Body Work (46 page)

Cristina Guaman’s face was as gray and puffy as her daughter’s. “Why are you torturing my family?”

I surveyed the street behind her. “Were you followed here?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. I went out the back door and crossed the neighbor’s yard to come out on Twenty-second Street. Why are you putting Clara in harm’s way? Why did you get my Nadia killed?”

Mr. Contreras said, “She ain’t the person killing your children. If you’d been a better ma to your girls, not blaming them for the lives they were leading, your oldest kid wouldn’t never have gone off to Iraq in the first place.”

“How dare you!” Cristina said to him. She turned to me, “Is this your husband?”

The question embarrassed me almost as much as it did the old man, but I didn’t bother to answer. We were starting to draw an audience, people wanting to know who was attacking who here—and it
was
hard to tell, from the way we were standing, who was the assailant, who the victim. Since I was a well-dressed gringa in a poor area, I didn’t want to push my luck.

“We need to get you and Clara and the rest of your family to a safe house,” I said. “I want to take you to Arcadia House. It’s a women’s shelter, and they are expert at keeping their residents free from harm, as long as we can think of a place for your husband to stay.”

“Papi could sleep with his cousin Rafi,” Clara offered. “He does, sometimes, if the weather is too bad for him to make it home. Rafi lives in Bensenville, up by the airport.”

“We can look after Clara,” Cristina Guaman said fiercely. “I will not have her stay with strangers, especially strangers who will judge us. I know the kind of shelter you mean, where they look down their noses at us for being Latinas.”

“I don’t think the staff at Arcadia House behaves that way,” I said, “but, even if they do, better to be in such an environment for a week than face those thugs in your house again tonight.”

Cristina Guaman looked at the group on the sidewalk, who continued to interject their own comments and queries—some of them knew her from the hardware store—and told them in Spanish that she was all right, just distracted with worry over Ernest’s health and Nadia’s death.

That marked the turning point in our confrontation, although it took another minute of cajoling before she and Clara got into the backseat of the Mustang. I drove to the house behind the Guamans’, to the neighbor whose yard Cristina had used when she left her own house. She crossed their yard to her boarded-over back door and returned in fairly short order with Ernest, her mother-in-law, and a couple of suitcases.

I drove a circuitous route to Arcadia House’s shelter, an anonymous building that lay just beyond the big medical complexes on the near West Side. It took some time to explain the Guamans’ situation to the staff. Arcadia House was bursting at the seams, and they weren’t happy about offering an adult male shelter, but after a prolonged conversation with him, and among themselves, they finally agreed to let the four Guamans stay for a few nights.

“If it’s any longer than that, Vic,” the executive director said, “you’re going to have to make other arrangements. In this economy, more and more families are breaking down into violence, and we’re overcrowded as it is.”

“If I can’t fix this situation within a week,” I said, “I’ll probably be dead, anyway. I’ll be in touch later today to tell you who will show up in the morning to escort Clara to school.”

49

Darraugh Gets Things Done

I
was running out of time to make my meeting with Darraugh. I told Mr. Contreras I’d get out at Darraugh’s building on Wacker Drive.

“Can you take the car home?” I asked. “I’ll be checking into a hotel tonight, but I’ll get you word somehow about where I am and where to meet me. There’s a lot of work to do and not much time to do it in. Will you call Petra, too, and tell her to lie low for now? I don’t want her running around town, exposing herself to danger.”

Mr. Contreras was delighted to be part of the team. When we reached the building on Wacker where Darraugh had his headquarters, my neighbor gave me a rough hug and told me not to worry about Petra, he’d take good care of her.

I jogged inside, trying to comb my hair while I waited for the elevator. As I got off on the seventy-third floor, I thought it was a pity Arcadia House couldn’t lease Darraugh’s lobby. It seemed to be bigger than the entire shelter on Taylor Street.

Darraugh’s assistant ushered me into the conference room and sent a message to his office to let him know we were ready when he was. Darraugh ran through the meeting with his usual briskness. I managed to be focused enough to cover my part of the agenda, which seemed like a major achievement, given my ragged condition. While Darraugh’s vice president for overseas operations wrapped up—at such length that Darraugh cut him short with a pithy remark—I thought again about the building’s beautiful, well-guarded space.

Everyone got up to leave. The chief of operations started a private conversation with Darraugh, but I interrupted, asking if I could have five minutes alone.

Darraugh’s brows went up, but he took me into his own office and shut the door. “Well?”

“I’m working on a case that is really scaring me, and I have an extraordinary favor to ask.”

I gave him a fast précis of how Chad Vishneski and Nadia Guaman had met, and why—at least in my opinion—she’d been murdered and he’d been framed.

“Tintrey has access to America’s most sophisticated tracking systems, and I need a secure place where I can meet with my team. I’m hoping—begging you, really—that we could use one of your conference rooms . . .” My voice petered out under his cold blue stare.

He didn’t speak right away, looking me up and down as if assessing my competence.

“You know why I work with you when I have companies like Tintrey on retainer as well?” He finally said. “Their size—I mean, their global scope. I don’t do business with Tintrey. Don’t like Jarvis MacLean. We’re on civic committees together. He always manages to duck his pledges.”

“I assumed it’s because when you work with me, the right hand knows what the right fingers are doing.” I said stiffly. I knew I couldn’t compete with the global monsters, and that without Darraugh, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills very easily.

He produced his wintry smile. “Right fingers, right hand—yes, I suppose that’s part of it. When I was a boy, I found a stray dog on our land. Someone had dumped him there with a broken leg, and I brought him inside. Mother’s chauffeur showed me how to set the leg. I’ve never known why Mother and my grandmother let me keep him. My grandmother despised sentimentality, hated the whole idea of pets. Unsanitary, she said, but the truth was, she hated the idea that any creature under her roof might show my mother or me affection.

“Some adult intervened,” he continued. “Don’t know who to this day. I called the dog Sergeant Rock, a comic-book hero when I was seven. Rock was small, some kind of terrier mix, but he took on anyone or any animal he thought was a threat to me. Growled whenever my grandmother came near me. Saved me once when I got cornered in the woods by some passing tramp who kicked me hard enough to break a rib. Died when I was fifteen. Broke my heart.

“You remind me of Rock. Scrappy. Sink your teeth into anyone’s calf if you see them kicking a kid.”

I felt myself flush but didn’t say anything.

“When do you want your team here?” he asked.

“Tomorrow. Maybe around noon.”

He nodded. “I’ll tell Caroline to let you have a room. She’ll clear it with security. She can get your people up here without leaving a trail. Just give her a list of names, phone numbers.”

I started to thank him, to offer him a month of free detecting, but he shook his head and took me over to his assistant.

“Vic’s going to give you a list of names and phone numbers. People we’re hosting tomorrow at noon. A number of competitors are interested in the attendance list and the agenda, so do your usual security magic for us, right?”

Caroline Griswold had been with Darraugh for nearly a decade. She spoke fluent French and serviceable Chinese, and often entertained Darraugh’s overseas clients or competitors. Two secretaries worked for her, but when Darraugh needed to be confident that security arrangements had been properly made, she handled all the clerical details of the assignment on her own.

While Darraugh went into his boardroom for a video conference, Caroline took me into his inner office and shut the door. I gave her a quick summary of the problems I was working on, then turned on my cell phone long enough to look up the names and phone numbers of everyone I hoped to see tomorrow: Petra, Murray Ryerson, Rivka and Vesta, the Vishneskis. Mr. Contreras, of course. Tim Radke and Marty Jepson. Even Sanford Rieff up at Cheviot labs. I put Sal Barthele on the list, but said I would speak to her privately ahead of the meeting.

Finally, I thought about the ultimatum the thugs had given the Guamans: Produce the autopsy report by tonight or watch your house go up in smoke.

“Do you have a way to make a call to a lawyer here in the Loop so that it’s impossible to tell what city it came from?” I asked.

Caroline’s usual face is the smooth mask of the high-stakes corporate poker player, but after a moment she smiled mischievously. “Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll send an e-mail to our agent in Beirut. He’ll be happy to place a call from his cell phone. He’s used to dodging bullets, so he knows how to talk from an untraceable line.”

“That will be especially fitting. This whole situation has its roots in our war in the Middle East. The lawyer is Rainier Cowles, a partner at Palmer and Statten. I want him to know that the Guamans
do not
have the material his clients are looking for. V. I. Warshawski has taken the papers with her to a remote location, and no one knows where that is. Any communication with Ms. Warshawski should go through her own attorney, Freeman Carter.”

Caroline wrote it up in an e-mail to their Beirut agent and had me read it before she sent it.

Since I was already begging so many favors, I asked to use her phone so I could try to organize the bodyguards I wanted for Clara. I started with the Streeter brothers, who I know are both skilled and reliable. Only Tom was available, and only afternoons, but I turned down his offer to find someone else for backup. I needed to know the guards I used.

I scowled in thought, then remembered the Body Artist’s friend Vesta; she was a third-degree black belt. I reached her at a law firm where she was temping.

“Have you found Karen?” she asked.

“Not yet. But I have the youngest Guaman daughter, and I’m wondering if you’d have the time or the inclination to do a little babysit-ting.” Before she could protest, I explained what had happened at the Guaman house the previous night and how I wanted Clara to be able to go to school while I tried to resolve the crisis in her family’s life.

“I have someone who can see her home from school,” I said, “but if you could get her there in the morning it would be a huge help. I pay twenty-five an hour, going rate for experienced guarding.”

“How much risk is there?” she asked. “Really. Not glossing over it to get me to do what you want.”

“I don’t know. The people trying to get at Clara work for the same outfit as Rodney Treffer. He’s the man who was always putting those crude numbers on Karen. If you are skillful at choosing your route, you should be safe. If they get a whiff of where she’s staying, it could be awful.”

“I don’t owe the Guamans, or even Karen Buckley, anything.”

“I know that.”

“And I know how to spar, how to conduct myself, under attack, but I’m not trained as a bodyguard.”

“I understand.”

“But I also know what it’s like to be powerless when someone’s beating on you. No girl should have to walk the streets in fear. Let me know where to pick her up, and I’ll do my best.”

I found I’d been holding my breath and let out an audible sigh. Before we hung up, I told her about the meeting I wanted to hold in Darraugh’s office the following afternoon, and she promised to arrange her lunch break so she could attend.

I got up and thanked Caroline for her help. “Although ‘thanks’ is a pretty feeble word, for all you’ve done.”

She smiled, her brisk, corporate smile. “All in a day’s work, Vic. But if we need to reach you, where will you be?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll try to get a room at the Trefoil Hotel, using my mother’s birth name, Gabriella Sestieri, but I can’t afford more than a couple of nights there.”

Caroline thought for a moment. “I’ll check with Darraugh, but we keep an efficiency apartment in the Hancock building for overseas staff who have to spend more than a few nights in Chicago. It’s free now. I can book you in as Ms. Sestieri.”

I felt my eyes grow wide. “It’s extremely generous. But, Caroline, it’s not just beyond the call, it could expose you to danger, too.”

She shook her head. “My sister’s only son was killed in Iraq, blown up in Fallujah. He was a reservist, and he had a new baby he never even saw. I can’t stand the thought that companies like Tintrey have been making money on his body.”

She looked at the console on Darraugh’s desk, saw that he’d finished his video conference, and took me into the boardroom so she could explain what she proposed. Darraugh grunted an agreement, and Caroline told me to stop back by in the morning to pick up a key and a photo ID for Gabriella Sestieri.

Darraugh escorted me to the elevator; he believes in old-fashioned etiquette and decorum. As I was getting into the car, he let out an unexpected bark of laughter and brushed a finger across my cheek.

“You are Rock to the life. I don’t know why I never thought of that before.”

50

Phew! Around the Sal Corner

I
didn’t feel very Rock-like crossing the Loop. Rainier Cowles and Kystarnik had me so spooked that I stopped in my bank to cash a large check; I didn’t want to take the chance that they might be able to track my credit card or ATM transactions. That’s the trouble with the Age of Paranoia—you know people can trace you, given the resources, but you don’t know if they are actually doing so, not unless you’re a whiz like NCIS’s Abby Sciuto, who can back-trace anyone who’s looking at her records.