28

Mayburn explained that since September 11, the feds no longer needed a warrant to search a home, just probable cause, so it was entirely possible they’d been in my condo that night. But the reality was the bureau usually reserved their breakings-and-enterings for suspected terrorists.

“If it wasn’t the FBI, then who else would be following me?” I asked.

“That’s what we have to figure out.”

“Should I call the cops?”

“Up to you, but then you’re signing up for yet another group who will come into your house and go through your stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the Chicago PD no longer has a case open, not about Forester or Sam. You call them about a break-in, and bam, they’ve got a case open, which means you’ve essentially given them the go-ahead to search your place. Sounds like you already know exactly what happened-someone got on your computer. I can sweep the rest of the house for prints. And I can get a locksmith there tomorrow to install a keyless lock with a push-button pad. But I don’t think the cops will help right now.”

I stayed silent, mulling over the information.

“In the meantime,” Mayburn continued, “you shouldn’t be alone. The fact that they didn’t lock your place back up means they probably had to leave fast, and that makes me nervous. Do you have anyone who can stay with you?”

“I suppose my friend Maggie could come over.”

“Is Maggie a tough chick?”

I laughed. “She is when she’s in the courtroom.”

“Is she a big person?”

“She’s five-foot-one and weighs about a hundred pounds. After she jumps in Lake Michigan.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said dryly. “Got anybody else?”

I started to say no. Then I thought of the perfect person.

Ten minutes later, my buzzer went off. “It’s me,” I heard my brother, Charlie, say through the speaker.

I buzzed him in and went to the kitchen to see if I had any red wine. If he could, Charlie would spend his whole life drinking red wine and reading. He was a lazy intellectual, but not a snobbish one. He found joy in anything creative and stimulating-from quirky commercials to quirky cabaret music-just as long as he didn’t have to work too hard to enjoy these things.

I found a bottle of French red. A soft knock sounded from my front door. I went and opened it.

My brother stood on the threshold, giving me his sweet, empathetic smile. He had brown hair that was longish and grew into loose spiral curls. It was a chestnut-brown, and when he stepped into the sunlight, or when an overhead light hit him like now, you could see the red hue that we both shared.

“You okay, Iz?” He knew Sam had disappeared, but I hadn’t told him anything else tonight when I called. Just that I needed him.

Charlie was my little brother, someone I was supposed to watch over, and technically I had done that. I was the more industrious of the two of us, the more responsible. But Charlie was the one who looked into people’s eyes and understood everything about them in an instant.

I launched myself into his arms and had a good cry. He patted me on the back. He held me, not flinching, not saying anything. Finally, I wiped my eyes and we moved inside. Charlie shed his old leather jacket and dropped it onto my yellow chair as if this were any other day. Then again, it was hard to shock Charlie-he was that laid-back. In fact, all of his friends (and sometimes even my mom and I) called him “Sheets” because he spent much of his time in bed.

Charlie had graduated from the oddly named college Miami of Ohio with a degree in English and a desire to do absolutely nothing. He seemed mystified that he had to work for a living. My mother and I tried to put the fear of God into him, telling him he’d end up homeless if he didn’t find work, and yet Charlie was unconcerned. He had this innate belief that life would work out, one way or another, and it wasn’t worth worrying about.

Since he couldn’t figure out what to do with himself, Charlie took a job on a construction crew with one of his high-school buddies who hadn’t gone to college. Charlie didn’t have much aptitude for tuck-pointing or electrical work, but everybody loved him. They finally gave him a job driving a dump truck to and from work sites. When there was nothing to haul, he napped in the trailer or read his well-thumbed copy of Dorian Gray. One day, while he was on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a semi cut him off, causing a rollover. He suffered internal bleeding, broke his femur and screwed up his back. I had to get him an attorney to make sure he collected workers’ comp, and I found him a personal-injury lawyer to get a settlement from the other truck driver’s insurance company.

An accident like that would have set most people back, but Sheets took it as a windfall. Sure, he was in a full leg cast for two months, and yes, the physical therapy was grueling, and true, he might still have to undergo surgery for his discs, but hey, at least he didn’t have to work for a while. He was going to make that settlement money stretch as long and as far as possible. As a result, my brother had essentially spent the last two years sitting on his butt.

Charlie walked to the kitchen and saw the open bottle. He reached into my cabinet, pulled out two glasses and poured the wine. Then he walked to the fireplace and began making a fire. “Tell me,” he said simply.

I gave him the whole story-Sam not showing at the Union League, finding out about Forester, what I’d learned from Mark Carrington, Sam’s boss, and my meeting with the cops and the FBI, someone following me and breaking in. I told him how I’d asked for advice from Mayburn. I started to tell him more about Mayburn-how he was going to help me, how he was going to train me so that I could help him on some cases, but then I remembered his warning-You aren’t going to be telling anyone that you’re working for me…No one.

“So that’s pretty much it,” I said as Charlie raised himself from a newly burning fire and sank onto the yellow chair. His frame crushed his jacket, but he didn’t move to right it.

“I wonder what in the hell Sam has gotten himself into,” he said.

“That’s what I can’t figure out.” I took another gulp of wine.

Charlie let his head fall back against the chair and stared at the ceiling. “He seemed fine at his bachelor party.”

I sat forward on my seat, excited. “That’s right, the bachelor party. I never got to ask you about that.”

Sam’s bachelor party last weekend had consisted of a mess of guys-his rugby buddies, friends from MBA school and friends from college-all descending on the Viagra Triangle for a night. The Viagra Triangle is a little pocket of bars and restaurants in the Gold Coast populated by drunken suburbanites, frat boys and middle-aged divorcées on the prowl (hence the “Viagra” title). It’s a perennial favorite for bachelor parties, and since Sam didn’t want a strip club, off they went to the Triangle. Afterward, he crashed at his Roscoe Village apartment, and I didn’t see him until the next night when I found him still there, avoiding bright lights and loud noises.

“He was typical Sam,” Charlie said. “He drank every shot somebody threw at him, but he wouldn’t do any of the stupid bachelor-party games the rugby guys wanted. He just got hammered and talked to his buddies. He seemed happy. Same old Sam.”

“And yet only three days later, same old Sam took off with thirty million dollars of Forester’s property.”

Right then, there was a soft shuffle from the end of the hallway, near the second bedroom.

Charlie cocked his head at the sound.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered.

He nodded, slowly putting his wineglass down.

Another scuffle sound, so quiet I wouldn’t have heard it if we were talking.

“What is that?”

Charlie stood from the chair and tiptoed silently toward the noise. I followed. When he stopped, I cupped Charlie’s ear to whisper into it. “I think it came from the back stairs.” I pointed to the door at the end of the hall.