Page 20 of Dodge

He checked the news from northern Illinois. He’d been following a trial in Vandalia County. The authorities there believed they’d caught one of the two men present with Offenbach at the site of the robbery and murder of Cynthia Hooper three weeks ago. The evidence was weak butthe myopic pit bull of a prosecutor, a man named Evan Quill, had pushed forward with the trial anyway.

Interesting to see howthatcircus would play out, Offenbach reflected.

Inhaling the whiskey, thinking of the house once more. Young Paul had come here as often as he could to escape from his junior mobster father. Paul hadn’t minded the man’s criminal career—he himself had paid for much of his college education running numbers in the Windy City. It was the man’s personality: he was a narcissistic bully, who never once touched Paul, his brother or their mother but abused them relentlessly with his sarcasm and insults. The words landed like whiplashes.

Still, he had his father to thank for starting young Offenbach’s own criminal empire; he’d blackmailed philandering Dad to start his own operation—a story he had never told to another soul on earth.

Other memories about the house: The bedroom on the third floor where he and his cousin, Sarah, had played, among other things. The expansive dining room where the family guests had boisterous meals. The musty basement smelling of heating oil, where—when older and he had the place to himself—he’d tied a drifter to a set of box springs and started experimenting, finding that this aroused him far more than Sarah, or any female, ever could.

In one way, he was regretting that Constant Marlowe would die. There was an appeal about her. In some respects she reminded him of himself. No interest in rules. No interest in following orders. Blunt, physical. He’d edited her bio for Tony Lombardi but much of what he’d told the deputy was close to the truth. She was a former award-winning prizefighter, with hundreds of titles under her belt. Nearly undefeated. She hadn’t been banned from the sport at all—in fact, she’d been much in demand by promoters through her retirement. She still kept at it, boxing inrecreational leagues, like the Illinois Public Safety Boxing Club, where she’d take on other women cops and firefighters. She especially liked fighting female prison guards. The job attracted large, tough women; Marlowe, the word was, didn’t like things easy.

Yes, she’d been in the army, and there’d been trouble, though it had nothing to do with peddling stolen arms, and her discharge was honorable. The reprimands were always for the same thing: if she learned of any soldier—enlisted or officer—guilty of harassment, and if the victim had been bullied to silence, Constant Marlowe delivered her own justice. Curiously, afterward, when asked about the bruises or the broken wrist, the men invariably reported that the injuries came from a motorcycle or rock-climbing accident.

Ah, Constant ...

A shame to say goodbye.

But speaking of being true to your nature ... Offenbach concluded he’d never met anyone more self-destructive than she was.

Suicidal probably.

Tomorrow he would simply help her fulfill that destiny.

How exactly he’d accomplish that he wasn’t sure. But this was one thing he’d found about himself. When confronted with a problem, he would sit back, smoke his pipe and let the ideas emerge. They would. Time. That was the key. Just the right amount. He’d made good money playing fast chess, but the games were always in the Rapid category, ten to sixty minutes per match, never Blitz or Bullet, in which the entire contest had to take place under ten minutes and under three, respectively. He knew perfection required planning, but that too much planning could derail the oh-so-vital element of improvisation.

Winning the game after losing your queen, money laundering, meth, bribery, shipping girls from Colombia to Indianapolis ... murdering your nemesis. As difficult as those challenges were, Paul Offenbach would always find a solution.

He turned the chair so the last slice of sun was visible over the hills, filled the bowl of the half-bent taper pipe with Astley’s No. 2 and flicked a blue flame from his hissing butane lighter—the same one he’d used on Cynthia Hooper, he now recalled.

Constant Marlowe walked along a path that wound from the parking lot to the entrance of Saint Francis Hospital in the northern part of Upper Falls.

The institution was situated on about four acres of land, well tended, though lacking in colorful petals; commonplace grass predominated. All pleasant, neat, easy on the eyes. But the corker was the narrow river running fast along the eastern edge, fed by one of the waterfalls that gave the town its name.

This cascade, discoloring to rich brown the rock it poured along, was modest, about twenty feet high. The more impressive chutes, tourist fodder, were downstream.

Inside the immaculate hospital, Marlowe was directed to the ICU, on the ground floor. Once there she located room 5, in front of which sat a blonde in her late twenties, solidly built, talking on a cell phone. She wore a navy-blue form-fitting dress. Flesh-colored stockings, too. Marlowe could not remember the last time she’d donned that particular accessory; she’d received a pair as a gift six months or so ago. They sat unopened. Somewhere.

The woman wore an ID badge on a lanyard around her neck, showing her picture and bearing the words LANGSTONHUGHESMIDDLESCHOOL.

A county Sheriff’s Office deputy sat across from her, guard duty.

Marlowe showed her ID and he nodded.

The caller put her phone away and turned her pretty face toward the agent with a questioning look.

Marlowe introduced herself to Jessica Lombardi.

They shook hands.

“How is he?”

“It’ll be a long haul. But we’ll get him better.” Her eyes were determined and her jaw set, and Marlowe remembered what Sheriff Braddock had said.

Woe to any nurse that tries to pry her away ...

“How’s the coffee here?” Marlowe asked.

“Only half as dreadful as you’d think.”

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