Shell Game

by Sara Paretsky

  “So you’re alone, not with the sheriff.” His narrow face was gray and puffy.

  “Yep, but there’s a deputy across the street, so please let me in before they catch sight of you and photograph us together.”

  “You afraid of being seen with me?” he jeered, but he backed up.

  “No. I’m afraid if they connect us it will limit my effectiveness when I’m trying to talk to your friends or your enemies.”

  “Do you know who they are, either my friends or my enemies?” he asked as he led me up two flights of stairs.

  “That’s why I’m here, hoping you’ll tell me.”

  I followed him into his apartment. It was a studio, dominated by a worktable that filled most of the room. A bed in the corner was unmade; papers and books littered the floor and much of the tabletop, but he was messy, not squalid—no food or unwashed dishes were sitting around.

  Besides the papers, the tabletop held several scale models, dollhouse-size machinery with miniature gears and belts and fans. I bent to study them.

  “Looking for bombs?” he said.

  “Admiring the craft. Did you build these?” I reached out to touch the tiny gear shaft.

  “Don’t—they’re delicate!” He pulled my hand away. “What do you think they are?”

  I pointed to the copper top at the end of one model. “It looks like part of a Scottish whisky distillery.”

  “Then we’re on the right track—this is supposed to be a portable water distiller. It converts human waste into power and steam and water.”

  I thought he was joking, but his face had come alive. He explained the workings in detail. I was impressed by what he knew and how good a job he’d done building his prototype.

  “This is what your Engineers in a Free State are creating?”

  The sullen glaze settled over his face again. “That’s why you came, of course, to help the police interrogate me.”

  “I don’t want you arrested, Felix, unless you murdered Lawrence Fausson, of course, but I don’t believe you did, so why won’t you tell anyone what you’re doing, or who and what you know?”

  He bent over one of his miniatures, making a minute adjustment to a gear. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper, addressed to the gear.

  “I just can’t. If I could, I would tell you, but I can’t.”

  I looked for a place to sit and finally pulled a chair away from the table. A book was open to something like an architect’s drawing, a figure of a ram with a long curling horn overlain with circles and grids. Numbers and letters in small print were explained in italics on the left. A photograph fluttered out. I bent to pick it up, but Felix was ahead of me, so fast our heads bumped.

  I backed away, rubbing my temple. The glimpse I had of the photo was of a bright gold shape, but Felix grabbed the book from me and put the photograph into it before I could see either the book or the picture clearly, although I made out the title along the spine: Art in Copper: A Technical History. Beneath that was the Library of Congress call code, along with the IIT Library stamp.

  I stared at him, astonished that he felt so secretive about a technical book.

  “It isn’t mine,” he muttered, and stuffed the book into his backpack. “I don’t want anyone getting it dirty.”

  “Yes, of course . . . I’m committed to helping Lotty and your lawyer save you from an arrest. One thing that would help is some reasons why Fausson might have had your number, since you say you didn’t know him.”

  “I never met him; I never spoke to him.” The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed convulsively. “I have no idea why or how Fausson had my number.”

  “He spent a lot of time at a Syrian-Lebanese center in the southwest suburbs. Did you ever go there, maybe do a presentation for them with some of the Engineers in a Free State?”

  “That sounds like a cop question,” he protested.

  I gave a sad smile. “I am a kind of cop, I guess, but it wasn’t meant as a cop question. I was thinking maybe someone at the center knew both of you and wrote your number down for him. He might have wanted—I don’t know what he might have wanted. But he could have had a reason for trying to reach you.”

  He shook his head, but the worry lines in his face deepened.

  “What about Force 5, the cleaning company?”

  Felix became completely still. “How did you find out about them?”

  “Lawrence Fausson worked for them. Do you?”

  He shook his head, in slow, jerky movements, almost like a machine he himself might have created.

  I tried several other gambits, but I couldn’t get him to say anything else. Force 5 had shut him up thoroughly. I couldn’t even figure out if the tense headshake meant he didn’t work there or was a guilty reaction to my uncovering the cleaning company’s name.

  I finally gave up. “I have an appointment with Dean Pazdur. Lotty says he threatened you with expulsion?”

  “Not that crude,” Felix muttered. “Just—I haven’t done well in my classes this winter. He said I should take a leave of absence, go home to Canada, see whether it all blows over.”

  “I presume he knows the U.S. has an extradition treaty with Canada. But maybe if you left it would slow down the sheriff’s juggernaut. Do you want to leave?”

  His dark eyes flickered to a chest of drawers by the door. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  That was all I could get out of him. I urged him to call me at any hour, day or night, as soon as he wanted to talk, and turned to leave.

  On my way out, I stopped at the bureau. On top was a book I recognized, a slim volume, azure, with a design inlaid in silver.

  “Tarik Kataba’s poems?” I was amazed. “Fausson had this same book next to his bed. And you still tell me you never knew him?”

  Felix grabbed the book and clutched it to his heart. “Damn you, Vic, damn you, I never met Fausson, I never talked to him. Why can’t I have a book of poetry of my own. Do you know every person who reads—I don’t know—whatever poet you like yourself?”

  Angry tears spurted from the corners of his eyes.

  A kaleidoscope turned in my head: the woman with the long braid on Devon Avenue. The daughter who’d accepted a special award for Arabic poetry while Tarik Kataba was in prison.

  “Kataba—his daughter is a student here, isn’t she?” I said softly.

  He looked at me, yearning, loss, impotent fury chasing across his face. “Oh, go away, just go away.”

  He collapsed onto the edge of the bed, clutching the book, silently weeping. I went to him and kissed the top of his head, but he refused to look up.

  33

  Blindsided

  I had to sprint to get to the engineering building in time for my appointment with Dean Pazdur. I ran past something that looked like a giant warehouse, darted between the cars on State Street, and was presenting my card to Pazdur’s executive assistant as the clock hanging from the ceiling read 1:24. Nine minutes late, close enough—especially since Pazdur himself kept me waiting for another ten.

  Pazdur’s office was in the corner of the second floor, where I could see across State Street to the L platform. The station looked like a large corrugated tube; maybe it was supposed to make me think of daring architecture, but it looked rickety, like a place where muggers could lurk to attack students getting off the train.

  Pazdur rose to greet me as I came in but repeated his warning. “I’m not sure how useful it is for you to meet with me, because I am not going to discuss student academic performance or private lives with anyone unconnected with the Institute, or who isn’t a family member.”

  He was a man perhaps in his forties, with thinning blond hair and a square face, the kind that people think betokens authority. His desk held the normal paper clutter of an administrative office, along with the requisite computer, pictures of his family—three grinning blond kids, a smiling wife, an eager terrier—and models of different buildings and machines, none as intricate as the ones Felix had created.

&
nbsp; I sat down. “I have to start someplace, Dr. Pazdur. I was with Felix Herschel when the cops took him out to Cap Sauers Holding to identify a dead body, so I have significant skin in the game, so to speak.”

  “Even so—”

  “Even so, Felix couldn’t identify the dead man. He’s been questioned numerous times by the sheriff’s police, who aren’t happy to give him the same privacy you value. It’s my understanding that you spoke to someone from the police about their reaction to their interviews with Felix?”

  Pazdur frowned. “Who told you that?”

  “Is that an outraged denial? You didn’t speak to the police about Felix?”

  “He’s a student here. If he’s committed a crime, the school has a responsibility to the whole institution to act. And since he won’t tell anyone anything, it makes it hard for us to spring to his defense.”

  “Felix told us that you were concerned because he wouldn’t tell the cops what he did on his vacation in the Boundary Waters. He says you suggested he drop out and go back to Canada. Did you?”

  Pazdur studied the street below us, where students were crossing State Street, heading into the warehouse-like building, or coming back toward us with cups of coffee and sandwiches.

  “Felix is a talented young man,” he said at last. “All of our students are talented in one way or another, of course, but Felix has a particular gift with metal, almost a sculptor’s understanding of what and how it can be shaped. He also has the mathematical interest in stresses and alloys and so on that we expect here. He has the potential to be an outstanding metals engineer.”

  “Have you told him that?”

  “Oh, yes.” Pazdur smiled briefly. “It doesn’t do anyone any good to be praised behind their backs, any more than it does to be criticized there. But he’s been neglecting his work. Ever since that disastrous day in November when ICE agents came on campus, Felix has become a sloppy student. If he’d performed like this his first term, he would be on academic probation. He was so gifted, so above average, in his fall performance that I’ve been cutting him a fair amount of slack. But the police inquiry, adding to his own anger over ICE actions—it’s making it hard for him to be the student he not only can be but needs to be.”

  “You don’t think he’s doing, let’s say, radical work, do you?”

  Pazdur curled his lip. “Making bombs, you mean? If he is, he’s not doing it on campus. No, the students he’s working with are designing a prototype to turn human waste into drinking water and power. It’s been done, but on a large scale. They’re trying to build something that’s genuinely portable. Portable and potable.” He smirked—it was obviously a joke he liked to repeat.

  “Felix showed me a prototype,” I said. “The crafting was beautiful, but of course I have no idea whether it would work or not. Was Lawrence Fausson ever connected to the school?”

  “Fausson?” Pazdur was puzzled. “Oh, that was the dead man in the woods, wasn’t it. If he was connected to IIT, I haven’t heard anything in the rumor mill, and that’s the kind of thing the mill thrives on. Why? Do you have evidence he was a student here?”

  “Nope. But I assume you know why the cops are focusing on Felix—they found a scrap of paper in Fausson’s pocket with Felix’s phone number on it. Felix claims they never met, but why did Fausson have his number? I thought if Fausson had been on this campus in some capacity, their paths would have crossed. Can you check?”

  Pazdur muttered something that I chose not to hear, but he called his assistant and asked her to look up Fausson.

  While we waited, I said, “I don’t know why you think Felix would be better off at home. We have an extradition treaty with Canada. Besides, if he leaves Chicago, the cops will take it as an admission of guilt.”

  “If he stays here and doesn’t cooperate, there will be a mess—arrest, spotlight on the campus, student protests, everything I’m trying to avoid.”

  “That’s disappointing—I was hoping you had some plan that would help Felix, but you want to jettison him to save the school.”

  “I’m responsible for the whole engineering school, not just one student—and one who’s difficult to deal with—oh, thank you, Kim.” He hung up. “We’ve never had a Fausson here, as a student or janitor or even a lacrosse coach. Anything else?”

  “Why did you say ‘janitor’?” I asked sharply.

  He glared at me. “The first word that came to mind. If there’s nothing else, I have a student waiting with actual engineering questions.”

  “You’re right. One last question. Do you have anyone here named Kataba?”

  “Is this a trick?” Pazdur was suddenly furious, his fair skin turning a blotchy red. “You already know the answer to that.”

  I shook my head, bewildered.

  “If you’ve been talking to young Herschel, I’m sure he told you. I resent you trying to trick me.”

  “Honestly, Dr. Pazdur, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And Felix said nothing to me about anyone by that name. Is it a man or a woman?”

  Pazdur’s face was still rigid with anger, but he got up to shut his office door. “We have a student here named Rasima Kataba; she was taken into custody by ICE on Thursday afternoon. Tell me that you didn’t know about this.”

  I gaped at him. “Was it on the news?” I managed to ask.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, trying to decide if my ignorance was real. “We’ve tried to keep it quiet: our international students are already under too much pressure. You really don’t know about this? Felix didn’t tell you?”

  “Is she undocumented?”

  “She has a student visa, but ICE agents came on Thursday to question her about her father. They say he’s here illegally and that she’s using her visa status to hide him and block his deportation. When she refused to answer their questions, they took her into custody. They’ve been interrogating me and my staff, as if we were somehow fomenting terrorism by admitting her as a student.”

  Felix and his tears, hugging his copy of Kataba’s poems. He was in love with a Syrian woman with a long braid who’d run afoul of U.S. immigration laws. If she was still in Chicago it would explain why Felix himself was unwilling to leave.

  “You said you were keeping this quiet, but you also thought Felix would have told me. Does he know?”

  Pazdur bit his lower lip, reluctant to let out more information, but finally said, “The Engineers in a Free State were meeting in one of our common rooms down the hall when the ICE agents arrived. Herschel and seven or eight others were there.”

  “You know this means everyone on campus will have heard by now,” I said. “I’m surprised you don’t have protestors lining the sidewalks.”

  Pazdur’s shoulders slumped. “You’re probably right. But you’re sidestepping my question. How did you know about her?”

  “I don’t, not really, but I’m pretty sure her father is a Syrian poet named Tarik Kataba. Lawrence Fausson had a copy of Tarik’s poems in his apartment; there was a newspaper clipping inside about a special poetry prize Rasima Kataba accepted on her father’s behalf when he was in prison. Some people in the Syrian community think they saw Tarik in Chicago recently. Fausson’s connection to Kataba is one of the few facts I’ve uncovered. If Tarik’s daughter is a student here, that might show me how Fausson learned Felix’s name, even if the two never actually met.”

  “You’re sure this poet is her father?” Pazdur asked.

  “It’s a pretty good guess,” I said. “I’ve never met either of them. But Rasima Kataba is the daughter who’s named in this clipping about the prize.”

  “I’ve had to go through all her documents, of course, since the government has been interrogating me,” Pazdur said bitterly. “In the personal statement Rasima submitted with her application, she said her father was a bicycle mechanic in Saraqib—the Syrian town where she grew up. She didn’t mention poetry.”

  “I don’t imagine poets make any better a living in Syria than they do here—he had to work at
something,” I said. “If he was a bicycle mechanic, maybe she grew up taking engines and gear shafts apart.” I thought of the beautifully wrought chain belts in Felix’s model; had Rasima created those?

  “Her fundamentals and her abilities were strong. We had every reason to admit her.”

  He sounded defensive enough that I asked if he thought Rasima was guilty of some crime that the school should have known about.

  Pazdur fidgeted in his chair. “No. I don’t. But I never looked at her record until these immigration agents questioned me about why we didn’t do a background check on her family. There doesn’t seem to be any record of how she arrived in the States, or who she came with. It didn’t matter so much three years ago. Now, of course—” He flung up his hands.

  Now, of course.

  “I heard her mother is dead,” I said.

  “A fact I only learned during the interrogation ICE put me through. The agent seemed to think we were damned near colluding with ISIS by not have a dossier on every one of Rasima’s relatives.”

  He slapped the desktop hard enough to make his scale models jump. “Felix Herschel is a complication I don’t need right now.”

  I ignored that outburst. “Does ICE think Rasima’s father is dangerous, or are they just trying to get every person not born here out of the country?”

  “I don’t know. This is a hideous time on a campus like mine, and Felix—if he’s involved in something illegal—I need to know sooner, not later. I can’t afford federal scrutiny of every aspect of my school.”

  Pazdur’s PA opened the door just wide enough to stick her head through. “I’m sorry, Richard, but Keith Lamont has been waiting twenty minutes now for his appointment.”

  I went to the door. “I’ll call you if I learn anything helpful. Why don’t you do the same?”

  Pazdur nodded wearily. He was looking again at the L, as if he wanted to jump through the window and ride it to the end of the line.