ONCE IT DEGENERATED TO barnyard talk, my meeting with Maguire and Anders went to hell in a hurry, so it wasn’t long past noon that I was on Lake Shore Drive, headed north in my latest rental car, a white Dodge Intrepid.
I might hold them off for a while by my claim that I wasn’t really interested in Dominic. But if they knew what I knew—or if they had reason to suspect it—they’d have to figure my best option for getting Lammy off the sexual assault hook was to skewer Dominic firmly on it.
It didn’t seem likely they’d file a lawsuit against me, though. They’d soon discover it was true that I had little of monetary value to lose. If they brought criminal charges I’d be entitled to a jury, and even with Dan Maguire’s help no state’s attorney would want to try to make Dominic Fontana look truthful to any group of human beings who managed to stay awake.
I took the Drive to Hollywood Avenue, then Hollywood to Ridge, and on up into Evanston. I’d already called and asked Barney Green’s secretary to check Sullivan’s, the directory of lawyers. There was no Paul Anders listed at Bauer & Barklind, or anywhere else in the state. On the other hand, he didn’t seem much like a mob associate of Dominic, either.
I’d had the clear impression throughout our conversation that Maguire was wishing he were somewhere else, that he was doing a job someone else wanted him to do. And the more I rolled that around in my mind, the more I wondered what the hell was going on.
At Green Bay Road and Central Street I noticed I was hungry and turned east. A few minutes later I parked in the shadow of Northwestern’s Ryan Field and walked back to pick up some lunch at Mustard’s Last Stand. By the time I left, with a couple of root beers and two jumbo hot dogs to go—no fries today—I was wondering whether I should be mad at Maguire, or feel sorry for him.
Back in the car I continued east, then north. Just past one o’clock, I twisted the old-fashioned bell at the Lady’s mansion and she opened the door herself. She already had her coat on.
Walking her to the Intrepid, I asked, “You want to drive?” It wasn’t an offer lightly made. The Lady’s one of the few people I feel truly comfortable riding with. She handles a car like a good cop on the beat—smooth and steady, eyes everywhere, never missing a thing.
“Not today,” she said. “I’ll simply sit and enjoy everything.”
Everything? That had to include the sky—a dismal, dark blanket that drooped about three stories above ground level—and a temperature that had risen a few degrees above freezing, so that sprays of salty slush thrown up by passing cars merged with the gray mist that already hung in the air and kept everyone’s lights on and windshield wipers working hard.
I headed south. The Lady accepted one of the root beers, but left her hot dog for me. The idea was I’d take her to pick up my Cavalier from the body shop. She’d use it the rest of the day to visit her shelters and then leave it in the garage under the coach house for me.
“You always do, don’t you,” I said.
“Um … I’m afraid I missed something, Malachy.”
“Enjoy everything, I mean.”
“Oh. Yes, usually. Occasionally I lapse, drift off into old habits.”
“Even you?”
“Even I.” Her British accent and proper grammar were inseparable. “At any rate,” she continued, “how is your ghost?”
“My ghost? You mean Lammy? Well, they beat the … beat him up pretty badly, but he’s home now. Casey’s staying with him.” I glanced across at her, but she was looking out the window, enjoying the damnable weather. “I … uh … I kinda thought he’d stay out of my dreams now, y’know? But he was back last night, up to his knees in the river again.” I thought for a minute. “Maybe it was all those French fried potatoes I had with the cheeseburgers that brought him back.”
“You said nearly the identical thing once before, Malachy. Only it was mashed potatoes that time.” When I looked over and caught her smiling at me, she turned her head as though to look out the rear window. “In fact, it was the potatoes that made me think of—”
“Ah, so that’s why you sent me that book,” I said. “Scrooge. When Marley’s ghost appeared, Scrooge figured his senses were deceiving him, that undigested potatoes were giving him bad dreams and the ghost wasn’t real. Right?”
“As I recall, he mentioned a fragment of an underdone potato.”
“Right,” I said. “That was it, or a bit of undigested beef. And Marley’s ghost was transparent, or hollow, just like—”
“Yes. Anyway, rereading A Christmas Carol made me think of you and your ghost.” She paused and leaned forward, apparently trying to look into the outside mirror on her side of the car. “I’m not really surprised, though, that the boy in the river is still making his appearances.”
“I am. I thought once I started helping the real Lammy, the one in my dreams would go away. But apparently that’ll happen only after I get him out of this mess he’s gotten himself into.”
A moment passed and then she said, “That’s really quite extraordinary.”
“What?”
“The way you phrased that. From what I’ve heard, your friend hardly seems to have been personally responsible for his predicament.”
“Well, I just—”
“And you apparently take for granted that you’ll succeed in extricating him.”
“That’s what—”
“Then there’s your belief—or hope, anyway—that the boy reaching out for help will disappear from your dreams.”
“Damn it, Helene.” The traffic signal just ahead turned yellow. I accelerated, then slowed, then accelerated again through the intersection, and just missed being broadsided by a UPS truck. “Sometimes you can be so—”
“Malachy?”
“What now?”
“Didn’t you want to turn west there, on Howard Street?”
“Ha! Gotcha! You think because I was mad at you I wasn’t paying attention to my driving.” I threw a hard right and hit the accelerator. “That’s a very long light there, at Howard. And I may just have gotten rid of that car that’s been following us.”
“Oh,” she said, “you mean that dark-colored Ford. I wasn’t certain you’d noticed it.”
“I hardly have to notice. They’re almost always there. When they lose me, they just go back to the coach house and wait for me again.”
We drove around haphazardly for awhile, while I told the Lady everything that had been happening. Sometimes she has helpful ideas; sometimes she doesn’t. But she always listens, remembers everything, questions each detail, tries to keep things straight.
Sometimes that helps me keep things straight.
Eventually we arrived at Caesar Scallopino’s and I drove around to the rear entrance. When the overhead door lifted, I pulled inside and cut the ignition. My Cavalier was sitting in one of the bays, looking better than it had in years. We sat and talked for a few minutes more. No one bothered us, and by now I’d left Lammy behind and was complaining about Cass and how much I missed her and just wasn’t able to chase those depressing nostalgic thoughts from my mind, no matter how hard I tried.
Her response—something to do with not trying so hard—sounded simple but wasn’t, I was certain. She ended up with, “Why not just feel sad when you feel sad, and let it be?”
“But I don’t like feeling that way. You don’t understand, because you never have those sad feelings.” When she didn’t answer, I looked across and caught her smiling, more to herself than to me, and something suddenly clicked. “At least, I never thought you did. But you do, don’t you? I mean get down sometimes. Sad, depressed, whatever.”
“Certainly I do. And it doesn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t bowl me over.”
“What is it that—”
“That woman sounds interesting.”
“What?”
“That woman,” the Lady said. “She’s the one I find most intriguing.”
“Oh?” I said, still not sure which woman she meant.
“Yes. First, she’s there at the coffee shop. Then, she’s the one trusted by Rosa to call you. Finally, she urges Dominic to kill you.”
“He didn’t need much encouragement. But I swear her screaming pumped him up even more.”
“But only after she interceded and saved your life.”
“Right.” So the Lady didn’t believe the woman’s hysteria over a cockroach in her milk was coincidental any more than I did.
“There’s an ambivalence about her that makes her interesting, and—oh my.” She was looking at her watch. “I really must be going now.” She opened her door, then turned back and laid her hand on my arm. “Be careful, Malachy.”
The keys were in the Cavalier, and she backed it smoothly out the door into the alley and was gone. I paid Caesar in cash and he gave me a receipt that detailed every bit of the body work, and the tow. Caesar’s extremely careful to keep proper records—as am I.
When I pulled into the alley I really didn’t know which way to turn. I agreed with the Lady, though. That crossword puzzle woman was intriguing.