That night, Carolina and I sat on a bench facing Buckingham Fountain, watching fourteen thousand gallons of water shoot skyward every sixty seconds. Most of the tourists had either gone back to their hotel rooms to sleep off a long day of sightseeing or were finishing up a late meal at one of the popular restaurants they found on Tripadvisor. Several pedicabs lit up by flashing neon lights wheeled through Grant Park, carrying passengers around the fountain for photographs.
“Hard to imagine that just a few months ago, this same ground was covered in three feet of snow,” Carolina said.
I ran through the park all winter, and not only had the snowfall blanketing the city been the worst we had seen in years but the fountain’s striated basin had been continuously draped by a heavy necklace of menacing icicles.
“How much longer do you think you’ll stay here?” I asked.
“Here tonight?” Carolina said.
“No, Chicago.”
“I’ve thought about moving to other cities, but I like my job, I like my apartment, and I’d miss the restaurants. What about you?”
“I could see myself leaving one day,” I said. “Not permanently, but maybe during the winter. That trip I took to Arizona last winter made me realize how nice it is to wake up in the winter and not have to wear three layers of clothes when I go outside.”
“Would you want a place in Arizona?”
“Or the Sunshine State. I read somewhere that it had four times the number of golf courses as Arizona.”
“I think you need to teach me how to play golf.”
“Why would you want to subject yourself to that kind of torture?”
“Because I know how much you love it, and when we get old, I don’t want to be a golf widow.”
I welcomed the implication in her statement. Things had been going so well that I hadn’t wanted to complicate the situation. We enjoyed being together and still having our own space to breathe, and I was still nervous as hell about proposing again. My therapist had explained it was important for me not to let the disappointment of my broken engagement to Julia be an obstruction to trying again with someone I loved and trusted.
“I found the case file on Thompson,” Carolina said. “It’s very thin for such an important person who died under those kinds of circumstances.” She opened up her handbag and pulled out a folder, then handed it to me. “I made a copy for you.”
I opened the folder. There were only three pages in the file, which immediately raised red flags. Thompson’s case was definitely a heater, and it would’ve attracted a lot of attention and generated a serious amount of paperwork. I read the report. There wasn’t much information that I hadn’t already learned from Wolcott, other than that he was staying at the Four Seasons downtown and his phone wasn’t found either at the apartment where his body was discovered or back in his hotel room. His wife said she had spoken with him a couple of times earlier that day and all seemed fine. Thompson was due to fly back home the next day, but the detectives hadn’t been able to locate an airline reservation in his name. They were awaiting the autopsy results.
“There must be a shadow file,” I said, closing the folder. “A case like this should have almost fifty pages of notes by now. Someone’s gotta be keeping the real file under wraps.”
“But who and why?” Carolina asked.
“That’s what we need to figure out.”
“We?”
My phone buzzed. It was Mechanic.
“I have an update for you on Monroe Connelly,” he said.
I mouthed to Carolina that Mechanic was on the phone. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“He’s a really busy guy once he gets out of work,” Mechanic said. “He makes a lot of stops before he heads out to the suburbs.”
“What kind of stops?”
“Two consecutive afternoons, he stopped by a townhouse on North Dearborn. The sign on the door says it’s the law offices of Eugene Andrade, Esquire. Lawyer work, I guess. Then this is the third night out of four that he’s gone to a restaurant, walked out with bags of food, then drove over to a building in River North, parked, and went inside with the food.”
“What’s the address?”
“Give me a sec. I need to get out and take a look at the front door. I can’t see it from where I’m sitting.”
I heard the car door open and the rustling of the night breeze. A siren drove by, then faded away in the distance.
“400 West Huron,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“I wasn’t a math genius in school, but I know how to read numbers of an address.”
The address sounded familiar.
“Is that on the northwest corner of Sedgwick and Huron?” I said.
“Yup. Gray mid-rise building with lots of glass.”
I knew why the address seemed so familiar. It was the same building Jenny Lee visited the night I followed her from the casino. She didn’t live in that building. It was highly unlikely to be a coincidence that Jenny Lee’s Maserati had been registered to Monroe Connelly, and Lee and Connelly just happened to be visiting the same building.
“Do you see a blue Maserati parked anywhere nearby?” I asked.
“Negative,” Mechanic replied.
“That’s the same building Jenny Lee walked into the night I talked to her.”
“Sounds like somebody’s up there having a good time.”
“Is Connelly still in the building?”
“Yup. It’s been just over an hour. He’s usually out by an hour and a half, then he drives home.”
“Where’s his house?”
“Out in River Forest, just past Oak Park. He must be a damn good lawyer, because his house is about the size of an elementary school. And this is the second vintage car I’ve seen him drive. The other day, he was in a black ’69 Mustang. Tonight, he’s in an old black Jag. You’re a car guy. You’d appreciate his style.”
“Take a pic and send it to me,” I said, wondering if the cars were fully original or if they had been restored with newer parts. Some guys liked to fully restore their cars. I preferred them untouched and just as they were when they came off the assembly line. An old collector had told me after I bought my first classic, “A car is only original once.”
“Want me to stick with him?” Mechanic said.
“Yup, and be on the lookout for Jenny Lee. See if he makes any other stops before he gets home.”
I looked down at my watch. It was a little past ten o’clock. If Jenny was working tonight, she’d still be on her shift at the casino. If she was there with Connelly, then things had just gotten a lot more interesting.
I sat at my computer in my apartment, reading about Bishop Thompson. There were hundreds of mentions of his unexpected death, but not one story included the details of where he was found or how. In a city where leaks were as common as a cold and deals were made behind bulletproof doors, it was impressive that someone had been able to keep such a tight lid on everything for so long.
I looked for anything on social media or in the gossip columns that might’ve alluded to a less spiritual side of Thompson, but couldn’t find anything. There was no mention of a mistress, domestic violence, or unclaimed children. Except for the complaints about his lavish spending and concerns about whether his church should be allowed to keep its tax-exempt status, Thompson checked out clean.
I picked up my phone and sent another text message to Malcolm Boyd. It had been a couple of days since our last text exchange. Maybe a little nudge late at night might get his attention. Just as I turned my attention back to the computer screen, my phone buzzed with a notification. I was hoping Boyd had responded, but it was Mechanic.
He left the building alone. No sign of Jenny Lee or a blue Maserati. He just walked into a mansion a few blocks west of the other building.
I dialed Mechanic’s number, and he answered right away.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Huge house on the corner of North Kingsbury. 701. The front of the house covers the entire block.”
“Was he by himself?”
“Yup. Parked his car, walked up to the house, and as soon as he got on the landing, the door opened.”
“Could you see who opened it?”
“Not sure, but I think it was a woman. He walked in, and the door quickly closed behind him.”
“Has he ever gone to this house before?”
“First time I’ve followed him here.”
“Stick with him. Let me know when he leaves.”
I got up from my computer, walked into the living room, and turned on the TV. I would catch another airing of ESPN’s SportsCenter or see what the Golf Channel was offering up. ESPN was showing the daily top ten, so I stuck there. The countdown was already on number six, and a golfer on the Champions Tour, who had a hole in one the day before, scored another hole in one in the subsequent round, making him only the second PGA golfer in history to score a hole in one in consecutive rounds. Number five was a baseball highlight of a player who had accomplished the rare feat of stealing home, one of the most difficult and rarest things in the game to do. Then it got down to number four. It was during the time-out of an NBA game, and two fans had been selected to compete against each other for a pair of airline tickets. They had to push a trunk that was on wheels for the full length of the court, while at the same time balancing a basketball on top of the trunk. If the ball fell, they had to go back to the starting line and begin again. Once they got to the other end of the court, they had to stop the trunk at a mark about eight feet from the basket, then shoot. The first one to make the basket won the tickets. The competition was between a tall teenage girl and a middle-aged businessman type who took off his suit jacket before the race began. They both made it to the other end without their ball falling off the trunk. They started shooting toward the basket at the same time, and the balls collided in midair, then fell to the ground. They ran and collected their balls and hustled back to the shooting marks and shot again. Same result. They collected their respective balls and raced back to the mark. This time, both balls dropped through the hoop nearly at the same time, and they got stuck in the net, neither ball falling to the ground. It looked like they both had gone through the rim at the same time, but on slow-motion replay, it was apparent the girl’s ball went through first. Once the stadium announcer declared her the victor, the lids of both trunks flew open. A star player from each of the opposing teams had been stowed away in the trunks, and they jumped out and shocked the girl and the businessman with big hugs and roars from the crowd. That’s what got me thinking.
I went back to my computer and loaded the video from Kantor’s building that night. I fast-forwarded to the arrival of the Amazon van. I watched the driver get out of the car, then pull the trunk down the back ramp. I paid closer attention than I had before, and this time noticed that while he had wheeled the trunk, his body movements indicated that he struggled a little with its weight. Then I realized the mistake I had made earlier. I never watched the Amazon driver once he was inside the building.
It took me a while of going through all of the video clips, but I finally found the footage of the driver entering the building. He took a right once inside, which meant he was heading to Kantor’s apartment. I cursed myself. I knew better than this. The answer had been right in front of me, but I had missed it because I was so intent on looking for someone else.
I watched the driver return to the lobby several minutes later, then walk out the door and to his van. He had been in and out in less than five minutes, but when he returned, he didn’t need to roll the trunk back up the ramp. It was light enough for him to lift and drop it through the side sliding door of the van. I was convinced the Amazon driver had delivered a live person inside that trunk, the same person who had gone into Kantor’s apartment and likely left in the Bentley.
My phone buzzed. It was Mechanic.
“He’s just leaving,” Mechanic said. “By himself. Doesn’t look as neat as he did when he went in.”
“What do you mean?”
“His shirt looks a mess, half tucked in, like he got dressed really quick. The flap on his left jacket pocket isn’t right either. His hair looks like he just woke up.”
“Anything else not seem right?”
“He walked the wrong way when he got outside, then turned around and walked to his car.”
“Maybe he’s been drinking or something. If he stops anywhere else before he goes home, let me know.”
“If he doesn’t get pulled over by the cops first.”
I explained to him my theory about the Amazon driver and delivering the car thief in the trunk.
“Did the cameras catch the plate of the van?” Mechanic asked.
“That would be too easy,” I said. “Unfortunately, they were pointed in the wrong direction. Tomorrow I’m going to some of the nearby businesses and see if any of their cameras caught it.”
“I know it was a nice car, but it’s hard to believe that someone killed him just to steal it, then strip it for parts.”
“I agree. I think there was something else going on. I just can’t figure out what that something is.”