“Birthmarks?” Barlow shrugs. “Tattoos?”
“But she had them?”
Barlow nods, then reaches to check the screen of his cell phone. “So I’ve been told. I have never met the woman.”
Heat rises on my neck. I throw Barlow a threat that seems to scare the shit out of everyone else. “And your friend Mr. Gryphon? Should I call him too?”
Barlow holds the smile, unaffected. “By all means, Bill, if you believe that will help.”
Chapter 9
Susie Devereux
Saturday, 3:00 p.m.
The elevator pings its return to the sixteenth floor. It opens for Bill Owens, then closes behind his broad shoulders and will now lower him sixteen floors to safety. His stars aligned; good for him. Anne’s university mate and I will chat, but that will be after James W. Barlow Jr. and I have our reunion.
The elevator begins its drop. I rewrap the gray-checked keffiyeh across my face, hair, and neck, count three, then step to Barlow’s office doors, slip through, sprint the carpeted hall to his door, and run straight at his desk with my Glock 21 leveled at his head.
“Good to see ya, James.”
Barlow reaches for his desk drawer.
“Bang!”
Barlow jolts backward in his executive chair.
“Don’t make me kill you.” I round his desk, kick his chair and him toward the window behind him. “My partners would. By ‘partners,’ I mean Anne and Siri. Tommy and Cyril are dead in the Camagüey Breaks. You remember Tommy and Cyril?”
Barlow freezes his hands in front of him, inhales to begin his lie—
“No thanks.” I aim my pistol at his forehead.
“Susan. Allow me to clear your misconceptions—”
“No. Allow me.” I step closer with the pistol. “Here’s how we got to the Camagüey Breaks: In 2002, Sportsman’s racetrack goes broke. A year later the track is sold to the city of Cicero. You act as Cicero’s legal advisor. To pad your fee, you sift through cabinets of papers. In one of ’em you stumble upon Eddie O’Hare’s files from back in the day—clues that support the Capone gold treasure stories you’d been party to all your life.
“You take the possibility of the Capone gold to Grossfeld. Dave puts up initial money as his part of the partnership. Anne Bonny knows the Caribbean. Dave uses Bill Owens’s name to meet with her in Port Royal; Anne comes to Siri and me in Santiago. We have ideas; the ideas need more capital than Grossfeld has.
“Dave goes to you. You say ‘no problem’ and deliver the financing. Siri, Anne, and I spend five years chasing the gold.
“But you lied. The money you put up to finance the hunt wasn’t yours, it was the Gryphon’s. Him and Cranston Piccard are big cats who like to play with their food before they eat it. They get tired of waiting for us to find the gold, or they decided they’re being cheated. You and Dave try to give them me and my clues to save yourselves and your shares.”
I unwrap the keffiyeh. “Stand up. Walk to your door and close it.”
Barlow lowers his hands, feigns comfort while he reads me for weakness. Barlow reads juries for a living; he figures my sentiments correctly, walks to the door, and closes it.
“Sit on the floor; back against the door.”
“I think not.” Barlow gestures to a green side chair at his desk. “Please. Have a seat, Ms. Devereux. We’ll settle our dispute. Like adults.”
I raise my chin to show the raw garrote welt that circles my neck. “Last night outside Hialeah Racetrack, two miles from Little Haiti, I ‘spoke’ with representatives of Cranston Piccard and the Gryphon. They wanted me and the clues.”
“I’m sorry. None of this . . . unpleasantness was necessary.”
“Unpleasantness? Sit on the floor, your back to the door, or I put a bullet in your stomach, search your office, then grab lunch and eat it while you die.”
Barlow frowns and nods toward the chairs. “Please. I’m too old to sit on the floor.” He walks to a green chair, sits, and points to the other green chair. “I know you to be an angry woman, but not unreasonable.”
I stand behind the other chair, tell him: “Odd, huh? I come out of rehab and hiding—three years of hospitals and hideouts—dangle myself as bait, and bingo, your people are everywhere I am, or used to be.”
Barlow stares at me, not the Glock, and says, “Dave Grossfeld is a client of this law firm, not ‘my people’ . . . in spite of the fantasy your friend Anne Bonny continues to conjure. Dave Grossfeld double-crossed you three years ago, and he double-crossed me as well. My part in his treasure hunt was as his lawyer. If he were successful, I would receive a contingency fee. All legal, all aboveboard.”
“Oh. So, you’re just Dave’s innocent lawyer. Crying shame the facts don’t support that.”
“But the facts do . . .” Barlow floats his eyebrows for effect. “Whether you and your compatriots like it or not.”
“How about Cranston Piccard. It was him who bought the five truckloads of stuff from Sportsman’s, wasn’t it? He hired you to front for him. You guessed what he was looking for. Then you fucked him. And us.”
Barlow doesn’t answer.
I aim the Glock. “One knee at a time, then each ankle, then the shoulders. If you don’t die, you’ll be in replacement surgeries the rest of your life.”
Barlow says, “I have known Cranston Piccard a long time, since the 1980s, my days in Virginia.”
“Not Virginia. CIA. Both of you. When’d you last speak to Piccard?”
Barlow shrugs, disinterested in remembering Cranston Piccard any further. I don’t feel that way. Barlow inhales in mock surrender. “Cranston Piccard is—”
“A fucking hate crime in a tropical white suit.” I aim at Barlow’s left knee. “A slime-ball bureaucrat conduit-confrere shadow diplomat. A CIA station chief who went bamboo when I was still a teenager. And not unlike your miserable fucking self, a player in the government-crime-business partnerships that govern our planet. Piccard’s just bigger.”
Barlow feigns frustration.
I show Barlow the suicide attempt that scars one of my wrists. “You and Dave got our treasure-hunt financing from that fucking red-market monster, but forgot to tell us.”
“You were late on your performance and unresponsive. Numerous meetings were requested to detail your progress that you declined to take.” Barlow shrugs. “Whoever it was who attacked you, it wasn’t me.”
“It was the Gryphon’s boats that attacked us, and you know it. Him and your pal Piccard.”
“I know no such thing.”
I shoot Barlow in the left knee.
Barlow screams, careens out of the chair, and balls fetal. His office now smells like blood and cordite.
“My friends on the boat . . . they died. Did I just tell you that?” I scan Barlow’s opulent office, adding time and self-control before I continue. “I had to shoot Tommy . . .” Breath catches in my throat. I cough to clear it. “Tommy was the first man I thought I could marry. And I had to shoot him so the Gryphon and Piccard couldn’t take him alive. Put him in their goddamn gibbets.”
Barlow rocks against the pain, squeezing his leg to his torso.
“The last three years I’ve thought a lot about how I’d kill you.” Pause, room scan, heart-rate reduction. “And Dave Grossfeld. And Piccard. And the Gryphon.” My eyes return to Barlow on the floor. “And, gosh, here we are.”
Through bit teeth, Barlow spits: “I didn’t betray you.”
“Three things will save you, if I get all three: Give me Astor Argyle. Give me the Barbancourt bottle. And give me a way to lure Cranston Piccard and the Gryphon out of the groves. All three, or you die here on your carpet.”
Barlow blurts: “Bill Owens. He has Astor Argyle. And the rhum bottles, or will. His number is on my desk. He’s bringing them to me.”
I back away to the desk, reac
h behind me, and grab the number. Truth check: “Is Bill Owens the fellow who just left here?”
Barlow nods, face contorted against the pain.
“Where’s he going?”
“Grossfeld’s Moving and Storage. To get the bottles and the picture.”
“Bottles plural? You’re wrong there; I already have one. It’s why I’m here.” I scan the office again, looking for the other bottle. “For your sake I hope it’s here.”
I shoot Barlow in the other knee. He screams and rocks onto his back.
“The bottle, or the next bullet’s in your stomach.”
Barlow pants, whimpers, then growls: “I don’t have it.”
I step to the desk, rip his landline out of the floor jack, and begin popping cabinets in his long credenza. Door no. 3 has Barlow’s Capone gold file but no bottle. I grab the file, then Barlow’s cell phone off the desk and walk back to him bleeding on the rug.
Standing, I straddle Barlow’s chest. “As of now, we are officially no longer partners.” I make a one-inch smile. “Good news. I can’t afford to lose your boy Bill before he finds me the rest of the clues. Meaning there’s not sufficient time to kill you the way you deserve. But I absolutely intend to kill you. You try not to bleed to death. I’ll call 911 when I clear the lobby.”
Barlow rolls to vomit, doesn’t, and focuses on the Glock.
I squat so he can see my eyes at the other end of the barrel. “I know you’re worried about Piccard’s madness, and you should be. And you’re sure as fuck scared of the Gryphon. But I intend to kill both of them, so think of me, not Piccard, whenever you see a shadow. Sooner or later, I’ll be the one with teeth.”
Chapter 10
Bill Owens
The cab south from Barlow’s office to my Citroën takes nine minutes and $8. The call to Jon Eig is free. At 4:00 p.m. I exit the expressway. I’ve added a 9 mm Beretta to my pants.
Two blocks from Grossfeld’s warehouse, I pull into an alley that smells like the dumpsters that line it. Jon Eig is parked where he’s supposed to be. We meet window-to-window, engines running. I say, “Ready?”
“I told you, I don’t do burglaries.”
“Not a burglary, Jon, I have keys and the alarm code. Dave gave me permission. You want to jam Barlow; I want to hear your offer. This is where we talk.”
Eig says, “I’m listening.”
“Is the DEA in this? Barlow-Dave-Bahamas? Is that how you knew I was there?”
Shrug.
“The publicity for Get Capone said a US attorney’s son slipped you a cache of ten thousand documents. Yes or no, was the gold mentioned and do you believe it’s real?”
“Barlow Jr. paid you to go to Rum Cay, a part of the world he’d avoid reconnecting with if he could.”
“That ain’t an answer.”
“Yes, it is. Back in the ’80s, your employer lawyered for the CIA. He resigned during the murder investigation of a green-card mercenary named Sile Howat, killed five miles from CIA offices in Odricks Corner, Virginia. Barlow’s beat was the Caribbean. He worked with a number of malignant characters before and after Haitian president Bébé Doc Duvalier was toppled in the 1986 coup.”
“And you worked with him; knew about the gold?”
“Something new put Barlow back on the hunt, a hunt his father would’ve put him on while Jr. was at the CIA.”
“Anything in those US attorney docs about the Hawthorne Kennel Club?”
Eig reads me before answering. “Yeah.”
“I heard that a greyhound named Astor Argyle might fit somehow. Maybe his owners, breeders, who knows? This dog won a big race in 1927.”
Eig nods. “You obviously don’t play the dogs.”
“Thank you.”
Eig laughs for the first time. “What? Horses are better?”
“Jesus Christ, Jon, horses are the sport of kings. Greyhounds chase a plastic rabbit—”
“That Eddie O’Hare stole the patent on.”
A horn blares on North Avenue. I jolt to the mirror. A white van is parked across North Avenue at the mouth of our alley. Down the block from the van is a taxi, a Flash Cab. Like the one that might have been behind me before and after I picked up my car. Probably coincidence. The cabdriver is waving a car past his cab.
“So,” I say, “you heard of Astor Argyle?”
“I know a Chicago cop who has a win picture from the race you mentioned. Biggest dog race ever run at Hawthorne, or in Chicago for that matter. The picture would have Astor Argyle’s owners and trainer in the photo.”
“Where?” I check the van in my mirror.
“On the cop’s wall.”
“Where’s the wall?”
“Are you willing to wear a wire on Barlow?”
“Everywhere but the steam room. Where’s the wall that has the photo?”
“In the Hardscrabble. Bridgeport. Better we take one car. Yours.”
“You bet.”
Wanting to share my car is proof Jon Eig does not deal with loan sharks. Or it’s proof that his current situation is worse than mine. I check the van and the Flash Cab again, then tell Eig to hit reverse and follow me out of the alley, away from North Avenue.
***
In my car, Eig and I exit the expressway south of the river, hit Wentworth Avenue below Chinatown, cut west into what’s left of Bridgeport, the working-class, ancestral home of the Daley machine. And now home to one Astor Argyle, everyone’s suddenly priceless racetrack artifact.
Ten short blocks south looms Loef Brummel’s Canaryville.
The car in front of us stops at Halsted. We’re trapped at the light. My pulse adds twenty points. Behind us, Bridgeport is tidy bungalows; ahead the neighborhood changes to three and six flats called the Hardscrabble. A giant shadow paints my hood, the Gothic steeple of St. Mary’s on Thirty-Second Street. I glance at Jon. “Why’d you say my history at Sportsman’s might kill me.”
Eig says, “Because your history is tied to Barlow and his dead father. Barlow’s into something that has him making phone calls to serious people; panic kind of calls.”
“How would you know who Barlow’s calling?”
“Could be somebody’s listening. Could be they mentioned something to me. Knowing I have those bills to pay.”
I fisheye Mr. Eig, “ex-journalist, biographer,” shadow man on a mission. “Have to be awful bad to make James W. Barlow Jr. panic.”
Under the Gothic steeple of St. Mary’s are four gargoyles. Gargoyles are like gryphons . . .
Eig is looking at them too. He says, “Yes, awfully bad.”
My Citroën creeps through the red light. We make two blocks and a fast left, then park down the block from Nick & Nora’s, one of the best hot-dog storefronts in the city, provided you’re willing to eat your lunch this close to Canaryville.
Eig points at Nick & Nora’s. “Belongs, in part, to Area 2 Homicide Lieutenant Denny Banahan. He’s from Canaryville, made news last year for killing an Outfit street captain and Nigerian heroin kingpin in our version of the French Connection.”
Swell, yet another Canaryville happy face, this one with a badge. Seems kinda odd that a guy with Banahan’s rep would own a hot-dog stand, but the Canaryville Irish are an odd lot, even the good guys—
Air brakes. Horn.
A hundred feet behind us, a CTA bus is stopped at the corner. Construction workers file out the bus’s back door; city workers file out the front. I stare for Loef Brummel’s crew. Three of the bus riders walk toward us. My hand goes to the Beretta—
Bus riders, dummy. Loef Brummel wouldn’t have his kidnappers ride the bus.
We exit my Citroën and walk across to Nick & Nora’s glass front door.
Inside, it’s hot-dog steamy; Chicago mustard and onions. One wall is covered with framed photos of Chicago writers, wrestlers, cops, racehorses, an
d posters from the Thin Man movies of the 1930s—Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy). Only one framed photograph has a greyhound in it, an eight-by-ten that’s probably Astor Argyle.
I cut to Eig—he’s looking at something out the window. I cut back to the counter and the woman behind it.
She’s late-twenties, artist beret, way too pretty to be making hot dogs in the Hardscrabble. Her iPod earbuds make her head bob to music I can’t hear. She smiles big. Too loud, she says: Kings of Leon, then offers me one earbud.
I smile back but decline. Her mustard-stained apron fits tight to a sporty figure and covers a Special Olympics volunteer T-shirt. I point at the Special O logo, then inhale to tell her I can get Flyers tickets behind the penalty box, a meet-and-greet with the players. She and I will—
“Over here.” Eig steps through all three empty tables to the greyhound picture. “Astor Argyle.”
I check the front window, then step to the wall.
Eig says, “You know Chip Ganassi? Car-racing billionaire. Spent $50 million to convert Sportsman’s from thoroughbreds to NASCAR.”
“Yeah, know of him. Gets credit for turning a Chicago institution into a vacant lot.”
Eig doesn’t apologize for knowing the Antichrist. “When I was researching Get Capone, Ganassi gave me stuff, this Astor Argyle photo was one of the last things, just before he and Bidwell signed the papers to dump Sportsman’s. I thought Tracy Moens should have it for that fabulous Herald piece she wrote about all the characters out there, the history. She thought the photo belonged in here, so here it is.”
“Ganassi give you any bottles of rum?”
“No.”
Eig waits for me to explain, then asks: “Was it Barlow who said Astor Argyle mattered?”
I lean my nose to the glass that protects the photo. “Not the dog itself; the photo. It was in the Sportsman’s offices, part of an inventory that didn’t get delivered.” Inside the frame is a yellowed typewritten card. It describes the half-mile race AA just won in 1:01. The card is dated December 16, 1927. Eight men crowd the photograph, four wearing straw boaters and seersucker jackets. Jackets like mine, but not slept in.
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