1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (23 page)

“Don’t think so, Ike. Peter had his phone rigged to forward or receive calls from anywhere—variation on call forwarding. Hell, Ike, my dad used a bookie in Baltimore named Lefty. He had a thing called a cheese box that could do it, and that was forty-five, maybe fifty years ago.

“My guess is Peter checked in the hotel across the street from the café. He called you, patched through his phone at the Agency, and set it up. It is not the sort of thing you check, you know. You said he called, he said he called. Unless you took the trouble to look at the sign-in sheets to see if he was in that night, you would never know, all very vague.

“Charlie?” Ike’s voice was quiet. “Is that why you killed him?”

“Like I said, Ike, I’m losing my touch.”

“Charlie, I’ll never understand you. You must be—”

“Ike, do yourself a favor. Do not even think what you were about to ask. Forget about today. It’s over. Do not make me have to come after you, too. You understand?”

Ike looked at Charlie, nondescript in baggy tweed coat, khaki slacks, frayed blue button-down shirt, rep tie, horn-rimmed glasses askew and taped together where he’d lost a screw at the hinge. “You must be a very important person, Charlie.”

“Ike,” Charlie said, his voice a warning.

“I mean, how the hell do you get away with it? You get paid to be the worst public relations man I’ve ever met, and your only accomplishment seems to be working the
New York Times
crossword puzzle every day.”

Charlie grinned, relieved. “But in ink, Ike, I do it in ink.”

Ike watched as he disappeared into the crowd.

Epilogue

Jennifer Ames snapped her purse shut, waved to Archie Boyer, and headed toward the revolving door.

“Have a good weekend,” Archie called out after her.

“You too,” she replied over her shoulder. She stepped out into the August heat and bounced down the broad steps in front of the Art Institute, toward Michigan Avenue. The street filled with people like herself, leaving offices, leaving work, and heading for bus stops, the El, or parking lots, on their way home.

She almost missed them. A gesture, a raised hand of greeting, caught out of the corner of her eye, made her turn and look at the three figures at the foot of the steps. She saw the girls first, miniatures of their father, but different, darker. And then she saw him. He looked younger, taller. The lines that once etched his face, the roadmap of his pain, were smoothed and softened. He smiled and she realized with a start that she had never seen him smile before.

She looked down at the children, their eyes wide with wonder.

“You must be Karen and Julie,” she said to them, and then to him, “Hello, Harry,” and made no attempt to stop the tears that began to fill her eyes.

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