V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 9

I was actually feeling edgy enough to try the lab. Of course no one was answering on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I worked my way through the voice menu and left a message in the mailbox of the guy who had signed the report on the Trans Am.

Sunday morning I went out with the dogs for another early swim, keeping an eye open for Lemour. Back home I told Mr. Contreras I would take Peppy to the office with me for company. I a.s.sured him I'd be back by four: he and the dogs and I were joining Mary Louise and her foster sons for a picnic. Mary Louise and I get together once a week to go over work; this week we'd decided to combine it with a family outing.

"Okay, doll, okay. You got a water dish down there? It's too hot for the princess to go all day without drinking."

I bit back a sharp retort. "Her comfort is my main object in life. And my office is airconditioned. I hope no animalrights people are out throwing yellow paint on her today, because she just won't give up that big old fur coat, not even in June, will you, girl?"

Peppy grinned in happy agreement and clattered down the stairs with me, her tail waving a pointed putdown at Mitch, left at home with my neighbor. At my office she ran first to Tessa Reynolds's studio. Tessa is a sculptor. These days she was working with marble; the dust made her short dreadlocks glitter under her bright lights. She waved a muscular forearm at me, gave the dog a quick scratch, but was too deep in her work to take a break.

If Tessa wouldn't stop to talk I had no choice but to go to work myself. While my computer came up I pulled out my phone books and started calling everyone in the metropolitan area named Morrell. I didn't try anything smart-just the unvarnished truth: V. I. Warshawski, private investigator, looking for the man asking questions of immigrants in Uptown. Of course half the people weren't home, but those who were either didn't know what I was talking about or affected not to.

"Enough, Warshawski, get to the stuff you know you need to do," I muttered, inserting a CDROM with a crossdirectory for Georgia phones and addresses.

Checking phone numbers was mindless work; my thoughts kept creeping back to Aguinaldo. Baladine said she'd faked an illness to get sent to the hospital.

Mary Louise said the prison had reported an ovarian cyst. Did Baladine know that was faked? Or that the report was a fake?

When I was with the public defender, my clients found it impossible to get medical care. One man with lymphoma had a tumor constricting his diaphragm and died in solitary for causing a disturbance when he tried to summon help. It was hard to believe that Coolis was so tender of their charges that Aguinaldo could have faked an illness. And once she'd fled the hospital, how had she gotten to Chicago so fast?

I put down my notes on Georgia and went to the cupboard to pull my Illinois county maps. Peppy, lying under a table, halfsat up to see whether I was leaving. She lay down again when I returned to my desk.

The hospital in Coolis sat on the northwest end of the town, the prison side, where growth was fastest. If Aguinaldo had left in a supply or laundry truck, they would have gone out the service road, which followed Smallpox Creek. I squinted through my magnifying gla.s.s to bring up the details. a.s.suming she'd hopped off the truck before it reached the town center, she had limited choices-she could follow Smallpox Creek on foot north to Lake Galena or try to hitch a ride on Route 113, which led from the hospital past the prison as well as northeast away from the town.

There was only one crossroads between the hospital and the prison, Hollow Glen Road, which intersected again with 113 a mile north and another state road a mile south. It might be worthwhile to see if someone picked her up-a.s.suming Robert Baladine hadn't been waiting at Hollow Glen Road in his Porsche. Those queries were ones that only the police or state marshals had the resources to undertake. I put the map down in frustration.

I went back to my paying client's work and forced myself to stay with it, copying numbers into a file, then laying them across a blowup of the area where Continental United's trucks were coming to grief. I was hard at it when Tessa popped her head around my door.

"Your friend Murray is outside-he rang my bell by mistake. Shall I let him in?

He's brought some talent with him."

My brows shot up in surprise, but I followed her to the front door. Murray was outside with Alex Fisher. She had on skintight jeans and a big mesh shirt, which revealed not only her Lycra tubetop but the sharp points of her breastbone. As she and Murray came in, I glanced at AlexSandy's feet, but of course if she owned Ferragamos with a missing emblem she wouldn't have them on.

Murray stopped to talk to Tessa. "Sorry you couldn't make it to the Glow Tuesday night. You missed a great evening."

Tessa gave him the kind of polite brushoff she'd learned from her years jetting around the world with her wealthy parents. I always envy someone who doesn't have to go to the jugular. As I promptly did.

"Sandy-sorry I didn't recognize you right away Tuesday night. You looked a lot different when you were urging us all to the barricades back in law school."

She flashed an empty smile. "I'm Alex now, not Sandy-another one of the changes in my life."

She surveyed my office with frank interest. I'd divided my share of the warehouse into smaller s.p.a.ces with pasteboard part.i.tions, not because I need a lot of rooms but because I wanted some human scale to the place. Aside from that and good quality lighting, I hadn't invested heavily in furnishings.

AlexSandy seemed to be preening herself, perhaps imagining her own office by contrast, when her eyes widened at a painting on the part.i.tion facing my desk.

"Isn't that an Isabel Bishop? How did you come by it?"

"I stole it from the Art Inst.i.tute. Do you want to sit down? Would you like something to drink?" An elderly woman whose grandson had been stripping her a.s.sets gave me the Bishop in lieu of a fee, but that didn't seem to be any of AlexSandy's business.

"Oh, Vic, you always had a bizarre sense of humor. It's coming back to me now.

Do you have Malvern water? It's hideously hot out-I'd forgotten Chicago summers."

"Malvern?" I stopped on my way to the refrigerator. "Did you introduce BB Baladine to that, or the other way around?"

"I didn't know you knew Bob. I think it's something we probably both learned from Teddy Trant. He spends a lot of time in England. Do you have any?" It was said smoothly, and it was even plausible.

She sat on a stool next to the table where Peppy was lying. The dog had gotten up to greet her and Murray, but something in my tone must have sounded a warning, because she crawled under my desk.

I offered AlexSandy a choice of tap water or Poland Springs, which is cheap and no different from the foreign imports as far as I can tell. Murray took iced tea, which Tessa makes fresh and drinks by the gallon when she's working. We share a refrigerator out in the hall and write scrupulous notes about who's taken what from whose shelves.

"Murray says you've become a private investigator," Sandy said when I'd sat at my desk. "It seems like strange work for someone with your education. Did you get tired of the law? I can totally understand that, but my own fantasies run more to retiring to a ranch."

"You know how it goes, Sandy-Alex-middle age comes on and you revert to your roots. You left the barricades for the boardroom; I couldn't stay away from my copfather's bluecollar work." I turned to Murray. "Sandy was always on my b.u.t.t for not joining protest movements with her. She kept telling me that a bluecollar girl-whatever that is-should be in the forefront of organizing struggles."

"You have to learn to move on from those old battles. These are the nineties, after all. Anyway, Murray suggested your name when we were mulling over how to help Lacey with a sticky situation."

A crumb from the Global table. Maybe Murray had been as embarra.s.sed as I by our conversation the other night and was trying a subtle amend. I could see him at dinner with AlexSandy. At the Filigree, or perhaps Justin's, the hot new hole on west Randolph, Murray leaning across the table toward Alex's modest cleavage: You know V. I., you know what a p.r.i.c.kly b.i.t.c.h she's always been. But she did the legwork on a couple of the stories that built my reputation and I hate to leave her standing in the dust. Isn't there something Global needs that would give her a break?

"Global has a gazillion lawyers, detectives, and strongarmed types to protect their stars." I wasn't hungry enough yet for a crumb, I guess.

"It's a little trickier than that," Murray said, "at least as I understand it.

Since you were at the Glow on Tuesday, maybe you saw the problem."

"Lucian Frenada," Alex said briskly. "He and Lacey had a boygirl kind of understanding twenty years ago, and he won't accept that it's over, that Lacey's moved on and he has to also."

I stared at her blankly. "And?"

"And we want you to make that clear to him, clear that he has to stop hara.s.sing her, calling her, or hunting her out in public." Alex spoke with an irritability that definitely hadn't changed from her old harangues.

"I don't do bodyguard work. I'm a onewoman shop. I have people I call on for support, but if you want guaranteed protection you need to go to an outfit like Carnifice."

"It's not a bodyguard kind of situation." Alex looked around for a table and put her drink on the couch next to her. "She says she's not afraid of him, but that he's embarra.s.sing her."

I made a face. "Murray, if this was your idea of a favor, take it somewhere else. If she's not afraid of him, she can talk to him. If he's bugging her, the studio has the muscle to make him back off."

"You didn't used to be stupid in law school," Alex snapped. "If it was that simple we'd be doing it. They were childhood friends, stood up for each other when the rest of the street hara.s.sed them for being geeks. She can't bear for his feelings to be hurt, because he rescued her at least once from some serious bangers in the stairwell. Beyond that, the guy is a kind of model enterprisezone leader. If it looks like a big corporation is persecuting him, we'll have a lot of hostility in the Spanish press, and of course that would be damaging for Lacey's image."

Murray was fidgeting with his gla.s.s. Something about the picture was making him ill at ease, whether Alex's condescension or my snappishness or the a.s.signment as a whole I had no way of knowing.

"He owns a business?" I asked. "What kind?"

"Gimmicky clothes," Murray said. "Uniforms for kids' teams, specialty Tshirts, that sort of thing. He started out doing the soccer uniforms at St. Remigio's and moved on. He employs a lot of people right there in the neighborhood. On their old street he's the secondbiggest hero, right behind Lacey."

"So what do you want me to do? Burn down his factory so that he has so much to worry about he leaves Lacey alone?" To my annoyance, AlexSandy seemed to be considering this smarta.s.s suggestion. "Lacey's going back to Hollywood, he's staying here, it's not a problem."

"It's image, Vic," Alex snapped. "Lacey's going to be in town for eight weeks-they're shooting Virgin Six here this summer. We can't have him hara.s.sing her, and we can't put him down hard. Why don't you look into his affairs, see if he's cut some corners someplace, see if we can't offer him a little quid pro quo: leave Lacey alone and we won't report you. If you turned up something, Global would be very grateful, and they have the resources to express their grat.i.tude."

I leaned back in my chair and studied them. Murray had stopped playing with his gla.s.s in favor of mutilating his napkin. Gray b.a.l.l.s of wet paper were falling on his jeans. Alex was staring at me with an arrogant impatience that I found exasperating.

"I'm not manufacturing evidence of a crime or misdemeanor, even if it means so much to Global they give me the residuals for Virgin Six. "

"Of course not, Vic." Alex bristled. "I'm not asking for that-but for you to fish. What's your usual fee?"

"A hundred an hour plus non-overhead expenses."

She laughed. "I'd forgotten how honest you always were. Most people double or triple a number when a studio lawyer comes to visit."

Meaning a hundred was so low it had to be the truth.

"We'll double your fee if you'll make this a priority. And throw in a high fivefigure bonus if you come up with something we can use. Here are Frenada's addresses and phone numbers."

"Not so fast, Sandy." Like Aisha's father this morning, I let the proferred paper fall between us. "I need to think it over, and I'd have to talk to Ms.

Dowell to see if she has the same take on the story you do."

AlexSandy pursed her lips. "We'd rather Lacey wasn't involved."

My jaw dropped. "If she's not involved, then what on G.o.d's green earth is all this fuss about?"

Murray coughed, a deferential sign so out of his normal character that my irritability increased. "Vic, let me put it bluntly. You can talk to Lacey, of course, and get her read on Frenada. What we're trying to avoid, or what Global is trying to avoid, is any hint that they're beating up on Lacey's old friends.

"No one wants you to manufacture anything. And no one who knows you would imagine that you ever would. As I made clear to Alex when we were talking about this last night. But if you do find something that the studio can use as a bargaining chip with Frenada, then we'd-they'd-prefer Lacey didn't know it was because of Global that things got resolved. And we don't want it in the papers."

"Seems to me Teddy Trant can decide that," I said, not trying to keep sarcasm out of my voice.

"Teddy only controls one paper and one television station, and anyway, the business side doesn't dictate to the editorial," AlexSandy said.

"Yeah, and the pope has no affect on the parish churches around here. I'll think about it and let you know. Of course, if I agree to work on it, Global signs the contract. Not you. And not Murray as your front man." I barely kept "your stooge" from popping out.

"Come on, Vic, you know me. And Murray's a witness."

"We're going to flap our little Phoenix neckties and shout the Chicago fight song to prove our loyalty to each other? We went to law school on the South Side of Chicago, not to Eton. Maybe the South Side has stuck to me more than the law, but one of the things Professor Carmichael pounded into our heads was the importance of written contracts for business agreements."

Her wide mouth flattened into a hard line, but at last she said, "Think it over.

I'll call you tomorrow morning."

"I'm not making a decision that fast. I have some urgent projects in hand that I have to finish before I can consider yours. Which is why I'm working on a Sunday. By the way, Murray, what made you drop by here today? You can't possibly have expected to find me in."

Alex answered for him. "Oh, we stopped at your apartment first, but the old man said you were here. I'll call you tomorrow."

"I can't wait to hear his description of you. As Murray can tell you, it's likely to be colorful and unstinting."

Why did I have to show hackle every time my fur was ruffled? No sooner had I asked myself that pointed question than I called to Murray, who was following AlexSandy through the door, "Was it Justin's or Filigree where you cooked this up?"

He turned and c.o.c.ked a sandy eyebrow at me. "You wouldn't be showing some jealousy there, would you, Warshawski?"

15.

Family Picnic I stared at the computer for a while, but I couldn't summon any enthusiasm for the Georgia trucking problem. Murray's last remark rankled. Which meant there might be a grain of truth to it. Not that I was jealous of women he dated, danced, slept with. But we'd worked together for so long we had the shared jokes and shortcuts of old comrades. It did hurt to see him more in tune with someone like Alex FisherFishbein than me. I had character, after all. All she had was power, money, and glamour.

Murray was an investigative reporter. He had the same sources I did-sometimes even better ones-for uncovering dope on entrepreneurs around town. Maybe he was offering Frenada to me as a chance to make some real money. Or because he felt guilty for selling himself to Global. Maybe I should be grateful, but all I felt was queasy.

Alex's reason for coming to me instead of the studio's usual security detail made a kind of sense, but not enough. When I'd talked to Frenada briefly at the Golden Glow, he'd seemed personable, quiet, not a masher. Still, one is forever reading about serial killers who seemed quiet and normal to their neighbors. And it's true, I myself had watched Frenada accost Lacey in the middle of the Golden Glow. If he was really a stalker, then Alex was being pretty cavalier about danger to Lacey. If he wasn't, then Global had some agenda that was going to get me in a pack of trouble if I took on their dirty work.

Frenada had said at the party that maybe I could help him-that something odd was happening in his office. My own upheaval around Nicola Aguinaldo had driven my conversation with him far from my mind. Now I wondered if Global was already doing something to discredit him. If he'd stumbled on their plan, and Global realized it, Alex might be trying to bring me in as fresh bait on the line.

I logged on to LifeStory and requested a check on Frenada, not so much because I'd decided to take the job as to look for some context around the guy. To understand his character, I'd do better to talk to the people who knew him, but I couldn't afford to spend time with his employees or his priest or whoever in Humboldt Park if I wasn't going to take the job.

As I tried to make up a list of tasks for Mary Louise and me to split on the Georgia inquiry, I couldn't help thinking of Alex's remark, that if I did the work she wanted, Global had the resources to express their grat.i.tude. A bonus in the high five figures. I wondered how high. Fifty thousand would not only get me a new car but let me build a cushion, maybe hire someone fulltime instead of relying on Mary Louise's erratic hours. Or what if it were seventy or eighty thousand? Murray was driving a powderblue Mercedes these days; I could pick up that red Jaguar XJ12 I'd seen in the ads on Wednesday.

"And that's how they catch their fish," I admonished myself out loud. "If you can be bought for the price of a used car, V. I., then you're not worth owning."

I worked hard for another couple of hours, stopping only once, to go out for a sandwich and to let Peppy relieve herself. After that I didn't look up until Tessa came in around threethirty.

"Mary Louise hasn't been in for a while," she commented, perching on the couch arm.

"You keeping an eye on the premises?"

She grinned. "No, doofus. You aren't the only detective around here: when Mary Louise comes in she always tidies up the papers. I'm taking off. Want to go for a coffee?"

I looked at the clock. I told her I'd have to take a rain check so I could get back to pick up Mr. Contreras. I started my system backup program and began hunting through the heap on my desk for the report Max had faxed over from Beth Israel: I wanted to discuss it with Mary Louise. I'd forgotten stuffing the papers into the folder labeled Alumni Fund but came on it by the sophisticated method of going through all the folders I'd stacked up lately.

I pulled out the report the paramedics had filed with the hospital. It described where they'd found Aguinaldo, what steps they'd taken to stabilize her, and the time they'd delivered her to Beth Israel (3:14A.M. ), but not the names of the officers who'd talked to Mary Louise and me in Edgewater. I wondered if I needed to know badly enough to pay for Mary Louise to talk to the ambulance crew and see if they remembered the guys. But I didn't know how else to start finding out whether Baladine or Poilevy had been pulling the strings that made the cops come after me.

"I'm going to take a shower. And neatly put away all my tools," Tessa added pointedly as I dropped the folder back on the heap of papers: if Mary Louise were working on it she'd have typed up a label on the spot and stuck it in the drawer with other pending cases.

"Yeah, you always were teacher's pet. It ain't going anywhere, but I am." I shut down my system for the day and stuffed a second copy of the backup program in my briefcase. It was the second thing my old hacker friend had taught me-always keep a copy of your programs off the premises. You never think your office is the one that will be burgled or burned to the ground.

Tessa, her hair heavy from her shower, was locking her studio when I came into the hall. She had changed into a gold sundress of some kind of soft expensive cotton. I wondered if a tenthousanddollar wardrobe could make me look as good as her or Abigail Trant. The two came from similar worlds-fancy private schools, fathers successful entrepreneurs. Probably the only difference was their mothers-Tessa's had broken through the white male barricades into a major law career.

"Not to be a feline, but I always thought Murray liked softer women than that bionic specimen he brought in today," Tessa remarked as she set the alarm code.

"He was kind of preening when he introduced us, so I take it they weren't making a business call?"

"Not the Bionic Woman-a s.p.a.ce Beret." When she looked puzzled, I said, "I can tell there aren't any small boys in your life. That's Global Studio's moviecartooncomicbook and megabilliondollar action figure. The woman is one of their lawyers. When we were in school together she was Sandy Fishbein and led sitins. Now that she's Alexandra Fisher and sits on boards, I get confused about how to think about her or what to call her. She's seduced Murray, and now they're trying for a menage trois with me."

"I never trust a woman who gets all her muscles at the health club and only uses them as an accessory to her wardrobe," Tessa announced, flexing her own arms, sinewy from years of hammering on stone and metal.

I laughed and waved at her as she climbed into her pickup-one of those fancy modern ones with leather seats, airconditioning, and perfect suspension. Seen next to it, the Skylark looked more decrepit than ever. I felt another unwelcome twist of jealousy. I wouldn't have traded either of my parents for the wealthiest tyc.o.o.ns in the West, but every now and then I wished my legacy had included more than the fiveroom bungalow whose sale after my father's death barely covered his medical bills.