Warshawski 09 - Hard Time (15 page)

In the next room a woman was lying in bed, sleeping heavily, wasted as my mother had been by her cancer. Across the hall a young woman with dark curly hair was watching television. It was only when I looked closely that I saw she was handcuffed to the bed.

“How are you feeling, Veronica?” Lundgren called as we passed.

“I’m okay, Nurse. How’s my baby?”

Veronica had given birth early that morning. She’d be returned to the prison in another couple of days, where she could keep her infant for four months. Coolis was progressive that way, the nurse explained, releasing the lock on the door that separated the nurses’ station from the ward. She cut short a flirtation between one of her subordinates and the corrections officer assigned to guard the hall, telling her junior to pay attention to the ward while she talked to us.

“It’s hard for them to work here—it isn’t like real nursing, and then they get bored when the ward is as empty as it is right now.”

She led us into a tiny room behind the nurses’ station that held a table, a microwave, and a small television. It was the one room on the floor with actual windows, but as these were made of wire–enforced glass they didn’t offer much of a view.

Lundgren took us through the statistics of the floor without any hesitation. There were twenty beds, but they never had more than eight or ten of them filled, except one disastrous occasion when there was a major food–poisoning outbreak at the jail and some of the patients with heart trouble came close to dying.

As to how easy or hard it was for an inmate to get to the hospital, she wasn’t privy to prison decisions, but in her experience, women were pretty sick before they were brought over. “Girls are always trying to get over here. The hospital food is better and the routine is easier to take. In jail there are counts every six hours, and lockdowns and all the rest of it. For someone serving a long sentence the hospital can seem like a vacation. So the prison makes it hard for anyone to malinger.”

“And Nicola Aguinaldo? How sick was she when she came here?”

Her lips tightened, and her hands moved uneasily in her lap. “I thought she was quite ill. So ill I was surprised that she was able to move enough to leave.”

“What was the problem?” Mr. Contreras demanded. “Was it some kind of woman problem? That’s what the cops told me, but she never said nothing about that to her ma—”

“A doctor didn’t actually examine her before she left. I was told by the prison nurse that they suspected an ovarian cyst. But before a doctor could see her, she was gone.”

“How did that little bit of a thing get away from you and the guard and everyone?” Mr. Contreras demanded.

Lundgren didn’t look at us. “I wasn’t on duty when it happened. I was told she used her small size to follow behind the laundry cart, on the side away from the guard, and that she probably concealed herself in the cart when the janitor stopped to talk to someone. In theory the laundry would be inspected before leaving this ward, but in practice they probably let it go through without poking at it: no one wants to touch soiled linens. A number of the women have AIDS.”

“And you believe Aguinaldo escaped that way?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral. “Wasn’t she cuffed to the bed?”

Lundgren nodded. “But these girls have nothing to do all day long except figure out how to use a hairpin on their handcuffs. It happens now and then that one of them gets loose, but since the ward is locked it doesn’t do them much good. I don’t think there’s anything else I can tell you. If you’d like some time alone in the chapel before you set out, I can have an orderly show you to it. Otherwise he’ll escort you to the main entrance.”

I left my card on the table when we got up to leave. “In case something else occurs to you that you’d like me to know about, Nurse.”

On the way out, Mr. Contreras exploded with frustration. “I don’t believe it. A laundry cart, huh? Things ain’t bigger than a minute, and not even Nicola was that tiny. I want you to sue them. Sue them for—what was it you said—not taking due something?”

Veronica, the woman who’d had the baby, managed to be in the hall, cuffed to the orderly, who was escorting her back from the bathroom. “You know Nicola? What happened to her?”

“She’s dead,” I said. “Do you know why she was in the hospital?”

Nurse Lundgren appeared next to us. “You can’t be talking to the patients, ma’am. They’re inmates even if they’re in the hospital. Veronica, you’re well enough to parade the hall, you’re well enough to get back to the house. Jock, you can take these visitors out to the main entrance. Show them where the chapel is before you come back.”

Veronica looked momentarily furious, then, as if her powerlessness were something she’d just remembered, her shoulders sank and her face crumpled into despair.

Jock gave permission to the man behind the glass wall to release the doors. At the entrance to the main hospital wing, he pointed down a hall to the chapel.

19 Power Dining

“So what do you think, doll?” Mr. Contreras asked as he buckled himself into the seat. “That nurse seemed mighty uneasy. And how would a little thing like that girl was get out of a place like that?”

I didn’t have an answer. Nurse Lundgren seemed competent, and even, for the setting, compassionate. I agreed she’d seemed uncomfortable, but it would be easy for me to read into that what I wanted to. Maybe she was troubled at the loss of a patient rather than covering up special knowledge of Aguinaldo’s escape.

We drove over to Smallpox Creek to let the dogs cool off again before the drive home. Mr. Contreras, suddenly seeing Nicola Aguinaldo as a person, not an illegal immigrant or a criminal, was subdued during the ride. We got home a little before six. Mary Louise had shoved a packet underneath the locked inner door with a report on her day’s work. She had delivered our report to Continental United; the human resources vice president had called to say they were delighted with our work, but that they thought they would have to send someone down to Georgia to check on things in person. And that someone would likely be me—unless Baladine persuaded the company to turn all their work over to Carnifice.

I didn’t want to hang about the back roads of Georgia, waiting for someone with a tire iron to hit me on the head. On the other hand, if I stayed in Chicago I might start doing unlucrative things like tailing Morrell, to see if a man worried about committing himself on the phone might drive to Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother’s home.

A man named Rieff phoned from Cheviot Labs at eleven,
Mary Louise had written in her round schoolgirl hand.
He says he can provide a printout of what is on Aguinaldo’s dress, but he does not know how meaningful it is. It was a long T–shirt with Lacey Dowell as the Mad Virgin on it. A label said it was a specialty shirt but did not identify where it was manufactured. There are traces of sweat, which are presumably Aguinaldo’s, but without a DNA sample he couldn’t say. There is a trace of cigarette ash around the inside of the neck. He is not charging for that information because the analysis was already done when they inspected the dress last week, but if you want to know what brand of cigarette, that will cost around two hundred extra.

Cigarette ash around the inside of the neck? I wondered if Aguinaldo was a smoker, and how hard or easy it was to drop ash down your own neckline if you smoked.

I turned back to Mary Louise’s notes.
At two o’clock Alex Fisher phoned. She wanted to know if you had thought over her offer any more. I said you were out of town for the day and would get back to her in the morning; she urged me to push you to take the job, it would mean a lot for your agency one way or another however you decided. Vic, what does this woman want?

She’d underscored the question several times. I was with her there: what did Alex want? What was Teddy Trant going to do to me if I didn’t dig around in Frenada’s affairs? Put a V chip in my TV so I was forced to watch nothing but Global programs? If Abigail Trant had persuaded her husband to give me some work, was that enough reason for him to be surly at my refusal to accept it?

Of course the other connection to Global was Lacey Dowell. She, or at least her face, kept cropping up. Now she was on the shirt Nicola Aguinaldo had on when she died. Was Global’s big star involved in something so ugly the studio wanted to pin it on Frenada? But there was nothing to link Lacey with Nicola Aguinaldo, at least as far as I could tell.

Maybe I should try to see Lucian Frenada. I had entered the phone numbers Alex Fisher gave me into my Palm Pilot. When I called his home, a machine told me, in Spanish and English, that Frenada regretted not answering my call in person, but that he was perhaps at his factory and would get back to me if I left a message.

I thought it over, then got up abruptly and went downstairs. If Frenada was perhaps at his factory I could see him in person. My back was stiff. A nagging sensible voice—Mary Louise’s or Lotty’s—told me if I had to poke at this wasp’s nest at all to do it in the morning. Or at least to take my gun, but what was I going to do with it—pistol–whip him into telling me what secret Trant wanted me to find?

There is no direct route from my place to Frenada’s factory. I snaked south and west, through streets filled with small frame houses and four–plus–one’s, past boys skateboarding or in small gangs on their bikes, now and then crossing pockets of lights around bars and pool halls. As I passed the fringes of Humboldt Park, the streets revved up with boom boxes and low–riders but died away again at the seedy industrial corridor along Grand Avenue.

A freight line cuts northwest through the area, making for oddly shaped buildings designed to fill odd lot sizes right up to the embankment. A train was rumbling past as I pulled in front of a dingy triangular building near the corner of Trumbull and Grand.

Lights blazed through open windows on the second floor. The outer door was shut but unlocked. A naked bulb glared just inside the entrance. Drunken letters in a notice board listed a wig manufacturer and a box maker on the ground floor. Special–T Uniforms was on two. As I climbed concrete steps slippery with age, light glinted on long falls of hair in a display case. It was like walking behind the guillotine after dark.

The noise coming down the stairwell sounded as though fifty guillotines were all whacking heads in unison. I followed light and sound along a metal walkway and came to Special–T’s open door. Even though it was nine at night, nearly a dozen people were working, either cutting fabric at long tables in the middle of the floor or assembling garments at machines along the wall. The racket came partly from the sewing machines, but mostly from the shears. Two men positioned layers of cloth at the end of the tables, clamped them in place under a pair of electric shears, then wielded a control box to release the blades.

I watched, fascinated, as the shears whicked through the fabric and the men carried pieces over to the sewing–machine operators. One person was sewing letters to the backs of shirts, another attaching sleeves. At least half the crew was smoking. I thought of the cigarette ash smudged into the neck of Nicola Aguinaldo’s dress. Maybe it had come from the person who made the garment, rather than from Aguinaldo herself.

Lucian Frenada was standing at one of the cutting tables next to a stocky man with thin black hair. They seemed to be discussing the proper placement of a pattern stencil. I walked over to stand in his range of vision—if I touched him to get his attention he might be startled into landing under one of the fabric scythes.

Frenada looked up, frowning.
“Si? Le puedo ayudar en algo?”

I held out my card. “We met at Lacey Dowell’s party last week,” I shouted over the noise of the machinery.

The man next to him stared at me with frank curiosity: was I a girlfriend so enamored that I would pursue Frenada into his shop? Or was I with INS, about to demand that all hands produce their papers? Frenada touched his arm and said something in Spanish, then pointed at the floor, ankle–deep with scraps of cloth. The man passed a command on to one of the cutters, who stopped his work to start sweeping.

Frenada took me to a cubbyhole at the rear of the floor, which was protected enough from the floor noise to allow conversation. Fabric samples and patterns festooned the top of a metal desk; production schedules were taped to the door and the sides of an old filing cabinet. The only chair had a motor on it. Frenada leaned against the door; I perched gingerly on the edge of the desk.

“Why are you here?” he demanded.

“You mentioned Tuesday night that something odd was happening at your shop.”

“Do you usually sell your services like this, door to door?”

My cheeks and neck grew warm with embarrassment, but I couldn’t help smiling. “Like encyclopedias, you mean? A reporter I know has been asking questions about your business. And I remembered what you said, so I wanted to see Special–T for myself.”

“What reporter? What kind of questions?”

“Wondering what secrets you were hiding here at Special–T.” I watched him steadily, but he looked only puzzled, and somewhat scornful.

Another freight train began to thunder behind the building, drowning Frenada’s reply. While I waited to be able to hear him, I looked around the office. On his desk, underneath one of the fabric swatches, I saw a glimpse of a slogan I knew from Emily Messenger’s wardrobe:
The Mad Virgin Bites.

The train passed, and Frenada said, “Secrets? I can’t afford such things. I thought you meant—but it doesn’t matter. My business runs on a shoestring; if something a little strange happens, then I have to accept it as an act of God.”

“Lacey reassured you when you saw her on Thursday?”

“Did she—who told you—”

“No one. It was a deduction. That’s what I do—get facts and make deductions. They teach it in detective school.” I was babbling, because of the Mad Virgin T–shirt.

Frenada looked around his office and caught sight of the shirt. He got to his feet and moved me toward the door.

“My business has nothing to do with Lacey. Nothing at all. So keep your deductions to yourself, Miss Detective. And now, by another gracious act of God, I have a large order to get out, the largest I have ever been blessed with, the uniforms for a soccer league in New Jersey, which is why you find me here so late at night.” He hustled me out through the shop floor to the metal walkway, waiting until I reached the stairwell landing before he turned back inside.

I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio’s church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school’s soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily mass from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin T–shirt half–buried under his fabric samples, I didn’t think the priest would share it with me.

Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old ’hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated shirts employing local workers at living wages.

Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I’d like to catch Murray’s second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn’t want to drive anymore, anyway. The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global—after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.

After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to titillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He’d taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fifty–seven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.

“Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,” I grumbled when the show ended.

“You want egg in your beer?” Sal said. “Guy can’t do everything.”

“I wish he’d covered the women’s prison at Coolis. That’d be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I’m surprised it’s not called Baladine City.”

“Vic, this may make sense to you, but it’s Greek to me.”

“Ever since that wretched party you threw here last week, I’ve been running around in circles. Like my dog Mitch chasing his tail, come to think of it—exhausting and about as meaningful.” I told her what I’d been doing. “And don’t tell me it’s none of my business, because it is, even if no one is paying me for it.”

“Get off your high horse, St. Joan.” Sal poured me another finger of Black Label. “It’s your time and money; do what you want with it.”

That encouragement didn’t cheer me as much as it might have, but dinner at Justin’s in the west Loop—where the owner knew Sal and whisked us past a dumbfounded line of beautiful Chicagoans—made me much happier. At least until I caught sight of Alex Fisher halfway through my tuna in putanesca sauce.

I couldn’t help staring. Alex was at a table with Teddy Trant and a bald man with the kind of shiny face all Illinois politicians take on after too much time snuffling around in the public trough. Jean–Claude Poilevy in person. If Trant would rather eat with him and Alex than the exquisite Abigail, there was something seriously wrong with his taste.

When we got up to leave, Alex and her convoy were still talking over coffee. Sal tried to dissuade me, but I went to their table. Trant was as perfectly groomed as his wife, down to the clear polish on his manicured nails.

“Mr. Trant,” I said. “V. I. Warshawski. I wanted to let you know I appreciate your willingness to send me some work. I’m sorry I couldn’t take it on for you.”

Alex gave me a look that could have done laser surgery on my nose, but Trant shook my hand. “Global tries to do business with local firms. It helps us anchor ourselves in cities we’re new to.”

“Is that why you’ve been talking to Lucian Frenada?” It was a guess, based on the Mad Virgin decal I’d glimpsed at Special–T earlier in the evening, but everyone at the table froze.

Poilevy put down his coffee cup with a clatter. “Is that the guy you were—”

“Lucian Frenada is the man who’s been harassing Lacey.” Alex cut him off quickly and loudly.

“Sure, Sandy, sure. It’s not a bad story, even if it has a few holes around the edges. Alex, I mean. She changed nicknames in the last twenty years,” I added to Trant. “We were such good pals when she was Sandy, I keep forgetting she’s Alex now.”

“What do you mean, holes around the edges?” Poilevy asked.