An Eye for Murder (17 page)

She nodded.

“I won’t take up any more of your time today.” I held out my hand. “Thank you.”

“I’ve enjoyed it.”

Roger got up and walked me to the door, casually draping his arm on my shoulders. It felt like a steel band.

“How about dinner?” he asked, opening the door. I looked pointedly at the ring on his finger.

“There are some things about the video I’d like to discuss,” he said, clearing his throat. “Sorry. I have plans.”

“Okay. Another time.”

The door closed behind me, and I headed toward the elevator. Dory Sanchez, her head down, arms folded, was pacing the hall.

“Dory,” I called out. “Is everything okay?” She waved me away without looking up.

“Dory?” She looked up then, and the misery on her face cut through me like a knife. I took the stairs.

Chapter Twenty-four

Time always slows down in summer, as if the heat stretches minutes into hours and hours into days. It was past seven, but the sun was still hot, and cries of children filled the air. I met Rachel at the pool. I was tired, but it was a good fatigue, the kind you get when you’ve accomplished something. We swam a few laps and played Marco Polo until the lifeguard kicked us out. By the time we got home and finished eating, it was nearly ten. I peeled off my clothes and opened the windows. A breeze fluttered through the shades.

I turned on the news, hoping to compare the media’s footage of Milk Days with ours. The anchor was in the middle of a report about three white supremacists who had been arrested by the FBI in Minneapolis for planning to explode a bomb at a federal building. One of the men arrested was a GS Fifteen who had conspired with the militants from the inside, turning over blueprints of the building as well as peak traffic schedules.

As if to apologize for devoting so much airtime to a racist plot, the next story featured a young, pretty blonde breathlessly summarizing a press conference called by LABOR, Latinos for a Better Order. According to Raoul Iglesias, LABOR’s leader, Latinos would soon be the largest minority in the United States but were stuck on the lowest rung of the employment ladder.

“We are being starved out of the economic system,” Iglesias said. “Many of us do not even get minimum wage. Of the twenty-five hundred minority companies that do business with the city, Latino firms have less than three percent of the contracts. We want our fair share.” To focus attention to these issues, LABOR was asking Latinos to demonstrate at the rally planned for Labor Day at Daley Plaza.

The report cut to a sound bite of the mayor, who proclaimed in mangled speech that his goal was to give everyone a fair shake. “I come from a blue-collar family myself, and I know how important it is to have a rock solid job. This administration will not exclude any deserving family from their share of the American dream.”

This was a real Chicago story. Ethnic. Blue collar. Political.

Stephen Lamont must be eating his heart out.

Finally the broadcast segued to twenty seconds of Milk Days. A close-up of the cow, a cutaway of the crowd, a short sound bite of Marian. Your typical quick and dirty TV fare. Our footage was better. I was spooning vanilla ice cream into a dish as a reward when the telephone rang.

“This is David Linden.”

Dressed in T-shirt and panties, I looked for something to cover myself with. “Uh…hello.”

There was a pause. Could he sense my disorientation? Then, “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but I was out of the country.”

I rummaged in the broom closet and grabbed a dirty sweatshirt. “You travel quite a bit.”

“Yes.” Silence.

I wrapped the sweatshirt around my shoulders. “I’ve been busy, too.”

“Oh.” More silence. “I wondered whether you and your father still wanted to meet.”

“Of course. When did you have in mind?” I should run up for my day book; it was in my office.

“How’s tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Are you—”

“I flew in today for a conference.”

“A conference?” The lights of a passing car winked in the night, streaming ribbons of red in their wake. I pulled the arms of the sweatshirt more snugly around me. “On what?”

“The regulatory and tax implications of foreign currency exchange in the new millennium.”

“Oh.”

“I’m the head of foreign currency trading for the Franklin National Bank,” he said impatiently.

Currency trading, day trading; they both seemed vaguely sinister.

“Ms. Foreman—”

“How about two o’clock?” I said. “Where are you staying?”

“The Ritz-Carlton.”

Sunday morning I slipped into my good pair of white linen slacks and a black silk shirt. I hadn’t worn the pants since last season, and now, of course, they refused to zip. Sighing, I changed into a dark blue pants suit. I looked like a linebacker for the Bears. I switched to a red dress with white polka dots. Now I was Little Red Riding Hood on speed. I changed back into the black shirt and white slacks and sucked everything in. If I sat down slowly, I might avoid splitting a seam. I put on makeup, pulled my hair back in a clip, and hooked my sunglasses down the front of my shirt.

A hot hazy day, it was two-thirty by the time I found a parking space. As I hurried past Water Tower to The RitzCarlton, perspiration beaded my forehead. A blast of icy air hit me as I pushed through the door. Downtown Chicago is rife with luxury hotels, but the Ritz was one of the first and has managed to maintain its cachet. I rode the elevator to the twelfth-floor lobby and padded across a Persian carpet. The house phone was in a semiprivate booth near a large oil painting with a gilt frame. I sat down—slowly—on a white satin bench and picked up the receiver. He answered on the second ring.

“It’s Ellie Foreman. Sorry I’m late.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Getting up, I tugged at my shirt and strolled past a whispering fountain to a large dining room with an intricately designed marble floor. Potted palms peeked around trellises, and a live tree framed a picture-window view of the street. Though lunch was technically over, a bus boy hefted a tray of silver-domed dishes to a station where a waiter stood at attention. The waiter presented the dishes to a blond couple and their three towheaded children, all of them in crisp summer whites. Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan and their kids, if things had worked out differently. I wondered if David Linden had brought his wife and kids along. I pictured a sweet, demure wife. Cute, well-behaved kids.

The waiter set one of the domed plates in front of the little girl, but she elbowed him away, preferring to walk her Barbie along the edge of the table. Her mother leaned over and whispered to her, but the little girl sulked and shook her head. The mother repeated her request. The little girl issued a loud, whiny “No.”

Then one of the boys threw a buttered roll at his sister, which hit her in her chest. The girl’s scream was so shrill that everyone in the dining room momentarily froze, like in those old E. F. Hutton commercials. When it became clear that the little girl wasn’t hurt, movement cranked up again. The father scolded his son, the mother berated the father, and the little girl, fingering the grease spot left by the butter, burst into tears.

On second thought, I decided, if David Linden could afford to stay at the Ritz, maybe his children weren’t so wellbehaved. Maybe they were as spoiled as these brats. One of them might even be a future ax murderer. It was a comforting thought.

“Ellie?”

I spun around. In front of me was a man in a white polo shirt, navy slacks, and cordovan loafers. His broad shoulders and sculpted biceps said he worked out regularly. He had large cornflower eyes framed with tiny lines and a thin, aristocratic nose that gave him a slightly haughty expression. He had to be over fifty, but he looked much younger, partly because of the pair of Revo sunglasses pushed up on his crown, and partly because of a thick shock of prematurely white hair.

Canned Muzak spilled from speakers, cutlery clinked on china, but I couldn’t speak. Except for his coloring, and something around the mouth, the man in front of me was Paul Iverson’s double.

His face, open and eager an instant ago, grew suddenly wary. “You are Ellie Foreman, aren’t you?”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. Then I pulled one out and extended it. “I’m sorry. You…you took me by surprise.” A question crept across his face, but he apparently chose not to ask it. His handshake was firm; the feel of it resonated on mine.

“Shall we go in?” He motioned to the dining room. “If you like.”

He strode to the dining room. I trotted behind, my brain racing to complete its circuits. Lisle was his mother. Kurt was his father. So why did he look exactly like Paul Iverson?

When he reached the three marble steps that separated the dining room from the lobby, he turned as if he’d just remembered I was there. As he ushered me down the steps, his hand lightly brushed my back. It felt good.

The maitre d’ seated us at a small table away from the Gatsbys, who were now bickering like any other dysfunctional family.

“Have you eaten?” He opened a red leather menu embossed with gold letters. “I…well, no, but I—”

He looked at me speculatively. “Well, I’m going to order a sandwich.”

He closed the menu, and a waiter promptly appeared. There must be a secret signal that sophisticated diners use to get a waiter’s attention. I wish I knew it. David ordered chicken salad on toast and iced tea. I asked for a glass of wine. The waiter sniffed.

David unfolded his napkin and put it in his lap. I played with my knife, noticing the smooth blond hair on his forearms and how it grew in one direction. “You have your mother’s coloring.”

He looked puzzled. “You know what she looked like?”

“My father has an old snapshot of her with him and Barney Teitelman.”

“Oh.”

The drinks came. I took a sip of wine. “Is he meeting us here?”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

I winced. There was a slight problem with that. It hadn’t gone so well when I told him about David.

“Are you
meshuga
?” he’d exclaimed. “You gave your number to a total stranger?”

“He isn’t a total stranger,” I said. “He’s Lisle Gottlieb’s son.”

“That’s what he says,” Dad said and launched into an extended diatribe about my naïveté and propensity to accept people at face value. This man could be anyone, posing as Lisle’s son. What did I know about him? How could I have given him my number and then, God forbid, agreed to meet him? Even the fact that David was staying at The Ritz didn’t mollify him. “Let me tell you something, Ellie. If I was looking to sucker you out of something, would I stay at some fleabag hotel? Of course, he’d be at The Ritz. You’ve got a lot to learn about human nature, sweetheart.”

I let him rant, hoping he just needed time to get used to the idea, but he never called me back.

“Umm, Dad couldn’t make it today,” I said to David. “His—his arthritis is acting up. You know.”

“Oh.” A muscle in his jaw tightened. “I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s all right.” His nostrils flared, accentuating the air of haughtiness.

“So, you trade currency?”

“That’s right.”

“I see.” I looked at him. “Have you always lived in Philadelphia?”

“Except when I travel.”

“Which is often, I gather.”

“Yes.”

I picked up a spoon. “Where do you travel? When you travel, I mean?”

“Europe, mostly. Sometimes Tokyo.”

“Have you been to Germany?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where your parents came from.”

“Yes.”

This was getting painful. I’ve never been very good at cocktail chatter. And I was desperately trying not to think how much he looked like Paul Iverson. Which was about as successful as trying not to think about a pink elephant.

The waiter brought his sandwich. David took neat, meticulous bites. Then he set the sandwich down on his plate and folded his hands in front of him. “What about you? What do you do?”

Finally. A question. He must have been embarrassed by the pathetic quality of our conversation. “I produce videos.”

“Really?” An unexpectedly sweet smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I’ve always wanted to direct a film.”

Film. Not movie
. He looked like he could afford a digital camera and all the gear. Even the editing software now on the market. “Why don’t you? Everyone else does.”

He shrugged.

“You can always experiment on your family.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to do home movies,” he said. “And I don’t have a family.”

No wife. No kids. No ax murderer.

“I don’t do features,” I said. “I make industrials. For corporate clients.”

“But you know how.”

Again a smile. Sunny. Open. Like the smile I’d seen on Dad’s picture of Lisle. A twinge of pleasure shot through me. “Yes. I haven’t always done corporate gigs. And one of these days…well…who knows?”

“The best memories I have of my childhood were at the movies. I worked in a theater during high school.”

“No way. An usher?”

He nodded.

I closed one eye, trying to imagine him as a pimply redjacketed geek. “Okay, what’s your favorite film?”

He raised his palm. “Oh no. I’m not that dumb.” I grinned. “Top five then.”

“Still tough.” He looked past me, his sandwich forgotten.

“Let’s see.” He held up his hand. “There’s
High Noon. The Godfather
.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “
Citizen Kane
.
The Seven Samurai
…and…
The Battle of Algiers
.” He spread his fingers, looking proud of himself.

I raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.”

He picked up the last bite of sandwich and put it in his mouth.

“I’ll give you three for five.”

He stopped chewing, and his smiled faded. “What did I miss?”

“
Casablanca. Double Indemnity. Some Like It Hot
. Maybe

L.A. Confidential
.”

“Pretty Hollywood, aren’t you?”

“Long live the studio system.”

He leaned back and squinted. “You’re not the type.”