“I don’t know. I didn’t say you had to do it, just that it could be better for Amber if you did.”
Torasella considered. He seemed to have become tired. He thanked Kubiak quietly, said he would have to talk it over with his wife. Kubiak walked him to the door, shut it behind him, faced his own wife.
“Well?” Denise asked.
“Well, what?”
“You can’t tell me that all you can do for that poor man is to assign a couple of beat cops to see Amber to her car. You must have some other plan.”
“Yes, I do. I plan to keep using the garage entrance for at least the next six months so I don’t have to see that look on his face again.”
“Kubiak, the daughter of a man we know is being stalked.”
“I’m not so sure that’s necessarily the case. In fact, the chances are she’s closer to this Harold Walsh than Torasella thinks.”
“And, what do you base that conclusion on? Male instinct?”
“No, only that it would explain why she’d feel the need to protect Walsh by staying silent, and why her friends would do the same.”
“You might consider that because she has a modicum of pride, and is obviously intelligent, she simply might want to keep her parents out of the situation and handle it herself.”
“Well, she hasn’t managed to do either at this point, has she?”
“No, but that’s why we’re counting on you.”
“We?”
“I don’t use the garage entrance. I have to pass that look on Joe’s face every time I go out to get the paper.”
“So, get your news from the television for the next two weeks. In the meantime, I’ll do my part to keep Amber from landing on the police blotter on her way home from her classes. As for the rest of it, that’s up to her and her family.”
“Is it? I would have thought it was entirely up to Harold Walsh.”
They were wakened just before eight the next morning by a knock on their door from Purcell, the security guard who worked the day shift. He handed Kubiak an eight-by-ten manila envelope, explained that Torasella had asked him to swing by his house on the way to work and deliver the information Kubiak had requested concerning Amber. Evidently that conversation Joe had said he’d have to have with his wife had been a short one.
Kubiak dumped the envelope’s contents onto the kitchen table. There was a copy of Amber’s schedule, some friends’ names and addresses, a photo of Amber (probably from her high school yearbook; it was so posed and key lit that it expressed her true likeness less than the goofy one in her father’s wallet), a note from Torasella stating he had convinced her to commute to and from Hyde Park in the family car over the next week and a half, and another note folded and tucked inside a pastel envelope. That note had been written by Connie Torasella. In it, in neatly penned blue ink, she thanked Kubiak, praised Kubiak, and expressed a jumble of thoughts on daughters and aspirations, universities and inner cities, families and random cruelties. Kubiak refolded it, tucked it back into the envelope, reached for the phone.
“I hope you’re not thinking of calling your old friend Crawford,” Denise said. “You remember, the last time you dialed his number it nearly got you locked up over Christmas weekend on the Stacey Bennett homicide.”
“I remember, and it’s why I’m phoning someone who’s just down the hall from him but a little more . . . malleable. Your old friend, Danny Guie.”
Denise made a face. She shared Kubiak’s low opinion of Guie, but found even less use for the man who specialized in trading favors for favors. This early in the day, Kubiak had expected to leave a message, but Guie was already in his office at police headquarters at 3510 South Michigan. His tone, after Kubiak announced himself, was as cordial as that of a lazy salesman. Kubiak pictured him with his heels on his desk, asked him if he knew anyone working out of the University of Chicago campus.
“Who do you want me to know?”
“No one in particular. I just need an umbrella service.”
“Oh? Who’s out gunning for you this time?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for a student.”
“So give the university P.D. a call yourself. You need the number?”
“It’s not a one-shot deal. I need it over a short period of time. I have her schedule.”
“Okay.”
“And, I’d rather the student not be aware of the officers’ presence.”
A pause. “You want surveillance.”
“I just want them parked somewhere nearby while she walks to her car. I’m trying to prevent a family fracas. Her father thinks an old boyfriend is stalking her. She’s not cooperating, and I’m not even sure she and the boyfriend aren’t still an item.”
“Kids these days. I thought your daughter was all grown up and happily married.”
“She is.”
“So who is this girl, and what is she to you?”
“Nobody. I’ve never met her.” Kubiak held up the glamour photo of Amber, tossed it aside, wishing for another look at the wallet photo, instead. “I’m helping out her father, is all.”
There was a dismissive chuckle on the other end of the line, then a sigh. Kubiak pictured Guie dropping his feet from the corner of his desk and stretching to reach a pen. “How long a period are we talking about?”
“Nine or ten days, until the boyfriend goes back to school downstate.”
“You’re sure that’s all there is to it? I don’t want to get these guys involved in anything that’s going to come back at them.”
“That’s all there is.” Kubiak spelled Amber Torasella’s name.
“What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
“Why would they need that?”
“They probably won’t. I might.”
“Harold Walsh. H-a-r-o-l-d, never H-a-r-r-y. I can get Amber’s photo and schedule down to Hyde Park later this morning. Think you can get things set up by then?”
“Of course. You’re dealing with Guie. Anything else?”
“Not on this end. You never told me how things have been with you lately.”
“I’ll keep in touch.”
Kubiak lingered around the condo until midmorning to avoid traffic, made the drive down to Hyde Park in under a quarter of an hour, parked in the campus visitors’ lot on Fifty-fifth. The wind was up, and the late March air was cold; they combined to make the walk to the red brick building that housed the University of Chicago Police Department seem longer than the half block it was.
Inside, it was all old school, with narrow hallways of green walls and worn tile floors that made echoes of his footsteps. The door to the communications room opened to an area the size of a walk-in closet, where on one wall, a sheet of Lexan separated Kubiak from a much larger room containing everything and everyone else. He stated his business through it to the communications officer, a young man with a mustache, who listened with the low level of suspicion one expects to receive when talking through Lexan. At one point, the young man excused himself. Kubiak stared back at the other officers in the room staring at him, until they turned away and resumed their conversation. When the communications officer returned, his demeanor had softened a bit. He requested the information on Amber Torasella, and Kubiak slipped her schedule and photo through the slot at the bottom of the window. The man paged through the information, verified a point or two, making his own notations. Obviously Guie, as promised, had gotten through to someone.
Outside again, Kubiak turned in the direction away from his car. He had the urge to stroll about the century-old campus, maybe make his way down to the grassy Midway Plaisance and take in the students on break between classes. If the day had been warmer, he might have. Instead, he settled for a slightly longer hike back to the garage, circling the block, watching the serious-faced young men and women pass briskly between classroom buildings. It wasn’t until he was back inside his car, cranking the heater up, that he admitted to himself that there was only one student on this campus he was curious to see, and that was Amber
Torasella. He wasn’t sure why, supposed he didn’t need a reason. He knew the name of the building she was in at just this hour, might be directed to it by any passing student. But then what? Loiter on the corner and ogle her exit, only to be tackled down by the same cops he had just arranged to have shadow her to her car?
He was nearly as curious to get a gander at her boyfriend. Oak Park, where Mr. Harold Walsh was home from school and staying tucked warm with his parents when he wasn’t getting his kicks bruising women, was only a twenty-minute drive from here. Kubiak wondered what went through the mind of a kid like that every time his mother pounded on his bedroom door demanding he pick up after himself. He wasn’t about to find out, though, for the reasons he had explained to Joe Torasella.
He went through the contents of the manila envelope again, found the page listing the names and addresses of the friends Torasella and Connie had tried to contact: Jennifer Tucker, an old high-school pal of Amber’s with a Cicero address; a name with a phone number but no address, Bridgot Patterson; two names listed under the same address but with different phone numbers, Robert Fleming and Chad Sloan. The numbers of the two males were to cell phones, most certainly. The address they shared was on Ingleside, just south of Hyde Park Boulevard, a five-minute walk from where Kubiak was sitting.
He cut the engine, buttoned the top button of his coat. There were other ways to satisfy his curiosity, and maybe get an answer or two for Joe in the process.
This stretch of Ingleside was on the fringe of Hyde Park, where a turn of the corner could take you from pristine, historic, million-dollar homes to stacks of ramshackle, subsidized apartments, and vice versa. It had been some time since Kubiak had walked the neighborhood, and he was surprised to find most of the buildings on this particular block standing empty, either having been renovated or waiting to be. Somebody was sending the struggling student tenants out, but their replacements with the deep pockets had yet to arrive, or the developer had gone belly-up along with the economy. The tenants Kubiak was looking for lived on the top floor of a stone three-flat that could have used new windows, but other than that still looked respectable. He pressed the buzzer more than once, waited, with the wind burning his cheeks and whipping his coattails, until he was certain no one was home. On his way back to the car, he glanced up the alley at the vertical rows of oversized porches tacked on to the backs of the buildings, remembered what Torasella had said about Amber meeting Walsh at a porch party, realized, too, that there were a hell of a lot of back porches in the city of Chicago.
He had nothing else on his calendar besides lunch, so he decided to make the drive to Cicero and had better luck there. Jennifer Tucker worked nights as a waitress and was at home with her mother. Their house was on the south end of the suburb among grids of similar, closely spaced, one-story homes made of the same light color brick in the background of the photograph in Torasella’s wallet. In fact, Jennifer said, the Torasellas lived just a few blocks north, though she hadn’t seen Amber since some time over the holidays.
“That’s three months ago,” Kubiak said from the squat chair he had been offered after explaining he was an associate of Amber’s father. The two stared back at him unblinking, as if wondering why he would feel the need to define the length of time between the start of January and the end of March. They sat on the couch, side by side, the daughter in a robe, the mother in a housecoat, the only thing separating them a quarter century of life.
“Did you and Amber have a falling out?” he asked Jennifer.
“No. Why would you ask that?”
He supposed his defining the relatively short length of time between high-school graduation and sophomore year in college would do him no good. Funny, Jennifer was the only high-school friend of Amber’s whose name Torasella had written down, and hers was the first on the list. Kubiak had assumed they had been close.
The mother, perhaps reading his expression, added, “Amber is very busy at college. And Jennifer works nights.”
Kubiak continued to address Jennifer. “You know Harold Walsh?”
“I’ve met him.”
“What do you think of him?”
A shrug. Uncomfortable silence.
“Miss Tucker, Mrs. Tucker, Amber’s father is concerned about the relationship between her and this Harold Walsh. He did express that to you?”
Nods.
“I just can’t help but wonder why, if you think his concerns aren’t justified, you wouldn’t at least give him the comfort of offering him some assurances. And certainly if you think they might be—”
Again, the mother interceded. “But, we just couldn’t say one way or the other. Like Jennifer said, we haven’t seen Amber in some time.”
“I understand that.”
More nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Kubiak said, continuing to address Jennifer. “It’s just that Joe gave me the impression you two were good friends.”
There was a tiny flash in Jennifer’s eyes, nothing much, but the first sign of life he had seen in her.
He asked, “Can you think of someone Amber was close to in high school who I might talk to, someone she might have trusted?”
“There was no one closer to Amber in high school than me.”
“Oh?” The sharper the barbs on the lure, he thought, the quicker the hook.
“But we’re not in high school anymore. And it isn’t just me. She doesn’t see any of her old friends. That’s not our fault.”
“It’s Amber’s?”
“I’m not saying that. It’s just that she has her college friends now, and she hangs with them.”
“And you don’t.”
“That’s not my fault, either, although I wouldn’t choose to, given the choice.”
“Any reason in particular why you wouldn’t?”
“They’re snobs, is all. They’re just not very nice.”
“College friends. You mean like Robert Fleming and Chad Sloan?”
“Yes.”
“You think they might be able to tell me something about Harold Walsh?”
“I’m sure they could, seeing as how he’s part of that group. But I don’t know what. I can’t stand the lot of them, and if the feeling’s mutual, that’s fine by me.”
Kubiak nodded, told her again that he understood. This time he meant it.
If he was going to make another try at the student apartment on Ingleside, he didn’t want to venture far, so he decided to have his lunch around the corner at Hawthorne, as the thoroughbreds were running there for another few weeks yet. He bought a program, two hot dogs, and a beer, and carried them up to the third level outdoor viewing section, to a seat in the top row where the wind couldn’t reach him. He hadn’t been to Hawthorne in some time. The old track hadn’t changed, for better or worse: same old, electric tote board; same old, grumpy men at the betting windows; even the same old bird crap speckled over the front line of seats, dropped by the pigeons nesting in the eaves. Different pigeons, of course, these the far removed descendents of the original peckers and nesters.
He had taken his daughter, Maria, here occasionally when she was a kid. They had always sat up here, at her insistence, and she had become as interested in the birds as she was the horses. Kubiak at first had thought them merely a distraction due to the long periods between the races, but there were times when, even as the horses were coming down the stretch, his daughter’s eyes were on the birds. She had even given them names, would claim she recognized a pigeon or two from previous visits. Denise had put a stop to the visits when Maria became a teenager, fearing the influence a group of grizzled, old handicappers might have on a young lady “coming into her own,” so it had to be a dozen years or so since they were here together. He thought of her now, wished he’d had an idea earlier he might end up at the track so he could have phoned her and asked her to join him. She was probably home, doing whatever she did around the apartment until David got home from work. She had dropped out of college when she and David married, much to Denise’
s chagrin. He had no doubt that Denise had felt a pang of dark envy when Joe Torasella had handed over that wallet and bragged about Amber’s scholarships. Right now, though, Kubiak couldn’t have been more content with his daughter’s choices.
He stayed for five races, burning through much of the afternoon and most of the cash in his pocket, fought traffic back to Hyde Park, tried the doorbell on the apartment building on Ingleside again, and this time got buzzed inside. The door to the third floor opened to a stereotypical student apartment—a lot of space, a little furniture, the front room dominated by a flat-screen television tuned to ESPN. The volume on the television was muted, and a stereo in the corner was playing a song Kubiak had never heard. A young woman straightened from a slump on the couch, and used a remote to turn the stereo’s volume down to a polite level. She would introduce herself as Bridgot Patterson. The young man who had opened the door was the one with his name on the lease, Robert Fleming. He was tall, blond, with a square jaw and the inquisitive eyes of a student who might like to sit in the front row, and he didn’t offer a chair, but after introductions and Kubiak’s explanation of the reason for his visit, stated:
“You say you’re a friend of Mr. Torasella. May I ask, if he wanted to talk to us about Amber, why isn’t he here himself?”
“He told me that he tried talking to you and your roommate over the phone about her, but that you offered him very little cooperation.”
“Well, I suppose that would depend on his perception of cooperation, wouldn’t it?”
“Would it?”
“I can’t speak for Chad, but when I talked to Mr. Torasella, he simply wasn’t interested in hearing the answers I was trying to give him.”
Chad Sloan, Robert’s co-renter, had entered the room from the back of the apartment. He was holding a lit cigarette and a bottle of beer he had yet to open, was shorter than his roommate, darker, wiry. He leaned against the wall near the stereo, catching up on the conversation.
“What were the answers you were trying to give him?” Kubiak asked Robert.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 3
