Breakdown (25 page)

Ormond sucked in an audible breath, while Dick performed one of those eye-rolling routines spouses do when their exes are unusually obnoxious. Napier’s glare could have peeled off my own makeup.

“Is Crawford the official law firm of the Kendrick campaign?” I asked Dick.

He shook his head. “We don’t take political positions as a firm. Individual attorneys, of course, may work for specific politicians, or hold fund-raisers for them.”

“So Eloise advises Kendrick.” I waved a hand toward Napier’s American flag pin. “Wuchnik might have gone to the cemetery to do something for Kendrick.”

“I can assure you that did not happen. But if you don’t believe me, you can listen to the messages in your own fillings,” Eloise said.

I laughed, hoping it would calm the waves if she saw I could take heat as well as dish it out. “You’re right—I shouldn’t have said what I did. Let’s see if we can agree on one or two things, even if we disagree on Helen Kendrick’s political views.

“The medical examiner says Wuchnik was hit on the head and then laid on the tomb, where someone pounded the rebar through his chest—that was what killed him, but he was unconscious, or barely conscious, when he died. No defensive wounds on the hands, no signs of a struggle.”

“We agree on that?” Eloise Napier said spitefully. Okay, the waves weren’t calm yet.

“Please talk to Dr. Vishnikov over at County yourself; you don’t need to take my word that those were his findings.”

I paused for a moment, to give her a chance either to call Vishnikov or to challenge me further, but she seemed willing to go forward.

“Wuchnik’s mileage log tells us that he went to Ruhetal five times between Memorial Day and July Fourth.” I handed out photocopies of the log—the original I’d moved from my apartment to my big office safe.

Dick didn’t bother to look at his copy, but Napier grabbed hers with an eagerness that told its own story. When she’d studied it, she demanded to see the rest of the log.

“That’s the only part of it I have. And it’s the only remaining piece of his documents—someone cleaned out his condo within a day of his murder. Computer, files, the works.” I watched Eloise as I spoke; maybe I imagined it, but she seemed to breathe a little sigh of relief on hearing that all Wuchnik’s papers were gone.

“I was hoping you might know about his trips to Ruhetal,” I said. “The dates—do they correspond to anything he was working on for you?”

“Did he leave a code for who the clients were?” Ormond asked.

I shook my head.

“Then why are you bothering us?” Napier asked.

“Oh, that—apparently the Global Entertainment honchos announced it in the puddle, or whatever they call their news briefing. They said Wuchnik worked for Crawford, Mead.”

The room was quiet for a beat, while Ormond and Napier both looked at Dick. He pushed himself back from the table.

“Right, Vic, it’s where you came in. He wasn’t on our payroll. Lou and Eloise hired him sometimes, but only as an independent contractor. They don’t know anything about his trips to Ruhetal. We were not his only clients, right, Eloise?”

“No, indeed.” She took her cue a little breathlessly. “Louis and I often had to wait several days before he could fit us in.”

Dick again looked ostentatiously at his wrist: he was a busy man with a lot of demands on his time. I was close enough that I could see a glass panel that showed the works moving in little circles. A separate circle showed the time. “F.P.Journe, Invenit et Fecit” was engraved across the bottom.

The meeting was over. I exchanged a few joking comments with Dick, just to make his colleagues think we were closer than we were, but I left more puzzled than when I came. I didn’t know about Louis Ormond, but smart money said that Eloise Napier had a pretty good idea why Miles Wuchnik had visited Ruhetal.

25.

IN THE HUDDLE

T
HE
G
ROMMET
B
UILDING WAS JUST TWO BLOCKS FROM
G
LOBAL
Entertainment’s monster headquarters on the Chicago River. Global One was a chunky building whose architect hadn’t been able to decide if he was putting up an amusement park or a Gothic cathedral—the steel frame was encased in concrete after about the fourth story, but the high lobby held an entertainment corner with a merry-go-round, a small putting green, and some giant video screens.

Global One had become such a popular tourist destination that the city had blocked off an entire lane of traffic in front of it for buses and cars to drop off their loads. People signed up for tickets to live tapings of
Wade’s World
and other popular shows, for tours of the studios, and for the round-the-clock screenings of Global’s archive of movies and TV series. If you had insomnia, you could wander over to the lobby and watch old TV shows at three in the morning.

When I strolled over from Dick’s office to take a look, the tourist line was already around the block. To keep the populace from feeling bored or fractious, vendors plied them with food and drink, and the big screens in the lobby showed reruns of
Nerve Center,
a spy drama set at the National Security Agency. Local actors worked the line dressed up as animals from Global’s kid show
Gator Under Cover.

I walked down the stairs to Lower Wacker Drive, where you usually find the service entrances to buildings that front the river. Global’s service bay had all kinds of trucks coming and going. I hadn’t really thought through what I would do if I went inside. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it at all—I just followed one of the truckers as he went into the loading dock in search of a signature, nodded at the guy checking off items in a load, and got into an elevator. As the doors shut, I heard someone calling to me angrily to get out, I couldn’t go inside without a pass.

One thing about makeup and a beautifully cut dress: you look as though you belong in corporate headquarters. I got off the service elevator at the fourth floor, where a knot of employees were waiting at the elevator banks, carrying bags of chips, coffee cups, and other accoutrements of having been on break.

I followed them into a car and interrupted a spirited replay of this morning’s project meeting by saying, “I have an appointment with Harold Weekes, but I forgot what floor they said he’s on.”

The group stared at me in silence—the sheep herd realizing there’s an ibex in the mix—and then one woman muttered, “Forty-eight.” The group shut down for the remainder of the journey: no one wanted to risk revealing themselves in front of a stranger bound for the head guy’s office.

On the forty-eighth floor, a locked glass wall separated me from the executive offices. A woman at a high desk on the far side of it spoke through an intercom, demanding my business.

“V. I. Warshawski to see Harold Weekes,” I said.

She worked her phone. “You’re not on the calendar. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“I don’t want to bellow private information around the hall,” I said, “but everyone at Crawford, Mead is wondering how he knew that Miles Wuchnik worked for them.”

“I didn’t get those names.”

I pulled a business card out of my bag and wrote my message on the back. I felt like an inmate in the lockup, pasting messages to a window, but I held my card against the glass panel for her to read. After hesitating for a moment, she must have decided she felt as stupid as I did; she released the door lock and let me present the card to her in person.

The woman muttered into her headset, listened, pronounced Wuchnik’s and my names with passable accuracy, and finally told me I could be seated, someone would be with me in a minute.

The minute stretched on to twenty-eight, but I couldn’t complain: I was unexpected, uninvited. I got out my laptop and logged on to one of my private databases so that I could start some research for an actual paying client; I answered a few e-mails. The Monitor Project blinked to let me know it had something for me.

My furious emotions this morning had made me forget that I’d asked for reports on the people I’d met yesterday at Ruhetal. Eric Waxman, the guy with the handlebar mustache, was badly in debt. He seemed to gamble on sporting events, along with belonging to those expensive golf clubs: he had a bill with a Las Vegas firm that was close to half his annual pay.

Lisa Cunningham, the director of patient services, wasn’t paid as well as Waxman, but her husband was a pharmaceutical company exec; they apparently stayed on top of their hefty credit-card and mortgage bills.

Vernon Mulliner, the security director who’d just moved into his garish mansion, was the only one with a real investment portfolio. Besides his house, he had a tidy nest egg, several million dollars. He was a shrewd investor, or his wife was. Or her suburban school district paid its first-grade teachers a handsome bonus. I was annotating the report when an emissary from Harold Weekes arrived.

“Ms. Warshawski? Todd Blakely, Mr. Weekes’s personal assistant. He’s got a two-minute gap between conference calls coming up soon, when he can talk to you, but he wanted me to find out what you’re doing here—he didn’t recognize any of the names Amber read from your card.” Blakely was a youngish man, in a crisp white shirt and tie, as if he were with the FBI in mid-February instead of an entertainment conglomerate in mid-summer.

I got to my feet. “Crawford, Mead—they’re one of Chicago’s biggest law firms. Miles Wuchnik—he’s the PI who was killed in the cemetery ten days ago. In the news cuddle the morning after Wuchnik’s body was found, Mr. Weekes mentioned that Mr. Wuchnik worked for Crawford. All up to speed now?”

Amber, the receptionist, was listening, but Blakely didn’t care, or maybe didn’t notice, what mere clerical workers did. He led me down one of those lushly carpeted halls to the executive offices at the east end of the floor. I was left in an antechamber with another secretary, who offered me a chair in a group that faced the window. People waiting for Weekes weren’t given a TV screen, but the great show of Chicago’s river winding through the skyscrapers toward Lake Michigan was entertainment enough.

A pair of binoculars on a glass table in front of me proved irresistible. I watched the sailboats out beyond the breakwater, the gulls swooping down behind the aquarium, and, on the river, the tour boats, where people’s sunburned heads appeared startlingly close to me.

When Blakely reappeared, I put the binoculars down reluctantly. Whatever else you could say about Global, they knew what entertained the public.

Blakely had his suit jacket on this time; as he held the door to Weekes’s office open for me, I noticed he had one of Helen Kendrick’s corn-flag pins in the lapel.

On the other side of the door, Weekes was bent over a computer screen with Wade Lawlor. Both of them were too busy to look up when we entered, which was just as well: I had time to school my face to keep the fury I felt at seeing Lawlor out of my expression.

Like his PA, Weekes was wearing a business suit; the jacket was for more than show—the air-conditioning was cranked up so high that my bare arms were sprouting goose bumps. Lawlor had on his trademark checked blue shirt, but both of them wore Helen Kendrick’s jeweled corn flags.

“V. I. Warshawski is here, boss,” Blakely said.

“Right. So, Wade, we’ll focus more on books in that sector”—he tapped the screen—“but this one clearly responds most to our foundation’s work. Ms. Warshawski—we met at Wade’s anniversary party, but I don’t believe I handed you an invitation, did I?”

“No. You left that to Mr. Lawlor, who apparently is fascinated by my family’s history. I wish you’d called me first before you ran your segment. I could have given better stuff—Boom-Boom Warshawski’s mom’s involvement in block clubs would have really spoken to your anti-Durango sector.” My aunt had been a spit-spattering racist who’d joined one of the sixties block clubs that sprang up in an effort to keep South Side parishes all-white.

If I’d hoped to rattle Lawlor, I’d underestimated him. “Glad to know you catch my show, Warshawski. From what I’ve heard of you, I wouldn’t expect you to agree with my viewpoint, but it’s nice to know that a liberal can keep an open mind.”

“Gosh, Mr. Lawlor, I didn’t realize you were so interested—you know my politics, you know where my mother came from. I almost feel like we had a date where you were the only one who showed up. I’m going to have to blog about this.” I made my voice seductive. “Every middle-aged woman’s dream came true for me this week: Wade Lawlor was stalking me.”

“A stalking charge is a serious one,” Lawlor said. “I’d be careful what I posted, if I were you.”

“She doesn’t have a blog, Wade,” Weekes said. “She’s just yanking your chain.”

“All of which proves my point,” I said. “You guys have an unhealthy interest in me. And you apparently kept an equal interest in Miles Wuchnik. They wondered over at Crawford, Mead how you knew that Wuchnik sometimes worked for some of their lawyers.”

“How do you—” Lawlor began, but Weekes cut him off.

“We have a lot of tipsters,” he said. “People hear something, see something, they know that we give away fifty dollars for every tip that makes it on air.”

“So someone thought it was newsworthy that Miles Wuchnik worked for a law firm?” I lifted my brows.

“You’d be surprised at what people send in, and sometimes the oddest tidbits turn out to be useful,” Weekes said. “And then we have a whole team of in-house investigators who can do background checks, verify leads, that kind of thing.”

I thought of Dick’s clerical staff. Would any of those receptionists slip information to Harold Weekes in exchange for fifty dollars? If you made thirty or forty thousand a year in a firm where the managing partner pulled in seven figures, you might feel you were entitled to a bonus by letting out nonessential information. You might not reveal a witness list, but if the firm worked with a PI, that could seem like a harmless thing to reveal to Harold Weekes.

Come to think of it, maybe that was how Lawlor knew I’d been at the Parterre Club with Salanter last week; the old woman in the restroom, the bartender, any of them might privately feel that Salanter’s guests were Wade Lawlor’s business.