Blood Shot (13 page)

“No, I can see you wouldn’t have.” I thanked him for his frankness and got up.

“If you come across anything else you think I could help you with, let me know,” he said, shaking my hand. “Especially if it might give me some grounds for a writ of certiorari.”

I assured him I would and left. I was wiser than I’d been when I came in, but no less confused.

16

House Call

It was well past noon by the time Manheim and I finished talking. I headed for the Loop and picked up a Diet Coke and a sandwich—corned beef, which I reserve for occasions when I need special nourishment—and took them to my office.

I could see Manheim’s point. Sort of If Humboldt lost a suit like that, it could spell disaster, the kind of problem that drove Johns-Manville to seek bankruptcy protection. But Manville’s situation had been different: they had known asbestos was toxic and covered up their knowledge. So when the ugly truth came out workers sued for punitive damages.

All Humboldt would have faced was a series of comp claims. Even so, that might be sticky. Say they’d had a thousand workers at the plant over a ten-year period and they all died: at a quarter of a million a pop, even if Ajax was paying for it, that was a lot of balloons.

I licked mustard from my fingers. Maybe I was looking at it wrong—maybe it was Ajax not wanting to make the payout—Gordon Firth telling his good buddy Gustav Humboldt to cool out any attempts to reopen the case. But Firth couldn’t have known I was involved—the word wouldn’t have run around Chicago that fast. Or maybe it would. You’ve never seen gossip and rumor mills until you’ve spent a week in a large corporation.

And then, why had someone threatened Manheim about the appeal? If Humboldt was dead to rights on the legal issues, there wasn’t any percentage in going after Manheim —it would just cause a judge to vacate the decree. So it couldn’t have been the company trying to brush him back.

Or maybe it was some very junior person. Someone who thought he could make a name for himself in the company by putting a little muscle on the plaintiffs. That wasn’t a totally improbable scenario. You get a corporate atmosphere where ethics are a little loose and subordinates think that the way to management’s heart is across their opponents’ bodies.

But that still didn’t explain why Humboldt had lied about the suit. Why dump a charge of sabotage on the poor bastards when all they wanted was some workers’ comp money? I wondered if it would be worthwhile to try to speak to Humboldt again. I visualized his full, jovial face with the cold blue eyes. You have to swim carefully when your waters are shared by a great shark. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the big man just yet.

I groaned to myself The problem was spreading out in front of me like ripples in a pond. I was the stone dropped in the middle and the lines were moving farther and farther away from me. I just couldn’t handle so many intangible waves on my own.

I tried to turn my attention to some problems that had come in the mail, including a notice of insufficient funds to cover the check of a small hardware store whose pilfering problems I’d solved a few weeks ago. I made a call that brought me no satisfaction and decided to pack it in for the day. I’d just slung my mail into the wastebasket when the phone rang.

An efficient alto told me she was Clarissa Hollingsworth, Mr. Humboldt’s personal secretary.

I sat up in my chair. Time to be alert. I wasn’t ready to go to him, but the shark wanted to swim to me. “Yes, Ms. Hollingsworth. What can I do for Mr. Humboldt?”

“I don’t believe he wants you to do anything,” she said coolly. “He just asked me to pass on some information to you. About someone named—uh—Louisa Djiak.”

She stumbled over the name—she should have practiced pronouncing it before phoning.

I repeated Louisa’s name correctly. “Yes?”

“Mr. Humboldt says he talked to Dr. Chigwell about her and that it is probable that Joey Pankowski was the child’s father.” She had trouble with Pankowski too. I expected better from Humboldt’s private secretary.

I took the receiver away from my ear and looked at it, as though I could see Ms. Hollingsworth’s face in it. Or Humboldt’s. At last I held it back to my mouth and asked, “Do you know who did the investigation for Mr. Humboldt?”

“I believe he interested himself directly in the matter,” she said primly.

I said slowly, “I think Dr. Chigwell may have misled Mr. Humboldt. It’s important that I see him to discuss the matter with him.”

“I doubt that very much, Ms. Warshawski. Mr. Humboldt and the doctor have worked together a long time. If he gave Mr. Humboldt the information, you may certainly depend on it.”

“Perhaps so.” I tried to make my tone conciliatory. “But Mr. Humboldt told me himself that his staff sometimes try to protect him from unfortunate events. I suspect something like that may have been going on in this case.”

“Really,” she said huffily. “You may work in an environment where people can’t trust each other. But Dr. Chigwell has been a most reliable associate of Mr. Humboldt’s for fifty years. Maybe someone like you can’t appreciate it, but the idea of Dr. Chigwell lying to Mr. Humboldt is totally ludicrous.”

“Just one thing before you hang up in righteous indignation. Someone misled Mr. Humboldt terribly about the true nature of the suit Pankowski and Ferraro brought against Xerxes. That’s why I’m not too confident about this last bit of news.”

There was a pause, then she said grudgingly, “I’ll mention the matter to Mr. Humboldt. But I doubt very much that he’ll want to talk to you.”

That was the best I could get from her. I frowned at the phone some more, wondering what I would say to Humboldt if I saw him. Fruitless. I locked up the office and drove up to the little hardware store on Diversey. They hadn’t wanted to talk to me on the phone, but when they saw I was prepared to be vocal in front of their customers they took me into the back and reluctantly wrote out another check. Plus the ten dollars handling for the bad one. I paid it directly into my bank and went home.

Slipping in through the back entrance, I managed to sidestep Mr. Contreras and the dog. I stopped in the kitchen to inspect the food supply. Still grim. I fixed a bowl of popcorn and took it into the living room with me. Popcorn and corned beef—um-um good.

Four-thirty is a terrible time to find anything on TV—I flipped through game shows, Sesame Street, and the beaming face of The Frugal Gourmet I finally turned off the set in disgust and reached for the phone.

The Chigwells were listed under Clio’s name. She answered on the third ring, her voice distant, unyielding. Yes, she remembered who I was. She didn’t think her brother would want to speak to me, but she went to see, anyway. He didn’t.

“Look, Ms. Chigwell. I hate having to be such a pest, but there’s something I want to know. Has Gustav Humboldt called him in the last few days?”

She was surprised. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t. His secretary passed on some information that Humboldt supposedly got from your brother. I wondered if Humboldt made it up.”

“What did he say Curtis told him?”

“That Joey Pankowski was Caroline Djiak’s father.”

She asked me to explain who they were, then went off to confront her brother. She was gone for a quarter of an hour. I finished the popcorn and did some leg raises, lying with the phone near my ear so I could hear her return.

She came back on the line abruptly. “He says he knew about the man, that the girl’s mother had told him all about it back when they hired her.”

“I see,” I said weakly.

“The trouble is, you can’t spend your whole life with someone without knowing when they’re lying. I don’t know what part of it Curtis is making up, but one thing I can tell you—he’d say anything Gustav Humboldt told him to.”

While I struggled to add this news to my pickled brain, something else struck me. “Why are you telling me this, Ms. Chigwell?”

“I don’t know,” she said, surprised. “Maybe after seventy-nine years, I’m tired of having Curtis hide behind me. Good-bye.” She hung up with an abrupt click.

I spent Saturday stewing about Humboldt and Chigwell, unable to think of any reason why they would concoct a story about Louisa and Joey, unable to think of a way to get a handle on them. When Murray Ryerson, head of the Herald-Star’ s crime bureau, called me on Sunday because one of his gofers had dug up the news that Nancy Cleghorn and I went to high school together, I even agreed to talk to him.

Murray follows De Paul basketball. Or slobbers over it. Although I live—and die—with the Cubs every year, and maintain a wistful love for the Bears’ Otis Wilson, I don’t really care whether the Blue Demons ever score another basket. In Chicago that’s extreme heresy—equivalent to saying you hate St. Patrick’s Day parades. So I agreed to truck out to the Horizon and watch them scrap around with Indiana or Loyola or whoever.

“Anyway,” Murray said, “you can sit there remembering how you and Nancy handled the same shots, only better. It will give a more intense flavor to your memories.”

De Paul lost a squeaker, with Murray commenting libelously on young Joey Meyer and the entire offense during the hour wait to move from the parking lot back to the tollway. It was only when we were in Ethel’s, a Lithuanian restaurant on the northwest side, filling Murray’s six-four frame with a few dozen sweet-and-sour cabbage rolls, that he got down to the real business of the afternoon.

“So what’s your interest in Cleghorn’s death?” he asked casually. “Family call you in to investigate?”

“The cops got a tip that I sent her to her death.” I calmly ate another fluffy dumpling. I’d have to run ten miles in the morning to work off all this.

“Come on. I must’ve heard a dozen people say you’ve been nosing around down there. What’s going on?”

I shook my head. “I told you. I’m clearing my name.”

“Yeah, and I’m the Ayatollah of Detroit.”

I love it when I’m telling Murray the truth and he’s convinced it’s a big cover-up—it gives me terrific leverage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to pry out of him. The police had called on Steve Dresberg, on Dresberg’s mouthpiece, Leon Haas, on a few dozen other upstanding South Chicagoans—including some old lovers of Nancy’s—and didn’t have anything they considered a real lead.

Murray finally got tired of the game. “I guess there’s enough that we could do a little human-interest story of Nancy and you in college, living on table scraps and studying the classics in between creaming the best women’s teams in the region. I hate giving you print space when you’re not earning it, but it’ll help keep her name in front of the state’s attorney.”

“Thanks a whole bunch, Murray.”

When he dropped me at my place on Racine, I got in my car and headed for Hinsdale. Seeing him had given me a nasty little idea on a way to pressure Chigwell.

It was close to seven when I rang the bell at the side door, not the ideal time for paying house calls. When Ms. Chigwell answered my ring I tried to make myself look earnest and trustworthy. Her stern features didn’t give me any clue as to whether I was succeeding.

“Curtis won’t talk to you,” she said in her abrupt way, showing no surprise at my appearance.

“Try this on him,” I suggested in an earnest, trustworthy manner. “His picture on the front page of the Herald-Star and some heartwarming stories on his medical career.”

She looked at me grimly. Why she didn’t just shut the door in my face I didn’t understand. And why she went off to deliver the message puzzled me still further. It reminded me of some elderly cousins of my beloved ex-husband Dick, two brothers and a sister who lived together. The brothers had quarreled some thirteen years previously and refused to speak, so they would ask the sister to pass them salt, marmalade, and tea, and she obligingly did so.

However, Dr. Chigwell came to the door in person this time, not trusting his sister with the marmalade. With his thin neck bobbing forward, he looked like a harassed turkey.

“Listen here, young lady. I don’t have to take these threats. If you’re not away from this door in thirty seconds, I’m calling the police and you can explain to them why you’ve started a persecution campaign.”

He had me. I could just imagine trying to tell a suburban cop—or even Bobby Mallory—that one of Chicago’s ten wealthiest men was lying to me and getting his old plant doctor to collude. I bowed my head in resignation.

“Consider me gone. The reporter who’ll be calling you in the morning is named Murray Ryerson. I’ll explain to him about your old medical cases and so on.”

“Get out of here!” His voice had turned to a hiss that chilled my blood. I left.

17

Tombstone Blues

Nancy’s funeral was scheduled for eleven Monday morning in the Methodist church she had attended as a child. I seem to spend too much time at the funerals of friends—I have a navy suit associated so strongly with them that I can’t bring myself to wear it anywhere else. I dawdled around in panty hose and a blouse, unable to shake a superstitious dread that putting on the suit would make Nancy’s death final.

I couldn’t set my mind to anything, to Chigwell or Humboldt, to organizing a plan to beat the police to Nancy’s killer, or even to organizing the spreading papers in my living room. That was where I had started the morning, thinking with a few hours on my hands I could get things put away. I was too fragmented to create order.

Suddenly at ten of ten, still in my underwear, I looked up the number for Humboldt’s corporate offices and phoned. An indifferent operator switched me through to his office, where I reached not Clarissa Hollingsworth but her assistant. When I asked for Mr. Humboldt, after a certain amount of dickering I got Ms. Hollingsworth.

The cool alto greeted me patronizingly. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to Mr. Humboldt about seeing you, Ms. Warshawski. I’ll make sure that he gets the message, but he doesn’t come in every day anymore.”

“Yeah, I don’t suppose you call him at home for consultations, either. In case you do, you might add to my other message that I saw Dr. Chigwell last night.”

She finished the conversation with a condescending speed that left me shouting into a dead phone. I finished dressing as easily as I could with my hands shaking and headed south once more.

Mount of Olives Methodist dated to the turn of the century, its high-backed dark pews and giant rose window evoking a time when it was filled with women in long dresses and children in high-buttoned shoes. Today’s congregation couldn’t afford to keep up the stained-glass windows showing Jesus in Calvary. Places where Jesus’s brooding ascetic face had been broken were filled in with wired burglar glass, making him look like a sufferer from an acute skin disease.

While Nancy’s four brothers served as ushers their children sat in the front pews, shoving and poking at each other despite the near presence of their aunt’s draped casket. Their harshly whispered insults could be heard throughout the nave until drowned by some melancholy bars from the organ.

I went up to the front to let Mrs. Cleghorn know I was there. She smiled at me with tremulous warmth.

“Come over to the house after the service,” she whispered. “We’ll have coffee and a chance to talk.”

She invited me to sit with her, glancing distastefully at her grandchildren. I disengaged myself gently—I didn’t want to be a buffer between her and the wrestling monsters. Besides, I wanted to go to the back so I could see who showed up—it’s a cliché, but murderers often can’t resist going to their victims’ funerals. Maybe part of a primitive superstition, trying to make sure the person is really dead, that she gets truly buried so her ghost doesn’t walk.

After I’d settled myself near the entrance Diane Logan swept in, resplendent in her silver fox. She brushed my cheek and squeezed my hand before moving up the aisle.

“Who was that?” a voice muttered in my ear.

I gave a start and turned around. It was Sergeant McGonnigal, trying to look mournful in a dark suit. So the police were also hopeful.

“She used to play basketball with Nancy and me; she owns a Gold Coast PR firm nowadays,” I muttered back. “I don’t think she slugged Nancy—she could outplay her twenty years ago. Today, too, come to think of it. I don’t know everyone’s name—tell me which one the killer is.”

He smiled a little. “When I saw you sitting here I thought my worries were over—little Polish detective is going to nab the murderer in front of the altar.”

“Methodist church,” I muttered. “I don’t think they call it an altar.”

Caroline clattered in with the group of people I’d seen in the SCRAP office with her. They had the preternatural earnestness of those who don’t often find themselves at solemn functions. Caroline’s copper curls were brushed into a semblance of tidiness. She wore a black suit designed for a much taller woman—the bunched clumps of material at the bottom showed where she’d hemmed it with her usual impatient inefficiency. If she saw me, she gave no sign, moving with the SCRAP contingent to a pew about halfway up the aisle.

Behind them came a handful of older women, perhaps Mrs. Cleghorn’s pals at the local branch of the library. When they’d passed I saw a thin young man standing in their wake. The dim light picked out his angular silhouette. He looked around uncertainly, saw me staring at him, and looked away.

The self-deprecating embarrassment with which he turned his head brought back to me who he was: young Art Jurshak. He’d made just such an effacing move in talking to the old ward heelers at his father’s office.

In the half-light from the windows I couldn’t make out his beautifully chiseled features. He sidled into a seat toward the back.

McGonnigal tapped me on the shoulder. “Who’s that alfalfa sprout?” he growled.

I smiled seraphically and put a finger to my lips—the organ had begun to play loudly, signaling the arrival of the minister. We went through “Abide with Me” at such a slow pace that I kept bracing myself for each succeeding chord.

The minister was a short, plump man whose remaining black hair was combed in two neat rows on either side of a wrinkled dome. He looked like the kind of TV preacher who makes your stomach turn, but as he spoke I realized I’d made the dread mistake of judging by appearances. He clearly had known Nancy well and spoke of her with eloquent forcefulness. I felt my throat tighten again and leaned back in the pew to inspect the ceiling beams. The wood had been painted in the blue and orange stencils popular in Victorian churches. By focusing on the intricate lacy patterns I was able to relax enough to join in the final hymn.

I kept glancing at young Art. He spent the service perched on the edge of his pew, gripping the back of the bench in front of him. When the last chords of “In Heavenly Love Abiding” had finally been wrenched painfully from the organ, he slid out of his seat and headed for the exit.

I caught up with him on the porch, where he was moving nervously from foot to foot, unable to free himself from a drunk panhandler. When I touched Art’s arm he jumped.

“I didn’t know you and Nancy were friends,” I said. “She never mentioned you to me.”

He mumbled something that sounded like “knew her slightly.”

“I’m V. I. Warshawski. Nancy and I played high school and college basketball together. I saw you at the Tenth Ward office last week. You’re Art Jurshak’s son, aren’t you?”

At that his chiseled-marble face turned even whiter; I was afraid he might faint. Even though he was a slender young man, I wasn’t sure I could break his fall.

The drunk, who’d been listening interestedly, sidled closer. “Your friend looks pretty sick, lady. How about fifty cents for coffee—cup for him, cup for me.”

I turned my back on him firmly and took Art’s elbow. “I’m a private detective and I’m trying to look into Nancy’s death. If you were friends with her, I’d like to talk to you. About her connections with your father’s office.”

He shook his head dumbly, his blue eyes dark with fear. After a long internal debate he seemed to be on the brink of forcing himself to speak. Unfortunately as he opened his mouth the other mourners began emerging from the church. As soon as people started passing us Art wrenched himself from my grip and bolted down the street.

I tried to follow, but tripped over the drunk. I cursed him roundly as I pulled myself back to my feet. He was reviling me in return, but broke off suddenly as McGonnigal appeared—years of living around the police gave him a sixth sense about them even in plainclothes.

“What’s the redhead so scared of, Warshawski?” the sergeant demanded, ignoring the panhandler. We watched Art get into his car, a late-model Chrysler parked at the end of the street, and tear off.

“I have that effect on men,” I said shortly. “Drives them mad. You find your murderer?”

“I don’t know. Your male model here was the only person acting suspiciously. Why don’t you show what a helpful citizen you are and give me his name?”

I turned to face him. “It’s no secret—the name is real well known down in these parts. Art Jurshak.”

McGonnigal’s lips tightened. “Just because Mallory’s my boss doesn’t mean you have to jerk me around the way you do him. Tell me the kid’s name.”

I held up my right hand. “Scout’s honor, Sergeant. Jurshak’s his old man. Young Art just joined his agency or his office or something. If you catch up with him, don’t use a rubber hose—I don’t think he’s got too much stamina.”

McGonnigal grinned savagely. “Don’t worry, Warshawski. He’s got stronger protection than a thick skin. I won’t mess up his curly locks…. You going over to the Cleghorn place for coffee? I heard some of the ladies talking about what they were bringing. Mind if I slide in with you?”

“We little Polish detectives live to help the cops. Come along.”

He grinned and held the car door open for me. “That get under your skin, Warshawski? My apologies—you’re not all that little.”

A handful of mourners were already at the house on Muskegon when we got there. Mrs. Cleghorn, her makeup streaked with dried tears, greeted me warmly and accepted McGonnigal politely. I stood in the little entryway talking with her for a minute while the sergeant wandered into the back of the house.

“Kerry took the children to her house, so things will be a little calmer today,” she said. “Maybe when I retire I’ll move to Oregon.”

I hugged her. “Go across the country to avoid being a grandmother? Maybe you could just change the locks—it’d be less drastic.”

“I guess it proves how upset I am, Victoria, talking like that—I’ve never wanted anyone to know how I felt about my sons’ children.” She paused a moment, then added awkwardly, “If you want to talk to Ron Kappelman about—about Nancy or anything, he’s in the living room.”

The doorbell rang. While she moved to answer it I crossed the little hall to the living room. I’d never seen Ron Kappelman, but I didn’t have any trouble recognizing him—he was the only man in the room. He was about my age, perhaps a bit older, stocky, with dark brown hair cut close to his head. He wore a gray tweed jacket, which was frayed at the lapels and cuffs, and corduroy pants. He was sitting by himself on a round Naugahyde hassock, flipping idly through the pages of an old National Geographic.

The four women in the room, the ones from church I’d assumed were Mrs. Cleghorn’s co-workers, were murmuring together in the other corner. They glanced over at me, saw they didn’t know me, and went back to their gentle buzzing.

I pulled up a straight-backed chair next to Kappelman. He glanced at me, made a bit of a face, then tossed the magazine back to the coffee table.

“I know,” I said sympathetically. “It’s a pain to talk to strangers at an affair like this. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think you could help me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I doubt it, but you can try me.”

“My name’s V. I. Warshawski. I’m an old friend of Nancy’s. We played basketball together a while back. A long while back.” I can’t get over how fast the years started zipping by after my thirtieth birthday. It just didn’t seem that long since Nancy and I had been in college.

“Sure. I know who you are. Nance talked about you a number of times—said you kept her from going mad when the two of you were in high school. I’m Ron Kappelman, but you seemed to know that when you came in.”

“Nancy tell you I’m a private investigator these days? Well, I hadn’t seen her for quite some time, but we got together for a basketball reunion a week or so ago.”

“Yeah, I know,” he cut in. “We went to a meeting together right after. She talked about it.”

A swarm of people buzzed into the room. Even though they were keeping their voices subdued, there wasn’t enough space to absorb the bodies or the sound. Someone standing over me lighted a cigarette and I felt hot ash land on the round neck of my bolero jacket.

“Could we go somewhere to talk?” I asked. “Nancy’s old bedroom or a bar or something? I’m trying to look into her death, but I can’t seem to get a thread to pull on. I was hoping you could tell me something.”

He shook his head. “Believe me, if I thought I had any hot dope, I’d’ve been to the cops like a rocket. But I’d be glad to get out of here.”

We pushed our way through the crowd, paying affectionate respects to Mrs. Cleghorn as we left. The warmth with which she spoke to Kappelman seemed to indicate that he and Nancy had remained on good terms. I wondered vaguely what had happened to McGonnigal, but he was a big cop, he could look after himself.

Outside, Kappelman said, “Why don’t you follow me down to my place in Pullman? There isn’t any coffee shop nearby that’s clean and quiet. As you surely know.”

I trailed his decrepit Rabbit down side streets to 113th and Langley. He stopped in front of one of the tidy brick row houses that line Pullman’s streets, houses with sheer fronts and stoops that make you think of pictures of Philadelphia when the Constitution was signed.

The neat, well-kept exterior didn’t really prepare me for the meticulous restoration inside. The walls were papered in bright Victorian floral designs, the paneling refinished to a glow of dark walnut, the furniture and rugs beautifully maintained period pieces set on well-finished hardwood floors.

“This is gorgeous,” I said, overwhelmed. “Did you fix it up yourself?”

He nodded. “Carpentry is kind of my hobby—makes a good switch from mucking about with the stunads I spend my days with. The furniture is all stuff I picked up at area flea markets.”

He led me into a little kitchen with Italian tile on the floor and countertops and gleaming copper-bottomed pots on the walls. I perched on a high stool at one side of a tiled island while he made coffee at the burners on the other.

“So who asked you to investigate Nancy’s death? Her mother? Not sure the cops will buck the politicos down here and see that justice runs its inexorable course?” He cocked an eye at me while deftly assembling an infusion pot.