Page 24 of Fade Out
“That’s great Frank, but I don’t have all day—”
“No, you have to listen. There’s a point. The mermaid. We were able to make a preliminary identification based on the tattoo alone. One of the places we went into, the artist remembered it.”
“No kidding.”
“So you see…there’s always a way.”
“What about the car?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Was it his car?”
“Actually, it was. But that wasn’t how we figured it out. We followed the tattoo.”
“Why wasn’t the car registration enough?”
“The guy was a hired killer. We knew it might be him, but we also knew it might not be. See, that was the problem.”
“Okay, Frank. I think I need to go now.”
“Yeah, you know there was this other time—”
I held up a hand to stop him. “Look, go home to your wife and apologize. You’re being kind of a dick. So just stop, okay?”
The empty look on his face suggested that he might actually listen to me.
Then I walked out. Frank’s marital problems weren’t my business. But given my own situation the idea of anyone getting over it, getting back together, well, I couldn’t leave it alone. And besides, other people’s problems are always less complicated than our own.
Chapter Seven
Driving away,I wondered if I’d actually learned anything remotely valuable. I already knew the point of cutting off someone’s head and hands was to hinder identification. The CPD thought the body was Rita. It wasn’t. That was exactly as she’d intended. Nothing new there.
The thing with that building on Wells, that was weird. Rita’s father was somehow involved. That involvement might have gotten him killed. If it did, there was one thing I knew for certain. Rita would want revenge. Was that why she had a file on the building? Was she planning revenge? The prospectus for 618 North Wells included the names of thirteen board members. I wondered for a moment if they were all still alive.
I drove back to Boystown and parked near the Belmont El station. I took the Jackson Park down to the city. It was time to deliver Jill Smith’s overdue list.
Peterson-Palmer was located in a boring gray metal building on Adams between Clark and LaSalle. Jill Smith’s office was on the fourteenth floor. She made me wait twenty minutes, which I shouldn’t complain about since I’d promised her the list at the beginning of the week.
I spent the time reading an article on the front page of theDaily Heraldabout a plot to sell arms to the Iranians that the FBI managed to foil. Some lieutenant colonel was deep in it and likely would go to prison. I was reading about the various agencies involved in catching this guy when Smith’s assistant told me I could go in.
Jill Smith was the kind of attractive, blue-suited woman you now frequently saw in the Loop. Yeah, they were still outnumbered by men ten-to-one, but a decade ago you rarely saw a woman who wasn’t a secretary.
“I’m not happy with you,” she said. “You were supposed to bring me that list of dormant accounts at the beginning of the week.”
“Sorry, I had some things come up.”
“You should have called me, I could have sent a messenger. I mean, we know Rita’s out there attempting to access these accounts. This could have cost us a lot of money.”
Apparently, she wasn’t a newspaper reader. I stood there uncomfortably not explaining things. She picked up her phone and dialed four numbers. They had an internal intercom system.
“Could you come down?” she asked, well more commanded. Then she hung up. “Give me the list.”
I opened the blue notebook and took out the list. Gave it to her. She quickly glanced at the names.
“These people are all dead?”
“Yes.”
