“Beautiful flowers,” Mallard said, as they settled around Ross’s desk.
“My principal hobby,” Ross said. “I have two thousand of them.”
“You take care of them yourself?”
Ross nodded. “Mostly.” He wasn’t interested in talking about his flowers. “What can I do for you folks?”
“You’ve probably got a pretty good idea,” Mallard said. “You once employed Clara Rinker. She just killed Nanny Dichter, and we think she is probably going after you. She blames you for the killing of Paulo Mejia.”
Ross made a hand gesture, a what can you do gesture, and said, “I never had anything but the best relationship with her. I was amazed when I found out that she’d been killing people. But her career started way before I met her—at least, if what the papers say is correct.”
“Look, you know as well as I do that the Bureau has a major file on you,” Mallard said. “I think that some of the . . . surmises . . . made in those files are correct. But I don’t care about that. I don’t care if you’re a big-time mobster, because my job right now is to find and stop Clara Rinker. What I want from you is any ideas you may have of where she’s staying, who she may be working with. Old friends, people she could force to take her in—anything like that.”
Ross was shaking his head. “I’d have no idea. I will go around and ask, though. When she worked for me, she mostly worked in the warehouse, and there must be twenty or thirty people out there who knew her. I’ll have one of my guys talk to everyone.”
“How about if we talk to them?”
“I’ve got no problem with that,” Ross said. He leaned forward, opened a small drawer, and took out a sheet of paper and a yellow pencil. He scribbled on it and pushed it at Mallard. “This is the manager’s name and phone number. I’ll call him as soon as you leave, and tell him to expect a call from you.”
Mallard nodded. “Thank you. . . . You personally have no idea. . . .”
Ross shook his head again. “None. I’ll tell you, I’m really not sure that she’s coming after me. I’m not sure exactly why she went after Nanny Dichter—I mean, you hear these rumors that Nanny played by his own rules, sometimes, but I didn’t know they had any prior . . . relationship. Maybe that’ll be the end of it. Nanny.”
“That’s a possibility, but she has at least one more man on her list for sure—not you. And we know that she made a series of phone calls from Mexico, to Missouri, after the shooting, and that you were the main topic of conversation. So we think there are at least two more people on the list, and you are one of them.”
“Who’s the other guy?” Ross’s dark eyebrows went up.
“Sorry,” Mallard said. “I can’t . . .”
“Paul Dellaglio?”
Mallard shook his head. “. . . really give you that information. Why would you think Dellaglio?”
“Because anything Nanny Dichter did, Paul was part and parcel of. Unless the Rinker thing involves sex.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Neither do I. Nanny didn’t get around so much. So I would guess that Paul’s the other guy on your list.”
Mallard shook his head and said, “I’ll have a couple of our agents around to your warehouse this afternoon.”
“Anything I can do,” Ross said.
THAT WAS THE INTERVIEW .After a few more unpleasantries, Ross took them out. On the way, they stopped in a room whose leaded-glass wall overlooked the back lawn. To the left, a greenhouse stood facing the south. A resort-sized rectangular swimming pool was straight ahead, and with its black-painted bottom, acted as a reflecting pond. To the right was a tennis court, where Ross’s wife was batting tennis balls around with a white-haired man.
“Tennis lessons,” Ross said ruefully. “That guy costs me fifty bucks an hour.”
“Your wife’s got a nice swing,” Lucas said.
Ross looked at him with a tiny spark in his eye, the first sign Lucas had seen of humor. “Yes, she does. Always has had,” Ross said.
Ross stood in the doorway and watched them go. When they were in the car, he pushed the door shut and walked to the opposite end of the house, moving silently on the thick carpet. Two men were in the billiards room, one of them looking out the window, while the other, a fiftyish man with a bald, pink scalp and a long Swedish face, was flipping playing cards down the length of a billiards table, at a tweed hat.
Ross watched him for a moment. Johnson’s dour face reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t think who. Ross did not like Honus Johnson—nobody did—but he was sometimes afraid that he’d let that attitude leak through, and that Honus had picked it up.
Honus was a throwback, a genuine sadist who’d found his perfect place in life as an interrogator, a punisher, with Ross’s organization. Some of the others used him from time to time, with Ross’s approval, but he was Ross’s creature . . . and like most people who owned creatures, Ross sometimes wondered if the beast would ever turn on him.
Johnson, with his playthings, his hammers and saws and pliers and wire, would give a man a hard way to go.
He stepped into the room, and both men turned to him. “They’re gone,” Ross said. “They have no idea where she is. But they pretty much said what I told you—she has to be staying with somebody she knew from before. I want you guys to get out there and start talking to people.”
“If we find her?” asked the man from the window.
“If you find her—if you literally find her, like walk in on her—you won’t have to worry, because she’ll kill you. But if you hear where she is, get back to me. We’ll get some guys to pick her up.”
“I don’t know if I can be of much use,” Honus Johnson said. “I’m not a scout.”
“I want you to go along with Troy, here, and stand in the background,” Ross said. “People have some ideas about you. That might convince them to be more forthcoming. And I have something else for you.”
“Hmmm?” Johnson didn’t quite look eager.
Ross looked at Troy. “You remember that woman Nancy Leighton? Used to work in fulfillment? Black hair, little mustache . . . Quit maybe three years ago?”
“Drove a Camaro,” Troy said.
“That’s the one. She used to be a good friend of Rinker’s. I think she’s got an apartment down on the south side somewhere. Get in her apartment, take her apart.”
Johnson’s eyebrows went up. “Take her apart? Completely?”
“Completely. Be careful—no prints, no DNA, but we want it to be noticed. We want it in the newspapers. Front page. Make it ugly.”
“An example,” Johnson said with relish. He rubbed the edge of one hand through the palm of the other, back and forth, like a saw. Then: “Do I get Clara if we pick her up?”
“I’d have to think about that,” Ross said. “I do like the girl—but she’s a very bad example, hitting Nanny like she did.”
“I’d like to have her for a while,” Johnson said. His flat tongue flickered out to his thin lips, his flat pale eyes catching Ross’s. “It wouldn’t have to be long.”
At that moment, when he caught Ross’s eyes, Ross realized who Johnson looked like: the old man in the Grant Wood painting American Gothic, the somber old man with the pitchfork standing next to his equally somber wife. “Old rivals, huh?” Ross said, and smiled at the thought. The two of them had been a powerful combination.
Too bad about Clara.
AT THE FBI BUILDING ,Lucas said goodbye to Mallard and got into his car. “Gonna roll around town for a while,” he said. He dug up Micky Andreno’s phone number and dialed it. Andreno was out in the yard and snatched up the phone on the fifth ring, as Lucas was about to hang up. “Washing the car,” he said.
“Know anybody at Heartland National?”
“No, but one of Bender’s kids works there. Want me to call him?”
“I think that Andy Levy’s a vice president. I did some calling around.”
“Oh, shit. . . . Oh, shit.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; “I’m so fuckin’ stupid. How could I be this fuckin’ stupid?” Andreno sounded shocked.
“What?”
“Nine, ten years back, there was a double murder—a woman and her divorce attorney were found together in bed, shot to death. Actually, the guy was in bed and the woman was on the floor right beside the bed, and the way it was reconstructed, they’d been screwing. Right in the act. This was at her house. Somebody walked in and shot the attorney twice in the back of the head with a small-caliber weapon. The woman apparently tried to slide out from under and get out, but she was shot in the forehead and then twice in the temple. There was a hideout in the bottom of her dresser, and a bunch of jewelry was taken . . . worth maybe ten grand? Something like that. The husband was a guy named Levy—I think it was Aaron Levy—but I’ll tell you what: Nobody knew it at the time, but looking back, it sounds exactly like Rinker. Like one of her hits.”
“Aaron Levy, Andy Levy . . . could be the same. Or maybe Sellos got it wrong,” Lucas said. “No arrests on the two killings?”
“Never a smell of one. Levy, this guy—a young guy—was like at some big Jewish convention somewhere, with several thousand witnesses. His wife’s name, I think, was Lucille. Lucy. That’s what I remember. Bender could probably get a file. He’s still tight with the guys in homicide.”
“See if he can. Ask him if his kid will talk to us,” Lucas said. “Call me back when you know.”
“Pick me up,” Andreno said.
“Sure. Call Bender.”
Lucas dialed the number Sally had given him. She answered with “Yes?”
“I just talked to a guy who said there was an Aaron Levy, a case nine or ten years ago, whose wife Lucille and her divorce attorney were shot to death in her bed. Execution-style, Rinker-style, small-caliber weapon, close range, head shots. No arrests.”
“Hang on a minute.”
He heard her repeating what he’d said, and then Malone came on. “Interesting,” Malone said. “Louis just walked in. . . . I’m on-line. . . . Let me get this . . . Aaron Levy and Lucille? Conventional spellings?”
“That’s the names I got.”
He could hear her typing, and then she said, “Here it is. Case still open. Nothing here . . . let me search.” She hit a few more keys, then said, “Nothing here on Rinker, so nobody attributed it to her. All I get is Aaron—no Andy, no bank job. No job reported here.”
A male voice in the background said, “That’s him, though. We’ve got a newspaper file from the Post-Dispatch website, a speech for the Chamber of Commerce. He’s listed as Aaron parenthesis Andy parenthesis Levy, vice president at Heartland National Bank. This is five years ago.”
Then another male voice: “Where is Davenport getting this shit?”
Malone said, “I’m speeding everything up. We’re putting a screen around Levy right now. We’ve got to talk some tactics here, but I’m going to suggest to Louis that we might go see him. Go see Levy.”
“Let me know,” Lucas said. They talked for another minute, then he rang off. Five seconds later, before he could put the phone away, another call came in. Andreno.
“Bender’s going downtown to see if he can get the Levy file. He doesn’t think it’ll be a problem to look at it, but he’ll have to slide around a little to Xerox it. He’ll try to get it.”
“What about the kid?”
“He’s calling the kid.”
“Outstanding.”
“If it works out. Let me tell you how to get where I am. . . .”
ANDRENO LIVED IN an aging brick house in a narrow street of older brick houses, all shoulder-to-shoulder, with tiny yards and high porches, and pairs of bedroom windows looking out over the porch roofs toward the street; working-class, 1920, maybe, Lucas thought. A movie set for an Italian neighborhood.
Lucas pulled up in front, and Andreno banged out through the door a few seconds later. Lucas climbed out of the Porsche and said, “Want to run it?”
“Sure.”
Lucas tossed him the keys, got in the passenger side, and located the instruments for the other man. Andreno eased away from the curb. “Now we got to drive around in front of all my ex-girlfriends’ houses. That’s gonna take a while.”
“Never got married?”
“Got married twice, loved both of them to death, but they didn’t like me much, I guess,” Andreno said. “I can be an asshole.”
“Any kids?”
“Two. One with each. They seem to like me all right.”
“Got one myself, with another one in the oven,” Lucas said.
“Gotta have kids,” Andreno said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
THEY WERE HALFWAY downtown, the old courthouse on the horizon with the Gateway Arch behind it, when Bender called. Andreno answered, then handed the phone to Lucas: “I can’t talk and shift.”
Lucas took the phone. “What’s up?”
“My daughter’s name is Jill. She’s got a friend in the computer systems department over at Heartland, and he can get you a list of Levy’s private clients. Take about twenty minutes.”
“Can he do it without anybody knowing that he’s the one who printed it? We don’t want Levy pissed at anybody, in case . . . you know, in case Rinker’s a friend of his.”
“We talked about that: He can get it without anybody knowing. Turns out he pipes stuff out to a business guy at the Post-Dispatch, so he’s done it before. Jill’s gonna get it, she’ll meet you at Tony’s Coffee.”
Lucas looked at Andreno. “Tony’s Coffee?”
“Sure. Right downtown. Ten minutes.”
“We’ll be at Tony’s,” Lucas told Bender.
“How’re we doing?”
Lucas laughed. “Everything that’s broken on the case was broken by us. We’re rolling.”
“Hang around Tony’s. I’ll see you there myself in a half hour,” Bender said.
JILL BENDER WAS a thin redhead with a big nose and wide smile. She found them two-thirds of the way back in Tony’s, huddled over cups of coffee. She slid in beside Andreno and asked, “Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”
“Playing golf,” Andreno said. He introduced Lucas and then asked her, “How’s your mom?”
“She still hurts. They say they replace both knees at the same time, because if you only do one, you’ll never do the other, because of the pain.”
“Better than being crippled,” Andreno said. To Lucas: “Arthritis.”
“I heard that about the knee thing,” Lucas said. “My fiancée’s a surgeon.”
Bender was digging in her purse, and came up with a plain white business envelope. “You never heard of me,” she said.
“If they really busted their asses, could they figure out how it got to us?” Lucas asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t see how. Nobody knows about me and Dave, and even if they did, it’d be a long train. And dad sounded excited about the whole thing . . . so take it.”
Lucas took the envelope and put it in his pocket. “I’d like to buy you something: a cup of coffee or a diamond necklace or something—but it’d probably be better if you got out of here.”
She bobbed her head. “Yup. You guys be careful. Make Dad be careful.”
They said they would, and she patted Andreno on the thigh in a niece-like way and left. Lucas took the envelope out of his pocket and spread the four sheets of paper on the table. On the left side of the paper was a list of names and addresses, and on the right, a bank balance and account number. He scanned them, but nothing in particular caught his eye. As he finished each page, he pushed it across the table to Andreno. When Andreno had read the last page, Lucas asked, “See anything?”
“I know a couple of the companies, the names,” Andreno said. “Nothing out of line. But did you see the balances? Nothing under four mil. Bronze Industries at thirty-two million? What the hell is Bronze Industries?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of metal deal? I never heard of it.”
“Only four individuals, ne
ver heard of any of them. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I gotta get this back to the feds,” Lucas said. “This is what they’re good at.”
“There’s a copy place down the street—they probably got a fax.”
ANDRENO WAITED AT Tony’s for Bender, while Lucas walked down the street. On the way, he punched Sally’s number into the cell phone, got her, and asked for a fax number. She came back with it, and he scribbled it on the palm of his hand.
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