I was barely interested in their philosophizing, but extremely concerned about Scott, and the possibilities of our surviving this encounter.
“How did he know about you and your dealing in jewels?” I asked.
“His father and mother were both good customers,” Equelle said. “Much of our business is legitimate, but there are risks, and occasionally problems arise. Glen brought several of our precious stones across the border over the years.”
“We’ll take the necklace Mr. Carpenter has,” Jose said. He lifted the gun in our direction. “Now.”
Scott reached behind his neck, unhooked the clasp, and handed over the gleaming bauble.
“Did he tell you how much this was worth?” Jose asked.
“I wasn’t interested,” I said.
“Half a million at least,” Jose said.
“It can’t be,” Scott said. “Why would he give us such a valuable thing?” Some of the color had returned to his face.
“Perhaps because he would be making a great deal more from revealing the location of Mr. Torres,” Equelle said. “He is a much-wanted man.”
“Or maybe he was too stupid to realize their value,” I said.
“You were not fond of Glen Proctor?” Jose asked.
“Not much,” I said.
They spoke in Spanish between themselves for several minutes. Then Jose turned back to us. “We’re going to your apartment.” He began to don his wig. “You will give me the key. We will enter the lobby, go upstairs, and come back together.”
“The doorman won’t recognize you,” I said.
Equelle said, “You will convince him it is safe. I will keep a gun trained at Mr. Carpenter’s right temple. If there is a problem, I will kill him.”
I had no doubt he would.
“But won’t anyone watching see me and attempt to talk to me, or spot me and kill me?” I asked.
“Why are they chasing you?” Equelle asked.
“We don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes they’ve tried to shoot to kill. Sometimes just to capture us. It’s totally nuts.”
“Maybe they think Glen gave you the information,” Jose said. “Did he?”
“No!”
Equelle said, “I don’t know how badly they want you. They must think you know or have something.”
“Why doesn’t Torres just move?” Scott asked. “Why all this chasing around trying to kill Glen and us? If the big problem is hiding the guy, why not just move?”
“You’ll have to ask them,” Equelle said.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
We drove in silence for a few minutes. Something had been bothering me about these two, and finally it dawned on me. “Neither one of you has much of an accent,” I said.
“Would you feel more comfortable if we talked like ignorant peasants just learning English?”
Equelle found a parking space a half block away from the penthouse. Jose and I got out.
“I could get killed by the people chasing us,” I said.
Equelle leaned over and spoke through the opened passenger side door. “That would create a further diversion for Jose to enter your penthouse and get the necklace. I mean no harm to you, Tom Mason, but I must have my jewelry. It is simply business, and in case you were thinking of alerting the police, Jose has a little device on his person that signals to a little device in my pocket that all is not well. If, for any reason, that goes off, your partner is dead.”
The side street was devoid of passersby who might look suspiciously at Scott edging into the front seat of the rental car. Equelle held the gun in his left hand, away from Scott. He would be ambidextrous.
Jose adjusted his skirt, gave his wig a final pat, and we marched down the street. I had to admit he was good. His movements and mannerisms rivaled Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game.
The walk to the penthouse was pleasantly uneventful. I didn’t know whether or not I was comforted by the fact that Jose had not removed the machine gun from the gigantic purse he carried.
I saw little point in thinking of ways to escape from Jose. One push of a button, and Scott would be dead. I desperately wanted Jose to succeed.
My legs wobbled a bit as we strode through the entryway. Howard saw me and his hand reached for the phone. Jose grabbed Howard’s arm.
“You don’t need to be calling anybody,” Jose said and let the tip of his machine gun peep out of his purse.
Howard licked his lips and shook his head.
Jose smiled. He pointed at me. “You stay down here and keep an eye on Howard’s arm. You might even ask him what he knows since he seemed so eager to call someone as soon as he saw you. If everything is not in order when I return, you two and Mr. Carpenter will die.”
Jose turned on his spike heels and marched to the elevator.
“Who was that?” Howard asked.
“You let somebody into the penthouse Saturday,” I said.
“No. Never.”
“Who were you going to call just now?”
“A friend. No one you know.”
“How did they get to you?” I asked. “You know they’re trying to kill us. How could you turn us in?”
Howard drew himself up straight and glared to one side of my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
I couldn’t get anything else out of him.
Jose returned moments later with an enormous smile on his face. He walked behind the counter, ripped out the phone, and then smashed the butt of his machine gun into the console. There was a small pffft, and the computer screens went blank. “I can kill you, too,” Jose told Howard.
Howard held up his hands in the Old West pose of being arrested.
Then Jose put his arm through mine, and we walked out of the building comfortably linked together.
“You got it?” I asked.
“It was just where you said it would be. Lucky for you.”
We strolled casually into the October early evening around the corner of the building, crossed the street, and sauntered toward the car, seemingly a man and woman connected against the early-winter chill. Walking toward us were two women, dressed in sensible Republican cloth coats open to reveal black skirts cut just below the knee. White blouses peeked out of beige V-neck sweaters.
We passed them when we were about two feet from the car door. I saw Scott begin to raise the door handle. Equelle’s gun rose from the front seat.
“You’ve got to let us go,” I said.
“That is up to my father,” Jose said. He motioned with his purse for me to get in.
Equelle had his gun pointed at Scott’s head, but I thought that if I got back in that car, both of us would be dead. They couldn’t just shoot us here. While not crowded, cars were going past, and people were strolling about nearby. They’d have to take us somewhere to kill us.
“Get in!” Jose commanded when I hesitated.
I didn’t want to see Scott’s blood and brains scattered all over the pavement mixed with my own. The barrel of the machine gun poked over the edge of the purse into the small of my back as he held the door open.
“Could you help me, miss?” It was one of the women we’d just passed. She was tugging at the edge of Jose’s purse. The woman must have been in her late forties or early fifties. Her companion was about five feet behind her, looking bewildered and lost.
“We just had a drink over on Rush Street, and we’re trying to get back to Oak Street, but we must have turned the wrong way.”
“Get out of here, lady,” Jose said.
The other woman came close. “Is that a gun?” she asked pointing into the interior of the car.
Equelle lowered the gun for a second. Jose looked ready to belt the woman. I grabbed Scott’s arm to yank him out of the car, but there wasn’t much need. He’d seized the moment and was halfway out the door.
“Drop it!” one of the women ordered.
A large gun appeared in her hands. I dove for the ground. Scott was right next to me as we t
ried scrambling away.
I glanced back and saw Jose try to raise his weapon out of his purse. One of the woman knocked it away. The glass of the car window shattered as bullets crashed through it.
The women dropped to the ground firing as they dodged. Jose jumped into the car. Seconds later, they roared away. Tires screeched as one car a half block down and one on the cross street gave chase.
I got up and dusted myself off.
“Thank you. Who are you?” I asked.
“Police,” the woman in the black skirt said.
The other pulled a radio out of her purse and spoke into it. She gave the license number and a description of the car to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Shots fired. Need some assistance here.”
“You guys okay?” the one who spoke first asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You saved our lives.”
She shrugged. Several blue-and-white cop cars pulled up. People jumped out and slammed doors. Various cops began filling out forms, making sketches, and asking questions. Some concern was expressed about where the bullets had gone that Equelle had fired. They found two lodged in a Dumpster in the alley next to us and one in the brick wall right next to it. Fortunately they hadn’t gone into any of the surrounding high rises.
The women told us that our building had been under surveillance. Jose and I had been spotted entering. They didn’t know who she was, but as soon as I was spotted, pairs of cops had begun to converge on the building from three different directions. They didn’t close in right away because they weren’t sure what was happening or where Scott was.
Before telling the rest of our story, we told the cops about Angelo and Bernie in the hotel. Calls were made, and a couple of cops hopped in one car and streaked off. Eventually we got permission to enter the penthouse, although a platoon of cops came with us. I didn’t care. I felt secure with a horde of them in the living room.
I took a shower and shaved in a still-unreconstructed bathroom. Scott did the same. I let the warm water cascade over me and felt the heat sink into my tense muscles. Near the end, I began to shake from the memory of what had almost happened to us.
Wrapped in a towel I entered the bedroom. I was drawn to the picture of Scott and me that always sat on the end table on my side of the bed. He always slept on the right nearest the door to the rest of the apartment. I always slept nearest the window. It was just the opposite when we spent nights at my place. I picked up the photo and gazed at it. It was a shot taken in St. Louis of the two of us smiling and laughing in front of an elephant we had just ridden on. The elephant had its trunk draped over one of Scott’s shoulders, and my hand hung over his other. It was a goofy picture, but it was one of my favorites because it showed Scott and me enjoying life and each other. He looked beautiful and strong and sexy. I got misty eyed.
I heard Scott enter the room. He padded up behind me. I got tears in my eyes and pulled him close. “I never want to lose you,” I said.
“I love you so much,” he said.
With cops scattered around our living room, we didn’t have time to linger. We dressed in faded blue jeans, white socks, running shoes, and sweatshirts. His from the University of Arizona, mine from UCLA.
I had time to check the answering machine for messages. One was from Bill Proctor, saying he had to meet us; the other was from Lester, asking how things were going. I managed to get Proctor at his dad’s estate. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted on the phone. I got the impression that he thought the phones might be tapped or someone might be listening. As paranoid as his dad was, maybe his security included in-house surveillance. I was tired and didn’t want to meet, but he sounded desperate as he insisted. I didn’t know how long we’d be tied up with the cops. He didn’t want to come to the penthouse. We wrangled for a few minutes, but I finally agreed to call him when we finished with the cops. He told me he was leaving home then and gave me his car-phone number. I told him to be careful and that if for some reason he needed to get hold of me, he could call the answering machine and leave a message.
The greeting on Lester’s answering machine consisted of the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I told the tape I’d call back.
Back in the living room we found that Bolewski and Quinn had joined the crowd of cops.
Scott and I sat together on the couch.
Quinn said, “We need you to tell us exactly what happened.”
We told them the story. Before we started, the other cops had been dismissed, except two who were told to stay at the front door.
“Why aren’t you convinced we need protection? That something strange and horrible is going on?” I looked from one to the other.
“We’ve got a few questions,” Quinn said. “Nobody saw the body except you. We found no evidence of anything strange in the tunnels. Would they clean that well?”
“It happened,” I said.
“You say Proctor was here and that he came from Mexico,” Quinn continued. “And you say that according to this Brad Stawalski and the necklace guys, Glen had the addresses of a safe house for drug kingpins here in Chicago and maybe other cities?”
I nodded.
Bolewski stated the obvious. “We’ve got to talk to all three of these guys.”
“He claimed he was only a guard for Glen. I can’t picture Glen Proctor relying on Brad. Glen had to be using him in some way.”
“I hope we find him alive to ask him,” Quinn said. “Until then we have to concentrate on what Glen was doing. We have a record of him entering Mexico in late September. From twelve days ago, no one has any idea of where he’s been. We have had people hunting through computers working on airline records for any international flight coming into O’Hare. We can find no record of Glen Proctor entering the country on any flight from anywhere, and that took a lot of hours of checking all the airlines.”
“Maybe he flew to another city, or maybe he didn’t fly,” I said. “At least under his own name.”
“Could he have entered the country some other way?” Scott asked. “Walked across the border?”
“We’re not sure about that,” Quinn said, “and we have no way of checking every city in the country.” He took a deep breath. “What did turn up in the records is that Scott Carpenter flew into Chicago on Air Mexico on Friday. He left from Acapulco, had a two-hour stopover in Dallas to change planes, and then flew here.”
“I’ve been here or at our cabin in Wisconsin since the end of the season,” Scott said.
“You’ll have to prove that,” Bolewski said.
“I’ve got all kinds of witnesses,” Scott said. “I’ve been in the city, and people up around the cabin know me. It’ll be real easy to establish that I was here.”
I said, “He’s not the only guy named Scott Carpenter on the planet, or Proctor could have been using his name.”
“We’ve interviewed the stewardesses on the flight,” Quinn said. “They said this was a baseball player bragging about his accomplishments, demanding special attention, and trying to get dates with three of them.”
“That proves it wasn’t me,” Scott said. “I wouldn’t be trying to get a date with anybody, and if I was, it would be with a steward.”
“Could have been a cover,” Bolewski said.
“Did it look like me?” Scott asked.
“They remembered blond and muscular and blue-eyed,” Quinn said.
“I’m not built anything like Proctor,” Scott said. “He was shorter by three inches. He was built more compact and beefier.”
“Fortunately, neither of you has committed a crime that we’re sure of yet,” Bolewski said. “We’re just trying to track down your story.”
“Have you found out anything more about the shots that were fired Saturday morning?” I asked.
“Absolutely nothing. No trace of the guys. No useful descriptions of them. The car they abandoned in the intersection after chasing you was stolen in Des Moines a week ago.”
“Wait a second,” Scott sa
id. “You can’t just forget about Proctor using my name. Maybe that’s why they’re after us.”
“Wouldn’t he have to have a passport made out in Scott’s name?” I asked. “Can he do that? How could he do that?”
“Possible,” Quinn said. “If he had a fake passport, then this isn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing that he was involved in.”
I said, “He’s been doing illegal things for years, and this was probably only one of his covers.”
Scott looked miserable.
We went round and round on the Glen Proctor murder, the chase through the tunnels, the shots outside of our building, and all the possible illegal things Glen may have been into. The cops hadn’t picked up Equelle, Jose, or Brad yet. This lapse did not boost my confidence in the Chicago Police Department. We spent a huge amount of time on the folderol that you must have something or know something that you don’t know you have or think you have, and what could it be? We had no idea.
Ultimately it boiled down to the question I asked: “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
We obviously weren’t safe. We certainly needed to come to some kind of terms with those after us, but we had no idea what those terms were or whether they could even be met. Glen Proctor had involved us deeply in his illegal schemes, and I couldn’t see any way out. My irritation with Scott for getting us into this seeped back into my consciousness.
“You need to understand,” Quinn said. “Your story sounds strange, but we’ve found some stuff that bears out the theory that you’re in danger, but we don’t see any solution soon. The little scene outside this place gives a lot of credence to your story, but we eliminate no possibility until this is completely cleared up.”
This set off another drop in my confidence in the cops’ competence. “We need some assurance of our own safety,” I said.
“Maybe you should try and hire more guards,” Quinn suggested.
“That really worked last time,” I said.
An Echo of Death Page 13
