55
Knitting the Raveled Sleeve of Care
I was outside, looking at the oily rainbows on the Chicago River, when someone tapped my arm. I whirled, braced for a blow, but it was Luana Giorgini, the Herald-Star’s entertainment and style editor. She was a youngish woman who wore the extremes of contemporary fashion without looking absurd. Today she was in a knee-length dress with a black-and-white photo of a Greek frieze on the bodice; the filmy skirt was printed with bold red flowers. She sported knee-high red boots and a glittery red clip in her thick hair that spelled tough and tougher, yet she still looked like someone who could run the organization without help.
“Vic, did you learn anything from Gavin?”
I made a face. “He’s a lying SOB who will jump through any hoop Norm Bolton holds out for him.”
“Besides that. I’m worried sick about Murray. We all are, but we can’t find out anything.”
“I can’t tell you more than whatever bulletins the hospital is putting out. He’s still alive and is breathing off respirator for a part of each hour, but they don’t know if—if there’s long-term damage. Aikers was trying to get me to tell him what Murray was working on, but I don’t know. Can you get into his files through your work network, see if he’d kicked open a hornet’s nest?”
She shook her head, dark eyes full of fear. “I got our IT guy to do that when I heard about the attack. Vic, all his files had been wiped clean. It was done remotely, that was the only thing that Theo—our IT expert—could tell me. He said it was very skillful. Someone broke in, maybe using Murray’s phone if they stole it, and took out, well, really, decades of work. Even files that are publicly available, like his work that got the Pulitzer. This is really frightening.”
I rubbed my eyes. Despite the drops I’d bought, they were itchy with fatigue.
“Luana, I know a lot of what’s going on, but not everything. If I called you, or texted you, and asked you to insert a paragraph into the online paper, could you? And do you have a personal email, not tied to the paper?”
She nodded, lips trembling. “Murray could be annoying, but he was just about the best journalist I ever met. He was great with women in the work setting. Mentoring in the important ways—he’d share sources, show you how to improve a pitch, all those things.”
She gave me a convulsive hug and darted back into the building. A minute later my phone dinged—a text from Luana with her personal account.
The area around the Herald-Star offices was in transition from a central depot for food and beverage wholesalers to the town’s hottest new residential neighborhood. Buildings were going up, warehouses were being repurposed to loft apartments, and chichi restaurants were springing up like nettles on a Kansas prairie.
I’d tried to park far enough from the paper that I could see if anyone was accompanying me, but streets and sidewalks were so crowded it was impossible to check. A block from the Subaru I ducked into a convenience store. I studied the faces that passed, but no one seemed to be slowing or paying attention to the store. I bought a Herald-Star and a bottle of Gatorade, lingered for a long moment in the doorway, and finally went to the car.
I decided I had to use my phone, that I couldn’t operate if I worried about surveillance. Everyone who might want to find me must know by now that I was back in town, and it doubled the amount of time I spent in transit if I kept looking over my shoulder for tails. Besides, at least one of my assailants had a sniper rifle, which meant I’d have to huddle fearfully in a basement to keep safe.
I stayed in the car to make calls, despite the ugly remarks from other drivers who wanted me to move on so they could have my parking space. I first checked in with Max’s PA, Cynthia, on whether they’d been able to set up security for Murray at the university hospital.
The hospital would let me post a guard if they had proper identification and received clearance from the head of university security, Cynthia reported.
I could see their point, but if I wanted to hire the Streeter brothers to look after him, it would take at least a day to work it out with the university. Unwelcome fingers of panic clawed at me again.
Before putting my phone away I scrolled through my message list. Five more from active clients. Junk calls. And one from area code 785, which covered the chunk of Kansas I’d been visiting.
Franklin Alsop had left a terse message; would I call him as soon as possible. I hoped that meant Coop had reappeared, but when I used one of my burn phones to call back, he had a demand.
He’d bought a piano for Lydia but it had only increased her agitation. However, it had also made her say the first words he or Cassie had heard from her: she wanted her own, old piano. She needed it; it was essential.
“Mr. Alsop, that’s not possible. She lost it weeks ago and it is gone. I scoured the park where she was hiding—I was looking for murder weapons, but I would have seen that piano if it had still been around.”
“I’m asking you to take one more look. You risked your life looking for one cartridge in Horsethief Canyon. And you found it. I thought you were out of your mind—still think so, actually—but you had luck on your side. Take another chance on your luck. No one will shoot you in a public park.”
“One of my oldest friends was shot near that park three days ago and a kid I knew was killed there,” I said.
“I can’t save you in Chicago, but I did save you in Kansas,” he said. “If you’d heard Lydia struggle to get out the word ‘essential’—it made her sweat—you’d be in that park right now.”
“This from the man who says I bring destruction wherever I go,” I said bitterly.
“Unjust,” he said. “I shouldn’t have judged you when I don’t know you well, but one thing that shines through about you is you are resolute in going after a goal, even if the goal looks crazy to an outsider. I’m asking—pleading—that you treat Lydia’s piano with the same kind of resolution.”
“Aw, gee, Mr. Alsop. Who could resist that kind of soap? I’ll add it to the queue.”
I had just enough energy to leave the Subaru a block from my office, to check the security footage on my phone before unlocking the door, and then I gave in to the summons from the daybed in my storeroom. I locked myself inside, turned off my phone, and slept.
In my dreams, Lydia Zamir was under the viaduct, wearing a black flowing concert gown, playing “Savage” on her little red piano. Murray was lying in a coffin next to her. Lydia looked at me with a ferocious grin and said, “Prove you do more good than harm.”
Still, when I woke, my thinking became clearer. If Murray needed a bodyguard, I could be that person. It would keep me away from my apartment, in case the taunts I’d flung at Murray’s boss prompted someone to come for me. This meant Mr. Contreras would be safe. Staying with Murray would bring me to the South Side. In the morning, I could go back to Forty-seventh Street to look for the piano.
I collected the industrial protective gear I keep in my storeroom: boots, waterproof coveralls, hard hat. I’d lost my work flash on the cliff top in Horsethief Canyon, so I swung by a hardware store for a new one. Also an industrial-quality protective mask. A trowel. If the piano still existed, I knew where it was.
56
The Luck Holds
The hospital made it disturbingly easy for me to stay with Murray. If I wanted to hire a bodyguard to protect him, I had to go through their security office, but saying I was his sister meant they let me spend the night in his room. They even brought in a giant recliner for me to sleep in.
The hospital had shaved Murray’s beard, I guess to make it easier to stick tubes into him. He looked naked, defenseless with his face bare. I got in bed next to him, cradled him, arms carefully tucked underneath all the drips and lines, and sang the same lullabies I’d done for Lydia.
“I’m on the trail, Murray. Don’t die. You need your name on the byline. Wish you could tell me whose cage you rattled.”
I dozed for the rest of the night in the big recliner, never getting i
nto the deepest sleep, but resting in between visits from staff to check his status. No one tried to kill him, but it did make me nervous, knowing how easy it was to gain access to the room. I left at seven when the day shift came on duty, but I gave the floor head my details.
“If he wakes up, or if—anything changes—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, but she smiled reassuringly and promised that everything would be fine, but they would call me if needed.
I was still wearing the business casual clothes I’d had on when I left home yesterday. When I drove up to Forty-seventh Street, only the drugstore was open. I bought four pint water bottles as well as a Sox T-shirt. At least I could leave my blazer and silk shirt in the car.
When I walked up the stairs to the Forty-seventh Street train platform, a handful of commuters was waiting for their train. They were attached to their devices and didn’t pay any attention to me as I pulled on my gear. Even this early in the day, the August sun was merciless. Inside my rubber clothes I felt as though I’d sealed myself into a turkey roaster. I drank most of one of my pints. Slid to the ground. Crawled underneath the platform.
The mound of garbage was sickening. The things people discard—bottles, rotting food, plastic bags, used train tickets, shoes, T-shirts, part of a cooktop, house keys, tire rims. Everything was coated in a slimy film from the disintegrating leaves and plants that the wind swept in.
The garbage under the platform had a life of its own; each time a train roared past, the layers shifted. Each time a train stopped, another shower of paper and food fell down. Despite the heat, I was glad to be covered in rubber.
I began digging the mound apart. My trowel was so small it felt as though I were emptying Lake Michigan with an eyedropper. My raw palms started bleeding inside my work gloves. But Alsop had been right on both counts: this was an insane undertaking, and my luck came through. I found one of the red plastic legs. And two yards or so beyond that, the case and keyboard, miraculously intact.
I edged out, clutching the instrument to my body with one hand, bracing myself against the platform joists, until I reached the safety of the stairwell. A young couple climbing the stairs looked at me sideways but forbore any comments until they thought they were out of earshot.
“Isn’t that the homeless woman who’s been on the news?” the youth said.
“God, she smells terrible!” his companion replied.
I did smell terrible, but I felt worse. I put the piano down to take off my outer layer, but then I had to carry the filthy gear in one arm while I lugged the piano in the other. I shuffled along Forty-seventh Street, my gait the same as the other homeless roaming the street looking for cigarette ends or dropped change.
There was a UPS store in the strip mall where I could express the piano to Alsop. I took the time to drink another pint of water and to sponge off some of my worst stench with a third bottle.
When I lifted the piano, the top came off in my hands. Toy pianos aren’t designed to come apart—they don’t have soundboards or strings that need tuning. As I fitted the cover back onto the case, I saw an eight-by-ten envelope taped to the cover’s underside.
Lydia had taken the piano apart. She had tucked an envelope into it. My piano is essential, she’d said to Cassie and Alsop, sweating to produce the word. Essential, because she had packed a secret inside it.
My fingers were trembling as I pried the envelope free. I drove home, hoping my luck would still hold and no one would attack me there. Maybe Donna Lutas’s presence would keep her boss or his pals from siccing their hellhounds on me. I came in through the alley, through the back gate and up the stairs to my kitchen entrance. I could hear Mitch and Peppy yearning to be with me as I passed Mr. Contreras’s back door, but I didn’t stop.
I put all my clothes, the protective gear, my good trousers, the Sox T, into a big garbage bag. I’d sort it out later. I showered and shampooed and wrapped myself in a towel. I put on a pair of light cotton gloves, the kind you use for handling photographs, and gently pried the envelope lip from the body.
57
The Affectionate Aunt
The top two documents were written in Spanish by someone with a firm hand, black ink on gilt-edged cream stock. A gilt monogram on both was grimy and chipped with age. Both held dirty fingerprints and thumbprints, showing where someone with dirty hands had clutched them.
The one phrase I was sure I knew was “Querido hermano,” my dear brother. Elisa Palurdo said that Jacobo’s only sibling had been his sister, Filomena, who’d been murdered.
Despite the similarities between Italian and Spanish, there was too much I couldn’t understand. A friend from childhood had died; he was (I thought) a Communist, union organizer, not a patriot, but that was about it.
The third paper was in English, the same gilt-edged stationery, the same firm hand, but with fresher ink; it had been written more recently, and was addressed to “My dear Lydia.”
I hope you will excuse my addressing you in a personal manner, but you are essentially my niece. My nephew’s death is a terrible tragedy and I am myself deeply grieved. I met Hector only once but his ardent spirit and sensitive intelligence made a deep impression. He was the son of my only brother, and so his loss is painful not just for you but for me as well.
Dear Lydia, I would ask you to be more temperate in what you say on paper. You cannot say, for example, that I have no understanding of what bloodshed means. This shows only that you do not understand the melancholy history of bloodshed in Hector’s father’s homeland. Hector’s father chose to abdicate responsibility for his people but I have stayed here to be consumed by responsibility.
I know that there were disagreements in the family about Hector’s actions at the mine. I put his behavior to his inexperience. At no time was his life threatened by any of his cousins. Dear Lydia, you must not let your mind be unsettled by your grief. Do not descend into the conspiracy theories so beloved throughout the Americas. If an economist makes a dramatic assessment of a financial situation, such an opinion does not make him a murderer. And you should not believe everything you see in the Rettig Report. It was created to pacify people who would rather re-create bloodshed than learn to live in a global economy.
If you travel to Tocopilla it will be my pleasure to show you the scenes of Hector’s father’s childhood, as I showed them to Hector. But even if Hector left a will, naming you as his heir, the lawyers assure me that he did not take steps to prove his identity in Chile and so his claim to be a first-order heir has no standing in Chilean courts.
Believe me, querida sobrina, tu tía cariñosa
The signature was a set of bold curlicues, which I finally deciphered as a capital F with a lot of other letters superimposed.
The final document was handwritten on the letterhead of Samantha Watkins, JD, with an office in the Board of Trade Building.
I have not been able to persuade the Chilean courts to reconsider their decision. Call me if you wish to discuss. SW
I placed the papers gingerly onto my dining room table, as if they were magical and might vanish in a cloud of smoke.
Lydia had written to the woman with the dear brother after Hector’s murder. The letter was signed, tu tía cariñosa—your affectionate aunt. Lydia had accused the aunt of—what? She’d been intemperate in her language—she had accused the aunt, or an economist of something heinous.
I used a toothbrush to remove some of the crusted dirt from the monograms on the three documents. Looking at them side by side, I reconstructed the letters: Q in the middle with F and maybe A on either side.
A lot of Spanish women’s names start with F. Flor, Fernanda, Felisa. And many surnames start with A or Q. But the probability was that these documents had been written by Filomena Quintana Aguilar.
Filomena’s brother, Fernando, had skipped her wedding to Guillermo Quintana. On the death of her father, Filomena’s husband took over the senior leadership position at Minas y Puentes. None of the news stories I’d found made
any further mention of the brother, either in the society or the business news. No death had been reported. He had evaporated, as if never born.
The idea dangling at the back of my mind seemed absurd, but somehow the only possible explanation. Using a burner phone, I called Stu Shiffman, the Latin American scholar who’d been Hector Palurdo’s college roommate.
“I’ve found some documents in Spanish,” I told him, brushing aside the usual social niceties. “I think they’re important—essential—to knowing what happened to Hector. I don’t read Spanish well. If I email them to you, would you have time to look at them soon? Such as—as soon as you get them?”
I’d been so abrupt he had trouble figuring out what I was saying. I calmed down enough to explain that I thought there were some strange aspects to Hector’s life story, or more accurately to his father’s.
“I’m beginning to think—it’s hard to put into words—but I don’t think his father was born Jacobo Palurdo. Or maybe he was, but he was connected to an important Chilean mining family. These letters—they’ll help reveal his history.”
Shiffman was interested, but cautious. He wouldn’t do anything that would damage Hector’s memory. He also wanted to know how I’d found them.
“Lydia had hidden them. I came on them by a complete fluke. I can’t promise they won’t damage Hector’s memory, but I don’t think so.”
I hung up and photographed the letters. I sent them to Shiffman, from an email address I don’t often use, hoping my encryption was strong enough to protect me from outside eyes. I included the letter from Lydia’s “affectionate aunt” and added, “Do you know what Hector did at the mines? I’m assuming these were the Aguilar mines in Tocopilla.”
I sent copies as well to my lawyer, with a note saying I would express the originals to him.
Dead Land Page 35