“No cocktail, Paul?”
“No, not for me. It’s too early.” And to himself he said, And I never, ever drink with assholes.
Lunch was what he had expected, an assault on his ears, a virtuoso performance by Rich Vosic. He made small talk, offered his views on politics, the cornerstone of which was a vision of Reagan as King Arthur, and gave an impromptu lecture on business, all of this delivered while Rich Vosic surveyed the young women at adjoining tables to assure himself that they were listening. It was impossible not to.
Whelan watched the young women strutting up and down Clark Street in summer dresses and sleeveless blouses and occasionally tuned Vosic in to see where he was in his lecture.
“…and I’m telling you, Paul, you can write your own ticket…they’ll pay through the nose…you buy one with a garage on ground-level, it’s like gold, Paul, there’s no parking anywhere on the North Side…make your money back in a year, put it back in, watch it double, triple. I know, Paul, I know.” He was gesturing to his chest with his salad fork. There was salad on it, and to a passerby it would have seemed that Rich was stabbing himself with a tomato.
Vosic seemed to notice Whelan’s scallops, all but lost in a dense layer of cream sauce, and he launched into a brief sermon on fat and cholesterol, on fried foods and additives. He went on from there to various forms of cancer, and before Whelan knew what was happening Vosic was discussing diseases of the digestive tract and parasites.
Whelan started laughing and couldn’t stop himself. Vosic paused with a forkful of healthy cucumber halfway to his mouth, tilted his head, and gave Whelan an amiable, slightly embarrassed smile, but his eyes were off in a different direction.
“Okay, Paul, what’s the joke?” He grinned and shrugged. “Okay, I talk too much, right?”
“Well, I was just wondering if you’re going to want to talk about leprosy next. Leprosy, I know. I did a research paper once in college.”
Vosic bestowed a grin on him. They were buddies again.
“Okay, okay, I get a little carried away with health problems, diet and all that. I’m interested in it, and I’ve read up on it. You know, my old man and my uncle both died before the age of fifty—heart disease. They were both old school, you know? Fifty, sixty pounds overweight. So…” He shrugged, looked at the two blond women at the nearest table, and then shot Whelan a quick look of conspiracy.
“I picked this place for the scenery, Paul.”
“Scenery’s great. So are the scallops. What are we going to talk about next, Rich?”
Vosic pursed his lips, played with the label on his beer bottle, and made a little nod. “We’re going to talk about this…I don’t know what you’d call it, this investigation. Is that the right word, Paul?”
“It’s a word.”
“Okay, this investigation. About George Brister, supposedly.”
“Why ‘supposedly’?”
Vosic shrugged. “Oh, lots of reasons. You seem to be asking a lot of questions, a lot of questions that don’t have anything to do with Brister.”
“Like what? And how would you know what I ask people?”
“Oh, I hear things, Paul. I know what you ask Carmen, for one. And I know you’ve been in my place on Rush.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I think you’re going about things wrong. You’re running around with no, you know, direction. You’re asking a lot of questions about me and my business, and Brister and…this and that.”
Whelan nodded; Vosic had stopped just short of saying “Henley.” Or “Harry Palm.” He could see that Vosic wanted him to say something, so he took a sip of his coffee, put it down, and continued eating. After a moment Vosic shook his head.
“And I hear other things, Paul. I hear your client—”
Whelan smiled. “You didn’t hear about my client. You’ve had me watched.”
Vosic’s eyes opened wider and he seemed just slightly off balance.
“You’ve had me watched and you’ve had me followed.”
Vosic regained some of his composure and nodded. “Okay, you saw my guy. You’re a pro at this, he’s not.”
“It’d be hard to miss him. Subtlety is not one of his gifts.”
“Well, maybe not. And it wasn’t exactly my idea.”
“Little brother, maybe?”
“Hey, I’m a businessman. I gotta take responsibility for what my people do, all right?” When Whelan said nothing, he went on. “That’s Larry, Whelan, and he’s all right. He’s the most loyal sucker you’d ever want to meet. He’d step in front of a bus if I told him to. But, okay, you been following me around, I think, and I had you followed. Just to see what was going on. For no other reason.”
“I really haven’t been following you around, Vosic. I’ve just been listening to a lot of people who know you.”
Vosic lowered his fork and his face darkened. “Yeah, I know who you been talking to. You been talking to Janice Fairs. Janice Fairs, for Chrissake.” He shook his head and looked around the restaurant and then back at Whelan, and he was now into a new persona, the aggrieved businessman.
“So now what? Do we fight a duel, or what?”
Vosic gave him a pained expression. “Hey, I’m not the bad guy here, Paul, I didn’t start this. I’m a reputable businessman with a reputation to uphold and interests to protect, and some guy comes sliding in and out of the shadows with a story about a guy from my past who wasn’t real nice people, and I want to know why. I thought maybe some other outfit was trying to track Brister for something else he did; I believed your story. Then I…then I find out you’re meeting with Janice Fairs. Janice Fairs is your client. There’s no company trying to find Brister.”
“Janice Fairs is someone I talked to in the course of—”
“Uh-uh, no, she came to see you, she comes all the way in from the suburbs to see you. That means she’s the client.”
“And what if she is?”
“What’s she want with me? I got nothing to do with her. I don’t want nothing to do with her, either.” Whelan wondered if Vosic’s grammar and pronunciation went south whenever he got angry or was just part of his regular-guy routine.
“She’s interested in what Brister got away with.”
Vosic studied Whelan with a little pout. He shook his head. “I’m not gonna buy it, Paul. I know what she thinks. She called me up one night, drunk and crying, and told me she thought I ripped her off. That’s her angle. She thinks I have her money.”
Whelan made a little shrug.
“Like she needs money, right? She’s rolling in it, Paul. Her old man died and she was right back on top of the world. She’s swimming in money. I got nothing she needs.”
“Is that the point? If somebody takes something of mine, and I don’t need it, does that make it all right?”
Vosic went red. It took him a moment to speak. “It ain’t hers. None of it. It’s mine.”
“Maybe it’s yours and Phil’s.”
Vosic looked at him openmouthed and then shook his head. “No. I made it all the way back by myself. I did it without any help from anybody. Phil Fairs didn’t have what it takes. He couldn’t handle it, Whelan, I told you that.”
“Maybe he didn’t kill himself. Maybe he planned to torch the boat and somebody decided to kill him.”
It was further than he’d intended to go, but now that he had, he was pleased. Rich Vosic just stared at him.
Let’s push, he thought. “Mrs. Fairs seems to think that if anyone killed anybody, it was you.”
Vosic leaned forward. “No, Whelan, she don’t think that. She knows exactly what went down. She knows her husband punched his own ticket. She knows he went through all the money like it was never gonna end, and then he killed himself. He killed himself and left her with nothing. Insurance company wouldn’t even pay on a suicide. He didn’t leave her with a damn thing but the ring they took off his hand. But now she’s got some money of her own and she’s still singing the blues. You know why, Whelan?”
/>
“Tell me.”
“Maybe she should. She didn’t tell you about her and me?”
Whelan made a little shrug with one hand’.
Vosic smiled. “No, she didn’t. You didn’t know about us. We had a little thing, Whelan. We had a little thing and it passed, it was one of those things. They don’t last; the broads always think they’re gonna last. Well, it didn’t and she wants my balls, Whelan.” He sat back in his seat and watched Whelan. “No, you didn’t know that. The big detective and he doesn’t know what’s really going on. That’s why Janice Fairs is after my ass, Whelan. ’Cause I dropped her.”
Whelan finished his coffee. There was no card to play, so he waited.
“You see, Paul? There’s no scam going on. And Brister?” He made a gesture of dismissal with his hand. “Who knows what hole he crawled into?” He smiled.
“Who’s Henley?”
Vosic hesitated just long enough. “He’s just a guy I’ve had some dealings with. He’s got nothing to do with any of this other shit.” He made the little wave of dismissal again.
Whelan shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
Vosic looked tired. He wiped his eyes with one hand. “What would it take to get you to drop this? Huh?”
“Well, now it doesn’t seem that I should. I think you just told me there was something more.”
Vosic glanced around, and when he spoke his voice was a hoarse whisper. “Maybe you need things broken down for you—simplified. Okay. You fuck with me, you keep digging around in this stuff, I’m gonna have the pleasure of seeing somebody beat you bloody. You think this is the minor leagues here, pal?”
“Yeah, I do.” Whelan got up and stretched. “Thanks for lunch.”
Vosic stood quickly and seemed to be making the effort to collect himself. “Hey, all right, Paul. I didn’t mean that. I was just pissed off, I don’t need all this aggravation from this woman…”
“It’s okay, Rich. What’s the point of being an asshole if you can’t act like one.”
For a second he thought Vosic would take a swing at him. They stood looking at each other till Vosic realized that people were staring. Whelan nodded to him and vaulted the iron railing. Standing on the sidewalk, he waved to Vosic.
Vosic pointed a finger at him. “Okay, smart guy…”
Whelan began to walk away. Then a thought struck him. He turned and smiled. “Hey, Rich? Your wife’s gonna kick your ass in court. You’re having a helluva month.”
He turned his back and began the long walk to his car. He thought about Vosic’s comment that Janice Fairs was driving all the way in from the suburbs and wondered how old Rich would feel if he knew Janice Fairs was staying in a hotel less than a half mile from Jerome’s.
“Really great lunch,” he said to himself.
He got in the car and drove over to the Harrison-Stratford Hotel. The hotel was a turn-of-the-century piece of elegance that faced the statue of Shakespeare in Lincoln Park. If you took a room with a window facing east you had a view of Mr. Shakespeare, flower beds, a fountain, and the zoo.
The hotel looked out on a pair of parallel streets, Lincoln Park West and Stockton Drive, the latter of which wound its tree-lined way through Lincoln Park and provided a bargain-basement tour of the conservatory, the zoo, and the Lincoln Park Lagoon. There was no parking on Park West so he tried Stockton and got lucky almost immediately, as a black Porsche pulled out in front of him.
He went across to the hotel, climbed the scarlet-carpeted stairs, and crossed a lobby that should have been in the movies. A tall, serious-looking man gave Whelan’s shirt a discreetly questioning look and then brought a smile up from his store of manners.
“I’m here to see Mrs. Janice Fairs. Can you ring her for me?”
“Mrs. Fairs hasn’t returned from lunch, sir. Would you care to wait?”
Whelan looked around at the ornate lobby and decided a walk in the zoo was a better idea. “No, I’ll come back later.”
“Very good, sir.”
He crossed the street, paused to stare at the wonderful seated Shakespeare, then went on to the zoo. The heat had gotten to the animals—the heat or the children, because almost all of the city’s children were here today, brought here by day camp or summer camp or baby-sitter or parent, a horde of children making a wall of sound. The parents seemed irritable, the camp counselors close to violence, but the kids were making the best of the hot, airless day, as they always seemed to. Some of them were inner-city children and Whelan wondered how many of them realized that this hot, sticky trip to the zoo was the best they were going to get for a long time—maybe all they would get.
The lion was a lifeless pile of hair and fur, one paw hanging down over a rock. He stared off into space, oblivious to the flies that surrounded him or the humans who watched. A thin old man with white hair and a red face leaned against the iron railing and smiled at the lion. Whelan had been certain he’d see this man here. On cold days in winter and late fall you could find him inside the lion house, sitting on a bench and watching lions and leopards or simply nodding off. On such days, when the zoo saw no more than a dozen visitors at the end of a day, you saw the zoo’s true regulars—this old man and a couple more like him, a retarded man in his forties who talked to anyone who would listen to him, a long-haired man in his twenties who always seemed to be reading, and at least a half dozen homeless. They huddled in the zoo buildings for warmth and seldom if ever panhandled, for they valued the shelter more than the prospect of a little pocket change. Once or twice he’d seen these shabby, lost men come out of the shadows and frighten people walking with small children and he’d been irritated at those people for their unreasoning fear of men who probably couldn’t hurt you if they wanted to.
He tapped the old man on the shoulder.
“Whaddya know, pop?”
“Oh, not much, lad. How you been?”
“I get by. Crowded enough for you?”
The old man shrugged. “Oh, I don’t mind ’em, the kids.” He winked at Whelan. “Where I live there’s just the old ones. We sit around on sofas and chairs in the lobby and see who can fall asleep first. I come home one night and there’s six of ’em sittin’ in the lounge there, and not a one of ’em’s awake.” He cackled and shook his head and Whelan laughed. “Anyhow, we’re a lot better off, you and me, than this poor sonofabitch here.” He indicated the lion with a nod of his head.
“Maybe not,” Whelan said. “This one’s not an African lion.”
“You’re right. He’s from some forest in India.”
“India’s hot and crowded and full of flies, so he probably thinks Chicago’s the promised land.”
The old man laughed and looked up at Whelan. “You been to India?” His pale blue eyes sparkled at the prospect of an unusual conversation.
Whelan shook his head. “I don’t travel much. Only time I was ever in a foreign country, people shot at me. I didn’t like it.”
The old man squinted in the bright sunlight. “Vietnam? You don’t look old enough for Korea.”
“Vietnam,” Whelan said. “Another hot place.”
They made small talk for a few minutes and he decided to try Janice Fairs again.
“Gotta run, buddy. Time to get back to work.”
“See you around, lad.”
“I’ll come by next week sometime and we can talk lions again.” The old man nodded and went back to staring at the overheated cat.
“Mrs. Fairs hasn’t returned yet, sir,” the tall, thin gentleman said before Whelan could ask for her.
“Okay, thanks.” He went back outside and then decided to sit in the car where he could listen to some music. His car was stifling, the seat burned his back, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sit there long. He tuned in a jazz station and caught what seemed to be an R and B set, “Way Back Home,” by the Crusaders, an old tune by Young-Holt Unlimited, a Booker T. number he didn’t recognize, and something by Ronnie Laws. He was about to have a cigarette when he looked out at
the hotel and saw Janice Fairs.
She stood in front of the hotel. She was smiling and listening to the conversation of her escort but he could tell by the way she looked around that she wasn’t listening too hard. There was a confidence, a composure in her face that he hadn’t seen, and he wondered what it had to do with the man she was with. The man chattered and ran a hand carefully across his blond hair and took his eyes off her only when a pair of younger women walked by. The gentleman was Ronald Vosic, and as Whelan watched, Mrs. Fairs said something to him and they went inside the hotel.
These people are some really interesting folks, Whelan said to himself.
They hadn’t bothered to close the door behind them, and he stood outside the office for a moment to prepare himself for what he’d find. It didn’t help.
He was aware first of the smell, a heavy, rank odor of sweat, and for a moment he thought the visitor might still be there. Two steps inside and he could see that the room was empty.
He crossed the room and sat on the edge of his desk and tried to imagine himself doing a more thorough job of trashing someone’s office, but he couldn’t. Aside from the desk itself, nothing was in its normal place—drawers lay upside down on the floor, spilling their shredded contents, and someone had put a judicious foot through one of them. That same person had emptied the wastebasket onto the floor, torn down the calendar and his two simple wall pictures, and ripped the phone apart. The receiver sat in one corner of the room while the earpiece peeked out from under a manila folder under the window. The intruder had reduced the contents of his Rolodex to a pile of scraps under the desk and turned the desk blotter into a twisted pretzel of green.
His desk chair had been smashed against the desk and the visitor had slashed the vinyl seats of his other chairs. Whelan studied the slash marks for a moment—long, loose wounds made with a large blade and an easy motion.
They hadn’t touched his wall safe, but then he would have been surprised if they’d been able to do anything with it. His first purchase when he’d gone into the business, it was top of the line, purchased from a retired jeweler. If you wanted to know about safes, you talked to a jeweler.
A Body in Belmont Harbor Page 21
