The car follows me down the street.
I turn the block.
It also turns.
I stop to tie my boot laces.
It slows to a halt.
I take off running, and reach a crescent at the end of the road. A god-awful semicircle of death, lined with picture-perfect brick houses and white picket fences. Who are these people and don’t they realize that the 1950s are over?
The car that has been following me idles nearby. Frederick Halpern rolls down the window on the driver’s side. “Get in,” he says.
I weigh my options. A car from a private home security company pulls up behind us. Halpern sticks his head out the window and waves at the driver. “Hey, Joe. No worries. She’s with me.”
The car flashes its high beams in response and waits for me to get in Halpern’s car. I do. The other car pulls off. Halpern smiles at me. “Gloria has her problems, I’ll give you that. But deception isn’t one of them, at least with me. You want to know about Ryan Russo?”
I nod, speechless for the moment.
“You came to the right place, then. I’ve got something I want to show you.”
We drive for about twenty minutes. I’m not familiar with Chicago, so I can’t tell from our surroundings where we’re going. I’m just grateful for the heated seats and dual climate control. Halpern’s BMW is a lot nicer than Sanchez’s Taurus, that’s for sure. Finally, Halpern pulls into an apartment complex across the road from a strip mall. I have no idea where we are, but it looks like the suburbs. He hands me a set of keys. “Big key is for the front door and the little one is for 309. I’ll wait for you here.”
I look at the keys. “Whose apartment is it?”
“Russo’s. About ten years ago Gloria thought she saw him at a coffee shop, but chalked it up to her imagination. I had a PI I know look into it. Russo sold his family paper years ago and invested in real estate. He’s got a few investment properties in California where he lives mostly, but I found out that he keeps a little place here. So I had my guy make keys. I’ve never been able to catch him checking up on her so I can’t prove it, but I know he does from time to time. I’ve taken the liberty of informing my PI that you’ll be here. Happy hunting.”
I get out of the car without another word. I’m still confused as I head into the sleepy little building. Nobody stops me on my way in. The elevator is broken so I take the stairs up. Apartment 309 is just off the stairwell, perfect for someone who doesn’t want to be friendly with neighbors in elevators.
I hesitate at the door.
What if Russo is in here? But if I don’t go in, I’ll have to face Halpern and tell him I was too scared. This is not an option. Unless he has planned some kind of ambush. But deep down inside I know that he hasn’t. He had no idea I was coming to visit his wife, nor time to formulate an organized response even if he were so inclined. I don’t question a possible motive for this to be a setup because, truly, I am beyond understanding human beings at this point. Why they do what they do is as much of a mystery to me as anyone else.
I enter the apartment as quietly as I can and wait in the dark while I listen for sounds or movement. Nothing. So I turn on the light and see some more nothing, but in a lit space. I walk through the tiny apartment, which is empty but for a few dishes and utensils in the kitchen cabinet and a single bed underneath a window in the bedroom. There’s a small bedside table with a lamp next to it. I open the drawer of the table, but find it empty. When I slide the whole thing out I see there’s nothing taped to the underside, either. I walk through the apartment again. It’s sparsely furnished, but doesn’t feel abandoned. I wonder when Russo was last here. If he’s been hanging around Chicago, then it would make sense he might have some connections to Detroit, which is not far at all. And could he have resisted having a peek at Gloria while he’s been trying to get me killed?
Under the kitchen sink there’s a bucket and some cleaning supplies. In the bucket there’s a knotted-off plastic bag with some used paper towels, an empty bottle of whiskey, and a manila envelope. It’s one of Stevie Warsame’s steadfast rules. If in doubt, look through the trash. Inelegant, but I can’t question his instincts. Especially now.
I close the door of the bathroom while I use it, by force of habit, and when I come out there is a man lounging on the bed.
“Now don’t go yelling and screaming just yet,” says the man on the bed, who sits up with a slow, easy motion. He’s got the manila envelope from under the sink in his hand. “I’m Fred Halpern’s PI. He told me to meet you over here because you’re looking for Russo. Fred has been waiting for years for that asshole to slip up so that we can put him behind bars.”
“For Gloria’s sake.” I look toward the front door of the apartment. It was closed and Halpern’s keys are still in my pocket. So this man must have his own set.
“He loves the hell out of that woman. I’m Jeff Samson. You can just call me Samson, if you want. Most people do.”
“Nora.” We don’t shake hands and he doesn’t attempt to reach out to me. I like a man who respects a woman’s personal space. I lean against the wall for some emotional support. It’s got none to offer. I must be desperate. Samson and I eye each other for a moment. A mild showdown that gives me enough time to get a good look at him. He looks as world-weary as any detective out of an old Hollywood noir film, with all the grace of an exhausted Sidney Poitier.
“What you got on Russo, Nora?” he asks, getting straight to the point.
“Not a hell of a lot.” I tell him what I know so far. He has a trusting face and, since the wall isn’t doing what I’d hoped, I’ve got to find my support from somewhere else.
“Sounds just like him,” Samson says, when I’m done spreading my confusion and unfounded allegations around.
“Yeah?”
“I owe Judge Halpern a favor or two from back in the day and the only way the man asked me to repay him is to keep an eye on this guy. I’ve been on Russo for a long time. Ever since Freddie found out about him from Gloria. Russo’s unpredictable as all get-out, except in one way. He’s a gambler. Sometimes it’s money and sometimes it’s other things. Digs himself into a hole, gets desperate, and lies his way out of it again. That’s the pattern of his life. At the beginning, I looked into Beirut. Don’t have my files with me, but I can get them to you if you want.”
“I’d be okay if you just tell me what you remember,” I say, trying not to let my excitement show.
“Not planning to stick around for long, huh? I understand that. What I remember is sitting with him at a blackjack table for a couple hours straight, watching him pretend he wasn’t a morphine junkie while he lost what I made in six months. Told him I was a vet and I’d served in Vietnam. Wasn’t a lie. He told me about when he was in Beirut. Started talking about all the crazy shit that went down in that country. How everyone turned on each other all the time. How a man could get a little side cash if he had the right kind of information.”
“He was a spy?” I ask, again remembering what Kovaks and Dubois seemed to both be obsessed with.
“He was an asshole. No kind of real intelligence operative would have opened his mouth like that. I got this feeling that I couldn’t shake. I’ve known bullshitters like him my whole life. I think he got in trouble and somebody had something on him. Used it as leverage to get a favor or two out of him, maybe. I don’t know how long this lasted, but I do know that for a while in Beirut the Soviets used to use a foreign flag cover to recruit people. Recruiters would pretend to be from other countries or lead unwitting agents to think they were working for the American government sometimes. If you’re looking for excitement, you’d be an easy mark. Add a debt owed and, boom, you got yourself an agent.”
“A debt . . . like from gambling.”
“Seems the likeliest story to me, Nora. Been on domestics for longer than I can remember and if a husband ain’t cheating or doping, he’s gambling.”
“That’s sexist.”
“It’s the truth. It’s a curse. An addiction. But the thing with Russo is he likes to think he’s smooth as shit, but he really ain’t. I think if he got mixed up in something, it didn’t go over well. He started talking all kinds of smack about the Arabs down there in Beirut. I knew he was injured when a car bomb went off near him, but I got the feeling this was something else. Something personal.”
I know whatever happened in Beirut must have been personal—or else he wouldn’t have spent all this time looking for my mother. “He didn’t strike you as competent, huh?”
Samson laughs. “Not even close. I think he’s the kind of idiot who goes around scaring women and acting reckless to show people he’s some kind of big man, because deep down he can’t control himself and never could.”
“Harsh.”
He acknowledges this with a smile. “But true. That kind of attitude don’t change with age, which is why I’m here talking to you. You can’t change a reckless man.” He gets up and hands me the envelope. “Things start to heat up and guys like Russo come unhinged. I’ve seen it a thousand times.”
Me, too. I have seen enough people crack to know that it only takes that extra little push.
“When I was sitting with him at that table, he got pretty close to unhinged. Gloria said he’d tried on and off to kick the morphine habit. Looking at him I could tell he was jonesing because when he started losing, it hit him hard. Went off about how he was working for the CIA. I said yeah, sure, buddy, and let him keep going. Didn’t believe a word of it. He got worked up like that with a stranger. Don’t want to imagine what he’d do with someone he knew well. Maybe I don’t have to imagine, because of what Freddie told me about him and Gloria. I know Freddie wants him to mess up somehow so that we can put that bastard behind bars for good, but I wouldn’t want a nice lady like you to get caught up in the crossfire.”
Seems like this so-called nice lady is already caught up. But I don’t say that. “I appreciate that. But you don’t actually think he worked with the CIA?”
“Not a chance. And I don’t think he believed it, either. But it was pretty clear he was working for someone. You take care now, Nora.” He goes to the door. I see now why I had no idea he’d come in. He could teach a course to a cat burglar on how to move silently. Maybe he already had at some point in his past. He’s that good. Before I know it, he’s gone, leaving behind no trace that he’d ever been here at all.
When I get back to the car, Halpern is listening to classical music with his eyes closed. He’s drumming his fingers against the steering wheel to the tune. I have the feeling that he already knew the apartment was mostly a dead end. He showed it to me to reveal what, exactly? I don’t ask him outright because I don’t trust his smiles. They remind me of Sanchez. Brazuca, too. They belong to men who know what it’s like to wield power.
I have no experience with that.
We are mostly silent on the drive to the bus station. He doesn’t mention a thing about Samson. Chopin plays in the background. I only know it’s Chopin because Seb used to have some classical music on his computer that he listened to when he thought I was asleep. Chopin was Leo’s favorite.
Halpern pulls up in front of the terminal. He nods to the manila envelope. “Samson showed me that already. Do you know what’s in there?”
“Lab results of some kind.” I’d taken a peek before Samson showed up.
“That’s right. We’ve already made copies and I had a doctor friend I play golf with take a look.”
“And?” I ask, playing along.
“What it shows is that over time, his creatinine levels are high. Dangerously so. And so is his potassium.”
A smile crosses his face. The Chopin dies away. I sense he’s waiting for me to say something, but I’m not in the mood to play his games anymore. So I return his little smile and keep quiet. He can’t help but fill the silence, because this is why he’s brought me here. To show me Russo’s little crash pad—and be his captive audience. We’ve come too far for him to stop now.
“Which means that his kidneys are failing and he needs to be on dialysis immediately. Three hours a day, three times a week for the rest of his life.” His smile turns satisfied. “He thinks he can just terrorize my wife for years and that he won’t get what’s coming to him? Well, life has a different idea about justice. May not be in the courts, so little justice is served there—and I’d know—but things have a way of coming ’round. He spent years in recovery after the bomb in Beirut. Years. And he didn’t learn his lesson. So guess what? He’s going to spend the rest of his life in excruciating pain.”
And Halpern’s going to enjoy it. Hell, he seems to be loving it already because he’s still smiling.
I nod, to show him that I’ve heard all this. I’m about to say good-bye to him, but the look on his face tells me there’s no point. He’s somewhere else. Maybe he’s still thinking about how much he’s going to love watching Russo die painfully—whatever it is, he’s already forgotten me.
I leave the envelope behind when I get out of the car.
There’s a bus going back to Detroit in half an hour, so I buy my ticket and sit on a hard bench to wait for it to board.
This has been the strangest night.
Ryan Russo may be something of a mystery, but he’ll soon be a dead mystery. It explains the renewed interest in my family after all these years. Like Seb, Russo is getting his affairs in order because pretty soon he’ll have to deal with a debilitating illness, one where he’ll spend the rest of his life tied to a dialysis machine. So, naturally, he’s got to get all his stalking done now. Find the women he blames for his shitty life. Murder people like me who are getting a tad too close to some of his deep, dark secrets.
You know, the usual.