Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  She gave a thin smile. “Superintendent Taggett would never have presented a preliminary idea as a completed proposal. I suggest you talk to your community group and find out what the superintendent said to them when he came to their meeting. They may have exaggerated the state of the proposal in an effort to push him into quicker action than he’s able to provide.”

  I thought about demanding to speak to her boss, but if the official line was to stonewall inquiries, all I would do is waste more of my own time without any result except to increase my frustration. Just to stir the pot, though, or maybe because I hate admitting defeat, I left a note for the superintendent:

  Dear Mr. Taggett,

  You said if I wanted to talk to you, to come to your office. Here I am.

  I understand that the proposals for changes to the Burnham Wildlife Corridor are preliminary only and not available for public viewing. Has your team let you know that Mr. Prinz’s computer has disappeared, as have Mr. Lensky’s maps and drawings of the park during that well-timed mugging? Thieves could well get those maps out on the Internet, but ordinary citizens don’t have access to the maps and drawings Mr. Prinz showed at the most recent SLICK meeting. Can you please tell your highly protective staff to let me look at such drawings as are available?

  I signed it with my office phone and email. Taggett might never receive it, of course, but I felt the dubious satisfaction of having the last word.

  When I looked at my phone back in my car, I saw a message from Donna Lutas at Devlin & Wickham: I could come into the office tomorrow at eleven, and she and one of her coworkers would help me figure out a way to search for Lydia.

  33

  A Little Help from My Friends (?)

  Before going down to the Devlin offices in the morning, I called Mona Borsa to tell her about my futile visit to the Park District the previous day.

  “They say all the plans are preliminary, and that none of the drawings are available for public viewing, so what were you showing in those public meetings?”

  “They gave us drawings, we showed the drawings.” Her voice was tired. Simon’s death had turned her apathetic.

  “Then why is Taggett withholding them now?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because all Simon’s copies got lost when his briefcase was stolen. They need to make sure they’re using the same material they gave us, so they have to double-check their records. I guess. Why do you care?”

  “I’m trying to figure out whether the drawings played a role in his and Leo’s murders. Leo was arguing with him about one of the maps, remember?”

  “No.” Her voice sharpened. “That’s your memory, not mine. I don’t remember them arguing about anything at all.” She hung up.

  I was lucky again this morning with street parking near the old Ft. Dearborn Bank building. Donna Lutas was apparently eager to see me—the guard sent me straight up to the tenth floor. Lutas met me by the elevators, accompanied by another young woman, both in the uniform of striving young professionals—blazers, man-tailored white shirts, pencil skirts. Lutas started to hustle us into the Devlin offices, but I turned to her companion, hand held out, and introduced myself.

  “Rikki Samundar, from our Mumbai office.” She flashed a smile, teeth very white against dark skin. “Let’s see what our three brains can do to find this unfortunate singer.”

  She swiped a key card against a pair of heavy wood doors and held one open for me, admitting me to the Devlin & Wickham main lobby. The heavy furniture and drapes gave it an atmosphere more of a funeral parlor than a modern law firm, but a six-foot bronze of a bucking horse demonstrated the partners’ commitment to fine art.

  “The Mumbai office?” I said to Samundar. “How did Lydia Zamir end up on Mumbai’s radar?”

  Samundar flashed another smile, not shared by Lutas, who was holding her shoulders so stiffly I could have broken pieces from them.

  “I trained for the bar under British and Indian law, but all Devlin attorneys need a working knowledge of American legal systems, no matter where we’re placed. I’m one of the fortunate ones who gets to intern here at the U.S. headquarters. And I was one of the young research team when the firm undertook Arthur Morton’s defense.”

  She stopped to tell a receptionist we would be in conference room L and that her and Lutas’s phone calls should be routed through to there for the next hour. Conference room L held a cart with coffee and soft drinks, a speakerphone, a wall monitor, notepads, and a view of the pillars of the Federal Reserve Bank across the street.

  “I’ve been curious about that,” I said. “How did a firm like Devlin hear of a Kansas farm boy?”

  Samundar laughed, softly. “Everyone in the world briefly knew about that Kansas farm boy, Ms. Warshawski. However, we have clients among the big ranchers in the west of the state. Specifically, Sea-2-Sea had acquired Arthur Morton’s family farm when his father had to abandon it. Local people harbored ill will, thinking Sea-2-Sea had driven the farm boy to desperation and so to murder. By taking on the case, pro bono, with Sea-2-Sea covering the administrative costs, we were able to smooth over some of those feelings.”

  “That sounds most noble,” I said dryly.

  “In a big farm state like Kansas, there are vast spaces with many cattle and few humans.” Samundar spread her arms, indicating the size of the western lands. “Sea-2-Sea found poison in one of their wells, cattle stolen from other holdings. It was important that they regain the trust of their neighbors.”

  Lutas was watching me closely, as if to monitor how much of this story I bought. I smiled amiably: yes, I’m on board with your version of events.

  “Of course, Lydia Zamir was deeply disturbed by her lover’s murder,” I said. “She wasn’t placated by Sea-2-Sea’s goodwill gesture.”

  “Personally, I was devastated by her deterioration after the trial. All my friends at home loved her Continental Requiem album, especially ‘Savage.’”

  “But professionally, you agreed with the orders of protection.”

  Samundar held out her hands, palms up, the gesture of helplessness. “What could we do? She actually tried to attack Clarence Gorbeck—our lead attorney at the trial—physically, not just in court, but also here, on LaSalle Street.”

  “So how do you think you can help find her?” I asked.

  “Her boyfriend was from Chile.” Donna Lutas spoke for the first time.

  “Hector Palurdo was American,” I said sharply. “He was born in Chicago to two American citizens.”

  Lutas waved an impatient hand. “His father was from Chile, which amounts to the same thing. We’ve contacted our Santiago offices to be on the lookout for Zamir. It seems Hector Palurdo had an aunt who worked there a long time ago. The Zamir woman might have gone there, looking for his family.”

  “Filomena Palurdo worked for Devlin in Chile?” I was so startled I ignored her ignorant statement about Jacobo’s Chilean birth meaning Hector was essentially Chilean.

  Jacobo had told his wife that his sister had been murdered. Or at least, Elisa told me that was what Jacobo had said. I had no idea whose version of events I could trust in this story.

  “When did his aunt work for you?” I demanded.

  “A long time back. It wasn’t Devlin back then,” Lutas said, “but a firm we acquired in 2013. And her name—”

  “Was spelled many different ways.” Samundar cut her off seamlessly.

  “Hector Palurdo went to Chile looking for his family and couldn’t find any trace of them. How did you learn about his aunt?”

  “He was one person, searching by himself; we have a lot more resources.” That was Samundar again, the smooth half of the duo.

  “Did you leak the news of Palurdo’s aunt to Lydia Zamir?” I asked. “She’s so frail, mentally and physically, that the only way she’d get to Santiago would be if someone strapped her to a stretcher and carried her.”

  “That’s so sad,” Samundar said. “We will definitely tell our Santiago team to check local hospitals on t
he chance that she did make it down there.”

  I pressed my fingertips into my forehead, trying to think. I was being spun an elaborate line about Jacobo Palurdo’s sister, but why?

  “Is Hector’s aunt still alive?” I asked. “If you let Lydia know you’d found her lover’s South American family, I’m sure she would seek them out if she had the strength.”

  “Sadly not,” Samundar said.

  She added “a car accident” at the same moment Lutas said “breast cancer.”

  “Perhaps she had breast cancer but died in a car crash?” I suggested with a limpid smile.

  “I may have been mistaken,” Samundar said. “Traffic in Mumbai is so hideous, I’m always imagining that premature deaths come from road incidents.”

  “You’re sure it was cancer and a road accident, not murder,” I said.

  “You think she was political?” Samundar said. “What do you know about her?”

  “I have no idea if she was political. I know only what her sister-in-law told me—that her murder is what made Jacobo Palurdo leave Chile for the States, which means she died more than forty years ago.”

  Samundar briefly lost her poise, biting her lips. “I’m working with sketchy information, coming in from investigators in Chile. We’re relying on the translation services we have here at Devlin, and of course our Spanish speakers have native fluency, but it’s not the same as being able to hear the report yourself firsthand. But we are sure that Filomena is dead.”

  Lutas nodded solemnly, as befit the mention of death.

  I changed the subject back to Lydia. “What about your Kansas offices? Are they also looking for Zamir?”

  “We don’t have offices in Kansas, but we did ask the state police to monitor the passenger lists at the airport, and there’s no sign that she arrived,” Lutas said.

  “Also the trains. Of course, if she arrived by bus or car—” Samundar again held out her palms—impossible to track car traffic. “But the state police will be watching, just in case. And obviously, once again, we’ll tell them to check hospitals.”

  “And morgues,” I said, but I couldn’t figure out what else to say. Like, How do you persuade local LEOs to grant you access to passenger manifests? Or, How much of these fables do you think I’ll believe? Or, Am I supposed to fly to Santiago while you do who knows what here at home?

  “There is the man, Coop, who I gather has also disappeared?” Samundar said.

  “Yes. As Ms. Lutas here will have told you, at great length, he left his dog at our building three nights ago.”

  Lutas produced what was supposed to be a smile. “What does he say about when he’ll be back for the dog?”

  “If I knew where he was, Ms. Lutas, believe me, I would get his dog to him at the speed of light. I hope my not knowing doesn’t make you want to resume your eviction efforts with the condo board.”

  Lutas gave another imitation smile, but her eyes were not full of love. “Of course not. I know now you didn’t want the dog dumped on you. But we’re in the middle of a big case, which means we don’t get much sleep, and so I don’t always keep my cool. I’m sure you remember from your own law experience.”

  I had to agree—sleeplessness is my overriding memory of my years at Twenty-sixth and California. That and the smell of too many unbathed bodies packed into the tiny conference room where public defenders met with a roster of clients too big for one person to handle. It certainly wasn’t like conference room L, whose meeting table was smooth, unmarred by gang symbols and death threats.

  “What is Coop’s full name?” Samundar asked.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” I said. “Not even the beat cops who occasionally had to keep him from disturbing the peace seem to know. You have the resources to track down Jacobo Palurdo’s sister’s cancer, unless it was her car crash. Surely you can find an American who’s been in this city for some time.”

  “Someone who is that determined not to be found can be hard to trace,” Samundar said. “But no one can be off the grid forever. Please let us know as soon as you hear from him.”

  That was meant as an exit line—both women were getting to their feet—but I stayed in my chair.

  “Before we wrap up, Ms. Samundar, you were the junior attorney at Arthur Morton’s trial?”

  She nodded cautiously.

  “So you were likely the person whom Mr. Gorbeck told to bring nicotine patches to Arthur Morton in the jail, right?”

  “That will always haunt me,” she said. “If I had known I was giving him the means of taking his life—!”

  “Did you buy them yourself?”

  She gave her practiced smile. “I almost feel as though you are cross-examining me, Ms. Warshawski.”

  “I almost feel as though I am, as well. Did Mr. Gorbeck give the patches to you? Or did he ask you to buy them yourself?”

  “If it were just me you wanted to ask, I would gladly answer, but I can’t speak for Mr. Gorbeck. Now, we have other matters to attend to, but do let Donna know as soon as you hear from Coop.”

  “I will bring Bear to kiss her goodbye in person,” I promised.

  34

  City Services

  I’d left Bear in my office while I was at Devlin. When I got back he greeted me with his usual somber expression: I have weighed and found you wanting.

  I took him to nearby Wicker Park for a walk, trying to digest what I’d learned from my meeting with Samundar and Lutas.

  The real reason they wanted to talk to me had been to find Coop, not Lydia. Either they knew Lydia was dead, or they knew where she was. They’d been clumsy, trying to stir my interest in Chile by suggesting a woman as mentally and physically frail as Lydia could have organized an expedition to Santiago. Did that mean they were trying to get me out of Chicago, or—what? Deflect my search? Imagine that their focus was more on Zamir than on Coop?

  Still, Hector had gone to Chile, trying to trace his family. Everything came through Devlin—the search for Lydia and Coop, representing Arthur Morton at his trial, and the strange information about Filomena Palurdo, whose name, Samundar said, was spelled in many different ways. Did that mean she actually had a different name? Or was Samundar trying to send me on a wild chase for a nonexistent person?

  When I got back to my office, I called Hector Palurdo’s old roommate, the Latin American specialist Stu Shiffman. He asked if I’d found Lydia.

  “I’m having trouble getting any kind of lead on her,” I said. “One thing that has cropped up in the last few days has to do with Hector’s father’s sister.”

  I told him about Filomena and the different versions of her death I’d been given.

  Shiffman whistled softly. “The lawyers contradict each other, and they contradict what Hector learned from his father. That’s a strange business all on its own. But Hector knew his aunt was dead all the way back when we were in college together. He made his first trip to Chile—I won’t remember exactly when, but probably when we were third-year students.

  “Hector came home frustrated because there was no information of any kind, her birth, her death, his grandparents’ lives. The thing is, if she was killed during the Pinochet years—which is when Hector’s father emigrated—my best guess is, hers was a political murder, not a crime of passion or some such.”

  “Why?”

  “Judicial murders for people violating national defense laws were much more common than what you might call ordinary garden-variety homicide. And despite thirty years of hearings, reports, roundtables, and so on, many of those desaparecidos—the disappeared—have never been found. Then, too, Hector’s father came from a poor family in a poor mining town—the odds are good that his sister would have been a leftist, and they were heavily targeted by the regime.”

  “These other two versions—cancer or car accident—it’s almost as though the Devlin attorneys were trying to protect the regime—but that makes no sense at all, since that ended, what—thirty years ago?”

  We thrashed it around
for some minutes without getting anywhere. Before hanging up, I remembered to ask him about the photograph I’d seen two days ago.

  “I’d forgotten that,” Shiffman said. “Hector hoped I could help him ID the man with his father. I sent him to some databases I knew that try to find the desaparecidos, but never heard back from him, so I don’t know if they were useful or not.”

  “When I was hunting for anyone named Filomena, I stumbled on a TV personality named Filomena Quintana,” I said. “She was clutching a Spanish edition of Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, which took me by surprise.”

  Shiffman laughed. “Yes, Rand is very popular in a lot of neo-nationalist, neo-liberal circles in the Americas these days. Go figure.”

  He couldn’t tell me anything else, and while everything he’d said had been interesting, it didn’t move my search forward. I did ask whether he’d ever met Coop, but neither the name nor my description of him rang any bells.

  I wrote up the details of the conversation in my case file before turning my attention to a problem I was investigating for one of my regular clients. It was past five when I finished. I swapped my backup drives from the fireproof safe in the back, locked everything up, and opened the street door, Bear at my ankle.

  Two men climbed out of a Cadillac Escalade that was blocking the entrance to my building’s parking area. They started toward me, moving with a kind of swagger that you have to practice in front of a dance school mirror to get right. They had on jackets, which meant they were carrying. Bear snarled and crouched, prepared to launch himself.

  “Steady, boys.” I spoke to all three of them, but held a hand near Bear’s muzzle. He wasn’t on a leash, and I didn’t want him shot.

  The men retreated to the Escalade. The front-passenger door opened, and Gifford Taggett climbed out. When he started up the walk, his swaggerers followed, eyes on Bear, hands inside their jackets.

  “Hello, Superintendent,” I said. “If your muscle shoot my dog I will retaliate. And if they shoot me, the dog will go for them.”