But this I will admit: before he slipped it in, he made me slip it on—the ring, I mean.
He said, “Gotta...start...making an...an honest... honest woman...out of you....”
“Take,” I said, “your time....”
FOUR
The doctor’s pen scratched at his notebook paper, filling a lull.
Then he said, “Let’s get back to new business, Ms. Tree. What was it about the Richard Addwatter killing that touched a nerve?”
“The other victim,” I said.
“The woman with Addwatter at the motel?”
“No. The other other victim—Mrs. Addwatter.”
“All right. What about her case touched a nerve, then?”
I glanced over at him. Reflections obscured the eyes behind the lenses and his solemn visage with the spade-shaped beard made him a figure in the kind of dream he might be asked to interpret.
“I’ll ask you one, Doc. How often does a homicide lieutenant encourage a P.I. to get involved in a murder case?”
Cook County Memorial Hospital, on West Harrison, takes up roughly fifteen city blocks and works at keeping the citizens of Chicago alive and well. When that doesn’t pan out, the Cook County Morgue, located at the hospital for 130 years or so, takes over.
The female Chicagoan on the metal tray—pale gray in her dead nakedness—was getting the kind of exam that doesn’t do the patient much good, no matter how thorough Dr. Pravene might be.
In his late thirties, a bland, blandly handsome East Indian in white, from lab coat to pants and even shoes, Dr. Pravene was just about to begin his autopsy, which seemed overkill, considering the cause of death just might be the three bullet wounds, one in the throat, another in the chest, last in the stomach.
Rafe and I were keeping a respectful distance. Autopsies don’t make me sick but they aren’t my idea of a good time. And if it had been any more unpleasantly cold in that cement-block chamber, our breaths would’ve been showing. Everybody’s but the corpse’s, anyway.
Rafe was saying, “Dr. Pravene found something interesting in the vic’s tox screen.”
Pravene, a scalpel in hand, paused, as if he’d been about to slice a birthday cake but somebody at the party reminded him that first the candles needed blowing out.
“Rohypnol, Ms. Tree,” Pravene said.
“Roofies?” I squinted at the doctor, as if trying to bring him into focus, then looked at Rafe the same way. “No offense to the deceased, gentlemen, but why would Richard Addwatter need a date rape drug to ply his charms on this debutante?”
Pravene placed the scalpel in a small tray and came over to give me his full attention; his patient didn’t seem to mind, even though the physician gestured at her in a dismissive manner.
“The drug wasn’t in the female victim’s blood,” Pravene said.
Then he moved over to another metal slab, where his next patient awaited: Richard Addwatter, who had taken bullets in the forehead, center chest and lower belly. The doctor gestured to my client’s late husband.
I said, “The male vic?”
Pravene nodded. “Female’s screen did show heroin, among other things—plus she was HIV positive.”
Rafe was at my side. “Hooker,” he said.
I gave him a frown. “You think?”
He ignored that, adding, “Rap sheet thicker than a Stephen King.”
“And probably at least as frightening.” I drew in a breath, regretting it instantly as a chemical taste invaded. “So...what’s a high-end john like Richard Addwatter doing with such a low-rent date?”
Rafe’s face was placid but his eyes weren’t. He answered my question with one of his own: “What do we get if somebody drugs the husband, hires a hooker who won’t be missed, and sets the psychotic wife in motion?”
I shrugged. “I dunno—instant dead Dick, maybe? ...But who wanted Dick dead?”
Rafe didn’t respond, not right away. Instead he nodded a thank you to Dr. Pravene, who nodded back and returned to his work as the homicide cop led me gently by the arm out into the hallway.
“Want to know who wanted Addwatter dead?” Rafe asked. “How about somebody whose books he’d cooked? Or maybe whose books he wouldn’t cook?”
I was shaking my head. “Addwatter Accounting? With their spotless rep?”
“Michael, since when do you buy P.R. bullshit?” His grunt was almost a laugh. “Anyway, a term like ‘spotless’ can’t be applied to certain of the illustrious firm’s clients.”
“Don’t be coy, Rafe. Drop a name.”
“Okay.” He grinned at me and there was something ruthless in it. “How about I drop this one? Muerta Enterprises International?”
As cold as the morgue had been, the chill up my spine was colder.
“Muerta,” I said, the word sounding half prayer, half curse. “They’re supposed to’ve gone entirely legit, since—”
One eyebrow hiked itself into a sort of question mark. “Since your husband put the family patriarch away? Since Mike Tree brought Dominic Muerta down?”
I said nothing.
“You really buy that, Michael?”
And for a while there, as Rafe stood glowering at me, I wasn’t any more talkative than the other residents of the morgue.
But finally I found words and my voice and put them together.
“Let’s see what Captain Steele thinks.”
Rafe didn’t argue.
“Captain Steele,” the doctor said. “He was your husband’s partner.”
“Yes. He heads up the Organized Crime Unit now.”
“They were quite a team, I understand.”
I nodded. “Put Dominic Muerta away—last of the Capone gang godfathers.”
“It was a close friendship, Mike and Captain Steele?”
I whipped a frown his way. “You know how close it was!...Sorry.”
I shouldn’t have snapped at him. The doctor was, after all, merely trying to maintain a professional decorum. He had been my husband’s psychiatrist long before I’d come here for therapy—Mike had been involved in several shootings during his time on the force, making counseling mandatory, and Dr. Cassel was one of the approved shrinks the department used.
“Captain Steele,” he was saying, “was your husband’s best man, at the wedding?”
“Yes. But, Doctor, there’s something...something I haven’t told you that colors all of this.”
“Go ahead.”
“If you don’t mind...I’ll get to it, but...in my own way.”
“Fine. Please. Go on.”
Captain Charles “Chic” Steele was a well-tanned blue-eyed blond, with an endless smile and a cute cleft chin, and had he been twenty, not thirty-five, and in California, not Chicago, you might have taken him for a surfer dude. Not that his attire was in the least bit gnarly: he looked sharp in a tan herringbone sportcoat with a light blue button-down shirt and a gold tie, his slacks a darker tan.
Right now he was on stage at police headquarters, in a big meeting room that bordered on an auditorium, which was filled with police officers, men and women under thirty, a mix of uniformed and plainclothes officers, with a few in “street undercover” attire stirred in.
Behind him, on a huge screen, a succession of images was being projected—images of criminals of various ethnicities. This was a slide show, and a young redheaded policewoman (I knew her a little—Sharon Davis) was running it from a computer at the rear.
“The pitfall,” Chic was saying, “is thinking of these elements as gangbangers—they are not. They are sophisticated criminal organizations. Take the Russian group, for instance—the R.O.C.—which is tied to Miami Colombian groups.”
Russian gangsters, on the screen, were followed by Colombians.
“Now each of you is assigned to one faction,” he told his rapt audience, “but watch for contact between R.O.C. and this new Salvadoran group, spun off from M-13 in California, and these Asian gangs, the Hip Sing and On Leong especially....”
As he conti
nued, Sharon kept the faces coming, Russian, Hispanic, Asian, sometimes mug shots, mostly surveillance photos.
Rafe and I were taking this in at the rear, not far from where Sharon perched at her computer post. The lecture continued for another ten minutes or so, but then the lights came up and the attendees started filing out. Lt. Valer and I moved against the tide to catch Chic, still up on the stage, chatting with a couple of lingerers.
Chic grinned when he saw us and came down the four steps. He extended a hand to Rafe, and they shook, while the OCU captain nodded at me and I did the same back.
Rafe said, “Hope you don’t mind us crashing the party.”
“Never.” He tapped Rafe on the shoulder in tag-you’re-it fashion. “I’d love to get you interested in what we’re doing at OCU. Ready to transfer over from Homicide?”
Rafe shook his head, laughed a little. “No way! I like coming in after the shooting has stopped, not putting my ass out on the firing line and getting shot myself.”
“Spoken like a true Homicide cop,” Chic said.
I was hearing this, but not looking at either of these good-looking coppers, my attention on the pictures that were one after another filling the screen, thanks to the policewoman at the computer doing a post-lecture check-through.
As these largely unfamiliar faces flashed by, I said, “Don’t know many of these new players, Captain—but it sure looks like somebody’s organizing.”
“Yeah,” Chic said, glumly, “and if these factions come together, like the Italian, Irish and Jewish gangsters did back in the Capone days? Well...then we get the perfect criminal storm.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, and met the captain’s blue eyes, “my favorite ‘faction’ didn’t make the cut.”
Chic offered up half a smile. “If you mean LCN, La Cosa Nostra’s cooperating with the Russians big-time back east....Different story here.”
My eyebrows went up. “Really? My memory is, the Muertas were always good at bringing rival factions together.”
Rafe was nodding. “Yeah, Chic—any sign of activity on that front?”
Chic shook his head and a comma of blond hair dangled itself over his forehead. His hands were on his hips. “Guys, I know where you’re comin’ from, but I’ve worked on the Muertas and their LCN ties for many months....We haven’t found a damn thing to link them to organized crime—DEA, Customs, ATF, all come up bupkis.”
“Currently,” I said.
“Currently.” He shrugged. “Sharon! Put Dominic Muerta’s pic up, would you?...It’s been, what, two years since Mike and I put that evil old son of a bitch in stir, and almost that long since he died in there.”
The face on the screen now was familiar, all right—the distinguished, white-haired, dark-glasses-wearing Dominic Muerta, with his narrow, high-cheekboned face seeming more Apache than Sicilian, a slender devil in dapper angelic white.
“And then,” I said, almost to myself, “his daughter steps in. Dominic replaced by Dominique....”
Chic called, “Put up the daughter’s pic, Sharon, would you?”
But Sharon had anticipated the request, and Chic’s question was only half-asked when the image of Dominique Muerta loomed from the screen, a dark-haired woman in her early thirties, sleekly beautiful but something hard around the thin, well-shaped lips and something cold in the dark almond eyes.
More images of her followed, surveillance photos mixed with wire-service ones, all painting a sophisticated, successful picture of a modern businesswoman.
Chic was saying, “Brilliant executive, by all accounts, Dominique Muerta...well-educated, respected by the business community. New generation of Muerta who recognized that enterprises entered into, years ago, as fronts and money laundries had become profitable in their own right. Enormously so. Chiefly, entertainment....”
“Like illegal gambling,” I said lightly, “and narcotics and child porn?”
Chic turned to Rafe. “When’s the last time the Muertas were implicated in any of those, Lieutenant?”
Rafe’s admission may have been reluctant, but it did support Chic’s thesis: “Not since cancer took the old man out.”
Again Chic called back to the policewoman. “Sharon? Would you put up those Muerta Enterprises images?”
“Certainly, Captain.”
And the screen illustrated Chic’s words as he said, “As I tell our troops, Muerta Enterprises is an ever-expanding international network of hotels, theaters and casinos—legal ones. Magazine publishing, music business, Internet...”
Rafe smirked humorlessly. “Nice to know the mob’s gone digital.”
“Only numbers that count to those bastards,” I said, “have dollar signs.”
“Maybe so,” Chic said, “but that’s the American dream, isn’t it, Ms. Tree? They started on the streets, like these current gangbangers...and now they’ve climbed the ladder.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “Now the question is, whose window are they climbing in?”
*
The three of us continued our discussion over dinner, since it occurred to me I hadn’t eaten for nine or ten hours.
Mike Ditka’s was as upscale as its namesake’s image wasn’t, a male bastion of rich wood, polished brass, and sports memorabilia displayed with just a little more pomp than religious relics at the Vatican. We were tucked into a leatherette booth where we were enjoying after-dinner coffee, having disposed of a filet (me), Da Pork Chop (Rafe) and roasted chicken (Chic).
Chic was saying, “We’ve looked under every rock in town, trying to show the Muertas are still connected to organized crime—to establish that the ‘new leaf’ Dominique turned over is strictly cosmetic.” He shrugged. “Nada.”
“They’re going to hide it deep,” I said. “There’ll be more layers than an onion.”
The OCU captain made a face. “So far, peeling ‘em has only made me weep...plus earned me more new orifices than I know what to do with.”
Rafe frowned. “How so?”
“I’ve had the brass warn me off the Muertas three times in the last six months. Twice orally and, most recently, in writing.”
I swallowed a sip of black coffee. “Maybe more than just the Muertas are connected.”
But Chic shook his head. “No. That’s not it. It’s not that the brass are bent, any of ‘em; it’s more that the Muertas’ attorneys have stopped just short of filing official complaints about harassment. Dominique was a big contributor to the mayor’s campaign, last go-round, y’know....”
“I rest my case,” I said.
Rafe’s eyes were tight as he said to Chic, “Isn’t there one thing you’re leaving out, buddy?”
Chic didn’t seem to follow that. “What?”
“You know.”
“Oh....Hell, you’re not starting that again.”
I asked, “Starting what?”
Chic waved a dismissive hand. “It’s a theory Homicide came up with. But OCU can’t get any traction on it, Ms. Tree...though God knows we’ve tried.”
Rafe leaned forward, insistent, his eyes going from me to Chic and back again. “Not a theory. These are real deaths.”
Chic nodded and sighed, then said, “Yes, the deaths are real enough. But there’s no sign that this so-called ‘Event Planner’ is—”
“Event planner?” Now I was sitting forward. “What, like weddings?”
Rafe said, “More like funerals.”
Chic drew in a breath and let it out and, reluctantly, explained. “Idea is the Muertas have a sort of...hitman once removed, who arranges for people to be eliminated in such a way that no mob involvement is indicated or even suspected.”
Rafe picked it up. “Clean hits that don’t seem to be hits at all, ‘cause they are tidy and tied up...leaving nothing for us poor public servants to investigate.”
“Why ‘Event Planner?’ ” I asked.
“Because these aren’t standard hits, they don’t even look like hits at all—accidents, even murders, but not professional killings.
A local politician with national potential—and a strong anti-organized crime background—commits suicide because of an affair. A lawyer in a major civil case gets struck down in traffic at a most convenient time for certain parties. And on and on, including a certain accountant who suddenly starts cheating again, getting himself knocked off by whack-job wifey. There’s more, and I’d bet a year’s pay the seven or eight we know about are just the tip of the goddamned iceberg.”
I returned my attention to Chic. “You obviously aren’t buying into this. Why?”
But I didn’t get a straight answer from Captain Steele until ninety minutes or so later, at my apartment, without Rafe Valer around.
“It’s bad police science,” Chic said. “No offense to Rafe, who is a hell of a detective, but you don’t start with a theory. You develop a theory from evidence... and there isn’t any.”
*
“At your...apartment, Ms. Tree?”
“Uh, yes, Doctor. That’s what I haven’t told you. Over these last few months, I should have been more forthcoming about this.”
“About what exactly?”
As we spoke, Chic was sitting on the edge of my bed in his boxer shorts, getting a cigarette going. He had a nice tan, or what was left of it from our week on Maui, and he was clean and smooth, not like Mike, who’d had hair not just on his chest but his back, a burly bear, whereas his former partner on the PD had a cat-like sleekness.
I was on the bed next to him, sitting up with a pillow behind me. I was wearing a little black nightie, the wispy kind that doesn’t need to come off to accomplish what we’d just done not so long ago.
“And this ‘Event Planner’ idea,” I said, “it’s a notion Rafe came up with himself?”
“Yeah.”
Chic stood. He crossed to a nearby chair where his clothes were draped and began to put them on. He moved with easy grace and confidence, completely unselfconscious.
“In the past five years,” he said, stepping into his trousers, “there have indeed been seven or eight deaths, linked in one way or another to the Muertas.”
“Linked?”
He shook his head. “Not in that way, Michael—these are deaths that have benefited the Muertas...but don’t lead back to them.”
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