Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (57 page)

“I’m
Ms. Warshawski. And you are?”

“We’ll
be more comfortable talking in the car.”

I
smiled thinly. “You’llbe more comfortable in your sedan. I, however, am
perfectly comfortable here in the hallway. Now why don’t you tell me your name
and your business.”

He
pouted as he tried to make up his mind—his instructions hadn’t included what to
do if I didn’t cooperate. “This is private, you understand.”

“No
problem. Unless the UPS man shows up no one’s likely to walk through the foyer
this time of day. Spit it out—you’ll find it easier than you imagine.

You’ve
come to ask me to tail your daughter’s boyfriend? To find out who’s selling
your company’s secrets overseas? To shoot me on Donald Blakely’s orders?

Or to
give me a warning about the Gantner investigation?”

He
was almost snorting in exasperation. “We need to talk seriously. I’m from
Senator Gantner’s office.”

“And
you have a name.”

“It’s
immaterial.”

“Not
to me—I need to call the office and make sure you really work there. Any con
artist can put on expensive threads and claim to work for a U.S. senator.”

Before
he could react I had a hand inside his left breast pocket. I pulled out his
wallet, a thin brown thing that felt like a lover’s skin in the night.

Keeping
one hand on my Smith & Wesson I shook the wallet open, then fished out a
driver’s license with my teeth. He started shouting—this was an outrage, who
did I think I was—that kind of thing. I brought out my gun and waved him into a
corner. The driver’s license identified him as Eric Bendel.

I
handed the wallet back. “I don’t know, Bendel, if you are Bendel—that picture
looks like an escapee from the mental hospital in Elgin. You sure you want to
claim it?”

“I
have a message for you from a United States senator,” he said through clenched
teeth. “That is something you should take more seriously than you seem prepared
to do.”

“Hey,
I’m a voter and a taxpayer. If he can say the same, we’re equals. But lay it on
me—I know you and he think it must be something special.”

“The
senator called me an hour ago from Washington.” The pale eyes had moved from
cold to permafrost. “He said to suggest that your energies would be better
spent on other work—that you would know what he was referring to. He also said
that if you persisted in an investigation that threatened the well-being of his
constituents he would see whether the laws you have broken in the last two
weeks constitute grounds for revoking your investigator’s license. The state
bar will also be interested.”

“My,
my. And you learned all that by heart too. No wonder he likes you on his staff.
Good-bye, Eric. Have a nice day.” I opened the door and waved him out with my
pistol hand.

“What
am I supposed to tell the senator?” he said in a voice like ground glass.

“That
as a constituent I’m honored he takes a close interest in my affairs and I’ll
do my best to reciprocate. Good-bye, Mr. Bendel.”

Pushing
his lips together in frustration he said, “The senator is used to people taking
him seriously.”

“He
and I will have to talk face-to-face sometime. We have so much in common—first
our interest in each other’s business, and now our liking to be taken
seriously. I hope you’ve learned my response by heart. Good-bye.”

He
left, almost flouncing his jacket skirts. I waited for him to get into the car
before unlocking the hall door. Maybe this was why they hadn’t tried beating me
up lately—they were hoping I might respond to senatorial persuasions. Revoke my
investigator’s license, huh? I laughed sardonically. The shape my business was
in these days it would hardly matter.

I
took extra precautions on my ride out to fetch Mr. Contreras. All the way south
to Fabian’s last night, and back, I’d had the sense of someone on my tail.

If it
was Terry’s minions, that was a relief, but if not—well, if not, I needed to be
wide awake at all times.

When
I got to Elk Grove Village I had a difficult conversation with Mr.

Contreras’s
daughter. Ruthie Marcano was understandably jealous of her father’s affection
for me. She didn’t want me to bring him home. I was a bad influence on him.
This was the third time he’d needed to be hospitalized in six years because I’d
dragged him into danger. Two gunshot wounds and now a rat bite. Did I think I
was God? If I thought she was going to let him come back into Chicago with me
for any coked-up gang-banger to shoot at, I was out of my mind.

She
was very like her father in one respect: words gushed out of her in an
unstoppable torrent. I murmured “no” and “yes” at appropriate intervals—after
all, she was right. I had given the old man a good run for his Medicaid taxes.

Before
I could come up with any way of stanching the flow, her father appeared on the
doorstep.

“Listen.”
I interrupted his jubilant greeting without ceremony. “Your daughter’s been
reminding me of all the danger I’ve put you in over the years. I think maybe
you should stay in Elk Grove Village until we get shut of—well, whoever’s been
taking aim at me lately.”

He
was indignant. If I thought he wanted to pack up and die he sure as hell
wouldn’t want to do it out here in the suburbs. He’d move into a retirement
community—his local owned one in Edgewater. But he wasn’t going to sit and
listen to me try to wrap him up like he was dead and I was a winding sheet.

Ruthie
turned on him for his ingratitude. “Didn’t I drop everything as soon as I got
the news you was in the hospital? Didn’t I? And all for what—for you to tell me
this—this floozy who got you in trouble to begin with is more important to you
than your own flesh and blood!”

“And
didn’t your ma wash your mouth out a dozen times for language like that?” her
father shouted. “Now you apologize to Vic here.”

“No
need, no need,” I said hastily.

This
was a family fight—they paid no attention to me. They started in on each
other’s past wrongdoings at such a pitch that Mitch and Peppy roared around the
corner of the house to see what was happening.

The
dogs were hysterical with delight at seeing me. It had been five days, after
all. While they raced up and down the sidewalk a dozen times to show their
pleasure, Ruthie’s younger son, a gangly fourteen-year-old, came out of the
house with Mr. Contreras’s suitcase. He hovered behind the old man in the manner
of teenagers—wanting to say good-bye, not knowing what to do with his body.

As we
finally shepherded the dogs into the car, Ruthie said, “I can’t keep running
into Chicago every time this detective gets you bitten or shot.”

“Good,”
my neighbor said truculently. “I keep telling you to leave me alone.

Bye,
Ben.” He clapped his grandson roughly on the shoulder and got into the car.

On
the way into town I found myself reiterating some of Ruthie’s warnings.

“Too
many people want my head on a platter these days. I just had a visit from one
of Senator Gantner’s aides, with a soft threat from the senator himself.”

“We
already been through this, doll. I ain’t gonna argue about it anymore.

Tell
me about the kids we brung out Monday morning. How are they?”

I had
called Eva Kuhn before leaving the apartment. I gave Mr. Contreras her report
on the two surviving Hawkings children.

“The
biggest problem is the custody fight Leon Hawkings is mounting. The kids are
recovering fast physically, but Tamar seems to have disintegrated emotionally.
Eva says as long as she had to cope with the real-life problems of survival she
was okay, but faced with the threat of losing her children she’s getting
withdrawn and morose.”

“Well,
it ain’t like she’s in contention for mother-of-the-year prizes, but we oughtta
think about helping her. ’Cause if the guy did mistreat her, and the daughter,
the poor girl that died, he’s got no business getting the other two kids back.”

“You
take on that assignment—thinking of something to do to help Tamar. Maybe you
could adopt the kids.”

I
meant it for a joke, but his eyes lit up. “Now, that’s a definite idea, doll.
We ought to get us a kid to go along with the dogs.”

“Great
idea. I could run all three of them to the lake and back every morning.”

“Now,
doll, you know—oh, you’re pulling my leg. Okay, okay. Maybe we don’t need a
kid. But we could give all five of them children a better home than they’ve got
to go to right now.”

I
couldn’t fight him on that one. It was one of the—many—things wearing me down
these days.

It
was just on noon when I had him settled into his apartment again. I left him
fussing with his seedlings and went upstairs to call Fabian.

After
various receptionists and secretaries switched me around the law school I was
permitted to talk to the professor. His voice was so tight I could have bounced
coins from it.

“Before
I say anything I want you to know that my talking to you is not a sign that I
agree to any of the outrageous statements you were hurling at me last night.”

“Yeah,
yeah,” I said, bored. “You’re a lawyer, you’ve talked to a lawyer. Now that
we’ve read the fine print, tell me how the cash comes in.”

“By
air, Warshawski. On Saturday nights.”

“By
air?” I echoed. “Where? Surely not to O’Hare.”

“You
pride yourself on being so smart, you figure it out.”

“Fabian—”

He
hung up, leaving me fuming. When I called back he refused to come to the phone
again, sending me a snotty message through the departmental receptionist.

By
air on Saturday nights. Great. I started ticking off airports in the Chicago
area. Probably not O’Hare, unless Gantner managed to pay off a whole lot of
people—mechanics, controllers, customs agents. The same argument applied to
Midway. There was a military runway near O’Hare—the senator might have access
to that. And the naval air base in the northern suburbs. Meigs Field, the
little corporate airport on the lakefront was a possibility. Gary, Indiana, had
an airport. There were dozens of private landing strips in the seven-county
area, but presumably the musketeers needed a jet if money was coming all the
way from the Caymans.

And
then I smacked my forehead. Gant-Ag had an airstrip. No customs, the mechanics
all worked for the company. The elaborate security I’d encountered when I drove
out there last week—that didn’t have anything to do with experimental corn
hybrids. Gantner needed every possible warning of visitors to the site.

“Fabian’s
right: Iam so smart,” I said aloud.

Or
was I? Had the senator sent Eric Bendel because Fabian had called him for help?
Or because young Alec had come running to Papa? Fabian might have gone to young
Alec anyway. In which case this cryptic hint was a way of baiting a trap for
me. But maybe, even if it was a trap, it was still true—the money did come in
there on Saturday nights, but they hoped to kill me in the act of trespassing
on the sacred experimental farm.

(“In
the dark we couldn’t tell who it was,” young Alec would say, more in sorrow
than anger. “She’d been out here last week pulling up our sacred grass.

We
warned her then—how could we know she had such contempt for private property
and the law?”)

I
called Murray. If Alec Gantner was going to unload bags of hundred-dollar bills
out at the family farm this weekend, I didn’t want to be the only witness.

As
Terry had made clear, no cops wanted to touch a U.S. senator’s banker, let
alone his son. I’d have to have pictures, names, and dates before I’d get
anyone to listen to me.

As
I’d hoped, Murray was eager to ride shotgun for me. When I’d explained the
whole situation to him he agreed to come up with a camera that could take
nighttime pictures. And he also promised not to nudge any of his volatile
Washington sources until after the weekend.

“It’s
not a story yet, you know,” he told me. “I played Tish’s tape to my editor
yesterday. He’s willing to let me poke around, but he’s treating me the way
Finchley did you. If we get something cold and hard, like an airplane logbook
and photos, I may get some real resources assigned to this.”

We
decided to drive out to Morris together around noon, so that we’d have enough
time to scout the landscape. Murray would pick me up in the alley behind the
Belmont Diner at eleven.

Lover
in Arms

The
cold had worked its way through my windbreaker and pullover. As I lay in the
damp soil next to Murray I had to clench my teeth to stop their chatter. I
unfolded the blanket from my backpack and wrapped it around my shoulders.
Murray grunted and grabbed a corner of it to pull across his neck.

When
we reached Gant-Ag a little after one we drove the perimeter of their
headquarters. On the southwest edge of the vast holdings of buildings and
experimental farms we found a thicket where a stream crossed the property.