Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (29 page)

Maybe
it was in Ken’s imagination. Still ... I went to my closet and took the Smith
& Wesson out of the safe. The clip was loaded. I inserted it into the gun
and climbed into bed.

The
best thing to do with a tracking tail is confront it. The second best is to
lose it. Which meant driving something other than the Trans Am. I couldn’t
afford to rent anything, though, and I couldn’t afford to risk any of my
friends’ safety by borrowing their cars.

I
turned out the light and prowled through the apartment, checking all the
windows as well as the back door. I’d installed an alarm system last year. I
knew it would be hard for anyone to come in after me, but it didn’t make it any
easier for me to relax: I hate being under siege in my own home.

As I
pulled my jeans off in my dark bedroom I heard paper rustling and remembered
the letter from Senator Gantner I’d pulled from Fabian’s desk. I turned on the
bedside lamp to read it.

The
senator thanked Fabian—“Professor Messenger”—for his advice on the Boland
Amendment. And he asked if Fabian could recommend someone knowledgeable about
tax law respecting loans from offshore banks.

Fabian
would have leapt to respond to the wish of the man who could get him his
judgeship. But the letter had nothing to do with his wife’s death, or with Home
Free’s reluctance to talk to me, or Lamia, or any of the other questions I was
trying to answer. In short, I had been not just nosy but stupid to take it.

How
on earth could I get it back to him?

It
was past two before I fell into a light, restless sleep, filled with feverish
dreams. I was chasing Emily but I had gone blind and had no idea how far ahead
of me she was, or even where we were. The remote spectator who inhabits dreams
showed me the action laid bare like a Dutch interior. I was following Emily
down endless flights of stairs while Phoebe, Lotty, and my mother stood in
doorways along the way mocking my blindness.

Files
for Thought

I
staggered through work on Friday, punch-drunk from sleeplessness. After
checking in with Alice Cottingham, who predictably had not found any teachers
sheltering Emily, I drove down to theHerald-Star . I didn’t make any effort to
hide my route: my destination didn’t have to be a secret, and it wasn’t likely
anyone would jump me downtown in broad daylight. Still, the back of my neck
prickled all the way to the Loop.

The
stories on Alec Gantner filled a large box. A piece of paper on top of Murray’s
desk showed an arrow to the box underneath, along with a message informing me
that all material would be sent to the recycler if I wasn’t there to claim it
by day’s end.

“P.S.,”
he had added. “I’ve looked through it but didn’t see anything I didn’t already
know.”

Murray
was out somewhere putting some politician’s feet to the fire—or perhaps a beer
mug to his own lips. I helped myself to his desk and started to read. We hadn’t
been able to distinguish between Alec the senator and his son in the search;
most of the material discussed the father.

Senator
Gantner had spoken to the American Jewish Congress in November, assuring them
of his respect for Israel’s integrity. He’d spoken for an hour in the Senate on
the importance of crop price supports, and sponsored a measure along with Jesse
Helms to guarantee them. CORN LIKKER AND TOBACCY, an accompanying cartoon had
lampooned the two men.

Gantner
went to Carbondale for a town meeting, Peoria to help Caterpillar with an
international contract, Chicago to welcome the president. He was heading the
president’s Illinois Reelection Committee.

I skimmed
the articles faster. Gantner testified before a Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence that Gant-Ag had not violated trade sanctions with Iraq in the
fall of 1990. The senator’s brother Craig was running Gant-Ag by then to free
Big Alec for his senate work. No conflict of interest there, of course.

Young
Alec came in for his own share of press, but on a more modest scale.

He,
too, had testified before the Senate on Gant-Ag’s clean hands and pure
heart—that had been in theWall Street Journal . TheSun-Times had covered his
joining the Home Free board. They hadn’t done a story—just one of those “who’s
in the news” blurbs, announcing Gantner and Blakely agreeing to serve on the
board shortly after Jasper Heccomb had started to head it.

My
head felt like a plastic bubble someone had pumped full of helium. It floated
remote above my body, making it hard for me to concentrate on what I was
reading. I kept skimming the material, hoping for more mention of Heccomb or
Blakely. A piece was missing, but what? I shut my eyes, which made the floating
sensation worse.

What
tied Gantner to Blakely? I presumed some of Gant-Ag’s accounts were at
Gateway—a huge corporation like that spreads them around. But Blakely and
Gantner seemed more than just banking acquaintances. For that matter, what tied
the two of them to Jasper Heccomb?

I
used Murray’s password to dial up Lexis on his computer and checked the Gateway
board of directors. Young Alec was one of their outside directors. And so was
Heccomb. I didn’t feel like taking off my clothes to run down Wabash shouting
“Eureka!” It wasn’t unusual for heads of not-for-profits to sit on corporation
boards. In fact, since the hue and cry over social responsibility in the
seventies most companies have their token do-gooder. Neither was it surprising,
if the three were pals, that they all sat at each other’s tables.

Out
of idle curiosity I dialed up Gant-Ag. Blakely served on that board. So did the
chairs of the Ft. Dearborn Trust and Chicago’s other giant banks.

Heccomb
wasn’t listed, but that didn’t prove anything—maybe young Alec hadn’t been able
to sell his uncle on the third musketeer as a Gant-Ag board member.

Nothing
in the stack of print told me what drew Blakely and young Alec to Jasper
Heccomb. I hadn’t read everything, but what I’d sampled made me agree with
Murray—nothing startling popped out. I fanned the remaining pages. I was so
tired I saw the name without thinking and was about to drop the whole stack
back into the box when it hit me.

Feverishly
I went back through the printout a page at a time. The story had run inside
theWall Street Journal last year: Craig Gantner assured a Senate Select
Committee on Banking and Narcotics that Gant-Ag had nothing to do with Century
Bank or JAD Holdings.

The
article didn’t say why the Senate had been questioning their distinguished
colleague’s brother on a connection. And why did it matter? I propped the story
on Murray’s keyboard and studied it. When I did my search on Century Bank last
week I had learned that the JAD Holdings Group had bought Century, but I hadn’t
bothered to find out what JAD was. Now ... now I was clutching at straws just
because they were mentioned in the same paragraph as the Gantner family. Still,
the letter I’d taken from Fabian’s home last night had been in a file labeled
JAD. I asked Lexis for the JAD board, but was referred to a dummy managing
agent.

Of
course, there was one remaining question about Century Bank—besides their
abrupt withdrawal from the Lamia project, that is. Why had Donald Blakely
disclaimed all knowledge of Century, when his right-hand woman sat on their
board?

I
rubbed my forehead in frustration. If I got a good night’s sleep maybe I could
make better sense out of the paper thicket in the morning. I stacked all the
paper in the box and hoisted it up. Paper weighs a ton: carrying it to the
elevator and out of the building I could feel the veins bulging in my forearms.

“Now
I know something else about you: you’re strong as well as beautiful.”

Bent
forward with my load I hadn’t seen MacKenzie Graham as I came out of
theHerald-Star building. I looked up to see him grinning with the same
imbecilic self-satisfaction he’d displayed last night when I stopped his car. I
thought after our late-night session he would move away from proving what a prize
jerk he could be.

“Why
don’t we see if you’re as strong as you are smart ... alecky.” I dumped the box
into his arms.

It
gave me a small twitch of satisfaction to see him stagger as he assumed the
load. It was only a slight twitch, though—it couldn’t make up for my annoyance
at not noticing him on my tail this morning. That’s how you get killed in this
business.

“You
collecting scrap on the side?” Ken asked.

“Yep.
That’s how I picked you up.” I opened the Trans Am’s trunk for him to stow the
box.

He
gave me a sidelong glance. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Umph.
So you came back to my place early this morning and tagged along behind me. Not
in the Spider, I take it?”

“Dad
let me borrow the Lincoln. I told him I had a lead on a job. He was too excited
to wonder why I couldn’t drive my own car to it.”

I
chucked him under the chin. “I’m touched. I hate to think of you lying to your
papa.”

“You
moral too?”

“In a
manner of speaking. Tell you what—I might have a job for you.” When his face
lit up I said, “Grunt work only. Whoever killed Deirdre Messenger in my office
last week erased my hard disk. They also dumped my paper files all over the
floor, so reconstructing my accounts is going to be a major job. Since taxes
are due next week I have to get those files rewritten—by hand. You up to that
kind of manual labor?”

“You
didn’t back up your hard disk?” he demanded, like a dentist who can’t believe
you haven’t flossed.

“Yeah,
but the murderer stole all my floppies. ... I know, I know, you should keep the
copies off-site. They always give you these horror stories about fires and
flood. They never say anything about brains on the disk drive.”

“You
have Mirror installed?”

“Only
over the bathroom sink.”

“It’s
a program. You use it for tracking files in times like this. Without it I don’t
think I can execute ‘Undelete,’ especially not after the machine’s been down
this long.”

I
snapped my thumb against my car keys. “You know I don’t understand a word
you’re saying. Can I get my files back or not?”

“We need
to get you into the Nineties. Here’s where you need me, not that cop of yours.
Everything depends on how he wiped out the disk. Or she,” he added with another
of his sidelong glances. “If he reformatted it you’ll never see the files
again. But if he was in a hurry, didn’t want to hang around to be caught while
he executed a bunch of commands, he might’ve just deleted the files, you know,
typed DEL star dot star. He could do that and go, in which case, if you haven’t
written over them, I might be able to reconstruct your accounts. It would be a
huge job, but not impossible.”

“I
couldn’t pay you what your time would be worth in that case. I’ll have to fling
myself on the mercy of the IRS—a notoriously compassionate outfit.” I moved
around to my car door.

He
came after me and grabbed my arm. “Hey—I have to do community service.

Convince
my probation officer you’re a 501-c(3) and we’re in business.”

I had
a feeling we’d never fly that kite: the court probably demanded to see some
kind of tax return. But I’d worry about that problem later. If Ken really could
reconstruct my accounts it would be such a big help I might bully one of my
charitable friends into saying the work had been on their behalf.

Ken
wanted to buy me lunch to celebrate our new pact before we stopped at Eleventh
Street for my machine. I vetoed using his father’s membership at the Athletic
Club, but let him pick up the tab at the New Orleans Gumbo House on South
Dearborn. Darraugh would probably pay that bill in the end, too, but it wasn’t
quite as obvious a poke in Papa’s eye.

At
police headquarters I was in luck: Officer Neely was at the desk she shared
with three other cops. She’d prepared the paperwork for me—when we got to the
evidence room it was a simple matter of filling out a few hundred forms. I
showed my driver’s license, she showed her badge, and the man behind the grille
handed over my 386, along with the keyboard. Pushed, he dug up a box. I packed
in the drive and monitor, balanced the keyboard on top, and handed the package
to Ken. Manual labor would only build character in him.

Ken
looked at the machine and grimaced. “This thing is pretty dirty. I don’t know
if the drives could even survive that much crud in them. I’ll do my best,
though. When we’re done maybe I should steal you a 486—I hate a slick detective
like you working on an obsolete chip.”

He
gave Neely his sidelong look to see if his comment would provoke her, but
hassling by punks is all in a day’s work for a cop—especially a female cop.

Ignoring
him, she asked if I’d heard anything about the Messenger children.

It
was my turn to make a face. “I talked to Fabian last night. He seems very
disconnected—not the brave bully of the court- or bedroom. I got the feeling
that someone had been putting the screws to him. Has Terry been questioning him
seriously about Deirdre’s death?”

She
snorted. “I wish! If he did beat her—if you were right, what you said on
Saturday—then he could well have killed her. But it’s his daughter’s prints on
the murder weapon. And he’s a good friend of the state’s attorney. ... ”