The Keepers

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  I knelt next to Vira as The U-Turns stepped past us, making sure her heart was still in the game.

  No reaction.

  As the aging rockers hit the bottom steps a younger woman stepped out from the line of gatherers, crossed the walkway, and tapped Bjerke on the shoulder. The guitarist turned, his jaw down to his kneecaps, and an instant later he had her in a bear hug. Greetings and additional embraces followed suit by Herriges and Lukkason.

  “Nope, you’re coming in with us,” I heard Bjerke insist as he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with The U-Turns, refusing to take no for an answer.

  Ten minutes before the memorial service was scheduled to begin, a flustered usher came out to inform the still-incoming horde there was standing room only. Five minutes later, the same flush-faced lad returned to let the flock know the church was now filled to capacity. Kippy centered herself in front of the entrance in order to punch home the point and suggest that that was that and there’d be no run on the bank.

  During the service, Vira and I threaded our way through the multitude milling about outside Concordia Lutheran, about the sidewalk and grass, about the street. We worked our way toward Officer Wabiszewski, who’d drawn the short straw and, like a master conductor, directed traffic at the corner of Byron Street and Seeley Avenue. I caught his eye and gave a quick wave. He nodded back. Wabiszewski was a different person than when we’d first met, back when he’d not believed a goddamned word out of my goddamned mouth.

  Another Vira convert.

  Perhaps I’d take a shot and call him Wabs, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

  We circled the church, and passed through the throng … again and again, but Vira kept her quiet.

  It was like the Sherlock Holmes case of the dog that didn’t bark.

  CHAPTER 9

  Cordov Woods sat behind the wheel of the double-parked Lincoln Continental intently working his way through the Chicago Tribune’s daily crossword. The clue for thirteen down was a single word—Forecast. Woods counted the white squares. Fifteen spaces and he already had a g, two os, and a final n filled in. He smiled and scribbled the remaining letters for the word prognostication in the open spaces. Although Woods was in no way, shape, or form a cruciverbalist—that is, an expert in solving or creating these types of brainteasers—Woods loved him his crossword puzzles.

  Woods had an appreciation—a deep fondness—for words and language. He figured words and language were the only things that differentiated us two-legged shit-makers from the rest of the shit-makers.

  Woods glanced again at his watch. The man he worked for, or more accurately the man he contracted with, was running twenty minutes late. Of course, the man he contracted with didn’t give two hoots if he kept Woods or anyone else waiting. Give two hoots, thought Woods—an idiom meaning to be concerned about someone or something; however, it was characteristically used in the negative to convey the opposite. And as for the man Woods contracted with, he’d up the idiom ante—he couldn’t give two shits or a rat’s ass if he kept anyone waiting.

  Woods was entering Minotaur in the eight empty spaces for six across—clue being Greek mythology, monster with body of a man and head of a bull—when he spotted his employer exiting the building, striding out the revolving door, and heading his way across the sidewalk. Woods tossed his nearly completed Tribune puzzle on the passenger seat and then did what he despised most, what rubbed against the grain of every fiber in his extra-large body. He stepped out from the sedan, marched around to the rear door, opened it for the man he contracted with, waited until the man was seated, and shut the car door. Woods then got back behind the wheel, hit the left turn signal, and pulled into the midday traffic. Woods stayed in the right lane; in fact, he took the first right turn, and then took another as he circled the block.

  Woods glanced in the rearview mirror and caught the man he contracted with staring back at him. They locked eyes for a long second before Woods took a final right, drove another half block, and then parked the sedan in the exact same spot from where they’d begun their journey.

  “We’re moving ahead,” the man Woods contracted with said before exiting the vehicle, shutting the Continental’s back door, and quickly striding back inside the building.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jonny Whiting had been cremated per his expressed wishes to both family and friends over the years whenever the topic of shuffling off mortal coils got broached. Of course, the extent of the injuries to his face excluded any type of open-casket funeral. Whiting’s cremains—his funeral urn—would rest in a niche columbarium. It would be stored in a hand-carved nook in Graceland Cemetery’s historic chapel.

  Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum lies between North Clark Street and Irving Park Road in Uptown, just a short jaunt northeast of Concordia Lutheran Church. A recent restoration had returned Graceland’s chapel of quarried red granite back to its original scale and beauty—at least according to what the brochure I’d nicked had mentioned.

  The reason I’d spent time reading cemetery brochures was in order to kill the monotony. The Concordia Lutheran Church memorial had been open to the public, but the interment service in Graceland’s chapel was private—invite only—just for family and close friends and the surviving U-Turns, basically the mourners that took up the front rows at Concordia Lutheran. Vira and I had performed sentry duty, much like we’d done at the church, as the handful of attendees filed slowly into the chapel. Then my golden retriever and I retired to the shade as the clouds had opened up—no April showers after all—and I sucked down water out of a bottle while Vira lapped her cut out of a paper cup.

  Again, it’d been a bust … the case of the dog that didn’t bark.

  The media presence in the cemetery’s parking lot had dwindled down to one news van, likely because the private service had not been advertised and the other alphabets had gotten enough footage at Concordia Lutheran.

  The police presence had also dwindled down to Kippy and her partner. Kippy had disappeared inside the chapel’s atrium—where I’d misappropriated the cemetery brochure—while Officer Wabiszewski sat in their squad car and scrolled Facebook. Although Kippy had told us we could vamoose, Vira and I hung out in the off chance any suspicious onlookers, hovering among trees or tombstones and gazing at Graceland’s chapel, showed up and tripped Vira’s radar.

  None had.

  We were getting ready to decamp when a red Toyota Camry snaked its way into the lot and parked in a far corner, under a thin patch of shade kicked off by an elm that’d just begun to sprout. A woman stepped out from the driver’s seat, stared at the chapel, glanced about the memorial park, then nodded at me, shut the door, and headed in our direction.

  I recognized her immediately as she’d been the mourner that had stepped out from the horde at Concordia Lutheran and been reluctantly drawn into the church by the surviving band members. I figured she’d arrived intentionally tardy so there’d be no chance of a recurrence at Graceland’s chapel. At thirty yards out she looked to be in her late twenties, but as she settled in front of me I’d upped it to mid-forties. She had a Stevie Nicks vibe going—all lace and billowed sleeves, bohemian, her brown hair long and wavy. She could have been a model.

  Scratch that—she could be a model.

  “You’ve got a beautiful dog,” the woman said, holding a hand in front of Vira for her to sniff.

  And suddenly it dawned on me.

  “Are you Tabitha?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Call me Tabby.”

  * * *

  “I’ve not seen him in a quarter century, but Jonny was a force of nature. Some days sunshine, other days—storm clouds and thunder. The cocaine and vodka and whatever else he’d wormed his way into kept him locked in that latter class.” She added, “In days gone by, they’d be arresting me for his murder.”

  I’d fetched Tabby a bottled water from the cooler that lived in the cargo bed of my F-150. We stood in the shade, sipped at our drinks, and chatted about her time with
The U-Turns.

  “Sounds like you’d been placed in an impossible position.”

  She shrugged. “Jonny got five years of my life. I was his agent, his publicist … his personal ATM. I set up gigs—bars and clubs, private parties—just to get the band a following. And I made sure Jonny showed up at these gigs, which, quite frankly, wasn’t one of his stronger suits.”

  I knew the story from my recent dive into Whiting’s biography. Without Tabitha in his corner throughout those early years, Whiting would have been nothing. But instead of paying Tabitha back in kind, Jonny Whiting took the prick route.

  Not necessarily a unique story.

  “Must have been difficult, living with his addictions,” I said, thinking how Tabby had been little more than a kid herself and then having all of Whiting’s baggage dumped on top of her.

  “He was too broke for much of that in the early days. I kept us afloat, barely, and pinched pennies for that Gibson Les Paul of his.” Tabby knelt by Vira and ran fingertips behind her ears. “Unfortunately, when fame and fortune came calling, Jonny’d managed to unearth this great passion for cocaine and speed.” She stared up at me. “And groupies.”

  “Is that when you left?”

  “I’d left him a dozen times by then. And somewhere along our civil war, ‘The Was of Time’ was written.” Tabby stood. “I left for keeps before the Grammys. Jonny was out of control and I hated what I’d become—a cliché—the jilted girlfriend trying to find him out in each and every tryst.”

  I thought of Kippy. Her ex-boyfriend had, among other things, cheated on her, thus instigating Kippy’s current cold war against the male gender, thus keeping her and I from progressing beyond our just-friends status.

  The rotten bastard.

  Tabby and I stood staring at our feet another minute before I said, “All these years, yet you came to his funeral.”

  “Looking for closure, I guess.” Tabby shrugged again. “Plus, every time that song comes on, it’s as though it’s only been a couple of weeks … and not a lifetime ago.”

  Kippy peeked her head out from the chapel, spotted us, and hiked over. I made a quick introduction.

  Tabby asked, “Any suspects yet?”

  “I just know what’s in the paper,” Kippy said. “They found a little marijuana in a Glad bag in his freezer so they’re thinking it could be a drug-related homicide, maybe a falling out with his dealer—if he even had a dealer—but killing someone over such a meager amount of cannabis doesn’t make sense unless the perp grabbed a bigger stash of something else. And if Whiting owed someone a chunk of change, he had plenty in the bank, so he’d have been able to pay them off.” Kippy added, “The intensity of … his death seems more personal in nature.”

  I noticed Kippy omitted the fact that Whiting’s head had been bashed in, smashed to a pulp, with the Gibson Les Paul Custom Tabby had bought for him once upon a time—the guitar he’d named after her. I figured it was police protocol not to release details of an active investigation, especially the nasty stuff that hadn’t made the papers, but I also knew Kippy wouldn’t want to lay that regrettable piece of news at Tabitha’s feet.

  “Did The U-Turns ever get into it back in the day?” Kippy asked. “You know, arguments?”

  “God yes. Once they became famous, if you ever pushed Jonny—if you even so much as bumped into Jonny—he’d go off and let you know you were only along for the ride.”

  “Would any of them have reason to hold a grudge?”

  “Chris tried keeping Jonny on track in the studio, tried keeping him clean and sober while they recorded. I was there when Jonny ripped into him once—ripped into all of them, actually—about how he was the hit wonder and how Chris and the rest of them could all screw off, but Jonny used a different word for ‘screw.’ I imagine they fought and made amends and fought and more amends until they finally broke up,” she said. “But they made good money together, which likely smoothed over any spats they’d had along the way.”

  “All the band members and everyone were at the funeral, right?” I asked, back to pondering Sherlock Holmes and the case of the dog that didn’t bark.

  Tabby nodded. “Chris and the gang had me sit up front with them, by the family.” Tabby then looked from me to Kippy and added, “Of course I didn’t see Eddie, but who would expect him to show up.”

  “Who’s Eddie?” Kippy asked.

  “Eddie Clare,” Tabby replied. “The band’s original drummer.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “There’s a phone call for you, Mr. Feist.”

  “There is?” Peter Feist had been lost in thought, shaking ground nutmeg—just a pinch—into his large Arco Etrusco dark roast at Caffe Umbria—his morning ritual—when Abbi, who as far as Feist could tell was Umbria’s head barista, tapped his forearm. This was certainly a first. The past two weeks had been hell on wheels, and he wondered what now had so blown up at the office that Marty or Andrea or Anahita felt the need to hunt him down as opposed to waiting an additional five minutes for his arrival.

  Abbi smiled at Feist, one of her regular customers. “You can take it in the back if you’d like.”

  Feist followed the coffeehouse barista, juggled his steaming cup of joe and his iPhone long enough to realize he’d received no calls or texts since the previous evening. Why wouldn’t his colleagues, or his wife, try him on his cell phone first rather than calling for him on Umbria’s landline?

  Warning lights began to flash in his head. What the hell was going on here?

  Abbi handed Feist the receiver for the shop’s landline in an office the size of a TV tray and returned to her station behind the counter to assist her crew in serving their morning rush of caffeine addicts.

  Feist stood in the open office doorway, stared at a rack of house-brand beans for sale, and spoke into the phone, “This is Peter Feist.”

  “I have news about David Siskin.”

  “Why didn’t you call my office?” Feist said sternly into the receiver, realizing how angry he’d become. If this call wasn’t from work or a family member, that meant a stranger had been following him. He scanned the coffee shop’s patrons, those standing in line and those sipping their brews at wooden tables. Feist hoped to spot a man with a cell phone glued to his ear and peering in his direction.

  No such luck.

  “Because it was a leak from your office that got David killed.”

  The accusation hung in the air for several seconds before Feist said, “Who is this?”

  “It’s a friend,” the voice replied. “Probably the best friend you’ve got right now.”

  “I sincerely doubt that.”

  “You can cop an attitude, Mr. Special Prosecutor, or you can jot down the number to a prepaid I just picked up and call me back—from a public phone—in thirty minutes sharp.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “I told you—I have news about David Siskin.”

  “Why the cloak-and-dagger?” Feist replied. “Why not just come in and talk?”

  “David got himself kicked to death because the two of you pranced about as though you were going to prom. How fucking dumb was that?” the voice said. “I’m not going to be seen with you, and I’m not going to have your calls traced back to me. I’ve got a family to think about, for Christ’s sake. This is not shits and giggles, Feist. You need to know where I’m coming from. Capiche?”

  Though he’d not touched his coffee, Feist’s heart had begun to beat faster. “Understood,” he said.

  “If you want to waste my time,” the voice continued, “I’ll shred the damned documents and toss David’s audiotape into Lake Michigan. And I’ll tell you something else, Feist—ditching everything would be a hell of a lot safer on my end.”

  “I said I understood.”

  The voice gave him a cell number.

  * * *

  “You’re Michael McCarron, right?” Feist said. “David’s Chicago partner?”

  “Oh, Christ—you’re using names. How fucking du
mb is that?”

  “I’m calling the number you gave me from a pay phone in the lobby of the Art Institute,” Feist said. “Hell, the museum’s not even open yet and there’s nobody here.”

  “Don’t you read the papers?” The voice was half frantic, half pissed. “All that eavesdropping shit they can do with phones now.”

  “Okay,” Feist agreed. “No names.”

  “Good. And, yes, I was in the office that morning before the police arrived and I saw what had been done to our Minneapolis friend. I saw the compound fractures—as though the killer snapped kindling for a bonfire.”

  “The ME said our friend was already dead before most of those fractures occurred.”

  “That supposed to make me feel better?”

  Feist had memorized the police report. “They took his Rolex, his wallet, wedding ring, laptop, and a couple other trinkets to fabricate a robbery, but they left his body that way in order to send a message.”

  “Ya think?” the voice said. “Well, I for one got the message loud and clear.”

  “Yet here you are,” Feist replied, “contacting me.”

  “You know that quote by Edmund Burke? The one about evil triumphing?”

  “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What have you got for me, Mr. McCar—” Feist stopped himself. “What have you got for me?”

  “I’ve got a nine-by-twelve envelope stuffed with some interesting documentation. Some from our Minneapolis friend and more from me. I’ve also got an audio recording—digital, on a thumb drive—that’ll knock your socks off.”

  “Do tell.”

  “With what you’ve been pursuing, it’ll be self-explanatory,” the voice replied. “You’re a bright guy—you’ll know what to do with it.”

  “Look—let me get you into a safe house,” Feist said. “I know you’re scared, but we can handle this in an appropriate manner.”