V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 16

Each step was now a prolonging of fatigue and pain. I made it across the expressway bridge to the L stop, where I fed singles into a ticket machine, then slumped onto a bench waiting for a train.

It was fourthirty now and the summer sun was beginning to turn the eastern sky a muddy gray. When a train screeched in twenty minutes later, the cars were half full, bringing home the night crews from O'Hare, sending early shifts into town to work coffee bars and diners. I found an empty seat and watched people sidle away from me. No one wants to catch poverty or grime from a stray homeless person. In my filth and tatters I looked worse than most.

I dozed my way downtown, changed to the Red Line, and dozed my way back north to Belmont. If someone was staking out my place I was past caring. I staggered the five blocks home and fell into bed.

24.

Annoying the Giants The gun had dug a deep bruise into my side when I tumbled from the boxcar. I'd be sore for four or five days, but if I was careful I'd be okay. Ditto for my left hip. The bruising there went down to the bone, so it would take longer to heal, but nothing was broken and none of the gla.s.s cuts in my arms needed st.i.tches. Lotty dispensed that verdict at her clinic Sunday afternoon, her lips flat, her black eyes large with a misery that hurt me more than anger.

"Of course, being careful, taking it easy, those are concepts beyond you, as I know to my sorrow. Still, I understand what these glib radio psychologists mean when they talk about enablers." She put her ophthalmoscope away with a snap and turned to wash her hands. "If I would have the courage to stop patching you up, perhaps you would stop breaking yourself into pieces. You are foolhardy, which, in case you didn't know, means to be daring without judgment: I looked it up this morning. How long do you think you can go on this way? A cat has nine lives, but you have only the one, Victoria."

"You don't have to tell me; my body's doing it for you." I found myself shouting. "My arms are sore. My hamstrings ache. I can hardly walk across the room. I'm getting old. I hate it. I hate not being able to count on my body."

"So you are going to follow Joan of Arc into the flames before your body fails you and you have to admit you're mortal?" Lotty gave a twisted smile. "How old was your mother when she died?"

I stared, startled by the unrelated question, and subtracted dates in my head.

"Fortysix."

"And she was ill for two years? It's a hard feeling, to know you will live longer than a mother who died young, but it is not a crime to do so," Lotty said. "You'll turn fortyfour next month, won't you? You don't need to push yourself past the brink so that you burn up in the next two years. You could have found a dozen ways to learn whether Mr. Frenada was inside his building last night. Make that the intelligent use of your energy, figuring out how to conserve your strength for those times when using your body is your last resort, not your first one. Don't you think that's what your mother would want for you?"

Oh, yes, probably. Surely. My mother's intensity had a blastfurnace quality, but she didn't prize brute strength above finesse. She'd died of a metastasis from the uterus that became apparent after a miscarriage, when the bleeding wouldn't stop and I'd brought her pads and changed my own in terror each month for years, wondering when it would happen to me, when I would drain away from the inside. Perhaps Lotty was right. Perhaps I was draining myself from the inside out of some survivor's guilt. If that was the case, my mother most surely did not want that from me, but life.

Lotty insisted on taking me home with her. I wanted to make phone calls, see if Lacey Dowell knew where Lucian Frenada was: I hadn't been able to raise him at his home or shop when I tried before coming to Lotty's clinic. I wanted to talk to Murray about how he'd gotten word that Frenada was running cocaine. I even had a manic idea about calling Baladine and accusing him of engineering the dope stashes.

Lotty refused to listen to my impa.s.sioned plea for a phone-she pushed me to her guest room and pulled the jack out of the wall. I fumed for around thirty seconds, but the next thing I knew it was ten o'clock Monday morning and I was more hungry than angry.

Lotty had left a note for me: the doorman knew I was staying and had orders to let me back into the building if I went out for a walk. I should take it easy for a few days. The building had a sauna and a gym on the third floor-the spare key to her front door tucked into the envelope would open the gym. Help yourself to fruit and bread. And Victoria, for my sake if not yours, don't leap again without looking very carefully.

After an orange and a piece of toast I went down to the gym. It was really only a small workout room, with weights and an exercise bike, but I was able to work off some of my stiffness. A half hour in the sauna sent me back to bed. When I got up again, around one, I made a hot meal out of eggs and fresh tomatoes. The calls I'd wanted to make yesterday didn't feel so urgent today, but I took the phone out onto Lotty's balcony and started with Mary Louise.

When I finished describing Sat.u.r.day's debacle at my office, she said, "So you really did find drugs there. And if Lemour planted them, then you can't call the cops."

"I do have a videotape of Lemour in the act, which I guess I could take to the State's Attorney. Trouble is, I don't know anyone there personally these days, and anyway, I'm afraid Lemour might be able to make even that evidence disappear. If I thought Murray would or could do anything, I'd give it to him, but these days I'm not sure I can count on him. How about showing it to Terry Finchley?"

She hesitated. "I've got these children I'm responsible for. I can't put my life on the line for some case you're inventing."

I sat up with a jolt that made my side ache. "Mary Louise, where do you get off with that kind of statement? You were with me when all this started. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was your panic that made me wreck my car. Which has been impounded by the cops and may well never surface again. Exactly what about that am I inventing?"

"Okay, not making up," she muttered. "And I'm sorry about your car. If I had the money I'd repair it for you. But it's the same story with you every time. You can't bear to be scared or beaten, so if someone threatens you, you have to take them on, no matter how big they are. Terry warned me about that when I started working for you, he said he saw you do it over and over again and that no one's life is worth that much principle. And in this case you're trying to take on giants. Don't you see? Don't you know?"

I clutched the phone so hard my sore palms began to throb. "No. I don't."

"Oh, Vic, use your brain. That didn't take a beating Sat.u.r.day night. You're trying to go nosetonose with Robert Baladine. Who's his best friend? Who got him that contract out in Coolis? And who can bury a body, no questions asked, faster than you can say "Jimmy Hoffa?' Why didn't you take that nice little a.s.signment Alex Fisher dangled in front of you?"

"What on earth? You yourself advised me not to touch it. And if you think I want to be bought by some-"

"I know. You're too d.a.m.ned holy to be bought off by a Hollywood slime ball. One thing you'd better believe-I'm not putting Josh and Nate at risk. Thank G.o.d Emily's in France and I don't have to worry about her. If you keep poking at this hornets' nest, I'm resigning and flying out of town with the boys."

You can't quit, you're fired. That's the standard line in such cases, but I only thought it, didn't say it. When I cooled off I'd regret it-Mary Louise is good for my little operation. But I hadn't cooled off yet, and our goodbyes were unfriendly. Especially after she said she didn't have time to help put my files back together. She had exams, she was doing some work for a law firm that might let her take an internship, she had the boys in summer camp, she couldn't possibly spend a week cleaning up the kind of wreck I was describing.

At first I was too angry to think, but I made myself calm down, hobbled around the apartment, studied Lotty's art collection. Including an alabaster figurine of Andromache that I'd recovered for her by the same methods she and Mary Louise were criticizing in me today. No, dwelling on that was only making me angry all over again.

I drank a gla.s.s of water and went back to the balcony to stare at the lake. At the edge, the line where lake meets sky, a cl.u.s.ter of sailboats looked like bits of white paper glued to a child's collage. I wanted to be on that remote horizon, but I had no way to reach it.

What didn't I see and know about Baladine? Of course it was Poilevy who got him that contract out in Coolis, you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes's smarter brother to figure that out. But bury a body, no questions asked, as Mary Louise had said, meant Poilevy had mob ties in Du Page County. One of her old pals must have warned her about him while I was in Georgia-probably Terry Finchley.

It also didn't take a genius to figure that Detective Lemour could do mob work on the side, not after what I'd seen of him on Sat.u.r.day. And he could do it in the suburbs. Chicago cops were required to live inside the city limits, but no ordinance forbade their moonlighting in the collar counties if they wanted to.

We'd had two police superintendents with ties to the mob in recent years, and I guess you have to start somewhere.

Lemour must be on Poilevy's payroll. No, not Poilevy's. The House Speaker wasn't going to get his hands dirty in a way that a reporter like Murray-like Murray used to be-could uncover. Lemour was on someone's payroll. But I already knew that. It was obvious Sat.u.r.day afternoon when his unnamed boss had phoned, told him to let me go.

What I couldn't make sense of was how all this had mushroomed out of Nicola Aguinaldo's death. What did Lucian Frenada know that mattered to Baladine or Poilevy? Something about the Mad Virgin Tshirt dress Aguinaldo was wearing when she died. Would Lacey Dowell know? And would she tell me if she did?

I looked up the Hotel Trianon number. The operator asked me to spell my last name, put me on hold for a moment, and then said Ms. Dowell wasn't available.

Had Ms. Dowell returned from Santa Monica I asked.

"All I can tell you is that Ms. Dowell isn't available." She hung up crisply.

I lay back on the floor. I'd become a nongrata person since talking to Frank Siekevitz in the Trianon's security department last week. Had Lacey put me on her index, or had Alex Fisher done it for her? I sat up and redialed the hotel and asked for Siekevitz.

"Vicki!" He was embarra.s.sed. "I'm sorry, but the lady doesn't want to talk to you. She put it in writing."

"She did, Frank? Or did the studio?"

"That I can't tell you. But you don't want to go bothering her if the studio wants you to stay away, do you?"

"Actually, I do. I need to talk to her about something pretty important."

"Nothing's that important, Vicki, believe me."

"So it was the studio."

He gave an uncomfortable laugh and hung up gracelessly. I wanted to limp to the Trianon as fast as my trembling hamstrings would carry me, but Mary Louise's comments haunted me. What would running to the hotel do for me, anyway? Frank would stiff me harder in person, because the giants, as Mary Louise had called them, had left nothing to chance. They had threatened him or cajoled him.

The giants knew our strengths and weaknesses. I'd realized that Sat.u.r.day night: they knew I would rise to the bait, that I'd be daring without exercising judgment. Joan of Arc, Lotty'd called me. What no one around me would believe was that I really didn't want to lift the siege of Orleans. I wanted to keep on doing nice little investigations for Continental United until I made enough money to fund my Money Purchase Pension Plan and bought me a little house in Umbria, where I'd make Orvieto Cla.s.sico and raise golden retrievers.

In frustration, I turned on the television, looking for news, fearing actually to hear news about Frenada. The Global channel had local coverage at four. It was the usual tabloid stew of s.e.x and violence: an overturned truck on the tollway with flames and car wreckage, Mrs. m.u.f.fet and Mr. Tuffet exclaiming that they heard the explosion, they thought my G.o.d it's World War III. Nothing on Frenada-or me, thank goodness.

When the ads started I turned off the sound, but after a truck climbed the Grand Canyon and a cleanser removed oily stains from a white blouse, a map flashed on the screen, showing a dotted line connecting Mexico and Chicago. Then Murray's face loomed over it. I hastily switched on the sound but heard only, "Tuesday night at nine. Chicago's hottest news, from the inside out, with Murray Ryerson."

After that I kept the station on for another half hour, watching a tedious rerun of some s.e.x comedy and about twenty commercials, until the Mexico map finally reappeared. "Enterprise zones. The perfect route for small businessmen hoping to make it to the top. But sometimes those businesses are taking federal seed money and using it to grow cocaine. Go inside Chicago with Murray Ryerson and find out how Mexican immigrants are using such innocuousseeming businesses as a uniform factory as a cover for drug deals. Tuesday night at-"

I switched off the set before the tag line ended. Joan of Arc or no, on my own against the giants or not, I couldn't lie here on Lotty's living room rug while Global used Murray to destroy Frenada's reputation. I started a reflexive finger on the phone b.u.t.tons, about to call Murray and shriek at him, when I realized it would be one of those conversations that begin with "what the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing" and end with both parties slamming the phone down.

I frowned for a moment, then went into Lotty's little home office. She's never felt the need to add automation to her home, but she has a typewriter. I'd used just such a primitive instrument until a couple of years ago. I scrounged in her drawers for a large envelope, typed LACEY DOWELL, TRIANON HOTEL. SCRIPT CHANGES.

BY MESSENGER in caps across it on the diagonal. In the left corner I typed Global's Chicago address. It would be better, of course, if I had a laser printer and could manufacture something resembling their corporate logo, but this would have to do.

Dear Ms. Dowell, I wrote.

Do you know that on Tuesday night, Global television is going to run a story denouncing Lucian Frenada as a drug smuggler? Do you know why they want to do this? Do you approve? Finally, do you know where Mr. Frenada is? I am a private investigator who has been caught up w.i.l.l.ynilly in his affairs, and I am virtually certain that evidence against him has been manufactured. If you know any reason why the studio would do such a thing, I will wait downstairs to talk to you, or, if you prefer, you may call me.

I included my home and office numbers, put the note in the envelope, and sealed the whole thing with packing tape. I wrote a note for Lotty, telling her I was going home and would call her tonight, and rode the elevator down to the lobby, where I got the doorman to summon a cab.

25.

Reaching Out To-A Friend?

No one bars you from an upscale hotel as long as you're properly dressed. I had the cab swing by my apartment and wait while I put on my wheatcolored pantsuit and some makeup. The midsummer heat continued as June inched into July; the rayon rubbed unpleasantly against my cuts and bruises, but the bellman inside the Trianon's entrance accepted the envelope and a ten with a respectful promise to see that it was taken up to Ms. Dowell's suite at once. I sat in an alcove off the main lobby, flipping idly through newspapers, but although the bellman a.s.sured me he'd handdelivered my packet, no message came down for me.

Short of checking into the hotel, there wasn't any way I could get upstairs without Lacey's summons: the Trianon had someone stationed between the desk and the elevators to monitor traffic. I watched a discreet pantomime take place between the frontdesk staff and the monitor, subtle nods allowing the blessed to pa.s.s into paradise. If I wanted to get upstairs, Lacey had to call me.

I read pages of Washington scandal, which I usually avoid; I read about the bodies hauled off the sidewalks after the weekend's drivebys-which I also usually skip-and even the sad ending of an unidentified man in his late thirties who'd been pulled out of the water at Belmont Harbor, but no word came for me from on high. I was starting to feel frustrated, which made my sore muscles ache more ferociously.

Maybe after another night's rest a different way of probing at Frenada and Global would come to me, but for now all I had energy for was collecting my car-which I hoped was still sitting three blocks from Frenada's headquarters. As I pushed myself out of the padded armchair, someone I recognized sailed through the revolving door like the Merrimac descending on a wooden frigate. Alex Fisher had such a head of steam that she ignored the doorman holding the side door wide for her. She also ignored a younger woman who was running to catch up with her.

"I can't wait around for you," Alex snapped in a ringing voice.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Fisher, I was paying the cab." The young woman panted; she was pastyfaced and out of shape, probably from too many late nights dining on pizza while waiting for commands from the studio.

I had slipped behind a pillar to watch, but Alex was so wrapped up in her own business that not even a marching band could have distracted her. When the hall monitor tried to detain her, Alex jerked away and pushed the elevator call b.u.t.ton. I was admiring her forthright tactics when Frank Siekevitz suddenly appeared at her side.

I couldn't hear what the security director said, but Alex announced that Lacey Dowell was expecting her, this was urgent, and would he get out of the way.

Frank murmured something else, his posture so deprecating that I cringed. The hall monitor used a phone, and in another minute Alex and her satellite were allowed to pa.s.s.

I sat back down, hoping Lacey might decide I could help her after all, but when Alex and her attendant reappeared, no one had asked for me. I couldn't resist following Alex outside.

"Vic!" Her greeting was half surprise, half venom. "I thought you-what are you doing here?"

So Lacey hadn't told her I'd written to her: interesting. "Yeah, I know, I was supposed to be dead or in jail or something, but here I am. Lacey doing okay?"

"If you're trying to see her, you can't." Alex waved off a doorman offering her a taxi.

"She's not the only guest at the Trianon. I was having tea with my aunt. She's a permanent resident."

"You don't have an aunt who can afford this place."

"You haven't read the LifeStory report on me very thoroughly, Sandy," I chided her. "As a matter of fact I do have a rich aunt. Actually, I have a rich uncle.

He's very big in the food industry. And his wife could afford to live here if she wanted to. By the way, where did you get the cocaine you planted on me?"

Alex became aware of her satellite, who was frowning in an effort to follow our conversation. She gave an unconvincing laugh and said she didn't know what I was talking about.

"It has that Hollywood feel to it, the kind of thing Gene Hackman would turn up in French Connection Three . Did you get Teddy Trant to talk to his screenwriters, have them come up with an absurd plotline, then turn it over to Baladine and his tame goons to act out?"

"Vic, why didn't you take that a.s.signment I dug up for you? It would have saved everyone a lot of grief." Her green eyes were dark in the twilight.

"Was it a bribe or a distraction?" I asked.

"There are worse things on the planet than bribes. I didn't remember you as so uncompromising in law school."

"No, that was you back then," I agreed. "Hot politics and stubborn intransigence. If you weren't part of the solution you were part of the problem.

Although maybe in that regard you haven't changed so much."

She bit her lower lip, swollen from collagen injections. "Well, you were always stubborn, that's for d.a.m.ned sure. But you weren't ever right about everything.

As you'll find out now if you don't back off. Felicity, can you get a cab over here? We have a lot of work to do tonight."

Felicity scuttled over to the doorman, who blew grandly on his whistle. The lead car in the taxi line pulled forward.

"Back off? From what?"

"Don't play the naive fool with me. I have you pretty well pegged by now. Come on, Felicity. Are you waiting for the Second Coming?"

"Poor Felicity," I said. "If her mama knew she'd be working for you, Sandy, maybe she would have named her Anxiety instead."

"And you know d.a.m.ned well that regardless of what my mama called me, my name is Alex-Vicki." On that shot Alex threw herself into the car, Felicity handed the doorman a dollar, and the two of them took off.

I stood in the drive, watching the street long after the cab's taillights had disappeared. I know I'm not right about everything, but she'd made it sound like something specific. Was it the same as the egg Murray was going to smear all over my smug face?

I was too tired and too sore to figure it out this evening. The doorman who'd taken in my letter to Lacey was urging me out of the drive and into a cab. I followed him meekly, although it was the fifth driver he whistled up who agreed to take me-when the first four heard the address I wanted, they shook their heads, willing to lose their place in line to avoid Humboldt Park. I didn't blame them, exactly, but I could understand why people on the West Side get so frustrated at being denied service. The guy who finally took me to my car barely waited for my feet to touch the street before screeching into a Uturn and heading back to the Gold Coast.

The Rustmobile fit into the neighborhood so perfectly that no one had removed the tires in the two days I'd left it there. The roar from the exhaust blended in with the vibrating lowriders. Definitely a better car for me than a Jaguar convertible or some other highrent import. No one looked at me as I went back down Grand. I stopped in front of SpecialT's front door. No lights shone tonight, but I wasn't going in for another look-I wasn't in shape to escape a second trap.

I parked several blocks from my apartment. Now that Alex could tell Lemour I'd surfaced, I needed to watch out for ambushes. No one was lying in wait so far; I stopped to chat with Mr. Contreras and the dogs. My neighbor had received the LifeStory report on Lucian Frenada that I'd mailed Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I'd forgotten to tell him about it, but I explained its importance to him now.

"You want me to keep it for you, doll, I'll be glad to."

"Remember how you got shot a couple of years ago when you were helping me out? I don't want to involve you like that again. Anyway, I need to make a bunch of copies so I can get it into the public arena as fast as possible."

He protested his willingness to take on any punk his size or bigger, but I took the report upstairs with me. I wished there was someone I could talk to-about the LifeStory report, or the putative connection between Baladine and Officer Lemour, or even the story Murray was running on Frenada. I hadn't realized how dependent I'd grown on Murray over the years. This was the first major investigation I'd taken on that I couldn't discuss with him, or tap into his vast knowledge of local corruption. And I badly needed help. This wasn't even an investigation. It was some kind of demon's cauldron I'd fallen into. I was bobbing around with the newts' eyes and bats' wings, and I wasn't going to have too much more time to figure out the brew before I drowned in it.