Warshawski 09 - Hard Time (22 page)

27 Hounding a Newshound

Murray wasn’t at the
Herald–Star,
but he rated a personal assistant now, so I got to speak to a human voice instead of a machine. When I told her I had important information on the Frenada story—and gave her enough details to convince her I wasn’t one of the horde of nutcases who always have important information on breaking stories—she said Murray was working at home.

“If you leave your number, I’ll give it to him when he calls in for his messages,” she promised.

I told her I’d call back later and didn’t leave a name.

I pulled on clean jeans and a scarlet top and took the Smith & Wesson out of the fanny pack. I balanced it on my palm, trying to decide whether to take it or not. In my present mood I might use it on Murray, but that was a risk he’d have to take: I felt more secure with the weapon. I put it in a leg holster, where I could get to it if I acted like a contortionist. The straps dug into my calf.

No one stopped me on my way to the Rustmobile. I kept checking my mirror on the way to Lake Shore Drive, but if I was being tailed it was expertly done. I detoured downtown to my bank and left a copy of the report on Frenada in my safe deposit box. Heading back north, I swung by Tessa’s mother’s palace on the Gold Coast long enough to leave spare padlock keys with the doorman so that Tessa could get into our building.

I didn’t bother to look for parking on the streets near Murray, since there never is any. I left the Skylark in the alley behind his building, underneath a sign that said: warning,
WE CALL THE POLICE TO TOW UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES.
Let them.

Murray lives in one of those six–flats with wood–burning fireplaces, tessellated marble floors in the entryways, and all the other stuff you get if you can afford a Mercedes convertible. The bells were brightly polished brass set into cherry paneling.

When Murray’s voice came through the intercom, I pinched my nose and said, “Florist. Delivery for Ryerson.”

We all imagine we’re so special that an unexpected gift of flowers doesn’t seem surprising. Murray released the lock and waited for me in his doorway. Sinéad O’Connor was wafting out from the living room behind him when I got to the second floor. The surprise in his face when he saw me did not seem to include delight.

“What the hell are you—”

“Hi, Murray. We need to talk. Is Alex–Sandy here?”

He didn’t move from the doorway. “What do you think this is? A public library with regular visiting hours?”

“That’s very good. I’ll have to use that. Like the next time you come around unannounced with Alex Fisher–Fishbein to con me into framing someone for you. What did you say to her: “Let’s sprinkle some crumbs from the Global table in front of Warshawski, she’s so perennially hard up she’ll jump on them like a carp on live bait?’“

His face darkened. “I tried to do you a favor. Just because you’re in some twenty–year–old catfight with Alex—”

“Darling Murray, when I’m in a catfight you see the gashes a jaguar leaves. But it’s hard for even a jungle cat to do much against a shark. Are you her partner or her patsy?”

“I’ve listened to you mouth off a lot of bull to a lot of people over the years, but this is the most offensive thing I’ve heard you say yet.”

“Did she tell you Global planned to toss my place? And did she mention whether they were sowing or reaping?”

His scowl got uglier, but he moved out of the doorway. “You’d better come in and tell me what happened before you go off half–cocked to Alex.”

I followed him into the living room and sat uninvited on one of the couches. He picked up a remote gadget and shut off his stereo, a cute system about as thick as my finger, with silvery speakers like rockets tucked into the corners of the room.

He leaned against the wall: this wasn’t a social visit and he wasn’t going to sit. “Okay. What happened to your place?”

I eyed him narrowly, even though I know you can’t read the truth in most faces. “Someone planted three—large—bags of coke in it while I was out of town last week.”

“Don’t bring it to me. Call the cops.”

“I did that very thing. A specimen named Lemour, who apparently freelances for BB Baladine, or maybe Jean Claude Poilevy, beat me and tried to have me arrested. That was when he couldn’t find the stuff. And he knew exactly where it was supposed to be.” I smiled unpleasantly and cut off Murray as he started to speak. “I ran a secret camera during the search.”

His scowl didn’t lighten, but a shade of doubt came into his eyes. “I’d like to see the film.”

“So you shall. I’m having your very own copy made for you. And today, because we’ve been pals for a long time and I hate to see you turn into a fawning sycophant for the studio, I am hand–delivering to you the LifeStory report I ran on Lucian Frenada two days before Global decided he needed to be discredited.”

Murray’s eyes blazed with fury at my studied insult, but he snatched the envelope out of my hand and sat down opposite me. While he examined the report I looked at the mess of papers on the glass–topped table. He’d been fine–tuning his script for tonight when I arrived: even upside down it was easy to make out Frenada’s name.

After a couple of minutes Murray dug out another report from the pile in front of him—his copy of Frenada’s finances—and began a page–by–page comparison. When he finished, he flung both of them onto the table.

“How do I know you didn’t forge this?”

“Feeble, Murray: the creation date is embedded in the report. What I want to know is what Frenada knew about BB Baladine—or Teddy Trant—that made the studio come after him.”

“He was harassing—”

“No.” I cut him off sharply. “He was not hanging around the hotel. He came there once, and Lacey met with him for an hour in her suite. Frank Siekevitz, the Trianon’s security chief, may be changing his tune now, but he told me that a week ago. I’ll be honest—Lacey has refused to talk to me—but I don’t believe that crock about Frenada harassing her. I think Global wanted me and Frenada both out of the picture. They’d give me so huge a fee for getting dirt on him that I couldn’t speak against them—and he’d be discredited. I know nothing that could interest, or harm, the studio, so why they’re riding me so hard I don’t understand. Whether Frenada did is another matter, but one we’re not too likely to find out at this juncture. But one thing I will stake my reputation on is that he was not in the drug trade.”

Murray’s full lips tightened in a thin line. I realized I wasn’t used to seeing his mouth—in all the years I’d known him he’d covered it with his beard. His face looked naked now, with a kind of bewildered petulance replacing his anger. It made me uncomfortable and I felt myself softening—into his ma or his scoutmaster. Mr. Contreras’s admonition came back to me and made me laugh.

“Yeah, it’s really funny. Maybe I’ll get the joke in a year or two,” Murray said resentfully.

“I was laughing at myself, not you. What are you going to do with this?”

He hunched a shoulder. “Cops found five kilos of coke in his office Saturday night.”

“Put there by the same hand that planted them on me. Unless you think I, too, am running drugs in from Mexico?”

“Nothing you do would surprise me, Warshawski. Although it wouldn’t be like you to do something that actually turned a profit. Where is the stuff you found?”

“St. Louis.”

“St. Louis? Oh. You flushed it.”

The Chicago sewers flow into the Chicago River. To keep the lake clean, we reversed the current of the river so that our sludge—properly treated, of course—flows backward, into the Mississippi. I suppose eventually it reaches New Orleans, but our rivalries are local—we prefer to think we’re dumping on St. Louis.

“In that case, you’ve got no proof. I don’t know what to make of this report. It’s the only thing that contradicts my story. It may be that new evidence came in between when you asked and when I did.”

“In forty–eight hours?” I lost my temper again. “If you go on the air tonight with this slander against Frenada I am going to persuade his sister to sue the studio and you for every dime you have.”

His anger flared up as well. “You are always right, aren’t you? You have one flimsy piece of counterevidence and you come galloping in like some damned Amazon, quivering with omnipotent self–righteousness, and based on your say–so I’m supposed to abandon an investigation I’ve worked hard on. Well, take your story to the
Enquirer,
or put it on the Web. A lot of people out there love conspiracies. And unless Frenada’s sister is a major enemy of yours, don’t egg her on against the studio: Global breaks bigger people than Celia Caliente like crackers over soup.”

“That what they’re threatening you with?”

His face turned the color of Lake Calumet brick. “Get out! Get out and don’t come near me again.”

I got to my feet. “I’ll give you a hint for nothing. The story on Frenada and Global isn’t about drugs. I’m not sure, but I think it’s about T–shirts. Mad Virgin T–shirts. We could have a nice little coup together—if Global didn’t own you. I mean, the paper, of course.”

He put a hand between my shoulders and pushed me toward the door. When he slammed it behind me, I dearly wanted to put my ear to the keyhole to see if I could hear him on the phone: would he go straight to Alex? I was glad I thought better of it: as I started down the stairs his door opened.

I turned to look at him. “Second thoughts, Murray?”

“Just wondering if you were really leaving, Vic.”

I blew him an airy kiss and continued down the stairs. At the bottom I wondered what I’d really gained from the encounter. It’s a mistake to try to interrogate someone when you’re angry. But at least that cut both ways with Murray this morning.

My car was still in the alley when I got there. One of the few pluses of a difficult day.

28 Friendly Warning

I was explaining to a woman from a temporary agency how to match invoices and case reports when the call came. “Collect for V. I. Wachewski from Veronica Fassler,” the operator said.

I thought for a minute but couldn’t place the name. “Sorry. I think she’s mistaken.”

“Tell her from Coolis, she met me at the hospital,” a voice at the other end gabbled frantically, before we were cut off.

Veronica Fassler. The woman who’d had the baby and was shuffling along the hall chained to the orderly when Mr. Contreras and I left. So much had happened in the last week that I barely remembered the event. I wondered how she’d gotten my name and number, but that wasn’t important—I’d been strewing my cards wholesale around the hospital.

“Oh, yes,” I said slowly. “I’ll accept the call.”

“I been in line thirty minutes and there’s people behind me still waiting. You asking questions about Nicola, right?”

Nicola Aguinaldo. Somehow I’d also lost track of her in the last few days.

“Did you know something about her?” I asked.

“Is there a reward?”

“The family doesn’t have much money,” I said. “If they could find out how she managed to get out of the hospital, it might be worth a hundred dollars.”

“Out of the hospital? I only know how she went. On a stretcher. That ought to be worth a whole lot more than how she left.”

“Female difficulties, I understand.” I sounded prim.

“You call pounding a CO on the chest with your bitty fists and getting burned “female difficulties,’ you have a different body than me, miss.”

“Burned?” Now I really was bewildered: I didn’t remember seeing burn marks on Nicola’s body, but there was no way of finding out now.

“You don’t know anything, do you? With a stun gun. The CO’s all carry them to keep order in the workshop. No one would’ve guessed they’d ever need one on Nicola.”

“That’s what took her to the hospital?”

“What about the reward, before you pry any further.”

“Did you see the CO burn her?”

A silence on the other end told its own tale. Before the speaker could bluster into some lies, I said I thought that much information was valuable, probably worth fifty dollars.

She paused again, marshaling her tale, then said in a rush, “Nicola took the gun—the stun gun—from the guard, turned it on him, and he got so mad he gave her a lethal dose. Stuns the heart, you know, just like the electric chair, if they turn up the juice. So the guards thought she was dead and rolled her body out of the hospital themselves to make it look like she didn’t die there. They wouldn’t want an investigation. That’s what happened.”

“I like the story; it’s a good one. But it’s not how she died. Where shall I send the fifty?”

“Fuck you, bitch, I’m calling to help, aren’t I? How do you know when you wasn’t there yourself?”

“I saw Nicola’s dead body.” I didn’t want to tell her what injuries caused the death, because then she’d embroider some story to account for them. I told her it would be worth another fifty to me if she could get me the name of someone at Coolis who’d known Nicola well.

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “She didn’t speak much English, but the Mexican girls didn’t hang with her on account of she was from China.”

I was startled, but then decided it was just garbled geography, not some unusual fact about Aguinaldo I hadn’t heard before. “You said she got injured in the workshop?”

“You know, where we do prison work. She was in the sewing shop. My friend Erica, her roommate Monique was working there the day the CO took after Nicola.”

“Maybe I could talk to her roommate.”

“And let her get the reward money when I’ve done all the work? No thanks!”

“You’d get a finder’s fee,” I encouraged her. “The roommate would get an informer’s fee.”

Before I could push any harder, the line went dead. I called the operator to find out if she could reconnect me, but she told me what I already knew: you can call out from jail, but no one can call in.

I sat back in my chair. So the prison had lied about the ovarian cyst. Possibly had lied, if I could believe Veronica’s tale. The idea of Nicola Aguinaldo attacking a guard seemed utterly improbable, but it was obvious when Veronica had started lying—when she blurted out the tale about the guards putting Nicola’s dead body out of the hospital. Of course, she’d had a week to prepare a realistic story. You don’t have to be behind bars to be a con artist, but the odds are more in your favor there. In my days as a public defender I’d encountered every variation of injured innocence known not just to man but to woman as well.

I needed more information on Coolis, on what Nicola had been doing the day before she went into the hospital. I’d have to make another trip out there, in my guise as a lawyer in good standing with the Illinois bar—which I am, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to retain a lawyer who hadn’t practiced in over a decade.

In the meantime I had more obvious tasks right in front of me. The woman from the temporary agency was standing next to me with a heap of computer printouts that needed sorting.

We were halfway through those when Tessa bounced in. She’d wrapped red beads around her locks and pulled them back in a kino cloth.

“What’s going on around here, V. I., that you put up that ridiculous set of . . . ?” Her voice trailed away as she took in the chaos. “Good grief! I knew you were a bit of a slob, but this is way outside your usual housekeeping. Unkeeping.”

I made sure the woman from the agency was clear enough on her work to leave her alone for a while and took Tessa into her studio to talk. She frowned when I finished.

“I don’t like being so vulnerable here.”

“Me either,” I said with feeling. “If it’s any comfort, I don’t think my marauders would bother you.”

“I want to get a better lock system installed. One that’s more secure than those padlocks you have out front. And I think you ought to pay for it, since it’s due to you that the place was vandalized.”

I expelled a loud breath. “You’re going to choose it and I’m going to fund it? No, thanks. You chose a number–pad system that seemed relatively easy to bypass.”

She frowned again. “How did they do that?”

I shrugged. “The pad itself hadn’t been tampered with, so my best guess is with UV–sensitive ink. They spray the pad, then after you go in they shine an ultraviolet light on the pad. The keys you’ve touched are clean, see. Then they just have to try those numbers in different combinations until they get the right sequence. If that’s the case we could reset the combination—but we’d have to remember to touch every number on the pad each time we went in. A magnetic card lock would be less vulnerable—but you have to remember to carry the card with you all the time. Anyone can break a padlock, but you have to stand there with equipment, which makes you more vulnerable to a passing squad car. Or to Elton. He’s keeping an eye on the joint for us.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Vic! An alcoholic street dweller!”

“He’s not usually falling–down drunk,” I said with dignity. “And his drinking doesn’t stop him from using his eyes. Anyway, I’ll ask Mary Louise to look into it. If she has time.”

My voice trailed away into doubt. Mary Louise seemed more than just too busy to work for me right now. She seemed scared.

Tessa was too absorbed by her own needs to notice my hesitation. “Daddy thinks I should—we should—get a system like Honeywell’s, that notifies a central computer of an unauthorized break–in.”

“Your daddy could well be right. But the guys who came in here wouldn’t have triggered anyone’s alarm system.”

We thrashed it around inconclusively, until the woman from the agency came to get more direction.

I tried the Baladines a couple of times during the afternoon, but only got Rosario, the maid, who said, Robbie not home, Robbie away, Missus away. The third time I called I asked for one of the precocious swimming daughters. I remembered they had names like street signs, but it took me a while to come up with Madison and Utah. The intersection where bad deals are done.

I didn’t introduce myself in case there was a parental warning out on me. Madison had seemed alarmingly forthcoming in her remarks when I was out there two weeks ago. She didn’t disappoint me today.

“Robbie isn’t home. He ran away, and Mommy’s out looking for him. Daddy is furious, he says when he finds Robbie he’ll make sure he toughens up, we’ve been soft on him too long.”

“He ran away? Do you know where he’d go?” I hoped there was a sympathetic grandmother or aunt someplace who might stand up for Robbie.

That’s why Eleanor had taken off, Madison explained, to go to her mother’s in case Robbie was hiding there. “We’re going to France on Saturday, and Robbie better be back before then. We’re renting a castle with a swimming pool so me and Utah and Rhiannon can practice. Do you know we’re having a swimming meet here on Labor Day? If Rhiannon beats me in the backstroke, I am going to be so sick. Robbie would never beat me, he’s too fat, he can’t do anything with his body. Like last summer when he fell over his feet playing football at our cousin’s. He got his feet tangled up in his shoelaces. He looked so funny, me and my cousin Gail laughed our heads off. Robbie was up all night crying. That’s something only weak girlie girls do.”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. “You didn’t even cry when a fire truck ran over your cat. Or did you cry because the nice shiny engine had a smear on it?”

“Huh? Fluffy didn’t get hit by a fire truck. That was Mom; she ran over her with the car. Robbie cried. He cried when she killed a bird. I didn’t.”

“You’re going to be a credit to Dr. Mengele one of these days.”

“Who?” she screeched.

“Mengele.” I spelled the name. “Tell BB and Eleanor he has an opening for a bright young kid.”

I tried not to slam the phone in her ear: it wasn’t her fault her parents were bringing her up to have the sensitivity of a warthog. I wished I could take some time off to look for Robbie, but I had more to do here than I could figure out. Such as what to do about Veronica Fassler’s call from Coolis. In the morning I’d take another trip out there, but for right now I could try to get the doctor who’d operated on Nicola Aguinaldo at Beth Israel.

Before calling the hospital I looked inside my phone to see if the folks who broke in had planted a bug in it. When I didn’t find anything unusual in the mess of wires, I went out behind the warehouse to inspect the phone junction box. There I found that the wires had been stripped and clipped to a secondary set of cables, presumably leading to a listening station. I tapped on them thoughtfully. Probably best that I left them in place. It wasn’t a sophisticated system, but if I dismantled it, Baladine would get something less primitive, harder to find, and harder to circumvent.

Back inside, I let Andras Schiff play Bach on my office CD. I don’t know if those old spy movies are right, that radios block listening devices, but the
Goldberg Variations
might at a minimum educate the thugs—who knows? I sat next to the speaker with my cell phone and called the hospital. The woman from the agency stared at me curiously, then turned a huffy shoulder: she thought I was trying to keep her from listening to me.

Max Loewenthal’s secretary, Cynthia Dowling, came on the line with her usual efficient friendliness.

“I can’t remember the ER surgeon’s name,” I said. “I should, since it’s Polish, but all I remember is that it had a hundred zees and cees in it.”

“Dr. Szymczyk,” she supplied.

When I explained what I wanted, she put me on hold and tracked down the report. Of course Dr. Szymczyk hadn’t done an autopsy, but he had dictated information while he was working on Aguinaldo. He had described necrotic skin on the abdomen but hadn’t mentioned any serious burn wounds. He had noted a couple of raw spots above the breasts that didn’t seem connected to the blow that killed her.

Raw spots. Those could conceivably have been caused by a stun gun, so maybe Veronica Fassler hadn’t been spinning a complete lie. I would bring fifty dollars for her with me to the prison in the morning.

I worked desultorily with the woman from the agency, but it was hard for me to focus on files. For some people, putting papers in order is a wonderfully soothing act, but I could make so little sense of the world around me that I couldn’t make sense of my scattered papers either.

Late in the afternoon, as I was trying to remember what year and what file records about Humboldt Chemical belonged to, my office buzzer rang. I stiffened and had my gun in hand when I went to the front door. I was astounded to see Abigail Trant, her honey–colored hair and softly tinted face as perfect as when I’d met her two weeks ago. Her Mercedes Gelaendewagen was double–parked on the street outside. When I invited her in, she asked if I’d talk to her in her vehicle instead. I wondered briefly if she had been dragooned into acting as a decoy but followed her to her trucklet.

“Do you know that Robbie Baladine has disappeared? If you know where he is, can you send him home?”

I blinked in surprise but assured her I hadn’t heard from him for several days. “Did Eleanor or BB send you to talk to me?”

She looked straight ahead, ignoring an angrily honking line of cars behind her. “I came on my own initiative, and I am hoping you will honor my speaking confidentially to you. We are flying to France with the Baladines on Saturday, along with the Poilevys, so Eleanor discussed Robbie’s disappearance with me in a frank way, as it is affecting their travel plans. They both feel that you have encouraged Robbie to be disobedient. I don’t know if that is the reason, but BB has been talking furiously about wanting to put you out of business or thoroughly discredit you in some way. Knowing something about his methods, I didn’t want to call you—he might well be monitoring your phone calls. I think I told you when we met that he doesn’t like to feel anyone is getting the upper hand with him: for some reason he thinks you are taunting him or undermining him in some way.”

I gave a snort of mirthless laughter. “He’s been making it almost impossible for me to run my business.”

A car shot around her from behind, giving her the finger and a loud epithet. She paid no attention.