Dante's Poison (15 page)

We'd won. But I couldn't help wondering if we'd live to regret it.

There were enough handshakes all around to resemble a Fortune 500 board meeting. Bjorn came up behind me and clapped me on the shoulder and said “Jolly good show” and all kidding aside would I put him on to my tailor, and Hallie turned to me after hugging Jane and said I had “cleaned Frost's clock,” a lawyer idiom I'd been told came from a moldy casebook they were all required to commit to memory during their first year of law school. Then I found myself being pushed toward the Mata Hari who had caused all this commotion, who appeared to top my height by several inches and said, in a voice as deep as Hallie's but without the endearing tomboyish lilt, “Thank you” and then: “Are you always able to do that?”

I wasn't sure what to make of the question. “You mean open my mouth?”

“No,” Jane said, sounding amused. “I'm sure you do that quite often and not always wisely.”

“What makes you say that?” I replied, thinking about putting out my hand but deciding against it. The last thing I wanted to do in front of this woman was appear to be groping. “Do I look reckless?” I added, trying to sound light.

“Oh, far from it. But a former bad boy if I had to guess.”

I thought about saying at least I hadn't played Lucrezia Borgia to my boyfriend but stopped myself. I was supposed to be on her side, after all. And what the hell did she mean by
former
?

Jane, meanwhile, had searched out my hand and enclosed it in fingers that felt like something Michelangelo might have sculpted during breaks from painting the Sistine Chapel. She pulled it toward her and rotated the wrist so that my palm was face-up. “Mmm-hmm,” she murmured thoughtfully. “Definitely a bad boy.”

“What is this, a palm reading?” I asked sarcastically.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Chirology is a hobby of mine. At a glance, I'd say you've been prey to some serious misfortune.”

“It doesn't take a crystal ball to figure that out,” I said, yanking my hand back. It seemed to be my day for being pawed at by strangers. “Do you have any other brilliant insights to share?”

“Your heart line is interesting, too. High up and filled with breaks and crosses. Not to mention a very clear triangle on the Mount of Venus.”

My curiosity got the better of me. “What does that mean?”

“It means I shall look forward to knowing you better.”

Not if I could help it.

Meanwhile, the deputy who was to escort her back to the Cook County Jail for processing had come up and was apparently signaling it was time to go. “Yes, officer,” she said in her regal way. “I'm ready to go with you.” She sounded as unconcerned as if she were being led off for a spa treatment. “It's been a pleasure,” she said, giving me a finger tap on the cheek like I was a naughty child. I felt like I'd just been held down and strip-searched in the middle of Daley Plaza.

Immediately after, Hallie was back at my side. “I'm sorry I can't give you a lift. It's going to take hours to get her checked out. And I have to arrange for payment. They don't take credit cards downstairs.”

“Doesn't the bail bondsman do that?”

“Uh-uh. Illinois is one of the few states that doesn't have them. The good news is, she'll only have to put up ten percent, which will be chump change for her. Can you get back downtown all right? I can ask Bjorn to take you in the Land Rover.”

I'd sooner accept a lift from Ted Bundy. “No thanks,” I said. “I'm sure it would be a frightfully good time, but it might make me late for my appointment with Professor Higgins.”

“What's gotten into you today?” Hallie rebuked. “You're acting like someone who didn't get everything he asked for on his Christmas list. We won, didn't we?”

This wasn't the time or place to raise all of my misgivings, but I couldn't help sharing one worry. “About that, are you positive of everything you said back there? If I were in Jane's shoes I'd be sorely tempted to fly off to some island nation that isn't party to an extradition treaty.”

“Not Jane,” Hallie pooh-poohed. “She's married to her job and always has been. I can't see her happy spending the rest of her life sitting on a beach drinking rum and Cokes. Which is why we have to get this thing resolved—and quickly. Jane's clients aren't going to stay loyal for very long with a murder charge hanging over her head.”

“If you ask me, she doesn't seem all that concerned about what might happen to her.”

“That's just a front for your buddies in the press box. Anyway, I've really got to get going. Thanks again for what you did today. And please promise me you won't take public transportation. I'd hate to see you winding up in the hospital with a cracked skull.”

At least she still had a glimmer of affection for me.

“Don't worry. If I can't find a cab I can always call paratransit.”

“Don't do that,” Hallie said with a chuckle. “The world might come to an end.”

As it turned out, there was no need to risk life and limb walking the ten blocks to the Pink Line. Just as I was leaving the courthouse I heard my name being called. The voice belonged to Bill O'Leary, the Chicago police detective who'd led the investigation in Charlie Dickerson's case. We'd since shared drinks and an occasional outing to Comiskey Park, where O'Leary had season tickets. I say “Comiskey Park” instead of Cellular Field because as far as O'Leary was concerned, the renaming of the newer stadium was tantamount to the desecration of a cathedral. Being originally from Bridgeport, O'Leary took his White Sox as seriously as the pope takes deviations from Church dogma, so we tended to share games in conversational silence while I followed Ed Farmer's play-by-play on my phone.

“You're not going where I think you're going,” O'Leary remarked dryly as he came up.

“Why? Is there an element of danger involved? I thought you guys were out there ensuring that the streets were safe for law-abiding citizens.”

“If you could see them, you'd know how my eyes were rolling. Have I not impressed upon you sufficiently the odds of being deprived of your wallet—or worse—if you roam around certain areas on foot?”

“Yeah, well. Why don't you tell that to the guys who decided to build a courthouse on the outer edges of Timbuktu.”

“I'll thank you to remember the vital role patronage jobs play in our local economy. Can I interest you in a ride in my chariot instead? We can take the scenic route.”

“Sure,” I said. “If you're going my way, I'll take an armor-plated vehicle over an exposed ‘L' car any day. And there's something I want to talk to you about.”

On the way back to the Loop in O'Leary's car I explained what it was.

“You've got to be kidding,” O'Leary said when I was through. “You want to file a missing person report on a homeless man?”

“Mike's a person and he's missing,” I pointed out. “Can I do it even if we're not related?”

O'Leary thought about this. “You can if you're familiar with his ordinary schedule and activities, though it's not going to get much play unless you can point to some unusual circumstances surrounding the so-called disappearance. You probably aren't aware of it, but the statistic is that someone in Chicago disappears every thirty minutes. I can report him for you, but the missing-person unit has its hands full just searching for folks with fixed abodes. Do you know what he looks like?”

I pulled up a mental picture from my warehouse of stored faces. “African American, around five-eleven, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. Lighter-skinned. Wears dreadlocks—or used to, anyway—and has a gold-plated left incisor.”

“Well, that will certainly help him stand out among the city's homeless population,” O'Leary said, rounding a corner in a squeal of brakes. “Where does he usually hang out?”

“I'm not sure exactly. I know he moves around a lot. In the summer, by the mouth of the river. But now that the nights are getting chilly, he's probably moved over to lower Wacker Drive. I may be able to get a photo from the newspaper he works for. I think they did a profile on him a few months back.”

“E-mail it to me then. I'll get it into Clearpath—that's the neighborhood community-policing database—and ask a few of the guys I know in the First District to keep an eye out for him. But don't expect anything too soon. And stop worrying. Chances are he's just sleeping off a bender and will turn up in a day or two.”

I didn't think so, but there was no sense in arguing with O'Leary about it.

The following few days passed uneventfully.

I dutifully took my pills three times a day with meals, and even worked up the energy to cook a few dishes on my own. On Saturday, I caught up with my journal reading and rewarded myself with a long afternoon walk along the Lake. It was a balmy Indian summer day with no hint of the cold fronts that would soon start barreling down from Canada, apart from the geese of the same name honking overhead en route to wherever it was they spent the winter. (There always seemed to be enough of them around leaving greasy piles for my shoes in all seasons.) Every so often I lifted my sunglasses to see if I could catch a glimpse of something concrete, but it was always the same pea soup. I reminded myself for about the thousandth time to be patient.

That night, I took in a Batman movie at the AMC outlet on Grand, and on Sunday morning, I joined a spin class at my health club. I'd started taking the class after deciding it wasn't healthy to be spending all of my exercise hours alone in my apartment and convincing a doubtful instructor that I could not only mount a bike with my eyes closed but out-pedal just about everyone in the class. That day's soundtrack drew heavily on the sixties, and we finished up with a heart-pounding, four-minute sprint to the ever-intensifying beat of
Sympathy for the Devil
, leaving me at the end satisfyingly winded and with thigh muscles begging for mercy. I spent another half-hour in the weight room, topped off the workout with a steam shower, and arrived home, scrubbed and sore, just in time for my weekly Skype session with Louis.

The idea, surprisingly, had been my ex-wife's. While my person was still pretty much anathema to her, I gave Annie credit for wanting Louis and me to build a relationship of sorts. Skyping didn't do much for me, but it allowed Louis to “show” me his nursery-school output and other things he was excited about, and kept my face in the forefront of his mind. I would have eagerly hopped a plane every weekend to be with him, but I was afraid of pushing my luck—under the divorce decree I had almost no visitation rights to speak of—or overwhelming Louis with my company. It seemed better to take things slowly, letting our intimacy develop gradually and making the best of extreme-distance parenting.

This week's offerings were several finger paintings, a Lego truck Louis had built by himself, and a new Snow White coloring book. Annie had taken him to see a digitalized and restored version of the Disney film, and he seemed quite taken by the story, chatting away happily about the “bad queen” and the beautiful princess and all the funny little dwarves.