Breakdown (26 page)

“I can’t imagine Eloise Napier blurting out team secrets for a measly fifty dollars,” I heard myself say.

“Eloise?” Lawlor smirked, the way kids on the playground do when they know a secret they’re not going to let you in on. “Fifty dollars doesn’t pay for a pair of Eloise’s stockings, from what I hear.”

“Eloise is a good team player,” Weekes rebuked him. “We sit together on several committees and she would never reveal a client or a firm’s secret, to me or to anyone.”

“You feel equally confident in Louis Ormond?” I asked.

“I don’t know Ormond,” Weekes said, “but even if I did, I don’t reveal our tipsters’ names without their permission. It could put them in danger. Speaking of people we know, you’re close to Ryerson over at the
Herald-Star,
aren’t you?”

“Close?” I said. “I know him, and a few other reporters around town. Beth Blacksin on your news crew, for instance. I used to know a lot more reporters, but what with axing news bureaus until they look like a rainforest after an agribusiness bulldozer’s been through, there aren’t that many reporters left to know these days.”

“So Ryerson didn’t blab secrets out of the huddle?” Weekes played with his pencil as if the question weren’t terribly important.

“The huddle!” I snapped my fingers. “I kept trying to remember what you called it—I thought it was the news muddle, where you imagine how to dirty up the news until the viewer can’t tell truth from fiction. No, like Eloise Napier, Murray Ryerson is a good team player. But, like you, I have a lot of sources around town.”

26.

CAR TALK

W
HEN
I
GOT BACK TO MY OFFICE,
I
SAT FOR A TIME, TRYING
to figure out what I’d learned from seeing Lawlor and Weekes up close. Or what I’d revealed. I hoped my defense of Murray had been believable: until now, I hadn’t taken seriously the notion that his career might hang by a thread. I started to send him a warning e-mail, then wondered if Weekes might be monitoring his mail, and decided it would be more prudent to leave it alone.

Hearing Napier and Ormond’s names had made Lawlor smirk. Had the two lawyers said something, say, at a Helen Kendrick strategy meeting, that had led Lawlor to find out about Wuchnik? Or was Wuchnik one of Lawlor’s own tipsters?

I hadn’t brought up Salanter’s name in the meeting, because it seemed to me that Lawlor was hammering on him chiefly as part of Global’s effort to discredit the Durango campaign; I hadn’t thought I’d get anything useful from mentioning him. In fact, what useful fact had I gotten from either of my meetings with the city’s rich and powerful? Back to work, Warshawski, I admonished myself.

I couldn’t resist looking up Dick’s Journe watch first. I’d never heard of the make, but it apparently was the ultimate watch if you needed every platinum screw carved by hand. The price, when I found it, staggered me. What was Dick trying to prove, buying a watch that cost as much as a house—assuming you didn’t need six bedrooms and a swimming pool? Even if I could afford a watch like his, I wouldn’t spend the money on it. I had a moment’s happy fantasy of Dick leaving his Journe on a bathroom sink. Good-bye, five hundred thousand dollars.

All the arguments we used to have came back to me: Dick’s insecurities, needing the most expensive car, the best wine, an impressive address, even when we couldn’t afford them. My belligerence, the chip on my shoulder that made me combative with his firm’s managing partners. I worked for the public defender—I was a loser, wasting my time on losers, Dick said, demanding that I quit my job so that I’d be at home, preparing delightful meals and making enchanting small talk with those partners.

I said he already had scoliosis from bending double in front of his bosses all day long, and he retorted, and I snapped back, and then we were divorced. I wouldn’t take alimony. In those days, I’d imagined myself as too idealistic to want a lot of money. And now, it just depressed me, how hard I worked, and how little I had to show for it.

“Money doesn’t matter,” I announced grandly. “Just what you can do with it.”

I opened the call log on my computer. I have an answering service, even in these days of voice mail and text messaging, because people with urgent problems need to talk to a live person, not a machine. The service posts calls to my computer as soon as they answer them. They also text me if an emergency comes in.

I ran down the list, picking out the urgent calls, which the service marked with a red asterisk. Halfway down was a message marked with a tiny blue crankshaft, the signal that alerted me to possible crank calls.

Anonymous caller, left message specifically for you, as follows: Xavier Jurgens has a new Camaro. Double-checked all spellings.
Phone number blocked.

Despite the last sentence, I called the answering service, but they couldn’t tell me more than what was on my screen, not even whether the voice had belonged to a woman or a man: gruff, deep, whether a woman pretending to be a man or a man roughening his voice; either way, the operator who’d taken the call figured the caller was disguising their voice.

I looked up Xavier Jurgens. There were two, one in central Pennsylvania, and one in Burbank, Illinois. The one who lived in Burbank was thirty-nine years old; he shared his address with a Jana Shatka. LifeStory said he drove a nine-year-old Hyundai. There was nothing about a new Camaro, but if it was really new the information might not be showing up on the DMV database yet.

Shatka was on long-term disability, for reasons not specified. Nor could I find where she’d worked, but Xavier Jurgens was employed. He was an orderly at Ruhetal State Mental Hospital, making just over twenty-four thousand a year.

I sat back in my chair and stared for a long time at nothing in particular. The secretary in Ruhetal’s social work unit—I looked in my notebook—Chantal was her name. Chantal had seen Miles Wuchnik talking to one of the orderlies from the forensic wing. Perhaps it had been Chantal who had left the anonymous message with my answering service.

If I called out to the hospital, I doubted very much that anyone would give me Xavier Jurgen’s work hours. But if I drove out to Burbank, I could see for myself if the guy owned a red Camaro.

I drove home and changed out of my gold dress into khaki cargo pants, an outfit more suited for stakeout work. A loose white knit top. My iPad, so I could do a little paying work if I had a long wait. A Thermos of coffee, some fruit.

Mr. Contreras was ostensibly tending his small vegetable patch behind our building, but after a weekend in the country, he and the dogs were all snoozing. I didn’t wake him, just left a note next to his chaise longue asking him to take care of the dogs this evening, since I didn’t know how late I’d be.

I managed to get on the expressway before noon, and, despite the construction on the Ike, I had a fast run, relatively speaking, to the western suburbs. I stopped in Downers Grove and toured the employee parking lot at Ruhetal. I saw a couple of Camaros, but none that looked especially new.

Jurgens lived a pretty good hike from the hospital, but on twenty-four thousand a year, there weren’t a lot of places he could afford out here. I drove the twenty miles to Laramie Avenue in Burbank. Jurgens’s address was a duplex across the street from a small park, just big enough for a single baseball diamond, a set of swings, and a sandbox.

I parked near the swings and walked up the street to the duplex. Midway Airport was nearby; a jet on its final approach seemed so close that I instinctively ducked my head, but none of the kids in the park paid any attention.

The north half of the duplex was painted a pale green, with the windows trimmed in rosy brick. The Jurgen-Shatka ménage, which occupied the southern piece, needed some attention. However, you didn’t notice the peeling siding, or the cracked paint around the windows, when you saw the car. A shiny fire-engine-red Camaro, it stood under a carport next to the duplex.

I walked up the short drive. The car still had its orange temporary license plate, but the plateholder announced the dealership: Bevilacqua Chevy in Cicero. I bent down to look at the wheels. The hubcaps must have been a special order, with their intricate wiring and the Camaro logo on the cap. The wheels were by Sportmax, picked out in red trim.

“What are you doing here?”

I’d heard a door slam, and had hoped it might be Xavier Jurgens, but this was a sturdily built woman in her forties, whose thin sundress didn’t quite cover her impressive bosom. She had thinning bleached hair that hadn’t been tended for several weeks—the dark roots were showing. Her freckled face was red, from the midday sun or maybe chronic anger.

I got to my feet. “Admiring the car.”

“You’re on private property. Admire it from across the street.”

“Is Mr. Jurgens at home, Ms. Shatka?” I asked.

“How did you know my name?”

I gave a thin smile. “It’s in our files, Ms. Shatka. You’re on long-term disability, but that doesn’t seem to prevent you from getting around.”

“What files? Are you with Social Security? Show me your identification.” She had an accent that was hard for me to place.

“I’m not with the government, Ms. Shatka. I’m private. And I want to talk privately with Mr. Jurgens.”

“He’s at work, and he has nothing to say to anyone, either privately or to the government.”

“I think he’ll want to talk to me, Ms. Shatka. I’m following up on Miles Wuchnik’s old cases.”

A couple of women with a number of small children in tow had stopped at the foot of the drive to stare. Although she whirled to glare at them, I didn’t think it was their arrival that made Shatka become suddenly quiet.

“Yes, Miles Wuchnik entrusted his work to me when he died,” I added. “And I’d like to think he got his money’s worth from Mr. Jurgens.”

A triumphant smile played at the corners of Shatka’s mouth. “I don’t think you ever met Miles Wuchnik.”

I had made a misstep there. I’d been convinced that Wuchnik gave Xavier Jurgens the money for the Camaro, but that apparently wasn’t right.

“Oh, I met him,” I assured her. “Miles was disappointed that after all the trouble he went to, Jurgens did a deal for the Camaro behind his back. As I tidy up the loose ends of Miles’s old cases, that’s one I want to clear up. The things he had to say about your disability claims, well, we can let those die with him.”

The smile disappeared. “Whoever you are, you leave my property now.”

“Technically, of course, it’s not your property. You rent it from the Makkara family, but I understand what you mean. I’ll wait for Mr. Jurgens in my car.”

I strolled back to the street, where I stopped to talk to the women. Two children were in strollers; three were old enough to whisper and punch at one another while their mothers chatted. Jana Shatka scowled at us from the top of the drive.

“That’s quite a car your neighbor has,” I said.

One of the women snorted. “Have you come to repossess it? Jurgens can’t afford to make the payments, and that
puta,
when did she ever do a day’s work to pay the bills, let alone buy a car?”

“I heard he paid cash for it,” I objected.

“If he did, where did he get the money?” the second woman said.

Jana Shatka stomped down to the sidewalk. “I know you two are standing there telling lies about me. What about your own lives, huh? Who pays for those spic children you’re breeding like flies in a warm dung heap?”

“
And you, you dried-up Russian
puta,
you are like a rotted squash, no seeds to bear fruit.”

Russian. That explained her accent. The fight was getting interesting, but I needed the conversation back on track. “If Xavier isn’t earning enough money at the hospital to pay for the car, how could he afford it?”

“That’s our business!” Shatka’s massive front heaved with fury.

“Probably he stole drugs and sold them,” the second woman said, and both mothers laughed boisterously.

Jana drew her hand back to slap the speaker. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand behind her back.

“Ladies, let’s not get physical here. It’s too hot a day, and the police overreact in the heat, okay?”

An ice cream vendor pushed a hand cart up the street; the three older children tugged at their mothers.
“Helado, Mamá, helado.”

The cry for ice cream gave everyone a face-saving way to leave the fray. The women turned to the vendor. I walked back to my car and Jana Shatka returned to her home.

I was betting she’d be calling Xavier, but if he was working days, the shift didn’t change for another two hours. I had time to drive over to the Bevilacqua dealership. The glare of the summer sun on the cars hurt my eyes even through my sunglasses.

No one was out on the lot, but as soon as I parked, a man in shirtsleeves and tie surged over to greet me. His smile could have lit most of the South Side. He looked at my nicked and dusty car as if it were a precious piece of art.

“You’re a lady with a discerning eye for a quality sports car. Let me tell you, if you liked this Mustang, you’ll love one of our new Camaros.”

I smiled regretfully. “I’ve come about a Camaro, but not to buy. To check the legitimacy of a sale.”

Like a turtle retreating into a shell, he switched off his heartiness and appeared more like a funeral director greeting the bereaved. “If this is a legal matter, you need Mr. Bevilacqua.” He spoke into a mike that hovered a few inches from his mouth, announcing to someone inside the building that trouble was arriving.

I walked through the sliding glass doors into air-conditioning so intense that I hugged my arms to try to get some warmth back into them. The cold air carried an unpleasant odor, maybe the glue they used in the carpeting.

A receptionist waved me toward a corner office. I wasn’t a customer, I didn’t deserve a personal greeting, let alone a smile. As I threaded my way around the cars and trucks that filled the showroom, I couldn’t resist stopping to stroke a Corvette. My dream car, the 1938 Jaguar SS 100, was reselling for about half a million these days—the price of Dick’s watch, come to think of it—but a Corvette wouldn’t be a shabby second choice.