“I’m loving the show,” I said, holding tight to Vira’s leash with a left hand and leaning in with my right to shake.
Clare’s stench washed over me, a stormfront of whiskey, sweat, ashtrays, and armpits. I now realized what was truly in that Coke bottle he’d been sucking down between songs. Suddenly I wasn’t so worried about Vira having forgotten any scent data she may have gleaned from Whiting’s Avondale condominium as much as how Clare’s desperate need for a shower might mask whatever Vira had picked up from the crime scene, how Clare’s lack of personal hygiene might throw off her read. And I figured Clare’s stretching out the breaks between sets wasn’t the only thing that riled his fellow band members.
“Thank you.”
I was grateful to retreat a step after the handshake, away from Clare’s immediate reek. I held up my leash hand and said, “This young lass is my date, Vira.”
“Well hello there, Vira,” Clare said, took a long pull on his Marlboro, exhaled, and turned his attention back toward Kippy. “I bet you’re here with questions about my old mate?”
Up close, you could see Clare was well into his fifties. He had a few inches on me, maybe six-foot-three, but thin, in need of a shave, and the mullet wig just looked silly. I was positioned where I could watch Clare but also keep an eye on Vira. She had her head up—was air scenting—looking at Eddie Clare and then at me.
Kippy dove in. “You and Jonny grew up together, right?”
“Since first grade.”
“You were friends?”
“Best friends back in the day, not so much later on—obviously—but I had a drum set, he had a guitar, and we drove my parents apeshit with a ton of clatter from the basement.”
Clare’s eyes were dull, glazed over, and he struck me as someone who navigated most of his waking hours in some degree of intoxication, someone whose alcohol intake would put me in an early grave but was just another Friday night to him. The man had been working bar gigs for the better part of four decades—perhaps cocktails were on the house.
Kippy had once mentioned—over drinks, ironically—that if a person is shitfaced, it makes it damn near impossible for a cop to get a solid read when it came to any kind of serious questioning. That got me thinking—could Eddie Clare be living in some kind of alcoholic haze in order to gum up any such read?
Kippy continued, “And you and Whiting started The U-Turns?”
Another puff, another exhale. “We’d begun with a couple of sillier names, but wound up with that, yeah.”
Clare seemed like a mellow enough fella, and I played mental gymnastics as to what time I’d be getting back home when Vira’s head began to scan about the ground and back up at Clare, slowly, as though she were trying to remember where she’d set the car keys, then suddenly her muzzle went herky-jerky. I looped my left hand farther down the leash as Vira started in with a low growl that evolved into a snarl, her eyes focused exclusively on Eddie Clare.
Vira stood as I knelt next to her.
“What’s up with your dog?” the drummer asked.
“It’s okay, Vira,” I said, my right hand on the back of her neck. She stood at full height, her body taut as piano string. “It’s okay, girl.” I looked at Clare. “She gets nervous in the city.”
Vira barked once and strained against the leash.
“We know, honey,” I said, slipping an arm around her shoulders, getting her to settle down, getting her out of attack mode. “We know.”
I glanced at Kippy but she’d returned to her list of questions, papering over an irate golden retriever.
“They bumped you from the band you helped create?”
Clare stared at Vira. I noticed he’d pressed himself as close to the brick exterior behind him as possible. He took another long hit off his cigarette before saying, “It was complicated. Jonny was the frontman—he wrote the songs—and rock beats scissors and that was that. I got voted off the island.”
“That had to hurt,” Kippy said, prodding.
“You can let that kind of stuff eat away at you—at your soul—but, ultimately, you’ve got to let it go.” Clare drew on his cigarette and slowly exhaled. “That was many moons ago, a lot of water under the bridge.”
I stood, placed a leg in front of Vira’s chest, and asked, “Were you with the band when Whiting wrote ‘The Was of Time’?”
Clare nodded.
I thought back on my original plan—of acting fan-like and sucking up—and figured why the hell not. So then I became Eddie Clare’s best friend in the whole wide world.
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “You were a founding member—with the band from the get-go—and they do that to you?”
“Yup.”
“All you’d been through with Jonny—with all of them—and they give you the boot,” I said and shook my head. “That’s such bullshit.”
“I showed up at the studio and there’s Chris—you know, Bjerke—and a couple of security guards … and Chris tells me I’m out.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “They sicced security guards on you?”
Clare nodded.
“And Whiting made Bjerke do the dirty work?”
Clare nodded again. “I’m stuttering what the hell a few dozen times and Chris is hemming and hawing but he finally lets me know it all came down to Jonny.”
“So you weren’t in on ‘The Was of Time’ recording?”
Clare dropped his cigarette and stepped on it with a Converse High Top. “No.”
“They screwed you out of the hit song.”
“They probably recorded it later that day,” Clare replied. “In fact, I’m certain of it, but they grabbed that Greg Lukkason asshole at the last minute—fucked me over … and the rest is rock-and-roll.”
“Jesus,” I said. “That sucks out loud.”
“Goddamn right it sucks out loud.” Clare’s eyes now seemed moist. “Fucking Lukkason got champagne and blowjobs—they all got champagne and blowjobs—but not me,” he said. “I got to roll around in my own shit.”
I shook my head again. “That’s just not right.”
“That was anything but right,” Clare replied.
“You and Whiting may have had a falling out, gotten pissed off at each other, but buddies don’t screw over buddies,” I said. “That’s an unwritten law.”
“One would think.” Clare had picked up a head of steam, confiding in his new pal—his new BFF. “And you want to know something else?”
“What?”
“I’m glad.”
“Glad what?”
“That Jonny got his.”
“Kind of like karma, huh?”
“Goddamn right it was karma,” Clare said. “I’m glad someone bashed fuckwad to death with his own guitar.”
“With Tabitha?”
“Yeah—smashed that fucker’s head in as though it were a goddamned pumpkin.”
We stood in silence a long moment, and then Kippy asked, “How did you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That the murder weapon was Whiting’s Les Paul?”
Holy shit … if not for Kippy, I’d have missed the Perry Mason moment.
Chicago PD had intentionally kept that gruesome part about the murder weapon out of the media, had kept that trump card up their sleeve to cull out any crazies who felt the need to confess to a high-profile crime they’d had absolutely nothing to do with—a holdback on behalf of CPD, known to them but not released to the public. It was the piece of the puzzle Kippy had withheld from Tabitha in order to spare her feelings.
So either drummer Eddie Clare implausibly had someone inside CPD leaking him specifics on Jonny Whiting’s murder … or … or Eddie Clare was the killer.
I saw the realization dawn on Clare a second after it had dawned on me.
“That’s what they said on TV.”
“No, they didn’t,” Kippy said and took a step backward. I knew she had her off-duty subcompact—a Baby Glock—in her ankle holster.
We stood the
re in awkward silence until Vira began to growl.
And Eddie Clare began to run.
He made it almost twenty feet when Wabiszewski, who’d been leaning against the building with an ear in our direction, lifted a right arm—a perfect clothesline—and Clare dropped like a bag of rocks.
“I love it when they run,” Kippy’s partner said as he lifted Clare and slammed him against the wall of bricks. “It means they’re guilty.”
“Eddie,” we heard a voice behind us call and turned to look. It was one of Clover’s bartenders, a question mark sprawled across his features at the sight of the drummer for Time Machine being handcuffed; nevertheless, he completed his thought, “They’re ready for you.”
Somehow I didn’t think Eddie Clare would be making the next set.
CHAPTER 15
Peter Feist pulled his Lexus ES into the last lot on the south side of Cornell stream, only a stone’s toss from where it emptied into the reservoir, and took the parking spot next to where the jogging trail enters the tree line. Thankfully, his was the only car in the lot. As instructed by McCarron, Feist’d had squad cars from the 2nd Police District comb through Washington Park a half hour earlier, both interrupting and herding out whatever passes for commerce in the hours after the sun goes down.
It was a clear evening; a half-moon stood sentry in the night sky. A couple of streetlamps made the tableau not as gloomy as Feist had anticipated. He’d brought along a flashlight, which he’d stuffed in the left-side pocket of his windbreaker—recent police presence or not, Feist didn’t plan on traipsing about Washington Park at midnight in his Brooks Brothers and Gucci Leather Oxfords. The flashlight was tactical, the kind that blinds assailants with over 130 lumens of brightness. In the windbreaker’s other pocket, a Kahr CM9—his subcompact 9mm carry pistol with six rounds in the magazine. Feist figured if he couldn’t hit a point-blank target with six shots, well … then he truly was screwed.
Although there was a mild chill to the air—with temperatures in the mid-fifties—Feist felt a sheen of perspiration form along his hairline, but he didn’t wipe it off. Instead, he kept his hands inside the pockets of his windbreaker, gripping his flashlight and Kahr CM9.
Feist hit the running path hard. At five yards, the trail merged into the tree line; after another fifteen yards, the trail began to curve along with the pond and, forty yards farther on—per their brief burner-phone discussion of Washington Park logistics—sat the venture capitalist, Michael J. McCarron, on a park bench under a busted streetlamp, a lonely figure in the shadows. McCarron sported some kind of old-time derby and raincoat, likely his attempt at disguise. The investor spotted Feist, nodded, and held a large envelope above his head. Feist returned the nod, jogged the remaining distance, slid his hands out of his windbreaker in order to grab McCarron’s packet of corroboration.
But the man on the park bench wasn’t Michael J. McCarron.
Of this Feist was certain, after having spent several minutes during the afternoon studying McCarron’s facial appearance from both his bio page on the investment firm’s website as well as the image from McCarron’s most recent Illinois state driver’s license. The towering hulk that stood up to face him had a professional football player’s thickness melded with a professional basketball player’s height.
“I’m afraid Mr. McCarron won’t be joining us for tonight’s rendezvous,” the man said in a somewhat familiar voice.
Feist pointed at the envelope now lying on the park bench. “You dropping that off for him?”
“Feel free to have at that packet of newspaper clippings,” the big man replied. “Don’t you remember what I said on the phone? How David got himself kicked to death because the two of you pranced about as though you were going to prom?”
Feist’s heart dropped. “You made the call?”
The big man smiled.
“I’ve seen you around,” Feist said, wishing his hands were still inside his windbreaker pockets.
“And I’ve seen you around.”
The two men stared at each other.
“Might we take a moment to appreciate the irony here?” the big man said.
Feist said nothing, his right hand an inch closer to the pocket containing the CM9.
“You came out here all hell-bent and Eliot Ness–like, thinking you were being handed the Holy Grail on a fucking platter; but, in fact, you got yourself lured here for something altogether different. I hear you love fishing, Counselor, and damned if I didn’t reel you in like a one-pound northern pike.”
“Before you finish patting yourself on the back,” Feist replied, “there’s something you ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
“For starters,” Feist said, surprised at how calm he felt, his right hand now at his side, “you’re insane if you think you’ll get away with this.”
“Oh, I may well be insane,” the big man replied, “but I’ve usually found the ballsiest moves to work the best.”
“You do know I’ve got backups of my backups.”
“Of course you do, and I’ve got this idiot savant who’s in your system right now as we speak … taking care of the backups of your backups. Hell, Jethro’s been wiggling about your network for much of the past week.”
“Jethro?”
“Wasn’t me—the kid picked it himself. He does love that name.”
Feist then asked, “Do you believe in God?” It was an old lawyer trick, throw a curveball and catch the witness off guard.
“Oh, I reckon there might be something out there,” the big man said after a beat. “Yourself?”
“I’m a Pascal’s Wager Christian.”
“Fuck is that?”
“An old French philosopher named Blaise Pascal figured we human beings bet with our lives that God either exists or He does not.”
“What’s the bet?”
“Well, the old French guy figured a rational man should live life as though God does exist because that way he’ll only suffer a few minor losses in the here and now, but will have infinite gains in the afterlife.”
“What if you lose the bet?”
Feist shrugged. “I’ve always tried to be a rational man.”
And with that Peter Feist went for his gun—a modern-day Wyatt Earp slapping nylon windbreaker instead of leather.
But Special Prosecutor Feist never had a chance. For his size, the big man struck like a cobra, a pile driver straight to Feist’s solar plexus. A second later and Feist’s Kahr CMP was in the big man’s hand. A second after that and Feist’s tactical flashlight had also been confiscated.
“That had to smart,” the big man said as he held Feist upright by his collar. “I knocked you into next week. That’s an idiom, by the way. It means I hit you so hard that you’ll be unconscious until sometime next week.” The big man redoubled his grip on the collar of Feist’s windbreaker and dragged him off the path and into the woods that shrouded the pond. “Don’t worry, though, that slime water will snap you up fast because you and I are going to have a little heart-to-heart. Sure, I liked that Pascal bullshit about God and all, but now we’re gonna talk apple carts.”
CHAPTER 16
Kippy and Wabiszewski dropped me off at one-forty in the morning. Kip told me to do what I had to do with the dogs, then turn around and haul ass downtown to CPD’s headquarters to see if us worker bees could con our way into watching Eddie Clare’s interrogation. Since that wasn’t something one gets to witness every day—and since my orientation class in Buffalo Grove didn’t begin until midafternoon—I offered to bring popcorn and Milk Duds.
Vira and I had nodded in and out of consciousness on the trek home from Milwaukee as Wabiszewski worked the wheel and disobeyed the speed limit while Kippy used her cell phone to scale her way up CPD’s totem pole—first speaking with an on-watch sergeant, and then a lieutenant, before finally settling in with a captain.
Dick Weech—a retired railroad engineer, widower, and dog lover who lived up the boulevard—had once again watc
hed the kids during my Friday-night outing. He’d hung with the brood until ten, watching baseball with Sue and eating the bucket of fried chicken I’d left for him in the fridge. Dick, in turn, had left me a note on the kitchen table.
Had to wash Bill twice, it read. You owe me a fistful of scratch-offs.
Evidently, my bloodhound’s fetish—Bill’s unquenchable yearning to roll about in any pile he could find, the juicier the better—persisted in my truancy.
I indeed owed Dick a fistful of scratch-offs.
I microwaved old coffee that’d been left in the pot since yesterday morning and filled a bunch of water dishes. All but Sue were willing to go outside for a middle-of-the-night sniff and pee. I swear Sue rolled his eyes as I called for him, either way he wasn’t budging from his spot on the couch, not this late at night. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be away and toyed with leaving the pet door open as all but Bill were trained not to wander away in my absence. I sometimes clip Bill to a thirty-foot leash attached to the picnic table that allows my bloodhound to do his business as well as sit under the table or perch on my miniscule back deck or even squat inside the pet door. If Bill makes a ruckus, Maggie May or Delta Dawn will come and sit with him until he settles down. If Bill refuses to settle down, Sue will jump from his sofa, strut outside, and have a come-to-Jesus meeting with the unruly puppy.
And, quite frankly, it would be best for all involved if Sue wasn’t forced to vacate his throne.
I decided against the pet door—it’d be dark for too many more hours—and Vira, a really bad cup of coffee, and I were out the door by ten to two and at police headquarters by half past. Officer Wabiszewski was on the lookout for us in the station’s main entrance off South Michigan. A night sergeant with part of his right eyebrow missing—had to be a story in there somewhere—hustled the three of us into the belly of the beast where the morning’s drama had already begun to unfold.
* * *
“I belted out ‘The Was of Time’s chorus as I beat Jonny’s brains in,” Eddie Clare announced to the interrogation room. “Never felt better—should have paid fuckwad a visit decades ago.”
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