At 4:00 that afternoon I was parked at the McDonald’s across the street from the Tomorrow facility watching the parking lot.
Fortunately, the parking lot was in the front of the building. Unfortunately, I had no idea what kind of car Lisa Hobbes drove, so I had to watch the entrance like a red-tailed hawk circling in the sky for a mouse to catch from a hundred yards up. Every blink felt like a mistake. At least the sun wasn’t close to setting.
People started leaving work. Some got into cars, others headed for the street and the nearest bus stop. One woman in an expensive suit had a Lyft waiting for her.
At 4:55 I spotted Lisa Hobbes in her yellow blouse, jacket over one shoulder, walking alone through the front door, carrying a briefcase while lighting up a cigarette. She headed down a row of cars as I started my Prius.
Hobbes drove a maroon Nissan with a gleaming rear windshield. It looked brand new, or at least freshly washed. She drove in no hurry, so tailing her was easy. I stayed close, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses so she wouldn’t recognize me if she glanced at my car. I hoped.
The after-work traffic was light but growing. A few trucks and a growing number of cars started created a challenge until the Nissan made a turn and then another turn down an alley next to a Mexican restaurant.
I waited a minute on the street while horns blared at me. Then I followed, yanking down the brim of my cap. The Nissan pulled into a small parking lot behind the restaurant. I let my car roll past the lot and stopped a few yards past the entrance, checking my rearview mirror for any cars behind me trying to get through the alley. After a minute I pulled forward to a spot where I could turn the car around, and edged forward to watch the lot.
I waited, my Minolta ready. Phones aren’t great for long-distance surveillance photos.
She stayed in her car. Ten or 12 minutes later a black minivan came up the alley and turned into the lot. Dusty, with a dent in the rear bumper. It stopped, blocking two cars, and a door opened. A man climbed out of the Subaru. Czernoff?
He was older than either of us, in his 70s, with a thin gray beard and white hair tied back, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He walked slowly to the Nissan, hobbling a little, and held out a package wrapped in brown paper.
Hobbes opened her door and snatched it from his hand, tossing it onto the seat next to her. Then she offered the man an envelope, her hand low. Glancing around, he grabbed the envelope and stuffed it into his back pocket.
They nodded to each other, then turned away. Hobbes started her Nissan; the old man trudged back to his van and climbed inside.
I’d gotten a few photos. I hoped they were clear. I started my car and moved forward, letting Hobbes swing onto the street before putting more pressure on the gas.
Just as I was turning to follow, my rear window exploded.
My reflexes slammed my foot on the brake as I ducked my head down, my neck suddenly stinging like someone had tossed a hive of wasps into the car. Horns roared in my ears. A woman shrieked. A man swore.
I looked up and saw a bus charging at me. I twisted my wheel, stomping on the brake again as my car veered across the sidewalk. I missed a light pole, clipped the bumper of an idling cab, and watched the bus scape past me by less than a foot. The driver flipped his middle finger at me.
The car finally stopped. I shut off the engine, shaking and trying to breathe. My hand reached to the back of my neck and came back with blood on it.
I swung around to check out the back seat. Half the rear window was shattered, leaving jagged spiderweb cracks across the remaining glass. The seat and floor strewn with bits of broken glass, some the size of pebbles, mixed in with larger shards big enough to slice flesh.
On the seat sat a chunk of metal, the size and shape of a brick. Dull gray, like a bullet, in the middle of the glass.
I sat there for a minute, my heart racing. Then a knock on the window jerked my head up.
A cop. “Are you all right, sir?”
I blinked. Nodded. Slowly opened the door. “Something—broke my window. I think I;m bleeding.” I looked at my hand, drops of blood across my fingers and palm.
“Stay right there, we’ll get someone for you.” The cop, a woman, went back to her squad car. I reached for a bottle of water, took a long swallow, and pulled out my phone to call Rachel.
“Our insurance rates are going to go up.” Rachel took the baked ziti out of the microwave.
“So work harder.” I gulped some beer.
She punched me as she set the dish down. ”Jerk.”
“Ow.” I was grumpy. The shop I’d had the car towed to said it would be three days before I got it back. I had to rent a red Honda, and I doubted that Melendez and IMS were going to reimburse me for any of it.
My nerves were still frazzled too. That bus had missed smashing the car by inches. Or I could have run down a mother pushing her kid in a stroller, or hit someone’s dog.
Was someone trying to kill me over Mike Willey’s expense account?
“So you think she spotted you?” Rachel sat down with a beer of her own.
I nodded. “Unless it was an unhappy client, or kids playing games. But no. It’s got to be the guy she met.” The black van. Cherny.
But what for? A drug deal? Was Anton Czernoff, or whoever he was, their pot dealer? Did it have anything to do with Willey?
“What did he throw at you?”
“The cop said it was a bar of lead. She said they probably wouldn’t get fingerprints off it, but they took it anyway.” I ate some ziti. “This is good.”
“You made it.”
“But you zapped it just right.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m still pissed at you. Work harder?”
“Sorry. Bad day.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally Rachel said, “So what now?”
I shrugged. “Look up Cherny. Anton Czernoff, if that’s his real name. Argue with the insurance company. Wait for Melendez to call off the case.” There wasn’t much reason for them to go on with it indefinitely. Unless Willey turned up.
Rachel stood up and took my plate. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.”
She leaned down. “Don’t ever get killed. Or I’ll have to bring you back to life to kill you.”
We kissed. I squeezed her leg. “Deal.”
The next morning I was filling out the insurance claim online when my phone buzzed. Alia Melendez at IMS. “I’ve got some news.” She paused as if to let me get ready. “Mike Willey is dead.”
“Oh, no.” I’d never met the guy, but he was younger than me, and death is always tough to hear about. “What happened?”
“They found his body behind a dumpster somewhere on the south side. I guess it was—pretty bad. No ID, but there was a tattoo, and they used dental records. His sister called this morning.”
“Pretty bad how?”
He paused again. “His skull. They found him wrapped up in a sheet. He was shot, too.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. Do you know anything? The sister’s pretty upset.”
I hesitated. “It’s—it’s possible someone tried to kill me yesterday.”
“Oh, my God—what?”
I told her about the lead brick smashing my rear window. “I’m fine, insurance will cover it. I just don’t know why someone would do that. Unless this woman Lisa Hobbes is involved in something illegal.”
“Oh, my God,” she said again. “I don’t—you don’t have to stay on this. Especially noew that we know Mike is—oh, my God, do you think it’s related somehow?”
“I don’t know.” It had seemed like a stretch before. Now that I knew Willey was dead—murdered—the connection felt firmer.
“Well, you don’t have to go on with this. We were only looking at Mike’s expense account, for God’s sake. Send me an invoice and forget about this.”
I couldn’t argue. They had no reason to keep spending money on the case. “All right. Thank you.”
“Stay safe.” She hung up.
Rachel walked in. T-shirt, shorts, coffee. “What’s going on?”
“The guy I was checking out for the metal supplier? He’s dead.”
She frowned. “That sucks. For him, I mean.”
“Yeah. I still get paid, at least.” It sounded callous, but I had to pay the bills.
“So that’s it? The intrepid P.I. is just giving up?” She set down her coffee and crossed her arms. Rachel knows me too well.
I shook my head. “Not until I check out this Czernoff guy. And finish this insurance forms.”
“Priorities.” She sat down and turned to her computer. I went for more coffee.
After I finished the forms, I started looking up Anton Czernoff on the internet. Search, search, search . . . Rachel worked quietly at her end of the office, swearing occasionally when something went wrong with her computer.
I swore a few times myself when I hit dead ends, but after an hour I sat back and stared at my screen, finishing my coffee. “Interesting.”
Rachel turned. “What?”
I pointed at the screen. “Check out this website.”
The word ALCHEMIST blazed in fire across the top of the page, with the letters A and C highlighted in red. At the bottom was a picture of the man I’d seen Lisa Hobbes exchange packages with in the restaurant parking lot.
“A,C.” Rachel stared at the image. “Anton Chernoff?”
Between the top and the bottom was some kind of spell in Latin, shimmering in and out of focus. One link would take us to a page called “Alchemical Arts,” where visitors could order potions, herbs, oils, incense, and more. Another one led to a page named VITAE, where Anton Chernoff’s bio informed readers that he’d been born in Louisiana, raised in Canada, studied the ancient texts in Germany and Italy, and now devoted his life to sharing the results of his lifelong research with the world—but only a select few deemed worthy of his wisdom.
“Does that mean people who can pay him?” Rachel asked, gazing at the last part.
“Probably, considering that’s all BS.” I switched to a different tab. “The page is registered to Tony Curnow. He was born in Ohio, studied chemistry at the University of Michigan before getting kicked out, and dropped out of sight until he was arrested crossing the border from Canada with a fake ID five years ago.”
“He got out of it?”
“Pleaded guilty, probation, no jail time. The only thing that seems to check out is traveling in Europe. His name pops up as a speaker at a conference on the occult in Germany in 2012, on the faculty of a school in Italy from 2013 to 2015, and a drunk and disorderly arrest in Spain in 2017, where he listed his occupation as chemist and his employer as a private lab in Madrid.”
Rachel cocked her head. “So what’s he doing with two executives at a metal factory?”
“Good question.”
She smirked. “Well, I know this detective.”
I stood up. We kissed. Then she pushed me away. “Not now, Casanova, I’ve got work.”
“Me too.” I picked up my coffee. “I got an address. It might just be a mail drop, but I’m going to go take a look to see if it’s really him.” I hadn’t found any images of Czernoff on his page, or any other page I’d looked at.
“Be careful. Did you get the extra insurance on the rental?”
“That’s a scam. You know that.” But I nodded. “Yeah. I did.”
“Good boy.” She patted my arm. “Happy hunting.”
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