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  To Hugh Holton, an inspiration

  … and I should have told him

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is a work of fiction, and the persons and places it depicts are imaginary or used fictitiously.

  One thing that’s real, though, is my gratitude to those who helped with the book. These include Sergeant David Case, for police and weapons information; Michele Mellett, M.D., for medical and trauma details; my agent, Jane Jordan Browne, and her staff, for encouragement and advice; and my editor, Kelley Ragland, and her assistant, Ben Sevier, for—what else?—inspired editing.

  The fact is, in my opinion, that we often buy money very much too dear.

  —W. M. THACKERAY: BARRY LYNDON XIII

  The wages of sin is death.

  —ROMANS 6:23

  INTERVIEW OF MARLON SHADES

  TAPE 1: SIDE A (EXCERPT)

  Marlon, how Mr. Foley here s’posed to help you, you won’t tell him where you was?

  I can’t, Mama. I be sittin’ up in the shithouse fifty years or somethin’… they don’t kill me first. I can’t tell him that part.

  Dammit, boy, you like to drive me—

  Sally Rose, please. Let me talk to him, all right?… LENGTHY SILENCE … Marlon, I believe you when you say you had nothing to do with killing anyone. But you have to tell me what happened.

  How I know you ain’t gonna jus’ tell everyone what I say? Shit. You another one of them—

  Hush up, boy. This here’s your lawyer. He can’t tell nobody, ’cause o’ that … whatchacallit … priv’lege. Ain’t that right, Mr. Foley?

  Yes, and—

  I ain’t tellin’ where I was. Y’all don’t … INAUDIBLE …

  You have to speak up, Marlon. My … uh … my hearing’s bad. I didn’t hear that last part.

  Nothin’. I said I ain’t tellin’ you where I was.

  It’s up to you, but what your mother says is true. Anything you say here is privileged. The rules say I can’t tell. I could lose my license if I did.

  Fuck the rules! Rules don’t mean shit when—

  Marlon! You watch your mouth, boy.

  Sorry, Mama, but … but how I know … INAUDIBLE … Plus, how I know they ain’t gonna change the rules, man? Then they make you tell.

  Goddammit, Marlon, I don’t care if they erase all the rules, or what they say, or do, or … whatever. I won’t tell anyone, that’s all. I just won’t. Not ever. You have my word on that.

  CHAPTER

  1

  “SO THEN, MR. FOLEY, your law license was suspended because you deliberately ignored a direct order of the Illinois Supreme Court.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Was that a question? It sounded like a state—”

  “Very well.” A deep, pseudo-patient sigh. “Isn’t it true, sir, that five years ago you deliberately ignored the order of the Illinois Supreme Court requiring you to reveal what Marlon Shades told you?”

  “No.” Obviously, I should have said yes and let her get on to her next question, but Stefanie Randle, young and cute and righteous as hell, was getting on my nerves. “No,” I repeated, “that’s not true.”

  “Well, sir”—another sigh—“let me show you—for the third time today, I might add—Foley Deposition Exhibit Seven, and ask you whether—”

  “I’ve seen that order a thousand times, Ms. Randle,” I said, “and it’s not true that I ignored it. The fact is, I flat out disobeyed the damn thing.”

  “Stop it, Mal!” Renata Carroway sounded as disgusted as Stefanie, and Renata was my own lawyer. “Would you mind—”

  “Sorry, Renata.” I stood up. “Let’s take a break, huh?”

  “No,” Ms. Randle said. “The rules don’t permit conferences between the deponent and his lawyer during the course of interrogation.” She never even looked up as she spoke, just kept paging through the papers on the table in front of her.

  “He didn’t ask for a conference,” Renata said. “He asked for a break. But that’s moot. Let the record reflect that I’m not feeling well; that it’s two-forty-two P.M. and I’m terminating this session of Mr. Foley’s deposition; and that I’ll call Ms. Randle tomorrow to schedule a mutually convenient time to resume. Thank you.”

  By the time she got to “Thank you,” Renata had her own papers stuffed back in her briefcase and was shoving me out the door of the conference room. She kept on pushing, down the hallway to the reception area and through the glass doors that said: Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. I’m sure she’d have pushed me all the way out to Randolph Street—and then maybe three blocks east, which would have had me treading water in Lake Michigan—except we were on the fifteenth floor and we had to wait for an elevator.

  The ride down was about as congenial as I deserved. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” I said, and didn’t get so much as a dirty look in response.

  It wasn’t until we were out on the street and I was waving for a cab that Renata spoke. “Forget that. We’ll walk to my office.”

  “Whatever you say.” We went west on Randolph, toward Michigan Avenue. With the temperature in the seventies, and brilliant sunshine in place of the gray April clouds that had shrouded the city for two days, Renata’s scowl looked out of place. I decided to try again. “I’m sorry you’re not feeling—”

  “Oh shut up, Mal. The only thing making me sick is you. It’s just a deposition and Stefanie is just doing her job, for chrissake. But you … you have to start out uncooperative, and move from there to sullen, and then rude.”

  Even though she had no way to know what was really bothering me, she was right and I was a pain in the ass. So, naturally, I didn’t admit it. “‘Stefanie,’ is it?” I said. “You’re on a first-name basis with the enemy?”

  “Listen to me,” she said. She stopped walking, planted her briefcase on the sidewalk, and peered up at me through her round, thick lenses. “I represent people charged with armed robbery, rape, and murder, people nobody else wants to be on the same planet with. And I do a damn good job of it.” Renata understated her genius by a mile. “I fight like hell when I have to, but I don’t treat opposing counsel like scum. They’re human beings. They have names. Stefanie Randle is one of them. Their office was closed this afternoon, for God’s sake. She only scheduled your dep for today to accommodate my schedule.”

  “Hell,” I said, “she was happy to do it. Kept her away from some damn training seminar. Anyway, I’m just trying to get back my law license, and she acts like she’s Saint Peter and I’m some sleazeball trying to con my way through the gate.”

  “She’s young … and nervous around you. You do have a reputation for—”

  “Even the way she spells her name irritates me. There oughta be a ‘ph’ in it.” I recognized how stupid that was, though, even with everything else on my mind. I picked up Renata’s briefcas
e. “I need to think. Let’s walk this way.” The light changed and we crossed Randolph, staying on the east side of Michigan. “I apologize, Renata. I really do.”

  “Thank you.” She obviously took the apology as genuine and I was glad, because it was. “I’m partly to blame,” she said. “I should have talked you out of petitioning for reinstatement to the bar. It wasn’t a good idea.”

  The east side of Michigan Avenue, from Randolph all the way down to the Art Institute three blocks to the south, had been torn up for years while they rebuilt the underground parking garage. But now it was park again. They say Chicago has fewer acres of park per person than most other major cities, but for those who can haul themselves across town and get close to the lakefront, you can’t beat it. In this particular oasis there were people pushing baby strollers, sitting on benches and along the edges of low retaining walls, even some lying on blankets. A hundred yards away a blue and white squad car sat parked in the grass, the only reminder that we weren’t in paradise just yet.

  To our left a woman with long auburn hair, who should have been staring into her computer monitor over on the business side of Michigan Avenue, was flat on her back working on her tan. Her eyes were closed against the sun, her tailored blouse stretched open at the throat down to bra level, and her skirt hiked at least a foot above her bare knees.

  I switched Renata’s briefcase to my other hand and twisted my head to keep the sunbather in sight as we passed. “God, this is still a great city.”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Renata asked.

  “Sure. That you should have talked me out of filing the petition, and that it’s not a good idea.”

  “No. I mean after that. While you were gawking at that girl.”

  “You mean woman,” I said. “And I bet you were just as turned on as—” I stopped. Renata was gay, and in a relationship more rigorously monogamous than most people I knew. “Sorry.”

  “What I said was that you ought to move to dismiss your petition. You’re not really interested in practicing law. You can just as easily tilt at windmills with your private detective’s license … if you can hold on to that.”

  “We really need to talk,” I said. “Let’s sit down a minute.”

  To our left a wiry little ebony-skinned man, wearing dreadlocks down to his shoulders and nothing else but snow white pants cut off mid-calf, was standing on a park bench. But not on the seat. He was balanced motionless on one bare foot like a yogi, up on the back of the bolted-down bench. Arms spread wide, he smiled serenely toward the sky and seemed oblivious of us. As soon as we sat down on his bench, though, he dropped lightly to the ground and ran away.

  “You’re right, Renata. I said all along that if they were going to keep on insisting that I ‘express remorse’ for the conduct that got my license pulled in the first place—I’d dump the petition.” I paused and watched the yogi stop at another bench, where he chatted with an old black man wearing at least three ragged overcoats and a cap with the ear flaps tied down with a string under his chin. “But it’s different now,” I added.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I took an envelope from my jacket pocket. “Read this.” I handed her a sheet of paper from the envelope. “It was with yesterday’s mail.”

  She unfolded the paper. “‘Forget your law license, asshole,’” she read, “‘or you’ll come apart just as easy.’” She stared for a long time at the paper, then handed it back to me. “That’s some sort of bug, right?” She pointed to a chunky black blob near the bottom of the page, held there under a piece of transparent tape.

  “A spider, I think, from the number of legs.” Lined up in a row beside the blob, under a separate piece of tape, were what looked like eight crooked spider’s legs.

  Renata stood up, but I just sat there. She wasn’t much over five feet tall and standing put her eyes about level with mine. “I’ll file a motion to withdraw the petition,” she said, “first thing in the morning.”

  “No. I told you … this note changes everything. Now, whether I want my license or not, I have to stay with it. Otherwise, I’ll look like I’m backing down.”

  She grabbed her briefcase and glared at me. “That’s the most foolish goddamn thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, “even from you. Whoever mailed that note is probably psychotic. Dangerously unbalanced, for sure.”

  When I couldn’t think of any response, she turned and stalked away. I watched her cross Michigan Avenue, and kept staring long after she was swept away in a river of pedestrians.

  So … do we all back down? Just because the bullies are unbalanced?

  CHAPTER

  2

  BESIDES, WHO’S TO SAY WHO’S UNBALANCED? People who looked perfectly normal were just then lopping the tops off whole mountains in West Virginia and dumping them into the valleys and rivers below, to get the coal that made them millions and able to buy wilderness homes in the Cascades, where others were clear-cutting every last forest in sight. Other people—like Renata herself, for example—worked sixty, seventy hours a week, thinking that’s how they’d give the loved ones they seldom saw the best life had to offer. Well-balanced?

  Speaking of which, the little yogi with the dreadlocks had reappeared, perched one-legged on the back of a bench again, this one just ten yards to the south of where I sat. He was still smiling, but not looking at the sky now. Looking straight at me.

  I couldn’t help nodding to him, and when I did he leaped to the ground and danced my way. “Hey, mon,” he said, “got a little change for a square?”

  I stood up to dig into my pocket, but found only fourteen cents in change, and nothing below a twenty in bills. “Here,” I said.

  He took the twenty without noticeable surprise. “T’ank you, mon.” He turned and started away, then swung back. “They be watchin’ you, big mon, y’know?”

  “What?”

  “They be watchin’ you. I see ’em right now. The fuzzies, y’know?”

  “Fuzzies?” I looked over and the squad car was still parked where it had been. “Cops?”

  “For sure. But not those gumballs, no. You look slow you might see the real ones. Takin’ pictures, hey?” Not turning his head, he kept shifting his eyes to his left, toward Michigan Avenue, and back to me again. “Maybe they wanna make friends, hey, big mon?” He grinned and skipped off across the grass.

  I shook my head and tried to look as though he’d said something that made me laugh, then casually turned toward Michigan Avenue. A car sat illegally at the curb, about fifty yards away. A dark green four-door Crown Victoria. An unmarked squad car. I’d have bet on it. I couldn’t see the driver, but the man in the passenger seat had a camera in front of his face, pointed off to the north somewhere … for now.

  I turned my back and, hoisting one foot up onto the bench seat, untied and retied my shoe. When I stood up again and looked around, the Crown Vic was driving away.

  * * *

  IT WAS THREE-THIRTY. I had a gig that weekend, at Miz Becky’s Tap. I wanted to go home, open a cold one, and sit down at the Steinway upright to work on a couple of Cole Porter tunes. Instead, I retrieved my well-worn Chevy Cavalier from the Grant Park underground garage and headed south toward Hyde Park and the University of Chicago.

  I could have taken the note with the dismembered spider to the police, but how could they help me? Even assuming they’d want to, which was always a questionable assumption for me. Funny. I’m a basically law-abiding citizen—within certain personal guidelines—and I know that the majority of police officers must be decent individuals.

  So why do I constantly bump up against the minority?

  No sense going to the postal inspectors, either, because—contrary to Renata’s assumption—the note hadn’t been sent through the mail. It was with my mail, though, which meant someone had come right up to my door and put it through the mail slot. And not just some innocent delivery person, because the envelope the note came in was blank. There was no name or address on it.

/>   I took Lake Shore Drive, and by the time I got to McCormick Place, was back to wondering how whoever left me the threat even knew I’d filed for reinstatement. The petition was a matter of public record, of course, but that meant only that it was in among the stacks of documents filed every week in the Supreme Court. It hadn’t made the papers as far as I knew. Maybe someone just happened to notice it; or maybe someone had been watching for this, for years.

  The notepaper and envelope were the sort available at any drugstore or copy shop, the words printed out by an inkjet printer. I’d looked for fingerprints myself. Nothing. The lab I was headed for now probably wouldn’t turn up anything helpful, either, but—professional investigator that I am—I’d leave no stone unturned. Especially when I was the client.

  It took just twenty minutes to get to Hyde Park, but another half hour to find a parking place within a half mile of where I was headed, which turned out to be a gray stone building that had to be one of the oldest on the U. of C. campus. The late afternoon sun threw a fittingly creepy shadow across the brass plaque beside the door that said: Center for Entomological Studies. Inside the lobby I pushed the button beside a card with the handwritten words: Arachnid Research.

  The spider expert was exactly as helpful as I’d expected.

  “Nothing exotic here,” he said, looking up from his microscope. “A bit squashed, of course, but I’m sure it’s one of a dozen types of common spiders. They’re all over the place. Probably a few creeping around your bedroom right now. Wonderful, beneficial animals, actually. Without them, we’d—”

  “Thanks,” I said, and took my once beneficial, now a bit squashed, animal with me on my way out.

  No stone unturned.

  CHAPTER

  3

  I DROVE HOME and checked my refrigerator. Plenty of beer, a few eggs, some bacon, and half a pizza with just a little fuzzy white stuff on one edge. I started a fresh pot of coffee, grabbed a bottle of Sam Adams, and tried to talk myself into going to the Steinway and working on some chord progressions for “Night and Day.”