The Dead Caller from Chicago

by Jack Fredrickson

  I watched his face. Nothing changed.

  “The burglary victim, Rudy Cassone, confronted Tebbins about the theft,” I went on. “Tebbins knew nothing about it. All he could tell Cassone was that Snark had taken off. So Cassone went away. Later that summer, Tebbins, or his boss, a man named Robinson, heard that Snark Evans was dead. But maybe Snark faked his own death, to throw Cassone off his trail. He could have changed his name and begun a new life somewhere far away.” I paused. “Until just a few days ago.”

  Leo’s thick eyebrows rose, like always when he was surprised. This time, though, there was no crinkling around his eyes to show that his mind was keeping up with his eyebrows.

  “Enter a couple of Hollywood types named Bennett,” I said.

  “Types named Bennett,” Leo repeated softly.

  I was speaking simply. His words were even simpler, childlike … and chilling.

  “Henny Bennett is a very successful producer of B-grade horror movies. As near as I can tell, Mindy, his wife, was successful mostly at being beautiful, at least until recently. Sadly, like us all, she’s gotten older, so I think Henny started casting around for a younger model. He found one, and now he’s divorcing Mindy. Each of them, Henny and Mindy, wants that painting that was stolen from Cassone so many years before. OK so far?”

  “OK so far,” Leo repeated in a monotone. He’d dropped his eyes back to the CD. I was losing him.

  “The painting is called the Daisy, and it once belonged to a Nazi. Actually, it might still legally belong to his descendants.”

  “Nazi?”

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “OK.”

  “The Daisy has not been seen since before World War II. Both Henny Bennett and Mindy Bennett are willing to pay huge dollars for the Daisy because each wants it for his or her collection.”

  “But it’s the Nazi’s.” His brow had wrinkled, but that could have been from squinting at the Brazilian goddess.

  “Or his family’s. Still, each of the Bennetts is willing to buy the painting, no matter who legally owns it, no questions asked—”

  He sighed and stood up. He walked to the bed and began taking off his white shirt.

  I went on, though I was now talking to myself. “Snark Evans, who’s been living under another name all these years, read of the battling Bennetts in a magazine somewhere. That made him remember the painting he’d stolen and given to a co-worker that summer.”

  A tiny noise came from the chair where he’d been sitting. I looked at him. He hadn’t heard it. He was putting on another of the shirts I’d brought, this a purple, orange, and yellow combination of trees, fruits, and birds wearing sombreros. He began buttoning the shirt.

  “Snark Evans wanted that painting back, because it was so valuable, and so he called that long-ago co-worker…” I stopped to look at the chair. The low hum had come again.

  “I’ve confused you?” I asked, standing up. I eased over to the chair and looked down. A cell phone lay on the seat, vibrating with a new message.

  “Dr. Feldott says she hears you whispering when you’re alone,” I said.

  He put on the orange slacks I’d brought and stepped to the mirror on the wall. His white teeth split his narrow head in two, smiling like he was breathing pure oxygen.

  “Ah,” he said to his image.

  “Damn it,” I said.

  He spun into the ridiculous small dance he always used when he’d put something over on me.

  “Samba,” he said.

  Fifty-three

  He sat down, still grinning a hundred-tooth grin. “Endora,” he said, glancing at the number that had set the phone to vibrating. “We mostly text.”

  It was why she hadn’t been angry when I’d told her she had to remain away from Rivertown. She knew Leo was well and coherent.

  I started with basics. “How did you get the phone?”

  “Are you carrying your usual five bucks, or do you have more?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, struggling for a preen, “I’ve got three hundred, though my prospects have returned to being grim. The phone?”

  The door opened, and the doctor came in with a boom box. “How are we doing?”

  Leo smiled at her vacuously. I told her we were getting along just fine.

  She set the boom box on the desk and smiled approvingly at Leo. Apparently, she saw his purple shirt and orange pants as progress toward better mental health. I could only question whether professionals like her knew anything at all.

  “I asked one of the teenaged girls who helps out around here,” he said, after the doctor left. “I told her I was hiding out from a gang of evil thugs. She’s such a sweet young thing, all innocence. She brought me a Walmart cell phone and says she’ll carry my secret to her grave.”

  “What nobility.”

  “I had to promise two hundred for the phone and the silence.”

  I peeled off ten of my dwindling twenties. “You texted Endora?”

  “I knew she and Ma would be worried sick. Don’t worry; I refused to tell her where I am, and I specifically forbade her from returning to Rivertown until you said things are safe.”

  “Things aren’t safe. You have to remain here.”

  “Who’s paying for this?”

  “I’m paying for part; the Bohemian’s covering the rest.”

  “Delightful. Then I’ll only have to reimburse Mr. Chernek.”

  “Tell me what you can.”

  “You found out I was hiding down the block?”

  I nodded.

  “My memory stops when I went back to my house one night to get food.” He arched his formidable eyebrows. “Do you know what set off my trauma?”

  “I found you disoriented. Maybe you hit your head?”

  He made a show of feeling the back of his skull. “There’s no bump,” he said, his eyes steady on mine.

  “Tell me a story, Leo, before I inflict real trauma on that head.”

  He shrugged, letting it go. “Shall I talk real slow, like you just did for me?”

  “Begin with Snark Evans at the garage that summer.”

  “You got most of it right. Snark was pinching small stuff from somewhere and peddling it out of his locker. I worked some side jobs for Mr. Tebbins at first, and you could see Snark’s eyes widen when we went into a new house. It was no mystery where he was getting some of his inventory. I think he kept his grabs small, so nothing much would get noticed. Still, I worried about getting my future wrecked, so I told Mr. Tebbins that I had studying to do at home and couldn’t work side jobs anymore. Mr. Tebbins knew what I was really saying. He was wise to Snark, because a couple of times, I saw him and Mr. Robinson checking Snark’s locker when he wasn’t around.”

  “Why not just quit using Snark on those installations?”

  “Mr. Tebbins had a good heart and was trying to straighten Snark out with extra pay, but he’d also been too good a salesman. He’d sold more systems than he could handle. He needed Snark. He needed me, too. He never forgave me for bailing on him.”

  “You never heard about Cassone?”

  “Today’s the first day I’ve heard the name. I must have been gone a week from the garage when Snark stole the painting.”

  “Mononucleosis? Really?”

  “It was the truth.” He put on a mock-offended look, adding slyly, “It’s the kissing disease, you know.”

  “Please continue.”

  “Snark stopped by my house early on what I now suspect was the morning after he stole from Cassone. He said he’d done a painting for his mother. The dumb thing was still wet. He said he was going to a funeral and asked me to hold on to it until he came back. He said to tell nobody about it. I didn’t believe his story, but no way I figured him for hot art, so I said sure. It was an ugly picture, just grays and browns and yellows. I put it out in the garage attic to dry and forgot about it.”

  “You really think he planned to come back for it?”

  “No, because he didn’t know w
hat it was worth. Snark wouldn’t peruse art catalogs and stolen painting bulletins, and there was no Internet back then, don’t forget.”

  “I checked. It was never reported stolen.”

  “I checked, too, but now I understand. Snark stole from a hood who didn’t have good title. He wanted to disguise it, thinking it would buy him some more time to get away.”

  “And for all these years, you had no idea the painting underneath was valuable?”

  “Just for three years, Dek.”

  “You learned it was the Daisy so soon?”

  “I worked for Sotheby’s right out of college, remember. One Saturday, I was up in the garage attic and came across Snark’s painting. As I said, I’d forgotten all about it. I brought it down. In the sunlight, the back of the canvas looked way too old for something Snark would have. I brought it into work on Monday and examined it with their equipment. It only took the morning to learn Snark had slopped over the last of Brueghel’s Four Flowers. Worse, my research showed who legally owned it.”

  “The descendants of the Nazi?”

  “He bought it legally, though for an impossibly low price.”

  “The proper thing was to return it to the Nazi’s heirs?”

  “Properly legal, but not properly moral. The German was an engineer, suspected of helping to set up the death camps. He died at the end of the war, before he could be charged.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how the family lost control of it. There’s no subsequent record of title, so technically it still belongs to them.”

  “That’s what you asked Amanda to double-check, a little while ago?”

  His face brightened. “You talked to Amanda?”

  “Only briefly.”

  “I wanted fresh eyes on my research. Anyway, what I learned wasn’t really helpful, because I still didn’t know where Snark stole it, or who stole it before that. Nor could I sell it and give the funds to survivors’ groups, because there was no way such a sale could be done quietly, or anonymously. The Nazi’s heirs were sure to hear about it, assert title, and get it back.”

  “So you set it aside and tried to forget about it.”

  “No. I went looking for Snark. He’d mentioned once that he came from Center Bridge, downstate, and that his sister had a sister-in-law who still lived there.”

  “You hadn’t heard he was dead?”

  “I never ran in to Mr. Tebbins or Mr. Robinson after I left the garage.”

  “I went down to Center Bridge.”

  His eyebrows danced. “What did you learn?”

  “Nothing about any sister’s sister-in-law. Everybody’s long gone.”

  “When I drove down, I did find the sister-in-law. She told me she’d heard Snark got shot in some jerkwater, fifty miles from Paducah. I called their police. They put me on to a retired cop who remembered Snark, mostly because of his name. Snark was killed by shots to the head, just weeks after he left Rivertown.”

  “Hood kill?” I asked.

  “Sure, now that you’ve told me the picture was swiped from a mobster. I figured Cassone would have noticed the theft right away and come to Mr. Tebbins. Mr. Tebbins was a decent guy, but no way he’d cover Snark on a grand theft. Mobster or no, he would have told Cassone that Snark was gone, maybe headed for Center Bridge.”

  “Why didn’t Snark tell him you had the painting?”

  “Snark was big-time dumb. He would have realized he’d left behind a very valuable picture, seeing as Cassone chased him all the way to Kentucky for it. To his last stupid breath, he must have believed he could con his way free and come back for it.”

  “And so things ended,” I said.

  “Until I got that call from someone who knew to pretend to be Snark. Right after you left, I got on the Internet and saw the news about the Bennetts and the Brueghels.”

  “Did you suspect it was Tebbins or Robinson who’d called?”

  “Never crossed my mind. I didn’t see how they could know I had the painting,” he said.

  “When Cassone showed up years later, to take another crack at what they might know about that painting, they realized Snark had never given it up before he got killed.”

  “Remember I just told you they had a master key for the lockers?” he asked, excited now. “One of them must have seen the picture before Snark painted it over. They must have turned on a computer, Googled, ‘daisy painting, stolen,’ and saw a picture they remembered.”

  “With huge dollar signs attached,” I said. “That got them thinking about you and Snark having lunch together every day. It was enough to risk a whispered call to you.”

  “Still, stealing a picture from me, even though it was stolen goods already, doesn’t sound like them. These were low-level guys, Dek, content to wash cars, tune trucks, and spread salt.” He leaned back, thinking. “Besides, I told my whispering caller I’d gotten rid of the painting a long time ago.”

  “You’ve never been much of a liar, Leo.”

  “I suppose I knew that.” He sighed. “For sure I was scared enough to send Ma and Endora away and hang back to see who’d come sniffing around. I had to figure out how to make this problem go away.”

  “Did you ever see anyone?” I asked, meaning the man he killed, Wozanga.

  He straightened up in his chair so he could look directly at me. Usually Leo could see right into the center of my brain.

  “No,” he said softly. “Did you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “How about that man that followed you to Eustace Island? Casssone?”

  Endora had told him everything she knew.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “How did Cassone know to come looking for me?”

  Endora would have heard about Tebbins, too. I had no option. “Cassone killed Tebbins.”

  “Ah, jeez.” For a moment he looked off, toward the doorway. Then, “Cassone made poor Mr. Tebbins give him my name.”

  “For sure, he would have said you hung around with Snark, back in the day. I’m guessing he also told Cassone you lied about not having the painting.” There was no need to mention Tebbins had been tortured and was begging for his life.

  “Cassone then took the painting?”

  “Yes, and I clubbed him in your backyard and took it back.”

  “Mr. Robinson then killed Cassone?” he asked.

  “He was watching your house and saw me drop Cassone and take the painting. After I left, he took the bat and later used it to club Cassone, after he shot him.”

  “Why?”

  “The shooting part was to get Cassone out of the way so he could sell the painting; the clubbing was revenge for Tebbins.”

  “Whoa! That’s too extreme. As I said, Dek, Mr. Robinson, like Mr. Tebbins, was a garage guy, not a killer.”

  “The clubbing was also to get me arrested for the murder and out of the way. My prints were on that bat.”

  “Mr. Robinson was a decent guy. I can’t see him getting that desperate.” He rubbed his eyes. He was getting too much information, too fast.

  I paused and asked the question that had been nagging at me the whole time we’d been talking. “You were never tempted to get the Daisy restored, quietly?”

  “No point,” he said after a moment.

  “Because it would be recognized and returned to the Nazi’s heirs?”

  “Just … no point.” His face got dark. “I need you to do something for me. I left Pa’s gun in that vacant house. I want you to go get it, before someone gets hurt.”

  “I grabbed it with your clothes.” It was true enough. I just couldn’t go further and tell him I’d lost the gun, which might link him to a killing if it were ever found.

  I stood up. The daylight was disappearing out the window.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “There’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

  “That’s because there’s a lot I don’t understand. Plus, I don’t have time.”

  “When will it be safe for me to go home?”

&nb
sp; “Soon.”

  “Because Robinson’s still out there?”

  “Plus two others, one driving a red car, one driving a black car.” I told him about them chasing me through the woods.

  “You’re lying about something.”

  I had to hurry to get back to the turret to barricade myself in before dark. “Whisper a call to me tomorrow,” I said and left.

  There was a Burger King a mile before the Tollway and only Cheerios at the turret. I hadn’t eaten since the In-N-Out in California, over twenty-four hours earlier. Say what one would about the In-N-Out, it had done no such thing; it had gone in and stayed. I hadn’t felt hunger in over a day.

  Of course, my loss of appetite might have come from being chased by a killer, twice in one day.

  I got two Whoppers with cheese, a large Coke, and what surely were healthy vegetables: Cheerio-shaped onion rings. Whoppers can be tough to eat one-handed while driving, so I did the prudent thing. I savored it all in the parking lot and didn’t get back to Rivertown until long after dark.

  The turret was too dark and foreboding, ideal for Robinson and his two friends. I drove to a supermarket for Ho Hos and Twinkies and came back to sleep on Thompson Avenue. I would not be bothered. The Rivertown police were accustomed to seeing men slumped back behind their steering wheels, eyes closed, mouths opened, along that particular patch of road.

  I switched off the key and slept sporadically until the sun rose the next morning.

  Fifty-four

  I waited until nine o’clock before I approached the turret. No one appeared to have tampered with the door lock.

  Nor had the sensor lights been tripped. I went upstairs, had coffee from previous grounds, and called Jarobi for news about Robinson and his friends.

  “What’s shaking?” I asked, trying to not sound like I was referring to my nerves, which would have been worse if I’d used fresh grounds, or spent the night in the turret waiting for someone to break down the door.

  “A forest preserve worker found a Chrysler minivan in a storage garage, near that access road you described.”