“What difference does it make? It doesn’t have anything to do with his death. You’ve missed a bunch of cigarette butts.”
“So I have,” I agreed. “It’s possible that someone asked Leo to meet him—or her—or them—in the Wildlife Corridor. I’d like to make sure it wasn’t Simon, or you, for that matter, worried by what Leo had seen in that document.”
Mona dropped her shovel. “You’re crazy. You think one of us—”
“I don’t think anything. I’m trying to get information. What was it that took Leo so much by surprise that he couldn’t make it through the rest of his presentation?”
Mona snorted. “Nothing. Simon keeps every document that ever passes through his hands. Then he gets confused about which are current and which are old. Leo saw one of the old ones, but that wasn’t what made him leave—that was because of Coop, who’s completely out of control. Coop started for the stage and Leo headed for the exit. Coop had already jumped him once. I thought a homeless man in the park must have killed Leo, but now I’m betting it was Coop.”
“Tell me about Coop, then.” I picked up three empty chip bags and a Seagram’s pint.
“He’s got a terrible temper.”
“What’s his last name? Where’s he from?”
She’d picked up her shovel and was digging a hole at high speed. “No one knows. A couple of the local stores took him on part-time, but he couldn’t keep his temper when customers said something against his code, and they had to fire him. He acts like he’s the only person who cares about the environment, so he started disrupting SLICK meetings, as if God had put him in charge of the park.”
“But no one knows his name?” I was incredulous. “To get hired, he’d have to give a name, a Social Security number.”
She looked at me sideways. “Small businesses use cash a lot of times.”
I nodded. Of course they did.
“I tried to find out.” Mona stopped digging to glare at me. “That homeless woman, Lydia, she was a public nuisance, but when I went to court to get her admitted, Coop had already got himself appointed her legal guardian. Leo dug up a copy of the guardianship agreement for us. It gave Coop’s name as Coop with his legal address in Humboldt Park. Simon and Curtis and I drove over one night, and the address was a vacant lot!”
She thrust her shovel into the ground with such force that she couldn’t get it out. I had to help her pull it out of the ground. She didn’t thank me. When I said I needed to be going, she had another spurt of her own anger.
“There’s a lot of trash you haven’t gotten to.” She pointed at a well-used Pamper. “And you still haven’t picked up those butts.”
“There’s a lot of trash everywhere, Ms. Borsa,” I said sadly. “I can’t keep up with it.”
22
Missing in Action
I sat on a ledge overlooking the lake, eating a black-eyed pea taco I’d found at a vegan restaurant near the beach. Sailboats were out on the water, runners and bikers were passing on the path below my ledge. Was I the only person in Chicago who had to work in the summer?
Coop had a short fuse, but then, so did Mona, and so did the third member of the SLICK troika, Curtis the gaveller. Mona’s pointer that she waved around didn’t seem substantial enough to do the damage Leo’s skull had received. Curtis’s gavel, though—if Leo had roused his wrath, that would pack a nice wallop.
I should have pressed Mona harder on Simon’s document. Mona claimed that Leo had reacted to an old paper that Simon had mixed in with current pages. At the meeting, though, Simon had said it was a preliminary report. Mona didn’t seem like a subtle person, but she’d managed to push my attention away from the document onto Coop. Maybe I was putting too much emphasis on the episode—after all, Mona was right—it was seeing Coop that made Leo flee the room.
I finished my taco and lay down on the ledge. Humidity was low, the sky was a clear blue with a few wispy clouds. A perfect day for hooky. I drowsed for some minutes until I felt a sharp nip on my fingers. I sat up with a squawk: a sparrow, emboldened by my immobility, had tried pecking at the crumbs on my fingers—a signal that there is no rest for the detective.
On my way north I stopped at the Second District. Sergeant Pizzello was not overcome with joy when she saw me. And she definitely wasn’t impressed with my suggestions about exploring the SLICK trio.
“That organization does a lot of good on the South Side, especially with getting kids out on the water. A kid who’s trying to keep a sailboard upright isn’t going to be hanging with a gang and holding people up at gunpoint. I have no interest in finding out what papers Simon Whatsis dropped at the last meeting, so, no, I won’t try to get a search warrant for SLICK’s storage cupboard at the old bank. I have no interest in going at cross-purposes with Parks Super Taggett, for that matter.”
“Chief of detectives golfs with him?” I said.
Pizzello gave me a dirty look, but muttered, “Boats. They’re on the same Mackinac crew.”
Hence the Second District’s enthusiasm for water sports. “What about the gavel?” I asked. “Highly polished object—could it be the murder weapon?”
Pizzello was about to utter a blistering no, but she pulled herself up. “It’s possible, I suppose. But then how did it get into that bit of park?”
“If Leo had arranged to meet Curtis—”
“No. Get over it, Warshawski. Must be nice to be a private eye, spend your life making up ridiculous theories for the police to investigate, but I have real work to do.”
I forbore saying that investigating Leo’s murder was real work. I don’t know why I’d stopped to talk to her in the first place. Maybe because I was feeling whipsawed and was hoping for a case discussion with someone I could trust. And odd as it sounds, I did trust Pizzello, despite her judgment lapse in strip-searching Bernie in the park after Leo’s death.
Leo wanted to do something about a foyer, Bernie said. But he went to his computer, not to a building. Of course, he might have been looking at architectural plans online, but—
“Foyer,” I said out loud.
As soon as I got to my office, I called Bernie. “You said Leo wanted to do something with a foyer. Could he have said FOIA?”
“Yes, that is what he said, what I told you, foyer.”
To her Quebec ear, the two apparently sounded indistinguishable.
“There’s a law that lets citizens demand documents from the government. It’s an acronym: Freedom of Information Act, F-O-I-A. Was this about the document he saw at the meeting? Did he say if he was submitting a FOIA? Or was he looking at a document Simon got in response to a FOIA of his own?” Either way, no wonder the SLICK leadership was worried about an outsider seeing it.
“I barely understand one word you are saying,” Bernie cried. “I cannot tell you what he knew, what he did not know, or where he was wanting this foyer to go. I only know that when we reached his apartment, he is going straight to his computer and writing an email before he is even kissing me!”
Sergeant Pizzello had made me feel a bit stupid for thinking that the SLICK documents had anything to do with Leo’s being in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor when he was killed. But if he saw something really out of line—if the Park District, or Simon himself, were fiddling with maps or money and knew Leo suspected it—that might be an ample motive for murder.
“I want to look at Leo’s computer,” I said. “What was his address?”
“Me, I don’t have a key,” Bernie said. “We were not together so very long, you know.”
“I’ll worry about that—just give me the address.”
Leo’s apartment was on South Ingleside, walking distance from the University of Chicago campus as well as the old bank building on Forty-seventh Street where SLICK met. The building was one of those ramshackle warrens where students could afford rent—a six-flat cut into pieces to turn it into a twelve-flat.
For an old-school solo op like me, it was a good apartment: the front door had a feeble lock that
responded to my picks, not something modern like an iris scanner. As it turned out, it could have required voice recognition and the name of the person’s great-grandmother, because the door opened when I turned the knob.
I tensed, but at first I didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary, just the typical chaos of a student apartment: papers on the floor, on the chairs, books open facedown and faceup.
I put on some latex gloves to lift the books, looking for a laptop. That was when I became worried. There was no sign of the computer, a flash drive, a backup drive. A printer lay on the floor under the table. The cartridge had come free; I saw it lying next to the wall. Someone had hurled the printer onto the floor hard enough to shatter the plastic case.
Did this chaos predate Leo’s death? Someone had come specifically for the computer, Leo had interrupted them, and then had been lured to the park. No, that didn’t make sense. But—what, then?
I texted Bernie: Did Leo have roommates.
He lived alone. Why?
I sent her a photo of the disarray and the broken printer. I wondered if Leo had done this himself.
Not Leo! He is always neat, everything put away. Someone broke in. I am on my way.
We had a few more exchanges, all having to do with Bernie thinking she needed to get to Leo’s apartment immediately to get on the trail of whoever had broken in. I finally hung up on her.
I went on to explore the rest of the apartment. Nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the bathroom, nothing in the bedroom. A sky-blue backpack turned inside out, the pockets slit.
I debated the matter, but called Sergeant Pizzello.
“We serve and protect, Warshawski. What kind of service do you need now? Or is it protection?”
“I’m at Leo Prinz’s apartment. Did your tech crew come through?”
“Why on earth would they? We’re swamped, Warshawski. We don’t act like CSI or NCIS on every random mugging in the park.”
“I wondered if you’d collected his electronics, so you could see what he’d been up to.”
“You’re trying to tell me they’re missing. And you think something fancy happened to them, such as Mona Borsa sneaking in to filch them. I run into her from time to time when we’re policing boating events. She’s well-meaning, even if she’s bossy, but she is not mentally organized enough to put together some super plot. You PIs are all alike—you want some big drama that will get you headlines, but crime isn’t like that, especially not crime in Chicago.”
As she’d intended, her remarks made me feel foolish. She asked for Leo’s address—not with the intention of stopping by, but to reenforce her message.
“South Side of Chicago, Warshawski, not the North Shore. Prinz was killed by a drunk in the park. His crib was burgled by a stoner on the street who realized the joint had been unoccupied for a few days. End of story.”
“You’ve made an arrest?” I said. “Found blood, phone, whatnot?”
“Not yet, Warshawski, but we will.”
“That means Bernadine Fouchard’s parents can take her back to Quebec, then.”
Pizzello was silent for a beat or two. “Jealous girlfriend with a strong forehand is always a good number two. Keep her in Chicago until we make an arrest. If you want to keep digging, Warshawski, be my guest. I think it’s a big time-waste, but that at least will keep you from bugging me.”
Simply because Pizzello had wrong-footed me, I sorted through the books and papers on the floor. Leo had been studying urban planning, but that apparently covered a lot of ground: he had printouts of econometric articles, articles on his special interest—how planners need to be aware of the way human spaces change wildlife habitats. The articles I glanced at said that planners need to keep in mind that coyotes are common in all U.S. cities. Bobcats, raccoons, even bears are starting to share urban spaces.
When I saw these essays, I understood why Leo had wanted to explore wildlife in the Burnham Corridor the night he was killed. If the Park District was going to remake that habitat, someone needed a census on what was living in the park. Unfortunately, understanding Leo’s research didn’t explain why he’d stood up Bernie.
I called the hospital where Simon worked. I wanted to ask him point-blank about the printout he and Leo had argued over at the meeting. I got his supervisor in the billing department, who told me that staff couldn’t take personal calls during work hours.
“It’s not personal,” I said. “I’m a detective; I want to—”
“Has something happened to him?” she said sharply.
“Why? Didn’t he come in today?”
“No, he didn’t. I tried phoning him and left a voicemail. He’s the one person who understands the HandClasp software; he should leave word where to reach him. Where is he? What’s happened to him?”
“We’re trying to find him ourselves,” I said. “He’s the one person who understands a set of documents we’re trying to get access to.”
I asked if Simon were prone to taking off without a word, but the supervisor said it was completely out of character. “He doesn’t have a family, except for the one son who has to be in a care facility. Other than the child, his life revolves around that park group he volunteers for. He loves that work—you should try them. I don’t have any names or phone numbers but I’m sure the police could find them.”
We hung up on mutual promises to call if either of us got word of him. I called Mona, to see if she’d heard from Simon.
“He was mugged on his way home from the SLICK meeting. He said he wasn’t hurt, but he was bruised. He’s probably taking a few days off.”
“Mugged? Did he—where?”
“Outside his apartment, he told me, when he was getting out of his car. If he forgot to call his boss, it’s really not your business.”
I agreed. “Even so, I’d like to check in on him.”
She was contemptuous but finally divulged his home address.
Simon lived in a well-kept building in South Shore, a stone’s throw from the lake. The super let me in when I explained the worry over his disappearance. Like the building, Simon’s apartment was tidy and well furnished. The super stood over me while I made sure Simon wasn’t in any of the five rooms or the closets. I gave him a twenty for his pains, but he still wouldn’t let me explore the place on my own. He ushered me out without giving me a chance to hunt for Simon’s stash of maps and architectural drawings.
23
Local Excavation
Simon might have fled town to avoid the police investigation. He might have gotten fed up with his job and gone out of town to gamble on a riverboat. While I crawled home along Lake Shore Drive I considered another half dozen ideas, including the possibility that Curtis or Mona or even Parks Super Taggett had assaulted him.
When I finally reached home, I made myself give up on it: not only did I have no data, but I also had no income stream to support an investigation into Simon’s disappearance. It was late afternoon on a long day—I didn’t have energy left to start a new project. Instead, I rode my bike to the lake, carrying one of the many important novels I never get around to reading. It had been so long since I’d looked at the book that I started again at the beginning, back on the sugar plantation. I thought I was focusing until my phone startled me awake.
I barely croaked out “Hello” before the voice on the other end cried, “I can’t find her.”
“This is V.I. Warshawski.” I got to my feet, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. “Is that who you’re trying to reach?”
“It’s Elisa Palurdo, Ms. Warshawski,” my caller said. “I followed your directions exactly, but Lydia wasn’t there.”
I tried to push my brain to work. Lydia gone—she’d fled because of my finding her, or she’d been picked up by cops, or by Coop or—other disturbing possibilities.
“You found a hole sheltered by fallen stones?” I asked. “Up on the train embankment, about three hundred yards north of Forty-seventh Street?”
“Yes, I did find it. The thoug
ht that anyone—that Lydia—could be living there! Squirrels jumped out when I shone my flashlight into it. I saw empty food cartons and a dirty blanket, but I couldn’t bear to climb down into it myself.”
I had a kink in my shoulders from sleeping against a rock. I tried to stretch it out while we spoke.
“What will you do?” Palurdo prodded me.
“There’s nothing I can do. She’s moved on, whether on her own or with someone else, and I have zero ways to locate her.”
“How about the man Coop?” she said.
“It’s possible, but I don’t know how to reach him, either. I can’t hang out along the lakefront, waiting for him to materialize.”
“No, of course not,” she muttered. “I don’t know why I’m upbraiding you, when I myself backed away from Lydia months ago. It’s just—I guess I was playing a pretend movie, where she would want to come home with me, get proper support, return to being the woman my son fell in love with.”
“Do you want to call the police about this?” I asked.
“No, oh, no! I can’t bear to talk to the police. And what would I tell them? How would I explain why I was looking for her there?”
“Tell them the truth—you heard it from me. It won’t be the first time I’ve pissed off Chicago cops.”
“Can’t you come down here?” Palurdo begged. “I’m still on Forty-seventh Street, at a drugstore in a mall there.”
I looked at my watch. Just after six. The thought of one more trip to the South Side in Chicago’s traffic made me want to scream. On the other hand, no way was I going to call the police a third time today. It would be ugly, anyway, since I’d have to admit I’d found Zamir yesterday.
Warning Palurdo that I couldn’t get there quickly, I biked home to collect heavier shoes, work gloves, wind pants, and a windbreaker to put on if I went into Lydia’s hole. I also collected the dogs—I’d take them to the lake after I finished with Palurdo.
I made better time than I’d expected. The police barriers were gone from the lot south of the Burnham Wildlife Corridor. Leaning against the side of the car, I pulled on my protective gear, sticking my work flashlight into my day pack with the gloves and hard hat.
Dead Land Page 15