Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (14 page)

“Warshawski, what in hell did you do to yank Bull
Durham’s chain so hard?”

“Hi, Murray. Yes, I’m depressed about the Cubs and
worried because Morrell is leaving for Kabul in a few days. But otherwise
things go on same as always. How about you?”

He paused briefly, then snarled at me not to be a
smart-mouthed pain in the ass.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” I suggested.
“I’ve been in meetings all morning and have no idea what our aldercreatures
have been saying or doing.”

“Bull Durham is leading a charge of pickets outside
the Ajax company headquarters.”

“Oh—on the slave-reparations issue?”

“Right. Ajax is his first target. His handouts name
you as an agent of the company involved in the continuing suppression of black
policyholders by depriving them of their settlements.”

“I see.” A recorded message interrupted us, telling me
to deposit twenty-five cents if I wanted to continue the call. “Gotta go,
Murray, I’m out of change.”

I hung up on his squawk that that was hardly an
answer—what had I
done
?! That must be why Ralph Devereux was calling. To
find out what I’d done to provoke a full-scale picket. What a mess. When my
client—ex-client—told me he was going to take steps, these must have been the
ones he had in mind. I gritted my teeth and put another thirty-five cents into
the phone.

I got Ralph’s secretary, but by the time she put me
through to him I’d been on hold so long I really had run out of quarters. “Ralph,
I’m at a pay phone with no more money, so let’s be brief: I just heard about
Durham.”

“Did you feed the Sommers file to him?” he asked,
voice heavy with suspicion.

“So that he could denounce me as an Ajax stooge and
have every reporter in the city hounding me? Thank you, no. My client’s aunt
reacted with indignation to my asking her about the previous death certificate
and the check; my client fired me. I’m guessing he went to Durham, but I don’t
know that definitely. When I find out, I’ll call you. Anything else? Rossy on
your butt over this?”

“The whole sixty-third floor. Although Rossy is saying
it shows he was right not to trust you.”

“He’s just flailing in fury, looking for a target.
These are the snows of summer, they won’t stick on Ajax, although they may
freeze me some. I’m going to see Sommers to find out what he told Durham. What
about your historian, Amy Blount, the young woman who wrote up the book on
Ajax? Yesterday Rossy was saying he didn’t trust her not to give Ajax data to
Durham. Did he ask her that?”

“She denied showing our private papers to anyone, but
how else could Durham have found out who we insured back in the 1850’s? We
mention Birnbaum in our history, bragging that they go back with us to 1852,
but not the detail Durham has, about insuring plow shipments they made to
slaveholders. Now the Birnbaum lawyers are threatening us with breach of
fiduciary responsibility, although whether it extends back that far—”

“Do you have Blount’s phone number? I could try asking
her.”

The metallic voice announced that I needed another
twenty-five cents. Ralph quickly told me Blount had gotten her Ph.D. in
economic history at the University of Chicago last June; I could reach her
through the department. “Call me when you—” he started to add, but the phone
company cut us off.

I dashed through the lobby to the cab rank, but the
sight of a pair of smokers huddled along the wall made me remember Don, sitting
in the Ritz bar. I hesitated, then remembered my phone charger was still in
Morrell’s car—I wouldn’t be able to call Don from the road to explain why I’d
stood him up.

I found him under a fern tree in the smoking section
of the bar, with two glasses of champagne in front of him. When he saw me he
put out his cigarette. I bent over to kiss his cheek.

“Don—I wish you every success. With this book and with
your career.” I picked up a glass to toast him. “But I can’t stay to drink:
there’s a crisis involving the players you originally came here to interview.”

When I told him about Durham’s pickets outside Ajax
and that I wanted to go see what they were up to, he relit his cigarette. “Did
anyone ever tell you you have too much energy, Vic? It’ll age Morrell before
his time, trying to keep up with you. I am going to sit here with my champagne,
having a happy conversation about Rhea Wiell’s book with my literary agent. I
will then drink your glass as well. If you learn anything as you bounce around
Chicago like a pinball in the hands of a demented wizard, I will listen
breathlessly to your every word.”

“For which I will charge you a hundred dollars an
hour.” I swallowed a large gulp of champagne, then handed him the glass. I
curbed my impulse to dart across the lobby to the elevators: the image of
myself as a pinball careening around the city was embarrassing—although it kept
recurring to me as the afternoon progressed.

Pinball Wizard

I
bounced
first to the Ajax building on Adams. Durham only had a small band of pickets
out—in the middle of a workday most people don’t have time to demonstrate.
Durham himself led the charge, surrounded by his cadre of Empower Youth Energy
members, their eyes watching the passersby with the sullenness of men prepared
to fight on a moment’s notice. Behind them came a small group of ministers and
community leaders from the South and West Sides, followed by the usual handful
of earnest college students. They chanted “Justice now,” “No high-rises on the
bones of slaves,” and “No reparations for slaveowners.” I walked in step with
one of the students, who welcomed me as a convert to the fold.

“I didn’t realize Ajax had benefited so much from
slavery,” I said.

“It’s not just that, but did you hear what happened
yesterday? They sicced a detective on this poor old woman who had just lost her
husband. They cashed his life-insurance check and then, like, pretended she had
done it and sent this detective down to accuse her, right in the middle of the
funeral.”

“What?” I shouted.

“Really sucks, doesn’t it. Here—you can read the
details.” He thrust a broadsheet at me. My name jumped out at me.

AJAX—HAVE YOU NO MERCY?
WARSHAWSKI—HAVE YOU NO SHAME?
BIRNBAUM—HAVE YOU NO COMPASSION?

Where is the widow’s mite? Gertrude Sommers, a
God-fearing woman, a churchgoing woman, a taxpaying woman, lost her son. Then
she lost her husband. Must she lose her dignity, as well?

Ajax Insurance cashed her husband’s life-insurance
policy ten years ago. When he died last week, they sent their tame detective, V
I Warshawski, to accuse Sister Sommers of stealing it. In the middle of the
funeral, in front of her friends and loved ones, they shamed her.

Warshawski, we all have to make a living, but must you
do it on the bodies of the poor? Ajax, make good the wrong. Pay the widow her
mite. Repair the damage you have done to the grandchildren of slaves. Birnbaum,
give back the money you made with Ajax on the backs of slaves. No Holocaust
restitution until you make the African-American community whole.

I could feel the blood drumming in my head. No wonder
Ralph was angry—but why should he take it out on me? It wasn’t his name that
was being slandered. I almost jumped out of the line to tackle Alderman Durham,
but in the nick of time I imagined the scene on television—the EYE team
wrestling with me as I screamed invective, the alderman shaking his head more
in sorrow than anger and declaiming something sanctimonious to the camera.

I watched, fuming, as the circle of marchers brought
Durham parallel to me. He was a big, broad-shouldered man in a black-and-tan
houndstooth jacket which looked as though it had been made to measure, so
carefully did the checks line up along the smooth-fitting seams. His face
gleamed with excitement behind his muttonchop whiskers.

Since I couldn’t punch him, I folded the broadsheet
into my purse and ran down Adams toward my car. A cab would have been faster,
but my rage needed a physical outlet. By the time I reached Canal Street, the
soles of my feet throbbed from running in pumps on city pavement. I was lucky I
hadn’t sprained an ankle. I stood outside my car gulping in air, my throat dry.

As my pulse returned to normal, I wondered where Bull
Durham had gotten the money for custom tailoring. Was someone paying him to
harass Ajax and the Birnbaums—not to mention me? Of course, all aldercreatures
have plenty of chances to stick their fingers in the till in perfectly legal
ways—I was so furious with him I wanted to assume the worst.

I needed a phone, and I needed water. As I looked for
a convenience store where I could buy a bottle, I passed a wireless shop. I
bought another in-car charger: my life would be easier this afternoon if I was
plugged in.

Before I got onto the expressway to track down my
client—ex-client—I called Mary Louise on my private office line. She was
understandably upset at my leaving her holding the bag. I explained how that
had happened, then read her Bull Durham’s broadsheet.

“Good grief, he’s got a nerve! What do you want to do
about it?”

“Start with a statement. Something like this:

“In his zeal to make political hay out of Gertrude
Sommers’s loss, Alderman Durham overlooked a few things, including the facts.
When Gertrude Sommers’s husband died last week, the Delaney Funeral Parlor
humiliated her by halting the funeral just as she took her seat in the chapel.
They did so because her husband’s life-insurance policy had been cashed some
years ago. The family briefly employed investigator V I Warshawski to get at
the facts of what happened. Contrary to Alderman Durham’s claims, Ajax
Insurance did not hire Warshawski. Warshawski was not at Aaron Sommers’s
funeral and did not see or meet the unfortunate widow until the following week.
It is inconceivable that Warshawski would ever interrupt a funeral in the
fashion the alderman is claiming. If Alderman Durham was utterly mistaken about
the facts of Warshawski’s involvement in the case, are his other statements
open to the same questions?”

Mary Louise read it back to me. We tweaked it a few
times, then she agreed to phone or e-mail it to the reporters who had been
calling. If Beth Blacksin or Murray wanted to talk to me in person, she should
tell them to come to my office around six-thirty—although if they were like the
rest of the Chicago media, they would probably be camped outside the doors of
members of the Birnbaum family, hoping to accost them.

A cop tapped my parking meter and made an ugly
comment. I put the car in gear and started down Madison toward the expressway.

“Do you know what the Birnbaum part of Durham’s
handout is about?” Mary Louise asked.

“Apparently Ajax insured the Birnbaums back in the
1850’s. Part of the vast Birnbaum holdings came from something in the South.
Ajax execs are steaming over how Durham got that information.”

As I oozed onto the expressway I was glad I’d bought
the water: traffic seems to run freely these days only between ten at night and
six the next morning. At two-thirty, the trucks heading south on the Ryan
formed a solid wall. I put Mary Louise on hold while I slid my Mustang in
between an eighteen-wheel UPS truck and a long flatbed with what looked like a
reactor coil strapped to it.

Before hanging up, I asked her to dig up Amy Blount’s
home phone number and address. “Phone them to me here in my car, but don’t call
her yourself. I don’t know yet if I want to talk to her.”

The flatbed behind me gave a loud hoot that made me
jump: I had let three car lengths open up in front of me. I scooted forward.

Mary Louise said, “Before you go, I tracked down those
men Aaron Sommers worked with at South Branch Scrap Metal. The ones who bought
life insurance from Rick Hoffman along with Mr. Sommers.”

The Durham attack on me personally had driven the
earlier business from my mind. I’d forgotten to tell Mary Louise the client had
fired me, so she’d gone ahead with the investigation and had found three of the
four men still alive. Claiming to be doing an independent quality check for the
company, she’d persuaded the policyholders to call the Midway Agency. The men
said their policies were still intact; she’d double-checked with the carrier.
The third man had died eight years ago. His funeral had been duly paid for by
Ajax. So whatever fraud had been committed, it wasn’t some wholesale looting by
Midway or Hoffman of those particular burial policies. Not that it really
mattered at this point, but I thanked her for the extra effort—she’d done a lot
in a short morning—and turned my attention to the traffic.

When I reached the Stevenson cutoff, my motion slowed
to something more like a turtle on Valium than a pinball—construction, now in
its third year, cut off half the lanes. The Stevenson Expressway is the key to
the industrial zone along the city’s southwest corridor. Truck traffic along it
is always heavy; with the construction and the afternoon rush building, we all
bumped along at about ten miles an hour.

At Kedzie I was glad to leave the expressway for the
maze of plants and scrap yards alongside it. Even though the day was clear,
down here among the factories the air turned blue-grey from smoke. I passed
yards full of rusting cars, yards making outboard motors, a rebar mill, and a
mountain of yellowish salt, ominous portent of the winter ahead. The roads were
deeply rutted. I drove cautiously, my car slung too low to the ground for the
axle to survive a major hole. Trucks jumped past me with a happy disregard of
any traffic signs.