The Big Score Page 9

  Her mind raced, but came up with no answer. Once in the park, he turned onto an old bridle path and killed the car’s lights. At length they came to a big chain-link fence, with a high gate. He opened the padlock, swung open the gate, drove inside, then closed and locked it again, dropping the keys into his pocket. He stood listening a moment, then got back in the car and drove it around behind a big parked truck.

  He wasn’t satisfied with Mango’s hand work. He wanted a blow—and with a condom on. She did her best, hating the taste of the latex and the smell of his crotch. The other girl had taken off her clothes and was reaching to unbutton his shirt.

  Mango was kneeling on the floor of the front seat. She pushed herself upright, her hand inadvertently slipping between his legs to beneath the seat. She felt the hard, cold sculpted metal of the heavy object there and knew instantly what it was. She knew then what she was going to do, what she had to do.

  “You ready, honey?” she said. “Really ready?”

  “Oh, yes. Come on.”

  The backseat was already down when he’d first picked her up. The black girl was crouching on the platform it made folded in place.

  “Get in back, honey,” Mango said, “and let her have a turn. Then I’ll finish you off in a way you’ll never forget.”

  He muttered something happily, then, with his pants still down, snapped open the door and lurched around into the back.

  He’d left the front door open, which kept the overhead light on. Mango reached and shut it. The black girl, her wig slipping sideways, climbed on top of him and began bouncing up and down, as practiced at her task as an auto worker on a production line. The leather of the folded-over seat began squeaking in time.

  Mango couldn’t wait a second longer. Seize the moment. Get it done. It had to be done. Get it over. Do it!

  She pulled out the big revolver, holding it in both hands as she raised it over the seat and leveled the short barrel at the back of the black girl’s head. The sharp, ringing volume of the explosion in the enclosed car surprised Mango. There was smoke, and an acrid smell. The black hooker’s head flopped and she went flying, her lower body heaving onto O’Rourke’s face. He was making frantic noises that were not words, flailing and struggling to get out from underneath her.

  Mango had no clear shot. She just kept firing at them both till the gun was empty.

  He was quiet. Neither of them moved. Mango said a prayer for herself. They were both worthless people, both whores.

  She had to move quickly. Sliding out the door, she went to the back and shoved the girl’s bloody body off of his. Wallet. Robbery. She got the desired object out of his coat breast pocket easily, but had to rip back a pants pocket to get at his keys. God, the smell. Both their bodies had been opened up. She stepped back to run, then caught herself. Fingerprints. She grabbed up the black girl’s skirt and began wiping the door handles. She didn’t think she’d touched the steering wheel, but wiped that, too. Then to the fence. The padlock fell to the ground after she unlocked it. After retrieving it, she wiped it clean and dropped it back to the dirt.

  There were bushes just across the little lane they’d taken to this place. Gun and wallet in hand, she darted through them into a small clearing. She could see car lights ahead, moving down the Inner Drive, but there were no sirens. No one was near. She scrubbed the gun with the skirt. After taking the money from the wallet, she cleaned that, too—and the keys, carefully, one by one. Then she gathered everything up in the skirt and threw the bundle back into the brush.

  After removing her shoes, she began to run. Her upper thighs were moist, oily. She realized it wasn’t sweat. She almost laughed at herself. She’d had an orgasm. It had happened before like this.

  Keeping to the dark, she proceeded south through the park, working her way closer to its western edge. Passing one streetlight, she saw that she had blood on the inside of her hand and arm. A quick thought. Into the darkness again. She removed her halter top and, crouching half nude, rubbed off the smears. Turning the halter inside out, stretching it far so that nothing would come off on her face, she put it back on. There was nothing for anyone to notice. At least not at night.

  It was a long walk to the hotel where she’d taken the room, but the desk clerk would hardly worry about the hour.

  She’d left nothing in the room but a small, cheap overnight bag and the doctored whiskey. There was a change of clothes in the bag—longer skirt, a clean blouse, more sedate heels. She put them on quickly, then gathered up the rest of her things.

  “Checking out,” she said to the clerk, who was reading the Sun-Times. She slid a twenty toward him with the room key, a tip for his indifference.

  He glanced at the wall clock beside him.

  “Slow night,” she said, and strolled out the door.

  After leaving Bitsie Symms’s party, Matthias and Sally walked along the Drive, following it around the curve of the shore to where they had a view of the man-made peninsula of Olive Park and the filtration plant and the long, antique hulk of Navy Pier beyond. There were a number of boats out on the water, their riding lights twinkling in the mist, making him think of his own sailboat and how much he’d like to be on it, out on this gentle inland sea with all the others. The night haze and the reflected glow of the city obscured most of the stars, but Matthias could see Venus shining brightly and the curving slice of the emerging moon. Sally clung to his arm, walking slowly and close.

  “I think you impressed him,” she said.

  “Who, the mighty Mr. Poe?”

  “Yes. You could tell by the way he looked at you. He was making a judgment.”

  Matthias made no comment.

  “He puts up buildings,” she said.

  “It’s a nice hobby.”

  “And now he’s invited us to dinner.”

  The invitation, he was sure, had been extended solely to him, but he’d be happy to arrange Sally’s inclusion, as she seemed so keen on it.

  “What are you thinking, Matthias?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m just trying to get used to being back in Chicago. A few days ago, I was sitting on the beach at Cap Ferrat, and Chicago might as well have been on another planet. I still can’t quite believe I’m here.”

  “Well, I can.” She gave his arm a little squeeze.

  They turned west again at Walton Street, heading toward the lights of the Drake Hotel. He let memories of their last meeting there come and go without comment.

  But that recollection was followed by others. Reaching Michigan Avenue, they crossed and turned south, passing by the very English Gothic revival façade of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, a very social house of worship that his mother had liked to attend on Christmas Eve and Easter. Next to the main building, enclosed by the church buildings and a medieval arcade of carved Bedford stone, was a quiet, grassy courtyard with a handsome fountain in the center. It served as an open-air sanctuary. When one stepped into it, the noise from the traffic on the nearby boulevard seemed to fade away. One could imagine madrigals coming from the stained glass windows.

  Sally put her head against his shoulder, but this was not the place for that. The memories this churchyard held for him were of Hillary, the woman who had once been his wife, and Jill. He had kissed them both in this enclosure. He and Hillary had been married in the church whose spire loomed overhead. Gently he pulled Sally away, back out onto the street.

  But she was bent on nostalgia, and more. Turning another corner, they went by the old Tremont Hotel. At the short alley beside it, Sally stopped, then led him within.

  “Do you remember?” she said.

  He looked at her blankly.

  “A zillion years ago,” she said. “A bright sunny day. You’d taken me to the movies and we went walking afterward. You pulled me in here and said, ‘Sally in our alley,’ and kissed me.”

  He remembered the poem: “Of all the girls that are so smart, there’s none like pretty Sally. She is the darling of my heart, and she lives in our alley.”


  He repeated the lines aloud. Sally gazed up at him, looking absurdly happy. She closed her eyes. He hesitated, then kissed her softly. She pulled herself tightly up against him, and the kiss became quite something more. He still cared for this woman. He’d felt deprived, cheated, when her mother had plucked her from him and pushed her into her marriage. Now Sally was being handed back to him, as if on a golden plate. Another sign?

  Sally at last relented, relaxed her hold, and stepped back, her eyes merry.

  “I told my baby-sitter I’d be home rather late,” she said.

  He knew what to say, but didn’t.

  “It’s not late,” she said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’d like a nightcap.”

  He glanced at the canopy of the Tremont’s bar, Crickett’s. In his day, it had been the hangout of the town’s most glamorous society divorcées.

  “Here?” he said.

  “No. Let’s go to your house.”

  They took a taxi. He had trouble finding the key to his door.

  “I’ve been living in the past,” she said. “I forgot that Christian lives here now.”

  His key came to hand. “Not really. He keeps his clothes here, but he seems to spend most of his time elsewhere. He’s staying on the North Shore tonight.”

  “Lucky us.”

  He turned on some lights, leading Sally on into the small library, where Christian had established an ample bar. He poured her a brandy and himself a Diet Coke. As he handed her the cognac, he noticed she was staring with astonished fascination at a picture above his desk. It was of a naked, red-haired woman slouched in a chair. Her body was sprawled in the most open, wanton fashion, her lushly exposed pubic area the focal point of the piece, but the look on her face was hard, and a little frightened. A woman who had learned all the secrets of life, and didn’t like them.

  “What an extraordinary painting,” Sally said uncomfortably.

  “It’s not a painting, it’s a print,” he said. “The original is in a museum in Berlin.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of lurid?”

  “The artist was Egon Schiele. Austrian, but a very Dostoyevskian character. He went to prison, some say unjustly, for rape and kidnapping when he was twenty-two. Then he was a soldier in World War I, and somehow survived that, only to die in the flu epidemic of 1918. He was twenty-eight. After his death, he became very famous.”

  “He must have been very unhappy.”

  “This woman was his mistress. As you can see, he knew her very well. He knew what she knew.”

  Sally shuddered. “I wish you’d left it in the closet. Let’s go into another room.”

  He smiled in resignation and took her back to the living room, where another new picture was hung.

  “This is a wonderful painting,” she said, going up close to it. “And it is a painting, isn’t it? Not a print?”

  “Yes. Finished this year.”

  “That man on the beach, in the white pants and blazer. That’s you!”

  That fact was inconsequential. It was a handsome piece of work, done in the century-old style of a John Singer Sargent or Thomas Eakins. The male figure who was its focal point was standing on a narrow rocky beach, staring in total absorption across dark blue-green Mediterranean waters at a distant fiery sunset almost volcanic in its intensity. Small, jagged mountains ringed the background. All about the man, young women in white summer dresses sat upon the rocks, their gaze following his, all of their faces tinged with the flaming sun’s rosy glow. All were utterly rapt, as if witnessing the birth of the world—or the death.

  “It’s the south of France,” Matthias said. “The coastline up from Cannes. At least it’s supposed to be. The mountains aren’t quite right.”

  “It’s just fantastic,” she said, turning to him excitedly. “You see, you’re a wonderful artist! A truly great artist!”

  “Christian painted it, not me,” Matthias said, taking a sip of his soft drink.

  Flustered, as if she’d just broken something, she looked away, unable to find words with which to rescue herself.

  “He’s never been to the south of France,” Matthias continued. “He did this from a photograph I sent him. And his own imagination.”

  The evening’s mood had been blown away as if by a sudden gust of wind. Sally appeared desperate to restore it. She set down her glass, then took his and put it aside as well.

  “You’re both wonderful artists,” she said, and moved to kiss him again before he could speak, pressing her pelvis urgently against his. He responded as she wished.

  Afterward, he raised her from the floor and turned off the lights. They sat on the couch in the near darkness and quietly finished their drinks, their naked bodies softly touching. He feared what she might say, what she might ask of him. He wasn’t ready for the answer.

  “I have to go,” she said finally. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  He’d let it all happen. From the moment a few days before when he’d received the telegram from Annelise about his mother’s death to this scene of passionate surrender, he’d let himself be swept back into his past as helplessly as a boat torn from its moorings in a strong-running tide. He was back in Chicago, wedged fast in his old life. Now he had to make something of it, as he’d failed to do before.

  Peter and Diandra Poe returned home late. He had stayed at Bitsie Symms’s party long after he was tired of it, only because Bitsie insisted that the mayor would be there. The man did show, but only just, making of the gathering merely another stop on a round of evening events—a couple of wakes, a charity fundraiser, a Hyde Park PTA celebration marking the end of the first year of a new integrated experimental school, an Italian-American dinner dance—all routine appearances in the daily life of a mayor who intended to stay in office a very long time. Bitsie’s party was just a drop-by. The mayor greeted her, shook a few hands, sipped a small amount of soft drink, and made a few halting remarks about the Gold Coast Garden Festival that was the ostensible reason for the gathering. Then he and his two ubiquitous aides were gone.

  Poe had hoped for at least a few minutes of private conversation, but the mayor had done no more than nod to him. In a few weeks, Poe would make an official call on his honor at his City Hall office to make an official presentation of his plans for Cabrini Green. That was not enough. He needed a one-on-one, a chance to bounce a few shots off the man and watch him respond without the guidance of his close advisers or some panel of experts. Poe was going to have to move the mayor’s office a long way on this one, and the first steps were going to be hard. What City Hall had in mind was a sort of Cabrini Green for Yuppies, a mix of midlevel high-rises and townhouses like those of the Carl Sandburg Village project east of Old Town that the great wheeler-dealer developer Arthur Rubloff had put up in the 1950s as—ha-ha—moderate-income housing. Sandburg had quickly turned into some of the most desirable real estate on the Near North Side and had pushed away the slums. That’s what the Hall wanted Poe to do, provide an anchor to help other developers to clear out the slums and old warehouses all the way west to the North Branch of the Chicago River.

  That’s not what Poe had in mind. He wasn’t going to let the mayor in on his real plans, but when he moved, he didn’t want the man in the way.

  Normally, Poe would end the night checking the calls to his private line and making a few of his own, ringing up Mango or Yeats or another of his close associates to talk about his plans for the next day. He had a lot of other deals cooking, and some work to do on those.

  Instead, he sat in a funk on the long couch of the penthouse’s cavernous living room, glowering at the opposite wall.

  Diandra had gone into the kitchen for something. She returned and stood in front of him, towering above his head. No wonder kings used thrones.

  “Would you like me to stay up with you?” she asked.

  He sighed. “No thanks, babe. Get some sleep.”

  “I’m going to read awhile.
Good night, Peter.” She walked away, her high heels clicking elegantly on the polished marble floor.

  Poe stared for a long time at a painting directly opposite. It looked like spilled spaghetti but it had been valued at $150,000. Poe didn’t understand the collectors who treated this stuff like the ultimate form of hard currency, but he was happy to take their cash money. He’d made a lot of money buying and selling art. Lately he’d mostly been selling it.

  A sound caught his attention, a distinctive, purring musical ring from down the hall. He became fully alert and looked at his Piaget. Mango.

  He got to the phone before the answering machine activated. It was her, all right, sounding higher than a jetliner.

  “I did it, Peter! I did it!”

  “Ease up, lady,” he said, keeping his voice low. “What the hell are you on?”

  “I had a couple of stiff ones. That’s all, just a couple of belts. I needed them. Jeez, I’m flying. Woooeee!”

  “I said ease up!”

  “It’s done, Peter. He’s finito.”

  “No problems?”

  “I took care of everything. Read your morning paper.”

  “Okay.”

  “I feel terrific.”

  Poe wondered if she had fucked the chump. “Okay, okay. Cool off and get some sleep. Be here first thing in the morning. Here, not the office.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And knock off the booze.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good night, Mango. And thanks.”

  “Thanks? Just thanks? Like I ran an errand for you?”

  “More than thanks. I love you, babe. I owe you large.”

  “Thanks.” She hung up.

  He trusted that woman more than anyone else in the world, but there were times when he wondered if he really even knew her.

  CHAPTER 3

  Poe had his Monday morning coffee and bran muffins brought to his study along with the Tribune and Sun-Times, waiting until his valet had left before turning to the papers, not wanting to seem too anxiously interested.

  There was nothing about Park District President O’Rourke on either front page. He turned on WBBM all-news radio just in time to catch the CBS network roundup on the hour. The president had returned from Camp David to announce a minor reshuffling of his cabinet. There was more trouble in the Mideast that would play hell with oil prices. There’d been rioting in Mexico City again. Some aging rock star had died of a drug overdose. Nothing about Chicago.