“You have something he wants,” he said, turning his head toward the police car from which two uniformed officers emerged, both black and with weapons in their hands.
“What do I have and why did he wait so long to kill me?”
“He didn’t know where you were. He found your name somewhere, an article perhaps on the Internet,” said the young man. “Then you bought an airline ticket. If we could find out about that, he can find it. I flew to Tampa and stayed with you from the second you got to the Southwest counter.”
“Why do you want to help me?” Lew asked, but before the young man could answer the police were too close to continue.
“Everybody just hold it where you are,” said the older of the two cops.
He was lean, homely, dark and serious.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
He and his partner, who had television star good looks, moved toward them.
“Roadside assistance,” said Franco. “That’s my tow truck. He called me.”
“That’s right,” said the driver.
“We got a call saying someone was being pulled out of the window by a man who looked like Mike Ditka.”
“Hear that, Lew? Not the first time someone thought I looked like Iron Mike,” said Franco with a smile.
“Hey,” the older cop called impatiently over the madness of the cars and trucks rushing by in both directions.
“Right,” said Franco. “Driver here was in a panic. Froze. Thought his car was about to blow up or something. I pulled him out.”
Franco looked at the driver.
“Right,” the driver said.
“What’s wrong with the car?” the older cop asked, suspiciously looking at Lew and then at the one-eyed man.
“Short,” said Franco. “He smelled burning wire. It’s fixed now.”
“I owe this man,” said the driver, glaring at Franco.
The cops looked at each of the four men in front of them. The older cop decided that the group looked a little strange maybe, but not formidable. Both cops holstered their weapons but kept a hand on them.
“Move out,” said the cop. “You’re tying up traffic.”
“One second,” Franco said. “He hasn’t paid me yet.”
Turning to the driver, Franco said, “That’ll be fifty dollars. Cash.”
The driver looked at the one-eyed man who reached into his pocket and came up with two twenties and a ten. He handed them to Franco. Lew had a lot to ask the one-eyed man but he had moved into the car along with the driver. Franco tapped Lew on the shoulder and Lew followed him to the tow truck.
“Now that was fun, huh, Lewie?” he asked, hitting his horn, easing into traffic.
“One couldn’t wish for more,” Lew said, reaching into his duffel bag and pulling out his Cubs cap.
“Still got that?”
“Still got it,” said Lew who put the cap on his head.
Ann Horowitz had said that Lew wore the cap for many reasons. She said that one obvious reason was to cover Lew’s balding head. “That,” she had said, “is good. It shows that you still care about how you look to the world and how you look to yourself. It’s a sign of ego. It’s a very small tear in your precious depression. If it is, I want to find the tear and sew it up. Don’t worry. We’ll apply a very local anesthetic.”
Lew felt that his depression was too important to him to lose. Ann knew this and knew about what he might have to deal with if it were gone.
Ann also believed that the cap was an attempt to hold onto something positive from the past, memories of Banks, Williams, Santo, Dawson, Sosa, Cey, Sandberg. Lew liked that interpretation. Whatever the cap might mean, he always felt a little better, a little more protected, when he wore it.
Franco’s cell phone, now back in the dashboard charger, buzzed. Franco asked Lew to get it as he worked his way toward the outer lane.
“Hello,” Lew said.
“Hey, where’s Franco?”
The caller, who had a raspy voice like Lew’s Uncle Tonio, was chewing on something.
“Driving. Traffic on the Dan Ryan’s backed up. I’m Franco’s brother-in-law.”
“Hey, Lewie? Is that Lewie?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Rick. Heard you went nuts.”
“Yes.”
“You better now?”
“No,” Lew said.
“Hey, it happens. Think you’re nuts, you should see my sister-in-law. She’s like fruitcakes all the time, you know?”
The outer lane was moving and they were on their way. Lew could no longer see the one-eyed man’s car.
“Got a pencil, something?” asked the voice.
“Yes,” Lew said, taking out his notebook.
“Car belongs to a John Pappas.”
Rick gave him the owner’s address and said he was faxing a copy of Pappas’s driver’s license to Franco’s house.
“I’m looking at it now,” said Rick.
“What’s he look like?” Lew asked.
“Fifty, maybe a little more, maybe closer to sixty,” said Rick. “Hair white. Looks a little like that guy on Law and Order, Dennis whatever. Guy that used to be a Chicago cop.”
Pappas was definitely not the driver Franco had pulled out of the window.
Franco reached for the phone. Lew handed it to him.
“Hey way, Rick,” he said. “That lunch’s gonna be on me.”
He paused, listening, nodding his head, smiling and then said, “Ditkaland forever. See ya.”
He handed the phone back to Lew. Lew hung it up.
“Rick’s not a cop,” Lew said.
“No, but his daughter Maria, thirteen, smart, knows how to use the Internet like you wouldn’t believe,” said Franco.
“It’s not legal,” Lew said.
“So’s jaywalking. You care?”
“No.”
“We’ll find him,” Franco said. “The son of a bitch who killed Catherine. We make a good team, huh?”
“Yes,” Lew said.
“In the compartment between us, in the armrest, I’ve got packages of that spicy beef jerky.”
Lew opened the compartment and found about twenty wrapped thin ropes of dark red jerky. He took one and handed one to Franco.
“Love those things,” he said, opening the wrapping of his jerky with his teeth. “Hey, give Angie a call. Tell her where we are.”
Talking to his sister would be another step into the past. He had only been in Chicago for about an hour and had had already taken dizzying steps.
“Just hit forty-seven,” Franco said, pointing at the phone.
Lew picked up the phone and hit the numbers. One ring and Lew’s sister was on the phone.
“Franco, you got him?”
“Angela, I’m back.”
John Pappas stood at the window on the second floor of his house in suburban River Grove, “the Village of
