V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 29

Thirtytwo children were entered in the contest, I read in my packet. The meet was divided into different heats for children of different ages and abilities.

Swimming was scheduled to start at one, but the Carnifice and Global sponsors had plenty of entertainment lined up for both before and after. Lacey Dowell was supposed to make an appearance, and the first three Virgin films were being shown in a tent behind the garage.

The event had grossed sixtyseven thousand dollars to be shared by three charities dedicated to children with disabilities, innercity children, and children's athletic programs. Carnifice Security and Global Entertainment had each contributed ten thousand dollars. It was a nice mediagenic event, and plenty of media was swarming about.

"Jennifer! They want us inside in five minutes to do a press conference."

It was Eleanor Baladine, speaking so close to me I jumped. She was on the other side from me of a large shrub with spiky leaves. I sipped my Malvern water thoughtfully and kept an eye on the flash of turquoise linen, which was all I could see of her.

"I'm annoyed with Abigail," Eleanor continued. "She says Rhiannon got tired of swimming when we were in Limoux and doesn't want to compete. I wish she had said something before we had the programs printed: I tried telling her how bad it looks for one of the organizers to withdraw her own daughter from compet.i.tion. I thought it was ridiculous the way she kept running off with her daughter to Toulouse for little shopping trips, as if they were girlfriends together. My girls were in the pool six hours a day and loved every minute of it."

"But you're so intense, Eleanor," Jennifer Poilevy said. "Not everyone has your drive. Of course your girls inherited your compet.i.tive spirit. It's a shame about poor Robbie, but I do wish you and BB had brought him to France with you.

He might have kept the twins from terrifying me with their climbing and jumping.

Half the time we were there, I was scared they were going to be brought in on stretchers."

"We certainly never have to worry about that with Robbie," Eleanor said dryly.

"Eleanor-there you are." Baladine had come up to the women from the other side of the house. The sound of his voice woke in me such a frenzy of hatred and of helpless rage that I had to move away before I blew my cover by leaping through the shrubbery and strangling him.

Before I got out of earshot I heard Baladine say, "Did your sister say anything about visiting Robbie at Camp Muggerton on Friday? Major Enderby called to say the boy's Aunt Claudia took him out for dinner and got him back after lightsout."

My stomach jumped. I hadn't expected the camp commandant to check up on a family visitor. That meant I had to move as fast as possible.

I scurried past the media tent into the kitchen, since the bathroom we media folk were allowed to use was there. Rosario the nanny was washing gla.s.sware while caterers a.s.sembled monstrous platters of shrimp, mushroom tartlets, and other delicacies. The contrast to the kitchen at Coolis, where roaches crawled over congealing piles of grease, and women swore at each other as they lugged dented pots around, made my anger start to boil again. When a waiter offered me a tray of salmon tartare with a perfect circle of caviar in the middle, I turned him away with more fury than manners.

The bathroom stood next to a swinging door leading into the body of the house. I pushed on it-anyone could make a mistake-and a Carnifice guard sprang to life in the hall beyond. He saw my green media badge and said, "House is offlimits to guests, ma'am. If you're looking for the bathroom it's next to this door. And don't you want to be at the press conference? It's starting in two minutes."

I murmured an apology and slipped into the bathroom. The first swim heat would start immediately after the press conference. It was the one for the littlest children, in which the Baladines' younger daughter was competing. Both Eleanor and BB would be at the pool for that, or at least Robbie had seemed to think so.

"They'll both want to see the girls beat everyone else, or if they lose, BB and Eleanor will want to show them everything they did wrong. They love that kind of stuff."

He told me that at dinner Friday evening. When he came into the visitors' room at Camp Muggerton on lagging steps, his head down, I felt an uncomfortable parallel to the visitors' room at Coolis, but when he saw me his face lit up.

I had been afraid he'd blow my cover out of surprise, but after a moment's confusion he said, "Oh, I thought-oh, it's you, Aunt Claudia."

Over chicken and mashed potatoes at a diner in Columbia, he begged me to take him away. I wished I could but told him that would put real teeth into his father's kidnapping charge and I might not manage an acquittal.

He started crying, apologizing between sobs, but Camp Muggerton was a miserable place, the hazing was horrible, he couldn't get anything right, he was always last at everything. And they were on strict orders about his diet, did I know that?

I knew that-Major Enderby had stressed it when I was sent to his office for a visitor's pa.s.s. The major was pleased to see a family member paying a visit: most of the boys were home for the holiday weekend, and young Robert felt left out, having to stay in camp, but Commander and Mrs. Baladine thought it better he not be put in the way of the temptation of a big party. I gave my most dazzling smile and nodded gravely when the major told me Robbie was not allowed fat or sweets of any kind-so no Big Macs and shakes, ma'am.

I said that Robbie's weight was a trial to the whole family and everyone wondered where it came from. Certainly not my sister's and my side, although Commander Baladine's mother had been a plump little woman.

I told Robbie about the conversation while helping him decide whether he wanted caramel or chocolate sauce on his sundae. He had lost weight, his soft chubbiness replaced by something worse, a kind of gaunt hunger.

"You've lost weight too, Ms. Warshawski. Was that because of being in jail? Was jail as horrible as this camp? You don't want ice cream?"

I'm not much of a sweets eater, but I got a cone to keep him company. As we ate our ice cream, Robbie sketched a plan of the Baladine house for me-where Baladine's study was, where the controls for the house security system were, and where the surveillance cameras were trained. I had explained I wanted to know because it had to do with Nicola's death.

"But I want to use the information to-well, in part to get your father to stop trying to destroy me and my business, and in part to pay him back for the miseries I endured in the prison he runs. I want you to think carefully before you betray your parents to me."

His tearstreaked face contorted in angry hurt. "Don't start preaching the Ten Commandments to me like they do here. I know I'm supposed to honor my father and mother, but how come they never think of me? It's like there's something horrible wrong with me, I know they wish I'd disappear on them, I wish I could, I wish I was strong enough to kill myself."

I gave him what awkward consolation I could-not that deep down his parents really loved him, but that deep down he was a fine and unusual person and that he needed to hold on to that idea. After we had talked for a time, I was relieved to see him start to look happier. I asked him if he wanted more time to think over what I wanted to do, but he said it was fine with him, as long as Utah didn't get hurt.

"She's kind of a brat, but I like her."

"I don't think anyone's going to get hurt. Not physically, anyway, although I'm hoping your father may have to find a new job, perhaps in a different city. That may be hard on your mother."

He ate another ice cream while he helped me draw up plans of the interior of the house. Afterward we sat and talked, about life and what could lie in store for him after he outgrew Eleanor and BB. I hadn't noticed the shadows drawing in on the town; we were going to be late for taps. I bustled Robbie into the rental car and drove like mad for the camp.

Before dropping him at the guardhouse I gave him a handful of twenties. "This is enough for bus fare from Columbia back to Chicago, if you decide you can't stick it out here any longer. Sew it into the waistband of your shorts, but for pity's sake, don't use it until I know if your dad is going to drop the kidnapping charge. Or until after my trial, whichever comes first."

The escape hatch seemed to breathe a little bit of optimism into him. I apologized to the guard for making my nephew late and begged him not to blame Robbie: I had gotten lost, and that wasn't the boy's fault. I had thought another dazzling smile would take care of matters, but now here was Major Enderby calling the Baladines to tell them Aunt Claudia had violated lightsout.

I waited in the kitchen bathroom until I heard the loudspeaker heralding the start of the swim meet. The bathroom had a second door, locked right now, that led into the maid's room. It took about fifteen seconds to pick that lock. I moved quickly, in case Rosario was getting a break while the swimming started, only stopping for a moment in front of a tin icon to the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was nailed over the prim single bed. I whispered a little plea for protection, although perhaps the Virgin would feel that not even Baladine's iniquities warranted protecting an intruder.

The back stairs led to Utah's and Madison's bedrooms and their playroom. On the other side of the playroom was a hall leading to Baladine's home office. I studied the location of the monitoring cameras in the bedrooms, playroom, and hall on my pencil map and ducked around the lenses, creeping into Baladine's office on my hands and knees.

Robbie said the system was voice and motionactivated. My hands and knees rustling on the carpet wouldn't turn it on, but a cough might.

Inside Baladine's office, I crawled along the edge of the room and came to the desk from behind. Lying flat, I stuck up an arm and found the switch for his inoffice video monitor and turned it off. I got to my feet and held my breath.

After a couple of minutes, when no security guards appeared, I relaxed enough to look around.

I found myself listening tensely for noise. The house was wellsoundproofed, and the cheers from the pool came through as only a faint echo. I might have half an hour; I needed to control my nerves and make the most of it.

The room held everything a manly man wanted in his home office, from the b.u.t.tery black leather couch in a window alcove to the electronics on the zebrawood desk, which included a shredder, a fax, a scanner, and a videophone.

I switched on the computer, covering my hand with a Kleenex-I thought it would be impossible to explain away rubber gloves if someone came in on me. The system came up and asked for a pa.s.sword. Baladine's ship number was what Robbie thought his father would use. When that didn't let me in I tried the name of the ship.

Bingo. To get into Carnifice files I needed another pa.s.sword. I tried the ship ID again, but the machine preferred his service dates.

I called up the homesecurity system and set the hall camera to appear in a split screen of the computer. That would give me a little advance warning if Baladine was coming. I checked the doors on the far side of the room. One led to a closet, another to a bathroom, and a third to the far hallway.

I logged on to the email server and called up the list of clients. Five of my own former clients had little stars by their names; Darraugh Graham had a question mark. I had memorized what I wanted to say and typed quickly, nervously proofreading and correcting my text. Did I want to send to the entire recipient list? I did.

Next I typed in my own media list and composed another message. When I'd emailed my media list I breathed more easily. I deleted all the messages, both from the outbox and from the trash file, so that Baladine wouldn't know from looking at his mailbox that someone had been using the server. Even if he found me now, I'd done enough to cause him some discomfort.

Just as a precaution I copied his homesecurity file onto a floppy, copied his client list onto another floppy, then, while I was still logged on to his network, started looking through his inbox for any messages that might be about me.

The searches had taken too much time. I was sweating, wondering if I'd better pack up and go, when I saw Baladine and Alex Fisher appear on the hall camera. I turned off the machine, grabbed my floppies, and dived into the closet at the back of the room. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought the closet door must surely vibrate in rhythm with it.

The two came into the room, talking in such low tones all I could make out was the murmur of their voices. Sweat began soaking my shirtsleeves as I imagined a telltale floppy or tissue alerting them to an intruder.

I didn't know whether to laugh or scream when I realized that Baladine and Alex hadn't come up to look at his computer, but to grab time together while Eleanor was focused on the pool, although I had one bad moment when Baladine spoke loudly enough for me to hear, saying he didn't remember switching off his office camera. After twenty minutes of frenzied thrashing on the leather couch and the murmured endearments of one barracuda for another, a hand grasped the closet doork.n.o.b.

It opened a crack, but Baladine said, "No, no, my dear, bathroom's the other door-that's just a supply closet."

Alex, sloppy Alex, didn't close the door all the way. "I need to get back downstairs, BB. I just got beeped-that means Lacey Dowell's limo is coming up the drive, and Teddy will want me on hand for her. She's been temperamental since Frenada died, and we don't want her going off halfc.o.c.ked to some reporter."

"Like Ryerson?" Baladine said.

"Ryerson was a newspaperman from day one. I shouldn't have let him persuade Teddy he could handle television-he was in way over his head. Although we still haven't found anyone who can handle that "Behind Scenes in Chicago' segment.

Anyway, as the man said, enough of this lovemaking-on with your clothes."

"Want to see the replay on television while you dress?"

"You have a camera back here? G.o.d, I thought Teddy Trant was infatuated with his body, but not even he videos himself in the act."

"I'm infatuated with your body. This is so I can watch it over and over."

"Right, BB. I'll take that. I don't need to see myself on the Net, and you're just the kind of guy to make that kind of use of a tape."

They had a few more minutes grappling, with Baladine laughing and then cursing at her for being a d.a.m.ned b.i.t.c.h. I wasn't an Alex fan, but I hoped that meant she'd wrested the tape from him. Then a sound of hand on flesh and a furious outburst from Alex. I put my eye on the crack in the door. Baladine had Alex's left arm twisted back and was putting pressure on her wrist. Her face was contorted in pain and she dropped the tape.

He laughed and said, "I thought you'd see it my way, my dear. But don't worry, I won't share you with the Internet. The world at large can't appreciate you the way I do."

She swore at him but finally left when Eleanor phoned up to say Lacey was here and they were trying to find Alex. The door shut behind her. Baladine washed off noisily in the bathroom, humming "Anchors Aweigh." In another minute he was gone as well.

By then I was so shaken that I was tempted to quit with what I had-but I didn't know when I'd ever have another chance like this one. I turned off his personal camera again and went back to the computer. Shutting it off without exiting properly had made it unhappy; I had to wait an extra five minutes while it examined all its files. While it cycled through itself, I looked around for the tape he'd just made. He'd left it on the bathroom sink. I shrugged and slipped it into my pocket.

Finally I got back to Baladine's email server and went to his inbox. In June, on the date I'd been in Georgia, I found someone calling himself Shark at AOL reporting on successful dropoff.

Subject out of town. 3 packs of Colombian Gold successfully deployed in location 1, 4 others at location 2.

My stomach so tight that my incision started to ache, I copied all of Baladine's correspondence with Shark. I logged off the Web and went into his data files to search for any material about me, or Shark. I found his detailed report from LifeStory and reports on the surveillance of my apartment. These files identified Shark as D.L. Not that I needed an acronym to tell me it was Douglas Lemour, but I was pleased that Baladine hadn't felt a need for real secrecy.

As recently as three days ago, D.L. reported a cruise around my neighborhood to make sure I hadn't surfaced. He was also looking at Lotty's place off and onas the safe house the subject usually chooses. I scrolled quickly through the rest of the file and came to an expense report. Five thousand dollars to D.L. for security work. It didn't seem like enough of a payoff for the amount of misery he'd caused me.

My heart was starting to beat too hard to focus on the screen. I copied the file and shut the system down. It was high time I was gone.

On a shelf in the closet where I'd waited out Alex and Baladine, he kept ca.s.settes from the video monitor. After his byplay with Alex, I was curious to see them. I pulled one from the last month Nicola had worked here, another from six months previously. I peeled off the labels, stuck them on the blank ca.s.settes I'd brought with me, and put the blanks in the empty slots.

I was halfway down the hall when I remembered Frenada. I counted dates frantically on my fingers. Even though I didn't have a third blank to use as a replacement, I ran back to the study and took the tape for two weeks before July Fourth. As I was leaving the second time, I remembered to switch Baladine's vanity recorder back on. I hurried down the hall again, through the girls' playroom, past acres of Barbies and stuffed animals, and down the stairs to the kitchen. I stopped briefly in Rosario's room to thank the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I'd been upstairs ninety minutes-nerves had made it seem even longer. I slipped outside and down the drive without anyone stopping me. Morrell was waiting for me at the bend in the road. His face was pinched with anxiety, but I felt lighterhearted than I had in months.

45.

Fugitive Morrell arrived early the next morning with the papers and a couple of cappuccinos-Father Lou breakfasted on sweet tea and bacon sandwiches and didn't keep coffee or fruit in the rectory. I'd already been up for a few hours when Morrell arrived. Gameday nerves, I suppose.

Father Lou had been up for hours, too. He started Labor Day as he did every day, with ma.s.s. This morning he startled me considerably by asking me to serve, since none of the children in his acolytes group had appeared. When I told him I'd never even been baptized, he grunted and said he supposed some hairsplitter would consider that a barrier, but would I at least keep him company by reading the lesson.

I stood in the Lady Chapel of the enormous church and read from the book of Job about how G.o.d desires humans to see the light. As Father Lou began the prayers for the ma.s.s, he prayed first for the souls of Lucian Frenada and Nicola Aguinaldo, for the working people of Chicago, for everyone who worked hard and had little to show for it. Along the way he surprised me by asking for light on my enterprise, to see whether it was good to let it prosper. I thought again of Miss Ruby, warning me that revenge didn't make a good meal.

At the end of the ma.s.s I stood in front of a wood statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, stubbornly arguing my case in my head. Even if it was revenge, didn't I have a right to live and work in this town? I said as much to Father Lou while he fried bacon in the cavernous kitchen.

He grunted again. "Not saying you don't, my girl. Turning the other cheek isn't the only advice Our Lord gives people. Just saying you need to remember you're not Almighty G.o.d sitting in judgment on Robert Baladine. Not why I asked you to read the lesson, though-wasn't trying to teach you a lesson." He laughed heartily at his little pun. "I wanted some company. It's a big cold church to celebrate ma.s.s in by myself."

Morrell's arrival cut the theology discussion short. He dropped the papers in front of me with a coffee and a bag of Michigan peaches.

"Triple Crown, Warshawski. All three Chicago dailies, not to mention the gorilla from New York."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the stack from him. The gorilla was on top and began with its usual rotund phrases.

CONFUSION REIGNS AT CARNIFICE SECURITY.

Oak Brook, Ill.- The Illinois prairie in this upscale community west of Chicago has been replaced by smooth sod and cool white marble, but inside the Carnifice office tower, life is anything but placid on this Labor Day. Robert Baladine is emphatically contradicting an email message received by Carnifice clients yesterday announcing his resignation as chairman and CEO of Carnifice Security, while his staff scurries to explain how a third party could have breached the security provider's own defenses to post messages on Mr. Baladine's email server.

These messages bear the unmistakable "fingerprint" of Mr. Baladine's personal email address. They say, in part, that impending publicity about alleged misconduct at the Coolis correctional facility that Carnifice runs is forcing Mr. Baladine to resign (see Page C23 for the complete text of the email received by Ajax Insurance in Chicago). The misconduct is an alleged use of the Coolis correctional facility to manufacture Tshirts and jackets for the Global Entertainment company. This is in violation of Illinois law, which forbids sale of prison manufactures outside the state prison system. Congressman Blair Yerkes (RIll.) has called for a complete investigation of the prison to see whether there is any truth to the allegation. "I have known BB Baladine since we hunted together as boys, and I utterly repudiate the suggestion that he has lied."

In the meantime, more disturbing to Carnifice clients is the possibility that an outsider could penetrate Carnifice's own computer. It means that confidential-often highly volatile-data entrusted to the security firm is at risk for dissemination across the Web. As Ajax Chairman Ralph Devereux said, "From our standpoint, we're left with two equally unpleasant possibilities: either Robert Baladine is lying about his resignation, or a hacker has been able to bypa.s.s all of Carnifice's security measures. Either way, the instability of the company's head honcho leaves us wondering whether Carnifice is the right company to handle our most private matters."

Various papers and television stations also received email from the Carnifice server, describing the manufacturing relationship between Carnifice and Global at the Coolis prison site. Because the source of the report could not be verified, it is not clear whether the information is accurate or whether it comes from a disgruntled Carnifice employee. Efforts to view the prison shop have been rebuffed by Coolis authorities, but state lawmakers are demanding an inquiry.

Mr. Baladine would not return phone calls to this paper, but Global Entertainment spokeswoman Alexandra Fisher says Global is considering the possibility that a local private investigator with a grudge against Baladine may have perpetrated the vandalism. The investigator, V. I. Warshawski, spent a month at Coolis after Mr. Baladine had her arrested on kidnapping charges.

Although Ms. Warshawski escaped with what physician Dr. Charlotte Herschel calls brainthreatening injuries, Ms. Fisher says no one actually knows the detective's whereabouts. Finding the solo investigator is Carnifice Security's first priority. (See Page B45 for coverage of some of Ms. Warshawski's investigations into industrial espionage.) Father Lou was reading the report in the SunTimes, which gave the story the most attention of any of the Chicago papers. The HeraldStar, as a Global paper, ran a oneparagraph story in the business section that sounded as though there'd been a brief snafu in the Carnifice email server. The Star didn't mention the Global Tshirt connection at Coolis. The Tribune ran a half column in the middle of Marshall Field's big Labor Day advertising spread.

"So now what?" Morrell asked when I'd finished reading. "Wait for the Carnifice clients to drop like flies and come running to Warshawski Investigative Services for help?"

I made a face. "They're busy doing damage control at Carnifice. And the CEO of Warshawski et cetera had better surface if she wants any clients. I think the next thing is a media show. For which we need secure s.p.a.ce. That, I think, will get BB so furious that he's likely to come for me in person. I want to put together a little tape of all my bits and pieces of pictures. Make some bulletpoint slides-everyone feels they've gotten real information if you give it to them in bullet points. And I want a VCR so I can watch Baladine's home videos. He was taping himself having s.e.x with Alex Fisher yesterday. It struck me as funny that the guy keeps his old homesecurity tapes, so I took three."

Father Lou stared at me in disgust. "Man photographs himself having intercourse?

Did the girl know?"

"She tried to get the tape from him, but he wouldn't let her." I didn't feel like explaining that I had it now. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it.

"Got a VCR in the school you can use," the priest said. "I'm still not sure whether you're doing the right thing, not sure I should encourage you since you stole the tapes you want to look at, but the man Baladine seems to do people a variety of harm. Set it up for you, then I have to meet with members of the parish council. Got a bunch of kids coming, cleaning out the crypt before school starts tomorrow. Parish picnic this afternoon. Lots to get done."

I ran down to my room and picked up the tapes I'd taken from Baladine's closet yesterday. The three of us walked through the church to a door that connected to the school. The dark vaulted s.p.a.ce was full of life as a group of boys shouted to each other behind the altar: "Bet you it's full of bones." "Yeah, Carlos here is going to faint when he sees one of those arms coming after him, ain't you, man?"

Father Lou interrupted them with a goodnatured shout that they needed to be more afraid of him than of any bones and he'd be back in a minute to make sure they were clearing out the old hymnals. He undid the dead bolt and led us into another long unlit hallway. He walked quickly in the semidarkness. Morrell and I kept tripping on things like loose tiles as we tried to keep pace. Father Lou took us up a back staircase to the school library. There he reluctantly decided he needed light to see what he was doing and turned on one dim desk lamp.

When he saw that Morrell and I knew how to set up the VCR, he went back downstairs to see how his hooligans were doing in the crypt. I started with the tape for the week that Frenada died.

We got a series of disconnected frames from the voiceactivated system of Rosario waking Utah and Madison, of Eleanor starting work with them in the pool and then turning off the camera. And then Frenada was poolside with Trant and Baladine. The little red date in the corner identified it as June 26, the night Frenada died. Trant said he understood Frenada was telling people that he, Trant, had stolen a Tshirt and he was tired of hearing about it. Baladine must have turned the camera off at that point because the next scene was the following day with Rosario in the nursery.