Shell Game

by Sara Paretsky

  “When Rasima was born, her father wrote a poem for her. In English, it goes something like, Nothing in life is planned, Not my fate, To fall in love with a tiny scrap / With solemn black eyes / And so we call this scrap Rasima, the plan, the design. Felix doesn’t speak Arabic very well, but he stumbled through it in Arabic, and so I believed it was him, because who else would know that about her?”

  That seemed like a credible if unusual proof of identity. “Did you tell him about the Dagon?”

  She nodded, not looking at me.

  “So when the Dagon went missing, you figured Felix had stolen it?”

  “I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “When he called, he asked how hard it was to break into the Institute. I thought he wanted to make sure the Dagon was safe, but after the break-in—anyway, I called him and asked if he’d taken the Dagon. He said, ‘No, of course not,’ but I didn’t know if I could believe him.”

  “You didn’t tell Professor Van Vliet or Peter about the call?”

  She shook her head, not looking at Sansen or me. “I didn’t want to get him in trouble. I mean, if Rasima and Tarik were being detained by ICE and Felix was connected to them, then telling on Felix could send him to prison.”

  I wanted to sit on the floor and howl. Her motives were noble, but they’d made an investigation into the theft impossible.

  “Why are we having this conversation now? And why are we having it in a place where the music is so loud my brain is getting scrambled?”

  “Because what happened next scared the bejesus out of her,” Sansen said. “She told me that someone had called her tonight, demanding the location of the Dagon.”

  “I told them I didn’t know, that it had been stolen. And the man, it was horrible, he said, ‘We know that, bitch.’ He said the one in Candra’s office was a fake and they wanted the real one.” She started shivering, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “Why did they call you?” I asked.

  “They had a note addressed to me, telling me what to do with the statue.”

  Sansen nodded grimly. “Before she left for Philadelphia, Candra had written down instructions for Mary-Carol, telling her how to test it and what authorities to question about it.”

  “Why didn’t they go after Candra, then, instead of Mary-Carol?”

  “She’s out of town,” Mary-Carol said. “But anyway the man said I must have switched the pieces. I kept telling them I didn’t know anything about it, and then he said, ‘No games, bitch. You ever see pictures of girls in Pakistan after someone threw acid in their faces? Tell us where the real statue is.’

  “They told me they were coming to my apartment to get it. I tried to reach Felix, but he isn’t answering his phone. I couldn’t call Rasima because she’s in that detention center, so I called Peter. He was going to come over to my place, but I heard someone outside my apartment door. I screamed my head off and ran out through the kitchen down the back stairs. I came here, because it’s close to where I live and I didn’t know where else to go.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the situation would go away, would be a mirage compounded of the loud music, the shrieking customers, the late hour. The noise seemed worse when my eyes were closed.

  “Did you and Professor Van Vliet know it was a fake, or suspect it, when you saw it?” I asked Sansen.

  “We didn’t have time to inspect it. It looked authentic, in the sense that it had the detail you’d expect from a Mesopotamian artifact of the early Akkadian period. And the work was beautiful.”

  I turned back to Mary-Carol. “How did Felix know the Institute even had the artifact?”

  “It was on the news,” Sansen reminded me. “The whole city knew about it—actually, the whole archaeological world. We were already fielding calls from institutes in Jordan and Israel as well as Europe and North America—it’s the kind of piece scholars covet, even though we didn’t have its provenance.”

  One of the waitstaff bumped into me trying to deliver drinks to a nearby table. I was blocking traffic; I needed to move. I especially needed to get out of the noisy bar, but if Kettie’s Russians were monitoring Mary-Carol, she wasn’t safe. Assuming it was his muscle who’d threatened her.

  Felix had played some role in this and I needed to talk to him. At once. I couldn’t imagine a reason he would have staged a theft of the piece from Professor Van Vliet’s office, but he was involved.

  “I need to get some air,” I said. “If I have to listen to five more minutes of this music I am going to lose all capacity for thought.”

  “I can’t go home,” Kooi said.

  I had a fleeting thought of parking her in the ICU next to Reno, where the Streeter brothers could keep an eye on her. Maybe Mr. Contreras and the dogs and I could curl up in there, too, and sleep for a week. I couldn’t help smiling at the image, even while I worried about where Mary-Carol Kooi could spend the night. If I ever had an extra hundred thousand lying around, I’d invest in a safe house where frightened clients and their detectives could huddle.

  “She could stay at my place and I could stay at yours, if that works for you,” Sansen suggested.

  I pressed his hand, but said, “That would be great, but I need to find Felix and see what he was up to when he put Ms. Kooi on the spot. If he’s not answering his phone, I’m going to the IIT campus to find him. You’d be welcome to go to my place by yourself—”

  “And face your downstairs neighbor alone? I’ve dealt with Taliban who didn’t frighten me as much. I’ll come with you.”

  I tried to protest, but Sansen said, “If it’s a question of authenticating a Syrian artifact, you need me, Ms. Warshawski, no matter how many pink stocks you buy and sell.”

  56

  Missing Persons

  Sansen took Mary-Carol out through the kitchen exit to the alley. He’d parked across the street. I watched through the long picture window, waiting for them to appear around the corner. When he pulled away from the curb, I went to the front entrance, scanning the street, but no one was following.

  Sansen lived in Bucktown, a mile or two from the bar. It took him half an hour to get her settled into his place and return. While I waited, I went into one of the unisex toilets, where the sound system was muted, and tried reaching Felix. He answered neither his phone nor my texts.

  When Sansen returned, we agreed to go in his car, which he’d left in the alley behind the bar. He drove a few loops around the area to make sure we weren’t being followed and then headed for the expressway.

  Neither of us spoke until we were sure we were clean and then Sansen said, “This is hard news from Mary-Carol Kooi. How could she have jeopardized the Institute in such a way? She’s one of our most promising young fellows, but when all this is cleared up, we’ll have to let her go.”

  “What I don’t understand is Felix. It must have been he who told the thieves where to find the Dagon. Until I’ve had it out with him, I don’t think you should make any decisions about Mary-Carol.”

  Felix wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—wanted to harm anyone at the OI. He’d cared about the Dagon because it came from Rasima’s hometown, but why would he have engineered its theft from the Institute? And the fact that it was a fake—I suddenly thought of Felix’s work, and the ghost of an idea stirred in the back of my mind.

  Dean Pazdur had said Felix had a sculptor’s understanding of how to shape metal, something like that. I had a vision of him in the IIT metal engineering shop, working with Rasima—not on their water purification model, let alone on weapons. What if they’d been creating a fake Dagon? I began wondering about the armless goddess in Dick’s drawer—was that a replica as well?

  In the drama around Mary-Carol, I’d forgotten I wanted to tell Sansen about the figurine in Dick’s desk, but before I could say anything, my cell phone rang: it was Dick himself.

  “Richard!” I pretended a liveliness I didn’t feel. “How lovely to hear from you. It’s been a long time since you’ve missed me so much that you phone
d at midnight.”

  Sansen gave me a quizzical look.

  “This isn’t a romantic call, Vic, as you damned well know. My nieces are both in considerable distress because of some papers that Reno has. Harmony said you showed her copies but that Reno has the originals. I need to see them.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s clear Reno is in over her head. She made a lot of hysterical accusations at Rest EZ before she disappeared. These papers can help me sort out what went wrong and maybe get them to let her have her job back.”

  “You are glib,” I said, my tone admiring. “If I didn’t know you and the facts I’d believe you. But the only way you could know about the so-called hysterical accusations is if someone in Rest EZ’s management chain told you.”

  “Only to protect my niece.”

  “Is that why you badgered her at the hospital? Where is Harmony in all of this? Is she in Oak Brook, nestled safe in one of your three spare bedrooms?”

  “You don’t have a need to know. What you need to do is give me those papers.”

  “Or you’ll huff and puff and blow my house in? Is that what Gervase Kettie wants you to do in exchange for that cute little statue he gave you?”

  “How do you know—” He cut himself off midsentence. “If you have been in my office I will have you arrested for trespass.”

  “Richard, don’t make empty threats.”

  “Don’t talk to me about empty threats,” Dick said. “That’s the emptiest one yet. There’s nothing wrong with Kettie—you just can’t stand for anyone to make a success out of capitalism.”

  I laughed. “You could be right. But next time you talk, ask him about Legko.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I added helpfully, “They’re an insurance company that’s involved in litigation with Trechette, which is the name on the ownership documents for Rest EZ. Since they don’t seem to have any capital reserves, I wondered how Legko got Ti-Balt’s surety bond business, but then I saw Kettie was on their board. And I dug some more and there he was on the boards of lots of companies that bought insurance through Legko and were suing for failing to meet their policy agreements.”

  “You always thought you knew more about the law than me,” Dick said, overlooking the fact that my exam results had usually been higher than his. “But you haven’t been near a courtroom or a lawbook in years. You be very careful what you say about Gervase Kettie—it could get you back into a courtroom in a way you’d hate.”

  “It’s only libel if it isn’t true,” I said. “But things are going to get uglier for Kettie before they get more beautiful. If you really are in bed with him, get out before someone sets fire to the mattress.”

  When I hung up, Sansen said, “I don’t know what that was about, but if you pronounce ‘Legko’ slightly differently, it’s Russian for ‘easy.’” He said the word, softening the g.

  I groaned. “If you’re right, someone with a perverse sense of humor set up all these holding companies. It’s hard to believe Gervase Kettie, or even Richard Yarborough, performed those linguistic tricks. Kettie is the kind of man who rips arms off statues to get the gold serpents.”

  “What?” Sansen bellowed. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Sadly, no. Do you remember that goddess in the Treasures of Saraqib who was holding two serpents?”

  “Kettie has it?” Sansen cried. “How—oh, hell, I just missed our exit.”

  We were on the Ryan, going through the spaghetti that connected the expressway to Chinatown, Bronzeville, and Lake Shore Drive. We got off at the next exit and backtracked.

  When we were heading east on Thirty-First, I said, “I saw it in Richard Yarborough’s desk drawer tonight.”

  “How did you do that? After listening to you talk to Yarborough, I wouldn’t think he’d let you within a mile of his office.”

  “He didn’t exactly invite me to inspect his desk,” I said primly. “When I opened a drawer, the figurine was there, but she was missing her arms. The metal was raw, as if they’d been torn off, or cut roughly with a metal shear. The statue was in Dick’s desk along with a thank-you note on Kettie’s personal note card.”

  “You think it’s the Saraqib statue but Dick tore off the arms?” Sansen was furious.

  “I think Kettie took off the arms and then the statue had lost its value for him, so he gave it to Dick—a discard, in a way. The first time I saw Kettie, he was wearing a big gold ring with a gold serpent embedded in a lapis square.”

  “Damn him to hell. Damn him, damn your ex-husband, and damn every other asshole who thinks their money gives them the right to fuck with our history. A figure like that—she’s irreplaceable.” He smacked the steering wheel hard enough that the horn sounded.

  I didn’t try to respond to his rage. “I took photographs in situ, but I don’t know how much you can tell from a picture. Would you know if it’s the same figure as the one in the Saraqib catalog?”

  “At least show me the pictures. . . .” Sansen’s voice died away. We’d reached Indiana Avenue where Felix had his apartment, but the road was blocked by a pair of blue-and-whites, their strobes sweeping the night. Behind them was an array of cars, some city, some county.

  Sansen straightened the wheel and continued west. He turned the corner on Indiana, the next street over, and pulled to the curb. He’d had a lot of experience with ducking danger.

  My arms and legs didn’t seem to have any muscles in them. Felix. Arrested? Shot?

  “I have to go back there.” My throat was so tight my voice barely came out.

  “I’ll go with you,” Sansen said.

  “Trouble,” I whispered.

  “I can see that, Vic. Oh. You mean trouble for me? Don’t worry about that.”

  I cleared my throat and straightened my neck. “If Felix is being arrested or he’s been—been hurt, they may take me for questioning. I need you free to call his lawyer. And Lotty.” I texted the two numbers to him.

  He looked at his screen. “Right. Put me on speed dial—if you need me to act, call but don’t talk. I’ll send for the marines.”

  He got out of the car with me and stood watching me. I didn’t try to get past the squad cars blocking Prairie but ran down Indiana, cutting across a vacant lot and coming to Felix’s building from the south.

  A crowd had gathered in the street. The mood was tense: students who thought they were going to witness midnight deportations were shouting anti-ICE slogans; African-Americans who thought the cops had cornered someone they planned to shoot were yelling, “We can’t breathe.”

  My stomach knotted at the sight of the crime scene unit’s name on one of the vans, but I walked to the door with an authoritative stride.

  “You live here, miss?” said the officer guarding the entrance.

  “I’m looking for Lieutenant Finchley or Sergeant Abreu from the Shakespeare station. Are they inside?”

  While the guard was trying to decide what to do, a pair of techs got out of the crime scene van and brushed by me. I followed them in. They went for the elevator, but I took the stairs and ran down the hall to Felix’s place.

  It took a minute for the confusion of floodlights, bodies, broken bits of metal scattered across the worktable and floor to resolve into images. The bodies were all upright and moving—law officers. No dead people on the floor or the bed in the corner. I looked at the tabletop: the little models of machinery that Felix had built had been smashed. An angry arm had swept all the little models to the floor. Only the copper flask from the water distiller was still on the table.

  The room had seemed crowded with lawmen and women, but there were actually only seven people, nine when the crime scene techs followed me into the room. The one person I recognized was Lieutenant McGivney. He saw me at the same time.

  “Warshawski.” I had never heard my name spoken with such loathing. “I might have known.”

  “Lieutenant.” I gave the slightest nod of the head. “I hope you’re not responsible for the destr
uction of the scale models that were on this table. They were valuable.”

  “When you’re looking for fugitives you care more about evidence than artwork,” he said, but his voice had thickened—embarrassment or anger, I couldn’t tell which.

  “Fugitives? You searched the tabletop for someone fleeing justice and were so enraged you had to break the evidence?”

  The room had become completely quiet. We could hear the L rumbling in the background; the tap in the kitchen sink was dripping.

  “You tell me, Warshawski,” McGivney said. “Where are Felix Herschel and Rasima Kataba?”

  57

  National Security v. Murder

  I was giddy with relief. Felix wasn’t dead. He hadn’t been arrested. I took a breath, counted to ten, steady, steady, don’t give way to emotions that would put me off balance.

  “I didn’t know they were missing,” I said, voice level. “When did you last see them?”

  “That’s our question to you.” A woman in a navy trouser suit stepped out of a knot of people near Felix’s bed. “I take it you’re V.I. Warshawski? We’ve been briefed on you, that you’re working on behalf of the fugitives.”

  “Your briefing is remarkably inaccurate, or at least lacking in detail,” I said.

  Her lip curled. “Suppose you fill in the details.”

  “Suppose you show me some ID.”

  She flashed a wallet at me, fast, the way they do in cop shows.

  “Let me actually see it,” I said, tone level, nonconfrontational. I couldn’t afford to enrage her. If I had any friends in the room, they hadn’t spoken up.

  She sucked her lips inside her mouth, but held the ID out again: Deenah Montefiore, with Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

  “I’ve been hearing a lot about you, how you think you’re the answer to law-enforcement questions in Cook County,” she said.

  “I look for evidence; I don’t manufacture it. Is that the answer to the county’s law-enforcement issues?”

  Someone in the corner near the bed turned a bark of laughter into a coughing fit. Montefiore stiffened. “Tell me when you last heard from, or saw, Herschel and Kataba.”