Hard Time

by Sara Paretsky

  We drove over to Smallpox Creek to let the dogs cool off again before the drive home. Mr. Contreras, suddenly seeing Nicola Aguinaldo as a person, not an illegal immigrant or a criminal, was subdued during the ride. We got home a little before six. Mary Louise had shoved a packet underneath the locked inner door with a report on her day’s work. She had delivered our report to Continental United; the human resources vice president had called to say they were delighted with our work, but that they thought they would have to send someone down to Georgia to check on things in person. And that someone would likely be me—unless Baladine persuaded the company to turn all their work over to Carnifice.

  I didn’t want to hang about the back roads of Georgia, waiting for someone with a tire iron to hit me on the head. On the other hand, if I stayed in Chicago I might start doing unlucrative things like tailing Morrell, to see if a man worried about committing himself on the phone might drive to Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother’s home.

  A man named Rieff phoned from Cheviot Labs at eleven, Mary Louise had written in her round schoolgirl hand. He says he can provide a printout of what is on Aguinaldo’s dress, but he does not know how meaningful it is. It was a long T–shirt with Lacey Dowell as the Mad Virgin on it. A label said it was a specialty shirt but did not identify where it was manufactured. There are traces of sweat, which are presumably Aguinaldo’s, but without a DNA sample he couldn’t say. There is a trace of cigarette ash around the inside of the neck. He is not charging for that information because the analysis was already done when they inspected the dress last week, but if you want to know what brand of cigarette, that will cost around two hundred extra.

  Cigarette ash around the inside of the neck? I wondered if Aguinaldo was a smoker, and how hard or easy it was to drop ash down your own neckline if you smoked.

  I turned back to Mary Louise’s notes. At two o’clock Alex Fisher phoned. She wanted to know if you had thought over her offer any more. I said you were out of town for the day and would get back to her in the morning; she urged me to push you to take the job, it would mean a lot for your agency one way or another however you decided. Vic, what does this woman want?

  She’d underscored the question several times. I was with her there: what did Alex want? What was Teddy Trant going to do to me if I didn’t dig around in Frenada’s affairs? Put a V chip in my TV so I was forced to watch nothing but Global programs? If Abigail Trant had persuaded her husband to give me some work, was that enough reason for him to be surly at my refusal to accept it?

  Of course the other connection to Global was Lacey Dowell. She, or at least her face, kept cropping up. Now she was on the shirt Nicola Aguinaldo had on when she died. Was Global’s big star involved in something so ugly the studio wanted to pin it on Frenada? But there was nothing to link Lacey with Nicola Aguinaldo, at least as far as I could tell.

  Maybe I should try to see Lucian Frenada. I had entered the phone numbers Alex Fisher gave me into my Palm Pilot. When I called his home, a machine told me, in Spanish and English, that Frenada regretted not answering my call in person, but that he was perhaps at his factory and would get back to me if I left a message.

  I thought it over, then got up abruptly and went downstairs. If Frenada was perhaps at his factory I could see him in person. My back was stiff. A nagging sensible voice—Mary Louise’s or Lotty’s—told me if I had to poke at this wasp’s nest at all to do it in the morning. Or at least to take my gun, but what was I going to do with it—pistol–whip him into telling me what secret Trant wanted me to find?

  There is no direct route from my place to Frenada’s factory. I snaked south and west, through streets filled with small frame houses and four–plus–one’s, past boys skateboarding or in small gangs on their bikes, now and then crossing pockets of lights around bars and pool halls. As I passed the fringes of Humboldt Park, the streets revved up with boom boxes and low–riders but died away again at the seedy industrial corridor along Grand Avenue.

  A freight line cuts northwest through the area, making for oddly shaped buildings designed to fill odd lot sizes right up to the embankment. A train was rumbling past as I pulled in front of a dingy triangular building near the corner of Trumbull and Grand.

  Lights blazed through open windows on the second floor. The outer door was shut but unlocked. A naked bulb glared just inside the entrance. Drunken letters in a notice board listed a wig manufacturer and a box maker on the ground floor. Special–T Uniforms was on two. As I climbed concrete steps slippery with age, light glinted on long falls of hair in a display case. It was like walking behind the guillotine after dark.

  The noise coming down the stairwell sounded as though fifty guillotines were all whacking heads in unison. I followed light and sound along a metal walkway and came to Special–T’s open door. Even though it was nine at night, nearly a dozen people were working, either cutting fabric at long tables in the middle of the floor or assembling garments at machines along the wall. The racket came partly from the sewing machines, but mostly from the shears. Two men positioned layers of cloth at the end of the tables, clamped them in place under a pair of electric shears, then wielded a control box to release the blades.

  I watched, fascinated, as the shears whicked through the fabric and the men carried pieces over to the sewing–machine operators. One person was sewing letters to the backs of shirts, another attaching sleeves. At least half the crew was smoking. I thought of the cigarette ash smudged into the neck of Nicola Aguinaldo’s dress. Maybe it had come from the person who made the garment, rather than from Aguinaldo herself.

  Lucian Frenada was standing at one of the cutting tables next to a stocky man with thin black hair. They seemed to be discussing the proper placement of a pattern stencil. I walked over to stand in his range of vision—if I touched him to get his attention he might be startled into landing under one of the fabric scythes.

  Frenada looked up, frowning. “Si? Le puedo ayudar en algo?”

  I held out my card. “We met at Lacey Dowell’s party last week,” I shouted over the noise of the machinery.

  The man next to him stared at me with frank curiosity: was I a girlfriend so enamored that I would pursue Frenada into his shop? Or was I with INS, about to demand that all hands produce their papers? Frenada touched his arm and said something in Spanish, then pointed at the floor, ankle–deep with scraps of cloth. The man passed a command on to one of the cutters, who stopped his work to start sweeping.

  Frenada took me to a cubbyhole at the rear of the floor, which was protected enough from the floor noise to allow conversation. Fabric samples and patterns festooned the top of a metal desk; production schedules were taped to the door and the sides of an old filing cabinet. The only chair had a motor on it. Frenada leaned against the door; I perched gingerly on the edge of the desk.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  “You mentioned Tuesday night that something odd was happening at your shop.”

  “Do you usually sell your services like this, door to door?”

  My cheeks and neck grew warm with embarrassment, but I couldn’t help smiling. “Like encyclopedias, you mean? A reporter I know has been asking questions about your business. And I remembered what you said, so I wanted to see Special–T for myself.”

  “What reporter? What kind of questions?”

  “Wondering what secrets you were hiding here at Special–T.” I watched him steadily, but he looked only puzzled, and somewhat scornful.

  Another freight train began to thunder behind the building, drowning Frenada’s reply. While I waited to be able to hear him, I looked around the office. On his desk, underneath one of the fabric swatches, I saw a glimpse of a slogan I knew from Emily Messenger’s wardrobe: The Mad Virgin Bites.

  The train passed, and Frenada said, “Secrets? I can’t afford such things. I thought you meant—but it doesn’t matter. My business runs on a shoestring; if something a little strange happens, then I have to accept it as an act of God.”

 
“Lacey reassured you when you saw her on Thursday?”

  “Did she—who told you—”

  “No one. It was a deduction. That’s what I do—get facts and make deductions. They teach it in detective school.” I was babbling, because of the Mad Virgin T–shirt.

  Frenada looked around his office and caught sight of the shirt. He got to his feet and moved me toward the door.

  “My business has nothing to do with Lacey. Nothing at all. So keep your deductions to yourself, Miss Detective. And now, by another gracious act of God, I have a large order to get out, the largest I have ever been blessed with, the uniforms for a soccer league in New Jersey, which is why you find me here so late at night.” He hustled me out through the shop floor to the metal walkway, waiting until I reached the stairwell landing before he turned back inside.

  I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio’s church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school’s soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily mass from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin T–shirt half–buried under his fabric samples, I didn’t think the priest would share it with me.

  Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old ’hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated shirts employing local workers at living wages.

  Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I’d like to catch Murray’s second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn’t want to drive anymore, anyway. The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global—after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.

  After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to titillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He’d taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fifty–seven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.

  “Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,” I grumbled when the show ended.

  “You want egg in your beer?” Sal said. “Guy can’t do everything.”

  “I wish he’d covered the women’s prison at Coolis. That’d be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I’m surprised it’s not called Baladine City.”

  “Vic, this may make sense to you, but it’s Greek to me.”

  “Ever since that wretched party you threw here last week, I’ve been running around in circles. Like my dog Mitch chasing his tail, come to think of it—exhausting and about as meaningful.” I told her what I’d been doing. “And don’t tell me it’s none of my business, because it is, even if no one is paying me for it.”

  “Get off your high horse, St. Joan.” Sal poured me another finger of Black Label. “It’s your time and money; do what you want with it.”

  That encouragement didn’t cheer me as much as it might have, but dinner at Justin’s in the west Loop—where the owner knew Sal and whisked us past a dumbfounded line of beautiful Chicagoans—made me much happier. At least until I caught sight of Alex Fisher halfway through my tuna in putanesca sauce.

  I couldn’t help staring. Alex was at a table with Teddy Trant and a bald man with the kind of shiny face all Illinois politicians take on after too much time snuffling around in the public trough. Jean–Claude Poilevy in person. If Trant would rather eat with him and Alex than the exquisite Abigail, there was something seriously wrong with his taste.

  When we got up to leave, Alex and her convoy were still talking over coffee. Sal tried to dissuade me, but I went to their table. Trant was as perfectly groomed as his wife, down to the clear polish on his manicured nails.

  “Mr. Trant,” I said. “V. I. Warshawski. I wanted to let you know I appreciate your willingness to send me some work. I’m sorry I couldn’t take it on for you.”

  Alex gave me a look that could have done laser surgery on my nose, but Trant shook my hand. “Global tries to do business with local firms. It helps us anchor ourselves in cities we’re new to.”

  “Is that why you’ve been talking to Lucian Frenada?” It was a guess, based on the Mad Virgin decal I’d glimpsed at Special–T earlier in the evening, but everyone at the table froze.

  Poilevy put down his coffee cup with a clatter. “Is that the guy you were—”

  “Lucian Frenada is the man who’s been harassing Lacey.” Alex cut him off quickly and loudly.

  “Sure, Sandy, sure. It’s not a bad story, even if it has a few holes around the edges. Alex, I mean. She changed nicknames in the last twenty years,” I added to Trant. “We were such good pals when she was Sandy, I keep forgetting she’s Alex now.”

  “What do you mean, holes around the edges?” Poilevy asked.

  “I did a little looking. I talked to Lucian Frenada. I talked to the head of security at Ms. Dowell’s hotel. Maybe the studio is overreacting to the scene between Frenada and Ms. Dowell at the Golden Glow last week—understandable with an important star—but I can’t find any evidence that Frenada’s been hanging around her.”

  “That isn’t what I asked you to investigate,” Alex snapped.

  “No, but you haven’t been asked to pay me anything either, have you.”

  Sal came up behind me and put a hand on my arm. “Let’s go, Vic. I’ve got to get back to the Glow—it’s my night to close.”

  I reminded Alex and Trant that they knew Sal from last week’s party. We all said meaningless nothings, about Murray’s debut, about Sal’s bar, but I would have given a month’s billings to know what they said when Sal and I moved out of earshot. I turned to look when we got to the door; they were bent over the table like the three witches over a pot.

  20 Child in Mourning

  What with the drive to Coolis and the long night hopping around town, I was glad to crawl into bed. I read a little of Morrell’s book on the Disappeared in South America, stretching my legs between clean sheets to pull the kinks out of my spine.

  The phone rang as I was drifting off. I groaned but stuck out an arm and mumbled a greeting. There was a pause on the other end, then someone garbled my name in a hurried voice just above a whisper.

  “Yes, this is V. I. Warshawski. Who is this?”

  “It’s—This is Robbie. Robbie Baladine. I was at the gate, you know, when you came last week, you know, when you talked to my mom about—about Nicola.”

  I came fully awake in a hurry, turning on the light as I assured him that I remembered him well. “You’re the expert tracker. What can I do for you?”

  “I—It’s not for me, but Nicola. I want—want to go to her funeral. Do you know when it is?”

  “There’s a problem about that,” I said carefully. “The morgue seems to have lost her body. I don’t know how that happened, but until they find it there can’t be a funeral.”

  “So he was right.” His young voice was filled with a kind of bitterness. “I thought he was making it up to—to tease me.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Yeah, old BB.” He was forgetting to whisper in his anguish. “Him and Eleanor, they’ve been so mean about Nicola. Since she died and all. When I said I wanted to go to her funeral, they said why, so I could stand around with all the emotional spicks and bawl to my heart’s content, an
d then finally BB said there wouldn’t be a funeral because no one could find the body and to—to shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I said inadequately. “I guess your dad worries about whether he’s a tough enough man, and so he’s always on guard against any strong feelings. I don’t suppose it’s much comfort to you now, but can you imagine him as someone who is incredibly weak and scared so he acts like a bully to keep other people from guessing how scared he is?”

  “You think that could really be true?” There was wistfulness in the young voice, a hope that his father’s meanness wasn’t due to his own failings.

  I thought of Baladine, casually helping with the dismemberment of African newborns, getting his hands dirty, and wondered if my diagnosis had any basis in reality. Maybe he was someone who enjoyed torture for its own sake, but I gave Robbie a hearty assurance I didn’t feel.

  “Your father is a cruel man. Whatever the reason for his cruelty, will you try to remember that his sadism is about him, about his needs and weaknesses, and not about you?”

  I talked to him for a few more minutes, until he’d recovered enough equilibrium for me to turn the conversation. There were two questions I wanted to put to him before we hung up. The first was about Nicola’s smoking. Oh, no, Robbie said, she never smoked, not like Rosario, their nanny now, who was always sneaking off behind the garage for a cigarette, which made Eleanor furious, because she could still smell the smoke on her breath even after Rosario swallowed a zillion peppermints. Nicola said she had to save all her money for her children; she couldn’t waste it on cigarettes or drinking.

  My second question was whether his dad owned any shoes with horseshoe emblems—and if he did, were any of the emblems missing. Robbie said he didn’t know, but he’d look.

  It made me feel like a creep, asking Robbie to spy on his own father—but I suppose it also made me feel like I was paying BB back for his frothing over his son’s masculinity. If he’d been proud of his sensitive child I might not have done it. But if he could be proud of a sensitive child, he wouldn’t be doing other stuff.