloff’s whisper would have been appropriate in the confessional.
Tuttle wanted to tip his tweed hat in reverent respect for such a sum. “Him?”
“Argyle House! I tried to stop payment on the check, but it has already been cashed.”
“You said him. Argyle House is, or was, a woman. J. J. Rudolph.”
“He worked with her. He took me there.”
“Where you wrote the check?”
“That was later.”
Tuttle paused. “Made out to whom?”
“To Charles!”
“Charles?”
“I met him in Barnes & Noble!”
Then came the incredible tale of how Borloff had fallen in with a hitherto complete stranger, been dazzled by the man’s apparent expertise in publishing, been taken to Kenosha to meet J. J. Rudolph. Once back in Chicago, Charles had given Borloff a first-class dinner. It was in the glow of brandies afterward that Carl had made out a check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to Charles. Tuttle’s hands were gripping the arms of his chair. Whatever the fate of that one hundred thousand dollars, there was more where that had come from.
“Charles what?”
“I don’t know!” Borloff got out his checkbook and held it up for Tuttle to see. In reco
rding the check he had written simply Charles.
“You must have written more than Charles on the check.”
“Of course I did.”
“Well?”
“I don’t remember! You must think me mad. What will the Deveres say?”
Tuttle sat forward. “Give me a dollar.”
“A dollar. What for?”
“A retainer. Thereby you become my client. I intend to get onto this as quickly as possible.”
Borloff eagerly got out a dollar.
Tuttle took it, rising. “For the nonce, I would recommend that you go into seclusion.”
4
“Kenosha?” Rebecca asked, contempt in her voice. “Why run a story that length on Kenosha? What’s it got to do with Fox River?”
Tetzel kept his counsel. When Menteur made the same comment, doubtless prompted by Rebecca, his only reply was “I was surprised when you ran the whole thing, Lyle.”
“It was a slow day.”
“I’m back on the murder of the artist, Bobby Newman.” Tetzel held his breath. It would be like Menteur to assign that to Rebecca, the fink. That fear was allayed by both Menteur’s silence and Rebecca’s crowing. Her piece on the women attendants in European men’s rooms had drawn a lot of comment on the Tribune blog, much of it scatalogical. Now Menteur wanted her to do a series on her European trip.
“Good idea,” Tetzel said.
“Did I ever tell you how the men in Naples treat women?” Rebecca asked.
“Several times.” Female tourists complained of having their bottoms pinched in crowds. Rebecca had probably backed through Naples without result.
An hour before, Tetzel had found a pensive Tuttle in the Jury Room, nursing a soft drink. He looked vaguely at Tetzel when he sat across from him. “This is more complicated than we thought, Gerry.”
“Nothing is more complicated than I thought.”
“What do you know about the Devere Foundation?”
“Look it up.”
“I have.” Tuttle paused. An ethical war seemed to be raging in the little lawyer’s unethical heart.
“Tell me about it.”
“I have a client.”
“That is news? It’s me, isn’t it?”
Tuttle was puzzled.
“We went to Kenosha as lawyer and client.”
This seemed to decide Tuttle. He sat forward. “Listen.”
Tetzel listened. His drink arrived, and he sipped it, following Tuttle’s story. Think of it as a confidential conversation between lawyer and client. The client Tuttle spoke of, however, was Carl Borloff.
“Agnes Lamb is on it, Tetzel. She was on the Bobby Newman murder. She is liaison with the Kenosha police. The tertium quid, the missing link, is Charles. She is bound to see that.”
“Who’s Charles?”
“That, my dear fellow, is precisely the question.”
Tuttle laid it out. His new client, Borloff, had turned over one hundred thousand dollars of the pile he had been granted by the Devere Foundation to produce a book of photographs of Angelo Menotti’s stained glass windows. Bobby Newman had been preparing illustrations for an Argyle House book. Tuttle had learned from Peanuts Pianone that a hooker who worked out of a room in the building where Newman’s loft was had spoken of a man in the case. Tuttle was assuming that that man and the man who had wheedled the money from Borloff were the same man.
“Borloff?”
“Borloff. Tetzel, put your investigative reporting skills to work on this.” He laid a piece of paper on the table. “That’s a photocopy Peanuts got for me. An artist’s sketch of Charles.”
Tetzel picked up the photocopy. The man looked like a choirboy, maybe because he wore his hair long, over his ears. Whoever had made the sketch had been fascinated by the cleft chin. Tetzel put it into his pocket, finished his drink, and stood. The two men looked at one another. An alliance had been cemented.
Tetzel went back across the street and up to police headquarters. Captain Keegan was at his desk, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand, papers in the other. He looked at Tetzel over the tops of his glasses.
“Good story on Kenosha.”
“I understand Officer Lamb is working with the Kenosha police.”
Keegan grunted.
“What have you learned about Charles?”
“Who’s Charles?”
“I asked you first.”
“Ask Cy or Agnes.”
“They in?”
“Do you want an escort?”
Cy wasn’t in his office, and Agnes was in Kenosha. On the way down in the elevator, Tetzel studied the photocopied sketch Tuttle had given him. Before getting into his car, he lit a cigarette. Traffic went east and west; pedestrians hurried along, oblivious of their surroundings. The sun glanced off plate glass, hurtful to the eyes. Tetzel’s heart went out to the scene. He might very well recall this moment and this scene when he wrote his memoirs. Little did I expect as I set off for Bobby Newman’s studio …
The blighted area off Dirksen was an unsavory area that Tetzel had seldom visited while sober. Vague memories of moral lapses disturbed the feeling that had been gathering in his breast for the past hours. He was onto something. There was a link between the studio loft at the top of the building he stood before and a brutal murder in Kenosha. Kenosha. Argyle House. Then, with a rush that made him catch his breath, he remembered. Argyle House was Madeline Schutz’s publisher. He turned on his heel and hurried back to his car.
Mintz was seated on the lawn in an old chair with a rifle over his knees. He scowled at Tetzel. “Rabbits.”
“What kind of gun is that?”
“An air gun.” Mintz lifted the rifle and cocked it.
Tetzel danced away from the wavering barrel. “Put that damned thing down.”
“I wish rabbits scared so easily.”
There was a pffft and then a ping. Mintz had shot at the birdbath and hit it. The old guy was elated. “I didn’t even aim.”
“Maybe that’s the secret. Miss Schutz doesn’t answer her bell.”
“It’s disconnected. These are her writing hours. I hook it up again when she’s done.”
“When’s that?”
The watch he reeled out of his pocket must have been the one he had used when he worked for the railroad. “Now.”
Tetzel waited while Mintz rewired the doorbell. Then he gave it a push and immediately started up the stairs.
“Better hurry. She takes a nap after her writing.”
“She tell you all her secrets?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. She is a real lady. She gave me some of her books.”
Tetzel turned at the landing, and the old voice fell away.
A door opened, and Madeline looked out. “Did you ring the bell?”
“I waited until you’d finished writing.”
“I don’t have anything but ice water,” she said as they went inside.
“My favorite drink.” While she took ice from the refrigerator, Tetzel got out the photocopy. He fought the impulse to show it to her at once. He did not want her to be distracted by other things. Too much rode on her reaction to the sketch. Tetzel imagined himself passing on the crucial discovery to Cy Horvath and Agnes Lamb.
“What’s that?” she asked, handing him a glass of ice water.
Ice water! she wasn’t kidding. He sipped it, grateful that there were no witnesses. “This is a sketch of the man who is very likely a murderer.”
She took it and glanced at it. “I’ve already seen this. Agnes Lamb showed it to me.”
Tetzel had often felt like this when an opponent turned over his hole card. He put the ice water angrily away. “What did you tell her?”
“That I had never seen anyone that looked like this picture.”
“I’ll bet she was disappointed.” The way he was now.
“I suppose. I have seen someone since who looks like that.”
“Where? When?”
“At Barnes & Noble.” She smiled and dipped
her head. “I was checking sales.”
“The bookstore on Dirksen?”
“Yes.”
“Madeline, you have to get out of here. You’re in danger. That man is a killer.”
“Why does that put me in danger?”
“He’s connected to Argyle House.”
Sometimes a simple declarative sentence contains a chapter of warnings, inferences, reasons. He helped her pack up her computer. He asked Mintz to come up.
“Look, Earl. Madeline is coming with me. I’ll go out to my car and drive away. In a few minutes I’ll be coming down the alley. Madeline will sprint out and hop in—”
Mintz looked devastated. “You’re eloping?”
Madeline assured him that her heart still belonged to him.
“You might keep that rifle handy, Earl,” Tetzel suggested.
Going out to his car, he had the creepy feeling that he was being watched. He got in, started the motor, and shifted into drive. Before he got to the corner, he had the sinking certitude that he had left Madeline unprotected. He should have called Keegan. He should have …
Two blocks away he turned, then soon turned again, entering an alley and bumping along it to the block where Madeline lived. He slowed, trying to identify the right garage. A figure arose from behind a trash container. Tetzel got the passenger door open, Madeline slid in, and they were off.
“See if you can get hold of Agnes,” he said.
“She gave me her cell phone number.”
“Call it.”
5
Edna was charmed by the young man who knocked on her office door and smiled in greeting.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Come in, come in.” She actually felt her heart flutter.
He strode toward her and extended his hand across the desk. “Charles Ruskin.”
He took the chair she indicated and looked around the office. “It still looks like the principal’s office.”
“Don’t tell me you were a pupil here.” He would not be the first former student of the school who had come back for a nostalgic visit and sat across from her like this. She had almost come to enjoy their reminiscing.
Stained Glass Page 14
