Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (39 page)

It
was noon when INS finally let me call Freeman Carter. That was not due to any
eloquence on my part, but because they’d fingerprinted us. A check through
AFIS, the automated print system, had given them a perfect match with a private
eye using my name and address. Somehow this didn’t convince them that I was who
I claimed to be—or more likely they were so furious at being proved wrong they
wouldn’t release us without putting us through legal hoops.

I was
reeling by then, my head a giant hammer pounding the anvil of my body, but
concern for Max kept me from keeling over. I was alarmed by his pallor and the
beads of sweat on his forehead. I told the officer in charge that if Max had a
heart attack I would use my connections with Senator Gantner’s office to make
sure none of them ever worked again. Grumpy, but not sure whether I might have
such contacts, they let me call my lawyer.

When
I found Freeman—by portable phone on the Kemper Golf Course—he wanted me to
wait while he finished a round. He thought being held at O’Hare as an illegal
alien a rather exquisite joke, but agreed Max’s character didn’t need
developing through punishment the way mine did. He would finish the hole he was
playing and come on over to the airport. While we waited for Freeman I tried to
get the cops to let me call Ana Campos as well—I thought the Romanians deserved
some kind of legal counsel before being thrown onto a plane home, but I
couldn’t persuade the law.

When
Freeman finally showed up he was laughing a little, but at the sight of Max’s
gray face his lightness evaporated. He wanted to call an ambulance, but Max
said all he needed was to get out in the air. Freeman took down the names of
the arresting officers, said they would hear from him, and ushered us to his
waiting Maserati—he’d managed to persuade the cop on duty to let him park right
in front of the terminal.

“Vic
is the one you should be worrying about,” Max said as we sped away from the
airport. “She was badly injured yesterday—knocked out, in fact. I was afraid
she might swoon in that stuffy room.”

His
words released the string with which I’d tethered myself to consciousness. I
tried to speak, to pay attention to Freeman’s response, but I fell into a well
of darkness. I remembered nothing—not even how I made it from the car
inside—until Freeman was shaking me awake in Max’s living room. He handed me a
cup of coffee and stood over me while I drank it.

When
he judged I was aware enough to respond, he said, “I know you’re dead to the
world, Vic, but I’d like a thumbnail sketch of what this was about before I
leave. You can give me a more complete report tomorrow.”

When
I told him he was not supportive. “You’re not getting much sympathy from me on
that one. In the first place, finding Deirdre’s murderer is a job for your
friend Conrad, and in the second, why should any business open its books to
you?

Just
because you want to know something they don’t want to tell you does not
constitute prima facie grounds of wrongdoing.”

He
held up a hand to forestall my outburst. “I agree that bringing in a planeload
of illegal immigrants and exploiting them is shameful behavior.

Charpentier
has a lot of explaining to do to the immigration authorities. And maybe Home
Free’s backers ought to know about it—but that isn’t your problem.

Your
problem, as I see it, is to find enough clients to make a dent in the two
thousand dollars you still owe me. Not to mention what today’s little junket
will cost. Fortunately for you I don’t charge overtime for Sunday rescues.”

Maybe
if I hadn’t been so tired I would have thought of an equally sharp rebuttal,
but the idea of his bill made me remember my taxes, due on Wednesday.

Not
to mention all my other obligations. I crawled wearily from the living room to
the spare room without bothering to tell him good-bye.

Lotty
had been tending Max, but she came in to give me a brusque, not to say
unsympathetic, exam. As she once again pulled the sheet up to my chin, she told
me that for two cents she’d sew it into a shroud and bury me with it.

“I
love you, too, Lotty. Good night.”

“And
what am I supposed to tell Conrad and Mr. Contreras?” she demanded.

“That
I love them, too, and I’ll call them in the morning.”

“No.
You sleep for a while, and then you use the telephone. They are seriously
worried about you, although why anyone would go to that much bother I don’t
know. After what you went through yesterday, to do this—and then to put Max at
risk also—is absolutely unconscionable.”

Max’s
name pulled me briefly back from the edge of sleep. “Is Max okay? I was afraid
he might be having a heart attack, but I couldn’t get those idiots to pay any
attention.”

Lotty’s
twisted smile came. “Not his heart. Maybe his soul. Max fled Europe for his
life when he was thirteen. The thought of a forcible return was a terrible
nightmare. It would be for me, I know. I’ve given him a mild sedative; he
should be fine in the morning.”

“I
didn’t mean it to happen,” I pleaded. “We took every precaution. How was I to
know they were warehousing illegal immigrants in an old bread truck on the
site?”

Lotty
sat down next to me. “You should have known. And you know why? Because no
matter what you set out to do the most disastrous possible outcome takes place.
If you go to the corner to buy milk, that is a guarantee that the store will be
held up at precisely that second.”

“When
I was born Mars and Venus were both ascending, or whatever planets do.

They
can’t make up their minds which one is going to dominate me. Is that my fault?”

I
struggled to sit up. “Why do you think INS descended at that precise moment?
Not because I was there today. But because I’d been there yesterday. One of the
musketeers must have called and reported the van so that the crew would be
scooped up and out of the country before I came back. If they knocked me out
yesterday afternoon they’d think they had today clear.”

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re proving, though, that it was your
presence that caused disaster to strike. Now go to sleep.” Lotty pushed me back
against the pillow, but her touch was gentler than her words.

It
was nine o’clock when she roused me again, to tell me Conrad was on the phone.
I pulled my jeans on and stumbled along the hall to the phone, disoriented in
the strange house, and by having slept at such a strange time of day.

“How
come you get arrested and I learn about it first from my mama?” Conrad greeted
me.

“Is
this twenty questions? How did your mother hear about it?”

“On
the news, same as everyone else in Chicago. Everyone but me, I mean. On top of
that, how come you get shot at yesterday and I hear about it from that
self-satisfied creep Ryerson?”

I sat
on the spindle-legged chair by the phone and rubbed my eyes. “I haven’t talked
to Murray at all since Thursday. So I don’t know how he knew.”

“Well,
I got most of the story from him—when he had the fucking nerve to call me to
ask for corroborating details.”

“He
picked it up on the wires, then, and acted as though we’d spoken, as a
reporting ploy. Or to cause trouble between you and me—which certainly worked.

Please,
Conrad—don’t call up rapping out accusations.”

Conrad
was too angry, or hurt, to pay attention. “Why the hell didn’t you tell the
cops out at O’Hare to call me? I could have gotten you out of that jam a lot
faster and a lot cheaper than your high-priced lawyer.”

I
rubbed the sore spot on the side of my head. “I was shoved into an overcrowded
van and carted off to O’Hare,where they strip-searched me. Have you ever had
that special pleasure? It’s disorienting.”

“You’d
rather have flown to Bucharest and figured out how to hitchhike home than ask
for my help. That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it?” His voice was like the
bitter edge of an aloe leaf.

“Of
course I’d rather call you. I’d rather call you when I’m afraid to walk up my
front stairwell. Can’t you see why I don’t? It’s so fundamental, Conrad.”

As I
spoke I wondered whether my pride was so fierce that I would have let them
bundle me onto a plane than involve my lover. It was something I preferred not
to know.

“When
were you going to let me know about this particular mangle?” he demanded.

“Tonight.
When I woke up. I would have called before if I’d known we rated the four o’clock
news. Come to think of it, I’d better get in touch with Mr.

Contreras
before he goes into outer space.”

“He
already has. Believe it or not the old guy called me—a sign of true
desperation. But going back to what’s fundamental, Vic, it seems to me you
guard everything you do like you were protecting baby Moses from the Pharaoh,
and when I learn of it by accident you grudgingly hand me a bulrush or two.”

“Conrad,
if you knew I had planned this morning’s outing you would have protested
mightily. Was it so wrong of me to want to protect myself against that kind of
reaction?”

“I
object to you breaking the law, not to you exercising a healthy curiosity about
your investigations. Can’t you tell the difference? And can’t you respect my
feelings as your lover when it has to be a reporter who tells me you’ve been
shot at?”

“Maybe
if you hadn’t been so fierce about the Fourth Amendment last night I would
have. But you were chewing me out, after I’d sustained a head injury, and it
made me forget the earlier fracas.”

“I
think the truth is you like to fly solo, girl. If someone’s in your wing, even
if it’s a friendly plane, you’ll shoot it down.” He hung up before I could
think of anything to say.

I
started shivering in the dimly lit hall. Lotty appeared, ghostlike, with a cup
of fresh coffee. I sipped it gratefully, then rested it on my leg so I wouldn’t
leave a stain on the piecrust table Max used for the hall phone.

“Max
still asleep?” I asked.

“He’ll
sleep until morning. Is Conrad coming for you?”

“He’s
so angry with me I don’t know if he’ll ever speak to me again. And don’t tell
me I deserve it: I don’t need that kind of comfort tonight.”

She
leaned a hand across me to push the switch on the small lamp next to the phone;
her eyes were shiny in the golden light. “Does it ever occur to you, Vic, that
I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I’ve made? Using anger or fear to
put up walls between you and other people is an uncomfortable way to live.”

I
clasped her hand briefly. When I talked to Conrad was I acting out of fear or
anger? Some of both, I concluded uneasily. I released her fingers to dial Mr.

Contreras’s
number.

As I
spoke to my neighbor I wonder why I could treat his frantic questions more
gently than I did Conrad’s. I patiently explained how Max had come to be
involved, how that didn’t mean I preferred Max to him, how sorry I was that
he’d had to deal alone with the television crews who’d arrived around
three—knowing he secretly must have relished the encounter.

“How
long you planning on camping out? The dogs need a good run. And what are you
doing to Conrad? I called him to find out what you was up to, and learned the
hard way he didn’t know. You can’t treat men the way you do and expect them to
hang around forever. And it’s not like I’m a fan of you dating Conrad Rawlings,
because I’m not. But he ain’t a bad guy for a colored fellow; he’s always been
real polite to you. To me too. But what are you, pushing forty? And living by
yourself without even any proper furniture? What’s your life going to be like
when you’re my age?”

“I
give up. I can’t think that far ahead. I don’t even know what it’s going to be
like tonight. So don’t push on me, okay? I can’t take any more of it right
now.”

“Okay,
cookie, okay,” he said gruffly. “But try to think about other people’s feelings
every now and then—that’s all I’m asking. You go back to bed now, though. And
don’t forget to call me in the morning.”

When
he’d hung up I studied the table lamp Lotty had switched on. Like everything in
Max’s house it was a carefully chosen piece, two clear bells with flowers
etched in them attached to a small brass post. Sometimes his exquisite taste
makes me come to his house as to an oasis of goodwill, but tonight I wanted to
smash the lamp against the Chinese vases lining the stairwell.

The
Quid Pro Quo

Lotty
was curled up in the breakfast nook with a novel, something in German by Inge
Bachman. She’d slept for several hours after putting Max to bed and was wide
awake now. I made a broccoli frittata to share with her, then sat at the
cooking island with a yellow pad she’d dug up in Max’s study, trying to marshal
the facts I had about Home Free, Deirdre, and Century Bank.

The
five million or so in Jasper’s cash drawer was the most significant item I had.
Presumably he paid off contractors like Charpentier in cash. If all the work
force was exploited like the crew I’d spent the morning with, payroll outlay
would be pretty small. Supplies add up, but how many suppliers would take
payment in cash? Some outlays must run to tens of thousands of dollars. And
even if all his suppliers were crooked, Jasper couldn’t possibly use up the
amount of money in his drawer paying them off.