34
The Accused
Before I got into my car, I craned my neck to stare at the corrugated tube overhead. It wasn’t made of cardboard but layered metal beams whose rusted bolts made it look unstable.
ICE had detained Rasima Kataba, threatening her with deportation because she wouldn’t tell them where her father was. My own mother came to America in 1944 at nineteen, illegally, after her Italian-Jewish mother was taken into custody by the Fascists. Gabriella’s life here hadn’t been easy, but no one had tried to throw her out, throw her back to certain death. How had we become the country that imprisoned children for the crime of not having a birth certificate?
I called Felix.
“Now what?”
I put a finger in my ear as a train roared overhead, rattling the rusty joints. “If you haven’t told Martha Simone about your friend, you should. Martha can find out where she’s being held and get her the legal support she needs.”
“How—who—” He choked.
“Dean Pazdur told me what happened. I’d rather you not say anything else on the phone: your calls are almost certainly being monitored. I’m still on campus—do you want me to stop by before I leave?”
“No. I have class in twenty minutes. Vic—thank you, Vic.” His voice cracked—perhaps relief that he wasn’t carrying his grief alone. “Could you call Martha for me?”
I used a burn phone to call the lawyer. Communications with Simone were privileged, so even if someone listened in on my calls, they couldn’t use them, at least not legally.
Simone promised to get on the case as soon as possible. “Is Dr. Herschel going to cover these charges?” she asked.
Of course Simone couldn’t work pro bono. “Add your fee for Ms. Kataba to my bill with Freeman,” I said.
My six-figure bill for legal fees was a guarantee that I’d be working until I was older than Mr. Contreras.
“Before you hang up, I need to be able to prove I’m on the side of the angels,” I said. “I’m on my way to Rasima Kataba’s apartment and it would help if you sent me a document stating you represent her and that I’m assisting you, so that her neighbors believe me when I tell them I’m not with ICE.”
“It would have to be right this minute? Okay.” I could hear her typing as she talked. “How did you get her address?”
“Felix made a beeline for her building after we left the woods last Wednesday,” I said. “But I don’t know what surname she uses on her door.”
“So Felix went straight to her but didn’t think to mention it to his counsel? What else is that young man hiding?”
I didn’t try to answer. As I started my car, I couldn’t believe it had been only last week that all this had started. Felix and the dead Fausson in the woods, followed instantly by Harmony’s appearance at my front door. I felt seven years older, not seven days. I looked at my face in the rearview mirror. Gray hollows under my eyes, almost like misapplied eye shadow, deepened my hazel eyes to a matching gray. Very sexy.
I bounced across the rutted gravel to the street, heading east to the lake. ICE agents had undoubtedly been at Rasima’s apartment ahead of me, but they’d been looking for evidence about her father.
The Syrians I’d spoken to in the Grommet Building had acknowledged working with Fausson. They’d clammed up and backed away when I brought up Tarik Kataba’s name. They knew him, obviously, and were protecting him. Kataba knew Fausson in Syria, so the two were connected and connected to the Grommet Building through the cleaning service. If Kataba had left any evidence connecting him to Fausson, ICE would have seized it. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to find, but I felt a need to look.
I’d debated asking Felix for Rasima’s apartment number, but I couldn’t do that on the phone, and I had a feeling Felix would object, hotly, to my exploring her home—especially if he realized I’d followed him there the night we’d looked at Fausson’s body.
I was waiting at the light on Cottage when my phone rang: the University of Chicago exchange. It was Candra van Vliet at the Oriental Institute, demanding Ms. Warshawski.
“Who did you talk to about our Dagon?” she asked without preamble.
“Your what?” Cars behind me were honking; I pulled to the side.
“The Dagon—the fish-man that you saw here on Monday. Who did you talk to about it?”
“I’ll be glad to tell you if you explain why you’re asking,” I said.
“It was on the news Monday night.”
“So it was,” I agreed. “I heard it myself.”
“And that is why you need to come down to the Institute at once to discuss who you talked to about it.”
“I didn’t get the memo,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” she snapped. “What memo?”
“The memo that said today was the day to call me with irrational demands. Do you want to start this conversation again from the beginning, or shall we hang up so I can get to my own meeting with my own clients?”
A pause, while she thought it over. “Very well. Please tell me if you described the Dagon to anyone.”
“No, ma’am. I talked about it with Mary-Carol Kooi. Period, end of story.”
A longer pause. “Someone broke into the Institute last night and stole it.”
“Wasn’t me,” I said.
“I wasn’t accusing you,” Van Vliet said stiffly.
“Your call began with an idiotic accusation.”
“I apologize.” Her voice was even frostier. “I am so disconcerted that I am not thinking clearly.”
“I hope you reported the theft to the police.”
“Of course we did, but once an artifact that rare has been stolen, it almost always disappears into the underground collector world and is never seen again.”
“I still don’t know why you called me. I know nothing about antique art or Dagons or how to buy and sell on the illegal market.” I put the Mustang into gear and moved back into traffic. “I presume you had locked it in a vault. I’m sure the university’s insurers will ask that question.”
She was taken aback but said, “I’m on my way to Philadelphia for a conference; I’d left it on my desk with a note to Mary-Carol Kooi, telling her what steps I wanted her to take to identify it. Very few people knew that it was in my office, but the thief knew to go there. My lock is easy to circumvent, but they used violence, breaking the glass pane in the door. They also took my Inanna figure.”
I was guessing that was the eight-breasted goddess, but I said politely, “I’m sorry for your trouble. That kind of invasion always feels like a personal violation. I hope you’ve also informed the FBI and Interpol.”
I hung up but had barely turned onto Lake Shore Drive when she phoned again. I could understand why Felix answered my call with “Now what?” but I said hello with as much politeness as I could muster.
“It’s Pete Sansen, Ms. Warshawski. I met you Monday in Candra’s office.”
Oh, yes, the balding, sunburned director of the Oriental Institute.
“We’re all in shock down here. We have a collection of immense value in the museum, and we have the requisite security for it, but whoever came in was able to bypass our lobby security. They didn’t try to get into the museum but went straight to Candra’s office.”
I kept my focus on the traffic, which was moving fast to beat the afternoon rush.
“I wasn’t surprised that the Dagon made it into the news,” Sansen said. “By the end of the day Monday, most of the Sumerian students and all the museum staff knew about it, including its dramatic arrival in the middle of the night. Of course they were all talking about it. But very few people knew Candra had it.”
“The package was addressed to her,” I objected.
He was silent. Only the ticking seconds on my car’s computer screen told me we were still connected.
He came back on the line after a minute. “Yes, that’s true. But she hadn’t put it in the museum vault; she’d locked it in her own desk, hoping to stud
y it more thoroughly today.”
“I had no way of knowing that, Professor Sansen. But even if I’d known, I wouldn’t have thought about it—she already had a number of other valuable-seeming objects in her office, including the figurine she says was also taken.”
“We’ve talked to the police, we’ve spoken to the FBI’s art crimes unit, and of course we’ve put it out on Interpol as well as advising the international artifacts project. But you have an eye for Chicago crimes. I’m hoping to persuade you to come down and look at our crime scene, to see if there’s something we’ve overlooked.”
I ran my afternoon schedule through my head. “I couldn’t do it before seven-thirty this evening, and I would expect to be paid my usual fee, a hundred dollars an hour plus expenses.”
“Even for a consultation?” he asked.
“In this case, yes. I’ve got an overfull caseload, and Professor Van Vliet began the conversation by accusing me of playing a role in your fish-man’s theft.”
“Ah, yes. That was awkward, wasn’t it? Seven-thirty, then. I’ll talk to our purchasing department about how to classify your work.”
I didn’t think I could do anything for them, but it was an odd problem: an unusual object shows up in the middle of the night and is stolen in the middle of the following night. It made me curious enough to want to see the crime scene.
I had reached my exit at Wilson Avenue when my phone rang again. This time it was Dick, furious that I’d been out to see Teri.
“She says you came with all kinds of accusations about my relationship with the company that Reno was working for.”
It was hard to believe that his light baritone had ever made my heart flutter.
“What company was that?” I asked.
“Rest EZ, as you damned well know.”
“When I saw you last week, you claimed not to know where Reno had been working,” I objected. “Then you said Glynis gave her a list of prospective employers. Now you’re hot and bothered about Rest EZ.”
“I didn’t want you butting your know-it-all nose into my business. It isn’t perjury when you’re trying to get your ex-wife to leave you alone.”
Maybe that was supposed to be a joke, but it didn’t come close to making me want to laugh. “Dick, I have been fed so many lies this last week that it’s almost been like eating fois gras morning, noon, and night. After a while, the diet is so rich you start to choke on it.”
“Before you say anything slanderous, you should know I’m recording this call,” he said stiffly.
“Just like Teri. Tell me why you’ve called: I’m keeping a client waiting.”
“Then you stay on the topic. You told Teri Reno was blackmailing me—”
“Jesus, Dick—she said Reno was blackmailing you. I suggested she urge you to dig deeper into Rest EZ and Trechette. They are highly secretive companies. If you are in on their secrets, I hope they are not illegal or disgusting. My words to Teri were to ask if Reno had come to you with evidence about illegal acts by either company.”
“She didn’t,” he snapped.
“But she talked to you when she got back, right? Even though you and Glynis said she hadn’t.”
“That’s because my actions with my nieces are my business, and I’m fucking tired of you making them your business.”
“Right, Dick. You didn’t suggest to your clients that she be one of their hostesses at their debauch in St. Matthieu last month. And so when she asked you for the directors’ names, you felt you had to protect them, not Reno. Correct?”
“‘Debauch’? What kind of word is that?”
“Sounds French to me, but I’m not a linguist.”
“You know what I mean. My clients don’t conduct themselves like that.”
“So no one assaulted Reno, you don’t know where she is, and you’re not worried about her well-being.”
“Those two girls know how to land on their feet, believe me.”
“I think we know two different women. Or should that be four different women, the two you know and my two? Actually, I’ve only met one of them. Teri told you about Harmony being attacked on the lakefront?”
“That was unfortunate. Glynis tried to find out where she’s staying so we could send flowers,” Dick said even more stiffly. “I assume you know, since you’ve set yourself up as her protector.”
“You might send lilies,” I offered. “They’re traditional for funerals, and I very much fear Reno is dead. Doesn’t that worry you?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Reno’s fate isn’t what Arnaud Minable wanted to talk to you about Monday night, was it?” I prodded.
“You have a hell of a nerve, Vic, thinking I’d collude in Reno’s death, or stand by while she died. You go around saying that in public, and you’ll face a slander suit so fast you won’t be able to say ‘subpoena’ before you’re reading it.”
“Bravo, Dick. I can see the jury, all teary-eyed over the misunderstood, tenderly loving uncle. Until, of course, we start crossing you and Teri and your mom on your absolute refusal to help Becky or her daughters.”
I paused for a beat, to let that sink in. He started to sputter, but I cut across him ruthlessly.
“Arnaud Minable seems to be representing Trechette in a suit filed against an insurance subsidiary by North American Ti-Balt. Trechette owns Rest EZ. Reno works—worked for Rest EZ. You connect those dots into a different drawing.”
“How do you know about Trechette and Ti-Balt?” he demanded.
“Lawsuits are filed in court and court documents are open to the public.” I put a maximum of patronage into my tone. “I’ve been trying to find out who owned Rest EZ so I could track down who Reno ran afoul of in St. Matthieu. The Trechette name popped up in dozens of places, but no human face was attached. So looking at legal action was the logical next step.”
It had been the logical step, just not one that occurred to me until this minute. As soon as I got back from inspecting Rasima Kataba’s apartment, I’d spend some time with LexisNexis, to see who else was suing Trechette.
“Runkel, Soraude and Minable are based in Havre-des-Anges,” Dick said. “The firm needs a U.S. address, so they’re renting space from us, but we don’t handle any of their business. I may have offered some advice to Minable on key aspects of U.S. foreign tax compliance, but I’m not party to their actions.”
“So you don’t care if I do more research into Ti-Balt v. Trechette?” I asked.
“Would you stop if I did care?” he asked.
I laughed. “Nope. Just curious about how disinterested you actually are. After all, only two days ago, I saw you leaving for dinner with Minable and Gervase Kettie. You wouldn’t bring Minable to that gathering if he wasn’t important to Kettie. And if he’s important to a power ranger, that means he’s important to you.”
“Be very careful what you say on an open line,” Dick advised me. “Very careful indeed.”
“Thank you, Dick,” I said meekly. “I appreciate your caring enough about me to give me such valuable advice.”
35
Home Without a Minder
I checked my e-mail. Martha Simone had come through with a formal document, describing her relationship with Felix and Rasima and listing me as an investigator helping uncover evidence that could be used in both Felix’s and Rasima’s defense.
I found an Internet café on Lawrence a few blocks from Rasima’s building and printed out the document. I also checked online for a photo. Rasima didn’t have a Facebook page, but she was in some student photos from the IIT engineering school, wearing jeans and sweatshirts, but covering her hair. Her distinctive face with its deep-set, thoughtful eyes looked much as it had in the photo of her at thirteen.
The caption described some of the water projects she’d worked on with her adviser. I could picture her and Felix, heads bent together over the machinery in the engineering school lab, creating their prototypes. Of course they’d fallen in love, or at least Felix had.
; I cropped the group photos so that I had separate pictures of both Felix and Rasima. I left my car at the meter on Lawrence and walked to Rasima’s building. In the middle of the afternoon, kids were starting to come home from school. I followed a group of teen girls up the walk to the entrance, but stopped to study the directory, looking for kataba. 4P. I rang the bell. The girls stared at me, exuding a whiff of teen menace.
“No one is there,” one of them said. “And the immigration, they already trashed the apartment.”
“Don’t talk to her, Raina—she’s a cop, she already knows!”
“Yeah, you can tell—look at her fist—she punched someone too hard.”
“Ooh, chill, Hania, white lady cop’s getting mad, she’s going to hit you with the other hand.”
I’d been a tough teen myself, although with a cop for a father, I wouldn’t have dared join in cop-baiting. To this group, I looked Anglo, which was mildly ironic: as a child I’d been the Jew’s daughter or the Wop’s kid.
I leaned against the inner door, blocking their way. “You girls are impressive, but I’m not with ICE or the city; I work for the lawyer who’s trying to get Rasima Kataba out of detention. The lawyer is also trying to keep Felix from being arrested for murder.”
I showed them my PI license and the letter from Martha Simone. They looked at each other, daring to be the one to read the letter or touch the license.
A couple of men came off the elevator and headed to the exit. I moved away from the door so they could leave. One of them spoke sharply to the girls in Arabic. They scowled, but the one called Hania pulled her scarf, which was wrapped around her neck, over her hair. The other two stared defiantly at the men, not covering their hair, but moving away from them into the building. When I followed the girls, the men eyed me narrowly but didn’t try to question me.
“What was that about?” I asked as we waited for the elevator.
“Shaming Islam,” Raina muttered.
“We don’t really know Rasima,” the girl with the scarf said. “She’s like eight years older, but she’s at college, she’s going to be somebody, not just a mother staying at home behind the cooking pots.”
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