I was awakened by my phone vibrating across my nightstand. It was Mechanic, at one o’clock in the morning.
“We had company,” he said.
“Where?”
“Your father’s house.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Are they still there?”
“No, but the bone fragments from one guy’s left shoulder are.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I was sleeping in a chair in your father’s bedroom when I heard the chime. I could tell it was from one of the windows and not the doors. I grabbed Betty, flipped off the safety lock, and waited for them to find me. Took a couple of minutes, but they finally arrived.”
“What did you do?”
“Shot the first one.”
“In the shoulder?”
“Anywhere else and there would’ve been blood all over this Egyptian rug your father has in here. I was trying to be considerate.”
“So, where are they now?”
“At least one of them is in some emergency room thanking God for skin, because that’s the only reason his arm is still attached right now. The other one is probably kneeling in the back of a church somewhere.”
“Did they fire back at you?”
“No, I don’t think they were prepared for that kind of party.”
“Did you follow them out of the house?”
“I did. They jumped inside of a dark truck before I could reach them. Of course, the truck didn’t have a license plate.”
I gathered my thoughts for a moment, then said, “I don’t know who’s behind this, but I think I know why.”
“Care to share?”
I told him about my conversation with Flavius Bechet and his mentioning of Eagle Rock and my subsequent call to Veronica Thompson.
“You think she knows what Eagle Rock means?”
“By the way she answered my questions, I’m certain.”
“You think she’s sending these assholes after you?”
“No, I think she told someone that I was asking about Eagle Rock, and they decided to send the assholes with a message.”
“Well, we just sent a clear message back,” Mechanic said.
“Yup. Tag, they’re it.”
After my walk with Stryker later that morning, I got on my computer and searched for Bianca Wembley. There was nothing on any of the social media platforms and nothing on LinkedIn. The closest thing I could find on the internet was a drag queen with the same first name, who was the first to headline at Wembley Stadium in London. I searched for a good hour, trying various combinations of search terms and even spelling her name several different ways. Nothing came up. I was on the twentieth page of results and about to give up when I stumbled across a potential hit. I found a link to a research article that was published over fifteen years ago in a political science journal. It was titled “America Has Outgrown the Two-Party System.” She was one of several co-authors of the article, and they all were part of the Colgate Department of Political Science. I read the article, and while it was short, it was well-written and extremely convincing that the fault in our politics was the limited number of options we had to select our political leaders. Other parties had been formed over the years, but they were always never more than a brave idea, and never taken seriously enough to threaten the two establishment parties. At the end of the article, it had Wembley listed as a student. I then spent the next half hour searching her name in combination with Colgate to see if anything else would come up. Nothing. I figured there would at least be a picture of her, maybe a high school yearbook or college sorority photo. Nothing. In these times of mass exposure, viral videos, and endless information sharing, it took a concerted effort to have an almost nonexistent digital footprint. Bianca Wembley had done just that.
A couple of days later, I sat in the customer waiting area at Cephus’s Car Joint, a car wash at the corner of State and Fifty-Eighth Street, whose previous owner—whom the wash had been named after—had been forced to surrender the business. My Porsche was on the receiving end of a meticulous hand-washing and fresh coat of wax. The old guy working on her was slow, but he was damn good, and I let him take his time without complaint.
My cell phone pinged.
This is Pedro. I finally got the other 3 months of manifests. Emailing them now.
A few seconds later, my phone’s email notification sounded, and I opened the attachment Pedro had sent. There were only twelve pages, each representing a flight. It would’ve been much easier to deal with all of this on my computer, but at least I could scan the pages and see if anything caught my attention. It wasn’t until I got to the seventh page that I found something. A flight from Chicago to Belize. Kantor, Connelly, Lance Greene, and Keegan Thompson were the listed passengers. The next page was their return flight three days later. I dialed Pedro.
“You ever hear of a man named Keegan Thompson?” I asked.
“Never,” Pedro said.
“How about Bishop Thompson?”
“Not that name either.”
“On November fifth, Elliott took a flight to Belize with Monroe Connelly, Lance Greene, and Keegan Thompson. Do you know what they were doing?”
“Elliott owns a farm down there,” Pedro said. “They must’ve been going down there to visit.”
“A farm?”
“Elliott owns the biggest cattle farm in Belize,” Pedro said. “He bought it from a friend of his who had run into some financial trouble. He needed the cash, and Elliott offered to buy the farm until he could get back on his feet.”
“Did he ever sell the farm back to the guy?”
“The guy committed suicide a week after he got the money from Elliott.”
“Have you ever been down there?”
“No, but I’ve seen pictures of it. It’s huge. Over three thousand acres. The farmhouse is the size of a factory.”
“Any idea what they did when they went down there?”
“Not sure, but I’ve heard the Belizean women are not only beautiful but very friendly, especially to American guests.”
Connelly, Thompson, Kantor, and Greene seemed like an odd group. If they were standing in a crowd, you’d never pick them out as acquaintances. But I couldn’t stop thinking mostly about Connelly. It seemed like every time I turned a corner, he was sitting there, waiting for me.
That evening, I waited outside of Monroe Connelly’s gargantuan house in River Forest. The brick mansion sat far back from the road, with a sweeping lawn that had been landscaped to perfection. I was surprised that there was no imposing gate surrounding the property, but then again, this was a zip code where the biggest crime was someone not putting enough change in the parking meter. I arrived a little after six o’clock and parked several houses down, behind a pair of white HVAC contractor vans. I was hoping that would make my position less noticeable on the lightly traveled street. I had been sitting there for just over an hour and only counted ten cars that had passed and a single old couple on an early evening stroll. The silence was deafening, so I turned on the radio, leaned my seat back, and let my mind run through the various parts of the case. I closed my eyes softly and imagined all of the faces and scenes and how they might eventually be connected. I also ran through the conversations with Simon and his sister, Clarence Allen at the Chicago Defender, Malcolm Boyd, Veronica Thompson, Flavius Bechet, and Karla Coe. Sometimes when you strung the interviews together in the right order, you could start seeing the shape of a narrative forming.
At a little after eight, Mechanic called in.
“We’re just getting on the expressway,” he said. “He’s driving a black 250 SL Mercedes. Thing is no bigger than a shoebox, but it’s sharp as hell.”
“This guy’s a player,” I said. “How far away are you?”
“Probably thirty-five if traffic’s not too bad.”
“I’ll follow him into the driveway,” I said. “You stay on the street. If I need your help, I’ll put my hand behind my back when I’m out of the car.”
“You think he’s really going to talk to you? The guy’s a lawyer.”
“That’s exactly why he’ll talk. Once I tell him what I know, he’ll make quick work of calculating his legal jeopardy. And you don’t even need a fancy Juris Doctor to do that.”
The sun had fallen low enough that the tree-lined street had finally welcomed darkness. A few cars passed and pulled into the various driveways of the elegant manses. Almost thirty-five minutes on the nose, a pair of headlights approached from behind. As they got closer, I could see the outline of the old Mercedes. The top was down, Connelly’s hair blew effortlessly in the wind, and the car’s chrome accents glistened under the streetlights. She was a beauty for sure.
Mechanic was at least fifty yards back. He slowed, and I waited for Connelly to turn into his driveway before pulling out from behind the vans and following him onto the property. I could see Mechanic turn off his lights and come to a stop at the foot of the driveway. Connelly pulled his car into the semicircular part of the driveway in front of the house. A detached garage, which I hadn’t been able to see from the street, sat a little farther back from the house. It was a mansion of its own.
Connelly got out of his car, either unaware that I had been behind him or unconcerned because he was on the property of his kingdom on a street of other kingdoms, and bad things just didn’t happen here. He stopped when he noticed my car and offered a friendly lift of his hand. I got out and met him halfway between the cars. The first thing that struck me was how unbelievably quiet it was, except for the occasional cricket having a moment somewhere off in the woods.
“How can I help you?” he said as we stood a few feet apart. He had the build of an ex-athlete, and his chestnut-colored hair had started to gray near his temples. His suit was perfectly tailored, and the gold Rolex hanging on his wrist had just enough diamonds to be taken seriously but not too many to be flamboyant.
“Monroe Connelly, attorney-at-law,” I said. “Nice to finally meet you.” I pointed to the car. “What year is she?”
“’68.”
“Don’t see many of them on the road these days. If I remember correctly, it has a 2.8 liter, straight six under the hood, right? Those oval lights and chrome lip were a real upgrade from the previous models.”
“You know your cars,” Connelly said. “Who are you?”
I offered my hand, and he accepted it. “Ashe Cayne,” I said.
“Do I know you?”
“I’m not sure. But you might know some of my work.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Help the cops catch the robbers.”
“You won’t find many robbers in these parts,” he said.
“Carjackings and purse snatchings aren’t the only forms of robbery,” I said. “Lots of people living in these big houses steal all the time. But since they also control the system, Lady Justice tends to look the other way.”
Connelly smiled. “We all have a right to our own opinion. It’s been a long day, I’m tired, and I want to get into my house. Mind telling me why you’re really here?”
“We work for the same family,” I said. “The Kantors.”
Connelly’s expression changed. That had gotten his attention.
“Are you an attorney?” he said.
“No, I’m a private investigator looking into what happened to the old man. His son hired me. Do you know Simon?”
“Not personally, but I know of him,” Connelly said.
“It’s a little strange that with as much work as you’ve done for the father, neither the son nor his assistants know who you are.”
“Elliott had professional relationships with a lot of people,” he said. “I’m sure Simon and his assistants didn’t know everyone he worked with. So if that’s all you’ve come to check on, then there’s not much more I can say.”
The front door opened, and a woman in a relaxed-fitting dress stood in the doorway. She was tall, with long blond hair that had been pulled behind her ears.
“Everything okay, Roe?” she said.
As he started to walk in her direction, I said, “Maybe we can talk about Jenny Lee when you get a chance.”
That stopped him midstride. “I’ll be there in a few,” he said to his wife. “Just finishing up this conversation.”
His wife looked at us for a moment as if making an assessment, then closed the door behind her.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
I put my right hand behind my back and followed him down the driveway. He stopped in front of the garage, whose exterior lights had been activated as we approached.
“What exactly are you trying to accomplish?” he said. “I need to understand the scope of what you’re trying to do.”
“That’s pretty easy,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out why one of the richest men in Chicago was found hog-tied to a four-poster bed in his multimillion-dollar secret apartment on the evening of May second, wearing only ruby-colored women’s panties. And why Jenny Lee, formerly Su-Wei Hsiah, no relation to the great doubles tennis player from Taiwan, who spells her last name with an e instead of an a, was visiting Kantor, your client, the same night he died, and was driving a blue Maserati that’s registered under your name. How’s that for scope?”
Connelly smiled confidently. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re getting yourself into something that’s way above your pay grade,” he said. “Sounds like you have a bunch of disparate pieces of information, and you’re trying to make it all fit together.”
“Not sure how disparate they are,” I said. “They all seem pretty close and connected to me. But I’m willing to accept your interpretation. So why don’t you indulge me a little and explain how I’ve got this all wrong? Then I’ll be on my way.”
“You probably should just be on your way, because, unfortunately, any information I have relative to Elliott Kantor is protected under attorney-client confidentiality. And that protection remains in force even after the client dies.”
“Yes, but suppressing information in a police investigation has nothing to do with attorney-client privilege.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let me explain to you my idea,” I said. “I think you asked your brother, Eugene Andrade, who’s the first deputy administrator of COPA and ironically shares the same name with a great Portuguese poet, to keep a lid on the investigation of Bishop Keegan Thompson, who was found similarly to your client, hog-tied in bed, wearing women’s accessories, and who was not only wealthy but also a friend of Kantor, and who joined you, Kantor, and Lance Greene about seven months ago on a trip to Kantor’s cattle farm in Belize.”
“Sounds like you’ve been working hard and doing a lot of digging,” Connelly said. “Or creating.”
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks,” I said. “Well, not the kind of bucks you make, obviously, with a place like this and the collection of cars you own, but I find a way to scratch out a decent living.”
“I also think you have a very active imagination,” he said.
“I think you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I have nothing to explain. Especially to you.”
“No problem,” I said. “We’ll do it your way. You don’t have to talk to me, but you can explain to someone at CPD who’s not in your brother’s pocket why you and a future Hall of Famer were on Northerly Island the same night Bianca Wembley was found hanging from a statue there.”
“I’ve never heard of a Bianca Wembley.”
I believed him.
“But you’ve heard of Daphne,” I said.
“I appreciate that you’re trying to help the family get some answers for what’s obviously a difficult situation. I was very fond of Elliott. He was a good man who did a lot of good things for tons of people. Losing him like this has been difficult for all of us. He was more than just a client. He was also a friend.”
“Is that why you sent Jenny Lee to his apartment that night? Except by the time she made it there, he was already dead.”
He shook his head dismissively as he smiled nonchalantly.
“You can deny it as much as you want, but you’re the one who made the payment for her visit,” I said, “and you’re the one who confirmed the visit was complete.”
“Listen, I’m going inside my house to have dinner with my wife,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
“VintageBlackOnly@gmail.com,” I said.
Connelly turned and walked toward his front door, never once looking back at me to see what I was doing or about to do. He calmly opened the door, walked inside, and closed it behind him. I’d come to learn that when people turn their back on a perceived threat, they are either completely confident no harm will come to them, or they’re stupid. Monroe Connelly might’ve been many things, but stupid was not one of them.