Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  “Lucy called you and told you to find me?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I was already outside the museum, so it was easy.”

  “What do you mean you were already outside? Like you were following Lucy?”

  He nodded, his face more chagrined now than pissed.

  “That’s not going to make Lucy very happy.”

  “She’s definitely not happy. She said her husband is probably taping her conversations, and now I’m following her. She told me not to call, not to text.”

  “Ouch. Sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I warned you about that.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mayburn sighed, turned the car onto Clark Street.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I’m taking you to your house, and then…” He paused, looked at me. “Is your home phone number and address listed?”

  “No. When I moved in years ago I’d just finished dating a guy who was a little too enthusiastic, so I unlisted it.”

  “Good. I’m going to wait while you pack and hope that those guys didn’t find where you live some other way, then I’m taking you to the airport.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Out of town. Anywhere you want. The farther the better. Dez Romano is serious business.”

  “Then why did you send me to hang with him at Gibsons, for Christ’s sake?”

  “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I’m just so screwed up about Lucy. It’s clouded my judgment.”

  “Maybe it’s clouding your judgment now. Maybe I don’t have to get out of town.”

  He stopped at a light and looked at me. His face was as serious as I’d ever seen it. “You’re leaving. I’ll work things on this end. I’ll try and dig up some stuff on Romano. See if I can get behind the layers of reputable businesses he hides behind, and if there’s anything to find, I’ll turn it over to the authorities.”

  “Can you also look into Kelvin McNeil? That’s my grandfather.” I told him how he was killed, about the clipping I found in my dad’s book.

  Mayburn shrugged. “I’ll look into it, but it’s not strange that your father would have a clipping of his own father’s death.”

  “I know. I just want to know more about it.”

  “What if there’s nothing to find?”

  “Then there’s nothing to find. And what about Dez Romano? What if there’s nothing to find there, either? He obviously covers his tracks. It was Michael they prosecuted, not him, because he covered them so well.”

  “Then we’ll talk to the Feds about getting you an order of protection. I just don’t want him looking for you while we’re trying to get all these things done. These guys specialize in making people disappear. You need to do that before they get the chance. No discussion. You’re going. So, you got some place in mind?”

  I looked through the windshield at girls in sundresses crossing the street, towels in hand, on their way to the beach. I loved Chicago in the summer. Old Town Art Fair was starting today, and the street fairs would continue every weekend from one quirky neighborhood to the next until September. But I’d spent one summer in another place, a place I had loved, too-a sticky, hot, glorious city with an array of streetside cafés, enoteche and ristoranti. Plus, the questions about my dad wouldn’t wait until October.

  I looked at Mayburn. “I’ve got someone to see first, then I’m going to Rome.”

  “Oh, that’s brilliant, McNeil. You’re running from the Mob, and you’re going to head to their homeland?”

  “You think these guys will expect me to go there?”

  “No, it’s probably the last place they’d expect, and they-”

  “Exactly. I’m going to the last place they’d think I’d go.”

  13

  It all happened fast. Still in Mayburn’s car, I made a call to the airlines and found an open seat on a 3:30 p.m. flight to Rome that afternoon. When I heard the price of that seat I must have looked as if a truck had hit me, because Mayburn quickly said he’d handle the cost as payment for sending me to Gibsons to meet Dez. He also made me hand over my Vespa keys and said he would pick up my scooter from the museum.

  When we reached my neighborhood, Old Town Art Fair was in full swing, the streets lined with canvases and beer tents. It made me wistful. I should be getting together with Maggie, heading to the annual party outside St. Michael’s church, drinking beer from a white plastic cup and laughing in the sun.

  The good thing was that if Dez and Ransom knew the neighborhood where I lived, it would have been hard to search for us through the hundreds of people strolling the streets. To be safe, I got out of the car and bought a scarf at a tent to throw over my hair. Two minutes later, Mayburn had checked out my place, found nothing and said he would stand downstairs while I packed.

  “And don’t call anyone,” he said as I began to climb the steps to my condo, thinking of Theo on those steps, missing him already.

  “I should tell my mom I’m leaving.”

  “You’ll call her from a payphone at the airport. Give me your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to check it out.”

  “I really should call my friend Maggie.”

  “No.”

  “I have to at least text…”

  I was about to say Theo, but Mayburn cut me off. “No texting, no e-mailing, no calling. I don’t know yet how those guys found you or if they’ve been watching you.”

  “You think they’ve tapped my phones?”

  “Your house phone, maybe. Your cell, unlikely. Very unlikely. Now, give me your phone.”

  I handed it to him and he flipped out the battery, poked and prodded. “It’s clean,” he said, handing it back to me. “But I still don’t want you on any phones or sending out any smoke signals. I just want to get you out of here. Now, go upstairs and pack.”

  “Jesus, no wonder Lucy broke up with you. You’re demanding as hell.”

  “Only when I’m worried about people I care about.”

  I put my hand on my hip and looked down at him. His eyes were squinting as if he were thinking too hard. Worry lines cut across his forehead. “You care about me?” I said.

  He groaned. “Please. Please go pack.”

  “That’s only the second time I’ve heard you say please.”

  Upstairs, I made sure my passport was up-to-date, then packed it along with outfits I’d been wearing lately in Chicago-a few dresses and skirts, a pair of jeans, a bathing suit, a couple of T-shirts. I threw in some slacks and three pairs of sandals of varying heights. I was about to zip up the bag, when I remembered the twisted ankle I’d gotten in Rome years ago from attempting to wear high heels on the very cobbled streets of Trastevere. (I’d heard that only Roman women could pull off such a feat, and I should have listened.) I opened the bag again, took out the pair of stiletto heels and replaced them with wedges.

  As I pulled the bag to the front door, I felt a release of energy inside me-a kind of nervous force, unsure and yet thrilling. Because although Dez Romano had tracked me down, and although I was technically running from him, I was also running toward Elena, and I could ask her whether there was any chance my dad was alive.

  When I got downstairs, I asked Mayburn, “When can I use my phone again?”

  “Once you get overseas. Then it’ll be nearly impossible to tap it or trace any calls.” He stared at his own phone.

  “Mayburn,” I said, as kindly as possible. “I know you’re hoping Lucy will reach out, but when someone tells you they need some space, they usually need space.”

  Yet even as I said it, I thought of someone who had told me he needed space. Sam. It was Sam who made the call that we were done for now, because he wanted us to be firmly into our relationship, no in-betweens, no maybe we’re dating, maybe we’re not, we’ll figure it out, we’ll see how it goes kind of thing, while I had grown more fond of, or possibly more comfortable with, the maybes and the in-betweens.


  But Sam was still the person I had checked in with every day for years; the person who, for years, had made all life decisions with me. And even though we weren’t together anymore, I wanted to tell him that I was leaving town. It was a courtesy he hadn’t given me last year when he’d disappeared, but what was done was done, and I didn’t believe in punishing.

  I looked at my watch. It was Saturday, which usually meant Sam was with the Chicago Lions rugby team. Sam wasn’t one of the starters, but he was one of the guys who trained with the team or helped out when they traveled locally. The Chicago Lions schedule was still in my datebook, because I used to have to plan our social stuff around it. I glanced at the schedule. The team was on a road trip to San Francisco, and Sam didn’t usually attend cross-country games. Instead, he was probably at his apartment, strumming his guitar, maybe having a Blue Moon beer. Just the thought made me miss him.

  I told Mayburn Sam’s address. “I need to stop by on the way to the airport.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I held up my hand. “Look, if I can’t make any calls, then I have to stop by. I’m not getting on a plane unless I talk to him first.”

  Sam’s apartment was in Roscoe Village, sandwiched next to a bar called the Village Tap. He’d been there for years, to the chagrin of his mother, who, every time she visited, told him he should move out of his bachelor-esque pad and head downtown into a place more “grownup.” The plan had been that Sam would move in with me when we were married, but since that hadn’t happened, the apartment with the funky gray door was still his home.

  “Hurry up,” Mayburn said, pulling up to the curb, putting on the hazards and focusing nervously in the rearview mirror. I jumped out.

  “The Tap,” as everyone in the neighborhood called it, already had a hopping lunch crowd. You could hear happy outbursts of laughter from the beer garden in the back.

  Sam had stopped carrying my keys a few months ago, a fact that had surprised and wounded me, but I’d never stopped carrying his. I guess I wasn’t ready to put away the idea of Izzy and Sam.

  If he was home, I’d tell him I was going out of town, and if he wasn’t, I’d leave a note and call him when I landed. But at least I’d make the effort. He would know that I still missed us. I still thought about us. I still thought there was a chance for us.

  I got out my keys, opened the street door and walked up the flight of stairs. I rapped lightly on the door, the way I used to, then let myself into the apartment. The living room was dark and looked the way I remembered it. His leather couch was slouchy and slightly dusty looking. The blue afghan with the Cubs logo, which Sam’s grandmother had knitted for him, was tossed over the side of it. On the coffee table were financial papers and magazines like Barron’s and the Fenton Report, and next to those were two empty Blue Moon beers. Sam had stayed home last night apparently, a fact that made me feel slightly sick with guilt, since I had spent the night, and the last few, with Theo.

  Something glinted on the coffee table, something next to the beer bottles. I looked closer and saw they were two tiny diamond earrings, set in gold. I picked them up. For a moment I thought they were mine, but my diamond earrings were fake and set in silver. As I held them up to the sunlight filtering through the window, I could see that these were clearly the real thing.

  Sam didn’t wear earrings.

  A shuffle from one of the bedrooms. I froze, irrationally scared for a second. What was I scared of? I looked down at the earrings. I thought I knew.

  The door to Sam’s bedroom opened, and there he stood. He was wearing boxer shorts, only that, over his short powerhouse of a body. He wiped sleep from his eyes, despite the fact that it was already noon.

  “Iz?” He pushed up at his cropped blond hair, making it sexily jagged with angles. He blinked his eyes, which were a sparkly olive color, so much so that I’d always thought of them as martini-olive eyes. But he was staring curiously at me now, and his eyes didn’t seem to be sparkling so much as squinting. “What are you doing here?”

  He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him as he asked the question. And it was that movement, more than the earrings, that told me everything.

  “So, you have a date?” I said.

  More blinking. “Something like that. Were you and I supposed to meet or something?” He said it in an irritated way. He knew we had no plans to meet.

  “I’m going out of town. I wanted to let you know, and they told me not to make any phone calls.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a long story. But I’m going away.”

  “Where?”

  I could almost hear Mayburn screaming, Don’t tell anyone where you’re going! “I’m not exactly sure yet.”

  “For how long?” He shifted his arms over his chest as if he were suddenly embarrassed to be seen by me-by me!-in his near nakedness. He was so cute, though, his trim, compact body so delicious in person-and in my memory-that I couldn’t get worked up about his modesty.

  But what happened next made it easy to get worked up.

  Yes, of course the bedroom door opened, and yes, of course a girl in panties and Sam’s Jeff Beck T-shirt, the one I used to sleep in, poked her head out. But that wasn’t what left me speechless.

  It was the fact that it was Alyssa.

  Alyssa Thornton was Sam’s ex-girlfriend, the one I’d been crazy jealous about since I met her at their high school reunion and had seen two things. One, she was ethereal, stunning, and, as I’d always said, thin as a bag of doorknobs, which, with my curves and my envy, was not intended as a compliment. With her white-blond hair, Alyssa almost looked like a miniature, female version of Sam. The second thing I had noticed at that reunion? Alyssa still loved Sam. She glowed when she gazed at him. Just like I did. But Sam had told me he was the one who broke up with her a few years into college, that they were just friends, only that.

  After the reunion, I tried to put a lid on the jealousy, but it kept bugging me, especially because I knew they e-mailed often. Finally, I asked Sam if he’d stop e-mailing her. I knew my jealousy was irrational, I told him, but it wouldn’t go away. Sam had smiled at me. And he agreed.

  As Sam and I continued to date and then got engaged, I got over the thought of Alyssa. But then Sam disappeared, and I found out that he went straight to her for help when he did so. I later learned his reasons. But still. But still. I hadn’t gotten over that.

  Clearly, Sam hadn’t, either, because there she was. There she was positively glowing at him again as she peeked from behind his bedroom door.

  If my insides had been slightly twisted with guilt over the fact that I’d spent the night with Theo, my stomach filled with bile now. It’s one thing to learn your ex is dating someone else. It’s another thing to find out that “someone else” is the girl you always had the bad, bad feeling about.

  And it was a whole other bag of cherries to see them post-romp.

  “Hi, Alyssa,” I said.

  “Hi.” There was no triumph in her voice. “I’ll give you guys some time.”

  She pulled her head back inside the room. Click went the door of Sam’s bedroom, then click again, because it had to be pushed twice to keep it closed. The fact that Alyssa knew that slayed me. Tears sprang to my eyes as I stood there looking at my fantastic, adorable, beloved ex-fiancé, who had clearly moved on with his life.

  “I thought she lived in Indianapolis,” I said.

  “She moved here a few weeks ago.”

  “To be with you.”

  “No, to work at Rush Medical Center. She’s in geriatric-”

  I cut him off. “I remember.” Alyssa was a researcher in the geriatric field, working to improve the quality of life for the elderly, particularly those who were bedridden. She was, essentially, an angel of mercy. Which, I’d always said, made it pretty tough to compete with her as an ex-girlfriend. Or maybe she wasn’t the ex anymore. It appeared she was the girlfriend now, and I was the former.

  The energy I’d had in my apartment
crashed, replaced by a sorrow so deep I took a few steps to the couch and sank into it, putting my face in my hands.

  “I’m sorry, Iz.” He sat next to me and put his arm around me.

  I didn’t think there could be anything worse than finding Alyssa in Sam’s apartment, but this-this-was worse. Sam awkwardly patting me on the shoulder, trying to comfort me, sure, but making it somehow clear in his stiff body language that his body didn’t belong to me anymore, nor, apparently, did his heart.

  And what of my heart?

  I thought of Q, my former assistant. Q had just entered the gay world when we’d met, and as such, he took any and all breakups hard.

  One day we were discussing his latest, and he had asked me when my heart had last gotten broken.

  “Never,” I’d told him. And it was true.

  The guys I’d dated before Sam-Timmy, my boyfriend in college, and Blake, the one I dated during law school-had been such insignificant relationships compared to the one I had with Sam. I was the one who broke up with Timmy-his love of beer bongs got old after freshman year. And Blake and I were on again-off again and had finally decided to part when we couldn’t find time to get together with our busy law school schedules and also found we really didn’t care. And when Sam and I split, well…How to explain it? I guess I never saw it officially as a split. Even when he disappeared and even after that, when he said he needed to move on, I didn’t really expect him to move on. I assumed that Sam and Izzy, Izzy and Sam was still an option that hung in both our horizons.

  Now I felt the heat of his skin as he sat next to me. I breathed in that Sam smell. Both of these things had brought tears to my eyes in the past, and this time was no different. And yet those tears definitely were different. They weren’t the sweet tears that glitter from your eyes when a deep connection makes you so happy, so filled with joy. No, those were tears I’d never felt before-hot, almost burning tears that must have come from the skin that protected my heart, the skin that felt sliced now, carved deep.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said again. He turned and gave me a half hug, and the self-consciousness of it cut me even deeper.