It was nearing midnight when I pushed through WWBC’s thick glass doors to a crisp, clear starry night, expecting to see the cab I’d ordered. Instead, I found Carrie sitting behind the wheel of her Beamer.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I sent your cab away.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I was hoping you’d come with me to my place.”
“Say again?”
“Oh, God, I guess that sounded weird. I mean, I was hoping you’d drive with me to where I’m staying. It’s on North State Parkway, not that far from your hotel, but we can send for a cab there.” She was nattering. Speed-nattering. “It’s just that, with everything that’s happened, I don’t … I mean, it won’t be that far out of your way, and you’re going in that direction anyway, and … Please, Billy. I have to park on the street, and there’s never an empty space, and I wind up walking blocks and blocks. And it’s always dark and really scary even when I don’t have a good reason to think somebody might pop out of the shadows and kill me.”
I took a closer look at her. “Desperate” was the word that came to mind.
I slid onto the Beamer’s leather bucket beside her. “Okay, Cisco, let’s went.”
She gave me the puzzled look of someone who’d never seen an episode of The Cisco Kid when they were growing up. Then she started the engine and we wented.
“All that talk about us being on the killer’s list really got to me,” she said. “Especially after seeing what they did to that poor man.”
She was quiet for a beat, then added, “I’m going to ask Derek to get me a bodyguard.”
I assumed that would be Derek Webber, the zillionaire producer of her movie, whom Charlie Dann the Puff Potato Man had mentioned.
“I’ve heard he’s a pretty good guy,” I said.
“The best. Really smart. Handsome. Almost Zuckerberg-rich. I’ll introduce you tonight. He’s usually up late.”
“You’re staying at his place?”
She smiled. “He and I are sharing a cozy little four-story, thirty-five-room shack with the film’s director, the cinematographer, several other members of the cast, and a full staff.”
“Sounds like a sure cure for loneliness.”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t heard we were all staying at his mansion,” she said. “It’s usually the second thing any interviewer is curious about.”
I was on the verge of asking what the first thing was when I remembered Gin’s interview with her on our show. Carrie was having a romance with the author of the Spy Who novels, Gerard Parnelle, while Parnelle’s wife was sleeping with Derek Webber. The situation struck me as a little too Jackie Collins. Or maybe not enough Jackie Collins.
The “shack” was an elegant red-brick neo-Georgian townhouse fronted by a wall with a wrought-iron gate on North State Parkway. The closest available street parking was a couple of blocks away on Dearborn.
“You’re a lovely man, Billy, for indulging my weirdness like this,” Carrie said as we walked away from the Beamer. “I guess you think I’m a wimp.”
Actually, I was thinking I was the wimp. The neighborhood may have been on the city’s ritzy Gold Coast, but that didn’t chase the dark shadows away. As we turned the corner on Schiller, heading for State, a metallic red monster of a car zoomed past us, leaving in its wake a dark, very quiet, very sinister block.
“What’s that place?” I asked her, indicating a long slab of granite on our right.
“The Chicago Racquet Club,” Carrie said. “Derek and Gerard play there … played there when Gerard was in town.”
“He’s off writing a book?”
She nodded. “I really miss him.”
“How long before he gets back?”
“He’s not coming back. I’m flying to Paris as soon as we wrap.”
“When will that be?”
“With luck, another two weeks,” she said.
“How often do you talk?”
“I got an email this morning. Gerard says that when we talk it’s too distracting. He prefers us to text and email.”
Ah, romance in the digital age.
We were halfway down the block, when a man-size hunk of shadow separated from an alcove at the rear of the Racquet Club. As he stepped into a rectangle of light from a club window, I blinked. When I looked again, he was still there, a snarling, six-foot-something baldie black guy wearing a black warm-up outfit and bright orange running shoes.
His hand seemed to be attached to an ugly-looking weapon.
I grabbed Carrie’s arm and pulled her down beside a parked car just as I heard several thunk-thunk-thunk sounds and pinging noises as the wall behind us developed a line of gouges and chips.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make me wonder if this might be the big coronary. I suppose I even might have wished that to be the case. Beside me, Carrie was shaking like a whipped terrier.
Judging by the padded footsteps on asphalt, our homicidal attacker was crossing the street toward us. Moving slowly. But irrevocably. I use words like that when I’m about to pee in my pants.