Authors: Sara Paretsky
We both knew it wasn’t, but I saw her into the Latin class without making the phone call I knew it was my duty to make and returned to the pool. Driving out the two students still splashing around in the water, I put signs on the locker room doors saying the water was contaminated and there would be no swimming until further notice.
I turned out the lights and settled in a corner of the room remote from the outside windows to wait. And go over and over the story in my mind. I believed it. Was I fooling myself? Was that why she wouldn’t call the Feds?
At last Tom came in through the boys’ locker room entrance. “Allie? Allie?” His voice bounced off the high rafters and echoed around me. I was well back in the shadows, my Smith & Wesson in hand; he didn’t see me.
After half a minute or so another man joined him. I didn’t recognize the stranger, but his baggy clothes marked him as part of Smollensk’s group, not the bureau. He talked softly to Tom for a minute. Then they went into the girls’ locker room together.
Whey they returned, I had moved part way up the side of the pool, ready to follow them if they went back into the main part of the high school looking for Alicia.
“Tom!” I called. “It’s V. I. Warshawski. I know the whole story. Give me the diskettes.”
“Warshawski!” he yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I sensed rather than saw the movement his friend made. I shot at him and dived into the water. His bullet zipped as it hit the tiles where I’d been standing. My wet clothes and my sore shoulder made it hard to move. Another bullet hit the water by my head, and I went under again, fumbling with my heavy jacket, getting it free, surfacing, hearing Alicia’s sharp, “Tom, why are you shooting at Vic? Stop it now. Stop it and give me back the diskettes.”
Another flurry of shots, this time away from me, giving me a chance to get to the side of the pool, to climb out. Alicia lay on the floor near the door to the girls’ locker room. Tom stood silently by. The gunman was jamming more bullets into his gun.
As fast as I could in my sodden clothes I lumbered to the hit man, grabbing his arm, squeezing, feeling blood start to seep from my shoulder, stepping on his instep, putting all the force of my body into my leg. Tom, though, Tom was taking the gun from him. Tom was going to shoot me.
“Drop that gun, Tom Dauphine.” It was Miss Finley. Years of teaching in a tough school gave creditable authority to her; Tom dropped the gun.
Alicia lived long enough to tell the truth to the FBI. It was small comfort to me. Small consolation to see Tom’s statement. He hoped he could get Smollensk to kill his sister before she said anything. If that happened, he had a good gamble on her dying a traitor in everyone’s eyes—after all, her designs were gone, and her name was in Smollensk’s files. Maybe the truth never would have come out. Worth a gamble to a betting man.
The Feds arrived about five minutes after the shooting stopped. They’d been watching Tom, just not closely enough. They were sore that they’d let Alicia get shot. So they dumped some charges on me—obstructing federal authorities, not telling them where Alicia was, not calling as soon as I had the truth from her, God knows what else. I spent several days in jail. It seemed like a suitable penance, just not enough of one.
HER VOICE ON
the phone had been soft and husky, with just a whiff of the South laid across it like a rare perfume. “I’d rather come to your office; I don’t want people in mine to know I’ve hired a detective.”
I’d offered to see her at her home in the evening—my Spartan office doesn’t invite client confidences. But she didn’t want to wait until tonight, she wanted to come today, almost at once, and no, she wouldn’t meet me in a restaurant. Far too hard to talk, and this was extremely personal.
“You know my specialty is financial crime, don’t you?” I asked sharply.
“Yes, that’s how I got your name. One o’clock,
fourth floor of the Pulteney, right?” And she’d hung up without telling me who she was.
An errand at the County building took me longer than I’d expected; it was close to one-thirty by the time I got back to the Pulteney. My caller’s problem apparently was urgent: she was waiting outside my office door, tapping one high heel impatiently on the floor as I trudged down the hall in my running shoes.
“Ms. Warshawski! I thought you were standing me up.”
“No such luck,” I grunted, opening my office door for her.
In the dimly lit hall she’d just been a slender silhouette. Under the office lights the set of the shoulders and signature buttons told me her suit had come from the hands of someone at Chanel. Its blue enhanced the cobalt of her eyes. Soft makeup hid her natural skin tones—I couldn’t tell if that dark red hair was natural, or merely expertly painted.
She scanned the spare furnishings and picked the cleaner of my two visitor chairs. “My time is valuable, Ms. Warshawski. If I’d known you were going to keep me waiting without a place to sit I would have finished some phone calls before walking over here.”
I’d dressed in jeans and a work shirt for a day at the Recorder of Deeds office. Feeling dirty and outclassed made me grumpy. “You hung up without giving me your name or number, so there wasn’t much I could do to let you know you’d have to stand around
in your pointy little shoes. My time’s valuable, too. Why don’t you tell me where the fire is so I can start putting it out.”
She flushed. When I turn red I look blotchy, but in her it only enhanced her makeup. “It’s my sister.” The whiff of Southern increased. “Corinne. She’s run off to Ja—my ex-husband, and I need someone to tell her to come back.”
I made a disgusted face. “I can’t believe I raced back from the County building to listen to this. It’s not 1890, you know. She may be making a mistake but presumably she can sort it out for herself.”
Her flush darkened. “I’m not being very clear. I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to ask for things. My sister—Corinne—she’s only fourteen. She’s my ward. I’m sixteen years older than she is. Our parents died three years ago and she’s been living with me since then. It’s not easy, not easy for either of us. Moving from Mobile to here was just the beginning. When she got here she wanted to run around, do all the things you can’t do in Mobile.”
She waved a hand to indicate what kinds of things those might be. “She thinks I’m a tough bitch and that I was too hard on my ex-husband. She’s known him since she was three and he was a big hero. She couldn’t see he’d changed. Or not changed, just not had the chance to be heroic anymore in public. So when she took off two days ago I assumed she went there. He’s not answering his phone or the doorbell. I
don’t know if they’ve left town or he’s just playing possum or what. I need someone who knows how to get people to open their doors and knows how to talk to people. At least if I could see Corinne I might—I don’t know.”
She broke off with a helpless gesture that didn’t match her sophisticated looks. Nothing like responsibility for a minor to deflate even the most urbane.
I grimaced more ferociously. “Why don’t we start with your name, and your husband’s name and address, and then move on to her friends.”
“Her friends?” The deep blue eyes widened. “I’d just as soon this didn’t get around. People talk, and even though it’s not 1890, it could be hard on her when she gets back to school.”
I suppressed a howl. “You can’t come around demanding my expertise and then tell me what or what not to do. What if she’s not with your husband? What if I can’t get in touch with you when I’ve found that out and she’s in terrible trouble and her life depends on my turning up some new leads? If you can’t bring yourself to divulge a few names—starting with your own—you’d better go find yourself a more pliant detective. I can recommend a couple who have waiting rooms.”
She set her lips tightly: whatever she did she was in command—people didn’t talk to her that way and get away with it. For a few seconds it looked as though I might be free to get back to the Recorder of Deeds
that afternoon, but then she shook her head and forced a smile to her lips.
“I was told not to mind your abrasiveness because you were the best. I’m Brigitte LeBlanc. My sister’s name is Corinne, also LeBlanc. And my ex-husband is Charles Pierce.” She scooted her chair up to the desk so she could scribble his address on a sheet of paper torn from a memo pad in her bag. She scrawled busily for several minutes, then handed me a list that included Corinne’s three closest school friends, along with Pierce’s address.
“I’m late for a meeting. I’ll call you tonight to see if you’ve made any progress.” She got up.
“Not so fast,” I said. “I get a retainer. You have to sign a contract. And I need a number where I can reach you.”
“I really am late.”
“And I’m really too busy to hunt for your sister. If you have a sister. You can’t be that worried if your meeting is more important than she is.”
Her scowl would have terrified me if I’d been alone with her in an alley after dark. “I do have a sister. And I spent two days trying to get into my ex-husband’s place, and then in tracking down people who could recommend a private detective to me. I can’t do anything else to help her except go earn the money to pay your fee.”
I pulled a contract from my desk drawer and stuck it in the manual Olivetti that had belonged to my
mother—a typewriter so old that I had to order special ribbons for it from Italy. A word processor would be cheaper and more impressive but the wrist action keeps my forearms strong. I got Ms. LeBlanc to give me her address, to sign on the dotted line for $400 a day plus expenses, to write in the name of a guaranteeing financial institution and to hand over a check for two hundred.
When she’d left I wrestled with my office windows, hoping to let some air in to blow her pricey perfume away. Carbon flakes from the el would be better than the lingering scent, but the windows, painted over several hundred times, wouldn’t budge. I turned on a desktop fan and frowned sourly at her bold black signature.
What was her ex-husband’s real name? She’d bitten off “Ja—” Could be James or Jake, but it sure wasn’t Charles. Did she really have a sister? Was this just a ploy to get back at a guy late on his alimony? Although Pierce’s address on North Winthrop didn’t sound like the place for a man who could afford alimony. Maybe everything went to keep her in Chanel suits while he lived on Skid Row.
She wasn’t in the phone book, so I couldn’t check her own address on Belden. The operator told me the number was unlisted. I called a friend at the Ft. Dearborn Trust, the bank Brigitte had drawn her check on, and was assured that there was plenty more where that came from. My friend told me Brigitte had
parlayed the proceeds of a high-priced modeling career into a successful media consulting firm.
“And if you ever read the fashion pages you’d know these things. Get your nose out of the sports section from time to time, Vic—it’ll help with your career.”
“Thanks, Eva.” I hung up with a snap. At least my client wouldn’t turn out to be named something else, always a good beginning to a tawdry case.
I looked in the little mirror perched over my filing cabinet. A dust smudge on my right cheek instead of peach blush was the only distinction between me and Ms. LeBlanc. Since I was dressed appropriately for North Winthrop, I shut up my office and went to retrieve my car.
Charles Pierce lived in a dismal ten-flat built flush onto the Uptown sidewalk. Ragged sheets made haphazard curtains in those windows that weren’t boarded over. Empty bottles lined the entryway, but the smell of stale Ripple couldn’t begin to mask the stench of fresh urine. If Corinne LeBlanc had run away to this place, life with Brigitte must be unmitigated hell.
My client’s ex-husband lived in 3E. I knew that because she’d told me. Those few mailboxes whose doors still shut wisely didn’t trumpet their owners’
identities. The filthy brass nameplate next to the doorbells was empty and the doorbells didn’t work. Pushing open the rickety door to the hall, I wondered again about my client’s truthfulness: she told me Ja—hadn’t answered his phone or his bell.
A rheumy-eyed woman was sprawled across the bottom of the stairs, sucking at a half-pint. She stared at me malevolently when I asked her to move, but she didn’t actively try to trip me when I stepped over her. It was only my foot catching in the folds of her overcoat.
The original building probably held two apartments per floor. At least, on the third floor only two doors at either end looked as though they went back to the massive, elegant construction of the building’s beginnings. The other seven were flimsy newcomers that had been hastily installed when an apartment was subdivided. Peering in the dark I found one labeled B and counted off three more to the right to get to E. After knocking on the peeling veneer several times I noticed a button imbedded in the grime on the jamb. When I pushed it I heard a buzz resonate inside. No one came to the door. With my ear against the filthy panel I could hear the faint hum of a television.
I held the buzzer down for five minutes. It’s hard on the finger but harder on the ear. If someone was really in there he should have come boiling to the door by now.
I could go away and come back, but if Pierce was
lying doggo to avoid Brigitte, that wouldn’t buy me anything. She said she’d tried off and on for two days. The television might be running as a decoy, or—I pushed more lurid ideas from my mind and took out a collection of skeleton keys. The second worked easily in the insubstantial lock. In two minutes I was inside the apartment, looking at an illustration from
House Beautiful in Hell
.
It was a single room with a countertop kitchen on the left side. A tidy person could pull a corrugated screen to shield the room from signs of cooking, but Pierce wasn’t tidy. Ten or fifteen stacked pots, festooned with rotting food and roaches, trembled precariously when I shut the door.
Dominating the place was a Murphy bed with a grotesquely fat man sprawled in at an ominous angle. He’d been watching TV when he died. He was wearing frayed, shiny pants with the fly lying carelessly open and a lumberjack shirt that didn’t quite cover his enormous belly.