threatening divorce, going for everything he owns?'
'It's happened,' said Lieberman.
'Our Harvey, the grieving widower, does not have a hell of a lot she could have taken from him,' said Kearney. 'He's in a break-even business, scrambling every month to keep it going. Overhead-entertaining, rent, support staff. Our Harvey didn't have much, but he could use some big money.'
Kearney bit his lower lip and scanned the notes again.
'Rozier's in good health. No shady deals we can find. Can't say the same for our lawyer, Kenneth Franklin. Franklin is very rich and very sick. Cancer.'
'Accounts for some of his attitude,' said Lieberman.
'Might,' said Kearney, looking up at Hanrahan. 'What the hell were you trying to do last night?'
'We,' said Lieberman. 'Bill and I agreed he'd go talk to Rozier.'
'At ten at night? The time alone, without an emergency, is enough to give some weight to Franklin and Rozier's screams about harassment.'
'He's guilty of something, and-' said Hanrahan.
'And you're sorry you did it,' Kearney finished.
'Absolutely,' said Hanrahan.
'The bottle of ipecac,' Kearney said, dismissing the reprimand. 'No fingerprints on it. Not a trace. Not a smudge. Wiped clean. Know anyone who wipes medicine bottles before they put them away?'
'An odd fetish,' said Lieberman.
'Evidence says the other bottles in Dana Rozier's closet were handled by her. Best possibility here?'
'Rozier wiped his prints off the bottle and put it in his wife's drawer,' said Hanrahan.
'Rozier or the killer. Can you think of any reason a break-in burglar who just committed a murder would wipe fingerprints off a bottle of ipecac?' Kearney paused. 'Neither can I. So why didn't Rozier throw the bottle away?'
'Smart enough to know that we might find traces in her,' said Hanrahan. 'We find it. Looks like she kept it hidden. It's all a puzzle to the grieving spouse.'
'So,' said Kearney, 'what have we got?'
'Bubkes,' said Lieberman.
'Right. We've got nothing,' said Kearney. 'A bottle of throw-up medicine with no fingerprints, a suspect who we think recognizes a burglar in a lineup but says he doesn't, a suspect with no apparent motive and an alibi. What do we do?'
'We find some evidence,' said Lieberman. lago Simms was grinning, but unless you knew him as well as Dalbert and Lonny did, there was no way of knowing, lago's face sagged to the left and his teeth were exposed on the right.
'Yes,' said lago, holding up the pistol he had found in the glove compartment of the car they had just borrowed from Reno the drug dealer.
Getting into the garage had been harder than they thought it would be. Three locks on the door. It wasn't daylight yet so they were reasonably sure no one had seen them. Lonny was all for giving up on the whole crazy idea, but there was no way he'd let Dalbert and lago know it.
'Fuck, kick it down,' Lonny had said, and Dalbert hadn't hesitated. Over two hundred pounds hit the garage door. It gave but didn't break. Dalbert turned to Lonny.
'Again,' Lonny said, looking around to see if any lights were going on in the houses behind them.
'Put some shit in it this time,' lago encouraged.
And Dalbert tried again, throwing himself against the door. It cracked and spat open, cracking against the wooden wall and almost hitting Dalbert in the face when it bounced back.
'Get the garage door up fast,' Lonny said. lago moved to the maroon Chrysler and opened the driver's side door, heading straight for the wiring under the dash. Dalbert hit the switch, opening the garage doors. They slid open smoothly in spite of the breaks.
'Hurry up,' Lonny cried.
'Got it. Got it. Got it,' called lago. The engine purred awake. 'There.'
The three of them scrambled into the car, Lonny driving, and sped down the alley.
'Hey, we didn't close the door,' Dalbert cried, looking through the rear window.
'Don't matter,' said Lonny.
'Why?'
' 'Cause,' said lago, turning in the front seat, 'you kicked the door to shit. No way we can get it back and not have some nigger fool with a sawed-off waiting for us. We do the job and drop the car wherever. That right, Lonny?'
'That's right,' Lonny said. lago had turned on the radio. Some woman was singing about men being no good. Lonny reached over and turned the radio off. It was then that lago opened the glove compartment and found the gun.
'Our lucky day, damn sure,' said lago, aiming the gun out the window with one eye closed.
It didn't feel lucky to Lonny. The day already felt like bad news, but there was no going back. He drove without talking, drove within the speed limit north on Lake Shore Drive, past Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan following them on the right, luxury high-rises beyond the park to the left.
Lonny had trouble finding the windshield wiper switch and almost lost control of the car, but after three false tries, he hit a button and the wipers came on, spreading the thin layer of rain into the morning.
Twenty-two minutes from the time they left the garage, Lonny was parking on Argyle across from Jacob Berry's office.
'He there yet?' asked Dalbert.
'Don't look it,' said lago.
'What we do?' asked Dalbert.
'Wait, that's what we do,' said Lonny. 'We just wait. When he comes, someone should stay in the car, be ready. We got no time to fool around disconnecting and shit like that, you got that?'
'No lie,' said lago. 'But I'm not stayin' in the car. Dalbert can stay.'
'No way,' said Dalbert angrily.
If he could have trusted the two of them, Lonny would have sighed his put-upon sigh, his I-don't-know-how- I-put-up-with-you sigh. Then he would have stayed in the car. It had felt bad when they got to the garage and it didn't feel any better now, sitting there waiting for the doctor to come to work. Shit, they'd all go in.
'Maybe we can just like break in up there and look for the drugs, money, all that shit. See what I'm sayin'?' Dalbert tried.
'We wait for him,' Lonny said, imitating that bald dude Hawk used to be on 'Spencer' on TV. 'We wait.'
Jacob Berry woke up that morning not sure whether he felt worse or better about coming to Chicago. The sky was dark and drizzly, no better or worse than East Lansing but maybe a little grittier.
He showered, shaved, dressed, had a large glass of orange juice-not from concentrate-a cup of decaf Folger's, and a toasted poppy seed bagel as he listened to the radio.
Rain, rain, more rain, and then rain again. Killers of little girls in the news. Fathers going mad and taking their children hostage. Bus crashes. No leads yet in the knifing of the woman in a good neighborhood, in her own home. And this was just in the city. Dr. Berry changed the station. Rock music. He changed it again. Oldies. Chubby Checker.
Bagels were better in Chicago. Food was better. People were not.
He rinsed the dishes and put them neatly into the dishwasher before he walked to the front door, picked up his briefcase, opened it on the table, and checked to be sure the gun was there, reassuring, ready. He considered putting the weapon in his pocket, but that was too awkward and heavy. When he got to the office he would remove the gun and put it in the drawer.
Jacob was ready to meet the day. He encountered no one on the elevator, which was fine with him. He didn't want to tell people he was a doctor and have them give him a strange, questioning look that said, 'If you're a doctor, what're you living in this building for? I've got no choice, but a doctor?'
Jacob didn't know the names of anyone in the building, though he did recognize a few faces.
