11
Artistic License
I caught up with Paul Alvarado before he got into the limousine that was to carry him to the cemetery. He and Diego, looking uncomfortable in black suits, were waiting for their mother to finish talking to one of the nuns. Paul bent over to kiss me underneath the brim of my straw hat. He took the opportunity to inspect my face.
“Lotty told Carol what happened, Vic. I’m real sorry—sorry you got messed up with that heap of garbage because of us.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t because of you—I was trying to find out something about Malcolm for Lotty…. I saw Fabiano. Was that your handiwork?”
Paul stared at me solemnly.
“You don’t know anything about it, huh? And Diego doesn’t either, I suppose?”
Diego grinned. “You got it, Vic.”
“Look, guys—I appreciate the spirit. But I’m nervous enough about Sergio as it is. What’s he going to think when Fabiano comes whining to him?”
Paul put an arm around me. “I have a feeling, Vic, that the boy is not going to cry to the Lions. The way I heard it, he was driving that Eldorado of his too fast, braked suddenly, and went into the windshield. The way I heard it, that’s what he was going to tell Sergio if he asked.”
Burgoyne was listening to the conversation with a puzzled frown. Before he could ask about these unknown people, the nun finally detached herself from Mrs. Alvarado, who moved with stately dignity to the waiting limo. Burgoyne took her hand, told her once more how sorry he was, and helped her into the car. Paul and Diego shook my hand warmly and joined their mother. Herman, Carol, and the third sister, Alicia, followed in a second car. A bevy of other close relatives took up an additional four limos; it was quite a procession. Burgoyne and I watched it down the street before getting back into his Maxima.
“Feeling better now?” I asked sardonically.
“Mrs. Alvarado is remarkably composed for a bereaved mother,” he answered seriously, pulling out onto Fullerton. “It makes it much easier for people to talk to her.”
“You were expecting a frantic display of Latin emotion? She’s a woman with a lot of dignity.”
“Those were her sons you were talking to? I wondered…. Maybe it’s none of my business, but did someone attack you? I thought you got that cut in a car accident.”
I grinned at him. “You’re right—it isn’t your business. An old client of mine felt he had a long-standing score to settle and took after me with a knife. It didn’t have anything to do with Consuelo, so don’t extend your bleeding heart to crying over me.”
He looked startled. “Is that how I look to you? Being dramatic over a patient’s death? Maybe I am. But this is the first obstetrical patient who’s died since I’ve been at Friendship. Maybe it’s something I should be used to, but I’m not.” He turned east onto Belmont.
We drove in silence for a few blocks, I feeling a bit embarrassed by my remark, he brooding perhaps on Consuelo’s death. At Ashland Avenue, the traffic gummed up suddenly—the Cubs were playing a late-starting game and happy fans were packing the streets.
“How did she actually die?” I asked. “Consuelo, I mean.”
“Heart failure. Her heart simply stopped beating. I was at home. They called me, but by the time I got there, she was dead. Dr. Herschel arrived about five minutes after I’d left again. I live only fifteen minutes from the hospital.”
“Wasn’t there an autopsy?”
He grimaced. “Oh, yes. And the county gets involved and wants a report, too. And the state, I suppose—haven’t heard from them yet. I could tell you the ugly technical details, but it boils down to the fact that her heart stopped beating. Very disturbing in a young girl. I don’t understand it. Maybe her diabetes…”
He shook his head and inched forward to Racine. Outside my apartment he fiddled with the steering wheel for a minute, then finally said, “We haven’t exactly met under ideal circumstances, but I’d like to get to know you a little better. Could we have dinner sometime? Tonight, maybe? I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off—have to run an errand in the Loop, but I could pick you up here around six-thirty.”
“Sure,” I said lightly. “That’d be fine.”
I swung my legs carefully out of the car so as not to run the stockings and went inside. Mr. Contreras didn’t appear—I supposed he was out with his tomatoes. Just as well. I could use a few minutes of silence. Upstairs I took out my gun, laid it carefully on the dresser, and stripped down to my underwear. Even though the suit was lightweight summer weave, between it and the automatic I’d gotten extremely warm and damp by the end of the service.
I lay on the floor of the living room for a while, watching the start of the game and trying to decide what further action I could take in the matter of Malcolm’s death. Since leaving Sergio’s late Saturday night my head had been fogged—first by pain and humiliation, then dope. This was my first opportunity to think clearly about the situation.
Sergio was a charming sociopath. At eighteen, when I was defending him, he had told me the most alarming lies with great plausibility. If I hadn’t had a well-documented police report I’m not sure I would have ever realized this in time to save him from being ripped apart in court. As it was, his fury had been extreme when I questioned him. He changed stories, not for the better, and it was some time before we came up with something that would stand up under examination.
He certainly could have killed Malcolm without turning a hair and lied about it with a smile later. Or given the orders for someone else to kill him, as he probably did these days. But the only reason for him to do so would have been at Fabiano’s request.
But Fabiano, while a whiner and a jerk, didn’t have Sergio’s psychotic outlook. And anyway, Fabiano didn’t stand that well with the Lions—I couldn’t picture Sergio committing murder at his behest—he’d be more likely to taunt and humiliate Fabiano. I got the feeling that Fabiano knew something about Malcolm’s death. But not that he had been involved in it directly. Maybe the beating he’d gotten would soften him up. I’d have to try talking to him again.
I pulled myself to my feet and glanced at the TV. The Cubs were trailing 4-0 in the second. Looked like a good day to be detecting instead of sitting in the bleachers. I turned off the set, pulled on blue jeans and a yellow cotton top, stuck the gun into a shoulder bag, and left. A glance out the kitchen window before departing showed Mr. Contreras deep in communion with his plants. I didn’t interrupt them.
Tessa Reynolds’s studio was in a part of town known as Ukrainian Village. Not too far from Humboldt Park, it is a working-class neighborhood making a reincarnation as an artists’ quarter. Tessa had bought a three-flat with city loans when the area was just starting its comeback. She had renovated the place with scrupulous care. The top two units were rented out to artists and students. The ground floor included her studio and living quarters.
Her work space took up most of the apartment. She had knocked out the south and west walls on the first floor and replaced them with bullet-resistant sheet glass. This project had taken two years and had left her with enormous debts to design and construction friends who handled the wiring and plumbing problems. But the result was a large, light studio ideally suited for the massive metal pieces that were her primary output. The glass slid open to allow her to move finished work outside with a gantry she’d installed overhead. Buyers could bring their trucks down the alley that her backyard faced.
I parked my car in front of the building and followed the brick walk around to the back without bothering to ring the bell. As I’d assumed, Tessa was in her studio, the glass doors open to let in the summer air. I stood in the entrance a moment—her concentration was so intense I hesitated to interrupt. She was holding a broom, but staring unseeing in front of her. An African-print scarf covered her hair, strongly accentuating her high Ashanti cheekbones. Then she caught sight of me, let the broom fall, and called to me to come in.
“I can’t work these days, so I thought I’d use the tim
e to clean up. And halfway through the sweeping I thought of what I wanted to do. I’m going to make a few sketches while it’s in my mind. Help yourself to juice or coffee.”
She retired to a drawing board in one corner and was busy with charcoal for a few minutes. I wandered around looking at bronze and steel bars and sheets, at massive cutting torches and metal files, and a few finished pieces. One was a fifteen-foot bronze whose jutting jagged edges gave a feeling of great energy. “For a bank,” Tessa commented briefly. “Called Economy in Action.“
She finished her sketches and came over to me. Tessa tops my five feet eight inches by two or three inches. She took me by the shoulders and looked down at my face. I was beginning to feel like charging admission for the show.
“They ripped you good, babe—you leave any traces on them?”
“Alas, no. Probably a few bruises, but nothing lasting… Could we talk about Malcolm? I’ve got a feeling one of the punks who attacked me knows more than he’s saying, but before I tackle him again I’d like to try to get a little more information.”
She pursed her lips. “Like what?”
“His mother brought him to Chicago when he was nine, didn’t she? Would you know if he had any kind of history with the gangs when he was younger?”
Her eyes glittered dangerously. “You’re not going to take the police line, are you—that crime victims bring their sorry fate onto themselves?”
“Look, Tessa. Between you and Lotty I’m reaching the end of a stock of patience that was small to begin with. You both want me to look into Malcolm’s death. Then you want to dictate and preach at me how I go about it. If Malcolm ran with the gangs when he was growing up it’s possible his past caught up with him. If he didn’t, then I can eliminate that exhausting and unpleasant field of inquiry and concentrate on the present. Okay?”
She continued to stare angrily at me—Tessa hates to lose fights.
“Just as well Detective Rawlings can’t see you now—he figures you’re strong enough to beat someone’s brains in, and if he saw that look on your face he’d know you had the will to do it, too,” I told her.
That brought a reluctant smile. “Oh, okay, Vic. Have it your way.”
She took me over to the corner by her drafting table where she had a couple of stools we could perch on. “I’d known Malcolm going on twelve years. We were both students at Circle, me in art, him in science. He always liked tall women, being a shrimp himself. So I knew him pretty well, what with one thing and another.
“His mama was quite a lady. Some folks say she was a witch. They say her ghost walks now that she’s dead. She didn’t want Malcolm running with bad boys, and I’m telling you, he did what she said—the whole block did what she said. You got a lady who can wither your privates, you do what the lady wants. So you can be confident he stayed out of the gangs.”
“Wish I’d known her when I was with the county.” I grinned appreciatively. “The day he was killed, you stopped by to see him. Was he expecting you?”
She raised her eyebrows, tightened her face, then decided not to get angry. “Yup. A guy with a schedule like Malcolm’s you do not drop in on on the chance he’ll be home.”
“So you talked to him during the day? Did he say anything that might make you think he was expecting anyone else?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t talk to him—I called the hospital and they said he was home. So I called his place and got his machine. He turned it on when he was trying to sleep. He always left the time he’d be returning calls—and that was our agreement, that that would be a time he’d be home, so that was when I’d plan to see him.”
“So anyone who called would get the message and know when he’d be there.”
She nodded. “But, Vic—hell, even if someone left a message on the machine—hey, Malcolm Tregiere, I’m going to bash your brains in—we know who did it.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “We? Speak for yourself. I don’t.”
She ran a strong finger lightly over my face. “Why the hell did he cut you, babe? You were asking him about Malcolm, weren’t you?”
“Tessa, this is where we started. If Sergio killed Malcolm, he had to have a reason. And you just finished telling me he had no reason—that Malcolm never ran with the gangs and Sergio wouldn’t know him from Adam.”
She hunched her shoulders impatiently. “Maybe he didn’t have a reason. Maybe he broke in and found Malcolm at home. Or thought he’d be carrying morphine. Uptown ain’t a honky high-rise, Vic—people know who you are. They knew Malcolm was a doctor.”
My temper finally got the better of me. “I don’t have voodoo connections; I can’t go after a guy because you’ve got a second sight into what he did.”
Tessa gave me her Ashanti Queen look, arrogant and menacing. “What are you going to do about it? Piss and moan?”
“I’m doing what I can. Which is talk to the cops. Get Sergio hauled in for assault. But we don’t have one shred of evidence that he went near Malcolm. And I’m not convinced in my heart of hearts that he did.”
Tessa’s eyes glittered again. “So you’re going to sit on your ass? I’m really ashamed of you, Vic. I thought you had more courage than to act so chicken shit.”
Blood rushed to my head. “Goddamn your eyes, Tessa. Chicken shit? I put my body on the line Saturday night. I’m talking to you with thirty stitches in my face and you’re calling me names. I’m not Sylvester Stallone. I can’t shoot a roomful of people and ask questions later. Christ!”
I slid off the stool and headed toward the door.
“Vic?”
Tessa’s voice, small and tentative, stopped me. I turned back to her, still furious. Tears glistened on her face.
“Vic. I’m sorry. I really am. I’m off my head about Malcolm. I don’t know why I thought yelling at you would bring him back to life.”
I went over to her and put my arms around her. “Yeah, babe.”
We embraced without speaking for a while.
“Tessa. I really do want to do what I can to clear up Malcolm’s death. But there’s fuck all to go on. Maybe I could listen to his phone machine—if it’s still around—maybe at least we’d know if someone tried threatening him. Who has his personal effects?”
She shook her head. “I think everything’s still locked up in his apartment. Lotty probably has the keys—Malcolm named her his executor, next of kin, all that stuff.” She smiled briefly. “Probably she was the closest thing to a witch he could find after his mother died—I always wondered if that was what drew him to her.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I gently disengaged myself. “I have a date with a rich doctor tonight—the man who worked on Consuelo with Malcolm out in suburbia last week.”
Her eyes narrowed in a rueful smile. “I take it back, Vic. You on the case, girl.” She hesitated, then said seriously, “Be careful with those guys, V.I. You only got the one face, you know.”
12
House Call
Burgoyne took me to a small Spanish restaurant he used to frequent in his student days. He was greeted like a long-lost son by the effusive owner and his wife—“So long since we have seen you, Señor Burgoyne—we thought you had moved away.” They handpicked a dinner for us, whose tender presentation made up for deficiencies of taste. When the coffee and Spanish brandy arrived, they finally retreated to other diners and left us to talk a bit.
Burgoyne was more relaxed than he’d been in the afternoon. He apologized for his self-absorption and announced a moratorium on medical topics for the evening. I asked him instead about life in the northwest suburbs.
“It’s everything they tell you about,” he said, smiling. “Clean, quiet, beautiful, and dull. If the commute wouldn’t be a nightmare I’d move back to the city in a flash. I’m not married so I don’t care about schools and parks and all that stuff. And I can’t seem to fit into the local social scene. Aerobics and golf are the hot topics and I’m not too interested in either.”
“Sounds like a pro
blem. Why not give up your perks and move back to an urban hospital?”
He made a face. “My dad always said no one was born to the purple—anyone can get used to it. I learned in a hurry after joining Friendship that it’s easier to get used to a standard of living than it is to move down to it.”
“So you move from five hundred thousand a year to two hundred. You won’t die, and I bet some lady would still find you attractive.”
He finished his brandy. “You’re probably right—except for your inflated notion of what Friendship thinks I’m worth.” He grinned engagingly. “Ready to leave? Would you like a moonlit stroll on the beach?”
As we drove to the lake, Burgoyne asked if I knew anything about police progress in investigating Tregiere’s death. I told him it was likely to be a slow process if the killers weren’t known to him. Terrorism, as the police categorize that kind of killing, is the hardest to resolve.
“But don’t feel they’re not going to keep resources devoted to it. Rawlings—the detective in charge—seems like a pretty dogged guy. And no murder case is ever considered closed. One of these days they’re going to get an informant or a coincidental crime that will break the thing open. Or maybe I’ll get lucky.”
He pulled into the parking lot at Montrose. We drove around slowly, looking for an open slot—the city pours onto the lakefront on warm nights. Radios blared. Children shrieked in the background behind necking couples. Bands of youths with six-packs and reefer stationed themselves with fishing gear on the rocks, prepared to intercept any passing young women.
Burgoyne found a space next to an outsize, rusting van. He waited until he’d turned off the engine before speaking again.
“You’re looking into Tregiere’s death?”
“Sort of. If it was a terrorist murder the police will solve it. If someone he knew killed him I may sort it out. I don’t suppose he said anything significant when you were working on Consuelo, did he?”
I could feel him looking at me in the dark. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” he finally asked. “I don’t know you well enough to tell when you’re trying to be funny. No, all we talked about was the patient’s erratic heartbeat.”
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