Love & Other Crimes
Page 7
The next morning, Dr. Kiel arrived with a large bouquet of flowers for Abigail. Rhonda made Abigail confess everything to Dr. Kiel, how she had stolen Miss Bianca, how she had stolen tetracycline out of his office. Abigail was afraid he would be furious, but the vein in his forehead didn’t move. Instead, he smiled, his brown eyes soft and even rather loving.
“You cured the mouse with quarters of tetracycline tablets dipped in peanut butter, hmm?” He asked to see the pieces Abigail had cut up. “I think we’re going to have to promote you from feeding animals to being a full-fledged member of the research team.”
A few months later, Dr. Dolan left Kansas to teach in Oklahoma. A few years later, Bob Pharris got his PhD. He was a good and kind teacher, even if he never had much success as a researcher. Magdalena Spirova recovered from her bullet wound and was given a job at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, where she worked until the fall of the Iron Curtain meant her husband could be released from prison.
Miss Bianca stayed with Abigail, living to the ripe old age of three. Although Rhonda continued to work for Dr. Kiel, she wouldn’t let Abigail back in the animal lab. Even so, Abigail grew up to be a doctor working for Physicians for Social Responsibility, trying to put an end to torture. As for the five lumpy Kiel children, one of them grew up to write about a Chicago private eye named V.I. Warshawski.
Note
When Jeffery Deaver and Raymond Benson asked me to contribute a story for Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue from the Cold War (Grand Central Press, 2014), I knew at once that I wanted to tell this story—not the story of Abigail and the white mouse, Miss Bianca, but the story of my father’s efforts to bring a sample of a microorganism the Soviets were trying to use in germ warfare to his Kansas lab. He actually did what Elena does in the story: when he was invited to an international conference on Rickettsiae in Czechoslovakia in 1966, he somehow got hold of a sample of the Soviet organism and persuaded a Czech lab tech to inject it into him. He got off the plane in Kansas City with a raging fever but refused to start antibiotics until his lab tech took a blood sample from him. This story grew into Fallout, my 2017 V.I. Warshawski novel. I couldn’t work in Abigail, and Dr. Kiel morphed into a much less attractive man, for which I’m sad.
Is It Justice?
1
I hit the street, arms over my head, when I heard the report. Thunder may sound like a gunshot, but a rifle never sounds like anything else: you know a weapon has been fired.
People were screaming. It was impossible to tell where the shot had come from, or if anyone had been hit, but the thicket of cameras that had sprouted outside the courthouse, waiting for the verdict in Illinois v. Cordell Breen, was trained on the stairs in front of the entrance. A crowd gathered behind them.
Twenty-Sixth and California is lousy with cops and sheriff’s deputies; they were already swarming, outfitted with riot helmets and assault weapons.
A car honked furiously, rubber squealing as it missed me by an inch. That was when I realized I had dropped for cover in the middle of the street. The driver stuck his head out the window to swear at me.
“You’d better get out of here before the road is blocked off,” I said, getting to my feet, but my advice came too late: squad cars, their goose horns honking, were covering all the intersections near the courthouse and jails. They also were blocking the exit to the parking garage across from the courts. I was going to be here for a while, so I went back to the west side of the street, where the cameras and cops and everyone else was jammed.
The police were clearing a path for an ambulance crew; I followed the stretcher bearers to the TV cameras. Murray Ryerson had persuaded Global Entertainment to let him cover the trial. He’s six-four, with red hair, easy to spot. I used the bruising elbows I’d perfected as a child with my hockey-playing cousin to force people out of my way.
“What happened?” I asked.
Murray glanced at me but kept speaking into his microphone. “Just moments after the jury declared him ‘not guilty’ on all but one of twenty-seven counts of a criminal indictment, Cordell Breen has crumpled on the stairs in front of the Cook County Criminal Courts, apparent victim of a gunshot. An ambulance crew is on the scene, and we’ll keep you updated as events unfold.
“Meanwhile, here with me is Chicago investigator V.I. Warshawski, who played a major role in getting the state to bring charges against Breen. She was also a key witness for the state. Vic, what were your thoughts when the jury brought in their ‘not-guilty’ verdicts?”
My thoughts had included fury at the outcome, followed by how much I disliked watching Richard Yarborough in victory. I had wanted to flee the courtroom, but I was wedged into the middle of one of the benches and couldn’t get out. I fumed while my ex-husband turned a dazzling smile on Cordell Breen. He clasped Breen’s forearm with one hand and put the other around his client’s shoulder. While he man-braced Breen, Dick scanned the courtroom, nodding at journalists, but really looking for me, wanting to gloat in person.
He released Breen and walked through the swinging gates to the benches. He had to lean across several people, hitting them with his jacket, but he ignored their protests: What were the spectators ever going to do for him?
“Vic, you know how much respect I have for you. You did a heck of a job.” His smile managed to combine pity with arrogance.
Dick hadn’t been the lead on the defense—he doesn’t do criminal law—but as a senior partner at Crawford, Mead, he showed up most days. After all, Breen was one of the firm’s most important—i.e., richest—clients, and he was on trial for counts ranging from criminal fraud to accessory to murder.
My final thought on hearing the verdict: if I’d stayed married to Richard Yarborough I’d be in the Logan Correctional Center for Women right now, serving natural life for murder. I didn’t say any of this with a live mike under my nose.
“I thought the state’s attorney brought the case in well,” I said to Murray. “It’s always disappointing when you have rock-solid evidence and the jury votes against you, but of course the jury system is the bedrock of our democracy.”
“Someone didn’t agree,” Murray said. “Cordell Breen was shot as he stood on the top step, straightening his necktie.”
“You don’t know that he was the target,” I objected. “There are a lot of guns around here. You have angry husbands, betrayed wives, and a whole freight car full of drug dealers. Breen could have been hit by accident.”
Murray narrowed his eyes at me but didn’t say anything: he was listening to a voice inside his earpiece. “The Chicago Fire Department is taking Cordell Breen to Stroger Hospital, where the city’s top trauma surgeons will be waiting. This is Murray Ryerson, live at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse.” He switched off his mike and glared at me. “Are you running for office, Warshawski? ‘The jury system is the bedrock of our democracy’?”
“I hope you don’t disagree, Murray—you’d have to go back to Miss Motley’s remedial civics class.”
“And that clap-doodle about the state’s attorney bringing the case in well—by the end of the third day, I was prepared to think someone had paid her to look as ineffectual as possible,” Murray said.
The same thought had crossed my mind, as Sonia de Winter fumbled her cross-examination of one of the defense’s key witnesses from Breen’s R&D department. She’d been equally uncertain when she interrogated Breen’s estranged wife, Constance, who was testifying on our side.
I certainly wasn’t going to say as much to Murray Ryerson, though, even with the mike turned off. Time was when I could trust him with my private thoughts on the criminal justice system, but those days had disappeared along with his job at the Herald-Star. Now, as he scrambled for face time on cable news, he was willing to say almost anything. In fact, the wilder the statement the better—that helped him go viral on YouTube.
“I don’t suppose you shot Breen yourself, did you?” Murray asked hopefully.
“Don’t you need to get over to the
hospital?” I asked. “You wouldn’t want Fox or ABC to scoop you with word about Breen’s condition.”
His crew had the same concern; I could hear someone’s voice coming scratchily from his earpiece. His camerawoman was tapping his arm impatiently.
“Cops are letting news crews out, but they’re inspecting everyone’s equipment, so we need to get going,” the camerawoman said.
I tagged along behind them. It would be hours before I’d be able to get my own car out of the parking garage. The whole area was under tight security by now. The cops waved us into the Global Entertainment van, giving our bags a cursory check for weapons.
As we nosed around the police cordon, we heard a loudspeaker announcement from the CTA: the California Avenue bus was being rerouted to Western, half a mile to the east. People who’d spent a long day in court to support a loved one were trudging along the side street, faces bleak. Some were towing small children, who whimpered at the long walk. One woman, with a corona of unkempt white hair, was slowly pushing a walker with the bowed face of someone long inured to hardship. I suggested to Murray that we give her a lift—it would be a good human-interest story—but he wanted to get to the hospital along with the rest of the rat pack.
2
“What do you know about this?” Richard Yarborough was in my office, whining and petulant. I can’t say I liked his whiny petulant persona, but it was a lot easier to take than his gloating.
He’d called as I was packing up my office for the day. He tried to order me to visit him at Crawford, Mead’s offices near the river, but I refused, on the simple grounds that I didn’t want to talk to him; if he was desperate to see me, he could slum it in my Humboldt Park warehouse.
“As for what I know, Cordell Breen was killed by a single bullet that went through the middle of his face at four-seventeen yesterday afternoon. I learned it from reading the paper this morning. You probably know more, being the guy’s counsel and privy to all his secrets.”
Breen had been dead when the ambulance picked him up. They’d taken him to the hospital for tactical, not medical reasons. The police hadn’t found the murder weapon, but the bullet had come from a hunting rifle, not an assault weapon.
Dick’s nostrils twitched. “I wouldn’t put it past you to have done it yourself, just because you hate to lose.”
I let silence build for a moment. “Dick, that had better be a joke.”
He flushed, but muttered, “You always bring out the worst in me.”
“You slandered me because I made you do it? That’s the most feeble apology I’ve ever heard. If you came here to accuse me of murder, you’d better go right now, or believe me, you will leave here on a stretcher yourself.”
“It’s true, though,” he insisted. “You can’t stand losing.”
“Whereas you embrace it? Come on, Dick. You know we couldn’t stay in the same room together when we were studying for the same test back in law school. Why did you really want to see me so urgently?”
“Breen dying like that, just at the moment we cleared his name—who besides you could have such a grudge against him, or against us for that matter?”
“Breen’s wife. Your team made her look like a bitter drunken has-been. Martin Binder—your client murdered his grandmother—”
“Breen was found not guilty,” Dick interrupted me hotly.
“Oh, please, Dick. Your client’s henchman and a bent sheriff’s deputy murdered Kitty Binder on Cordell’s orders. Ditto Julius Dzornen. Ditto Derrick Schlafly, not that he’s any loss to society. Ditto for Bowser—”
“Bowser?” Dick said.
“Schlafly’s dog,” I said. “And then, you have all of Breen’s shareholders, furious with Cordell for ruining their investment. When he was indicted, the stock tanked. It did not show any bounce when the verdict came in: the market thinks your guy was guilty and the shareholders are a peevish and embittered bunch.”
“So you think Martin Binder killed Cordell?”
I got up. “Leave, Dick. You are an insane person this afternoon and I don’t have the patience for it.”
“I’m not leaving until you answer my questions.”
“You don’t have questions. You have offensive accusations. First me, then Martin? Why do you need to pin the murder on anyone?”
He pursed his lips, pushed his cuff back to look at his watch. He was trying to figure out what excuse I would buy.
“My partners are concerned,” he said. “They know you have special contacts with the police and the media.”
“You want me to call Murray Ryerson and tell him Crawford, Mead’s partners are concerned, so please release your private video foot—oh.” I interrupted myself. “You’re billing Breen’s company, not Breen as a private individual. And the board is balking at the bill. Must run to about six million, doesn’t it?”
“We could be tied up in litigation for years,” Dick said plaintively.
“My heartstrings are truly tugged, but I will not confess to a murder I didn’t commit just to clear your profit center for the year. Go home to Terri, let her tell you what a handsome hero you are and what a bitch I am.”
He glared again. “I’m sorry I misspoke. My partners are hoping you know something.”
“I’m not working for you, Dick. You know that would be a total disaster.”
“We’d pay a good five figures for any information you have,” he said.
“You’re way too used to having your own way. Even a good six or seven figures wouldn’t tempt me. I really do not care who killed Cordell Breen. The police will jump through hoops for you; that has to be enough, even for your vanity.”
3
It was true: I didn’t care who killed Breen. His father had been with the U.S. Army of Occupation in Europe after World War II where Breen, senior, had stolen a patent from a Holocaust victim. He’d used it to build an electronics empire in the 1950s and 1960s.
The victim, a physics virtuoso named Martina, had managed to slip her design into a collection of papers that survived the war. Martina’s great-grandson Martin Binder inherited her gifts. When he stumbled on Martina’s papers and found her design—created in hellish conditions during the Second World War—Martin tried to talk to Cordell Breen about his great-grandmother’s work. Cordell Breen knew his father had stolen the design from Martina; he thought it was a good joke, because he believed his family was entitled to whatever came their way.
Cordell pulled out all the stops, including murdering Martin’s family, to protect the Breen fortune, but Martin had managed to flee. I had spent much of the previous fall looking for him—and ducking a lot of Cordell’s bullets in the process.
It had been one of the hardest jobs of my professional life to persuade the state’s attorney to bring charges against Cordell. If his wife hadn’t decided to testify against him, we might never have gotten as far as the courtroom. I don’t believe in vigilante justice, really, I don’t, but I wasn’t going to lose sleep over Cordell Breen’s death.
His murder was certainly a nine-day wonder, not just in Chicago but internationally, given that Breen had headed one of the world’s largest electronics companies, but my own work was keeping me busy. When the murder receded from the front pages, I stopped thinking about it.
That changed the afternoon Alison Breen came into my office. She was Breen’s daughter, distressed at finding out what her father had done, distressed at seeing her parents’ marriage unravel under the relentless light of the cable news cameras. When I first met her, she’d had the assurance and good looks that wealth and a quality education provide. Today, though, her chestnut hair had lost its glossy sheen, her nails were bitten down to the quicks, and her eyes were red rimmed and puffy from lack of sleep.
“Vic, please, you have to help me.”
I ushered her into the armchair in the alcove I’ve created for client meetings. “What’s the problem?” Besides her father getting murdered, her mother testifying against him in court, what else could be wrong?
“Like what?”
“Mother came over this morning. Really, like three in the morning. She was—she’d been drinking, she wasn’t herself—but this one detective, the way he’s talking, she’s afraid they think she killed Daddy.”
I shut my eyes, trying to remember the courtroom at the moment the verdict came in. “She was there, wasn’t she? And her friend, that woman—what’s her name?”
“Leila. Leila Mitchum. I really can’t stand her. She’s always talking like some dreary political slogan, how Mother is an archetype of the oppressed woman, how Daddy tried to buy her and then broke her spirit, all this stuff that is just stupid and horrible to listen to. And then she likes to go drinking with Mother, which I hate even worse. But, yeah, Leila and Mother were there when the verdict came in.”
“Does your mother know how to shoot?”
“We all do,” Alison said. “Mother grew up with guns, and she and Daddy used to go target shooting, back—well, before—before everything turned crazy. Daddy felt, since we were kidnapping risks, we should know some basics of self-protection, so Mother and I took kung fu together when I was in high school.”
“Aside from the fact that your father’s lawyers made your mother look bad on the witness stand, does she have any reason to have shot your dad?”
“Vic! I came to you for help, not for you to build a case against her.”
“I can’t do anything to help until I understand why the police suspect her. Didn’t your father try to strip her assets?”