Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (48 page)

Camilla
put the pot back on the stove. She frowned at me anxiously and left the
kitchen.

“You
got two big favors. My, my. And they didn’t ask for anything back. They are
both Easter bunnies, I guess. Did Jasper talk to you about who they were buying
off at City Hall on their construction sites? And don’t pretend you don’t know
what I’m talking about—the story of my arrest at a Home Free site made all the
networks Saturday.”

I
heard a click. “Are they messing around with their Wage and Hour reports,
Quirk?” Camilla had picked up the extension in the bedroom.

“Hi,
Zu-Zu,” Phoebe said. “If they are they didn’t confide in me.”

We
batted it around another futile minute. Phoebe was an experienced high-stakes
poker player; she wasn’t about to fold during this phone conversation. Even
Camilla’s nervous desire for information about Home Free’s legal standing
couldn’t budge Phoebe. Finally, in exasperation, I told her I was going to talk
it over with Murray.

“Maybe
I’ll never know who’s so spooked down at City Hall. But if theHerald-Star runs
a story on the Wage and Hour scam, Murray can at least put a temporary
spotlight on the other Home Free job sites. It’ll be a while before they start
flying Romanians in again. Maybe it’ll give some American workers a crack at
getting jobs. And Senator Gantner will enjoy the publicity on how he comes
through for his constituents.”

“Just
don’t shine so bright a spotlight on them that we lose the rehab job,”

Camilla
adjured me sharply from the extension.

“It’s
what they got in exchange for giving you the job that I want to know about. The
tie-in is through Century Bank.”

“But
Home Free didn’t have anything to do with that deal,” Camilla reminded me.

“That’s
what I’d like to know. Eleanor Guziak sits on the Century board.

She’s
Donald Blakely’s right-hand woman, so he must know what’s going on there, and
if he does, so do the other two musketeers, Jasper and Alec—” I broke myself
off. “JAD Holdings. What an imbecile I am. Jasper, Alec, and Donald. One for
all, all for one. Right, Phoebe?”

“I’m
sure you know what you’re talking about, Vic,” Phoebe said. “I don’t. Go to
Murray if you want. But if you screw up the Lamia deal you’d better have some
back-up project up your sleeve for the tradeswomen.”

She
hung up. Camilla came back to the kitchen, troubled by the conversation.

I
couldn’t reassure her that the Lamia project was safe—if my investigations
pulled a major rug out from under Home Free, they probably wouldn’t be able to
fund even Lamia’s rehab work.

“What
are the guys up to?” I demanded. “They’re buying Century and it’s supposed to
be a deep, dark secret. If I’ve guessed right about who makes up JAD

Holdings,
that means Jasper pulled back on your original project, then threw you the
rehab job as a crumb. Don’t you want to know why?”

“Aren’t
our jobs more important than whether Jasper’s working a fiddle with City Hall or
some banks? It’s hard for women to get this kind of work,” Camilla pleaded.

“Someone
killed Deirdre,” I told her. “If it was these guys, do you really want to take
their money?”

Camilla
came over to me and made a great pretense of staring into my ear.

“Just
like I thought,” she announced at last. “They didn’t put compromise in your
head. Look it up in the dictionary. Study it. It’s a useful concept. I’m going
home. You don’t need a baby-sitter, you need a straitjacket.”

I
didn’t like her leaving angry, but nothing I said could calm her down—unless I
agreed to let go of Jasper Heccomb. She even suggested I put my investigation
on hold until the end of the summer, when Lamia expected to be done with their
job. I shook my head miserably and watched her storm out the door.

I
felt the ache between my shoulder blades that I get from fighting with the
people I like. I shuffled back to the kitchen to call my answering service. I
had a message from Eva Kuhn, the Arcadia House therapist.

She
wanted to tell me what she’d learned from Tamar Hawkings. It had been
difficult, but in the end she’d managed to get Hawkings to talk. Eva had also
persuaded Tamar to let her speak with Sam and Miriam, the surviving children.

Tamar’s
mistrust of the social welfare system was apparently rooted in the history of
her sister Leah.

Leah,
married to an abusive man, did all the right things: after getting out of
prison, when he continued to batter her, she went to a shelter, she found her
own apartment, got an order of protection, went through a jobs program, and
landed a position as a data-entry clerk. And then was murdered. Tamar was
convinced the same fate awaited her if she went through the shelter route. Her
daughter’s death couldn’t persuade her that she wasn’t better off foraging on
the streets than putting herself in the hands of the social welfare system.

“I’m
working on it, but it won’t be easy. Just thought you’d want to be kept posted
on what we’re doing,” Eva finished. “I did check up on the sister, by the
way—she was murdered by an angry husband who stalked her for months beforehand.

Even
beat her up at work one day. She was in the hospital for three weeks that
time.”

When
I hung up, my bleak mood only deepened. I wanted to crawl back to bed.

When
I thought about all the men beating on women, beating on their daughters,
beating on each other, I couldn’t imagine my own efforts to intervene as
anything but futile.

“But
if you don’t act there may be one more dead child,” I said out loud.

“And
then you really had better crawl under a rock.”

I
drummed my fingers on the kitchen counter. I would need help if I was going to
put the squeeze on Cyrus. I phoned Murray Ryerson at theHerald-Star .

“Warshawski!”
His voice dripped sarcasm. “The queen herself condescends to speak to the
common folk.”

“You’re
about as common as they get, that’s for sure. You want to talk business, or
trade love songs? I’m ready to tell you everything I know.”

“And
in exchange?”

“And
in exchange, if you decide any of it’s a story, maybe it’ll goad people into
showing their hands. Also, you can buy me dinner. At the Filigree. In which
case I may overlook you smearing me with Conrad on Sunday.”

“O
Queen, your wish makes me tremble and hasten to obey. Filigree in half an
hour.”

I looked
at the clock: seven-thirty. Conrad lives in Chatham, almost half an hour south
of the Loop, and I needed to make another call. Murray agreed to give me an
hour.

I
reached Sal Barthele at home. She was depressed about having to shut the Golden
Glow indefinitely—in these hard economic times it was her main source of cash
flow. Fortunately she wasn’t directly affected by the water in the tunnels—the
Glow sat on a shallow basement.

“I’ve
been following you around Chicago on the tube,” she said. “One day arrested and
almost deported, the next a mighty heroine hauling the homeless out by the
scruffs of their necks. I tried the hospital but they told me you’d already
left. Where are you now, girlfriend?”

“Down
at Conrad’s. Someone tossed my place on Saturday and I didn’t have the stamina
to do cleanup.”

“You
don’t lack stamina for that, Vic—you lack desire. Me, when something goes
wrong, I scrub. You, when something goes wrong, you shoot. You moving in with
Conrad as a way to solve your housing problems?”

For
some reason that option had never occurred to me. I said No so emphatically
that Sal laughed.

“Why
I really called was to see if you know how to get in touch with Cyrus Lavalle,”
I said.

“What
do you want with that ridiculous clotheshorse?” she asked. “If you need a
dress, isn’t he thinner than you? ... Someone told me when he doesn’t drink at
the Glow he hangs out at the Grand Guignol. That’s up on Broadway, at
Corneliaor Brompton, something like that. If you really need him he’ll probably
show up there.”

When
she’d hung up I called Murray. He grumpily agreed to the Grand Guignol instead
of the Filigree—it was a long trek north of the newspaper and we probably
wouldn’t be able to eat there. I scribbled a note to Conrad and scrambled into
the jeans he’d brought to the hospital for me. I was about to leave when I had
a second thought. I took an extra half hour to clean and oil the Smith &
Wesson and load a new clip.

The
Price of a Bottle

As
soon as I entered the Grand Guignol I knew I was out of place. The inside of
the massive door was lined with beaten bronze. The walls, as nearly as I could
tell in the dim light, were covered in matching leather. The customers,
perching thickly at tables and along the bar in the narrow entrance hall, were
all men.

Men
in leather, men in silk, men in shredded cutoffs with holes to expose tattooed
buttocks, men in makeup and high heels, and even a few in business suits. At
the rear of the bar the only other woman was crooning throatily into a mike.
Her sequined dress just covered the essentials.

As I
passed along the bar the men on the stools eyed me narrowly, then fidgeted
uneasily in their seats. I felt like Gary Cooper making that solitary walk down
Main Street. I tried to stand tall in my loafers, saying, “Easy, boys, and none
of us will get hurt,” but kept the remark under my breath.

Cyrus
wasn’t in the room, but Murray had arrived ahead of me and bagged a small table
in a corner. A young man with olive skin and bleached blond hair, wearing a
pink silk jumpsuit open to the navel, was leaning across the table in the
facing seat. When I came up to the table he glanced at me, made a face, and
went back to cooing something at Murray.

I
smiled nicely. “I’m afraid he’s my date, but I’ve only paid for the first hour.
When I leave you can claim him.”

The
youth got up, languidly, picked up Murray’s hand to plant a kiss in the palm,
and strolled to the bar. Murray looked venomous. I couldn’t help laughing, and
once I’d started I couldn’t stop. The other patrons turned around to frown.

“You
wanted revenge, Warshawski, you got revenge, I’ll give you that,” Murray said
in a savage undertone.

“I
didn’t know it was a queer bar,” I gasped in between hiccups of laughter.

“But
if you could have seen your face when the guy kissed your hand ... ” I sat down
and clutched my sides. “I’ll cherish that till the grave.”

“Which
will greet you soon if you don’t shut up that cackling,” Murray hissed.

When
I kept howling he grabbed my shoulder and pointed out a bouncer about the size
of a refrigerator, watching me with the gaze of a junkyard dog who’s spied
dinner. A waiter was frowning at us as well. I pulled myself together as best I
could and ordered a whisky in a gasping voice. Murray was drinking Holstein’s,
his favorite beer.

The
waiter told me that people wanted to hear the music and he’d appreciate it if I
didn’t crash a place where I wasn’t welcome if I was going to laugh at it. In
the middle of my apology the sequined woman finished her set and exited to
massive applause. As she sashayed through a back curtain I realized it was a
man. I don’t think I could ever look that good, even if I could afford a dress
like hers. His?

Under
cover of the applause and renewed conversations I told Murray why we were in
the bar. “Cyrus is my source. I don’t mind you meeting him, but you put him in
print and he’s a dried-up source. Dig?”

“Go
teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” he said irritably. “Why are we going
through this charade? What’s your source got?”

“I
used to watch my granny take old sweaters apart so she could use the yarn on
something new. She’d start with a shapeless wad, tugging at it here and there
until suddenly she’d find the thread that would turn the wad into a long
string.

I’m
hoping Cyrus has the thread.”

I
pulled a pad of paper from my shoulder bag and started drawing blocks: one for
Century, one for Gateway, one for Lamia, one for Home Free. Above the blocks I
listed the people who were connected to each block.

“All
these guys come together, but I don’t see how. If I could find that out I’d
probably know why Deirdre died. Even though I’m pretty sure it was Jasper
Heccomb or one of his pals who killed her, I’m not a hundred percent certain.

And
until I can see why, I can’t see who.”

Bad
temper wasn’t one of Murray’s vices. Before I was halfway through my story
about Century, Phoebe, and Lamia,about Jasper’s stash and my encounter with
Anton at the Home Free site, he had pulled out his own pad and was writing
furiously.

“You
think JAD Holdings is your three musketeers. I ought to be able to find that
out.”

I
grinned. “Spoken like a true coconspirator.”

“Where’s
Jasper’s cash coming from?”

“I
don’t know. I also don’t know where the cash is going. Some of it’s used to pay
the contractors off the books so they don’t have to file taxes, but you don’t
need five million for that.”