44

Polly and I used to dream about our father’s death, hoping that someone would obliterate him as he’d obliterated our childhoods. But now that the time had been fixed, what he’d done thirty-one years before, and even how he’d abused me at Stateville, faded away. I remembered him as a father—his great high belly laugh as we roughhoused or played soldiers, the smell of freshly sawed wood as I leaned into him on the couch. Even his infamous green van had been a joy to me. I recalled the sweet taste of jelly donuts while the heater whirred, the scrunch as he scraped the snow from the windshield. Pop was dying. Polly and the whole world would rejoice, but all I felt was loss—for what he was and what he could have been.

I had no time to grieve. Marta would be furious that I’d gone to Chicago. But despite disobeying what both she and the judge ordered, despite all the mistakes I’d made, going to Stateville had been the right strategy. I now had leverage with both the police and the FBI.

My conversation with Marta could best be managed at the bank, where she’d have to reign in her anger. I drove to work and phoned her from my office. As soon as I told her I went to Stateville to see my father, she cut me off. “Stay the hell where you are,” she said.

She was there in fifteen minutes, probably because she’d stamped on the accelerator. I ushered my seething attorney into the small “den” conference room and closed the door. She sat opposite me at the antique card table. I kept my voice low, made it sound reasonable. Kogan wouldn’t talk to me by phone; I had to do something. It wasn’t just me in the crosshairs; the picture the killer took of Frieda was a direct threat. In the note I got this morning, he’d mentioned the names of my family and connected them to the massacre in Algeria.

Marta glared at the cloth wallpaper and touched a leaf of the plant below it. “Jesus, even this is fake.”

“Less maintenance,” I said.

She stamped to the heavy beige drapes and stared out at Cowles Mountain in the distance. Without turning, she said, “Did you really think Stateville would ignore a new name on his visitation list? The first one in fifteen years?”

“They need me. So much so, the police are putting security around my family.” I didn’t mention what I’d traded in exchange for that
protection.

Marta strode to the damask-papered wall. Sneered at an oil painting of a little town in Europe. “God, this whole bank is pure pretension.”

“Did you hear what I said? Tonight a squad car will guard my family while they sleep.”

“All of that because you saw your father in prison?”

“The FBI thinks the killer’s about to slaughter another woman.”

She turned, probably to make sure I saw her disgusted scowl. “That’s what the FBI always thinks.”

“If they throw me in jail, they won’t get anything from Kogan. That’s why the detectives haven’t told the DA about the trip.”

Marta’s laugh was so cruel it sounded as if it came from another person. “Of course the DA knows. You’re a mouse she’s playing with.”

I’d saved my best information for last, after she’d spent her anger. “I saw Harvey Dean Kogan’s sister in Chicago.”

Her face froze but her hoop earrings seesawed across her cheeks.

“The FBI wants her to see him.”

“These geniuses actually think he’ll open up to her?”

I nodded. “We have to do it fast. Because of his cancer.”

She paced back to the antique card table and sat down heavily. I explained my father’s diagnosis.

More heavy breathing. It seemed like ten minutes but was probably only one. She said, “Don’t ever think you’re on the same team as these guys.”

I accompanied Marta to the reception area and then headed back down the hallway. No one was around. My shoulders deflated and I leaned against the wall. I wasn’t in jail, and Marta was still my lawyer.

I returned to banking and packed up to go home. Bullshit Bob stood across the hallway, his office door open. He was loudly setting up his calls for Wednesday, his weekly prospecting day. Every few weeks Bob dressed as a “tribute to the Golden Eighties.” Today he wore red suspenders and a blue shirt with white cuffs and a matching white collar. Even his new leather briefcase, with its old-style latches, looked like an heirloom. Next to the case on his desk was a manila file folder labeled Dr. Lawrence Massy.

The son-of-a-bitch was getting the last of the paperwork done to close my deal.

I started to laugh. I laughed all the way to my Camry. It was only when I got behind the wheel that it hit me again. Pop was dying.