Of spreadsheets, shoe boxes, and Lil’ Eddie…
She stopped in her tracks, eyeing me warily. “ Excusez moi,” she said with a bad French accent and a forced a smile. “Ze store does not open until 10:00.”
“For a ‘tall, leggy blond in a pale-green business suit,’ that's some disguise.”
With the fastest set of hands I'd seen since Sugar Ray Leonard, she snatched an ornate gold letter opener off the table and dropped into a tight fighting stance, the long blade flashing back and forth in front of her.
I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, you win. All I want to do is talk.”
“Talk, huh?” she answered as the accent disappeared and the letter opener flashed past my nose.
“Whoa!” I stepped back and raised my hands higher. “Don't do that, please?”
“Please, my ass. Try anything and you're gonna to bleed.”
“Whatever that guy told you, it's a lie.”
She feinted with the letter opener and jumped three feet in the air in a spinning karate kick. I leaned back as the heel of her shoe narrowly missed my nose. In the process, I knocked over a tall, brocade armchair and she knocked over a Chinese table lamp.
“Keep that up and we'll total the place. Look, I'm not leaving until we talk.”
She backed off and glared at me. The shock of black hair had fallen over her eyes again and she pushed it up and out of the way.
“What did they tell you?” I asked. “It must have been a beauty.”
“That you're the North Side serial rapist they've been after: a sicko-pervert who preys on helpless young women.”
“Helpless young women? That's funny,” I said, looking at the sharp blade and the killer expression in her eyes.
“They said you've already killed three women, three that they know of.”
“Jesus! And you believed that?”
“They were the FBI? Why shouldn't I?”
“For starters, if this really was a rape or murder case, it would be the Chicago PD knocking on your door, not the FBI. But why did you call them in the first place?”
“I didn't call them; they called me, right after you did.”
“Then they have your phone tapped.”
“The FBI? Tap my phone? Get real.”
“Yours, my friend Doug's in Boston, his home and office, and probably everyone else I know.”
She stared at me, wary, but a little less certain. “They told me they raided your apartment in Evanston and found my name and address on a slip of paper. They figured you were coming after me next, so they called to warn me.”
“Convenient, but I don't have an apartment in Evanston. I got in town about three hours ago from Ohio.”
“That's convenient, too.”
I pointed at her camera. “What's with that? The big photo op? “Feds Grab North Side Rapist.” “Local Woman Sets Up Vicious Killer.” Is that why the goon in the sunglasses got all uppity? Your camera?”
“The goon in the sunglasses?” I saw a hint of a smile. “No, he kept insisting I go with them. I declined. He got pushy, but he won't do that again.”
“Be careful with those guys. They can be nasty.”
“So can I. And I'm always careful with guys.”
So much for Midwestern hospitality, I thought. “I'll bet he didn't appreciate you taking pictures of them, did he?”
“That was one of his issues. I'm a stringer for some local papers and like I told that jerk, it's a living, it's mine, and it's not negotiable.”
“Good for you. Even if there is a North Side rapist, I'm not him and they know it. If I had shown up, there wouldn't have been any story and you'd have never seen your film or your camera again. That is, if anybody ever saw you again, or saw me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hi, my name's Peter Talbott. Hi, I'm Sandy Kasmarek,” I said. “Pleased to meet you Peter. You too, Sandy. And now that we've been properly introduced, I'm tired.” I picked up the armchair and sat down on it. ”
“Great. Another fucking comedian.”
“No, I'm a systems engineer. I do computer programming.”
“ Ah, pardon, a fucking rocket scientist. Me, I play third base for the Cubs, but today's an off day over at Wrigley, so I came in to sell some art… Gimme a break.”
I stared at her. “I do mathematical paradigms and systems design.”
“Yeah? Well take your pair-a-dimes downstairs and drop them in a fucking pay phone. Maybe somebody else will listen to your story, 'cause I'm not.”
“Sandy, I came here because I need your help. I don't rape women, and I sure as hell haven't killed any.”
“And I'm supposed to believe that because…?” she fired back, holding out her hand. “Let's see some ID.”
“I don't have any ID. They took my wallet back in Columbus. I have some newspaper and magazine clippings, but they're going to take some explaining.”
“Gee. Why doesn't that surprise me?”
“It's the truth. Look at me. I'm not even half-way good at lying and it took a real pro to dream this thing up.”
“A real pro?”
“The goon with the bad manners and sunglasses you tangled with. His boss.”
“The FBI? You're telling me they set this whole thing up, just to catch you?”
“They weren't FBI.”
“I saw his badge and his ID, and that was a US Government sedan.“
“Yeah? Then why didn't you get in the car with him, instead of tossing him into a brick wall? You knew he was bogus. The French cuffs and gold cuff links? Come on. If he was real, after you dented his head, why didn't he arrest you for assaulting a cop? You knew he was a phony.”
She studied me a moment and I could see some of it was sinking in.
“Look, I stumbled into something back in Ohio.” I leaned back in the chair and tried to look my least threatening. “I haven't figured it all out yet, but back in Ohio they're burying mob guys under other people's names, people who are already dead so no one will notice. When I got too close, they tried to kill me.”
“Kill you? The government? You really are crazy.”
“Am I? You told me Eddie died almost a year ago.”
“Yeah,” she answered warily.
“And he was buried here in Chicago?”
“Out by Park Forest.”
I pulled out the wad of newspaper clippings and laid the one for Edward J. Kasmarek on the desk in front of her. “Here, read this,” I told her, laying the clipping on her desk. She snatched it up and read it, then read it again. “That was in February. They used Eddie's name, but that wasn't Eddie and I know where the grave is. That's why I came here and tracked you down, because we're not the only ones.”
“This is nuts.”
I pulled out the ones for the Brownsteins, the Skeppingtons, and the Priors, and the ones for Terri and me, and I laid them on the desk. After she read them, I pulled out the three flash drives. “These belonged to a mob accountant named Louie Panozzo; I found them hidden in his car. They're the financial records of the New Jersey mob. He took them with him and I think it's what got him killed.” I pulled out the George Deevers driver's license and showed her that too. “This is a phony ID he had, but that's his picture.”
She looked at the ID and the three flash drives. She still wasn't sure, but she was listening. There was a thin-screen computer monitor sitting on her receptionist desk. “You've got a PC? Let me use it, I'll show you.”
“You aren't going anywhere near it… or near me.”
“Fine, fine,” I put the first flash drive on her desk and plopped on the floor with my back to the door. “Is this safe enough for you? Go ahead and boot it up yourself. You do know how to use a computer don't you?”
“Yeah, I know how to use one, smart ass! I got my Associates in Photography, but I'm not stupid. I know some bookkeeping, too.”
“Great. Put the drive in and bring up the directory.”
She picked up the flash drive. “Remember, I still have this,” she said as she showed me the letter opener again and slipped behind the desk. “If you're messing with me, you're gonna hurt in places you didn't know could hurt.” It took a few minutes, but before long, she was staring at the monitor, not at me, and I saw her fingers moving across the keyboard. “Okay, they're spreadsheets, general ledger accounts.”
“Nice to see the Associate's wasn't wasted.”
“Don't start with me,” her eyes narrowed. It isn't good salesmanship, especially when you're the one with your ass against the door and I'm the one with something sharp.”
“I think those are mob-owned businesses in New Jersey. They probably launder their money there and skim it back off the top.”
“Jeez! There's even a spreadsheet here for “Payoffs.” And what's this? Foreign bank accounts? Guess he wasn't worried about getting caught, was he?”
“He's dead. He's the guy they buried under my name.”
“Did you get a look at the names on that Payoff list? I'm not a political junkie, but even I recognize some of them.”
“Still think I'm crazy? There's a lawyer back in Columbus who's running the whole thing. The guys you met today work for him. And they have a doctor, a clinic, a funeral home, and their own cemetery. If I'm right, I know the names of nine people they buried back there, and there's probably more.”
“Nine people? How could they get away with something like that? Think of all the paperwork: the death certificates, insurance, taxes, driver's licenses, Social Security. Nobody can do that.”
“Sandy, they're the government. Waco? Ruby Ridge? Guantanamo? The CIA? The FBI? NSA? The Patriot Act? They can do anything they want.”
“But nine people?”
“Four couples, husbands and wives, and single guy. He's the one they used Eddie's name for. See, they didn't know about you. They thought he was single.”
“And what? You think they're after me now?”
“Well, I dropped some names on them — the New Jersey Capo and some of his hoods who are missing, a guy in Atlanta and his wife, a couple from Portland, a couple from Phoenix… and Eddie. Those are the names they buried the hoods under. I was trying to shake them up, that's why I mentioned their names… and Eddie's. Anyway, when I got away and headed for Chicago, they must have put two and two together and found out about you the same way I did. That's why they put a tap on your phone.”
“You dumb bastard!” She jumped to her feet and pointed at the door. “I was doing just fine until you came along.”
“No, no. They'd have figured it out sooner or later. Then you'd have quietly disappeared some night and never known what hit you.”
She continued to stare at me, still angry. “Wait a minute, are you some kind of cop or spy or something?”
“No. All I did was go to the public library and looked back through the obituaries. It's all there in the newspapers, if you know what you're looking for. That's how I found the one for Eddie and decided to come to Chicago. I need to find some hard evidence that shows Eddie died here, not in Columbus. When I got in town a couple of hours ago, I started calling Kasmareks. That's how I tracked you down.”
“Yeah? Well nobody was bothering me until you showed up.”
“No, you were in danger long before that. But we're safe for the moment. They think I never showed up. And they don't think you know anything.”
She looked across at me and shook her head, still trying to take it all in. “Okay, let's say all this stuff you're telling me is true. Why Eddie? Why would anybody pick a weasel like him?”
“He was the right age. No close relatives. And the timing and distance worked for their computer. Who knows? All they wanted was a general match.”
“With what? Another shit head?”
“No,” I laughed. “He was a nobody, that was the whole point, someone with no ties and no family who wouldn't be remembered. Look, if you want me out of here, I need a copy of Eddie's death certificate from Cook County, maybe his obituary from the Chicago papers or a copy of the insurance payoff. Do you have any of that stuff?”
“I wasn't keeping souvenirs.”
“But you do have them?”
“Yeah, I have them.” She relented. “They're in a shoe box on the top shelf of my closet. Nobody else would do it, so I got stuck closing out his “affairs.” The bastard had “affairs” all right, with anything warm that would spread their legs for him.”
“Sandy, I really am sorry to stir this all up for you. I know that under all that raw anger, you still hurt. I know.”
“Yeah, well, the dumb jerk couldn't even die right.” She looked at me and frowned. “And don't try to play me, Talbott. Been there, done that.”
“Okay. But, the papers. Can we go over and get them? I can get some copies made and get out of town, and then you can pretend I was never here.”
She stared at me for a moment, not comprehending. “What? You want me to go back to my apartment? Now? With you? Au contraire.” She shook her head.
“I'm at the end of my rope, Sandy.”
“That's a good place for you to stay. I live up in Winnetka, there's no way…”
“Winnetka? You live at 1414 Clark.”
She glared at me again, but all I could do was shrug, trying to look my most helpless. “I followed you this morning. I had to know which side you were on.”
“What makes you think I'm on yours?”
“Look, pretty soon the guy in the sunglasses and his three pals will come walking through that door looking for you, so help me, please.” It must have been my look of complete hopelessness, but something worked.
“Oh, man,” she moaned. “I'm supposed to open up the shop in ten minutes. I'm up to twelve dollars an hour now and if Old Man Fantozzi docks me a day's pay, I'm really going to be pissed.”
I pulled out Dannmeyer's coffee money, peeled off a one-hundred dollar bill, and laid it on the table. “That should buy me hour or two.”
The expression on her face turned cold and angry as she shoved the money back across the table. “I don't know what you think I am, but I'm not for sale.”
“Hey, I didn't mean anything,” I quickly back peddled. “All I was doing was making sure this doesn't cost you anything, okay? And I apologize if you took it wrong, but I really do need your help.”
She stared at me a while longer before she finally relented. “Okay, I'll get that stuff for you,” she said. “I just can't believe I'm letting you drag me into this thing.”
“I didn't, Eddie did.”
“Men. You're all such bastards.”
“Probably,” I stood up. “But let's get out of here while we still can.”
She picked up a pen and scribbled a quick note on a pad of paper on the desk. “That's for old man Fantozzi. I told him I'm out shopping with his wife.”
“Won't he check?”
“Are you kidding? He got grabby in the storeroom last week and he knows if I say a word to his wife, she'd kill him.” She looked over at me long and hard once again. “Just remember, if you're bullshitting me, you'll wish I was the FBI.”
“With this honest face?” I gave her my best smile.
“Yeah, with your honest face and my total stupidity when it comes to guys, you figured me for an easy mark.” She handed back the flash drive. “Well don't get cocky. You may be bigger than me, but I still have the letter opener and I really do have a black belt. Touch me and you'll be in traction.”
“One more thing,” I asked. “Call me Peter, okay?”
She gave me a long, hard look. “Don't fucking count on it,” she said as she picked up her camera and her shoulder bag and headed for the door.
She walked next to me, but she kept her distance. When we reached the escalator, I stopped and stared down into the huge atrium. All I could see was the tops of the heads of as people walked around below. Too many heads. Too many dark suits, and I didn't like it. “Is there another way down?”
“Getting a little paranoid, Talbott?”
“Only when people are trying to kill me.”
“We could take the elevators.” She pointed to two high-speed, all-glass capsules that ran up and down the atrium wall. They were as exposed as the escalators. She looked around. “Or the service elevator around back. It'll take us down to the loading dock.”
“Perfect,” I said. It was around a corner, and it had solid walls and solid doors. “Besides,” I pointed at her short black leather skirt and lacy white blouse. “You'd be pretty easy to spot in that outfit.”
“Me?” her eyes flashed angrily. “You come in here dressed in plaid and old denim, like an ad for Cowboy Bob's Gay Bar in Arlington Heights, and you're giving me crap about my clothes?”
“I'm not giving you crap. It's lovely, bold, and very… distinctive.”
The elevator arrived and the door opened. She got in and stood in the far corner with her back to the wall. “You know, Talbott, one good thing about you saying all those dumb things you've been saying, is that you've finally convinced me you couldn't be all that bad. Dumb? Yeah. But bad? I don't think so.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“And you lived in LA?” she asked. “Where? Under a rock?”
“I'm an engineer, Sandy. I work all day with computers.”
She looked me over again, from head to toe more slowly this time. “And there's no female touch out there to help un-geek you? No wife? No girlfriend?”
“There was a wife,” I answered. I looked away, but the elevator door was polished metal and there was no place to hide from her eyes. This was a conversation I didn't want to have with anyone, least of all an attractive young woman I barely knew, but I had no choice. “Her name was Terri. That was her obituary. She died a year ago of cancer.”
“Oh, Jeez, I'm sorry.” I saw her raise her hand to her mouth, legitimately embarrassed. “Me and my big mouth. Well, if you knew me, you'd know I didn't mean anything. I mean, I know you don't know me, but if you really did know me, you'd know I was just joking around. Not that I want you to get… Oh, you know what I mean.”
“Hey, it's okay, Sandy. You didn't say anything, honest.”
“I did, but I didn't mean to. I know a little bit about pain, too. Maybe that's why I'm always joking around, until some big guy steps in and scares the snot out of me.”
We rode the rest of the way down to the loading dock in silence. As we got out, I said, “Most of the people they buried were couples. They used my name and my wife's to bury the bean counter and his wife. That's what really pissed me off. They had no right to hi-jack her name and my memories of her like that. They're all I have left of her now.”
She stopped and stared at me, her expression softening. “Must be nice. I mean to have memories of someone you care about, good ones, that mean something to you.”
We walked outside through the service door. There were no gray sedans with black-wall tires and no goons in suits and sunglasses waiting for us, so we turned up the alley and headed north. She pulled a cell phone out of her purse and started pressing buttons.
“You better not use that thing. Tinkerton's people will be all over us in minutes.”
“No cell? Jeez, I'll be lost,” she whined, but she turned it off and dropped it in her shoulder bag. We continued west two blocks and then turned north before she spoke to me again. “Back there,” she finally asked. “All that stuff you about your wife, that wasn't more of your bullshit, was it?”
“No, unfortunately it wasn't,” I sighed. “Neither was the rest of it.”
“’Cause I'm a real sucker for stuff like that.”
“I wish it was a story. But you lost somebody too,”
“Yeah, but you didn't want to lose yours. Me? If Raoul from the Happy Pancake hadn't shot Eddie first, I would have.”
“Funny, one of the Kasmareks thought you did.”
“That bunch of shits?”
“She said that too. I think she was another in-law. She called him “little Eddie.”
“ Little Eddie?” she chuckled. “That was not one of his problems… Sorry.”
“If he was such a big jerk, why did you keep using the last name? It's been what? Almost a year now?”
“I suppose I could blame it on my photography business,” she shrugged. “I had just put new ads in the phone book and I would have had to buy all new business cards. They don't come cheap, especially when I'm not making much money to begin with, but the truth is I couldn't deal with it, with any of it.”
“Yeah, I know what that's like. I was frozen for months after Terri died. I couldn't even open her dresser drawers or look on her side of the closet, much less box up any of it up. I couldn't even touch her stuff.” I looked over and saw her staring at me with large, wondering eyes as if she was a kid on a field trip to the zoo and I was some strange specimen she found sitting in the back of a cage. “It took five months before I finally let a couple of her friends come over and clean everything out for me. All of it. If they hadn't, I'd still be sitting there in that house in California. I couldn't let her go.”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked over at me. “Why do I think you've never talked to anyone about this before? I'm right, aren't I?”
I shrugged as I walked away. “I don't know. I can't explain it.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“I'm not, it's just that you kept asking, and… maybe it's easier with a stranger.”
She caught up and gave me that puzzled look again. “You are a really strange guy, Peter Talbott,” she said, but this time the defensive wall and the hostility weren't there. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say more, then thought better of it and stopped.
When we reached Clark, I paused to look up and down her street. “Why don't we take the long way around,” I told her.
“You think they're watching?” she said as she dropped her big sunglasses down over her eyes. “Then I shall go incognito.”
Instead of the route we took that morning, we swung west two blocks, then north as far as Schiller, approaching Clark from the far end of her block. It was a nice walk, until we looked around the corner and saw a white sedan parked near her building with two men inside. Sandy's mouth dropped open as that reality sank home. We slipped back around the corner and backtracked a block. There was a narrow walkway that brought us back to the alley behind her building. Peeking around a fence, we saw the rear end of another government car.
“Still think I'm paranoid?” I asked.
“I don't believe this. Maybe I could sneak past them and go upstairs?”
“That's too risky. We can wait them out. When I don't show and you don't either, Tinkerton will pull them off.” We walked back down the narrow passageway crossed the next street, and several others, and turned south again.
“Do you know some place we can hide for a while?” I asked.
“We? You mean “we” as in the-two-of-us-we?”
“A couple of hours, that's all. Until they give up. A friend's? Maybe someone with a computer I can use, and a printer?”
She stopped and studied me through those dark sunglasses. She was hard to read, but I could tell she was deciding about a lot more than just a place to hide.
“I'm not making those cars up, am I?” I asked. “Or the goon with the gold cuff links and bad manners. You saw what was on that computer disk, Sandy: the spreadsheets, the books, the payoff lists, the Swiss bank accounts, all of that stuff. If we can print it out, we can blow this thing wide-open and get both of us off the hook.”
“A rocket scientist, huh? And you know all about computers?” She shook her head, still skeptical. “I know I'm gonna hate myself in the morning, Talbott, and that won't be the first time, but okay. I'll trade you. My Aunt Penny has a condo over at Marina Towers. She's out of town, I have a key, and she has a computer. So, I'll take you over there for a while. You can take a look at the disks, then you're going to teach me that computer stuff.”
“That computer stuff? I don't know how much time you've got, but it's a deal.”
“One thing, though,” she looked me over again. “That cowboy costume has got to go. Me and plaid do not get along.”