The Confessors' Club

by Jack Fredrickson

  He said he would. Or at least that’s what I hoped he might have said after he swore and clicked me away. I didn’t know for sure until he roared up forty-five minutes later.

  ‘Do not speak,’ he said as I slid in. Beard stubble smudged his pale face.

  I started to do just that.

  He held up a hand for silence. ‘And do not rest your shoes on the carpet. Someone disgusting fouled the interior of this fine machine, and clumsily attempted to clean it himself. I shampooed it myself last evening, but it’s still damp.’

  ‘I’ll pay for a proper detailing—’

  ‘And leave your window down. The whole car smells like an over-treated urinal.’

  ‘I told you: I’ll pay—’

  ‘Exactly how much money are you packing these days?’

  ‘I have potential.’

  He downshifted, turning onto LaSalle Street. ‘Tell me when we get to Min’s and I’ve had coffee.’

  Greasy spoon, spotted vest; no term can do proper justice to Min’s Café. No words can accurately describe the impact the fat-cat pols and business types who’ve warmed Min’s plywood and pink vinyl booths have had on Chicago, nor can words convey the artery-clogging magnificence Min piles onto her chipped green plates. In a town renowned for its massacres, from Fort Dearborn through St Valentine’s, to the latest gang shoot-outs in public parks, Min’s entrees have felled more crooks, saints and just plain ordinary folks than any gun-wielding hoodlums or gang bangers ever have. It was an appropriate place to discuss murder. We took a booth under a paint-by-number picture of a forest and ordered Eggs Bud.

  Leo held me off until he finished his first mug of coffee. After the waitress came by with a refill, he took another sip and said, ‘Now talk.’

  ‘I got picked up on video tape illegally entering Arthur Lamm’s office.’

  His eyebrows tangoed at my foolishness. ‘What the hell were you doing there?’

  ‘Hoping for a peek at his appointment book.’

  ‘You fiddled with locks …?’

  ‘The door was open.’

  ‘And inside was a federal crew with video cameras?’ He grinned, lighting the morning with a thousand bright teeth. Dumb was dumb.

  Before I could answer, our Eggs Bud came. Bud had been the grill man at Min’s for ten years. His masterpiece was four over-easy eggs piled atop two English muffins, slathered with sausage, melted cheddar and mushroom gravy the thickness of porridge. Bud died young. No one wondered why.

  Leo smacked his considerable lips, lifted a dripping forkful and asked, ‘So, you passed yourself off as prospecting for that five per cent Debbie Goring will give you?’

  I nodded. ‘I said I think Arthur Lamm attended those secret Tuesday night get-togethers.’

  ‘As a killer, or as a victim?’

  ‘I think Lamm’s alive,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because I think that’s why Wendell fired me. I think Wendell is covering up for Lamm.’

  ‘How much of this have you told Amanda?’

  ‘She knows her father is withholding.’

  ‘How is it, being close to Amanda again?’ he asked, a little too gently.

  ‘We’re getting along,’ I said. For now, that’s all I would allow aloud.

  ‘And Jenny?’

  I gave him what I could manage in the way of a grin. ‘We’re getting along, too.’

  ‘What’s next?’ he asked.

  ‘Finish my Eggs Bud.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Wait for inspiration.’

  He sighed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  My wait for inspiration wasn’t long.

  The younger agent who’d sat wordlessly with us in the IRS conference room, before Krantz sent him out for something, stopped by before noon. He opened a large white envelope and took out a sheaf of photocopied calendar pages. ‘All we have is this year’s. We think he destroyed the previous ones.’

  It was Lamm’s calendar. I flipped through the sheets. ‘He’s got the same notation for each of those second Tuesdays,’ I said. ‘“Sixty-six.”’

  ‘As you can see by his other entries, he noted all his appointments with numbers, sometimes followed by a letter or two.’

  ‘Abbreviations for addresses?’

  ‘We think so. Lamm didn’t use a driver. He drove himself around. Those entries were the properties he visited. On those second Tuesdays, his last stop was always a place with a number sixty-six street address. It’s meaningless and irrelevant to our investigation, but Special Agent Krantz thought you’d appreciate a first-hand look.’

  He held out his hand, I gave him back his copies, then he said, ‘Mind giving me a quick tour of one more floor? I’ve never been inside something like this.’

  It surprised me. Unlike most first-time visitors, he’d paid no attention to the craggy walls. ‘Sure,’ I said, and led him up to the second floor.

  ‘That cabinet isn’t quite level,’ he said in the kitchen. He was looking at the one that had been vexing me for days.

  ‘I’ll get it right,’ I said.

  He stepped out into the large area that would one day be something more specific, like a living room or a study or maybe both.

  ‘This is your office?’ he asked, walking up to the card table where I keep my computer.

  ‘Things are simple here,’ I said.

  He touched the torn vinyl covering on the card table, smiled, and said, ‘I’d best be going.’

  I don’t remember whether it was Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison or Bozo the Clown who said genius was one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. I’m guessing it was Bozo, because he had to stomp around in huge shoes, something sure to make him sweat like crazy. Stomping around, sweating, was all I could think to do next, though mercifully I wouldn’t have to do it in two-foot-long floppy red footwear.

  I drove to the corner of Michigan and Walton in Chicago, where Jim Whitman had been dropped off that last evening of his life. I parked the Jeep two blocks over, just off State Street, and headed west on foot. State Street is the dividing line for east and west addresses, and I figured Arthur Lamm’s number sixty-six would be a block or two east or west of it, and similarly, only a block or two north or south, since it had to be within easy walking distance for Whitman, a dying man.

  North of Walton, I walked east and west along Maple, Elm, and finally Division Street. There were four properties numbered with a sixty-six address: a Thai restaurant, an adult bookstore, a day spa and a private, three-story graystone residence.

  I turned around and walked the streets south of Walton. There were only two properties numbered sixty-six down there. Both were three-story graystone homes.

  I’d seen nothing, but I knew somebody who might know somebody who knew more. I walked west to Bughouse Square. Its real name is Washington Square Park, but to generations of Chicagoans it’s always been Bughouse Square, the place where soapbox orators used to stand on crates to rant about the inequities of the day, real or imagined. For decades it was a welcoming place for activists, lunatics and those who simply liked to watch.

  Then the neighborhood went upscale, like so many in Chicago. Some of the old graystones were renovated, but more were bulldozed to make way for concrete towers of condominiums, beige and bland inside and out. Sadly, Bughouse Square became gentrified along with everything else. Its worn, grassy expanse was professionally landscaped and cut with diagonal concrete walks, its loonies chased away to AM talk radio where they wouldn’t have to stand on boxes – or for that matter, even wear pants – to orate.

  Fortunately, the Newberry Library, across the street from the north of the square, remained untouched. I sat on one of the new benches the city had installed for trendy ladies and well-clipped dogs to share with homeless people and looked up at the fine old building.

  I called Endora’s cell phone. ‘Who do you know that’s a wiz on finding obscure private clubs in Chicago?’

  ‘M
e, of course. I have access to wonderful computers.’

  ‘I know it’s Saturday, but would you care to swing over to the Newberry?’

  ‘I’m already there.’

  Her office faced the park. ‘Look out your window,’ I said, waving.

  ‘I see.’ She laughed and said she’d meet me in the third-floor reading room in fifteen minutes.

  I tell Leo that the reason Endora adores him can be fathomable only to aliens from more twisted civilizations. She is in her early thirties and has magna cum laude degrees in history and anthropology that she’d financed by modeling upscale clothing in national women’s magazines. At graduation, she’d turned down longer contracts with the big New York agencies to work at the Newberry. Beautiful, brilliant and quirky, Endora was devoted to two things: the study and preservation of historical documents, and Leo.

  That she loved Leo pleased me immensely.

  That she worked at the Newberry assured me that occasionally there is perfect symmetry in the universe. For the Newberry Library, too, is quirky. It was planned on a promise of funding in the 1880s by a Mr Newberry, one of the richest men in Chicago. Unfortunately, before ground for the new library could be broken, Newberry died on board a ship en route to Italy. His traveling companions persuaded the captain not to deep-six the influential Newberry, as was the custom then for on-board expirations, but instead to preserve him in a barrel of whiskey. And so it went. Newberry completed his journey, to Italy and back to America, bobbing in a cask. In fact, even returned to Chicago, Newberry never left his barrel. He was rolled up the hill to Graceland Cemetery and buried in it, pickled and, by then, undoubtedly puckered.

  Newberry’s heirs squabbled over honoring his commitment to build the new library. Compromise was reached: exactly half of the library would be built. And so it became. Its front and sides are ornate, built of fine stone exactly as planned, but the detailing along its sides ends abruptly, like an ornately frosted rectangular cake sliced smack down the center. The upper cornice work stops crudely, and the back of the building is walled with the cheapest common bricks. Half was half.

  Such rudeness aside, there is nothing half-finished about the Newberry’s resources. It is renowned for its collections of arcane history, especially about Chicago.

  The third-floor reading room is a great old hall of golden oak, arched windows and massive tables lit by pull-chain, green glass lamps. It is a sturdy, safe place. I pulled out a book of old maps of Europe, brought it to a table, and looked at ancient geographies while I waited.

  Ten minutes later, a hand lightly touched my shoulder. Endora wore her usual dark, concealing work clothes. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and she wore no makeup. Even dressed so sternly, she was lovely, and I had no doubt that many of her male colleagues spent much time each day imagining what naughtiness with Endora might be like.

  ‘What’s up?’ she whispered, sitting down.

  I handed her the piece of paper on which I’d written the addresses of the buildings I’d just checked out. ‘What information do you have about these locations?’

  ‘For ownership or tax records?’

  ‘I’m trying to find a private club.’

  We went to one of the computer kiosks where she typed in a query. A moment later, she keyed in another question, and a couple of minutes after that, she motioned for me to follow her out into the hall.

  ‘There might have been such a club, a hundred years ago, at Sixty-six West Delaware, though I can find no current description of it. There’s someone else who may know more, and he’s in today, too.’

  We went through the double doors leading to the private offices. At the end of the corridor, Endora knocked on the wall next to an open door, and leaned in to speak to someone inside. After a second, she stepped back and motioned for me to go in ahead of her. ‘Mickey Rosen, Dek Elstrom,’ she said.

  The office was the size of a utility closet. It was crammed with bookshelves, a small metal desk and a tiny old man seated on a swivel chair. Mickey Rosen was at least eighty-five, and dressed in a pilling orange polyester sweater and maroon pants. He stuck out a small, leathery hand. ‘Any male friend of Endora’s is an enemy of mine,’ he said, leering up at her.

  ‘Dek’s got a question about properties around here,’ Endora said. ‘Specifically, private clubs, with street addresses numbered sixty—’

  ‘Stop!’ Mickey held up a liver-spotted hand to silence her, then moved it to his forehead like a psychic. He closed his eyes as a big grin split his face, exposing yellowed teeth. ‘Nobody say anything. I’ll divine what your friend wants to know.’

  I glanced at Endora. She looked stricken.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Rosen, all I’m looking—’

  He moved his hand from his forehead, opened his eyes, and finished my sentence. ‘You’re looking for an organization of influential people that meets only six times a year, does so secretly, is named with a word that begins with a “C” and has a street number of sixty-six.’

  He dropped his hand and looked at Endora. Satisfied with her look of stunned admiration, he asked her, ‘Will you sleep with me now?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed.

  ‘Just as well,’ he sighed. ‘My heart beats best in boredom.’ He turned to me and winked. ‘Do you know a man named Small?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Certainly there’s nothing small about him. A heavy man, heavy breather, destined for a coronary event,’ he said. ‘Anyway, this Mr Small came to see me. Edward, I think he said his name was, or Edwin.’ Mickey shook his head. ‘He too wanted to know about a property around here numbered sixty-six.’

  ‘How recently?’

  ‘Late February, or maybe the beginning of March.’

  ‘Was he a cop?’

  ‘He didn’t show a badge.’

  Small might have been the investigator Wendell had hired. ‘Were you able to help him?’

  Mickey Rosen smiled. ‘The Confessors’ Club,’ he said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sixty-six West Delaware was one of the graystones I’d seen south of Walton, an old, narrow, three-story with high steps leading to a black-painted front door. It was in the middle of a mix of residences, boutiques and bars.

  I didn’t spot any security cameras outside, but some might have been mounted inside the windows. Remembering my obviousness at Lamm’s office, I didn’t linger, and ducked into a bar directly across the street instead. It was one of those places that catered to the slim, hip, wanting to be noticed. Its front wall was almost all glass, so that people inside could be admired from outside, and people out on the sidewalk could be admired from inside. But all that admiring was for later, after it got dark. Now the bar was almost empty. I stood at a high table close to the window, ordered coffee, and pretended to be slim and hip, but really wishing I had a doughnut to go with the coffee.

  I called Delray’s cell phone. ‘I’m in a bar across from the C. Club,’ I said to his voice messaging, right after the beep.

  He called right back. ‘Where?’

  ‘State and Delaware.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Apparently, a club inside a private residence. How soon can you get a warrant?’

  ‘Any sign of activity?’

  ‘You mean Lamm, puttering about, freshening the lawn for spring? I’ve seen no one.’

  He told me he’d be there soon. I told him I’d wait. By now it was getting dark, and the slim and the hip were beginning to descend on the intersection in slim, hip droves.

  There was a restaurant across the intersection trying to pass as a fifties diner. The counter waitress was a cutie done up all in pink, right down to the bubble gum she was chewing with an open mouth. I sat on one of the red vinyl stools, slapped a roll of Tums on the counter and ordered a chili cheeseburger, chili fries and chocolate malt. She gave me an admiring glance, recognizing me as a serious contender who knew to bring antacids to a grease pit.

  The chili burger and fries had cojones
, the malt was too thick to go through the straw and the music was quintessential rockabilly, made long ago by men who’d married prepubescent cousins. I took my time, savoring the malted milk and inbred rock and roll, until seven-thirty when Delray showed up at the corner across the street.

  He was dressed in a black silk shirt, black trousers, black silk sport coat and black shoes. Subtract the gelled stuff he slathered on his hair, add two hundred pounds, a beard, and fifty years, and he could have been Orson Welles. Except not dead.

  He studied me as I crossed the street like he was checking out a Salvation Army mannequin. ‘Is there a story behind you never wearing anything but a blue button-down shirt and khakis?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much of one,’ I said. ‘Where’s your team?’

  ‘I’m not assigned to this case anymore, remember? Second, there’s no Chicago PD warrant out for Lamm. And third, it’s Saturday night.’

  ‘So you’re not going inside?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘You said it’s a residence?’

  I knew that sort of grin, and knew that I’d be protected, being in the company of a cop.

  ‘Let’s go clubbing,’ I said. By now the sidewalks were teeming with people younger than me and older than Delray.

  I took him to the bar I’d been in earlier. The guy sitting outside, on a stool, didn’t give me a second glance but asked Delray for identification. Delray flashed his open wallet, and we went in to stand in the crush by the window. We shouted an order for long necks to a young girl with really blonde hair.

  ‘Where is it?’ Delray leaned to ask, after the girl had brought us the beer.

  ‘Sip slowly,’ I said. ‘Anticipation is everything.’

  ‘Then tell me about why you wear only blue shirts and khakis.’

  ‘I got in some trouble, had to sell stuff to pay legal bills. It was strangely liberating, and I found I enjoyed it. What I couldn’t sell I gave away, including most of my clothes.’

  ‘I read up on you. You were all over the front page of the Chicago Tribune for a couple of days before you got cleared.’