Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  “There’s one thing I need to discuss with her,” I said. “Bernie says she went to the park to look for Leo because she thought she might have misunderstood where they were meeting. And I gather he wasn’t answering her texts—his phone had likely already been stolen. Still, I have a feeling there’s something she isn’t saying?” I prudently didn’t accuse her of lying, not to Arlette. “Bernie isn’t the kind of person to wait around for a dilatory lover.”

  “Di-la-torie? Quoi?”

  “Someone who keeps you waiting.”

  “Ah, yes. I will ask her these things and believe me, she will tell me the truth, no fear over that. And I will stay for a few days. These girls, they live out of packages, as if there were no such thing in Chicago as real cheese.”

  That made me laugh, but when we hung up, my own spirits were still oppressed. Running around in the hot sun was not a good cure for me, certainly not the running around I’d been doing today.

  19

  Unending Grief

  I phoned Lotty to let her know I’d given her clinic number to both Coop and Lydia Zamir. When I described the condition in which I’d found Lydia this afternoon, Lotty insisted on talking face-to-face. We met for a late supper at a café near her condo building.

  Lotty hadn’t paid attention to Leo Prinz’s murder—she refuses to follow news about any violent deaths. “I would have no time for surgery if all I did was read about the day’s shootings and stabbings. There is a limit, anyway, to how much misery the mind can absorb before it buckles under the weight.”

  That meant I had to tell her the story from the beginning, from stumbling on Zamir after Bernie’s soccer match, through Bernie’s near-arrest, Murray’s article, the disastrous aftermath on the train platform, and then the suspicious way Coop kept popping up.

  Lotty asked questions, and discussed the answers with her usual intelligent sympathy. The conversation helped wash some of my own misery from my bones.

  “Do you believe this Coop killed the young man?”

  I grimaced. “I would feel confident it was a homeless person camping in the park if it weren’t for the fact that Leo went there when he was supposed to be joining Bernie. I guess it’s possible he spent the afternoon in the Wildlife Corridor, but it seems more likely that someone arranged a meeting. He’d seen something on one of the maps at the SLICK meeting that bugged him—maybe someone assured him they could explain the map if he came to the park.”

  “This man Coop doesn’t sound as though he thinks ahead like that,” Lotty said shrewdly.

  “True enough,” I agreed. “He explodes on provocation, but only he knows what the provocation will be. Maybe not even he knows. I wish I could get him to bring Lydia to you. Or hospitalize her.”

  Lotty shook her head. “Look what happened when the police took her to Provident—this woman who is malnourished and exhausted found the strength to flee, probably on foot, a distance of what?”

  “About two miles,” I said. “You’re repeating what others around her have been saying, that she’s allergic to care.”

  “There’s a lot of debate these days about involuntary treatment,” Lotty said. “It’s not my field, of course, but I do encounter families who are dealing with this issue. Even for someone who is deeply delusional, there is still a need for some autonomy, some decision-making. Only Ms. Zamir can decide if she’s ready for care. Right now, the idea frightens her.”

  Lotty laid a hand over mine. “Liebchen, forgive me if I step on your toes, but—I’m wondering if you are overly involved with Ms. Zamir’s situation because she is a musician. A musician in trouble is perhaps a reminder of your mother, whom you couldn’t save.”

  She was echoing what Peter had said earlier. I smiled painfully. After a moment she moved the conversation to less stressful topics: she and Max were planning a music lover’s vacation, from the Marlboro Festival in Vermont to England for the York Early Music Festival.

  I myself was planning a hiking trip in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains: before his murder, my cousin Boom-Boom had built a cabin there next to Pierre Fouchard’s. I’d inherited the cabin, and usually rented it through the agency the Fouchards used, but I had claimed it for a week later in the summer. I couldn’t join Peter in Turkey for his dig, but I didn’t want to spend the whole hot summer in Chicago.

  Talk of music and hiking moved Lydia’s mental state and Leo’s death from the middle of my head to a small side room. Arlette Fouchard moved it closer to the middle again: she called as I was unlocking my front door to tell me she’d interrogated Bernadine about why she’d waited around for Leo when he stood her up.

  “She said she was angry. She was wanting to give this Leo a piece of her mind. And then, when she saw his dead body, it was an enormous shock, she felt guilty, only she is ashamed to say about her anger. I believe her, Victoire. Me, I know when my child is lying to me.”

  I, too, believed Arlette had dug the truth out of her daughter: I used to witness her interrogation methods with her husband and my cousin Boom-Boom, when the two men were playing for the Blackhawks. Arlette was thorough, merciless, and effective: You say there was a flat tire, but I see the spare is still in the trunk? Ah, you stopped for beer. Yes, that I believe.

  Bernie’s reported answer felt authentic, too. She would have been pacing the sidewalk, building up a head of steam so that when Leo appeared she would be ready to lay into him with a highly polished—no. Not possible, don’t let your mind go there, Victoria.

  I sat at the piano, moodily playing scales with one finger. Lotty might be right, that Lydia’s condition affected me more because she made me think of my mother. Her other point, that Lydia deserved to make her own decisions about her care, hit two contradictory impulses in me.

  I myself hate being told what to do, especially unsolicited advice about what is good for me, so I had definite empathy for letting Zamir decide what she wanted for herself. At the same time, though, I can’t bear to leave wounded people by the side of the road.

  I realized that I was picking out the vocal line to Grieg’s “The Swan,” one of the songs that Lydia had taken apart for her own work, and one of my mother’s favorite short lieder.

  I turned away from the piano to call Murray. “I’m retiring from your case, Murray: it’s work I can’t do.”

  “Warshawski—no! I need—”

  “I’ll return your retainer, and there’s no charge for the time I spent on the search.”

  “What the hell?” He was angry. “Did someone offer you more money to leave her hidden?”

  “That is an insult I won’t respond to,” I said coldly. “Leo Prinz’s murder in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor last night—you know about that, right? That was around the corner from where Zamir had been camping out. The police are all over those streets, looking for a weapon and a killer. If Zamir is there, the cops will find her.”

  “They would have found her by now if she were hiding out near where the Prinz kid was killed. She could have moved to a different part of town, or someone took her in.”

  “In which case it would be beyond my resources to find her,” I said. “I’ve talked to her agent, to people she went to school with, to her mother, and Palurdo’s mother. None of them knows where she is. Maybe she was snatched from Provident, as one person who was in the hospital waiting area claims. Finding that person would take the cops or the FBI, not a solo op with other clients.”

  Murray was sidetracked briefly by the mention of Hector Palurdo’s mother. He demanded a detailed report of the conversation; I gave him the highlights, since Elisa Palurdo hadn’t said anything he couldn’t have learned from other people.

  “I’ve never known you to walk away from an investigation,” he said. “Someone got to you, didn’t they?”

  “What is going on in your head, Ryerson? First you think someone outbid you, now you think someone warned me off? It’s my turn: What’s your real agenda here? It isn’t just that your boss threatened your career, is it?”

&n
bsp; “I’m paying you out of my pocket because I don’t want the company to know I hired a detective,” he insisted.

  “I can’t make sense of this, Murray. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t believe your initial rationale for hiring me. Since when does Global Entertainment stake their reputation on looking after a mentally ill person’s health care?”

  “I said it’s because the Smithson woman was threatening a suit.”

  “Global has so many lawyers that if they stood hand to hand they’d circle the equator with a few spares to reach the North Pole. A music agent whose glory days are behind her would make them laugh. Tell me a different story.” I wished I could sic Arlette Fouchard on him—she’d shake the truth loose.

  “Give me one more day, Vic,” he pleaded.

  “I’ve resigned. I’m returning your money. That’s final.”

  My last call of the day was to Peter Sansen, to tell him how I’d been spending my time and why I needed to go to bed early, and alone. Still, five minutes on the phone with him helped calm some of the turbulence in my mind.

  Despite my troubled state, I slept deeply. I was stiff when I woke up—the mildew on my aging joints, I suppose—but my mind felt clearer. I did a long and thorough workout, ending with a four-mile run with the dogs to the lake and back.

  Before heading to my office, I used an encrypted service to leave a message for Elisa Palurdo: she deserved to know that I’d found Lydia, but that I was respecting her desire to be left alone. Palurdo phoned half an hour later. She wanted to know where Lydia was, and what shape she was in.

  “She’s not well. She needs proper food and a proper bed and significant medical care. But what she needs and what she’s willing to receive—”

  Palurdo interrupted me, distressed. “You should have called me yesterday. You should call an ambulance! Tell me where she is!”

  “I can tell you how to find her, but she doesn’t want to see you.”

  Palurdo didn’t respond for a long beat, then said quietly, “That’s probably because she feels my rejection. But—because of Hector—maybe she will listen to me now and get whatever help I can bring her to accept.”

  “Getting to her means you’d expose yourself to public view,” I warned. “You’d have to be cautious and you still might make both her and yourself vulnerable to the kind of haters who are stalking you.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Palurdo said in the same small voice.

  I gave her a detailed description of how to locate Lydia’s hideout.

  “Oh, how could I know the burdens Hector would bring me?” Palurdo burst out. “All the—”

  She cut herself off; after a moment, she said in a quieter tone, “I don’t mean it like that. Being Hector’s mother was a joy. But when you hold your baby and imagine his future, it doesn’t include his murder, his lover’s disintegration, your own unending grief.”

  20

  My Name in Lights

  All the good health I’d felt after my long run evaporated with Elisa Palurdo’s phone call. I imagined packing a bag and leaving for Turkey with Peter. While he was absorbed in his excavation, I would slip off and disappear into an Anatolian cave and let Chicago go. Let Mr. Contreras figure out what to do with the dogs, let Elisa figure out what to do with Coop and Lydia, let my paying clients fend for themselves. I was tired of organizing events, patching the leaks in other people’s plumbing.

  A homeless man I sort of know was selling StreetWise near my office. Like Lydia, Elton was too allergic to other people to go into a shelter, but at least, when he’d had pneumonia last winter, he’d let me take him to County for treatment.

  When I bought a paper from him, he gave me a few fragmented sentences, dancing uneasily from foot to foot, and finally backing down the sidewalk. When he was at a safe distance, he called, “Dude wants you.”

  He jerked his head at a bullet-colored Land Rover across the street. “Came out and rang your bell and got back in.”

  Before I could thank him, Elton had darted to the Polonia Triangle, a minute park created by the intersection of three streets not far from my office. He somehow made it across six lanes of traffic unscathed. Perhaps the traffic island made him feel safe, like Lydia in her hole.

  As I typed in the door code to my building, I stood in profile so that I could keep an eye on the Land Rover. No one emerged, but about five seconds after I’d turned on the lights inside my office, the outer doorbell rang. I switched my computer screen to read the security camera that surveys the street and saw Murray Ryerson. Someone was behind him, but Murray’s a big man; all I could see of his pal was a shoulder in a tan jacket.

  My immediate, overwhelming feeling was fury. I’d told him no, and he’d come to wheedle me into yes.

  “Busy day here in the detecting mines, Ryerson,” I called through the intercom. “You’re not on my calendar.”

  “I’m here with Norm Bolton, Warshawski. We only need five minutes.”

  Norm Bolton? I asked my device, which told me a Norman Bolton headed Global Entertainment’s Spinning Earth division. Music, TV, streaming, the company’s big moneymakers. I scrolled through the rest of the Spinning Earth subdivisions. The Herald-Star was in Bolton’s fief, but such a small contributor to Global’s profit centers that it was lumped with “miscellaneous” media.

  I waited for them in the doorway of my office suite.

  “Lucky for both of us I don’t carry,” I said to Murray. “Otherwise I’d be spending a lot of years in Logan while your friends and family grieved over your grave. How can I persuade you that ‘no’ means ‘no’?”

  Murray didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on his feet as I escorted him and Bolton into what my architect called “the client zone” when she tried to bring the high ceilings and cement walls into human proportions.

  The client zone has a couch and a couple of faux Barcelona chairs. Also side tables with lamps and boxes of tissues—asking for a detective’s help can be very emotional. I figured that wouldn’t be the case today, or at least, the emotions weren’t likely to run to distress.

  Bolton was short for a man, not quite my own height. Perhaps that’s why he crunched my fingers together when we shook hands. I twisted my wrist around his so that he was forced to let go. We both pretended this hadn’t happened.

  While they settled themselves—Bolton on the couch, spreading his arms across the top of the cushions, Murray in one of the side chairs—I went around the partition corner to get my bankbook from a filing cabinet. I wrote out a check to Murray for the amount of the retainer he’d paid and handed it to him before rolling my desk chair around to face the couch.

  Murray laid the check on the side table. “Vic, wait—”

  I ignored him. “Okay, gentlemen: I can give you five minutes. The clock has started.”

  “Is that your usual approach to clients, Ms. Warshawski?” Bolton looked amused. “Tell your story in five minutes or get out?”

  I made a pretense of scrolling through my phone. “Someone accused me the other day of slowing down with age, so I wondered if I’d forgotten your hiring me, but I don’t see you in my client log.”

  Bolton thought that was funny enough to deserve a loud crack of laughter. “I do want to hire you, Ms. Warshawski. Ryerson speaks highly of you as an investigator, which is more or less what I have in mind. I understand you and he have worked on a number of high-profile situations together over the years.”

  I looked thoughtful. “High-profile situations . . . that would be corp-speak for major crimes. Is there such a crime you’d like me to tackle?”

  Bolton abandoned his space-grabbing posture to lean forward, hands on knees: he was in earnest. “It’s Lydia Zamir, Ms. Warshawski. I understand you’ve become a part of her life.”

  “Then you understand more than I do, Mr. Bolton.” I looked at him steadily, but he didn’t show any discomfort.

  “Wasn’t your goddaughter arrested for trying to intervene in Zamir’s life?”

  “She wasn�
��t arrested,” I said. “I’m sure Murray didn’t tell you she had been—he’s too good a reporter to fiddle with facts.”

  “Anything involving Fouchard or Boom-Boom is news in this town, Vic, you know that as well as I do,” Murray put in. “Some guy in the Second District made the connection to Boom-Boom when your kid was brought in. It didn’t take Picasso to connect the dots to Zamir.”

  “I think you mean Seurat.” When he looked blank, I added, “Dot painter. Bernadine Fouchard was never arrested. And no matter what Fouchard did or who knows her or my cousin’s names, I still am not part of Lydia Zamir’s life. So if you were hoping for an exclusive interview, with me or with Bernadine, I have to disappoint you. Two minutes left.”

  “Your life would make a great TV series,” Bolton said. “Your work has all the drama we look for in our short series—the chases, the high-profile situations, and then you’re a female, and that’s hot right now.”

  “Yep. Every thirty or forty years, being female is hot, and then the men in charge get bored with us and revert back to filming the creatures they know best: the faces they see in the mirror every morning.”

  The corners of Norm’s mouth twitched as he fought back a frown.

  “Warshawski, PI?” Murray said. “I thought this was about—”

  “Seeing the dynamic duo in action,” Bolton cut across him. “I told you: the two of you have a reputation in this town. We want to see how you go about an actual investigation, and the Zamir story is perfect—it’s got everything, from murder to sex. I went to the Golden Glow last night, and your gal Sal is phenomenal. And she gives us diversity.”

  “Right. Glamorous African-American lesbian, a twofer.”

  “Exactly.” Bolton smiled as if we were buddies. “You can even bring in the old guy you live with.”