V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 20

I walked past the front of the church and found a narrow walkway leading to the rear. Chunks of pavement were missing, but someone had made a gallant attempt to spruce up the area. Scraggly rosebushes surrounded a dejectedlooking statue that I a.s.sumed was St. Remigio himself. I picked an empty bottle of Four Roses from behind him and looked for a garbage bin. Finally, not wanting to present myself to the priest carrying a bottle, I tucked it into my handbag and rang a bell labeled FATHER LOU.

After a longish wait, when I was thinking the soccer coach might have been explaining that Father Lou was away, a harsh squawk startled me. I hadn't noticed the intercom to the left of the door.

"This is V. I. Warshawski. I want to talk to the priest about one of his parishioners." I didn't think I could explain my errand intelligibly at a shout through a speaker.

After another long wait, the dead bolt snapped back and an old man in a Tshirt and slippers stood in the doorway. His upper body and neck had the thickness of a weight lifter. He looked at me as if a.s.sessing whether to pick me up and throw me off the stoop.

"Father Lou?"

"Are you with the police or the press?" He had the gravelly voice of the old Irish South Side.

"No. I'm a private investigator-"

"Whether you're private or public, I won't have you digging around in that boy's past, trying to prove some slander about him." He turned back inside and started to shut the door.

I put out a hand to brace the door; it took all my strength to keep a big enough crack open for me to cry out, "I'm not slandering Lucian Frenada. I've been trying to stop the HeraldStar from running their story on him and drugs. I've been trying to talk to Lacey Dowell, because she knows something about the true reason he was killed, but she won't talk to me. I was hoping you might know something."

The pressure on the other side eased. Father Lou reappeared in the entrance, frowning. "If you aren't digging up dirt on Lucy, what's your involvement?"

"Please. Can we sit down? I can explain the whole story to you, but not standing out here in the heat with one foot in the door hoping you won't shut it on me."

"This is my rest time," the priest grumbled. "Everyone around here knows not to bother me from six to seven. It's the only way an old man like me can keep running a big parish."

That must have been what the soccer coach was trying to tell me-the priest is back there, but don't interrupt his nap. I was starting to mutter an apology when he added, "But Lucy's death-I can't sleep anyway. I might as well talk to you."

He led me into a wide dark vestibule. Despite his age he moved easily, his walk a graceful bounce. Dancers' legs, boxers' legs.

"Mind your step. I don't put lights on in the hall-have to save every nickel in a poor parish; don't want the cardinal shutting us down because we're too expensive."

Father Lou unlocked a small side room, furnished with the heavy remains of the previous century. Eight chairs with ornate legs stood primly around a heavy table. A blackened painting of Jesus in a crown of thorns hung over an empty grate.

The priest motioned me to one of the chairs. "I'm going to make tea. Make yourself comfortable."

I did my best in the wooden chair. The flowers carved into the back dug into my shoulder blades. I shifted forward. On the table a plaster statue of the Virgin smiled at me sadly. Her lips were chipped and the paint had flaked from her left eye, but the right one stared at me patiently. She was wearing a cloak of faded taffeta, painstakingly trimmed in handmade lace.

Father Lou returned with a battered metal tray holding a teapot and two cups as I was fingering the fabric. "A hundred years old, that lace, we have it on the altar, too. What did you say your name was?"

When I repeated it he tried to talk to me in Polish. I had to explain that I knew only a handful of words, gleaned from my father's mother; my own mother, an Italian immigrant, spoke to me in her language. At that he switched to Italian and grinned with delight at my surprise.

"I've been here a long time. Baptized Italians here, married Poles; now I offer the ma.s.s in Spanish. Neighborhood's always been poor; wasn't always this dangerous. Parish council suggested soccer. Seems to be good for the little kids, lets them run off some of that energy."

"But you were a boxer?" I was guessing, from his gait.

"Oh, yeah. I boxed for Loyola in the forties, then I found my vocation but kept boxing. I still run a club here. St. Remigio's remains the school to beat-gives the boys something to be proud of. We can't play football against those big suburban schools. We can't get enough equipment for eleven boys, let alone fifty or sixty the way they do. But I can outfit boxers. Lucy was one of my best. I was that proud of him."

His jaw worked. For a minute he looked like a tired old man, his pale eyes filming over, then he shook himself, an unconscious motion, shaking off one more punch.

He looked at me aggressively, as if to make sure I didn't try to pity him for his weakness. "The police came around suggesting Lucy was running drugs through his factory. They wanted me to spy on him. I told them what I thought of that.

Then the papers and the television. Mexican boy makes good, so he must be selling drugs. All that innuendo-I saw what the HeraldStar' s been saying. This boy who drove an old car so he could pay his sister's children's fees here at Remigio? They couldn't leave him alone."

He stopped to drink some tea. I had some too, to be polite. It was light and flowery and surprisingly refreshing in the heat.

"When did you last talk to him?" I asked.

"He came here to ma.s.s once or twice a week. I'm thinking it was last Tuesday. He filled in as a server when he saw that the kid who was supposed to do it hadn't shown. They used to laugh at him when he was fourteen, when I talked him into coming here, do some training and serve at the ma.s.s-little altar boy, that's what they called him-but then he started winning boxing matches, and the tune they sang on the streets changed in a hurry.

"I'm getting sidetracked. I don't like to think about him being dead, that's all. It's easy to say people are with Jesus when they die, and I even believe it's true, but we need Lucy here. I need him, anyway. Jesus wept when Lazarus died-He's not going to condemn me for crying over Lucy."

He picked up the statue of the Madonna and twisted it around, smoothing the taffeta cape over her hips. I sat still. He'd speak when he was ready, but if I prodded him he might turn pugnacious again.

"So-he still came to ma.s.s. When he started his shop, SpecialT, he could have gone someplace farther away, a safer neighborhood, but he liked to stay close to the church. Felt his life had been saved here. He went from being a lookout for the Lions, selling nickel bags, to citywide lightweight champ. Then my old school, Loyola, working nights at a downtown hotel to put himself through college, but he left those Lions and drugs behind for good when he boxed for me.

I make it clear to all the boys: they can't get in the ring with Jesus and drugs at the same time."

There wasn't any hearty piety in his voice, just the facts. No one looking at those forearms, or the stern set to his jaw, could doubt Father Lou's ability to stand up to a g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger.

"Anyway, I'm thinking it was Tuesday, but maybe it was Wednesday, I can't be sure. But we had a cup of coffee and a donut after the service."

"Was he worried then?"

"Of course he was worried, all this-this c.r.a.p about him and drugs!" the old man shouted, smacking the table hard enough to make the Virgin wobble. "And what's it to you, anyway?"

"If it's any comfort, I think someone was setting him up with the drugs." Once again I went through the long story of Nicola Aguinaldo, of Alex Fisher and the studio asking me to look into Frenada's finances, and the two very different reports on them.

"It's disgusting," Father Lou said, "disgusting that you could go pry into the boy's private business like that."

My cheeks grew hot. I didn't try to defend myself-I know it's a breach of privacy, and I wasn't going to give that pathetic adolescent bleat that everyone did it.

Father Lou glared at me, his jaw working, then said, "Still, I suppose it's a good thing you saw the accounts the way they really were. How could it happen, the report being changed like that, so that you get one version, that reporter friend of yours another?"

"I've thought a lot about that," I said. "That's one of the reasons I came to see you. You read from time to time about hackers trying to move money from a bank into their accounts; the security stops them when they try to take it out.

I don't think it would be so hard for someone with a lot of sophisticated resources to break into a system and make more money appear than was really there. But what will happen if the user tries to withdraw it? If Lucian Frenada's sister is his heir, can you get her to try to take the money out? That will prove whether it's really there or just a shadow."

He thought it over. He didn't react quickly, but he was thorough, asking a series of questions designed to make sure Frenada's sister wouldn't be in any danger if she tried to get the money.

"Okay. I won't say yes or no tonight, but I'll talk to Celia in the morning. I want you to promise me you won't bother her. Are you a Catholic? Do you have a pledge that you honor?"

I shifted uncomfortably on the hard chair; my mother, fleeing Fascist Italy because of religion, didn't want that to define her daughter's life in the New World. "I'll pledge you my word. When I give it I do my utmost to keep it."

He grunted. "I guess that'll have to do. And the other thing you wanted from me?"

I took a breath and said in a rush, "Lacey Dowell. She knows something about Frenada, about his shirts, why he made those Mad Virgin Tshirts and then pretended he hadn't. She won't talk to me."

"Magdalena. I never can think of her by that silly stage name. You think I can make her give up her story?" His full mouth twisted, whether in amus.e.m.e.nt or scorn I couldn't tell. "Maybe. Maybe. You being a detective and all, I suppose you know what fancy hotel she's staying in while she's in town. She sure avoids the old neighborhood, unless she's got a team of cameras following after her."

30.

The Mad Virgin's Story Father Lou was gone about twenty minutes. When he came back he said if I could wait he was pretty sure Magdalena would be along to the church sometime this evening.

I suddenly remembered Morrell, waiting for me at a restaurant on Damen, and asked for a phone. Father Lou took me into his study, a shabby but far more comfortable room than the parlor we'd been using. Boxing trophies were scattered about shelves stuffed with old papers. The desk, with a simple wood crucifix over it, was stacked with financial reports and old sermons. He didn't have many books; I noticed a collection of Frank O'Connor short stories and, to my surprise, one by Sandra Cisneros-trying to keep up with parishioners, he explained when he saw me looking at it.

He had an old black rotary phone, heavy and clunky to hands used to plastic TouchTones. He listened in unashamedly as I made my call-I suppose to make sure I wasn't going to set a mob heavy on Frenada's sister-but when he heard me ask the matre d' for Morrell he brightened.

"So you know Morrell," he said when I hung up. "You should have told me that sooner. I didn't know he was back in town."

"He got thrown out of Guatemala," I said. "I don't know him well."

Father Lou had met him during the Reagan years, when American churches sometimes gave sanctuary to El Salvadoran refugees. St. Remigio's had sheltered a family that fled to Humboldt Park, and Morrell had come to do a story on them.

"Does a lot of good, Morrell. Not surprised he got thrown out of Guatemala. He's always covering underdogs of one kind or another. If you were meeting him for a meal I suppose you must be hungry."

He took me down a long unlit corridor to his kitchen, a cavern of a room, with a stove even older than the rotary phone. He didn't ask me what I wanted, or even what I wouldn't eat, but fried up a pan full of eggs with an expert hand. He ate three to my two, but I kept even with him on the toast.

When Lacey still hadn't arrived at nine, we watched Murray's show on a set in the parish hall. It was so old that Murray's face danced around in a wavy line of reds and greens. The report was subdued and lacked Murray's usual punch: he'd apparently been rattled by my information, however angrily he'd tossed me out this morning. Most of the report focused on the MexicoChicago drug route, with only ninety seconds on Lucian Frenada, "an upandcoming entrepreneur whose untimely death means a lot of questions with no answers. Was he the point man for a drug ring, as the five kilos of c.o.ke found in his shop last week suggest?

Was he murdered by a.s.sociates he'd run afoul of? Or was he the innocent bystander his sister and other friends claim?"

Murray segued from that to footage of the shop, footage of the c.o.ke inside a bolt of Tshirting, and some old footage of Lacey and Frenada in front of the very church where I was sitting. "Father Lou Corrigan, who trained Lucian Frenada as the city champion lightweight boxer in this building, wouldn't talk to Channel Thirteen, either about Frenada or his other prizewinning student, Lacey Dowell."

He went on with details of Lacey's life, showed footage of his twoweekold interview with her, and closed with a summary that seemed lame to me. Father Lou was furious, but I thought it was a much more muted report than Murray would have made without my input. Of course, the priest had known Frenada for thirty years. It was a personal story to him.

We were back in his study, still thrashing it out over a second pot of tea, when the doorbell rang, a harsh, loud buzzing that fitted the priest's own voice. He pushed back from the chair and moved out to the hall on his light dancing step.

I followed: if Lacey was bait in a Global trap I didn't want to be sitting under a crucifix waiting for it.

The star was alone, her cloud of red curls tucked inside a motorcycle helmet. No one would have known her in her nondescript jeans and jacket.

She put an arm around the priest. "I'm so sorry, Father Lou. Sorry about everything."

"Oh? And what do you have to be sorry for, miss? Something that you and I should talk about privately in a confessional?"

Her head jerked up and she squinted over his shoulder down the hall. When she saw me she moved away from Father Lou, and away from her sad drooping. "Who is that?"

"That's a detective, Magdalena," the priest said. "She's private, but she's got some questions about Lucy you would do well to answer."

Lacey turned toward the door, but Father Lou grabbed her left wrist in a businesslike grip and pulled her forward. "Your old playmate, and I have to call you to get you to come talk to me about him. That tells its own tale, Magdalena."

"Isn't this rather melodramatic?" Lacey said. "Midnight meetings in the church?"

"Why not?" I put in. "The whole of the last two weeks has been Bgrade garbage.

Did you talk to Alex Fisher about coming here? Is hers going to be the next knock on the door?"

"Alex doesn't know I'm here. She's making me nervous these days."

"This something that came on you suddenly after you saw the news about Frenada?"

I demanded.

"Girls-ladies, I mean. Let's go sit down. More light, less heat."

Father Lou put a muscular arm around each of us and propelled us back to his study. He came up to about my nose, but I wouldn't like to test the strength in those arms. He poured cold tea into three cups and set the pot down with a firm smack on the tray.

"Now, Magdalena, you'd better tell me everything you know about Lucy's death."

He spoke with an old authority over her.

"I don't know anything about his death. But-oh, I don't even know where to begin. I'm so confused."

She blinked tears away from her large blue eyes, but I didn't feel moved to pity, and Father Lou apparently didn't either. He fixed her with a hard stare and told her to save her dramatics for her movies. She flushed and bit her lip.

"What about the cocaine," Father Lou said. "Do you know anything about the drugs that were planted in his shop?"

"Planted? That isn't what happened." She shook her head. "I was shocked. I'd talked to Lucy at my hotel, oh, weeks ago, and he never breathed a word about it. Of course he wouldn't necessarily, but-but-it was unexpected, anyway."

"How do you know they weren't planted?" I asked. "Is that what Alex told you?

After I wrote you that Global was doing the broadcast tonight?"

"How do you know-she didn't-" Lacey stammered.

"Alex?" Father Lou said. "Oh, the girl from Hollywood. Don't lie about this, Magdalena. If she talked to you about it, I want to know."

Lacey's wide mouth contracted into a sulky pout. "When I read this Warshawski woman's note, I called Alex. Don't bite me: I know her, and I don't know Warshawski from a pit bull. Someone like me gets a million people a day saying they have special news or they can protect me from some weird s.h.i.t or other. I thought Warshawski wanted to scare me into hiring her detective services."

"That isn't implausible," I said. "But it doesn't explain why it rattled you so badly you had to call Alex about it. I wrote Ms. Dowell that Global was going to smear Frenada on television," I added to the priest. "I wanted to talk to Ms.

Dowell about it. Since I couldn't get a phone call in to her, I wrote her and waited in the lobby in case she wanted to talk to me. Half an hour later Global's Doberman showed up, very agitated."

"What did she tell you, Magdalena?" Father Lou demanded.

"She-Alex-she came to the Trianon and told me it was true, she even showed me a photograph they had of a kilo of cocaine inside a fabric bolt Lucy brought in from Mexico." Lacey looked pleadingly at the priest. "If you think I wouldn't come here because I'm coldhearted, you're so wrong. I didn't want to have to talk about Lucy with you if he was dealing drugs. You never could hear one bad word about Lucy. Not even when he was a lookout for the Lions when he was eleven. If you want to believe it was a plant, go ahead, but Alex warned me, warned me that Warshawski would try to get me caught in a smear campaign. And she warned me not to talk about it. It's one thing for Hugh Grant or some other male star to get in trouble with s.e.x and drugs, but when a woman does it, especially one getting to be my age, she looks like slime. Alex said it could kill me if it got around." Lacey looked at me. "I suppose you were hiding behind the potted palm in the lobby."

"You took her word for it without asking anyone else?" Father Lou said. "Your old comrade, who saved you from getting beat up, and you didn't even question what a television show was going to say about him? Did you see what they did to him tonight, that boy who worked day and night to keep a roof over his sister's head after her husband was killed?"

"Alex had a photo," Lacey said, but she looked at her hands.

"That's true, Ms. Dowell," I said. "That's very true."

Lacey flushed. "She had a photo; I saw the cocaine in a photo."