Burn Marks

by Sara Paretsky

  “You’re making this up! Ralph and Gus told me you might be around to harass me. He told me what you might insinuate. You think you’re so smart, but he’s smarter than you.”

  “Gus?” I started to ask, then realized she must mean August. “One thing’s for damn sure-he’s smarter than you! Don’t you realize that I didn’t know MacDonald was involved in Farmworks until you told me just now? It was a guess, but it sure was right on target. Shall I guess everything else that happened and you let me know if I’m right or wrong? Or do you want to tell me yourself?”

  She pulled herself up in her swivel chair. “You’d better get out of here before I call the police. You’re harassing me in a private office and that’s against the law.”

  “Let me make another guess.” I pulled her Rolodex toward me and started flipping through it. “You’ll call Roland Montgomery’s private number and he’ll send some uniforms hopping to drag me away. And Star! What a coincidence! Here it is.”

  “I… uh…” She started a sentence several times but didn’t finish it. “You don’t have any proof.”

  “No,” I had to admit. “It’s just another guess. But he- or at least Farmworks-is at the center of a whole lot of different action that he’d just as soon the FBI didn’t see. They’re going to, though, Star, because the Herald’s going to print the whole story. And then the feds will come subpoena your files and they’ll charge you with conspiring to commit fraud and arson and murder. And then you won’t just be a poor little orphan, you’ll be a poor little orphan in jail. Only if a jury hears how you let your own mother take the fall for you, they’re not going to treat you like a helpless waif.”

  “Just because my employer tried to buy a building belonging to Mother’s employer does not mean he killed her.” Her voice was scornful.

  “Ralph and Boots really wanted the Indiana Arms, didn’t they? Really badly. I know about their stadium bid-that’s not a secret. And it won’t take too much work to do a proper title search for the stuff back there, so you might as well tell me.”

  She thought it over carefully, then finally conceded that Farmworks had been buying up property in the triangle behind McCormick Place and the Dan Ryan for several years now, positioning themselves for a bid on the stadium. The Indiana Arms was one of the few occupied buildings they hadn’t been able to acquire. Star had been keeping Seligman’s books for him at the time-she was a CPA. She thought he was foolish not to sell and tried to pressure him.

  “He acted like that place meant more to him than his own children,” Star said resentfully. “You’d think he’d of been glad to get what they were offering-it would have been so much better for Barbara and Connie than inheriting that run-down junk heap. Even after-after things started going really wrong, like when the elevators broke down and no one would come fix them, he couldn’t see it was a losing proposition.”

  “It had some sentimental meaning for him. So what happened next? You went to August Cray and Ralph and said if they’d hire you, you’d keep up the pressure on Seligman through your mom?”

  She tossed her golden hair scornfully. “They made me an offer. They could see I was good, that I was wasted in that nickel-and-dime place.”

  “What were you supposed to do? Forge a title transfer? Were you good enough to do that? Or just get your mother to keep the heat on the old man to sell?”

  She smiled at me coldly. “You’ll never know, will you?”

  “But then Rita learned that Mr. Seligman had given me a photo that had you and Shannon in it along with his own daughters. And she came to you, panicked. She was afraid if I started showing it to someone who had lived or worked at the Indiana Arms that they would recognize you. What had you been doing down there? Sabotaging the elevators yourself? Or just guaranteeing that no repair company would come fix them? So you told Ralph your mom was getting cold feet and he did the only decent thing-he got someone to kill her.”

  She sucked on her lower lip, but she didn’t shake that easily. “You’re in here with guesses and stories. If that’s your idea of fun, I’m not going to stop you.”

  “Yeah, they’re guesses and stories, but they’re pretty volatile. A more innocent woman might be hollering for cops or lawyers or witnesses or something. But you’re taking it all in to see how much I know, aren’t you? Well, Boots may have the local cops in his hip pocket, but I don’t think he owns the FBI yet.”

  I got up to go. Star had a strange little smile on her face. “Of course you have to talk to them first, don’t you? And even if Boots doesn’t have much influence with the FBI, he can make sure they don’t listen to you.”

  My stomach jolted a bit but I said calmly, “Oh, did Ralph and Boots tell you about their joke on my ignition? I found it and I’ll be extra careful looking for others. I remember LeAnn Wunsch telling me what a kidder Boots was. I’m only just beginning to really appreciate it.”

  She barely waited for me to leave before she picked up her phone. I didn’t shut the door all the way and stood with my ear against it. She asked for Ralph and said it was urgent and that she’d wait at her desk until he called back. I guess her mother’s church friends weren’t that important.

  43

  The Eye of the Hurricane

  I stood in the middle of LaSalle Street trying to quell a rising tide of panic. I needed some allies and I needed them fast. It was luck, pure and simple, that had kept me from disintegrating into my component parts today. If I had, Roland Montgomery would have closed the investigation for lack of leads-or painted me as a bizarre suicidal maniac. I’d miraculously side-stepped my fate, but it wouldn’t be Ralph MacDonald’s last effort to present me with his side of the story, as he’d put it on Monday.

  Maybe I was jumping to conclusions in putting Ralph behind the dynamite in my car. Perhaps it was Roland Montgomery-he had ready access to all kinds of incendiary stuff. Or Michael, getting it from Wunsch or Grasso. Michael. My stomach twisted some more. He couldn’t have tried to blow me up. We’d never been in love, but we’d been lovers for a brief sweet time. Can you want to think of a body you’ve caressed torn into jagged chunks of bleeding bones? Or did my rebuff make him want to see me so?

  I shook my head, impatient with myself. This was hardly the time or place to sink into a melancholy reverie, I needed to get myself organized. The Smith & Wesson was in my backpack, that was one good thing. Of course I couldn’t very well pull it out in the middle of LaSalle Street, but I didn’t think anyone was likely to try to shoot me during the evening rush hour. I was just lucky that Montgomery had been so hot to get me in the interrogation room and break my jaw that he hadn’t bothered with the usual formalities at the police station. No one had searched me; I hadn’t had to surrender the gun and go through the tedious process of producing my permit and getting permission to pick it up again.

  I needed to get to a phone but I was too scared of what direction MacDonald-or Montgomery-or Michael- might next attack from to go to my office. That was an easy place to lay a trap. For the same reason I didn’t want to go home-or to Lotty’s. If MacDonald’s mind was running to dynamite, I didn’t want him to kill Peppy or Lotty in the effort to destroy me.

  I finally flagged a cab to ride the nine blocks to the Golden Glow. Sal would let me use her phone and I wouldn’t mind a little Black Label to settle down some of the more extreme lurches my stomach was giving.

  As the taxi wove recklessly through the end of the rush-hour congestion, it occurred to me that Ralph probably hadn’t ordered the dynamite in my car. Most likely it had happened just like Becket-him running his fingers through his well-cut silver hair and asking tragically if no one would rid him of this meddlesome priestess. It’s always that way, I thought bitterly, from Henry II to Reagan-your barons or Oliver North or whoever does the dirty work and you wrap yourself in a mantle of bewilderment and lawyers. I never knew about it, they misinterpreted my instructions.

  “You say something, miss?” the cabbie asked.

  I hadn’t realized I’d
been angry enough to mutter aloud. “No. Keep the change.”

  Murray Ryerson was sitting at the mahogany horseshoe bar drinking Holstein and talking to Sal about the upcoming college basketball season. Neither of them broke off a spirited debate about the NCAA sanctions on the KU Jayhawks when I climbed onto a stool next to Murray, but Sal reached behind her for the Black Label and poured me a glass.

  Sal’s cousin was taking care of customers at the tables. I sipped my whiskey without offering any opinion on Larry Brown’s perfidies of Milt Newman’s abilities now that Danny Manning wasn’t leading the squad anymore. When Sal and Murray had run out of ideas on the subject, Murray casually asked me what was new.

  I swallowed the rest of my drink and accepted another from Sal. “You almost got your wish to write my obituary today, big guy-someone laid a bomb across my ignition coil.”

  At first Murray thought I was joking. “That so? How come you’re here to tell about it?”

  “Really happened.” When I got to the part where the head of the Bomb and Arson Squad refused to conduct a proper investigation, he shut me up and went to his car for a tape recorder. He was somewhat aggrieved at missing the story. He’d been at a conference out at the airport all day so he hadn’t seen any of the wires or the sensational reports the networks were trumpeting.

  I told him everything I knew, from Saul Seligman and the Indiana Arms to the little scam among Farmworks, Alma Mejicana, and Wunsch and Grasso, to Roland Montgomery’s strange theory of me setting fire to the Indiana Arms and then blowing myself up in remorse.

  When I finished Murray put an arm around me and gave me a sloppy kiss. “You’re wonderful, Vic. I forgive you for holding out on me last winter. This is a great story. All it needs is a little proof.”

  “You don’t call a hunk of dynamite proof?’ Sal snapped a bottle of Holstein’s down in front of Murray. “Her dead body would impress you more?”

  “It shows someone wanted to kill her, but not who.” Murray drank directly from the bottle. “You didn’t copy any of the stuff you found at Alma’s offices or at Farm-works did you?”

  “I took notes at Alma’s offices, but I didn’t see any of the books at Farmworks. But can’t you track some of this stuff down through Lexis and the Office of Contracts and so on? And get someone in the county to tell you what Roland Montgomery owes Boots? That scares me more than anything-you get a big cop dogging you and he can kill you or frame you or any damned thing he wants. I’m shaving my head and growing a beard until this sucker blows up big enough that I’m not the only figure tap-dancing in the spotlight.”

  Sal offered me the bottle again but I turned it down. I couldn’t spend the night at the Golden Glow and I wouldn’t survive if I left here too drunk to notice who was walking up behind me.

  Murray went into Sal’s private office to make some phone calls. It was too late in the day to look up any records in the county building, but he was going to initiate a more thorough search through the Lexis network than Freeman Carter had done for me-now that we were looking for a tie-in between MacDonald or Meagher and Alma Mejicana, Murray could ask the system to pull together combinations of names that hadn’t occurred to me earlier.

  “So what do you do now?” Sal asked. “Lay low until the storm passes?”

  “I think I go home.” I interrupted her voluble protest. “I know, I came in scared, crying for help. I’m still scared but-” I broke off, trying to think my inchoate feelings into a semblance of logic.

  “It’s like this. Now Murray has the story-he can get enough going by tomorrow even maybe to print something Friday or Saturday-if the Star isn’t too scared of Boots and Ralph. So as soon as Boots and MacDonald see things are coming into the open, they’ll be shredding documents like mad, be covering their tracks on the Ryan. They’re probably rounding up a truckload of Hispanic and black workers right now with documents proving they’ve been working there since the first of March.

  “If they think it’s still just me on my own, maybe they’ll try to come get me. And then at least we can nail a few of them in the act.”

  “You and Murray?” Sal pursed up her face in high disdain.

  “I’ll do the story-Murray’ll make the pictures,” I said with a lightness I was far from feeling. “No. I think I’ll be okay at home. I was panicking earlier, wondering if Ralph might dynamite the whole building just to get me. But really, he’s much more likely to wait until I’m on my own and try something different. My old guy downstairs has been on all the stations talking about the men he saw yesterday-the pair who came calling on me in person and the pair who probably put the bomb in the car. So I can’t believe they’ll risk anything there again, at least not so soon.” I hoped.

  A couple of guys in business suits came in and sat up at the mahogany bar on the opposite side from me. Sal went over to fill their orders.

  I played moodily with my whiskey tumbler. The one name I hadn’t given Murray was Michael Furey’s. It wasn’t that I wanted to protect Furey, but I didn’t have proof-just a string of guesses supported only by logic. His name hadn’t even been in Star’s Rolodex.

  Before I started my own offensive I wanted to know how deep Furey’s involvement went with his neighborhood pals-whether he’d just put some of his daddy’s life insurance money into Farmworks when they gave him the opportunity-or done more. Like maybe borrowed heroin from the police evidence stores so Cerise could kill herself.

  If he’d done something like that-I couldn’t imagine trying to break the news to Bobby. I’d tried today without evidence. If proof came in-I shuddered. It just better not be me that lets Bobby know about it, that was all.

  When Murray came out of Sal’s office I went in to call Lotty to let her know what I was doing. She’d heard the story of my bomb from her clinic nurse, who’d called after watching the six o’clock news and was well and truly alarmed. She wanted me to come stay with her, wait in seclusion until the police caught my assailant, but when she heard what response they were giving me she reluctantly agreed I was making the right decision.

  “Only, Vic-be careful, all right? I couldn’t bear it if you got killed. Will you think of me before you stick your head in front of a gun?”

  “Christ, Lotty, I’ll think of me before I do that. Don’t. Don’t think I’m that careless of my life. I’m more frightened now than I can remember being in a good long while. If Bobby Mallory were paying the least attention to me, I wouldn’t touch this business with a barge pole.”

  We talked a little longer. By the time we hung up I was close to crying. I got up slowly from Sal’s desk and went back through the mahogany door to the bar. My palms were tingling with nervousness, but a warm afterglow from the whiskey kept my stomach in place.

  The bar had cleared out. Sal was washing the empties as her cousin brought them in from the tables. She finished sticking a row of glasses in their slots above the bar and came over to me.

  “You sure you want to take off now, girl?”

  “Yup.” I stuck my hands deep in my pockets. My right fingers ran into metal. I pulled out the Cavalier keys-I’d forgotten putting them there. The sight of my Chevy logo stamped into their heads increased my nervousness.

  Sal isn’t given to demonstrativeness but she came around the front of the bar to hug me tightly. “You be careful, Vic. I don’t like this at all.”

  “It’s a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done,” I recited in attempted bravado.

  “If you die you’re not going to land in a better place than you’ve ever been, so just watch yourself, you hear?”

  “Do my best, Sal.”

  Murray offered me a lift north, “Then maybe I’ll just cruise around the block every now and then to see whether you’re still alive.”

  “Shut up, Ryerson,” Sal said roughly. “Gallows humor isn’t going down well tonight.”

  We stood awkwardly silent for a few minutes. A late customer came in, breaking the spell. Murray and I left while Sal stirred a martini f
or him.

  Murray and I have a style of banter together that somehow precludes true intimacy. Tonight I was too nervous to respond in kind to his jokes. Too nervous to respond at all. I kept rubbing my palms dry against my jean legs and trying not to imagine what MacDonald might do next.

  44

  An Old Friend Catches Up

  Murray dropped me at the neighborhood car rental. He waited while I checked the engine-whether out of courtesy or because he was hoping for another dynamite story, since he’d missed the first, I didn’t ask. No one could have known I’d called Bad Wheels for a car; it was just my jangling nerves that made me look.

  The Tempo’s engine ignited with a lurching rumble, but no flames shot out from under the hood. When Murray saw I wasn’t going up in smoke, he tore off in his battered Fiero, leaving me drumming my fingers on the wheel in indecision.

  The sun had set. It would be light for another half hour or so, not really long enough for me to go hunting Elena with any confidence. If Michael had found and killed her, would it matter that her body lay waiting for me until morning? Of course she wouldn’t be alone, exactly-there were all those rats I’d seen last week.

  It made my palms and feet tremble when I remembered the little ball of fur I’d encountered groping for my flashlight in the dark. I drove home, parking on Nelson west of Racine and going down the alley to the back of my building.

  Peppy set up a terrific barking when I came in the back gate. Mr. Contreras appeared at the kitchen door, holding her on a short leash with his left hand and carrying a pipe wrench in his right.