A dour-looking, heavy-set man was standing on the sidewalk when I pulled up to Wade’s campaign headquarters on Chicago’s near west side. ‘Name’s Jeffries,’ the security man said, eyeballing my khakis for anything weapon-like.
We went inside. ‘Lousiest-looking campaign shop in the Democratic Party,’ he said, sounding proud, as we walked past stained fabric panels enclosing young people staring at computer screens and talking into telephone headsets.
‘Yet your candidate is rich,’ I said.
‘He never acts it. He’s just a regular guy.’ We went into a small conference room. A young woman, about nineteen, was sitting at the table reading a dog-eared copy of Time magazine.
‘Earlene,’ he said, ‘tell Mr Elstrom everything you told me about those calls you and Marilyn took.’
‘About two weeks ago,’ the young girl began, ‘I took a call from a man who sounded drunk. He said he wanted to get a message to Mr Wade. I said I could take down the message because that’s what we’re supposed to say, even though the only people who call here wanting to talk to the candidate are nut jobs. This man says to tell Tim – that’s what he called him, “Tim” – to leave his private number with us here for when he calls back. I said I most certainly would, and then I asked him his name. He said never mind and asked me my name. I said it was Mindy, which was a name I made up just for him. He hung up. I thought he was just another wacko and forgot about him. But then the next night, one of the other girls stood up above her partition and asked if any of us knew anyone working here named Mindy. Nobody said anything for a second, and then I remembered the call from the previous night. I said it was me and took the call, more curious than anything. It was the same guy, except he didn’t sound drunk this time. He asked if I’d passed along his message. I said not yet. He said to tell Tim that if he wanted to keep the hatchet buried Tim better give me a private contact number I could pass on. That sounded a little more serious so I got up and told Marilyn about it, because she was my boss and that was procedure.’
She looked at Jeffries, who said, ‘Go on.’
She looked back at me. ‘Marilyn said we ought to write it up since the guy called twice, and came back with me to my cubicle. We have computer histories of all the incomings and we were able to figure out which were the two calls from this guy, though they came from two different numbers. Marilyn wrote them both down and told me to alert her if the guy called again. Which he did, the very next night, again asking for Mindy. I told him what Marilyn told me to say, that I was transferring the call to my supervisor who could better assist him. I switched him over to Marilyn and that was the end of it for me.’
Tears had formed in the girl’s eyes. Jeffries thanked her and she left.
‘She feels responsible for turning the calls over to Marilyn,’ he said, ‘though I told her that was procedure, just as she said, and in any case those calls had nothing to do with Marilyn’s death.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘If course I’m sure, damn it.’ He took a breath and went on more calmly: ‘Or almost sure. Marilyn had decided to do a little investigating on her own before reporting the calls to me. She was like that: always had a strong faith in her ability to handle every damned thing, bullheaded to the extreme. So she did a reverse lookup on both numbers and hit pay dirt on the first one, the call he’d placed when he was tipsy. It was from his own number out in California. Turned out she knew the guy from way back. When the guy called again she told him a few things about himself that he probably didn’t like to hear, namely that she knew he was an old buddy of Mr Wade’s.’
‘John Shea of Laguna Beach.’
‘Calling himself David Arlin. When Marilyn looked up Arlin on the Internet she saw Shea’s face, someone both she and Mr Wade knew from long ago.’
‘Blackmail, that business about keeping the hatchet buried?’
‘Some sort of shakedown of Mr Wade, it seemed. I told him about it but he wasn’t concerned. Whatever this Shea-Arlin fellow had, it couldn’t have been much. Mr Wade told me to forget about it.’
‘What about that silo? You think it was coincidence, Shea mentioning a hatchet and that rubber axe business?’
‘It crossed my mind that they were related, but “bury the hatchet” meant the same thing as “let’s forget about our disagreement,” and probably nothing more.’
‘So you did nothing about Shea?’
‘Marilyn wasn’t happy about that, but like I said, Mr Wade said to drop it. I told her there was nothing I could do until the guy presented himself as a problem, here in Chicago. That’s when she mentioned you.’
‘She mentioned me by name?’
‘Nothing so direct. She said she knew of a private investigator she could hire cheap, and that if I didn’t get off my dead ass she’d hire the fellow herself. Which,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘she obviously did.’
‘She told you this before Shea got blown up?’
He stared at me, surprised. ‘What the hell, man? There’d be no need for an investigator after the explosion, right? I mean, the threat was gone when Shea got killed.’
‘Of course,’ I said, but he had it wrong. She’d hired me right after she thought Shea got killed.
‘And then she got murdered,’ he said. Something in his eyes had changed. He had cops’ eyes, hungry for what I knew that he didn’t.
‘That got you worrying?’
‘You bet. If her murder hadn’t resulted from something else entirely, it meant Shea had an accomplice who killed Marilyn to destroy any evidence that might link back to him.’
‘Or the accomplice was set to pick up where Shea left off,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Sure, except nothing’s happened since. No phone calls, no threats, nothing at all. It’s over, Mr Elstrom.’
‘You never thought to tip the cops?’
‘I had nothing to give them except speculation,’ he said, which meant it was campaign season and he didn’t want anything nasty sticking to Timothy Wade.
‘You’re sure the accomplice hasn’t contacted Wade without you knowing?’
‘Mr Wade’s got plenty to lose. He would have gotten me involved right away.’
‘You’ve been with the Democrats a long time?’ I asked.
‘More years than I like to think.’ He made a point of raising his arm to check his watch, an ordinary rubber Casio quite unlike the multi-thousand-dollar gold timepieces Wade’s personal guards wore.
‘I’d stay on guard,’ I said.
He dropped his arm. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Call the cops in Laguna Beach and check on their investigation of the Arlin explosion.’
‘There’s something new?’
‘Marilyn Paul’s killer is still loose in Chicago. That’s new enough.’