V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 22

"Ovarian cysts or cancer, which wasn't present when the doctors in Chicago opened her."

That not only effectively destroyed his smile but caused him to forget himself: he blurted out that the body was missing, that no autopsy had been performed.

"You do keep a lively interest in your prisoners, even after death," I marveled.

"It's true her body disappeared from the morgue before they could perform an autopsy, but the surgeon in the emergency room where she was sent did a detailed report on her abdominal cavity after he failed to save her life. He wondered if the peritonitis might have been caused by an ovarian or uterine rupture and looked specifically at those organs."

Of course I was making all that up, but it didn't matter. I was convinced that whatever had sent Nicola Aguinaldo to the hospital, it hadn't been an inflamed ovary. At any rate, for the first time since I'd come into his office, I'd made Ruzich uneasy. What was it he was afraid an autopsy would have shown?

"Why don't you let me see the model workshop where Ms. Aguinaldo was working when she took so ill she had to go to the hospital? If I can a.s.sure her grandfather that it's a safe environment, it might make him less inclined to sue."

He scowled, an ugly expression but easier to watch than his smile. "Definitely not. You have no reason to be involved in that part of my operation."

"Not even if that's where Ms. Aguinaldo's injuries occurred?" I suggested softly.

"She was not injured there, despite the wild rumors Veronica Fa.s.sler was spreading. Yes, Ms. Warshawski, we monitor all those phone calls. We have to.

It's the best way to keep track of drug and gang traffic between the cities and the prison. I'm sorry you made that long drive for nothing, but there's nothing else for you to do here. Unless you'd like to come up with the name of another prisoner to pretend you represent." Ruzich pushed his intercom and demanded that a CO escort me from the building.

32.

Midnight Caller I tried to think over what I'd learned from meeting the warden, but the long wait I'd had before seeing him meant I hit Chicago at rush hour. In the time I sat on the tollway, it was hard to think of much of anything except floating in Lake Michigan with a cold drink in my hand.

They had moved Veronica Fa.s.sler as soon as they overheard her conversation with me. Whether she had been sent to another of Illinois' women's prisons or out of state or was simply in solitary at Coolis didn't matter. What mattered was that Fa.s.sler knew something about Nicola Aguinaldo's death that the prison didn't want me to find out.

I couldn't force my mind beyond those elementary deductions. When I got home, eager to get out of my rayon trousers, it was hard for me not to bark at Mr.

Contreras, bustling into the hall with the dogs. Apparently the only effect last night's conversation had on him was to make him redouble his vigilance as the guardian of my gate.

I leaned against the railing, scratching the dogs' ears. I couldn't very well embroil him in my affairs and then refuse to talk to him, but while I told him about my day my hot, swollen feet occupied most of my mind.

Partway through my recital, the woman who lives across the hall from Mr.

Contreras opened her door. "I have a presentation to an important client tomorrow, and I don't need your dogs and your conversation going on in the background while I try to finish it. If you two have that much to say to each other, why don't you move in together? It would give the rest of the building some muchneeded peace and quiet."

"Living together don't guarantee peace for the building," Mr. Contreras said, his color heightened. "Maybe no one ever told you, but when you and your husband or boyfriend or whatever he is get to shouting at each other, even I can make out every word, and my hearing ain't a hundred percent these days."

Before the quarrel could build, I pushed myself upright and said I needed to take a cold shower and change out of my business clothes. The woman muttered something that ended with "show some consideration" and slammed her front door shut. Mitch barked sharply, to say he didn't like her att.i.tude, but I persuaded Mr. Contreras to take him inside and let me get some rest.

I lay in the tub for a long time, long after the grime of the drive and the prison were out of my skin and hair, trying to figure out what Baladine was up to. Maybe he only wanted to discredit me, possibly with a spectacular arrest for drug possession, rather than kill me outright, but in a way it didn't matter.

I couldn't keep on this way, not knowing where the next menace might come from.

Whether Baladine was carrying on a war of nerves, or he wanted me dead or arrested, or all three, I couldn't run a business when I was afraid to be both in my office and in my home. I couldn't turn to my oldest friends for fear of jeopardizing their lives or families. Murray, who I'd worked with for so many years, was carrying a bucket for the other side this time. Mary Louise had been frightened into leaving me alone.

If only I could get the story together I might be able to find a way to make it public. It had something to do with Coolis and something to do with Frenada's factory, although how those two places came together on Nicola Aguinaldo's frail body I didn't understand. I needed to get in touch with Morrell and insist that he take me to Aguinaldo's mother before Baladine succeeded in whatever his plan was.

When I finally climbed out of the tub it was dark outside. I could hear the steady popping of firecrackers as people in the area geared up for the Fourth of July, coming up on Sat.u.r.day.

When I was a child my father used to take me for a walk on the Fourth, telling me a thrilling version of the War of Independence, stressing the role of General Kosciuszko and other Poles in the American Revolution. My mother always followed my father's tale with a reminder that it was Italian explorers who found the New World and made it possible for the English and Poles to leave Europe.

In the afternoons we'd make a picnic with my father's pals on the force and my mother's vocal coach and his daughter. My mother would make my favorite dessert-an Umbrian rice pudding with currant jelly and sweet wine sauce-and I'd race around screaming with the other children, playing baseball and wishing I had a big family instead of just my one cousin, BoomBoom.

I wondered what the Baladines taught their children on the Fourth of July.

Perhaps something instructive about free markets.

I took that bitter thought to bed with me. Despite my fatigue I couldn't relax.

Coolis, Aguinaldo, Frenada chased through my mind, sometimes with Baladine in pursuit, sometimes Alex Fisher. I was just deciding I'd do better to get up and pay bills than lie churning over these profitless ideas when my front doorbell rang.

No one in Chicago pays calls at midnight if they have your wellbeing in mind. I pulled my jeans on and grabbed my gun from the closet safe before calling down through the intercom.

A voice quavered, "It's me. It's Robbie Baladine."

I stuck the gun in the back of my jeans and went downstairs. Sure enough, Robbie Baladine was standing, by himself, on the other side of the door. His plump cheeks were dirtstained, and he looked exhausted. I opened the front door at the same time that Mr. Contreras came into the hallway with Mitch and Peppy: he probably thought Morrell was paying another latenight call.

When the dogs bounded forward to greet him, Robbie stood stock still and turned white. Yelling at the dogs to stay, I caught the boy as he started to crumple. I caught him before he hit the floor. His deadweight hit my low back and hamstrings like a pile driver.

"Put the dogs inside, will you?" I panted to Mr. Contreras. "And let's get this young man warm."

Robbie hadn't quite fainted. While my neighbor dragged the reluctant dogs back to his apartment, I helped Robbie to the bottom of the stairwell and made him sit with his head between his legs. He was shaking with suppressed sobs. His skin was clammy, his sweat acrid with the smell of fear.

"I'm such a weakling, aren't I, fainting at the sight of a dog," he gasped.

"Is that what happened? Mitch is a pretty big dog, and he took you by surprise.

And you look done in. Don't worry about it."

Mr. Contreras returned with an old sweater and helped me wrap it around Robbie's shoulders. "This a friend of yours, doll? He needs hot cocoa. You stay here with him; I'll heat up some milk."

The door opposite Mr. Contreras's opened and the woman making the important presentation stormed out in sweat clothes. "Did you buy this stairwell to use as your living room?" she demanded. "If not, could you entertain upstairs so that people like me who work for a living can get some rest?"

Behind Mr. Contreras's door, Mitch took exception to our neighbor's hostility and let out a sharp bark.

"Think you can manage the stairs?" I said to Robbie. "If this woman gets any more excited she'll have a stroke, and then we'll be up all night carting her to the hospital and you'll never be able to tell me why you came or how you got here."

"I'm only asking you to show some consideration," the woman said.

I didn't think Robbie needed the added stress of me getting into a fight, so I bit back the various remarks that sprang to mind and concentrated on helping him up the stairs. When I turned my back on her, the woman gasped and ran back inside her apartment. It was only when we reached the second landing that I realized she must have seen my gun. I laughed a little to myself: that might be the last time she p.i.s.sed to me about noise in the building.

We went slowly; by the time we reached my door Mr. Contreras was huffing up behind us with a tray and three cups of cocoa. The old man is at his best in dealing with the halt and lame. I left him roughly coaxing Robbie to drink some cocoa while I took my gun back to my bedroom.

"You must think I'm pretty weird, coming here like this and fainting and everything," he said when I came back.

I pulled the piano bench next to the armchair. "I don't think anything about you, but I'm about to burst with curiosity. Your sister said you'd run away. How did you get to Wrigleyville?"

"Is that where we are? By Wrigley Field? I've been here with my dad." Some of the strain eased out of his face-if I lived in known territory it couldn't be as scary as he'd been thinking. "I came how Nicola used to-I took my bike to the bus and rode the bus to the train. But then I got lost trying to find you and I didn't have enough money for a cab or anything, so I've been walking and walking, I bet I've walked five miles. That would make BB and Eleanor delirious with joy if they knew I got that much exercise in one afternoon."

"Who are BB and Eleanor?" Mr. Contreras asked.

"Parents," I explained briefly. "Baladine's nickname at Annapolis was BBgun Baladine."

"He loves it," Robbie said. "He's such a heman, it proves it when people call him that. Only-only I'm not. He hates that. Or hates me; he wishes Madison and Utah had been the boys and me the girl, he said if I was a girl he could dress me in-in pink ruff-ruffles."

His teeth began to chatter. I moved over to the arm of the chair and forced some cocoa into him, giving Mr. Contreras a warning sign to keep quiet. I was afraid even a man as benign as my neighbor might appear threatening to this very tired child.

"You're exhausted," I said in a matteroffact voice. "You're probably dehydrated too, from walking so much. That's why your body is acting up on you.

Everybody's does when they're overtired and then have to deal with a strange situation: it happens to me, which is how I know. Finish this cocoa before you try to say anything else."

"Really?" He looked at me hopefully. "I thought-thought it was only because I was a-all the names he calls me."

I supposed Baladine stood over him and called him a f.a.ggot or queer or other names that pa.s.s for insults with someone like him. "Namecalling is a horrible kind of torture, especially when it comes from your parents. It leaves you without any defenses."

He gulped the drink and kept a death grip on the cup as the best way to hold on to his wayward feelings. When he seemed calm enough to speak, I asked why he'd come to me.

"That was probably the stupidest thing of all, me coming to you, because what can you do? Only, when I saw he was going to send me to-to boot camp, I thought I couldn't take another time like that, like when they made me go to the camp for fat kids, that was horrible enough, but at least everyone else was overweight too, but boot camp, that's like when all the other kids get to haze you for being queer or different somehow. Like my cousins, when I have to go spend a month with them, they play football, they're supposed to toughen me up."

I blinked. "Is this a definite plan?"

"Oh, yes." He looked at me bleakly. "Don't tell me it's wrong to snoop in his briefcase, it's the only way I know what he's up to, and I saw the fax from this place in South Carolina-of course anyone who does anything with prisons or army stuff, they fall over themselves for a chance to help out BB and this guy, he's the head of this military school and they run a summer boot camp. So he faxes BB that they'll be expecting me Sat.u.r.day night, I can start Monday morning. BB and Eleanor can put me on a plane to Columbia when they take off for France. Not that I wanted to go to France with those ghastly Poilevy twins and my sisters, watch them swimming all day long to get ready for Mom's swim meet. She's doing this thing for charity on Labor Day, and of course she wants Madison to beat everyone. But I'd rather clock Madison and Rhiannon Trant in the pool than go to military camp."

"But you disappeared two nights ago, didn't you? Where have you been in the meantime?"

He looked at his hands. "I hid out in our grounds. When BB and Eleanor went to bed I'd go sleep in the cabana. Only the gardeners found me this morning and I was afraid they'd tell Eleanor."

"Your folks are looking for you-that's how I know you left home. Do you think they would call the police, or will they rely on Carnifice's private security force?"

"I'm so stupid, aren't I, I didn't think about that," Robbie muttered. "I only thought I should get away as fast as I could. Of course if he wants me he'll sic his whole team on finding me. Not that he really wants me, but no one is supposed to outsmart BB Baladine."

"I think you're pretty smart," I said comfortably. "You hid out right under your parents' noses for two days. You found me, and that's not so easy for a suburban kid who gets driven everywhere, to navigate a city like Chicago at night.

"Here's the problem. I don't mind putting you up, but your father is on my case in a serious way, and if he came here looking for you I wouldn't have any way to keep him from taking you: you're a minor child and I have no legal relationship to you. Is there anyone you can go to who would stick up for you with your dad?

A teacher, or an aunt? Your grandparents?"

He shook his head, miserable. "I'm like this really weird person in my family.

Even my grandmother keeps telling BB he's too soft on me. If I ran away to her she'd probably put me in handcuffs and take me to military camp herself."

Mr. Contreras cleared his throat. "He could stay with me, doll. I got that sofa bed."

Robbie turned white but didn't say anything.

"Is it the dogs?" I asked. "They look ferocious because they're huge, but they're pretty gentle."

"I know it's sissy to be scared of dogs," he whispered, "but it's one of the-BB-some of his clients work with Rottweiler's, he thought it would be funny-it made everyone laugh-Nicola, she tried to get the dogs to leave and one of them bit her."

"What did he do?" My hand on his shoulder had clenched reflexively into a fist, and I had to force the fingers to relax.

"He brought them home with him. Also the handler. It was kind of when he started running Carnifice. This will kill you or cure you, that's what he's always saying to me. So he sort of, well, he didn't really sic the dogs on me, tell them to attack me, just to corner me, in the family room, I was watching television, they stayed there and stayed there and I-I couldn't help it, I had to go to the bathroom so bad-"

His shoulders started to heave again. I kept my arm around him but drank some cocoa myself to try to keep my own stomach from turning inside out on me. Family night at the Baladines. Fun for everyone.

"Now listen here, young man," Mr. Contreras spoke roughly. "I been a soldier, I been a machinist, I spent my life with men who could take your daddy apart and line up all his arms and legs in a row and not even work up a sweat, and let me tell you that is not how a real man acts, setting a dog on his kid."

"d.a.m.n straight," I said. "Why don't we bring the dogs up here for the night and let Robbie sleep downstairs with you? That way if BB shows up he'll get an earful of Mitch but no son."

Robbie cheered up at that. I helped him back down the stairs to Mr. Contreras's and held the dogs while he went inside. The old man said he reckoned Robbie could wear one of his pajama shirts to sleep in tonight and they'd get him some blue jeans and Tshirts in the morning.

"I know you're really tired, but could you answer one question for me before you go to bed?" I was unfolding the sofa bed while Mr. Contreras brought in clean sheets. "What were you wanting to tell me when you phoned me last week?"

He'd forgotten about it in the stress of his journey. That phone call to me was what made BB and Eleanor decide to send him to military camp, but it had lost its importance to him. He blinked his eyes anxiously, then suddenly remembered.

"You know that man who got pulled out of Lake Michigan? I'm pretty sure he came out to see BB. With Mr. Trant, you know."

"Teddy Trant from Global? Are you sure?"

"Come on, doll. Boy's asleep on his feet. This will wait until tomorrow."

"You're right. Sorry, I wasn't thinking," I said, but Robbie, taking off his military shirt with a sigh of relief and putting on one of Mr. Contreras's violently striped pajama tops, said, "Of course I recognize Mr. Trant, and I'm pretty sure it was the guy I saw on television with him. He was really, really angry, but I couldn't hear what he said and, well, they kind of locked me in the nursery with Rosario and Utah. On account of Mom said I was-a little snoop-who'd go telling tales out of school. But I woke up in the middle of the night because they were standing under my window and Mr. Trant was saying that should solve the problem for the time being if only Abigail-Mrs. Trant, you know-didn't start getting helpful ideas again."

"Okay, Victoria. Boy's going to bed now. No more detecting tonight."

"Ms. Warshawski, thank you for letting me stay here, and you too, sir, only I'm sorry I don't know your name, and I'm sorry about the dogs, about making them leave. Maybe-maybe tomorrow I won't be so chicken around them."

I squeezed his shoulder. "Get a good sleep. Like the man said, tomorrow is another day."

It was only as I started back up the stairs that I remembered my fears about BB bugging my apartment. I hoped I was wrong, but my stomach turned cold as I imagined what Baladine might do next.

33.

Thrown in the Tank Lemour arrested me as I unlocked my front door Friday afternoon. He flung me against the stone railing and yanked my purse from my shoulder. A Du Page County deputy sheriff who was with him tried to calm him down and was thrust roughly aside.

When Lemour had the cuffs locked, he flashed a warrant under my nose for the arrest of one Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, acting upon information and belief that she did unlawfully and without the permission of the parents seize and hold against his will Robert Durant Baladine, a minor child not her own.