The Confessors' Club

by Jack Fredrickson

  I was sure I was touching death, perhaps days old. I felt along its shape, found a shoulder, and then the curve of an arm locked in place, unyielding. And a knee, tucked up under the chest.

  I wanted to run, get free from the stench, the death. But I had to know. For myself. For Amanda, more.

  I sunk the teeth of the hammer’s claw into the plastic shrouding the death, ripping it. The purest fumes of hell came at me, searing my nose, constricting my throat, pulling up bile. I held my breath, afraid I’d vomit. I found a belt and followed fabric – denim, wool or cotton; I couldn’t tell through the yellow gloves – past a dead hip to the small raised square that I was hoping to find. A wallet in a back pocket. An answer.

  I eased it out with my fingers, backed out of the car, and dropped it on the hood. I poked it open with my index finger. The driver’s license was in a plastic window.

  Herman Canty, PO Box 12, Bent Lake, Wisconsin.

  The body exhaled behind me, a soft sound of gas escaping through the rips I’d made in the plastic. I grabbed the metal case from the front passenger seat, left the wallet behind, and ran to the ruined door that led to the office.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Amanda said after we’d sped down the first mile of Milwaukee Avenue. ‘I forgot to leave the key.’ She looked stricken at the thought we’d have to drive back and slip the key through the slot in the door.

  After the briefest glance at the cash inside the metal case, we’d fled Second Securities unnerved, sick from the smell of death, barely able to remember to lock the door behind us.

  ‘Put it in the ashtray,’ I said. ‘I’ll get rid of it later.’

  ‘Why did we take all that money?’ she asked, gesturing at the metal case I’d tossed in back. Her hands shook as she dropped the key in the ashtray.

  ‘To see who comes after it.’ It was all I could think to say. I had no plan that involved grabbing cash. I hadn’t expected it would be there. ‘Canty must have been Lamm’s partner in running down Grant Carson. Lamm must have killed him to silence him for all time, then left the money with the corpse, thinking it would be safest there, while he went north to tidy up a last detail.’

  ‘What last detail?’

  ‘Canty’s girlfriend, Wanda. Lamm must be thinking Canty told her some things. Do you know how to block your number when you make a call?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘Get the number of the sheriff’s department near Bent Lake. Leave an anonymous tip that Wanda over at Loons’ Rest might be in trouble.’

  It only took her a couple of minutes. Then she asked, ‘I still don’t understand: if Arthur needs money badly enough to kill for it, why risk leaving it in that garage?’

  ‘Guys like Lamm and your father, they don’t fly commercial, right?’

  ‘Lear jets, chartered out of Midway Airport,’ she said.

  ‘Then Second Securities is the safest short-term place he knows. Nobody knows about it except Rikk at the insurance company …’ I let the thought trail away.

  ‘Dek?’

  ‘And anybody else he might have told. He swore he didn’t tell Delray when he called, posing as a cop. But you never know.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  I thought for a moment, and said, ‘I don’t think so. Delray’s got to be thinking the check was picked up and cashed somewhere. I’m pretty sure the only person who’s going to be shocked at Second Securities is Arthur Lamm, when he comes back. He’ll be light the two million dollars he needs for fleeing in a corporate jet.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Krantz to keep watch for Arthur to show up at Second Securities?’

  ‘I owe your father more than that. We’re going to tell him about the money we just found. That ought to make him talk about his friend Arthur.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We find a way to give it to the cops without implicating your father.’

  ‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘I wish my father didn’t get rid of his security detail. Too much cash is being tossed around.’

  ‘He believes he has nothing to fear from his old friend Arthur.’

  ‘I’m going to call my father when we get back to my apartment.’

  We drove in silence for another five minutes, until she told me to pull over in front of a discount men’s clothing store.

  ‘My treat,’ she said. I stunk of the death I’d found in the small battered Ford, and I’d torn one knee of my khakis, ripping my way into the car trunk. She was out with a bag in five minutes, and we were back on our way.

  Upstairs in her condo, she handed me the bag.

  ‘Ah, new duds,’ I said.

  ‘But the same you,’ she said. ‘Cheap khakis, de rigueur blue button-down shirt in cotton polyester, socks and underwear. Thirty-six fifty for the whole outfit. Once you’ve showered, you’ll smell and look like new.’ She forced a nervous laugh, but she was firing on all pistons, in control. ‘Guest bath is waiting. While you’re showering, I’ll call my father, see if we can meet him in an hour or so.’ She handed me a paper bag for the clothes I was wearing. ‘Incinerator chute is outside, in the hall.’

  Shampoo and soap were in the shower; I needed nothing. Yet previous lives occasionally demand a fast indulgence. Inside the medicine cabinet were wrapped bars of soap, two fresh tubes of toothpaste, a sealed toothbrush, and nothing else. Most especially, there was no man’s razor, shaving cream, or deodorant.

  She’d mentioned Richard Rudolph, socially impeccable silver-haired hedge fund manager and investor, only in passing, saying he was in Russia, doing a deal. I’d mentioned Jenny the same way, just as reluctantly and also only in passing. I’d supposed our vagueness was normal, an offering of respect for the past and probably nothing more.

  Now, in her guest bathroom, surrounded by her soaps, her linens, things didn’t feel so firmly rooted in the past.

  I opened the linen closet, looking for a towel, and got a soft jolt. An inch of familiar red and blue striped terry showed bright behind the stack of white towels. I pushed the towels to one side and was sure. It was the robe she’d bought me right after we married. That she’d kept it wanted to set off too many conflicting thoughts, and I showered trying not to think about any of them.

  I emerged twenty minutes later, studiously scrubbed, garbed in fresh polyester and smelling swell. I dropped my paper bag of clothes into the incinerator chute down the hall, came back, and went into the kitchen. She’d made us coffee, and set cups on the kitchen table.

  ‘My father is in meetings,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll leave the two million here,’ I said. ‘You’ve got all the building security it needs.’

  We drank the coffee, then she walked me to the door and told me she’d call as soon as she heard from her father.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Amanda didn’t call, and I fiddled away all of the next morning and the earliest part of the afternoon on the Internet. News sites everywhere had seized upon the graystone they were all now calling the Confessors’ Club, used only six times a year for the secret meetings of wealthy men. Facts were in short supply, so many of the reports offered Keller-like speculations of wild drunkenness, sexual debauchery, political manipulations and, of course, murderous plotting. It seemed that the farther the news organization was from Chicago, the wilder was the prose it used on its website.

  Close to home, the reporting was more responsible. The Tribune’s site ran a story about the IRS investigating Lamm next to a history of the Confessors’ Club, leaving no doubt that the two stories were related. The IRS story reported the likelihood that Lamm had high-tailed it out of Chicago to escape his impending indictment. Unnamed federal authorities, Krantz or one of his subordinates, said that the search for him had shifted to Sarasota, Florida, where Lamm had another home, and to a small, unnamed Caribbean country, where he might have transferred funds.

  The Confessors’ Club article was historical, and featured a photograph, taken around 1900, captioned as being the only one known to
ever have been taken of its members. It showed thirty men, in high collars and walrus mustaches, sitting stiffly at the long dining-room table, staring unsmiling into a camera that must have been set up in the parlor. The story noted that no record had been found of the club ever participating in civic or charitable endeavors, despite the prominence of its members, and seemed to have always conducted its activities in secret.

  There were short sidebar biographies of Barberi, Whitman and Carson, noting that the deaths, though still presumed to have resulted from natural causes, excepting Carson’s, were being re-examined as part of the Lamm and Confessors’ Club investigations.

  No site mentioned Delray Delmar, or offered the police artist’s sketch of Delray I’d been hauled in to help create. The lid was still tight on the cop imposter. I supposed it didn’t much matter. It was the other stuff that was big news, and no real news at all.

  Amanda called at two-thirty, but not with news that we were to meet with Wendell. Her words were perfectly precise with rage. ‘The man from the IRS is now here at my home. He’s the one who called yesterday. He says his name is Krantz. I’m wondering if you might stop by.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘Sleazy innuendo that I’d rather you heard first-hand.’ Undoubtedly Krantz was within hearing distance.

  I told her I’d get there in a hurry, and I did. She was waiting out in the hall. We shared a brief hug and I followed her inside.

  Agent Krantz was standing in the center, looking tiredly at the framings on the wall. If he knew art, he recognized the names on the oils. If he didn’t, chances were he at least recognized the bold signatures on the big Manet and the small Renoir. And if he didn’t know a Manet from a Monet, like me before I met Amanda, he still would have guessed from the heavy security in the building that he was staring at big-dollar art.

  ‘Ms Phelps has been educating me about light and brush strokes, and backgrounds and shadows and colors,’ he said to me, instead of saying hello. He turned to Amanda. ‘May we proceed now, Ms Phelps?’

  Amanda ignored him and smiled at me. It was a smile that could have cut steel. ‘I asked Secret Agent Krantz if—’

  ‘That’s Special Agent—’ Krantz cut in.

  ‘Whatever.’ Amanda changed her smile to a glare. ‘I asked this man if he wouldn’t mind waiting until you got here, Dek. I didn’t want you to miss one word of his slimy accusations.’

  ‘Now wait …’ Krantz started to protest again, but Amanda had already turned to go into the kitchen. Krantz and I followed and sat at the table. It was the one she’d had at her multi-million-dollar house at Crystal Waters before it blew up – cheap pine, poorly enameled, and chipped from years of use. If Krantz took any meaning in being led from fine art to sit at a garage sale table, he didn’t show it. Coffee that smelled fresh came from a high-end Braun maker on the counter. Amanda, an able gameswoman when angry, sat down without offering to pour us any.

  Krantz took a long breath, which only built more tension in the room, and began. ‘I stopped by to ask Ms Phelps if she knew where her father was. Ms Phelps told me that she did not. I asked her if she knew about her father’s business relationship with Arthur Lamm. Ms Phelps said she wanted you here. I’ve just spent thirty-eight minutes learning things I do not need to know about fine art.’

  Amanda cut in before I could answer. ‘Secret Agent Krantz is implying all sorts of things—’

  ‘That’s Special—’

  ‘Wendell is missing?’ I asked Krantz.

  ‘My father often travels on business,’ Amanda cut in.

  ‘According to his housekeeper,’ Krantz said, ‘he never went into the office this morning. He threw clothes in an overnight bag and left about eight o’clock, telling her he’d be gone for one or two days.’

  ‘Secret Agent Krantz is implying my father fled town rather than speak to him.’

  ‘I was to interview Mr Phelps this afternoon at his office,’ Krantz said. ‘When I got there, I was told he’d left. Ms Phelps confirms she hasn’t seen him today.’

  ‘He’s only been gone for a few hours. Our offices are on different floors,’ Amanda said.

  ‘When did you set up the appointment?’ I asked.

  ‘Day before yesterday, Tuesday.’

  Tuesday, Confessors’ Club day.

  ‘You talked to him directly, to set up the appointment?’ I said.

  ‘It took a while to get past all the secretaries, but yes.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘Unappreciative.’

  ‘How about today? Did you speak to his wife?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently his wife didn’t see him leave. She was home at the time, but off …’ He paused to look at Amanda, perhaps afraid she’d come across the table at him if he used the wrong words.

  ‘Tending pigs,’ Amanda said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Krantz said, wincing only a little. ‘I only spoke to the housekeeper.’

  ‘Secret Agent Krantz is implying that my father took off to avoid being questioned,’ Amanda said.

  Krantz sighed. ‘I merely informed him of his responsibilities when we spoke, day before yesterday. We’re not much interested in this so-called Confessors’ Club, the murders that were supposedly set in motion there, or even why your fingerprints are everywhere inside, Elstrom.’

  I started to say something, offer up some lie about why I’d failed to mention I’d been inside the graystone, but he waved it away. ‘The Chicago police are pursuing all that, Elstrom. I want to interview Mr Phelps because of his shared business interests with Mr Arthur Lamm.’

  ‘My father serves on many boards,’ Amanda said. ‘And he bought shares in some of Arthur’s real-estate ventures.’

  ‘Your father bought half of Lamm’s insurance brokerage last fall.’

  Shock widened Amanda’s eyes. It linked Wendell to the insurance agency’s enormous IRS problems. Worse, though Amanda couldn’t realize it yet, it tied her father to any killings Lamm might have done.

  I rested my hand lightly on her wrist. ‘Buying into an insurance agency doesn’t link Wendell to any of Lamm’s alleged frauds.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Amanda stood up and walked out of the kitchen. A moment later, a door closed down the hall.

  Krantz looked at me across the chipped table. ‘As I’ve been saying, we’ve been investigating Lamm for all sorts of tax law violations. It’s not hard to imagine he was also instrumental in the deaths of James Whitman and Grant Carson, but that’s for the cops. Our focus is on income tax evasion, and that must include Wendell Phelps, because he owns half of Arthur Lamm’s brokerage.’

  ‘But you said Wendell only recently bought into the agency.’

  ‘Phelps is tight with Lamm, damn it. He owns half of his insurance brokerage, belongs to the same secret club. Lamm has gone missing. So has Wendell Phelps. Even if Phelps is completely innocent, Lamm is dragging him down. Phelps can help himself if he tells us what he knows.’ He leaned back in the chair. ‘As can you, Elstrom.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘That Confessors’ Club on Delaware Street.’

  ‘How is it you knew its name before anyone else?’

  ‘We’ve been investigating Lamm’s activities for months,’ he said, lying, with an impressively straight face.

  ‘Maybe you should have tipped the cops about that club. Maybe you could have saved lives.’

  ‘Maybe you should explain what you were doing inside.’

  ‘I went in with a guy I thought was a cop.’

  ‘Where the hell is Phelps?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s the supposed cop?’

  ‘Supposed?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t exist,’ Krantz said.

  ‘Why don’t you get the cops to release the sketch I helped their artist develop?’

  ‘They’re touchy about someone passing as one of their own. They think people will end up not talking to any of them.’

  Delray had gone to
Wendell’s house, but I didn’t want to bring Wendell any closer into this conversation. ‘The kid posing as Delray Delmar is real. Whitman’s daughter spoke with him,’ I offered instead.

  ‘Your fingerprints were on pewter mugs left on the dining-room table in that graystone.’

  ‘Delmar had me take them off a wall rack. He left them out so they’d be printed.’

  ‘CPD also pulled your prints off a lot of doors.’

  ‘Delray was careful to leave no fingerprints of his own. He was setting me up to become a fall guy, someone to pin everything on.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe to use as leverage, to get me to do something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Amanda came back into the kitchen, but stood facing the coffee maker, as though waiting for Krantz to leave before she poured herself a cup.

  Krantz stood up. ‘Encouraging Wendell Phelps to come forward will deflect some of the glare off you, Elstrom, and help your father, Ms Phelps.’

  I walked him out because the set of Amanda’s back showed she wouldn’t turn around to look at him.

  At the door, Krantz looked at his watch. ‘I’m thinking twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until I ask the Chicago police to pick you up for questioning. They can lose records long enough to sweat you for forty-eight hours if I tell them you’re withholding information in their murder investigation.’

  ‘That’s crap.’

  ‘That’s notoriety for your ex-wife, and legal fees you can’t afford.’ He stepped out into the corridor. ‘Play tough with me, Elstrom, and there’ll be “details to follow,” to quote your favorite columnist.’

  I slammed the door as he walked, whistling, to the elevator.

  ‘You left us to call Lake Forest?’ I asked, coming back to the kitchen.

  ‘My father raced out of there this morning with a suitcase, just as Krantz said. No one’s heard from him since. Delores is frantic.’