The Dead Caller from Chicago

by Jack Fredrickson

  The flame burned tiny at the tip of my fingers. I touched it to the others, and the whole packet flared. I threw it down the stairs. It landed on a wood step halfway down. For a moment it sputtered, benign. Then it found the rest of the little river of gasoline and it roared into full life, hurtling flames down into the basement. He screamed.

  I kicked the other, closed jug down the stairs and ran from the hell I’d unleashed.

  Forty-eight

  The dawn had warmed the day enough to change the snow to freezing drizzle. Twice we nearly fell as I led Amanda around the garage to the Jeep. She moved stiff-legged, her teeth chattering, her eyes wide, oblivious to the frigid rain.

  I eased her onto the passenger’s seat and was about to wrap her in my coat when a house door slammed behind me. I had a horrible image of Robinson on fire, coming after us. There was no time to duck back to look, no time to cover her with my coat. I slammed her door, turned to run to the driver’s side, and fell flat on the ice. I grabbed at the tail lamp, got up, and pulled myself around to the driver’s side.

  A shot sounded nearby. I started the Jeep but must have pressed the pedal down too hard. The wheels spun, bit, and sent us skidding across the fresh ice to crash into a garbage drum, killing the engine.

  I twisted the key, certain Robinson was but a few feet away, in flames, aiming. The engine sputtered and quit. I twisted the key again. This time the motor caught and roared into life. I let out the clutch and pointed us toward the center of the alley. We half slid, half wobbled down the alley and onto the cross street.

  Four-wheel drive is nice, but nothing’s nice on ice. The street was worse than a skating rink. Every time I tried to nudge us beyond ten miles an hour, the wheels broke loose and I’d start to slide. I could only crawl, one long block at a time.

  Behind me, high headlamps followed, the right size for a big SUV like Robinson’s Escalade.

  Thompson Avenue, that main drag, was littered with wrecked cars. The ice storm had come too suddenly for the town’s salt truck, and early-morning drivers, passing through to jobs well away from Rivertown, were crashing everywhere, slamming catawampus into curbs and other cars inching down the street.

  Yet through it all, the high headlamps stayed a hundred yards behind, almost invisible in the freezing crystal rain.

  I chanced a look at Amanda. She sat stoically on the seat beside me, staring straight ahead, still wheezing deeply, desperate in her dark place to store more oxygen before someone came again with wire ties and silver tape.

  I crawled west along Thompson Avenue, thinking vaguely of a hospital a few miles down the road.

  I’d left my cell phone on the dash. I switched it on and called Wendell. I owed him that, and I needed help. He answered on the first ring.

  “I got her, Wendell,” I heard myself shout. “I got her.”

  “She’s safe?” he yelled.

  “Safe, but traumatized. Your man tailed Robinson back to his house?”

  “Yes, but Robinson left again, almost right away. I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “Robinson’s behind me. Call your man. See if he can get between us and Robinson.”

  “Let me talk to my daughter!”

  I put the phone on speaker and laid it on the dash. “She’s in shock,” I yelled. “Call your man, get Robinson off my tail.”

  We came to the north-south street I wanted. I took my foot off the gas and slid more than drove into a southbound turn. Halfway through, the Jeep shuddered and broke loose on the ice. Horns began blaring as we started to skid into the oncoming lanes.

  I fed the Jeep more gas and found traction enough to push us into the correct lane. Amanda’s breathing began to slow, though she was nowhere nearby.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Wendell shouted from the tinny phone speaker. “Robinson just turned south behind you.”

  “She’s in deep shock. I’m taking her to DuPage General.”

  “Bring her to me!”

  “She’s not communicating. The hospital’s just a few miles ahead.”

  “Damn it, Elstrom, she won’t be protected there,” he yelled. “Bring her to Lake Shore Drive.”

  Her condo building was heavy with security, and Wendell could make it even heavier … but it was so many miles east.

  “Is your man behind Robinson?”

  “Right on his tail, but he’s driving a little crackerbox Honda, slipping all over the road. Robinson’s got a big SUV.”

  I slowed. The big headlamps behind me did not.

  I turned the wheel gently to the left. It was enough. The Jeep teetered and broke into a slide, but this one I’d anticipated. I turned the wheel a little more, pressed gently on the accelerator, and spun us just enough to head back north.

  I watched the rearview. No headlamps were turning behind us.

  “We’re good, Wendell,” I shouted at the phone. “I don’t think he followed.”

  “I’m not hearing from my man,” he said.

  We drove north, then east, dodging crashed cars or other cars poking gingerly along, like us. I watched my rearview incessantly for the high headlamps, but the lights behind us were ever changing, not constant. I could only hope Robinson had slid into a ditch.

  Amanda sat robotlike, staring straight ahead, but her breathing had slowed to normal.

  Thirty minutes later, we crawled up onto the Eisenhower Expressway and headed toward Chicago. Wendell was an incessant chatter from the phone on the dash. Sometimes I yelled something back; mostly I ignored him. Amanda said nothing at all.

  Salt trucks were moving in both directions, but they made the road more dangerous. Drivers were hitting the salted spots and thinking they could speed up with the new traction, only to lose control when they hit the next slick patch. They went into the guardrails or, worse, other cars. Somehow, a thin trickle of traffic kept moving through it all, toward Chicago.

  We’d just entered the city limits when a pair of taillights ahead suddenly shot across all three lanes of the expressway, headed straight for the vertical wall of a cement overpass. The hundred taillights between us lit up like gun bursts, their drivers slipping and angling to avoid being hit. Some made it; some didn’t. Cars crashed in all three lanes. The grandmother of all gridlocks was about to commence.

  I couldn’t risk being stopped. The Racine Avenue exit ramp was ahead, to my right. I angled across all three lanes, half driving, sometimes skidding. High-beam headlamps flashed behind me; horns blared as I followed my reckless diagonal. Then I was there. The exit ramp loomed up. I downshifted. By some miracle, the Jeep slowed without breaking loose.

  A red light stopped me at Racine. I looked over at Amanda. She seemed to be barely breathing, as though she were slipping into some deeper form of shock.

  “You there, Wendell?” I shouted.

  Some sort of crackling came back from my phone.

  “Have a doctor waiting,” I yelled. “She’s deeper in shock.”

  The phone crackled and went silent.

  A pair of high headlamps was coming up behind me. The signal ahead was still red, but the headlamps behind me weren’t slowing. I watched them get larger. At twenty feet I recognized the burgundy paint and the Cadillac crest on the grill.

  I ground the shifter into first gear and shot out into a hole in the traffic moving slowly along Racine.

  The Escalade followed.

  “Wendell, where’s your man?” I screamed at the phone on the dash.

  “… to voice mail … after … rings.” Even though he was breaking up through the tinny speaker, I could hear the defensiveness in his voice. He must have heard the fear in mine. “Robinson?”

  “He’s got a gun, Wendell.”

  “I’ll … police!” he shouted.

  “In this ice storm? Not even your clout will get them here in time.” An image flashed in my mind then, of alleys and garages. “I’m going to try to lose him,” I yelled. “Make sure people are waiting with guns.”

  “They’re alrea
dy—”

  “Someone is following us?” Amanda asked calmly, more startling than the sound of any gunshot.

  I glanced in the rearview. The big headlamps were fifty feet back. He’d not gained on us.

  “A guy named Robinson. We can talk later.”

  “A man was down in the basement, whistling. I could hear him through the door. Was that the man?”

  “Did you see that canvas on the washtubs as we ran out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Robinson was beginning to sponge away the acrylics.”

  “Leo’s.”

  “Not Leo’s; mine. I made a copy.”

  She inhaled sharply and began giggling, loud and hysterical. “Now what?”

  “I know tricks,” I said.

  Forty-nine

  I didn’t know tricks so much as I knew alleys, from the years when investigating hinky insurance claims was a big chunk of my business. There were good alleys in the old neighborhoods west of the city. That day, I needed to find one that was perfect.

  The salters hadn’t gotten north of the expressway. Hardly any cars were out. I zigzagged north on the ice-sheeted streets as fast as I dared, through gentrified blocks of dance and design studios, yupped-up fusion restaurants, and places looking to sell scarves, silk flowers, and anything else that would fetch a price greater than its utility. The sidewalks were barren, too. The young and fancy were taking an ice day off, staying indoors, sipping warm designer coffees and admiring their shoes.

  I would have liked that, too, instead of being chased by a relentless lunatic with a gun.

  Sometimes I gained a hundred yards and couldn’t see him at all for the drizzle and the mist, only to have his headlamps charge up bright in my rearview. It would have been ludicrous, a chase done at turtle speed, except for his intent. The painting propped on the washtubs must have gone up in flames, and he needed Amanda now for the two million she’d fetch.

  I turned west, into the bomb-zone old neighborhoods that would never feel the golden brush of gentrification. Many of the old graystones were gone, torched for insurance and pushed over. Oddly, almost all the garages remained, and that might be enough.

  I swung left, then right, then darted into an alley. Loose gravel and crumbled asphalt poked up through the ice like cleats on a golf shoe, good for traction for me, but good for him, too. Cars were parked parallel to garage doors, and garbage barrels were scattered here and there, also narrowing the way.

  I breezed through. So did he, so close at times I could hear his huge tires banging in the potholes. Once I chanced a look back. His head was pure white. He’d grabbed a towel for his burns.

  The alley was too wide. I popped out onto the cross street no farther ahead of him than I’d been. I needed narrower.

  I swung right, too fast, and skidded, barely missing a car parked at the next corner. I looked back. He’d come out skidding, too, but he was gaining ground. His Escalade was heavy and more sure-footed. Less than twenty-five yards separated us.

  Crazily, I’d forgotten about Amanda. I shot a glance over. Her body was rigid; her breathing had gone back to shallow. She’d slipped back into the safety of deep shock.

  There was another alley. I turned in. Again I found traction in crumbling asphalt and potholes; again I blew past garbage barrels and parked cars. Twice I heard him strike things, sending garbage barrels banging into garages and cars, but he never slowed. His big Cadillac engine thrummed above the whine of my Jeep. He was gaining even more ground.

  Something sparked off a cleat on a telephone pole ahead. I looked back. His hand was out his window. He was firing, despite the potholes. If he got much closer, he wouldn’t miss.

  The alley continued on past the cross street. There was a vague, dark narrowing in the distance. I couldn’t slow; his engine was loud behind me. I hit the cross street. My wheels broke loose, sending me into a fishtail. I pressed down on the accelerator; somehow we shot into the next alley headed straight.

  I got close and recognized the darkness. Several toughs in long black leather coats and watch caps stood warming themselves around a barrel fire they’d tugged into the middle of the alley. Just behind them was a shiny blue Chevy Caprice, set to ride high on oversized wheels.

  I slowed for an instant. The barrel fire was there for warmth, but it was also there as a barrier, to warn off people from the high-riding masterpiece. Right-thinking alley users were expected to back up and find another place to park until the Chevy was no longer there. Such were the rules of the thugs who controlled that alley.

  The Escalade roared loudly behind me.

  I pressed down on the accelerator. Hearing acceleration instead of reversal, the long-coats turned to stare slack-jawed at the breach of reason that was bearing down on them. Hands jammed into the leather coats. They weren’t reaching for jellybeans.

  I snuck a last glance behind me. He was close, and gaining fast.

  I saw only fragments of what happened next, because I could only focus on the gap that was shrinking fast in front of me. A wrong twitch to the left and we’d slam into a garage. A wrong one to the right and we’d hit the barrel fire and be dead of gunshots by the time we crashed into the Chevy.

  Their arms were raised. Their guns were out.

  I twitched left, no more than a couple of inches but enough to show respect, and charged into the narrow opening. Incredibly, we were through in an instant, accompanied by no sounds of scraping metal, splintering wood, or guns. We’d gotten past clean.

  Not so the Escalade. Metal hit metal, hard. Guns erupted everywhere. I slowed to look behind.

  Hell was raining from the sky. Small fires were falling, burning remnants from the barrel. Others lay strewn on the asphalt and, most disrespectfully, on the black vinyl top of the shiny blue Chevy that rested, crumpled like a cheap toy, against the side of a garage.

  The toughs stood surrounding the Escalade, aiming guns at its shattered windshield. Steam hissed from what was left of its grille. I could not see Robinson’s towel-wrapped head.

  I turned right, and left, and finally found streets that had been well salted.

  “We’re good, Wendell,” I shouted at the phone on the dash.

  He did not respond. I picked up the phone. The battery was dead. I laughed.

  Thirty minutes later, I drove up the curved driveway of Amanda’s high-rise.

  Wendell had indeed summoned up troops. A man with a medical bag on his lap sat inside the opened door of a Mercedes. The garage attendant, an always affable, always armed fellow, stood under a huge black umbrella, out in the drizzle. As did three thickset men who had to belong to Wendell’s private security force. Jarobi stood holding an umbrella, talking to two uniformed Chicago police officers sitting in a cruiser.

  Wendell, the great man himself, shared an umbrella with a slick, silver-haired man. Though we’d never been introduced, because we’d never travel in the same circles, I knew him. He was a wealthy commodities trader named Richard Rudolph, and he always seemed to be at Amanda’s side every time a newspaper photographer ran pictures of her at a charity event.

  After I slid slightly to a stop, it was Rudolph who hurried to open Amanda’s door. Her breathing had stabilized, and she appeared to have regained her focus. She looked over at me looking at the silver-maned snake. She might have given me a smile, but I don’t know; Rudolph slid her out so quickly I couldn’t be sure. Her father came up then, and together the six-legged creature of affluence, joined in ways I could only imagine, walked under the canopy and through the door, trailed by the doctor, security men, and cops that would keep her safe.

  Not even Jarobi came over to say anything.

  It was just as well. I turned around and drove back onto Lake Shore Drive. I wanted to be absolutely alone.

  I drove north on Lake Shore Drive, putting more miles between Amanda and me. There was little traffic, no ice, and, despite my incessant checking, no Escalades.

  My cell phone rang. It was Jarobi. “Care to share
before the Rivertown police pick you up for arson?”

  “There’s a fire?”

  “Apparently a house belonging to Rivertown’s chief building inspector caught fire early this morning. Reports are sketchy, other than it appears the fire originated in the basement. There are persons of interest. A rather shabby-looking fellow and a disheveled woman were seen leaving the bungalow in a rusted red Jeep adorned with much silver tape.”

  “That’s the problem with those eyesore Jeeps. There are hundreds of them. Too many are red, and most have been patched with silver tape.”

  “Mr. Phelps whisked his daughter up into her condo. She needed medical attention, so I did not intrude.”

  “If Robinson’s basement hasn’t been totally destroyed, you’ll find traces of Amanda being held hostage there.”

  “Speaking of that painting…?”

  “There might be traces of it, or he might have grabbed it on his way out.”

  “Where is he?”

  “West Side, in a bad place, likely dead of gunshot.”

  Suddenly, I was numb with fatigue. Other than snatches on the plane, returning from L.A., I couldn’t remember when I’d last slept.

  Jarobi must have heard it in my voice. “Where are you?”

  “North Avenue Beach.”

  “Pull into the parking lot. I’ll send a blue-and-white to escort you home. And Elstrom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep that Peacemaker handy until we find Robinson.”

  “Peacemaker?” I asked, too tired for puzzles.

  “That old Colt you were waving, the first time I came to your place. It’s a variation of the old single-action Colts they used in the Wild, Wild West. They called them Peacemakers. Keep it handy until we find Robinson.”

  “It was stolen,” I managed to offer up. It was better than saying I’d dropped the gun in Robinson’s basement, where someone was sure to find it, a cop or a fireman, and trace it to a man lying under loose stones.

  It was a worry for a more alert man. I needed sleep.

  An officer pulled up in a marked Chicago car then and followed me back to Rivertown. He settled back in the driver’s seat as I walked up to my door. He was going to stay.