Which meant the vial I was now holding should have contained but a few pills, the end of a two-week supply.
Which meant it could not have contained enough pills to kill him.
‘You’re sure the medical examiner found twelve hundred milligrams of this stuff in Whitman’s system?’ I asked.
‘Approximately.’
‘Isn’t it odd that two pills remain inside this vial?’
‘Whitman would have known just a few would do the trick.’
I gave him the arithmetic. ‘Fifteen pills were needed to put twelve hundred milligrams in his system.’
‘OK,’ the desk sergeant said slowly, not comprehending where I was heading.
‘That’s over half a vial. His reserve supply at home was untouched.’
‘What are you saying?’
I rattled the vial in the plastic bag. ‘He took pills from this vial exactly on schedule, two a day. Where did Whitman get fifteen pills to swallow all at once?’
Finch grabbed the bag back. ‘From this—’
‘No,’ I cut in. ‘There weren’t enough left in there.’
The desk sergeant cocked his head, motioning Finch to leave. ‘You’ll have to check with the medical examiner,’ he said to me.
I gave it up, and walked up the stairs. I took a long look through the window in the door before going out. I saw no black BMW or sharply barbered MBA outside, but I’d just seen plenty inside.
I crossed the street to a drug store and bought a pack of Listerine breath tapes. They were stronger than my generics, and got rid of the taste of onions right away.
But they didn’t mask the bile that had risen in my throat.
FIFTEEN
Robert McClain was in the parking lot behind his dark brick apartment building, dry wiping a shiny black Cadillac Seville. He looked old enough to have been driving when roads were made of dirt.
‘I like to be ready, in case I get a call,’ he said, smiling.
I asked him about Jim Whitman.
‘Working for Mr Whitman was a real pleasure,’ he said. ‘Most fellows would have insisted on a younger driver, but not Mr Whitman. He was always real polite and regular, always sat up front with me. He tipped really well.’
‘Do you remember the night he died?’
‘Like yesterday. I knew he was ill – he was straightforward about it – but he didn’t act like a man about to kill himself.’
‘His spirits were good?’
‘Considering what he was facing, yes. As usual, he talked about his grandchildren all the way into the city.’
‘You picked him up about seven?’
McClain nodded. ‘Went in, had a spot of coffee with Mrs Johnson while Mr Whitman was getting ready.’
‘Do you remember where you took him?’
‘Corner of Michigan and Walton, downtown.’
‘I meant which restaurant.’
‘No restaurant. Dropped him at the same corner, as usual.’
‘You’d taken him there before?’
‘Every few weeks. He never did say where exactly he was going from there.’
‘And you picked him up later at that same corner?’
‘Not that night. He called to say he was catching another way home.’
‘You didn’t bring him home in a tan-colored car?’
‘This baby’s all I got,’ he said, touching the gleaming hood of the black Cadillac.
‘Was it usual for him to find another way home from there?’
‘He’d never done it before. Every other time, I picked him up at ten o’clock sharp. He’d be standing on that same corner, waiting.’ He picked up his rag, worked at an imagined spot. ‘That was the last time I drove anybody.’
‘Business slow?’
‘I’m old, and I look it. The agency’s got younger drivers.’
There was nothing left to say. I left him in the late-afternoon sun, polishing a future that likely had disappeared.
I busied myself cutting the last of the closet trim that evening. I needed simple work requiring clear and logical steps while my mind stumbled about in the fog surrounding Jim Whitman’s pills.
For a time, it worked. The cutting, sanding and staining were calming, easy steps in an understandable sequence. But then, well into the evening, it came time for varnishing. Varnishing, done right, requires care: one pass, no over-brushing. Be too fast, and a spot can get overlooked.
And that’s what happened with the cops looking at Jim Whitman’s death. They’d missed a big spot: they hadn’t accounted for his pills. He couldn’t have used his current two-week prescription to kill himself because there had been too few remaining. And he hadn’t tapped his reserve vial because it was untouched. He had to have gotten his fatal batch of fifteen pills from a third source.
Unless he hadn’t. Someone else could have slipped Gendarin into his meal or his drink, knowing that the excess in his bloodstream wouldn’t be questioned because it was the pain medication he was already taking. It would have been assumed that Whitman used his own supply to overdose himself.
What I couldn’t see was the logic in risking the murder of an already dying man.
The vague thoughts and the pungent smell of the varnish finally made me woozy. I walked down to the river to sit on the bench and breathe in the cold March air. Behind me, the jukes in the tonks along Thompson Avenue were beating out big bass notes, primitive drums summoning tribe members to return. I almost envied those in that dark carnival. They were sure of what they were seeking: a simple tingle from some booze, a few laughs, a rub of rented flesh.
Perhaps it had been that simple for Jim Whitman, that last night. Maybe he’d finished a good meal, enjoyed a few drinks, had a few laughs being driven home by a friend … and realized things would never get any better than they were that evening. Maybe he’d rat-holed a stash of Gendarin for just such a time, and asked himself, on the spur of that moment: Why not? Why not check out with a belly full of good steak and good Scotch, and the sound of a laugh still resonating in the back of his throat? Why not?
Except for the grandchildren he’d left without a nickel.
The dim light from the lamp along the riverwalk made a tiny shadow on the ground just beyond my feet. It was another still-born ash leaf, curled and dried on the grass. I looked up at the tree. There was not enough light to see for sure, but I knew in my throat that no new leaves had appeared that day.
I took out my pocket calendar and recorded that loss, too.
SIXTEEN
Two men in loose-fitting gray suits, one carrying a square carton, the other something the size of a wrapped painting, came out of the Whitman house the next morning, heading toward the black Ford Expedition parked at the curb. They stopped when they saw me pull up. The one with the painting gestured at someone in the big SUV, and a third man, also in a suit, got out from the driver’s door. All three stood motionless, watching me. I couldn’t see the guns, but I knew they had them. Whatever Jim Whitman had bequeathed, it was worth enough to merit three guards.
Mrs Johnson had followed the two men out of the house, saw them tense and stop on the front walk. She turned to look where they were looking. I waved out the Jeep’s open side curtain. She squinted, recognized my face. ‘We’re almost done,’ she called. And the world righted itself. The men carrying the box and the painting resumed walking toward the SUV, the driver got back inside, and I settled back to wait.
Ten minutes later, Mrs Johnson followed the armed men out with the last of the cartons, and watched them drive away. She came over to the Jeep. ‘You can’t imagine how relieved I am that those things are on their way to the Museum of Contemporary Art,’ she said. ‘The house has an alarm, but I’ve not been comfortable there, alone with all those valuable pieces.’
‘They’ll be exhibited soon?’ I asked as we went up the front walk.
‘The curator said they’ll be catalogued, then stored. In a year, maybe less, they’ll be rotated into exhibition.’
‘How valuable are the p
ieces?’
‘Millions,’ she said, as we entered the house. ‘Mr Whitman was a plain man, not the usual patron of the arts. Those pieces were recommended as investments. From what I understand, he profited quite handsomely from their purchase.’
‘Yet not even one was left to Debbie.’
The distress on her face seemed genuine. ‘Wealthy fathers can be especially difficult on young daughters. And Debbie, as you might imagine, was very strong-willed. But Mr Whitman cared for his daughter, and adored his grandsons.’
‘You find it odd that he left them nothing?’
‘It’s impossible to believe. And now you’ve come back because you’re wondering where he got the pills, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, and I’d like to see his calendar again. You’re certain there was only one bottle of Gendarin in reserve?’
‘Certain as I can be. As I said, Mr Whitman wanted to keep more on hand, in case the pain got worse, but his doctor wouldn’t go for it. Federally regulated narcotics are so very tightly dispensed.’
‘Could he have set aside a pill or two from each refill, to build up an extra supply?’
‘That’s very doubtful. He truly needed those pills, and skipping one would mean going twelve full hours in pain. And yes, Mr Elstrom,’ she said, ‘I told that to the police, but they didn’t seem interested.’
‘Any more thoughts on where Mr Whitman might have gone that last night?’
‘Mr McClain was no help?’
‘He dropped off Mr Whitman on North Michigan Avenue. Someone else drove him home.’
‘In that tan car I saw.’
‘Any idea whose it was?’
‘Only thing I know it was tan, and it was a Buick.’
‘You know cars well enough to spot a Buick?’
‘Goodness, no. All cars look the same to me these days, like jelly beans. It’s just that when I was young, Buicks had those holes …’ She stopped, searching for the words.
‘Like portholes, on the sides of the car?’
‘That’s it. Imagine Buick still doing those holes, only smaller, after all these years.’
We went into Whitman’s study. She picked up the calendar from the desk and handed it to me. I opened it to the page for December 13, the day he died, and looked again at the half-dozen entries. His first appointment was for lunch, at eleven-thirty. Other names were penciled in, beginning at one, ending at two-thirty. After that, the calendar was blank until the ‘C’ entry, scrawled across the lines for the evening. I pointed to it.
‘As I told you last time, I don’t know that one,’ she said. ‘After you and Debbie left, I flipped back a few months. There are other entries just like it.’
‘McClain said the same thing. He dropped Whitman at the same intersection, Michigan at Walton, every few weeks.’
‘You think he got the Gendarin there?’
‘I can’t understand why he’d need to. He had enough in reserve here to kill himself.’
‘I went through the whole house, Mr Elstrom. I found no third vial, no trace he’d hidden more Gendarin.’ She studied my face. ‘You came back because you’re thinking what I’m thinking.’
‘Two pills remaining in the vial in his jacket, as there should have been? Full reserve supply upstairs, as there should have been? Leaving us to accept he’d gone to the bother of obtaining the pills he needed to kill himself elsewhere, when he didn’t need to? Yes, I’m having a problem understanding why he’d go to that trouble.’
‘He didn’t commit suicide, did he, Mr Elstrom?’
‘I can’t prove that.’
‘Why would someone risk killing him? Why not simply wait?’
‘Did he have enemies?’
‘Business adversaries, perhaps, though Mr Whitman was not ruthless, not someone who took unfair advantage.’
I started turning back the calendar pages. ‘I need to know where he went that evening.’
The appointments looked to have been written by two different people. Most were in a feminine hand. ‘Did you make most of these entries?’
‘His secretary made those,’ she said. ‘The ones that are barely legible, like that ‘C’ for the night Mr Whitman died, he wrote himself.’
Almost every page had an abbreviation for an evening appointment. I started pointing randomly to different evening entries.
‘Y?’
‘YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, usually a dinner meeting for the directors, every three months.’
‘MP?’
‘Millennium Park, the new park on Michigan Avenue. He donated one hundred thousand dollars.’
I came to another ‘C’ entry, two months earlier, in October.
‘That’s one of the others I found,’ Mrs Johnson said.
Again it was simple and cryptic, scrawled across the lines for evening appointments. Beside me, Mrs Johnson shook her head, offering nothing. I turned back more pages. There were ‘C’ entries in August, June, April and February.
‘Did he keep another desk diary at his office?’ I asked.
‘This was the only one; he carried it back and forth in his briefcase.’
‘Maybe the prior year’s book has more information?’
‘His secretary kept his old diaries,’ she said, picking up the phone. Then, while she was dialing, ‘Why would someone murder an already dying man?’
There was no answering that.
SEVENTEEN
Whitman Industries occupied four floors in a high-rise office building just north of the Chicago River. Jim Whitman’s former secretary, a trim, efficient woman in her mid-fifties, came to the lobby carrying two blue leather desk calendars identical to the one I’d brought from Whitman’s house. We sat in a secluded corner next to a plant.
I opened the calendar I’d brought to December 13, the night Whitman died. ‘Do you know what this is?’ I asked, pointing to the ‘C.’
‘I wondered about those,’ she said. ‘I wrote most of the appointments in his book, and knew almost all of the ones he entered. But those “C”s …’ She shook her head. ‘I never asked, of course.’
‘Were there many?’
‘Several a year.’ She opened one of the calendars she’d brought, the book for the year before last. Turning the pages, she made notes on a small pad. When she was finished, she said, ‘The year before last, he attended ‘C’ meetings on February tenth, April thirteenth, June eighth, August tenth, October twelfth, and then December fourteenth. They seem to have been regular enough, all on Tuesdays.’ She handed me the list.
‘How about the year before that?’
She opened the other book she’d brought, the one for the third year going back, and, turning the pages, read off the dates so I could write them down. ‘Regular thing,’ she said, when she was done. ‘Tuesdays, every other month.’
‘You have no idea where he spent those evenings?’
‘No.’
‘How did he seem, his last day here?’
‘For a man whose life was being cut short – a strong, powerful man who had to give up control of an empire he had constructed?’ Her lips tightened, then relaxed. ‘Actually, he seemed in remarkably good humor that day. He met with several people, dictated a few letters, mostly apologies for matters he could not attend to personally, and left around three o’clock.’
‘Did he keep any extra medication in his office?’ I asked.
‘You mean pills to kill himself?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I went through his office thoroughly. There was no trace of pills.’
I had no doubt she’d searched immediately, looking to destroy any evidence Whitman had taken a deliberate overdose.
‘You wouldn’t tell me if there were,’ I said.
‘I find it difficult to believe he killed himself. In any event, there was no trace of an extra supply in his office.’
I believed her like I believed Mrs Johnson. Whitman had no extra pills.
And that was enough for Wendell Phelps to call the cops.
I called his private cell phone number as soon as I got outside. ‘I’ve got something for you to take to the police. Jim Whitman loved his grandsons, and would have known his suicide would null the insurance policy he’d left for their well-being.’
Wendell said nothing for a moment, and then asked, in a surprisingly weak voice, ‘Insurance?’
‘He had a two-million-dollar life policy, benefitting his grandsons. Death by suicide nulled it.’
Again he paused. ‘Perhaps there were other policies …’ He let the question trail away.
‘If there were, his daughter, Debbie, does not know of them. She got nothing for the care of her kids. You have enough to go to the police, Wendell.’
‘The cops will say he was a sick man. Pain doesn’t make for high lucidity.’
‘He was lucid enough to arrange his other bequests.’
‘That proves nothing,’ he said, his voice stronger, almost combative.
‘Then try this: I can’t find the source of the pills he supposedly took. He had plenty at home, but he didn’t touch those. If he took his own life, he used pills from a secret stash.’
‘Cops will say a secret stash was easy to create.’
‘He could have been fed those pills. Murdered, as you suspect.’
‘Jim Whitman was dying, damn it. There was no motive for murder. Cops will laugh.’
‘Why fight me on this, Wendell? You suspected right away your friends were being murdered.’
‘I overreacted.’
‘The night Whitman died, he went downtown to a place that begins with a “C.” He went there every two months, always on a Tuesday. He was secretive about it. He had his driver drop him nearby, but never directly at the destination.’
He chuckled, but it sounded forced. ‘Whitman was a widower. Maybe he went down there to visit a lady friend he didn’t want anyone to know about. Hell, she could have been a high-priced hooker.’
‘His regular driver didn’t come back for him the night he died. Someone else drove him home, somebody in a light-colored Buick.’
‘This is all you’ve got?’ He exhaled disgust into the phone. ‘There are thousands of Buicks in this town, like there are thousands of places that begin with the letter “C.” I’ll get back to you if I want you to continue.’
The Confessors' Club Page 7
