V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 13

I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio's church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school's soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily ma.s.s from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin Tshirt halfburied under his fabric samples, I didn't think the priest would share it with me.

Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old 'hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated shirts employing local workers at living wages.

Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I'd like to catch Murray's second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn't want to drive anymore, anyway.

The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global-after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.

After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to t.i.tillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He'd taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fiftyseven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.

"Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,"

I grumbled when the show ended.

"You want egg in your beer?" Sal said. "Guy can't do everything."

"I wish he'd covered the women's prison at Coolis. That'd be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I'm surprised it's not called Baladine City."

"Vic, this may make sense to you, but it's Greek to me."

"Ever since that wretched party you threw here last week, I've been running around in circles. Like my dog Mitch chasing his tail, come to think of it-exhausting and about as meaningful." I told her what I'd been doing. "And don't tell me it's none of my business, because it is, even if no one is paying me for it."

"Get off your high horse, St. Joan." Sal poured me another finger of Black Label. "It's your time and money; do what you want with it."

That encouragement didn't cheer me as much as it might have, but dinner at Justin's in the west Loop-where the owner knew Sal and whisked us past a dumbfounded line of beautiful Chicagoans-made me much happier. At least until I caught sight of Alex Fisher halfway through my tuna in putanesca sauce.

I couldn't help staring. Alex was at a table with Teddy Trant and a bald man with the kind of shiny face all Illinois politicians take on after too much time snuffling around in the public trough. JeanClaude Poilevy in person. If Trant would rather eat with him and Alex than the exquisite Abigail, there was something seriously wrong with his taste.

When we got up to leave, Alex and her convoy were still talking over coffee. Sal tried to dissuade me, but I went to their table. Trant was as perfectly groomed as his wife, down to the clear polish on his manicured nails.

"Mr. Trant," I said. "V. I. Warshawski. I wanted to let you know I appreciate your willingness to send me some work. I'm sorry I couldn't take it on for you."

Alex gave me a look that could have done laser surgery on my nose, but Trant shook my hand. "Global tries to do business with local firms. It helps us anchor ourselves in cities we're new to."

"Is that why you've been talking to Lucian Frenada?" It was a guess, based on the Mad Virgin decal I'd glimpsed at SpecialT earlier in the evening, but everyone at the table froze.

Poilevy put down his coffee cup with a clatter. "Is that the guy you were-"

"Lucian Frenada is the man who's been hara.s.sing Lacey." Alex cut him off quickly and loudly.

"Sure, Sandy, sure. It's not a bad story, even if it has a few holes around the edges. Alex, I mean. She changed nicknames in the last twenty years," I added to Trant. "We were such good pals when she was Sandy, I keep forgetting she's Alex now."

"What do you mean, holes around the edges?" Poilevy asked.

"I did a little looking. I talked to Lucian Frenada. I talked to the head of security at Ms. Dowell's hotel. Maybe the studio is overreacting to the scene between Frenada and Ms. Dowell at the Golden Glow last week-understandable with an important star-but I can't find any evidence that Frenada's been hanging around her."

"That isn't what I asked you to investigate," Alex snapped.

"No, but you haven't been asked to pay me anything either, have you."

Sal came up behind me and put a hand on my arm. "Let's go, Vic. I've got to get back to the Glow-it's my night to close."

I reminded Alex and Trant that they knew Sal from last week's party. We all said meaningless nothings, about Murray's debut, about Sal's bar, but I would have given a month's billings to know what they said when Sal and I moved out of earshot. I turned to look when we got to the door; they were bent over the table like the three witches over a pot.

20.

Child in Mourning What with the drive to Coolis and the long night hopping around town, I was glad to crawl into bed. I read a little of Morrell's book on the Disappeared in South America, stretching my legs between clean sheets to pull the kinks out of my spine.

The phone rang as I was drifting off. I groaned but stuck out an arm and mumbled a greeting. There was a pause on the other end, then someone garbled my name in a hurried voice just above a whisper.

"Yes, this is V. I. Warshawski. Who is this?"

"It's-This is Robbie. Robbie Baladine. I was at the gate, you know, when you came last week, you know, when you talked to my mom about-about Nicola."

I came fully awake in a hurry, turning on the light as I a.s.sured him that I remembered him well. "You're the expert tracker. What can I do for you?"

"I-It's not for me, but Nicola. I want-want to go to her funeral. Do you know when it is?"

"There's a problem about that," I said carefully. "The morgue seems to have lost her body. I don't know how that happened, but until they find it there can't be a funeral."

"So he was right." His young voice was filled with a kind of bitterness. "I thought he was making it up to-to tease me."

"Your dad?"

"Yeah, old BB." He was forgetting to whisper in his anguish. "Him and Eleanor, they've been so mean about Nicola. Since she died and all. When I said I wanted to go to her funeral, they said why, so I could stand around with all the emotional spicks and bawl to my heart's content, and then finally BB said there wouldn't be a funeral because no one could find the body and to-to shut the f.u.c.k up."

"I'm sorry, honey," I said inadequately. "I guess your dad worries about whether he's a tough enough man, and so he's always on guard against any strong feelings. I don't suppose it's much comfort to you now, but can you imagine him as someone who is incredibly weak and scared so he acts like a bully to keep other people from guessing how scared he is?"

"You think that could really be true?" There was wistfulness in the young voice, a hope that his father's meanness wasn't due to his own failings.

I thought of Baladine, casually helping with the dismemberment of African newborns, getting his hands dirty, and wondered if my diagnosis had any basis in reality. Maybe he was someone who enjoyed torture for its own sake, but I gave Robbie a hearty a.s.surance I didn't feel.

"Your father is a cruel man. Whatever the reason for his cruelty, will you try to remember that his sadism is about him, about his needs and weaknesses, and not about you?"

I talked to him for a few more minutes, until he'd recovered enough equilibrium for me to turn the conversation. There were two questions I wanted to put to him before we hung up. The first was about Nicola's smoking. Oh, no, Robbie said, she never smoked, not like Rosario, their nanny now, who was always sneaking off behind the garage for a cigarette, which made Eleanor furious, because she could still smell the smoke on her breath even after Rosario swallowed a zillion peppermints. Nicola said she had to save all her money for her children; she couldn't waste it on cigarettes or drinking.

My second question was whether his dad owned any shoes with horseshoe emblems-and if he did, were any of the emblems missing. Robbie said he didn't know, but he'd look.

It made me feel like a creep, asking Robbie to spy on his own father-but I suppose it also made me feel like I was paying BB back for his frothing over his son's masculinity. If he'd been proud of his sensitive child I might not have done it. But if he could be proud of a sensitive child, he wouldn't be doing other stuff.

Before Robbie hung up I asked, as casually as I could, how he'd gotten my unlisted home number: it wasn't on the business card I left him last week.

"It was in BB's briefcase," Robbie muttered. "Don't tell me I'm a criminal to go snooping in his case, it's the only way I know when he's planning something awful, like that camp for fat kids he sent me to last summer. I checked it out, and he had this whole file on you, your home number and everything."

My blood ran cold. I knew Baladine had done research on me-he'd made that clear enough on Friday-but it seemed worse, somehow, his carrying the information around with him.

"Doesn't he keep his case locked?"

"Oh, that. Anyone with half a brain knows all you have to do is plug in his ship's ID, the biggest number in his life."

I laughed and told him he was plenty smart enough to keep up with his dad if he could remember not to let BB get under his skin. In case I ever needed to burgle Baladine's briefcase myself, I got Robbie to give me his father's ship number.

On that note he seemed to feel calm enough to hang up.

I finally went to sleep, but in my dreams Baladine was lugging Nicola Aguinaldo's body through Frenada's factory, while Lacey Dowell leaned heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s forward, clutching her crucifix and whispering, "Her hands are dirty.

Don't tell her anything, or the vampire will get you."

In the morning I had a call from the operations manager at Continental United, asking me to come in to discuss my report. He thanked me for writing so clearly that everyone could understand it: too many firms cloak the obvious in meaningless jargon, he said. Maybe it was my ability to write a clear English sentence that kept Continental coming to me, rather than my superior a.n.a.lytic skills.

They didn't want to fire the dispatcher without concrete evidence, the operations manager added, or without knowing whether the plant manager was in on the scam.

"If you want to spend the money you'll have to have someone on the spot doing surveillance," I said. "It'll take two people. One to handle the truck, one to operate a camera. And it has to be people who aren't at the plant, because you don't know how many employees on the ground are involved, or at least aware."

As I'd feared, they nominated me as the one to handle the camera. And they figured their fleet manager in Nebraska could pose as a truck driver, as a walkon for someone out sick. They were losing so much money on that route, not just from replacing tires but from lost delivery time, that they wanted me to "do what it takes, Vic; we know you're not going to pad a bill for the heck of it."

I was sort of flattered, although, remembering AlexSandy's scorn for my low fees, I wondered if it was more a description of a lowrent outfit than a compliment. My man made a call to Nebraska; the fleet manager would meet me in Atlanta tomorrow night. A nice bonus for me if we wrapped it up quickly.

From Continental United's offices I went to the Unblinking Eye. They carry surveillance materiel as well as running a more prosaic film and camera business. I talked to the surveillance specialist about the kind of equipment I ought to use. They had some marvelous gadgets-a still camera that fit in a b.u.t.ton, one that was disguised in a wrist.w.a.tch, even one in the kid's teddy bear if you wanted to watch the nanny. Too bad Eleanor Baladine hadn't trained one on Nicola Aguinaldo. Or maybe she had-the Baladines probably had every uptothemoment security device you might want.

I settled on a video camera that you wore like a pair of gla.s.ses, so that it followed the road as you drove. You needed two people to operate it, since it required a separate battery pack, but that was okay: the Continental fleet manager would wear the gla.s.ses while I operated the equipment. I saw no need to plunk down four grand of Continental's money to own the camera, but took it on a week's rental.

The Unblinking Eye is on the west edge of the Loop. It didn't seem that far out of the way to drive the extra fourteen blocks to the morgue to see if Nicola Aguinaldo's body had turned up. Since Vishnikov starts work at seven I wasn't sure he'd still be there this late in the afternoon, but he was actually walking to his car when I pulled into the lot. I ran over to intercept him.

When he saw me he stopped. "The girl who died at Beth Israel. Is that why you're here?"

Her body hadn't turned up; he had lost track of the inquiry in the press of other problems, but he'd get back to it tomorrow. "As I recall, the release form wasn't signed. It's the trouble with these job sinkholes the county runs. Most of our staff is good, but we always have some who are there because their daddies hustle votes or move bodies for the mob. I've turned her disappearance over to the sheriff for an investigation, but a dead convict who was illegal to begin with doesn't rank very high-family isn't in a position to make a stink, and anyway, if they've been able to conduct a funeral they're not going to want to."

I don't think this family has held a funeral. I haven't seen them myself. In fact, I don't know where they are, but a guy named Morrell has been interviewing immigrants in Aguinaldo's old neighborhood. He says you know him, by the way."

"Morrell? He's a great guy. I know him from my work on torture victims in the Americas. He pulled me out of one of the worst traps I ever walked into, in Guatemala. Nothing he doesn't know about the Americas and torture. I didn't realize he was in town. Tell him to call me. I have to run." He climbed into his car.

I leaned in before he could shut the door. "But, Bryant-Morrell talked to Aguinaldo's mother. She didn't even know her daughter was dead, so she definitely doesn't have the body."

He stared at me in bewilderment. "Then who does have it?"

"I was hoping you could help on that one. If the form wasn't signed, is there a chance the body is still in the morgue? Maybe the tag got taken off or changed.

The other possibility is that a Chicago police officer named Lemour got the body. Do you think there's any way to find out?"

He turned the ignition key. "Why would-never mind. I suppose it could have happened. I'll ask some more questions tomorrow." He pulled the door shut and shot past me out of the lot.

I walked back slowly to the Rustmobile. I wished Vishnikov hadn't turned the investigation over to the sheriff's office. If anyone was covering up for the disposal of Nicola's body, the sheriff's office was probably kneedeep in how it was done. But I had enough going on without trying to run an inquiry at the morgue.

I went home to take the dogs for a swim and to let my neighbor know I'd be in Georgia for a few days. I also called my answering service, telling them to hand any problems over to Mary Louise until Monday.

I drove up to O'Hare with Mary Louise and the boys to help put Emily on the plane to France. She was scared and excited but trying to cover it with a veneer of teen cool. Her father had given her a camcorder, which she used with a studied offhandedness. At the last minute, when he saw she was really leaving, fouryearold Nate began to bawl. As we comforted him and his sniffling brother, I thought again of poor Robbie, unable to express his grief over his dead nanny without his father tormenting him.

We took the boys out for an evening show of Captain Doberman -another Global moneymaker. Over ice cream afterward, Mary Louise and I discussed odds and ends.

"Emily wanted me to promise I wouldn't let you get Lacey in trouble while she was away." Mary Louise grinned. "I think it was more like a subtle hint that she wanted every word of any conversation you and Lacey have."

"I haven't seen Lacey, only her old childhood friend Frenada. Over at his SpecialT-" I broke off. "Mary Louise, you left me a note about the report from Cheviot on that shirtdress they found on Nicola's body. You wrote down that the label said it was a specialty shirt. Could it have been SpecialT ?"

I spelled out the difference. Mary Louise looked chagrined and said she would check with the engineer at Cheviot Labs in the morning. She asked if I wanted her to go over to Frenada's shop and talk to him while I was away, but we decided that could wait until I got back from Georgia.

It was past ten when I got home, but I wanted to pack my gun before going to bed. It's a timeconsuming business, and in the morning I'd be too rushed to get it done to FAA specs. I laid packing and cleaning materials on the dining room table and took the gun apart, placing two empty magazines in the carton-the cartridges have to be packed separately. I was cleaning the slide when the phone rang.

It was Rachel from my answering service. "I'm sorry to call so late, Vic, but a man named Lucian Frenada is trying to get in touch with you. He says it's really urgent and he doesn't care if it's midnight, if you don't call him he's going to get the police to find you and bring you to him."

I blinked-that was a curious coincidence. When the phone at the factory didn't answer, I reached him at home.

He was so furious he could hardly get out a coherent sentence. "Did you plant this story? Are you behind this effort to defame me?"

"Do you know that I have no clue what you're talking about? But I have a question for-"

"Don't play the innocent with me. You come to my plant with insinuations, and twentyfour hours after I refuse to hire you, this-this slander appears."

"Which slander? Innocent or not, I don't know what it is."

"In the paper, tomorrow's paper, you thought I wouldn't see it? Or not so early?"

"Okay, if we have to do it by twenty questions, let me guess. There's a story about you in tomorrow morning's paper, is that right? About you and Lacey? You and that Virgin Tshirt? Do you want to tell me, or do you want to hold while I go out and find a newsstand with the early edition in it? I can be back in half an hour, probably."

I don't know whether he believed me or not, but he didn't want to wait for me to call him back. He read me from Regine Mauger's column in the early edition of the HeraldStar: "A little bird at the State's Attorney says Lucian Frenada, who's been hanging around Lacey Dowell all week like a sick pit bull, may be using his Tshirt factory to smuggle cocaine into Chicago from Mexico."

"Is that it?" I asked.

"Is that it?" he mimicked bitterly. "It is more than enough. She calls me a sick pit bull, which is a racist slur anyway, and then accuses me of being a drug dealer, and you think I shouldn't be angry? My biggest order of my life, the New Jersey Suburban Soccer League, they can cancel if they think I'm a criminal."

I tried to stay patient. "I mean, is that the only story on you in the paper?

Regine Mauger can print anything as a rumor. A little bird told her. I don't know if anyone at Global-I mean the HeraldStar- factchecks her. But if they ran a news story, that means they have actual evidence."

"No one could have evidence of this, because it isn't true. Unless they made it up." He was still angry, but calmer. "And I am thinking you could have been a little bird yourself, out of revenge."

"Then you aren't thinking at all," I snapped. "If I want to stay in business the last thing I'll do is run smear campaigns on people who spurn my services. That word gets around fast. The next thing I'd know, all my clients would have left me for Carnifice."

"So if you didn't plant that story, who did, and why?"

I let out a compressed breath. "You want to hire me to find out, Mr. Frenada, I'll be glad to talk it over. Otherwise, since I'm leaving town in the morning, I need to get to bed."

"That would be funny, wouldn't it-I call to chew you out and end up hiring you.