Burn Marks

by Sara Paretsky

  I should overcome my repugnance and pay some attention to Elena’s problems, though. It wasn’t fair to her or to Furey to just hand her affairs over to him. At least I could hunt out Zerlina to ask again if she knew anyone who would shelter Elena. My shoulders drooped at the prospect.

  I could stop by the Central District to see if Finchley recognized the bracelet-and to check on whether Furey had turned up anything on Elena. If he hadn’t, I’d organize my own search in the morning, maybe call in the Streeter Brothers to help out. And I could go see Roz-it was time I went on the offensive with Ralph MacDonald. Whether he was connected personally with the fire or not, he had something on his mind; I’d stood passively by far too long.

  I stood up abruptly and called to the dog. Peppy gained the top in three easy jumps and danced around eagerly. When she saw we were getting in the car instead of returning to the beach, her tail sagged between her legs and she slowed to a painful crawl.

  The Chevy was crawling pretty painfully too. I’d put in more transmission fluid, checked the oil, looked with a semblance of intelligence at the plugs and the alternator. Tomorrow I’d have to make the time to bring it to a garage. And make the money for paying a mechanic and hiring a rental car in the interim.

  “Keep moving,” I ordered the engine.

  The top speed it allowed me this afternoon was thirty-five. I had to stick to side streets, irritating the traffic behind me by keeping below twenty. It took over a half an hour to get to the Central District.

  “I’m stopping here first because Finchley will be gone later,” I explained to Peppy, in case she was accusing me of cowardice. “I’m still planning on finding Roz.”

  I went in through the entrance to police headquarters on State Street. If I used the station door around the corner, I’d have to explain my business to the watch commander. Of course there’s a guard at State Street, but he didn’t take as much persuading as a desk sergeant would- especially since he recognized my last name. He’d known my dad years ago and chatted with me about him for a bit.

  “I was just a rookie then, but Tony took an interest in the young men on the force. I’ve always remembered that and try to do the same for the new guys coming up. And gals, of course. Oh, well. You want to go up to the lieutenant, not stand around reminiscing. You know where his office is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ve been there hundreds of times. You don’t need to call up.”

  Bobby’s unit shared quarters on the third floor at the south end of the building. The detectives had desks jammed behind waist-high room dividers lining the fringe of the room while the uniformed officers shared desks in an open space up front. Bobby held the reins of command in a miniscule office in the southeast corner.

  Terry Finchley was finishing a report, banging on a typewriter almost as ancient as my own, Mary Louise Neely, a uniformed officer who worked with the unit, was sitting on the edge of his desk talking while he typed. The typewriter was so noisy, they didn’t hear me come in.

  Most of the desks were empty. The shift changes at four, so roll call and assignments had long been disposed of. Five is a slow time in the crime world. The cops take it easy then, too, getting dinner or waiting for witnesses to come home from work or whatever else you do when you have a little breather on the job.

  The door to Bobby’s office was shut. I hoped that meant he’d gone home. I went over to Finchley’s cubicle, interrupting Officer Neely as she was describing the interior of an XJS she’d chased down last night. I didn’t know if it was the black leather seats or the three kilos of coke she’d found underneath them that impressed her more. Usually ramrod stiff, she was gesturing and laughing, a tinge of color in her pale face.

  “Hi, guys,” I said. “Sorry to butt in.”

  Finchley stopped his one-handed banging on the machine. “Hi, Vic. You looking for Mickey? He’s not in right now.”

  Officer Neely retreated behind her colorless facade. Murmuring something about “putting it in writing,” she marched stiffly off to the desks in front.

  “Only partly-to see if he’d turned up anything on my aunt. She’s been missing four days now, you know, I found something at my place this afternoon and stopped by to see if you might have dropped it.”

  “I didn’t know your aunt was missing. The lieutenant must have given Mickey the assignment on the side.” Finchley gestured hospitably to the metal chair by his desk. “Take a pew. Want some coffee?”

  I shuddered. “My stomach isn’t strong enough for the stuff you guys drink.” I sat down. “I never saw Officer Neely look so human. I kind of wish I hadn’t interrupted.”

  The police woman was sitting at a typewriter clattering away with flawless precision, her back straight enough to satisfy a West Point inspection.

  “She’s the first female in the unit,” Finchley explained. “You know how that goes, Ms. W. Maybe she’s afraid you see her acting natural, you’ll squeal to the lieutenant.”

  “Me?” I was outraged.

  Finchley grinned. “Okay, maybe she’s afraid if she acts friendly around you, the lieutenant will think you’ve corrupted her. You like that better?”

  “Much,” I said emphatically. I pulled the bracelet from my pocket and showed it to Finchley.

  “I found it under my couch,” I explained. “You and Montgomery are the only men who’ve been sitting there lately. I wondered if you’d dropped it.”

  Finchley looked at it briefly. “Ain’t mine. That’s pimp jewelry-I hate that kind of stuff. And give Monty his due, it’s not exactly his style, either.” He scanned my face. “I’ll ask him for you if you like.”

  I hesitated. I hated to admit I couldn’t stomach facing the arson lieutenant. On the other hand, how many difficult confrontations did I need to prove I wasn’t a chicken? I accepted ruefully.

  Finchley was sliding the chain through his fingers. “You know, this really looks more like-” He bit himself off. “I’ll ask around.”

  “Can you just do it with a description? The other person it might have belonged to is the dead girl-the young woman whose family you helped me locate last week. I want to take it down to show her mother in the morning.”

  “Conscientious little thing, aren’t you? You ever think of hiring someone to do some of your legwork for you?”

  “Every day.” I gestured toward Officer Neely’s stiff back. “Maybe I should talk to her. The pay isn’t that great but it’d make a change from typing reports on cokeheads.”

  “Hey, if you don’t have to type reports, start with me,” Finchley protested. He made a careful note of the number of amethysts in the chain and handed it back to me. “I’ll ask Monty and-and give you a call tomorrow if I can.”

  His phone started ringing. “Take it easy, Vic.”

  “Thanks, Terry. Can I use a phone before I leave?”

  He picked up his own receiver and gestured to the desk behind him. I went around the divider and called my answering service.

  Lucy Mott had phoned from my lawyer’s office with in formation on Farmworks, Inc.; she hadn’t left details with the answering service. Lotty had called. So had Robin.

  I tried my lawyer first. Lucy Mott was gone for the day but Freeman Carter was still there, in conference with a client. The man answering the phone offered to take a message, but when I explained I was at police headquarters and couldn’t ask for a callback, he went to get Carter.

  Freeman thought I’d been arrested, of course, and wasn’t too thrilled to learn I was just borrowing a phone. “It’s that kind of tactic that burns your name around town, V.I.,” he grumbled. “But since you’ve taken me out of my meeting I’ll show you how much better my manners are than yours and dig the stuff out now instead of making you wait.”

  “I know you’ve got better manners than me, Freeman- that’s why I always stand quiet and serious at your side when I have to go before a judge.”

  He left me dangling for five minutes or so. A few more detectives wandered in, people I didn’t know who s
topped to talk to Finchley and eye me curiously. Just as Freeman got back on the line Sergeant McGonnigal walked in. When he saw me his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He didn’t wave or detour to see me but kept on his way to Mallory’s door, where he knocked and stuck his head inside. I turned my attention to Freeman.

  Farmworks, Inc. was an amazing company-it existed without officers. The only name associated with it on the Lexis system was the registered agent, August Cray, at a Loop address. Freeman hung up on my thanks. I sat with the receiver in my hand until the police operator came on asking if I needed assistance. I hung up abstractedly.

  I knew that name. I’d heard it fairly recently. I just couldn’t place it. It was too late to go traipsing over to the LaSalle Street address Freeman had given me. Anyway, I was too tired tonight to undertake many more errands and I kind of wanted to go see Roz. I’d get over to the north Loop in the morning. When I saw Cray I’d probably remember why I knew his name.

  “Can I help you find something, Vic? That’s my desk you’re burrowing in.”

  McGonnigal’s voice at my elbow made me jump. He was trying for a light note but his voice held a brittle undercurrent.

  I held up a hand. “Pax, Sergeant. I wasn’t delving into your deepest secrets. I came by on a errand and Detective Finchley told me I could use this phone… Can’t we go back to being friends, or at least nonenemies, whatever it was we used to be?”

  He ignored the bulk of my comment and asked what kind of errand I had. I rolled my eyes in disgust but pulled the bracelet out of my pocket and went through my saga.

  McGonnigal picked it up, then flung it to the desk, “We can go back to being friends or at least nonenemies when you stop playing little games, Warshawski. Now get lost, I’ve got work to do,”

  I stood up slowly and looked at him stonily. “I’m not playing games, McGonnigal, but you sure are. You little boys give me a call if you ever decide to let me in on the rules.”

  Officer Neely had stopped typing to watch us. “You get tired of the Boy Scouts, come see me,” I said as I passed her. “Maybe we can work something out.”

  She flushed to the roots of her fine sandy hair and resumed typing at a furious rate.

  38

  Running into a Campaign

  When I got into the Chevy, Peppy looked at me expectantly. I’d forgotten I had her. It wasn’t fair to make her sit while I tried to track down Roz, but I was afraid if I took her home I wouldn’t be able to goad myself back into action.

  “Sorry, girl,” I said, turning on the ignition. “Terry and John both know who owns that bracelet, wouldn’t you say? So why won’t they tell me?”

  Peppy looked at me anxiously-she didn’t know, either. A small procession of cars was moving north up State Street. I waited for them to pass so I could make a U. The tail of the procession was Michael’s silver Corvette. I tried honking and waving, but he either didn’t see me in the fading light or chose to act as though he hadn’t. I could try to catch up with him to ask him about Elena but I didn’t feel like running into McGonnigal again tonight.

  I drove north to Congress. The potholes and derelict buildings gradually melted into the convention hotels fringing the south rim of the Loop. After I turned west on the Congress and speeded up, the Chevy gave an ominous whine. My stomach jolted again.

  “Not at thirty,” I lectured the car. “You gotta get me around town a few more years. A few more days, anyway.”

  The car paid no heed to me but increased its nerve-wrenching noise as I took it up to forty. When I brought it back down to twenty-five, the engine quieted some, but I really couldn’t drive it on the Ryan. I left the Congress at Halsted and plodded my way north and west to Logan Square.

  Roz Fuentes’s campaign headquarters were in her old community organization offices on California Avenue. The front window held flags of Mexico, the U.S., and Puerto Rico, with the Mexicans on the left and the U.S. in the middle. Underneath the Mexican flag hung a huge portrait of Roz, beaming her two-hundred-watt smile, with the slogan in Spanish and English: “Roz Fuentes, for Chicago.” Not original, but serviceable.

  The office was still brightly lighted. We were five weeks from election and people would be working into the dawn at different headquarters all over the county. On top of that Roz was still functioning as a conduit for community problems with the city on housing and crime. According to the papers, that was a thorn for the alderman-a gent of the old macho school-but Roz was too popular in the neighborhood for him to try going head-to-head with her.

  Beyond the plate-glass window people were working with the noisy camaraderie a successful campaign brings in its wake. A dozen or so men and women sat at desks in the big front room talking, answering the wildly ringing phones, shouting questions at each other in Spanish or English. No one paid any attention to me, so I wandered past the campaign workers to the back, where Roz used to have a small private office.

  Another small knot of people was sitting in there now, a nice landscape of Roz’s multiracial appeal: a white man of about thirty and two Hispanic women-one plump and fiftyish, the other not long out of high school-were deep in conversation with a wiry black woman in hornrims. I didn’t recognize the white man but I knew the woman in the horn-rims-it was Velma Riter.

  The four of them fell silent when I came in. Velma, who was seated behind the beaten-up desk in Roz’s swivel chair, looked up at me fiercely. To call her expression hostile was about as descriptive as calling Niagara Falls wet- it didn’t begin to convey the intensity she was putting out.

  After a puzzled glance from Velma to me, the fiftyish woman asked, “Can we help you, miss?” She wasn’t unfriendly, just brisk-they were conducting business and needed to get back to it.

  “I’m V. I. Warshawski,” I said. “I was hoping to find Roz.”

  The plump woman held out a palm toward the high school grad without speaking; the young woman handed over her typed sheet of paper. She scanned it and said, “Right now she’s finishing a community meeting on gangs in Pilsen. After that she’s going to Schaumburg for a fund-raising dinner. If you tell me what you need I can help you-I’m her chief assistant.”

  “You’re not content with trying to stab Roz in the back-you’re coming in here to put poison in her coffee, is that it, Vic?” Velma spoke up venomously.

  The young woman looked flustered at Velma’s open anger. She stood up hurriedly and picked up a stack of papers. Murmuring something about getting them typed before she went home, she excused herself.

  “Are these people so close to you that you want me to talk in front of them?” I asked Velma.

  “They know you’ve been trying to smear Roz.”

  I leaned against the door, my shoulders too tired to keep me upright without a prop. “Have you seen some kind of smear story in the papers or on TV that you can trace to me?”

  “People are talking.” Velma held herself rigidly. “Everyone on the street knows you want to stab her in the back.”

  “That wouldn’t be because you told them that, would it, Velma?” I couldn’t bear to look at her angry face; I turned my gaze to a peeling poster on the wall showcasing a quote from Simón Bolívar that proclaimed liberty for all peoples.

  “Why don’t you tell us why you’ve come, Ms, Warshawski? We’re all close to Roz, we don’t have any secrets from each other,” Roz’s chief assistant said.

  I moved uninvited onto the metal folding chair the young woman had vacated. “Maybe first you can tell me your names.”

  “I’m Camellia Maldonado and this is Loren Richter. He’s managing the finances for Roz’s campaign.”

  Richter flashed a perfect Ipana smile. “And I can assure you there’s nothing amiss with them.”

  “Splendid.” I put my arms on the desk and propped my chin on my hands. “I’m really exhausted. If Velma’s told you all about me, you know I almost died in a fire in an abandoned hotel last week. I’m still not quite over it, so I’m not going to make any effort to be subtle.

&
nbsp; “Two weeks ago at a fund-raiser out at Boots’s place Roz made a special point of taking me to one side and asking me not to sandbag her campaign. Since that was the farthest thing from my mind, I was irked to say the least. And it made me think she must be hiding some secret.”

  “If it was secret, then it was none of your business, Warshawski,” Velma interjected.

  I sat up at that. “She made it my business. She-or anyway, Marissa Duncan-got me to put my name to a public roster announcing my support. And I backed it up with more money than I gave to all other political candidates this year. If Roz was pulling off something illegal or unethical behind my name, I damned well did have a right to know about it.”

  I was panting by the time I finished. I took a minute to calm myself and focus my thoughts. Camellia and Loren were sitting stiffly, willing to hear me out but ready to slam the door on me as soon as I’d finished.

  “When I started asking questions a long list of people began telling me I was a pain in the ass and to mind my own business. The first, of course, was Velma here, followed by Roz. And then, interestingly enough, Ralph MacDonald, the big guy himself-Boots’s pal, you know-warned me off. A little more subtly than Velma and Roz, but a warning nonetheless. And after the fire he warned me again, this time not nearly as subtly.”

  Ralph’s name took them all by surprise. If Boots had told Roz he was siccing MacDonald on me, she’d kept it to herself.

  “Well, when I was at Roz’s fund-raiser she had her cousin with her-Luis Schmidt-and Carl Martinez, his partner in Alma Mejicana. And it seemed to me that it was they who pointed me out to her, suggesting I was up to no good.”

  I stopped. Something in that picture, the scene of Wunsch and Grasso huddled with Furey and the two men from Alma Mejicana, was tugging at my brain. If I wasn’t so tired, if Velma wasn’t so hostile, I’d get it. It was because he’d been talking to Wunsch and Grasso that Schmidt warned Roz. They were all connected, Wunsch and Grasso, Alma, Farmworks. And Farmworks was connected to Seligman, through Rita Donnelly’s daughter Star. Did that mean that Wunsch and Grasso were connected to the arson? My brain spun around.