The Bodies Left Behind

sank like the Edmund Fitzgerald.
    As the salad plates were noisily whisked away, Mankewitz noticed a man enter the restaurant by himself and shake his head curtly to the hostess. He was in his late thirties, with short, curly hair and an easy face and looked like a good-natured Hobbit. The man oriented himself, looking around the underlit and over-Italianized place, which was owned by Ukrainians and staffed by Eastern Europeans and Arabs. He finally spotted Mankewitz, who was hard to miss, being 230 pounds, with an enviable shock of silver hair.
    They made eye contact. The man stepped back, into the corridor. Mankewitz took a slug of wine and wiped his mouth. He stood up. “Be right back.”
    The labor boss joined the Hobbit and they walked toward the banquet rooms, tonight empty, down a long corridor, where the only other presences were effigies:pictures of people like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and James Gandolfino, all of whose signatures and endorsements of the restaurant in bold marker looked suspiciously similar.
    Eventually Mankewitz got tired of walking and stopped. He said, “What is it, Detective?”
    The man hesitated, as if he didn’t want his job title used under these circumstances. And Mankewitz decided that of course he didn’t.
    “There’s a situation.”
    “What does that mean? ‘Situation’? That’s a Washington word, a corporate word.” Mankewitz had been in a bad mood lately, unsurprisingly, which prompted the retort, but there wasn’t much edge to it.
    The Hobbit said, without a fleck of emotion, “Up in Kennesha County.”
    “The hell is that?”
    “About two hours northwest of here.” The cop lowered his voice even more. “It’s where the lawyer in the case has a summer house.”
    The Case. Capital C.
    “The lawyer from—”
    “Got it.” Now Mankewitz was concerned about indiscretion and cut the cop off with a wave before he mentioned Hartigan, Reed, Soames & Carson. “What’s the story?” Mankewitz had dropped the irritated act, which was replaced by a concern that was no act at all.
    “Apparently what happened was there was a nine-one-one call from her husband’s phone. Went to the county. We’re monitoring all communication involving the players.”
    The Players. In the Case  . . .
    “You told me that. I didn’t know they were checking all the way out there.”
    “The systems’re all consolidated.”
    How did they do that? Mankewitz wondered. Computers, of course. Privacy was fucked. As well he knew. “A call. A nine-one-one call. Go on.” Mankewitz looked at a smiling Dean Martin.
    “Nobody seems to know what was said. It was really brief. And then it seemed to get rescinded.”
    That’s a word cops don’t use very often. “Whatta you mean?”
    “The husband, he called back and said it was a mistake.”
    Mankewitz looked along the dark corridor to where his wife was chatting happily with a tall, balding man standing at the table. He wondered if the man only stopped by because he’d seen Mankewitz wasn’t at the table.
    Determined, slick, tough pricks  . . .
    He focused on the Hobbit. “So it was an emergency and then it wasn’t.”
    “Right. That’s why it didn’t go to anybody on the task force. I’m the only one who knows. The record’s there but it’s buried. . . . I have to ask, Stan, what should I know about?”
    Mankewitz held his eyes. “There’s nothing you should know about, Pat. Maybe it was a fire. Nine-one-one—who knows? A fender-bender. A break-in. A raccoon in the basement.”
    “I’ll go out on a limb for you but not walk the plank.”
    For what he was slipping into the cop’s anonymous account, the man should’ve been willing to jump off the fucking plank and kill sharks with his bare hands.
    Mankewitz happened to notice his wife glancing his way. The entrées had arrived. He looked back at the cop and said, “I told you from the beginning there’s nothing you have to worry about. That was our deal. You’re completely protected.”
    “Don’t do anything stupid, Stan.”
    “Like what, eat here?”
    The detective gave a halfhearted grin. He nodded at a photo next to them. “Can’t be that bad. It was Sinatra’s favorite restaurant.”
    Mankewitz grunted and left the man in the corridor, heading for the men’s room and fishing a prepaid cell phone out of his pocket.

    ON THE SECOND floor of the house at 2 Lake View were five doors, all closed. The carpet was Home Depot Oriental and on the walls were