Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (25 page)

“Vic!
What are you doing here? I thought—” she broke off.

“I
know. You thought Jasper had successfully booted me out the Home Free door and
I’d taken off in my sporty roadster. The three of you sat in Jasper’s little
office watching me on the TV monitor and cheering. But I snuck back in time to
see you and young Alec waltz away together.”

“So?”

“So
why is your seeing the head of Home Free such a secret?”

She
looked from me to the receptionist, suddenly aware of how public our
conversation was. “It’s not a secret, Vic. And, as Jasper told you, when you
drop in on people unannounced you can’t expect them to find time for you. I
have a meeting to get to.”

I
stood up. “I know, sweet pea. It’s with me. We can have it out here in the
foyer, in your office, or downstairs in the coffee shop, but we are going to
talk.”

Her
face bunched together in frustration. “Oh, very well. We’ll go to my office.
Hold my calls, Laura.”

She
walked down the hall at race-qualifying speed, ignoring greetings from
co-workers and a frantic demand from one man that she respond to a Japanese fax
immediately. In her office she sat at her desk, an imposing piece of ebony
about a tennis court wide. Her desk chair built up her height; wing chairs in
front put visitors a foot below her head. I opted for one of the corner couches
behind the desk. She swiveled and glared, angry at losing her barricade.

“Okay,
Vic. This had better be good.”

I
blinked. “You stole my line, Phoebe. I want to know what you and Alec Gantner
are up to. With Heccomb thrown in for sauce.”

“Private
business. You’re on retainerfor me, in case you’d forgotten. Not to investigate
me.”

“We
seem to keep having this conversation. You paid for my professional help.

You
did not buy me. In case you’d forgotten, last week you used that same line to
coerce me into investigating why Century Bank had pulled the plug on Lamia.

When,
just two days later, Home Free agreed to give them a rehab job, you trotted out
those very words to pull me off the investigation.”

She
started to say something, but I spoke through her. “In a minute. I want to
spell this out clearly for you. I left the investigation most reluctantly. My main
City Hall informant was so nervous about it that I knew I’d inadvertently
walked in on something sensitive. Ordinarily I would not have dropped such an
inquiry, but two things decided me: Camilla Rawlings’s ardent pleading for
Lamia, and Deirdre’s murder. Her death, and the disappearance of her three
children, pushed other less-important questions out of my mind. Also, I had
inspected Home Free’s 990 filing and their finances looked good enough to pay
Lamia’s bills.”

“So
why come around now?” Phoebe’s fists were knotted in her lap. “Leave it alone
for good, Vic.”

I
pressed my fingertips into my forehead. “You’re not listening, Phoebe. I didn’t
drop the inquiry on your orders, but for the reasons I just outlined.”

“What’s
made you change your mind?”

“Nothing.
Until I saw you and Alec Gantner waltzing out of Home Free this morning I had
scrupulously avoided all mention of Lamia in my few sessions with Jasper
Heccomb. Now—all bets are off.”

She
pounded her right thigh in frustration. “Then what were you doing there?”

“Looking
for leads into Deirdre’s murder. She was an active Home Free volunteer. I’m
trying to find someone she talked to the night she died. Now you tell me what
you were up to this morning.”

She
swiveled around to commune with her desk. “I was going over some details of the
Lamia deal.”

“With
Alec Gantner?”

“He
is on the Home Free board, Vic,” she shot over her shoulder “He has a
legitimate interest in their projects.”

“I
see.” I walked to a sideboard against the far wall and opened its doors.

“What
the hell are you doing?”

“Looking
for a refrigerator. I thought you might have eggs. Which you’d be willing to
show me how to suck.” I shut the cupboard doors and leaned against the edge.

Phoebe
frowned ferociously, her jaw jutting out far enough to cause permanent damage
to her overbite. “It’s time for you to return Capital Concerns’s retainer,
Vic.”

“Great.
I’ll be happy to. I can’t work for someone who’s as secretive as you are about
your actions. You keep me totally in the dark and then are outraged if I bump
into a giant sofa you’ve stuck in the middle of the room.”

“Don’t
bring furniture into this, Vic. You promised me—Camilla and me—last Sunday you
would leave Lamia’s affairs alone. I can’t have someone on my payroll who’s so
untrustworthy.”

“Pot
calling the kettle, Quirk.” It was an effort to keep my voice light. “My
accounting records are boarded up in the Pulteney. I’ll send you a check as
soon as I can get in to see how much of your retainer is owed you—I’ve done
some work on Mr. T that I haven’t billed you for yet.”

“Mr.
T? What’s he got to do with me? You’re not just arrogant, you’re insane.”

“Your
little T-cell company. That’s what you called it when you gave me the
assignment. I don’t remember its formal name offhand.”

Her
skin turned so pale that her freckles stood out like drops of blood against her
skin. “I want you to drop that investigation at once. What have you found out?”

“I’ll
look it up this afternoon and send you a report and a bill.” I spoke stiffly,
uninterested in masking my own anger.

“I
don’t want you looking it up. I don’t want you sending me a report. I’ll write
off the retainer in lieu of a fee for the work on that company.” She got up.
“And stay away from Home Free. Neither Camilla nor I want those waters muddied
any further.”

“Phoebe,
you just fired me. You can’t order me around. And anyway, you never have
realized I’m not a blender to start and stop by throwing a switch. You need to
remember I’m a professional with whom youcontracted —not hired—to get work
done. And that means I design the work plan. If I turn up startling material
that changes the work plan, I make that decision.”

“Professional?”
She curled her lip. “With your accounts boarded up in an abandoned building?
What a joke! I hired you out of pity for a struggling woman entrepreneur. But
there are plenty of other firms around town who will do what I need with a lot
less grief.”

As I
rode the elevator down to the ground I felt a sour taste in my mouth.

There
was too much truth in her criticism. Nothing about my life these days looked
remotely successful, let alone professional.

I
tried to find a quick place for lunch on my way up Dearborn. I’d have liked a
bowl of old-fashioned barley or matzo ball soup, but the mom-and-pop delis have
all disappeared—replaced by trendy cappuccino bars to gratify yuppified palates
such as my own.

I
found some ersatz minestrone and a lump of dough calling itself a bagel and
went on up to theHerald-Star . Without my modem I had to revert to slogging the
streets like an old-fashioned gumshoe. Good thing I’d worn my Nikes—I was
dressed for the part.

I
climbed the stairs to the second-floor news offices and made my way through the
labyrinth of cubicles to Murray Ryerson’s desk. My lucky day. Murray was in,
hunched over the phone. He looked up when I tapped his shoulder, wound up his
call, and stood to hug me. An outsize Viking in a red beard, he tops my
five-eight by a good nine inches.

“Nancy
Drew in the flesh.” His voice boomed around the floor; a woman in the next
cubicle poked her head around to stare.

Murray,
oblivious, fingered my hair. “You’ve got some white in that curly mop of yours.
It’s been so long since you’ve spoken to me, you’ve grown old.”

I
disengaged myself; the woman next door scooted back to her desk. “Just showing
the effects of working with you all these years.”

“Withme?”
he mocked. “When was it ever cooperative? I never got anything from you except
with a crowbar, and then only if you needed a favor back. Which makes me wonder
what you’re doing here now.”

Murray
and I go back to my days in the PD’s office when he’d been a rookie reporter
trying to find who was leaking defense files to the state’s attorney.

He
had interviewed me for the story. Even though I’d suspected my assistant
director, residual clannishness from growing up on the South Side kept me from
squealing. Murray eventually got the information from a disgruntled secretary.

I’d
taken the heat anyway at my next performance review and had always wondered if
Murray fingered me out of pique for not making his job easier.

Over
the years, as he became one of the city’s preeminent investigative reporters,
our relations remained colored by that early experience: he came to me for
stories; I held on to information to protect clients or friends; he got angry;
I got burned. For a brief time we’d compounded the mess by becoming lovers, and
that interlude added to the ambivalence we felt on seeing each other. Did we
welcome a meeting or recoil from it? Did we gain or get hurt by it? Neither of
us could figure that out.

“Oh,
well, since you know I’ve come to beg for help, I won’t beat around the bush. I
want to look up some stories on the news data bases.” Murray had access to
theTimes ,Tribune , andHerald-Star as well as the Dow Jones News Service.

“Whoa,
there, Nancy. I’m not running the public library here.”

“Okay.
I’ll go to the library. You know, the police impounded my computer after
Deirdre Messenger died, on account of they think they can bully me into explaining
why the murderer erased my hard disk. Or maybe Deirdre did it because she was
in a bad mood. And the Culpeppers boarded my modem up in the Pulteney on
Wednesday. Otherwise I’d do this myself. But the library’s a good tip. Thanks.”

I
sauntered toward the door. Murray caught up with me at the elevator.

“Not
so fast, Vic. This in connection with Messenger? I was in Washington last
week—they’ve got me poring over Congressional finance records now. I forgot you
were sitting in the front seat on this one. What’s with Deirdre’s kids?

They’ve
hogged the front page the last two days. Someone said Messenger beat his wife
and killed her because she was having an affair.”

“Could
be.” I pushed the button.

“Oh,damn
you, Warshawski.” He got down on one knee, with more agility than you might
expect from a guy his size, and kissed my right hand. “O

She-who-must-be-obeyed,
I will dial up all data bases for you with my own fingers if you will only tell
me about the murder, omitting no details however trivial they may seem to you,
and tying them up with the computer search you are undertaking.”

I
laughed. “I’m not sure how what I want to know ties to Deirdre’s death. I’m
just fishing around. But I’ll tell you something for nothing that the cops
aren’t interested in: Deirdre had made an appointment to see someone in my
office. I’m trying to find out who.”

Murray
loved it. He danced me around the hall and told me he took back all the mean,
ugly things he’d ever even thought about me, let alone said, adding that the
white hairs looked sexy, and whisked me down to Lucy Moynihan’s hamburger joint
to talk. While he ate three burgers and I supplemented my soup with a basket of
onion rings we discussed the pros and cons of Fabian as a suspect.

“I
know he beat her: I heard him do it once,” I said. “But who was she supposed to
be sleeping with?”

He
shook his head. “Idle talk—no one had any serious names to throw around.

You
know the odds-on suspect is the daughter. That’s why she’s supposed to have run
away.”

“I
know. But I don’t believe it. I think it was Fabian. And I think the only thing
I can do to help the kid is find who Deirdre was meeting in my office last
Friday. It might even have been Alec Gantner or Donald Blakely—she was making
suggestive remarks to them at her dinner party last week. If they saw Fabian
enter the building, maybe they’re not squealing out of brotherly solidarity. I
want a lever that will make them talk to me.”

“And
what’s your pal Conrad saying while you show the police how to do their job?”
Murray jeered. “Aren’t he and the officer in charge good old boys together?”

“You
want to do a story on my love life or on Deirdre’s death?” I snapped.

Murray
laughed. “I love to catch you off guard, Warshawski. It’s good for you.”

“Yeah,
like castor oil.”

I
looked at my wrist. Even if I’d had an inheritance I wouldn’t have spent it on
a pimp watch like Jasper Heccomb’s. My father’s old steel watch, which I’d had
fitted with a new band so it didn’t fall off my wrist, told time just as well
as a Rolex. Right now it told me I had two hours before I was due back at Home
Free. I herded Murray back up to daylight and his computer.

Whirling
Dervish

Endless
stories had been filed on the Gantners. Alec senior was a U.S. senator and had
been a secretary of agriculture. His wife served on the Symphony and Ravinia
boards; their eldest daughter, Melanie, had flirted briefly with the Weather
Underground before buying a farm in Oregon. She lived there in ostentatious
simplicity, cultivating a hundred acres without modern chemistry or machinery,
and writing well-publicized polemics against modern agribusiness.