Cold Blue Midnight

by Ed Gorman

  'You were probably one of those boys once.'

  'I was. And that's why I'm so depressed.'

  'Well, you turned out all right. Maybe these boys will, too.'

  He nodded and sat back in his comfortable leather executive chair. His office was modestly appointed but neat in every respect. His father had been an illegal immigrant. Jose took great pride in how far he'd come. He was always pushing magazines of the conservative political persuasion at Marcy. Jose had grown up on welfare and knew how it strangled not only ambition but dignity as well. At this stage, his office furnishings were not the most expensive wood but someday, through his continued hard work, they would be the best cherry wood available. He had pride, and great drive. In addition to owning this small store, he still taught computer classes three nights a week.

  'So what government computer are we going to rape today?' he enquired.

  'The Driver's License Bureau.'

  He grinned. 'Good. They will only give me twenty years in prison for that one.'

  She handed him the particulars. 'Blue Volvo. Here's the year and the model. And here's a description of the guy.

  See how many matches you can turn up.' Then she looked up at him from the notes she'd put on his desk. 'And this time, I'm going to pay you.'

  'No, no. You were a pleasure to have as a student, and you're even more of a pleasure to have as a friend. Besides, we small-business people, we have to stick together.'

  'Jose'

  'My word is final, Marcy. Final.'

  She smiled and shook her head. 'You're crazy, you know that? But in a real nice way.'

  She gave him a little kiss on the cheek before she left.

  Then she went and got in the big black monster truck. She hoped she would run into that leering pirate again. This time she'd really humiliate him.

  CHAPTER 49

  Jill worked in the darkroom all morning. Every twenty minutes or so, she'd call Mitch's phone and let it ring four times. Nobody ever answered. She'd hang up before the operator picked up. She didn't want to leave a message, didn't want Mitch to know how frantic she was getting. Did Lieutenant Sievers really have any hard evidence against her? Wouldn't he believe that somebody unknown had stolen her blouse and skirt and apparently soaked them in blood?

  By two o'clock, Mitch still hadn't called.

  Jill remained working in the darkroom, but now she was making some really stupid mistakes.

  Really stupid mistakes.

  CHAPTER 50

  Cini's first stop was at Baskin-Robbins, where she bought one quart of French vanilla ice cream and one quart of Dutch chocolate.

  Her second stop was at Dunkin' Donuts. She got a dozen assorted donuts and half a dozen filled cream puffs.

  Forty-two minutes after leaving her apartment, she rolled into Fanny Farmer's in a strip mall on the way to O'Hare.

  A bell tinkled above her as she walked in.

  The place was tiny, with space for only three very small glass display cases and a nook for a cash register. Two prim elderly ladies with blue-tinted hair were at the register now. One of them paid the hefty, middle-aged, white-uniformed clerk with a trembling, liver-spotted hand. 'You know that Esther and I have been coming to Fanny Farmer ever since we were little girls?' The clerk resembled a 'Woman in Prison' movie posterwith her cast in the role of sadistic guard.

  Obviously, the elderly woman expected the clerk to make some sort of fuss.

  The clerk just shrugged wide, sloping shoulders. 'Oh. That's nice.'

  The old ladies exchanged glances of disappointment.

  'Where's Molly today?' the second one said, obviously implying that Molly was more their type.

  'She was awake all night pukin' her guts up,' the clerk informed them crudely. 'Musta picked up the flu. Anyway, they called me at home this morning at six-thirty, if you can believe it. My husband was really pissed. This is his day off.'

  The prim ladies looked at each other again and sort of shook their heads.

  'Vulgar,' Cini could hear them saying. 'So vulgar.'

  She felt sorry for the old ladies. The world was such a harsh place these days.

  The ladies went out, the tinkling bell announcing their exit.

  'I hope I never live to get all pruned-up like that. Yer skin hangin' down in bags 'n stuff. So how can I help you?'

  Memories of the bad old days were coming back to Cini now. To an overeater, a Fanny Farmer store is just like a bar to an alcoholic.

  She inhaled the various aromas of the rich, dark chocolates. Her eyes scanned row after row of chocolate delicacy.

  'You hear me? I said so how can I help you?'

  Cini said, 'I want two pounds of those and two pounds of those and two pounds of those.'

  The woman whistled. 'You know how much that's gonna cost you? Especially the ones with the pecans?'

  'I have plenty of money, if that's what you're worried about,' Cini said. Then, remembering how the clerk had treated the old ladies, she said, 'Anyway, my finances are none of your fucking business.'

  The woman looked stunned.

  A quiet upper-class girl like Cini, using language like that?

  Cini had never spoken to anybody in her life like that. She knew she owed her mood to the terrible demands her body was putting on her.

  She thought about apologizing but reminded herself of the bored and abusive tone the clerk had taken with the women.

  'And I don't want to wait around all fucking day, either,' Cini said.

  The clerk set immediately to work, seeming to be at least a trifle leery of Cini's mental state.

  As well she should.

  The parking lot was a drab wind tunnel. Cini made her way back to her car clutching the Fanny Farmer bag to her chest, the way she would carry something invaluable and holy.

  When she got in the car and turned the key, the WGN news came on. The announcer said, 'Chicagoans are still expressing shock that one of their own most prominent advertising executives was stabbed to death in his Loop office sometime last night.'

  She should go to the police.

  She should tell them what she saw.

  She should be a good citizen.

  She put the car in gear and drove off.

  In less than half a mile, she had eaten one third of the Fanny Farmer chocolate-covered turtles. The expensive ones with the pecans.

  CHAPTER 51

  'Mitch Ayers, please.'

  'I'm sorry, miss. He's not in at the moment.'

  'All right. Thank you.'

  'Any message?'

  'Just tell him to call Jill as soon as he hears anything.'

  'Jill,' the detective repeated. 'Call ASAP when you hear anything. Got it.'

  'Thank you.'

  'My pleasure.'

  CHAPTER 52

  An after-dinner speaker once noted that Arthur K. Halliwell was not 'a citizen of the United States, he is a citizen of Chicago.' The audience, knowing exactly what he meant, broke into both laughter and applause.

  While other firms had opened branches in Washington, DC to take advantage of the national political set, and others still wanted New York with its international flavor, Halliwell had been content to rule Chicago. Though a patrician from a long line of patricians the Wrigleys, the Palmers and the McCormicks had attended many of his birthday parties Halliwell had always found the vulgarity of Chicago history heady and exhilarating.

  And for this reason, many of the city's most powerful players trusted him in the way one would a father confessor. There was no problem Arthur K. Halliwell could not solve; no secret Arthur K. Halliwell would not keep. When a recent Mayor of this city found himself in trouble with a pregnant nineteen-year-old campaign worker who was thinking about going to the press, Arthur sent the young woman a copy of her father's police records on a morals charge (exposing himself to a twelve-year-old girl in 1967) on which he scrawled an anonymous note: 'Would you like to see this in the press?' The young woman came to her senses. She aborted the child.


  While the Arthur K. Halliwell law firm, which overlooked the city from its sixty-seventh-floor eyrie, ostensibly handled business and corporate matters for its clients, it was really a Big Brother program for the city's elite. Uncle Walter, as some chose to call him, was never more than a phone call away. As for Uncle Walter himself, he rather enjoyed playing God. He just wished that he were a little more powerful, as powerful as many of his clients imagined him to be but that was probably a normal divine failing, wasn't it? Even gods wanted things a little nicer for themselves.

  The offices reflected the firm's status of dignified wealth, with furnishings that lent the air of a sumptuous and elegant home. Beautiful as the secretaries were Walter knew that both men and women appreciated beautiful, elegant women they took care to dress as conservatively as the lawyers themselves, usually in corporate gray or blue. And as for the lawyers no associate ever worked harder than at Uncle Walter's firm. The associate period generally lasted five years, and less than thirty per cent passed muster. Many simply collapsed from the exhaustion of constant eighteen-hour days and enough rules to make Marine boot camp look like Easy Street. If you complained, you always got the same time-honed anecdote about how Arthur K. Halliwell himself, who'd begun life as a trial lawyer, had lost his first fourteen cases and was dismissed by all the legal wags in the city as a lightweight. But he stayed the course and went on to win more than 1,100 cases in a row. Imagine the hours he'd put in. Imagine the sacrifices he'd made to family and frivolity. How could an associate demand any less of himself? In forty-three years, no associate had ever found a way to argue with that.

  Halliwell thought of all this as he sat in his office that day. He did not usually engage in this kind of nostalgia recalling his rise to prominence but on mornings when his arthritis was acting up, he had no choice but to recall better days in order to get through the bad ones.

  He paced the office now everything cherry wood with leather, brass-studded furnishings that had clawed ball feet and carved legs hobbled slightly by the arthritis that had lately inhibited his left knee, trying to appreciate his new framed map of the Old World (his taste in art came from his wife, to whom he had been unutterably faithful for fifty-one years), and his view of Lake Michigan. On a sunny day such as this one, he always wanted to start his life over, live it not in the hushed mahogany reverence of boardrooms but aboard the tramp steamers and dogsleds of the Jack London stories he'd enjoyed so much as a boy. So many years gone by so quickly…

  As he paced, he also kept glancing at the phone.

  What the hell had happened to Adam Morrow, anyway?

  For the first time since losing those initial fourteen trials, Arthur K. Halliwell had the terrible feeling that he had perhaps gotten himself involved in something that was, in equal parts, foolish and self-destructive…

  Had Uncle Walter at last come up against a problem he couldn't solve? Worse a problem that had been of his own making.

  He limped to the phone, arthritic fingers touching arthritic knee, a lion of an old man, silver-haired and handsome in a jowly, somewhat angry way and dialed.

  Dialed as he had every half hour for the past four days.

  Just where in the hell was Adam Morrow?

  The last Halliwell had heard from him was that frantic, furtive call a few days ago when he'd whispered that Rick Corday 'might be on' to them.

  The phone rang several times. He waited for the answering machine to pick up, for Adam's deep voice to invite the caller to leave name and number and date of call.

  But the phone machine didn't pick up.

  Instead, somebody human did.

  'Hello?' Arthur K. Halliwell said.

  But the person who'd picked up said nothing. Simply listened.

  'Hello?' Arthur K. Halliwell said again.

  Breathing now.

  'Adam, is that you?'

  Breathing.

  'Adam, are you all right?'

  Breathing.

  'This is Arthur K. Halliwell. I demand to speak to Adam Morrow.'

  Now not even breathing. Just… silence.

  'Damn you, I am Arthur K. Halliwell and I do not brook this kind of treatment!'

  He laughed.

  The bastard laughed.

  Uncle Walter composed himself. 'Is this you, Rick?'

  Silence again.

  'Rick?'

  The breathing.

  'Rick?'

  And then the person on the other phone hung up.

  Uncle Walter slammed the receiver down.

  Where the hell was Adam Morrow, anyway?

  CHAPTER 53

  Lieutenant Sievers said, 'Mitch? I was waiting for your call.'

  'How'd it go?'

  'She came in just fine, no problem,' Sievers said.

  'I mean matching the prints on the murder weapon with her prints.'

  Lieutenant Sievers said, 'Mitch. They're a perfect match. I'm going to charge her with murder. I'm sorry.'

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 54

  One week later, it snowed in Chicago. Being the first really heavy snow of the season, everything traffic on the expressways, schoolbuses picking up the kiddies, pushers going to meet their customers got backed up a couple of hours. In Elmhurst, a man woke up in bed with a woman not his wife and realized that he'd passed out around midnight. He hurried out of his lover's arms so quickly that he tripped going down her icy front steps and broke his leg in two places. In Park Forest, a man who was planning to rob a bank that morning (he had pulled three successful bank robberies in the past two weeks and was beginning to believe this was one easy gig) started shoveling out his driveway and keeled over with a heart attack, dead by the time the wailing ambulance got there. In Lawndale, a hooker finished up the aerobics she always did to her old Jane Fonda videotape, and then went into the bathroom for a leisurely shower. She threw back her shower curtain and promptly screamed. There squatted a rat the size of a grown cat, all black and glistening and red-eyed. Then she remembered the gift her pimp had given her a few months ago. She fled into the bedroom, grabbed something from beneath her bed and returned to the bathroom, her pink fluffy mules going clack clack clack on the shiny hardwood floors as she ran. 'You little shit,' she said. And promptly pumped three armor-piercing rounds into the devil's hairy chest. The rat basically came apart in two big bloody chunks.

  Nothing so exciting was going on with Marcy Browne. She was out near the suburb of Northbrook, parked an eighth of a mile from a large hip-roofed ranch house that had no close neighbors. Perfect for a guy who liked to do things he didn't want other people to know about.

  She'd had to give up the black pick-up. Too obvious for this kind of work. Instead, she sat in a plain Chevrolet six-cylinder she'd rented for the week. The body shop said it'd take them a month to get her car fixed, what with ordering the parts and all, but that they could recommend a real good rental agency, leading suspicious Marcy to believe that body shop and rental agency were owned by the same people.

  It was 7:35 a.m. and still snowing hard and there was virtually no music to be found on the radio. Everything was school closings and traffic reports and warnings to drive safely; everything was stay-tuned-for-further-traffic-and-weather-updates… all delivered in a tone that let you know that these radio station folks were virtual saints. We love your collective asses off, folks. We really do. That's why we're giving you all these groovy facts about the blizzard.

  All Marcy wanted was a little music.

  Well, and one more thing: she wanted the guy who came out of the ranch house to match the James Coburn lookalike on the photo that Jill had taken.

  In the past week, Jose had been able to come up with forty-seven blue Volvos in the Illinois vehicle registration computer. By now, Marcy had visited thirty-nine of the owners. They had been fat, bald, black, crippled, red-haired, brown-haired and shaven-headed… but not one of them had been white-haired and not one of them had borne even a passing resemblance to James Coburn.

  She only had eight to
go.

  Please God, make this the right one.

  And please God, while You're at it, could You give us a little respite from traffic reports and all that stuff? You know I don't wake up in the morning unless I have three cups of steaming black coffee and a lot of really loud rock and roll.

  The coffee she had. She'd filled a thermos at 7-Eleven.

  It was the rock and roll she missed. Unlike her own car, this renter didn't have a tape deck.

  She really needed some rock and roll.

  Really really.

  ***

  'Oh, God.'

  'What?' Mitch said.

  'The alarm. It didn't go off,' Jill said.

  'It didn't? I thought you were going to pick up a new one yesterday.'

  'I forgot.'

  This time, Mitch said it: 'Oh, God.'

  And then Mitch, in his subdued mint-green boxer shorts, and Jill in her pink silk pajamas, leapt from bed and got their respective mornings off to a heart-pounding start.

  'You take the bathroom first,' Jill said. 'I'll start the coffee.'

  'I'll be happy to start the coffee.'

  She shook her head. 'I'm so groggy I need the caffeine even before I take a shower.'

  Mitch padded into the bathroom and proceeded to perform a couple of really impressive (at least to him) stunts he'd picked up over the years. To wit: Mitch knew how to pee while brushing his teeth with his right hand and using his electric razor with his left.

  He was performing this circus act when Jill knocked on the door and said, 'We should've looked out the window.'

  Mitch took the toothbrush from his mouth. 'How come?'

  'There's three feet of snow on the ground. We're having a blizzard.'

  'Oh, God.'

  'Everything and everybody's going to be late this morning. We can probably take our time a little more.'

  'I'll call the Lieutenant and see how things are stacking up this morning. I still want to check out a few more bars.'