Breakdown (6 page)

“You’d lose,” Murray said. “He comes from some kind of broken home. I’ve seen him weep on camera, over how his dad ran off and left him and his sister to fend for themselves. Success hasn’t just gone to Wade’s head—it’s made him vindictive. My job ain’t so secure that I can dis the network’s golden goose. And I don’t want to go alone.”

“What about all those blond twentysomethings you flaunt anytime I see you in public?” I snapped.

“Are you jealous?”

“More disgusted. Why can’t you act your age?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do here, and you’re not helping. You can rehabilitate me, turn me into a boomer who’s not afraid to show his age,” he wheedled.

“If I could rehabilitate you, Murray, it would be to turn you back into the journalist who won a Pulitzer for
White Crime/Black Convict.
”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I’d wished them back. Murray had done a spectacular series for the
Herald-Star
on the white youths who bought their coke and meth on the black South and West Sides but who were seldom accused of drug crimes. He’d followed four kids—two black, two white—from the drug scene for a year. At the end of the year, the two white guys were setting off for the east coast to college at Haverford and Princeton; one of the black kids had been sentenced to fifteen years for possession, while the other was dead.

The year after Murray won his Pulitzer, the Global Entertainment Network bought the
Star,
along with several hundred other papers. Harold Weekes acquired a minor Hollywood studio for its cable potential, moved the company from the outer reaches of LA to Wacker Drive, gutted the reporting staff at Global’s papers, and hired Wade Lawlor to disseminate rumors, innuendo, and outright lies, under the catchy title
Wade’s World
.

Wade’s World
trumpeted the claim that Obama had ordered police to collect Bibles from kids on their way to school. Wade signed on with a group disputing the president’s citizenship.

It wasn’t Murray’s fault that his new owners preferred video to print. It wasn’t his fault that he had to scramble to keep a job, so I didn’t hold it against him that he anchored a weekly TV show on GEN. In
Chicago Beat
, he reported on everything from politics to the arts, but most of his shows were devoted to sensational crimes, since that’s what draws a crowd.

Despite Harold Weekes’s hearty assurance that everyone in GEN’s headquarters loved
Chicago Beat
, Murray’s show aired once a week in Illinois and Indiana, although Wisconsin and Michigan affiliates sometimes picked it up.
Wade’s World
was shown four times daily in every city, village, and farm in America.

I didn’t believe Murray’s career hung by the thread he kept claiming, but he was working in a poisonous environment. Lawlor was reported to pull in twenty million a year just from GEN, while his endorsement contracts probably tripled that figure. Other GEN cable stars made seven-figure salaries; in a milieu where the chief operating officer dismissed print journalism as “turning back the clock to the era of illuminated manuscripts,” no matter what Murray earned, he was bound to feel insecure.

I felt ashamed of rubbing Murray’s face in his troubles; I said I’d go to Lawlor’s event at the Valhalla with him. And I’d regretted it the minute I walked in the door. After the encounter with Weekes in the Valhalla ballroom I was furious.

“You could have warned me before I met your boss that you wanted my help with a story. I could have jumped in with some intelligent backup, instead of which he dismissed me as your girlfriend.”

Murray looked sheepish. “I just couldn’t find a way to propose it to you, and then Weekes popped up, and I wanted to get the idea back in front of him. You saw the first piece, looking at the returning Iraq/Afghan vets who’ve become homeless.”

“Yes, yes, I did. You did a great job with that. I didn’t know it was the start of a series, though.”

“It wasn’t,” he fumed. “I had the whole series started—I was going out to one of the state mental hospitals to look at murderers found not guilty by mental defect, I had one on the advanced practice nurses who do most of the hands-on medical care of the mentally ill homeless—I had nine shows lined up, and I had my own producer’s blessing, and then, right after the one on the vets ran, Wade Lawlor stuck in an oar at the huddle, said it was banal and a resource-eater, and Weekes axed the whole series.”

“I can’t possibly persuade Harold Weekes to listen to you instead of Lawlor,” I protested.

“No, but I was hoping you could come on board as the resident expert on evaluating criminal evidence for the segment on people found not guilty by reason of mental defect. I’ve tried pitching that again as a single episode; I put together a list of five people who’ve been held at Ruhetal or Elgin for more than twenty years, but Lawlor keeps shooting down the idea, and I never get time alone with Weekes. I was hoping if he saw you, I don’t know—”

“Even though I’m not a blond twentysomething, that my sparkling gray eyes and flawless skin would captivate him.”

Murray grimaced. “You have a way of putting things in the worst possible light, but, yeah, something like that.”

It was then, as the noise level in the ballroom had passed the dangerous decibel mark, that Petra’s call came, begging me for help. I told Murray I had a client in trouble, refused to give him details, and fled. It took a good fifteen minutes for the Valhalla valet to fetch my car. By the time I got to Mount Moriah, the girls had a substantial head start on me.

5.

STIMULATING NEWS—OR IS IT MALICE?

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME,
I
CAME UP THE BACK STAIRS, WHERE
I
could see if lights were on in Jake Thibaut’s place. He’s a bass player who moved in across the landing from me two years ago, and we’ve been spending a fair amount of our free time with each other. Friends of his had been playing at a small venue on the northwest side, and I’d kind of hoped he might still be up—musicians keep even more erratic hours than detectives. However, his place was dark. The whole building was, except for the second floor, where the Soong family had a new baby that kept them up nights.

I slid thankfully into bed. Although I dreamed of vampires and ravens, I slept soundly until the phone woke me a little after eleven. I choked out as bright a hello as I could manage, hoping it was Jake on the other end.

“Warshawski, what the hell was going on last night?”

“Murray Ryerson.” I tried to wake up. “Now, there’s an excellent question. I still don’t understand why you brought me blind to the Wade-in last night. Thank goodness I didn’t actually touch Lawlor, but just breathing some of his CO
₂
nearly did me in.”

“You know damned well what I’m talking about. Why did you leave to go to a crime scene and not tell me? I looked like a total moron in front of the head of the news division when the reports came in this morning.”

“Murray—when I left you, I didn’t know I was going to a crime scene.”

“And when you got to Mount Moriah cemetery, you didn’t think you could call me? You’d just left me, you know how much I could use a scoop. I told you how hard it is for me to get face time with my boss. Instead, I find out at our morning huddle that the vampire corpse not only has a connection to Vina Fields, but to Crawford, Mead.”

I sat up. Murray had dropped that squib deliberately. The Vina Fields part was easy enough to understand: Kira had said that the parents of one of the girls in her group, Jessie Something, were connected to the mayor. They must have started their Sunday by calling their clout and getting him (or her) to intervene with the police for them. And once that happened, word would start floating around the city.

But Crawford, Mead? There are a handful of outsize law firms in Chicago that work for the state’s heaviest hitters in politics and business. Since I specialize in financial crime—when I’m not crawling through cemeteries in the mud—I’ve met members of most of the big firms in court, but it’s only a managing partner at Crawford, Mead whose taste in socks and sex I know. Or had known, back in the days when we were married.

Richard Yarborough wasn’t a bad guy, just one who wanted power and money badly enough to sacrifice anything that got between him and his goal—such as my career, my feelings, little kittens. Not that I was still bitter or anything, twenty years later.

“What’s the connection?” I asked weakly.

“If you won’t share, I don’t have to, either.”

“Murray, I’m too tired for games—I was up past three with recalcitrant schoolgirls. How did you find out I was involved, by the way?”

“These things leak out, Warshawski, you know how that goes. I have a friend at the 13th District who thought a body with a stake through its heart was freaky enough to merit coverage. Of course, she mentioned you, because she knows you and I are pals, although a pal would have called me from the cemetery.

“This morning, I had to listen to Lawlor’s broadly smeared innuendoes about what a great
leg
woman you were, and how great it was that you went out and created news for me. Of course, I pretended I knew all about it, and at least I’d had the heads-up from the 13th, but you listen to me and listen good, V. I. Warshawski: if you ever leave me looking that stupid again you will never ever get another line of print from me, even if you’ve uncovered proof that the president was born on the planet Krypton.”

“Believe me, Murray, when you’re slogging through mud with a bunch of screaming tweens, the last thing on your mind is texting your friends. Although, of course, if I’d known you wanted to take over my babysitting gig I would have called you in a heartbeat.”

Murray was too angry to be placated. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if you hadn’t just been with me. Lawlor’s an asshole, but Weekes is no dummy, and he put the twos together very fast.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, inadequately.

The truth was, I hadn’t wanted to give Murray a heads-up. I was worried about my cousin, and about the immigrant girls in her group. Given how much Lawlor and Weekes railed against illegals in the country, I wanted to protect Kira and her mother from GEN scrutiny. Time was when you could cover Murray with syrup and send him into a nest of fire ants and he wouldn’t talk. Now, given how desperate he was to make an impression on his boss, I wasn’t so sure.

“Of course, you could start making it up to me,” Murray said.

“Oh?”

“Get me in to see Yarborough.”

“Murray, Dick and I have been divorced for a good twenty years, and the parting wasn’t harmonious. It’s unlikely that I could get him to talk to
me,
let alone a reporter.” I sat on the edge of the bed and did a few leg lifts, flexing my toes to increase the stretch. “What on earth was Wuchnik doing for Crawford, Mead?”

“He died without confiding in me. All I know is that he was on Yarborough’s payroll.”

“Along with thirteen hundred other people. Dick probably didn’t know his name.” I put the phone on speaker and started loosening my shoulders. “I’m going back to the cemetery this afternoon. I’ll be glad to show you the tomb where Wuchnik died.”

“We had a photographer out there first thing this morning. And a camera crew. By the way, Helen Kendrick had a really passionate segment on her
Sunday Values
show on how a woman who wants to deny Americans the right to read their Bibles raised a daughter to worship Satan in a graveyard.”

I stopped my exercises. “Murray, I don’t know if it’s you or me, but this makes no sense. Are you trying to say that Helen Kendrick was attacking me? Does she think Petra is my daughter? An assumption that depresses me on every conceivable parameter, by the way.”

“You really don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“Nia Durango was one of the girls at the cemetery last night.” He sounded like a magician who’s surprised himself along with his audience by pulling a rabbit from his hat.

“Nia Durango.” I repeated blankly. “The name is supposed to mean some—oh! She’s Sophy Durango’s kid?”

“Give the lady the kewpie doll for firing the winning shot. Do you swear on Boom-Boom’s jersey that you really didn’t know Durango’s kid was with you last night?”

“Murray, ten minutes ago I was blissfully asleep. I can’t handle all this—Wuchnik and Dick Yarborough, Sophy Durango’s daughter, Helen Kendrick’s shrieking, Satan, eliminating Bibles—too much without even a cup of coffee, let alone a trip to the bathroom. I’ll call you back.”

I hung up. At least I was wide awake now, but I still found Murray’s call a lot to digest. What on earth was Sophy Durango thinking, to let her kid take part in an escapade like this? I guess that wasn’t a fair question—Nia Durango had sneaked out pretending that she was spending the night with her pal Arielle.

Durango was president of the University of Illinois. She was also a candidate for the United States Senate. And she was running against Helen Kendrick, she of the ear of corn on the American flag. Three years ago, no one had heard Kendrick’s name, except in connection with her husband’s family’s fortune. Then Kendrick had sued Durango and the U of I over the school’s science admissions criteria—Durango refused to allow incoming freshmen to substitute Creation “science” for evolutionary biology.

“We’re training young people for the twenty-first century, not the twelfth,” Durango had said, and Kendrick, who believed Creationism should be taught in the public schools, had sued. The trial had brought Kendrick national attention and support, along with a slot on GEN’s national cable news show (
GENuine News, No Substitutes Allowed!
scrolls across the top of the screen while you’re watching Lawlor, Kendrick, and other commentators hyperventilate.)

Kendrick’s followers had filled the courtroom during the trial, and had held up gorilla masks when Durango passed them in the hallway. Since Durango was African-American, their chant “to send the monkey back to the zoo” had struck some of us as a wee bit racially charged.