V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 15

My-boss says if you swallowed the evidence I can't hold you, although I'd like to bring you in and choke it out of you. You can go home. You-Holc.u.mb, is it?

Uncuff her and let her go."

While the officer undid the lock, she whispered that her mother was an upholsterer, that she'd bring her over in the morning and get her to repair my couch, no charge. I was too tired and too angry to do anything but nod my sore neck. I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed, until the last of the battalion had left. I barricaded the door from the inside and sat on the couch.

The mess in the room was now so unbearable I couldn't imagine ever being able to work in this s.p.a.ce again.

22.

Night Crawlers Mr. Contreras roused me from my stupor, calling on my office phone, his voice rough with anxiety: at fourthirty I'd said I'd be back in an hour for dinner, and here it was almost eight. When I told him what had happened he insisted on flagging a cab and coming to the office. Nothing I said could dissuade him, and in my fragmented state I didn't try too hard. When he knocked on the door fifteen minutes later, I shocked both of us by bursting into tears.

"This is terrible, doll, this is terrible. Who could've done such a thing? That cop, that creep that wanted to arrest you last week? And he hit you? You can't take that. You gotta tell someone. Call the lieutenant. Call Detective Finchley."

I blew my nose. "Yeah. Maybe. What I'd like is to get some kind of padlock for the doors. Whoever broke in bypa.s.sed the code on the front door. They can break down padlocks too, but they'll be more obvious from the street if they're doing that."

One of the chains had opened a big allnight home supply store not too far from my building. The old man rode over with me and helped pick out locks and tools.

When we got back I was still so jumpy that I insisted on inspecting both my office and Tessa's studio to make sure no one had arrived in my absence.

While Mr. Contreras set to work installing the locks, I made a halfhearted effort to organize the wreck. The Isabel Bishop I handled with latex gloves, putting it in a plastic bag to give to Mary Louise on Monday. I wanted her to get it dusted for fingerprints and to have someone in the department run a check on AFIS. I also figured I could pay her to put files in order: it would be so much easier for her than for me, since she was not only more organized, but not so emotionally invested in the destruction.

I did restore the couch, screw in the light bulbs that the vandal cops had removed, picked up obvious garbage, scrubbed coffee stains from the little bit of carpet. My mother's engraving of the Uffizi Gallery had been knocked over and the gla.s.s cracked. I bit my lip but put it in the bag with the Isabel Bishop. I wasn't going to break down over this. The picture wasn't damaged underneath; the gla.s.s could be replaced.

The printer cartridge Lemour had dropped on the floor was leaking carbon. I threw it out, cleaned out the printer, and installed a fresh cartridge. I held my breath and turned on the machine. I hit the TEST b.u.t.ton, and a page of beautifully executed font samples ran out the mouth. I felt better. One small vessel saved from the inferno.

When Mr. Contreras grunted with satisfaction that he'd got the place pretty well bolted down, my office still looked like the t.i.tanic after the iceberg. Who would have thought the old room had so much paper in it?

Mr. Contreras praised my progress-more visible to him than me-and I dutifully praised his handiwork, which was actually quite impressive. With a handful of inexpensive tools he'd installed a serious lock system. Nothing is impregnable, but this would take long enough to smash that Elton or someone might wander along and interrupt the intruders. I took time to call Tessa's mother to explain what I'd done and to leave a message for Tessa-I'd drop off a spare key before she got back from her sailing trip.

As we walked to the car, Elton popped out of the shadows. "Saw you had the cops with you, Vic. They find anything?"

"Nada. But the sergeant who came is in on the fix. If you see anyone-don't call 911, because the cops may be the perps. Call-can he call you?" I asked Mr.

Contreras. "I'm not home enough."

My neighbor wasn't pleased at my involving him with a street person, but he grudgingly agreed that I could write his phone number on one of my business cards and hand it to Elton. "Call collect," I recklessly committed my neighbor.

Illinois Bell charges thirtyfive cents-it's even harder for the homeless to come up with correct change than for the rest of us.

When we got home I insisted first on inspecting the Rustmobile to make sure no contraband had been slipped into the trunk. Then I brought Mitch and Peppy up to the third floor with me while I made a circuit of my apartment. I was ashamed of my jumpy vulnerability, but every time I thought of those bags of white powder, the skin on the back of my neck crawled.

My neighbor put fresh charcoal on the grill outside his back door and started cooking chicken. Before going down I called Lotty, hoping for sympathy-and a prescription for my sore neck. She gave not just sympathy but alarm, trying to persuade me to spend the night in the safety of her eighteenthstory apartment.

I thought I'd be happier in my own home, among my own things, but told her I'd keep the dogs with me until things simmered down.

"As far as your neck goes, my dear-aspirin and ice. Ice now and before you go to bed. And call me in the morning."

I felt irrationally bereft when she hung up. She'd offered me a bed-why did I want technical medicine instead of love? Ice, when the left side of my neck was sore to the touch? What did Lotty know about neck injuries, anyway. I stomped into the kitchen, filled a freezer bag with ice, and pressed it against the sore area, as if determined to prove her wrong. Instead, by the time Mr. Contreras phoned up to say the chicken was cooked, I could move my head more easily. Which made thinking more possible as well.

The ca.s.settes that I'd made of Lemour in my office-I needed to do something with those. A copy for my lawyer, and maybe one for Murray. Would he run a story on the breakin? Was I testing him, to see whose orders he was following?

After dinner I went back upstairs and hooked the ca.s.sette pack up to my VCR and ran the tape. Knowing I had sat pa.s.sively while Lemour grew ever more demented made me feel the violations of the afternoon all over again. My stomach clenched. I could hardly bring myself to keep watching. When I heard the call that made Lemour let me go, though, I sat up and played it back several times.

His caller kept cutting him off. Perhaps he didn't like Lemour's thin nasal voice. But maybe he didn't want Lemour revealing too much on an open line.

Lemour's evil grin, and the way he said he'd look forward to that-whatever that was-made it clear they had some more elaborate frame in store. Although what could be more elaborate than drugs planted in my office I didn't know. Maybe I should go to Lotty's after all.

I stopped the tape again when Lemour said it was my lucky day, I could go home.

He paused before saying his "boss" had ordered my release. A cop does not refer to superiors as bosses; he calls them by t.i.tle-lieutenants or watch commanders-whatever the highest rank happens to be. So who was on the phone?

Baladine? JeanClaude Poilevy?

Maybe a really sensitive machine could pick up the voice of the person speaking to Lemour. I could talk to the engineer at Cheviot Labs about that, but it would probably have to wait until Monday. Just in case the guy came in on weekends I left a message on his voice mail.

I locked the tape in my closet safe and went back downstairs to collect the dogs. With an aspirin on top of my long day-my long week-I was asleep as soon as I turned out the light.

Two hours later the phone pulled me up and out of a deep well of sleep. "Ms.

Warshawski? Is that you?" The hoa.r.s.e whisper was barely audible. "It's Frenada.

I need you at once. At my plant."

He hung up before I could say anything. I held the receiver to my ear, listening to the silence at the other end. My mind had that deceptive clarity that the first hours of a sound sleep bring. Frenada didn't have my home phone number: when he called to scream about Regine Mauger's blurb in the HeraldStar, he got me through my answering service. Perhaps he used caller ID and had picked up my number when I called his home.

I turned on my bedside light and looked at my own ID pad. Caller unidentifiable.

The person had either blocked the call or was using a cell phone. I went into the living room. Mitch and Peppy had been sleeping next to the bed, but they followed me, crossing in front of each other so that I had a hard time moving.

I nudged them out of the way and found my briefcase where I'd left it, next to the television. I dug out the Palm Pilot and looked up SpecialT Uniforms. When I phoned the plant, the number rang fifteen times without an answer. His home phone gave me only his bilingual message.

"So what should I do, guys?"

Mitch looked up at me hopefully. Go for a run seemed to be his advice. Peppy lay down and began methodical work on her forelegs, as if to say, Take a bath and go back to sleep.

"It's a setup, don't you think? Lemour's handler made him release me. So that they could trap me at the plant? Leaving me with egg all over my smug face, as Ryerson informed me Wednesday night? Or was this really Frenada, in serious trouble? In which case, why didn't he call the cops, instead of me?"

The dogs looked at me anxiously, trying to figure out my mood from my voice.

Maybe Frenada's experience with the cops was the same one I'd had this evening, so that he didn't feel he could rely on them.

A wiser person would have followed Peppy's advice and stayed home. Maybe I am that wiser person now-experience does change you-but in the middle of the night, with that sensation of looseness that made me think I was still thirty and able to leap tall buildings at a bound, I pulled on my jeans and running shoes, put my gun back together and stuck it in a shoulder holster under a sweatshirt, put my PI and driver's licenses in my back pocket with a handful of bills, and made my cautious way down the back stairs. To their annoyance, I left the dogs behind-if I got involved in a shooting war I didn't want them complicating the battle.

Lemour thought he could get me, but I would make a monkey of him. That seemed to be the gist of my thinking, if acting solely on impulse can be called thinking.

I drove past the plant at Grand and Trumbull. A light was shining through one of the rear windows on the second floor. In case Lemour had set a trap, I didn't slow down but turned south at the next intersection. I parked three blocks away.

Sat.u.r.day nights on the fringes of Humboldt Park are not quiet. The streets in this industrial section were empty, but sirens and dogs keened a few blocks away. I even heard roosters crowing. Someone was running a c.o.c.kfight nearby. A freight train squeaked and hooted in the distance. As it drew near, its rackety clankclank drowned out other sounds.

When I got to Frenada's building I scouted it as closely as I could in the dark.

I paused outside an old delivery van, listening intently at the rear doors to see if it was a stakeout vehicle, although it was hard to hear anything above the thundering of the freight train.

I stood across the street from the entrance for ten minutes, waiting for some sign of life. Or was I waiting for my courage to build enough for me to enter a rickety building alone in the dark? The longer I stood, the more inclined I would be to go home without looking inside. And what if that really had been Frenada on the phone? And what if he really was in trouble, bleeding, dead? Then what? I took a deep breath and crossed the street.

The front door was unlocked. It's a trap, Vic, the sensible voice whispered, but I slid sideways through the opening, gun in hand, palm clammy against the stock.

Inside the entrance, the dark wrapped around me like a living cloak. I could feel it grabbing at my neck, and the soreness, which I'd forgotten, came back. I moved cautiously to the stairwell, fighting the impulse to turn tail and run.

I climbed the slippery concrete stairs, pausing on each riser to strain for noises inside. Outside, the freight thumped and squeaked into the distance. In the sudden stillness I could hear the sirens and car horns again, making it hard to focus on the building. I hugged the stairwell wall, trying to make no sound myself, hoping the hammering of my heart was audible only to me.

At the top landing I could see a bar of light under SpecialT's door. I moved faster, as if light itself meant safety. At the door I knelt down to look through the keyhole but saw only the legs of the long worktable. I lay flat, trying not to think of the filth of decades against my face (how many men had spat on this floor when walking out at the end of the day?), my eye pressed against the thin slit of light. All I saw were bolts of fabric and some waddedup paper. I waited a long time, watching for feet, or for a shadow to move. When nothing happened I stood up and tried the handle. Like the outer door, the one to the shop floor was open.

A clothes shop is probably always chaotic, but SpecialT looked as though someone had tossed the place through a wind tunnel. Whoever had rampaged through my office had been here as well. The long tables in the middle where the cutting took place had been cleared; fabric, shears, and pattern stencils lay in a heap around them. Along the wall, the sewing machines stood with their covers unscrewed. A single light over one of the machines was the one that I'd seen from the street.

I moved fearfully toward a small room at the back, expecting at any second to come on Frenada's body. Instead, I found more signs of upheaval. The vandals had taken the room apart with a ruthless hand. The intruders had been looking for something: drawers stood open, their contents dangling over the side to spill on the floor. A piece of loose tile had been pulled up and tossed to one side.

Invoices, dressmaking patterns, and fabric samples made a gaudy stew on the floor. The bulbs had been removed from the desk lamp.

I was certain that there must be bags of powder on the premises, but it wasn't a search I wanted to make alone and in the dark. I looked in Frenada's office for the Mad Virgin shirt I'd seen on Tuesday. When a quick inspection of the tangled heap of cloth and paper didn't reveal it, I moved to the hall. I'd see if Frenada was in the john or at the back by the freight elevator; if he wasn't on the premises I was out of Dodge.

The toilet was in the hall that ran outside SpecialT's door. A supply closet was next to it; the freight elevator was at the end farthest from the stairs. I had looked inside the closet and found nothing more disgusting than a mop that needed a good bath in disinfectant, when I heard the scuffling sound of a door opening, of many feet trying to sneak silently up concrete stairs. A second later a train began to wheeze and crank its way up the track: if they'd waited only a heartbeat longer I'd never have heard them.

23.

A Run to O'Hare I slid out of the supply closet. No cover there. Where? No way to scale the wall, no way up to those windows. I ducked into the freight elevator. The train rattled the walls, drowning any sound of my pursuit. If they'd started up the stairs, it wouldn't take them long to look in here. Even if I had a key to start the elevator, while it toiled downstairs a dozen men could wait outside the door and pick me off like a duck in a crate.

Fool. d.a.m.ned c.o.c.ky fool to plunge into this building when the whole evening was painted with red warning signs, stay away, don't touch. Someone knew me too well, knew that I'd weigh the risks and take them anyway. Set the tiger trap. If I was a real tiger I could have leapt from shop floor to window and been on my way.

I looked around the elevator cage. The service hatch stood open. I measured the distance: about four feet over my head. I wasn't a tiger, and I'd get only one chance on these fortyplus muscles. A light bounced off the hallway wall. I crouched, swung my arms, and jumped. My hands clawed at the edge of the opening.

Left hand on a nail, grab hard with my right while I move the left, claw for purchase, fingers digging into splintery wood, biceps bulging as they hoist my weight. The freight train screeching past covered my scramble through the hatch, my rasping breath.

Above me a skylight filtered in starlight, showing ghostly shapes of cables and the wooden slab that covered the hatch. I slid it across the opening. The cage shook with the thundering of the train but settled down as the noise receded. I started hearing voices, words m.u.f.fled by the shaft, then one directly under me.

"She should be here."

My stomach heaved, felt as though it might split itself open.

"Did you see her leave home?" Lemour's unmistakable squeak.

"No, but her car's gone. She must have gone out through the alley before we thought of putting a watcher out back. And there's no answer on her phone."

"Then we beat her here. Maybe she stopped for help. I'll get someone into the broom closet, someone in Frenada's office. You wait here."

The voices faded. I was sitting on a piece of metal. Now that I knew I must not move, I became aware of every surface detail-an edge like a razor cutting into my left b.u.t.tock, the cable under my right foot that would tw.a.n.g if my sore muscles buckled.

I took slow careful breaths, the air sc.r.a.ping against my dry throat. I was terrified that I might have to cough. I inched my neck slowly back so that I could see the skylight. Some rungs were bolted to the wall leading up to it. If I could get to them without the man in the elevator hearing . . . Tilting my head back increased the strain on my throat, and a large cough built in my lungs. I held it as long as I could, desperately swallowing but unable to produce enough saliva to coat it. Just as I could hold it no longer the cage began to shake again. For a brief flash of terror I thought the watcher was following me up the hatch, but as the cough exploded in my chest, another train began to rumble behind the building.

Grabbing the cable in front of me, I eased myself to my feet. My left thigh trembled. I'd been bracing myself with it, not realizing until I started to move that it held my weight. I flexed my leg cautiously; even with the train as cover I couldn't afford a loud noise here in the shaft.

As soon as the worst cramping subsided, I stepped to the edge of the cage and tugged on the rung above my head. It seemed secure. Holding it firmly I pushed with my right leg on the rung in front of me. It held as well. I stepped off the edge of the cage and began hoisting myself up. Like in Ms. McFarlane's gym cla.s.s back in high school, when we had to climb ropes. Why, one of the girls had demanded, we're never going to be firefighters. If I got out of here-when I got out of here-I'd go back to South Chicago and tell today's knowall adolescents: The day may come when you're as stupid as me, when you've backed yourself into an ambush and need to climb out of it.

A short climb, only fifteen feet. Five rungs to the skylight. Step, hoist, and then a final yard into s.p.a.ce to reach a tiny platform for the work crew to sit on. You couldn't be a very big machinist and work in this s.p.a.ce. And why didn't the skylight open? Didn't they ever need to get out on the roof? I couldn't see a latch. Was this window simply decorative?

The train continued to rattle underneath. I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster and smashed the stock, hard, against the gla.s.s. It crashed down the shaft. No one could overlook that sound. I knocked the gla.s.s clear from frame.

Pulled my sweatshirt over my head and erupted through the window as the watcher underneath me shouted for backup.

I scrambled onto the flat tar roof and ran to the edge. A cop car was parked on Trumbull, blue strobes inviting, warning bystanders. Another covered the west end of the building. I backed away and ran to the other side. The freight tracks curved behind the building. The train rocking slowly through the turn cut off any escape on that side.

In the middle of the roof a head popped through the broken skylight. "Freeze, Warshki!"

I fell to the flat tar as Lemour fired. Swung my legs over the side. Extended my body by my fingertips. Lemour ran toward me. I twisted as far to the right as I could and dropped.

Like falling off a bike. The boxcar moved forward underneath me; I fought to keep upright but landed hard on my left hip and forearm.

I lay that way, rocking with the train, so happy at my escape that I almost relished the pain in my side. A badge of the adventure. I wasn't too old to leap tall buildings after all. I grinned stupidly in the dark.

I lay that way for about ten minutes, watching streetlamps and tree branches rock past. As my euphoria at escaping died down, I began to worry about what to do next. I couldn't ride this train out of town. Or I could, but what would I do then? A stay in a cornfield overnight. Persuade someone to give a beatup, disheveled, specimen a ride to the nearest town. Some smalltown Wisconsin cop finding me with a gun on me and not believing I had any right to it. Even worse was the possibility that Lemour was following the train. I stopped grinning and sat up.

I had no idea where I was. The city as familiar to me as the bones and markings of my face had changed into a ma.s.s of signal lights and looping tracks. I felt alone in the swirling dark. The train was gathering speed, hurling through strange seas toward strange land. A southbound freight rattled past, shaking me so hard I lay down again.

A plane floated over me, a giant gra.s.shopper, its lights bulging eyes. Lying on my back I could see the belly light, the landing gear. O'Hare. So at least we were somewhere near the city.

The train suddenly braked, with a jolting screech that rocked me back again on my sore hip. I didn't take time to curse or feel my bruises but scrambled crablike to the front of the car, found the ladder and climbed down. The train was still moving, although slowly. I jumped free of the slicing wheels, rolling with the motion of the train, landing on gra.s.s, rolling downhill, my gun digging into my breast, until I came to rest against a concrete wall.

I got on my hands and knees, but when I heaved myself to my feet I felt a tearing in my side that took my breath away. I leaned against the wall, tears smarting in my eyes. Gingerly, I touched the area under my holster. An edge of pain cut through me. A broken rib? A badly torn muscle? If Lemour had persuaded someone to stop the train, I couldn't stand around waiting to heal. I had to keep moving.

When I started to walk the gun bore into the sore area. I used the wall as a brace and held my left arm up to unbuckle the holster. Checking the safety on the Smith & Wesson, I stuck it in my pocket and fastened the holster loosely around my waist.

The sleeves of my sweatshirt had gaping tears from the gla.s.s in SpecialT's skylight. The rest of me was covered with oily mud. Blood was caked along my neck and arms-cuts I hadn't known I was getting were starting to bother me. I hobbled along as fast as I could, straining my ears for sounds of pursuit above the rocking of the train.

Bright lights above the wall I was using for support showed me every detail of the ground-refuse of fast food tossed from cars, c.o.ke cans, plastic bags, even shoes and clothes. I limped my way along the wall to the bottom of the embankment. The street sign said MONTROSE AVENUE. Lying on the boxcar, I had thought I'd been traveling an hour or more and pictured myself in some unknown suburban landscape, but I was still inside the city. The unknown landscape suddenly turned on its side in my brain and I knew it. The concrete wall was a barricade between me and the Kennedy expressway. The roar I was hearing didn't come from the train, which had moved on, but from traffic.

I followed the exit ramp up, looking nervously behind me but not seeing Lemour.