Chapter 26
I found Dontell’s acceptance letter to Southern Illinois University still folded inside the envelope it had come in, now brown at the edges, as well as the framed graduation photograph of him in his maroon cap and gown, his arms around his proud grandparents, everyone happy.
There was a mangled messenger bag with a broken strap; inside it, a copy of Dontell’s résumé, dirtied, creased, as if it’d been trodden upon and manhandled; and a copy of James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. Underneath sat a sealed plastic bag, the kind hospitals tossed your things in when you were brought in. I turned it slowly over in my hands, almost reverently, aware of its significance, a little sad, even though I’d never met Dontell. This was the tangible sum of his young life? Stuff, bits of paper, so important to the living, worthless to the dead. Eli watched as I shook what was inside onto my lap.
“Not much,” he said.
I sighed. “Only what was in his pockets.”
I picked up a leather wallet, worn at the seams, its outsides scratched, muddied. There was twenty-five dollars still inside the billfold, and in the slots were a Discover card, an ATM card, and a driver’s license, all expired. I inspected his watch. The face was smashed in; the hands were frozen at 11:36 AM on the twenty-eighth. His key ring had four keys on it. One was a car key, one looked like it might go to a bike lock, the other two looked like house keys, presumably to his grandparents’ home. The ring sported the BMW logo.
“Did he have a car?” Eli asked.
I shrugged. “I didn’t ask. I doubt he could have afforded one on what Allen was paying. Maybe the key is to his grandfather’s car?”
There was nothing else in the plastic bag, and nothing else in the box but a pack of Trident, loose change, and a tarnished Swiss Army knife.
Eli checked his watch. “That’s thirty.”
I looked up at him, lost in thought.
He said, “Call it.”
I put everything back in the box the way I’d found it, then closed the lid and stood. Eli did, too. He reached for his jacket.
“Get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Wait.”
We looked at each other, saying a lot without saying anything.
“Stay?”
He smiled, walked over, took my hand. We headed back, and I hit the light switch in the hall as we passed it, then stopped suddenly.
“Wait. Where’s the letter?” I turned to Eli, as if he might know. “The letter of recommendation. Did you see it in the box?”
I flicked the lights back on, rushed back to the living room, Eli on my heels. I flipped the top off the box and rechecked the hospital bag, though I was fairly sure I’d done a thorough job of it my first time through. “He should have had it on him.”
I checked the entire box, every inch of it. I didn’t find the letter. Dontell had gone to Strive specifically to get it. The video showed him strolling into their office to pick it up. He’d called his grandparents right after he left to tell them he’d gotten it. So where was it? I looked at Eli. “It’s not here.”
“Half his stuff probably blew off to the four winds when that car hit him, and could have ended up halfway down the street. Hectic accident scene. Nobody’s going to go picking around in the gutter for every piece of paper.”
He was right. Of course, he was right. Our eyes held.
Eli said, “But you don’t think so.”
The Peetses. Dontell left to die in the street. Hewitt, Sewell, Allen’s own mother.
“No way.”
* * *
I woke to rain beating against my windows but lay there for a time, watching the slanted drops streak down the glass, feeling gloomy, wishing getting wet was the only thing I had to worry about. Eli had left around six thirty, but I hadn’t gotten up. I glanced over at the clock on the bedside table. Three hours I’d been lying here, not getting up, wishing I could go back to before the bookstore and the knife, before Allen. Impossible, fantastical thinking. I’d have to deal with what was, like always, like everybody living.
I reached over and grabbed my phone, hoping for good news from Carole, but she hadn’t called or left a message. At least that meant no bad news. There was a text waiting from Tanaka, though. I bolted up, read it. Cooperation was a go. She wanted to meet to seal the deal. “Ha! Yes!” That meant speed and access and more hands stirring the pot. “Thank you, Jesus.” I sprang out of bed and darted for the shower, suddenly in a much better mood.
Tanaka was waiting for me at Tut’s, a dingy, greasy sandwich shop off Roosevelt Road. I found her at a back table, devouring a Gym Shoe sandwich, a South Side rite of passage, or death, whichever way you wanted to look at it. The classic Gym Shoe was corned and roast beef, onions, cheese, gyro meat, all griddled up together and then dropped onto a sub roll. The thing was then topped with shredded lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, tzatziki sauce, and giardiniera.
The Gym Shoe was usually eaten in a joint like this, where the cashier and the griddle were both behind bulletproof glass, so whatever went on out here, at the tables, was on you. If you were lucky, someone on the griddle side would call 911 if something went down. If you weren’t, you died with tzatziki sauce on your chin. Tut’s smelled of onions and simmering meat, and the soles of my shoes stuck to the floor as I walked. No menus. You picked your lunch from the board of options on the wall, and since half the letters were missing, you had to take an educated guess. Some Einstein had spelled cheeseburger with two z’s. No credit cards. Only cash. No shoes, no shirt, no Gym Shoe.
I peeled out of my rain jacket and slung it over the back of my chair, then sat across from Tanaka and watched her kill herself one bite at a time. I laid my phone on the table in case Carole called. We had the place to ourselves, except for the griddle guy and the woman at the register.
“A Gym Shoe? At ten thirty in the morning? Who hurt you as a child?”
“It’s my meal break. I’m starving, okay?” There was a slew of balled-up paper napkins littering the table like greasy fake snowballs. Tanaka talked to me between bites. “Besides, it hits all the major food groups, and I only have twenty minutes.”
I gaped at her but said nothing. To each his own. “Any new developments?”
She put the sandwich down and wiped schmutz off her hands and wrists. Another snowball hit the table. “We talked to Allen about the letters.”
“And?”
She leaned back in her chair, I guessed waiting for the Gym Shoe to Superman its way down to her stomach, bounce, and shoot back up her esophagus. “She says you’re a nutcase. You saw a chance to bleed money out of her by threatening to sell this stalker story to the gossip rags. Blackmail, in short.”
I almost laughed. “That’s ridiculous, but not surprising. I’m hoping you also talked to Chandler, and that she gave you something useful.”
“Not a thing. She just stood there. So, no letters, no corroboration, nothing we can do, until there’s something we can do.”
“This is bananas, you know that, right?”
Tanaka took a moment. “I know. The bookie angle was Jones’s deal, just so you know, and it didn’t pan out, as we both knew it wouldn’t.” Tanaka’s eyes swept over the room, right to left and back; she watched the door, too. I knew she had it, so I didn’t bother. I did turn my chair slightly sideways, though, so I had a side view of the entrance. “But something’s going on, because two of her employees are lying in the morgue right now.” She began collecting the napkins, brushing them all into a snow hill. “What about you? What’d you come up with?”
I told her about my visits to Deton Peets and David Grissom, also about Dontell’s hit-and-run, the videos he shot, and the missing letter. “There’s footage of him entering the office, time stamped, and the word of his grandparents that he definitely left with what he came for.”
“What’s any of that got to do with Sewell and Hewitt?”
I eyed my phone. Nothing. “Pattern.”
“So, Vonda Allen ran down Peets and Adkins? One, to shut them up about the magazine lawsuit, and two, to keep the kid from blasting her craziness all over the internet?”
“In both cases, she got rid of potential problems.”
“So, Vonda Allen, Chicago celeb, gala queen, is a stone-cold killer?” Tanaka looked skeptical. “A psychopath hiding in plain sight? And what’s her old college boyfriend supposed to be able to tell you?”
“I don’t know, but there’s something there, too. I can feel it. He’s too coy, too smug. He’s also living too high on the hog for the salary he’s likely pulling in. I don’t believe he’s had no contact with her in all this time. He’s hiding something. She’s hiding something. I’ll take another crack.”
Tanaka emptied her cup, stuffed the napkins and the sandwich wrappings into the greasy brown paper bag they came in, and then looked around for a trash can. “This should hold me for another twelve hours.”
“Or twelve days.”
“You one of those salad and hay people, Raines?”
I shook my head. “Had pizza just last night. But c’mon, a Gym Shoe? Get ahold of yourself.”
She grinned. “Do I look worried?”
I shook my head. “Death by Gym Shoe. At least it’s original.”