“I can’t talk about members’ business.”
“I’m not really looking to hear about their business,” I said. “Just wanted to know what you could tell me about Maurice and Cammy.”
Her expression flickered. “Oh. Those assholes.”
Being a terrible person comes with costs you never know you have to pay. “Wow. That bad?”
“Oh em gee,” she said. “You can’t imagine. Him having you dragged out is just standard for him. They’re both the worst. Just the worst.”
“Like Maurice sending his first espresso back?”
“He usually sends it back twice,” she sighed. “Cammy forgets what she ordered and claims I got her order wrong maybe every other day. I just have to smile and nod.”
“They’re a thing, then?”
“They’re some kind of thing,” Tracy said. “I mean, they say horrible things to one another like they’re having a normal conversation.”
“So why are they together?”
“She’s hot and kind of slutty. He’s a dog. So, they have that in common. I mean, he’s married, you know? And not to her.”
“You ever see his wife?”
“No. I guess she’s not the athletic club type.”
I couldn’t imagine a chain-smoking alcoholic would have much fun playing tennis, but I could have been wrong. “Anything else you might be able to tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She looked over her shoulder warily. “Cammy likes her snow. I know that. I’ve walked in on her in the bathroom.”
“Ah,” I said. “She rich, too?”
“She’s some kind of financial person, I think,” Tracy said, “but she doesn’t carry designer bags. You know?”
“Starting to get a picture,” I said. We had reached the El station. “Thank you for your candor, Tracy.”
“You’re not going to tell anyone I talked to you, are you?” she asked.
I held up three fingers with my thumb folded over my pinky. “Scout’s honor.”
I thought about calling Viti again, just to be annoying, but she had occasionally shot me out of pique, and I didn’t feel like healing up another wound. Viti is very good about establishing boundaries. Monster LLC had plenty of shady contacts, but it would take her more time to dig around the more legitimate, private parts of the net.
Having nothing better to do, I hung around across from the tennis club, waiting to see what happened. Mostly what happened was older men and expensive-looking women coming and going, and Cammy came out looking freshly showered in business casual attire. She waited for a few minutes, looking at her phone, then got into a car that had a ride service sign in the window. What the hell. I got on my unstolen bike and followed her.
Traffic was slow, and if anyone had been looking for me, it would have been a problem to blend in believably rather than blowing past stalled traffic. No one was. I did a lot of loitering. Cammy and her pretty calves wound up getting out of the car at an office building on the north end of the Loop. I changed my face again, put on a ball cap to make me really unrecognizable, and hurried ahead of her to open the building’s door for her.
She took no notice of me. She was talking loudly to someone on the phone as she walked, wearing wireless earbuds. “…and where do they get these drivers? He just sat in the traffic and did nothing at all to get me there faster. One star, bitch. And a review that says he was staring at me like a creep. That’s what he gets…I know, I know, right?”
I followed Cammy, still without being noticed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m good at not being noticed, supernaturally good at it in fact, but I could have been wearing a poster-board sign that said,“I’m the guy from the club today” and Cammy wouldn’t have seen it.
So I got in an elevator, pushed the button for the top floor, and stood quietly while Cammy kept chattering. “Uh-huh, I know. I know. Good, that was exactly what you should have done to the bastard. He deserves exactly that. Right. Okay. Okay.” She hung up without saying goodbye, gave me a withering glance, and said, “Don’t even think about it, buddy.”
I didn’t move, look at her, or otherwise show that I’d heard her at all.
“Fucker,” she said, and got out on the fourth floor.
I rode the elevator to the top and back down, found the office index on the wall of the ground floor, and scanned over which businesses had the fourth floor: an orthodontist, a title company, an engineering consulting firm, and a tax attorney’s office, Acumen, Inc.
Ah hah.
