“If I had real authority, we could pass Wal-Mart, I know we could, but my company decisions are just like my parental-anyway, I want to know when you’re planning on seeing Billy, and what you’re planning to say to him.”
“I’m going to tell him exactly what got said in our meeting and ask him to interpret it for me: you’re all strangers to me, so I don’t understand what you mean when you say things.”
“That’s just it,” William said. “We all say things, but we work together as a family. My brothers and I, I mean: we grew up fighting, the old man thought it made us tougher, but we run this company as a family. And we present a family front to competitors.”
So I wasn’t supposed to take dissension among the brothers to a bigger public. I had destroyed some important businesses with my meddling; I needed to know that By-Smart would fight me hard if I tried to do anything to them.
“Is Billy living in South Chicago?”
“Of course not. He may be infatuated with that storefront preacher, but he comes home to his mother at the end of the day. Just watch what you say and do with him, Ms.-uh-because we’ll be watching you.”
Our moment of palliness was apparently at an end. “Warshawski. I believe you will-I saw all the spy cams in the warehouse. I’ll be real careful what I say just in case you’ve put one in my car.”
He forced a laugh. So we still were pals after all? I waited for him to come to the point, schooling my face into the bland mask that makes people think you’re a discreet listener-not the woman who destroyed Gustav Humboldt.
“I need to know who this English woman is riding with in South Chicago. It could be bad for us, from a liability standpoint, I mean, if she got injured.”
I shook my head regretfully. “She hasn’t told me who she’s met down there, or how she’s met them. She has a lot of friends, and she makes friends easily, as you saw with your dad just now. I’d think it could be almost anybody, maybe even Patrick Grobian, since she likes to make sure the top man is in her court.”
The mention of Grobian’s name seemed to bother him, or at least put him off balance. He drummed his fingers on the doorjamb, wanting to ask something else, but unsure how to phrase it. Before he figured it out, Mildred’s nervous assistant claimed his attention: one of his directors was returning his call.
He went to Mildred’s desk to answer the phone. I walked over to the picture of Buffalo Bill and the airplane. If I stood on tiptoe and squinted down, I could see the name of a photographer’s studio with an address in Wattisham at the bottom of the matting. Marcena was not only a more skilled interrogator than I, but a cleverer investigator. It was depressing.
William was still on the phone when Buffalo Bill escorted Marcena out of the conference room, his hand on her waist. He frowned when he saw I was still there, but he spoke to Marcena. “You don’t come without those photographs of your father, young woman, you hear?”
“Absolutely not; he’ll be thrilled to know I’ve met you.”
While they did an intricate separation dance, William put a hand over the mouthpiece and beckoned me to his side. “Find out who this gal is riding with, okay, and give me a call.”
“In exchange for funding for my program?” I said brightly.
He stiffened. “In exchange for keeping it under discussion, certainly.”
I looked mournful. “That offer won’t really make me summon my best effort, Mr. William.”
Bysens weren’t used to beggars trying to be choosers. “And that kind of attitude definitely won’t bring forth any effort on my part, young-”
“The name is Warshawski. You can call me that.”
Marcena had finished with Buffalo Bill; I turned my back on young William and headed down the hall with her. Once we were clear of the office, her shoulders sagged and she dropped her perky grin.
“I am so fagged!” she said.
“You should be; you’ve done a full day’s work this last hour, what with Pete, and Buffalo Bill. I’m a little beat, myself. Is there really a Julian Love who flew Hurricanes in the war?”
She smiled mischievously. “Not exactly. But my father’s tutor at Cambridge did, and when I was up, I used to have tea with him once or twice a term. I heard all the stories; I think I can fake it.”
“I don’t suppose he flew out of Wattisham, either.”
“It was Nacton, but Buffalo Bill won’t remember after all these years what one airfield or another looked like. I mean-he thinks I’m old enough to have a father who flew in the war!”
“And the photographs of your father, I suppose, will get lost in the mail. Sad, really, because they were taken before digital photography, and now they can’t be replaced.”
She gave a loud shout of laughter that made several people stare at us. “Something like that, Vic, something very like that, hnnh, hnnh.”
13 Hired Gun
Thursday started early, with a call from my answering service. I was luxuriating in a private morning with Morrell-I hadn’t seen Marcena since dropping her off after yesterday’s prayer service. I’d gotten up to turn on Morrell’s fancy espresso machine. I was turning pirouettes in the hall, happy to be able to prance around naked, when I heard my cell phone ringing in my briefcase.
I don’t know why I didn’t just let it go-that Pavlovian response to the bell, I suppose. Christie Weddington, the operator with my answering service who’s known me longest, felt entitled to be severe.
“It’s someone from the Bysen family, Vic: he’s already called three times.”
I stopped dancing. “It’s seven fifty-eight, Christie. Which one of the great men?”
It was William Bysen, whom I thought of as “Mama Bear,” sandwiched between Buffalo Bill and Billy the Kid. I resented the interruption, but I hoped it might mean good news: Ms. Warshawski, your fearless disposition and your brilliant proposal have caused us to shred one of our billions into forty thousand small pieces for the Bertha Palmer school.
Christie gave me William’s office number. His secretary was, of course, already at her post: when the big gun starts firing early, the subalterns are there ready to load.
“Is this Ms. Warshawski? It is? Do you normally make people wait this long before you get back to them?”
That didn’t sound exactly like the harbinger of glad tidings. “Actually, Mr. Bysen, I’m usually too busy to return calls this fast. What’s up?”
“My son didn’t come home last night.”
Heart-stopping-kid was nineteen, after all, but I gave a noncommittal “oh” and waited.
“I want to know where he is.”
“Do you want to hire me to find him? If so, I’ll fax a contract for your signature, after which I’ll need to ask a bunch of questions, which will have to be done over the phone, since I have a full calendar today and tomorrow.”
He sputtered, taken aback, then asked where Billy was.
I was getting cold, standing naked in the living room. I picked the afghan up from Morrell’s couch and draped it over my shoulders. “I don’t know, Mr. Bysen. If that’s all, I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“Is he with the preacher?”
“Mr. Bysen, if you want me to look for him I’ll fax you a contract and call you later with a list of questions. If you want to know whether he’s with Pastor Andrés, then I suggest you call the pastor.”
He hemmed and hawed, and finally demanded my rates.
“One-twenty-five an hour, with a four-hour minimum, plus expenses.”
“If you want to do business with By-Smart, you’d better rethink that rate structure.”
“Am I talking to a canned recording? The worried father wants me to negotiate my fee?” I burst out laughing, then suddenly thought maybe he was making me a subtle offer. “Are you saying that By-Smart will fund my basketball program if I’ll lower my fee for asking about your kid?”
“It’s possible that if you can locate Billy, we’ll discuss your proposal.”
“Not good enough, Mr. Bysen. Give
me your fax number; I’ll send you a copy of the contract; when I get back a signed copy, we’ll talk.”
He wasn’t sure he was ready to go that far. I hung up and went into the kitchen to flip on the espresso machine. My cell phone started ringing as I was going back up the hall: my answering service, with Bysen’s fax number. Hey-ho. I stopped in the small bedroom Morrell uses as a home office and sent through a contract. This time, I turned my phone off before going back to bed.
“Who was that so early? You spent a lot of time with him-should I be worried?” Morrell demanded, pulling me down next to him.
“Yep. I’ve met his papa and his kid already-I’ve never even laid eyes on your family and we’ve been knowing each other for almost three years now.”
He bit my earlobe. “Oh, yes, my kid, a little something I’ve been meaning to tell you about. Anyway, you get to meet my friends. Have you met this guy’s friends?”
“Don’t think he has any, at least, not any as cool as Marcena.”
When I finally got to my office, a little before ten, I had a fax from William waiting for me: he had signed the contract, but had exed out several provisions, including the four-hour minimum, and the paragraph on expenses.
Whistling between my teeth, I sent an e-mail: I regret not being able to do business with you but will be glad to talk to you in the future about your needs for an investigator. Not that I never negotiate my fees-but never with a company that has annual sales of over two hundred billion.
While I was online, I checked By-Smart’s stock. It had dropped ten points by the end of the trading day yesterday and was down another point this morning. The question about whether By-Smart was going to open its doors to unions had made CNN’s breaking news banner on my home page. No wonder they were gnashing their teeth over Billy up in Rolling Meadows.
By eleven, Mama Bear had decided he could meet my terms. He then wanted me to drop everything to dash out to Rolling Meadows. By-Smart was so used to a parade of vendors, offering everything, including their firstborn off-spring, for the chance to do business with the Behemoth, that young Mr. William actually couldn’t grasp that someone might not want to jump through his hoops. In the end, after a time-wasting argument, when I’d hung up once and threatened to twice more, he answered my questions.
They hadn’t seen Billy since he left the meeting yesterday. According to Grobian, Billy had gone to the warehouse, put in eight hours, and then disappeared. He usually returned to the Bysen complex in Barrington Hills by seven at the latest, but last night he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t answered his cell phone, hadn’t called his mother. When they got up at six, they found he’d never returned. That was when Mama Bear had made his first call to me. Thank goodness, I had left my own phone in the living room.
“He’s nineteen, Mr. Bysen. Most kids that age are in college, if they’re not working, and even if they live at home they have their own lives, their own friends. Their own girlfriends.”
“Billy isn’t that kind of boy,” his father said. “He’s part of True Love Waits, and his mother gave him her own Bible and engagement ring to seal his vows. He would never go out with a girl if he didn’t intend to marry her.”
I forbore to mention that teens who take pledges of chastity have the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as nonpledgers. Instead, I asked if Billy had ever spent a night away from home in the past.
“Of course, when he’s gone to camp or to visit his aunt in California or-”
“No, Mr. Bysen, I mean, like this, without telling you. Or his mother.”
“No, of course not. Billy is very responsible. But we’re concerned that he’s too much under the thumb of that Mexican preacher who came up here yesterday, and since you spend a lot of time down in South Chicago we decided you were the best person to make inquiries for us.”
“‘We,’” I repeated. “Is that you and your wife? You and your brothers? You and your dad?”
“I-you ask too many questions. I want you to get to work finding him.”
“I’ll want to talk to your wife,” I said, “so I need her phone number, home, office, cell, I don’t care which.”
This caused more spluttering: I was working for him, his wife was worried enough.
“You don’t need me, you need a tame cop,” I snapped. “You must have fifty or sixty of ’em scattered around the city and suburbs. I’ll tear up the contract and messenger it out to you.”
He gave me his home phone number and told me to report back by noon.
“I have other clients, Mr. Bysen, who’ve been waiting a lot longer than you have for help. If you think your son’s life is in imminent danger, then you need the FBI or the police. Otherwise, I’ll report when I know something.” I really, really hate working for the powerful: they think they’re the boss of the whole world, as we used to say in South Chicago, and that includes being the boss of you.
While I was on the phone with Bysen, Morrell had made me a cappuccino and a pita with hummus and olives. I sat at his desk, eating, while I talked to Bysen’s wife. In a quiet, almost little-girl voice, Annie Lisa Bysen told me nothing: oh, yes, Billy had friends, they were all in the church youth group together, they sometimes went camping together, but never without him talking to her first. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend; she repeated his participation in True Love Waits, and how proud they were of Billy after their experience with their daughter. No, she didn’t know why he hadn’t come home, he hadn’t talked to her, but “my husband” was sure he was with that preacher in South Chicago. They had asked their own pastor, Pastor Larch-mont, to call down to the South Side church, but Larch-mont hadn’t been able to reach anyone yet.
“It was probably a mistake, that exchange program with the inner-city churches, they have so many bad kids who can influence Billy. He’s so impressionable, so idealistic, but Daddy Bysen wanted Billy to go work in the warehouse. It was where he started his business, and all the men in the family have to go. I tried to tell William we should just let Billy go to college, like he wanted, but you might as well talk to Niagara Falls as get Daddy Bysen to change his mind, so William didn’t even try, just sent Billy down there, and ever since it’s been Pastor Andrés, Pastor Andrés, as if Billy was quoting the Bible itself.”
“What about your daughter, Billy’s sister-does she know where he is?”
A long pause at the other end. “Candace-Candace is in Korea. Even if it wasn’t so hard to get to her, Billy wouldn’t do that; he knows how much William-how much we-would hate it.”
I wished I did have time to drive up to South Barrington to the Bysen enclave. There’s so much that you get from body language that you can’t see over the phone. Did she really believe her son would avoid his sister on his parents’ say-so-especially if he was running away from home? Did Annie Lisa do everything Daddy Bysen said? Or did she resist passively?
I tried to get Candace’s e-mail address, or a phone number, but Annie Lisa refused even to acknowledge the question. “What about your sister-in-law, Jacqui Bysen. Did Billy talk to her at the warehouse yesterday?”
“Jacqui?” Annie Lisa repeated the name doubtfully, as if it were in a strange language, maybe Albanian, that she’d never heard of. “I guess it never occurred to me to ask her.”
“I’ll do that, Ms. Bysen.” I took the names of the two youths she thought her son might be closest to, but I expected the Bysens were right: Papa and Mama Bear had insulted a man Billy looked up to, and Baby Bear had probably fled to him for cover. If he hadn’t, I suppose I could begin the unenviable job of trying to find Candace Bysen. I would also check area hospitals, because you never know-accidents happen even to the children of America ’s richest men. I scribbled all this down in a set of notes, since I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t keep track of so many details in my head.
I had business in the Loop for a couple of significant clients, but I finished before one and drove early to the South Side. I stopped by the warehouse to talk to Patrick Grobian first. He and
Aunt Jacqui were deep in a discussion of linens; neither had seen Billy today.
“If he wasn’t a Bysen, he’d be out on his can, believe me,” Grobian snapped. “No one who wants a job with By-Smart comes and goes as they please.”
Aunt Jacqui stretched, catlike, with the same look of mischief around her mouth I’d seen yesterday during the uproar at the prayer meeting. “Billy is a saint. You’ll probably find him eating honey and locusts in a cave someplace, maybe even under the boxes in the basement-he’s always preaching to Pat and me about work conditions here.”
“Why?” I widened my eyes, innocence personified. “Is there something wrong with work conditions here?”
“It’s a warehouse,” Grobian said, “not a convent. Billy can’t tell the difference. Our work conditions comply with every OSHA standard ever written.”
I let that lay. “Would he go to his sister, do you think?”
“To Candace?” Jacqui’s carefully waxed brows rose to her hairline. “No one would go to Candace for anything except a trick or a nickel bag.”
I left while she and Grobian enjoyed a complicit laugh over that witticism. I had to be at the school for basketball practice at three, which is when Rose’s shift also ended. I couldn’t keep the girls waiting for me, so that meant if I wanted to talk to Rose I had to go back to the factory.
14 (Re)Tired Gun
The yard in the middle of the afternoon looked different than at six in the morning. A half-dozen cars were parked on the weedy verge, a panel truck stood in the drive, partly blocking my way, while several men were hauling fabric, shouting to each other in Spanish. I drove the Mustang onto the weeds, next to a late-model Saturn.
The factory’s front doors stood open, but I went down to the loading bay, where a second truck was docked, motor running. I went over next to it and pulled myself up onto the lip of the dock, hoping to avoid both the foreman and Zamar. I sketched a grin and a wave at the men, who had stopped to stare at me. They had driven a forklift up to the back of the truck and were loading boxes, which they hurriedly covered with a tarp when they saw me watching. I pursed my lips, wondering what they were hiding. Maybe they were even smuggling some kind of contraband. Maybe this somehow lay behind the sabotage attempts, but they were staring at me with so much hostility that I went on in to the main part of the factory.
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