Bitter Medicine

by Sara Paretsky

  “So, Fabiano, your poor aunt returns.” “When he showed up with those bruises we knew he had insulted you once too often.” “Come here, Auntie, let’s have a kiss—I appreciate you if this garbage doesn’t.”

  After taking Fabiano outside with me, I went over to the baby-blue Eldorado, inspecting it ostentatiously.

  “I hear you drive that car of yours too fast. Banged your face into it, huh? Car looks okay to me—must be harder than that head of yours, which is really astounding.”

  He looked at me murderously. “You know damn well how my face got hurt, bitch. You don’t look so good yourself. You tell those Alvarados to leave me alone or they see your body in the river. Next time we don’t be so easy on you.”

  “Look, Fabiano. If you want to fight me, fight. Don’t go sniveling to Sergio. It makes you look ridiculous. Come on—you want to kill me, do it now. Bare hands—no weapons.”

  He looked at me sullenly, but said nothing.

  “Okay, you don’t want to fight. Good. That makes two of us. All I want from you is information. Information about whether your pals in the Lions had anything to do with Malcolm Tregiere’s death.”

  Alarm suffused his face. “Hey, man, you ain’t laying that on me. No way. I wasn’t there. I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  “But you know who did.”

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  We went round and round on it for five minutes. I was convinced—from his fright and his words—that he knew something about Tregiere’s death. But he wasn’t going to talk.

  “Okay, boy. I guess I’m going to have to go to Detective Rawlings and tell him you were involved in the murder. He’ll pick you up as a material witness, and we’ll see if that makes you talk.”

  Even that didn’t shake him. Whoever he was afraid of was a worse threat than the police. Not surprising—the police could hold him for a few days, but they wouldn’t break his legs or his skull.

  He wasn’t brave physically; I grabbed his shirt front and slapped his face a few times to see if that got me anywhere, but he knew I couldn’t be berserk enough to really hurt him. I gave it up and sent him back to his beer. He left with half-tearful warnings of revenge, which I would have dismissed unthinkingly if not for his alliance with Sergio.

  I stopped by the Sixth Area. Rawlings was in; I told him about my conversation with Fabiano.

  “I’m convinced the jerk knows something about Malcolm’s death, but he’s too scared to talk. After two weeks that’s all I’ve been able to come up with. I don’t think there’s one damned thing else I can do on this case.”

  Rawlings’s heavy smile gleamed. “Good news, Warshawski. Now I can concentrate on my investigation without worrying about you creeping around a corner in front of me. But I’ll pick up Hernandez and see if I can sweat him.”

  I had supper with Lotty that night and told her that I had done what I could about Malcolm.

  “Aside from my wounds and the few bruises that Fabiano got, I would say the results I’ve gotten on this case have been nonexistent. I’m going to have to find a paying client pretty soon.”

  She agreed, reluctantly, and the talk turned to her efforts to find a replacement for Malcolm. When she left, around ten-thirty, Mr. Contreras didn’t even come to his door. Almost two weeks with no action had persuaded even him that the premises weren’t in danger.

  I was still curious about where Dieter Monkfish had gotten the money to pay for Dick’s legal services, but with all the work at the clinic I hadn’t had time to do anything more than phone my attorney. Freeman Carter was the partner with Crawford, Meade who handled their small criminal caseload. I had met him when married to Dick and had found him the only member of the firm who didn’t believe he was doing the world as well as the legal profession a favor by participating in it. Given the size of his fees I used him only on occasions when the forces of justice genuinely threatened to flatten me.

  Freeman expressed himself delighted, as always, to hear from me, wanted to know if I needed help with Sergio Rodriguez, and told me I should know better than to call asking him to divulge anything about any of the firm’s other clients.

  “Hey, Freeman, if I always assumed no one was going to tell me anything, I might as well go home and go to bed for the duration. Just thought I’d try.”

  He laughed, told me to call him if I changed my mind about prosecuting Sergio, and hung up.

  On the Thursday after my second interview with Fabiano, I got a call from a real client, a man in Downers Grove who wanted help stopping drug sales on the premises of his small box factory. Before going to see him I decided to take my curiosity about Monkfish one step farther.

  IckPiff’s address, in the 400 block of South Wells, put it close to the Congress Expressway, the least desirable fringe of the Loop. I drove, picking my way past potholes and chunks of masonry, and parked on the street about a block from the building.

  Money was not pouring into IckPiff headquarters. Their building was one of a handful of forlorn survivors of urban removal, standing on the street like uneasy pins left after the efforts of a bush-league bowler. A few winos were sitting in the doorways, blinking unsteadily in the late August sun. I stepped over the outstretched legs of one who couldn’t rouse himself enough to panhandle and went into a fetid hallway.

  A handwritten sheet taped to the peeling paint informed me that IckPiff headquarters was on the third floor. Other building tenants included a talent agency, a tourist agency for a tiny African country, and a telemarketing firm. The elevator, a small box set into the wall, was padlocked shut. As I climbed the stairs I didn’t see anyone, but perhaps it was still too early in the day for talent agencies.

  On the third floor, a faint light shone through the half glass of IckPiff’s door. A poster featuring a blown-up photograph of a blob—presumably a fetus—was taped to the door with a screamer headline reading STOP THE SLAUGHTER. I pulled the blob toward me and went in.

  The interior of the office was a small step up from the squalor of the lobby and stairwell. Cheap metal desks and filing cabinets; a long deal table covered with pamphlets where volunteers could collate mailings; and a battery of telephones for campaigns in the state and national legislatures made up the furnishings. Decoration was provided by wall-to-wall posters depicting the evils of abortion and the virtues of fetus protection.

  A heavyset, white-haired woman was watering a scraggly plant in a dirty window when I came in. She wore a beige polyester skirt hiked up in front by her protruding stomach to reveal the scalloped end of a slip. Her legs, badly swollen, were encased in support hose and plastic sandals. I wondered with fleeting sympathy how she negotiated the stairs every day.

  She looked at me with dull eyes partly hidden by the flabby creases of her face and asked what I wanted.

  “State of Illinois,” I said briskly. “Audit department.” I flashed my private-eye license at her briefly. “You’re registered as a not-for-profit organization, aren’t you?”

  “Why, why, yes. We certainly are. Yes.” Her voice had the heavy twang of the South Side.

  “I just need to take a look at your list of donors. Some questions have arisen about whether they are sheltering income with IckPiff instead of using it as a genuine tax-exempt charity.” I hoped she wasn’t an accountant—my meaningless jargon wouldn’t fool anyone with a junior-college certificate.

  She drew herself up proudly. “We are a genuine organization. If you’ve been sent here by the murderers to harass us I’m going to call the police.”

  “No, no,” I said soothingly. “I have great admiration for your views and goals. This is totally impersonal—just the machinery of the state division of taxes and audits. We can’t have your donors taking advantage of you, can we?”

  She shuffled back to the desk on slow, painful feet. “I just need to call Mr. Monkfish. He doesn’t like me showing our private papers to strangers.”

  “I’m not a stranger,” I said brightly. “One of your public serv
ants, you know. It won’t take but a minute.”

  She continued dialing. With one hand over the mouthpiece she said, “What did you say your name was?”

  “Jiminez,” I said. “Rosemary Jiminez.”

  Mr. Monkfish was unfortunately at home, or at the Union League Club, or wherever it was she’d dialed. She explained her predicament in her heavy, panting voice and nodded in relief several times before hanging up.

  “If you’ll just wait here, Mrs…. what did you say your name was? He’ll be right over.”

  “How long will it take him to get here?”

  “Not more than thirty minutes.”

  I looked conspicuously at my wrist. “I have a noon meeting with someone from the governor’s office. If Mr. Monkfish isn’t here by a quarter to, I’m going to have to leave. And if I leave without the information, my boss may decide to subpoena the records. You wouldn’t like that, would you? So why not let me look at the files while we’re both waiting for him?”

  She hesitated, so I upped the pressure, discoursing gently about police, the FBI, and the subpoenas. At last she pulled out some heavy ledgers and the file cards of donors’ names and addresses and let me sit at the table.

  The ledgers were all handwritten and in an appalling mess. I started through them in reverse order in the hopes of finding either Dick’s fee or some incoming amount big enough to pay for it, but it was hopeless. It would take hours, and I had minutes. I flipped through the file of donor cards, which at least was in alphabetical order, but I had no idea of whom to look for among the several thousand names. Out of curiosity I looked in the Y’s for Dick. His name and office number were listed, along with a penciled note saying, “Bills to be mailed directly to donor.” I snapped the lid shut and got up.

  “I think we’re going to have to send in a full audit team, ma’am. Your records, if you’ll forgive my saying so, are not in apple-pie order.”

  I slung my handbag over my shoulder and headed for the exit. Unfortunately, I had not been quite quick enough. Dieter Monkfish was coming toward me as I opened the door. His hot, bulging eyes burned me with their fire.

  “You’re the girl from the state?” His nasal baritone was bigger than he was, bigger than the crowded office, and it made my ears ring.

  “Woman,” I said automatically. “Didn’t find what I was looking for—we’re going to have to organize a full audit team, as I explained to your office manager.”

  “I want to see your identification. Did you ask for any, Marjorie?”

  “Yes, Mr. Monkfish, of course I did.”

  “Yes, we went through all that,” I said soothingly. “Now I have to be going. Lunch with one of the governor’s assistants.”

  “I want to see your identification, young woman.” He stood in the doorway, barring my way.

  I hesitated. He was taller than I, but reedy. I suspected I could elbow my way past him. But then Marjorie might call the police and who knew where it would all end? I pulled from my bag a card with nothing but my name and address on it and handed it to him.

  “V. I. Warshawski.” He butchered the pronunciation. “Where’s your credentials from the State of Illinois?”

  I looked at him unhappily. “I’m afraid I told a little bit of a lie, Mr. Monkfish. I’m not really from the state. It’s like this.” I put a supplicatory hand on his sleeve. “Can I trust you? I feel like you’re the kind of man who can really understand a woman’s problems. I mean, look how understanding you are of women with unwanted pregnancies—that is, how well you understand the problem of being an unwanted child.”

  He didn’t say anything, but I thought the manic fire died down a bit. I took a breath and continued, faltering a little.

  “It’s my husband, you see. My ex-husband, I should say. He—he left me for another woman. When I was pregnant with our last child. He—he wanted me to have an abortion, but of course I refused. He’s a very wealthy lawyer, charges two hundred dollars an hour, but he doesn’t pay a dime in child support. We had five beautiful children together. But I don’t have any money, and he knows I can’t afford to sue him.” It sounded so heartbreaking I was close to tears.

  “If you’ve come here looking for money, young lady, I can’t help you.”

  “No, no. I wouldn’t ask it of you. But—my husband is Dick—Richard Yarborough. I know he represents you. And I thought—I thought if I could find out who was paying the bill, I might persuade him to send the money to me, to feed little Jessica and Monica and Fred and—and the others, you know.”

  “How come your name isn’t Yarborough?” he demanded, focusing on the least important part of the melodrama.

  Because I wouldn’t use that prick’s name on a bad check, I said to myself. Aloud I quavered, “When he left me, I was so embarrassed I took Daddy’s name again.”

  His face wavered uncertainly. Like all fanatics, he couldn’t think about events except as they affected him directly. He might have given me the anonymous donor’s name, but Marjorie had to stick in her two cents. She shuffled over on her uncertain legs and took the card from him.

  “I thought your name was Spanish—Rosemary Him—something.”

  “I—I didn’t want to use my real name unless I had to,” I faltered.

  Monkfish’s eyes bulged farther. I was afraid they might pop out of his head and hit me in the face. Marjorie hadn’t recognized the name, but he did—Rosemary Jiminez was the first woman killed from a back-alley abortion after the state cut off public-aid funds for poor women. She’s become something of a rallying point in Illinois pro-choice circles.

  “You—you’re nothing but a filthy abortionist. Call the police, Marjorie. She may have stolen something.”

  He took my wrist and tried to pull me back into the office. I let him drag me in past the open doorway. As soon as his body was out of the way I jerked my wrist free and fled down the hallway.

  17

  The IckPiff Files

  I spent the afternoon in Downers Grove hearing a horror story about blatant drug dealing in the little box factory. The owner listened while I sketched out an undercover surveillance plan involving me and a few young men working in the factory. The Streeter brothers, who had a moving and security-guard business, usually help me out on jobs like this. The owner was enthusiastic until I mentioned the fee, which runs about ten thousand a month on such an operation; he decided to spend the weekend mulling it over—deciding whether his losses from theft and downtime were less than my charges.

  Even though August was sliding toward September, the days were still sweltering, especially in the late-afternoon jam of traffic on the Eisenhower. I stopped at home long enough to change from business attire into a bathing suit and spent the remainder of the daylight at the lake.

  I waited until late evening to return to IckPiff. Mindful of the winos—who could be aggressive when drunk and in a group—I didn’t carry a purse, but stuffed the Smith & Wesson into the belt of my jeans and stuck my wallet into a front pocket. I’d lost my picklocks last winter but I had a makeshift collection of some of the commoner kinds of keys and a plastic ruler in my back pocket.

  As I drove over to Wells, I wondered why it mattered so much to me who was paying Dick’s bill. I was very angry, certainly, that Monkfish was getting away scot-free with the destruction of Lotty’s clinic. But would I have been as hot on the trail if some other attorney had represented him? I hated to think I suffered from residual bitterness after all these years.

  I parked on the corner of Polk and Wells and covered the remaining block on foot. After dark is not a good time for women to be out alone in this area. In hot, muggy weather all the nightcrawlers come out. I knew I could outrun most of these derelicts, and in a pinch I could use the gun, but I still breathed easier when I made it into the stairwell of Monkfish’s building without any more hassles than some obscene panhandling.

  No lights in the stairwells. I turned on the pencil flash on my key chain so I could see as I climbed. Galloping feet behind the wai
nscoting told of the inevitable rats feasting on the remains of the dying building. A man lay pitched over at the turn of the second landing. He had vomited generously; it dripped down the stairs in large blobs and I stepped in one patch as I carefully climbed over his inert body.

  I stood outside Monkfish’s door for a few minutes, listening for signs of life within. I had no real expectation of a welcome committee—no sane person would hang around such a place after dark. Although the kindest well-wisher would not levy a charge of sanity against Monkfish.

  I pulled out my collection of keys. Not worrying about the noise, I fiddled with the lock underneath the fetus poster. In deference to his neighbors, Monkfish had installed a double lock, which did not yield easily. It took about ten minutes of work to wrestle it open. Once inside I turned on the overhead light. No one who saw me enter the building was going to remember what I looked like, let alone what night I’d been here.

  Stacks of envelopes lay sorted into zip codes on the deal table. They were neatly addressed by hand. Why invest in a computer when you had Marjorie? Indeed, a computer in a building like this wouldn’t last a week. Marjorie was the sensible choice. I flipped open one of the envelopes to see what call to action Dieter was trumpeting this week.

  “Abortion Mill Shut Down” trumpeted the typescript. “A small group of people dedicated to LIFE risked their lives and went to jail last week to stop a DEATH camp more hideous than Auschwitz.” Thus Dieter rhapsodized about the destruction of Lotty’s clinic. My stomach turned over; I was tempted to add arson to the breaking and entering on my charge sheet tonight.

  The room held few places to secure anything. I found the ledgers and the membership list locked in Marjorie’s desk drawer. Activity for the last three years seemed to be crammed into two giant books, one for receipts and one for disbursals. At least it was a system. Or so I thought until I started examining line items.