When Cyrus Lavalle heard my voice he whispered theatrically that I should know better than to identify myself by name to his co-workers. And no, I couldn’t possibly come to his office, but if I would show up at the Golden Glow at five he’d meet me there.
“Come on, Cyrus. You know me by now. I’m not going to threaten you in public with pictures of Andrew Jackson—I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“No way, Warshawski,” he whispered. “There’s plenty of people around here who rate you down below the sewer system. It’s worth my job to be seen with you.”
In other words, he wanted a free drink and the possibility of driving a hard bargain for information on Camilla’s building project. I gave in with bad grace and went back to work.
I actually had an outstanding paying project for Phoebe—a background check on the owners of a little drug company she was interested in. They had a single product, a T-cell enhancer for which they’d been seeking FDA approval to begin human testing. The company was actually called Cellular Enhancement Technology, but in my files I used Phoebe’s nickname for them—Mr. T. Mr. T had been languishing for two years, but if they ever got approval they could make someone like Phoebe a lot of money.
The biology they were working with was way beyond me, but not the credentials of the biologists. I called the various universities where they claimed to have studied, verified their degrees, and logged in to a credit rating service to see whether their financial backgrounds were as good as their academic ones.
That seemed to be enough work for one day. I shut down the system and locked up. On my way out I took a last tour of the basement, but the rats still had the place to themselves. I didn’t really expect to find Tamar Hawkings again: in her eyes I’d probably betrayed her to the social worker. She wouldn’t return for more treachery.
The temperature had risen steadily all day, melting the glass shards from trees and cars, turning the streets to slush, and filling the air with a horrible stench. On the way across the Loop to the Golden Glow my socks turned into damp mats inside my Nikes.
Inside the small bar I found a table by the heat vent and stretched my legs out gratefully. The warmth of the Tiffany lamps gave me a moment’s illusion of rest.
I was early, both for Cyrus Lavalle and the commuter drinking crowd. Sal Barthele, who works the place personally, came out from behind her famous bar with the Black Label bottle. She’d found the mahogany horseshoe in the old Regent’s Hotel when it was torn down twelve years ago. Sal had stripped and polished it by hand, returning it to the high gloss it had when it left its English manufacturer in 1887. Sal won’t keep a waiter who doesn’t wipe up every drop of liquid the instant it touches the surface.
I waved off the Black Label. “Not tonight. I’m off to Deirdre’s after I finish with Cyrus Lavalle.”
“Girlfriend, you need a drink to get through an hour with Cyrus. You coming down with something?”
I faked a punch at her. “Yeah. It’s called middle age. I have to run the dogs and change and drive and socialize. I’ll never get through that routine if I have whisky now.”
She sat chatting with me until Cyrus showed up—twenty minutes late. He was a sight for jaded eyes, in a crimson Nehru shirt and lavender silk trousers. He made a great show of pleasure at seeing me, seeing Sal, seeing all the people he met on his regular rounds at the bar. When I was able to halt his dramatic flourishes I drew a blank. It didn’t surprise me—Camilla’s tradeswomen wouldn’t generate enough gossip to filter along to ward heelers like Cyrus. He promised to initiate some delicate inquiries.
“And for a hundred I’ll share what I hear with you, Warshawski.”
“Forget it, Cyrus. For a hundred I can buy the alderman and learn it direct.”
He smirked. “Yeah, you could. But you won’t. You don’t know how to bribe people without turning red and blowing your moves.”
I guessed that was a compliment, although in Chicago it’s kind of shameful not to know how to buy an elected official. “I don’t have a similar problem with you, my friend. Fifty is my top offer. I don’t care more than that.”
He bargained me up to sixty-five and left a happy man. I, on the contrary, jogged back through the slush to my car with my head pounding. Between Tamar Hawkings, Darraugh Graham, Phoebe and Camilla—it was too much. I’d become a private eye because I wanted to be my own boss. Lately all I seemed to do was jump through other people’s hoops.
I turned the Trans Am’s heating system on full power and tried to dry my feet during the slow trek home. The fog had thickened so much that traffic was stalled on both the Kennedy and Lake Shore Drive. I zigzagged through the side streets, but the trip still took half an hour.
I longed for a bath and the drink I’d turned down at Sal’s, but once home I resumed my headlong dash through the day. Putting on sweats, I collected the dogs from Mr. Contreras and took them over to the lake in my car—the night air was too thick to risk running through the streets with them. We chased each other around the lagoon a few times, not a wonderful workout for any of us, but enough to tide the dogs over until morning.
By the time I’d showered and changed into wool crepe slacks and a silk evening shirt it was past seven, the scheduled start of Deirdre’s party. I shrugged into my old winter coat and clattered back down the stairs. Once in the car my earlier pettishness returned. I thought of Deirdre’s hunched shoulders, the lost soul laced with venom, and drove well within the speed limit all the way south.
7
The Cocktail Party
When Fabian Messenger joined the University of Chicago law faculty, he bought a home in the old Kenwood neighborhood. A mile north of the university campus, Kenwood is filled with mansions—thirty-room houses on outsize lots, built in the last century and packed with all the wood paneling and stained glass that the Victorian imagination demanded. For a long time the neighborhood went downhill as people who could afford the houses let racial fears drive them away. Nowadays, though, the rehab contractors were having a field day as rich doctors or law professors like Fabian fed their egos on size, opulence, and proximity to Lake Michigan.
It was eight when I pulled up across from the Messenger home. Palace. I took a deep breath and went through the open iron gates. I’d been afraid I was so late I’d have to sidle to a table while everyone dropped their forks and stared. The roar of happy drinkers reassured me as I rang the doorbell. Deirdre apparently favored a long cocktail hour. No one heard me over the din, so I pushed open the door and joined the melee.
Women in cocktail dresses and men in evening clothes spilled out of a brightly lit room on my left into the hall. A few people glanced at me, but returned immediately to their chatter when they saw they didn’t know me. I looked around for some place to dump my coat. The day had grown so warm after its icy start, I hadn’t needed a coat outside, let alone in here.
An old oak wardrobe stood against one wall, more for decoration than use: two flowered straw hats hung from its hooks, but nothing else. I hesitated to hang my shabby old wool there. As I hovered uncertainly next to the wardrobe I saw an umbrella stand, also decorative: instead of umbrellas it housed an old baseball bat, hand-signed by Nellie Fox.
I was about to take the coat back to my car when a small boy sailed into the hall, his pale bangs the same cornsilk as Deirdre’s when I first met her. He was handing round a tray of Deirdre’s cream puffs, but was so wound up with the excitement of the party that he couldn’t stop long enough for anyone to take them. I put a hand on his shoulder, stopping his gyrations so abruptly that he dropped the tray.
He gulped. The vivacity drained from his face and his lower lip started to quiver.
“Sorry, honey,” I said. “My fault for startling you. How about if I pick them up—no one will ever know they’ve been on the floor—and you find someone to help me with my coat.”
He stuffed his fist into his mouth, nodded nervously, and fled toward the back of the hall, calling “Emily!Emily!” through his
fingers.
I knelt below the uproar and reassembled the tray, putting pastry caps back on lopsided blobs of mushrooms and bacon. Deirdre must have spent a day on these, if she’d made enough to feed thirty-five. They’d come out rubbery and a bit burned. Why had she bothered, with dozens of catering firms to choose from?
As I was dusting off the sides of the last few pastries the boy reappeared through the swinging door at the end of the hall. He was hand-in-hand with a young woman whom I took for his nanny—the Emily he’d gone crying for. She was wearing a dress cut from an expensive wool, but designed for a woman broader in the bust and smaller in the waist than she was. Presumably she wore Deirdre’s castoffs without caring too much how they looked on her, since the rich pink didn’t go with her brown suede shoes.
She moved awkwardly in front of me, muttering something I couldn’t catch over the uproar. When she finally took the tray from me, her round, undefined wrists showed she was much younger than I’d thought at first, surely a teenager still.
“What should I do with my coat?” I bellowed through the din. “Upstairs?”
“Josh will take it. Be careful,” she said as the child grabbed it. “Don’t let it drag on the ground.”
She watched him anxiously as he ran up the stairs, trailing the coat along the carpeting. She took a step toward him, then glanced at me as if expecting censure.
“It’s old,” I said lightly. “He can’t make it grubbier than it already is.”
She didn’t smile back. Her expression was lackluster under her mass of ill-cut frizzy hair; I wondered if she might be retarded.
“Drinks are in there. Can I get you something?” Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear her.
“That’s okay, I’ll serve myself. Is Mrs. Messenger in there?”
She shook her head speechlessly, then roused herself to say Deirdre was in the kitchen. I declined an offer to go back to see her—kitchen chaos moments before putting a big dinner on the table strains guest and hostess alike. Assembling what I hoped was a social smile I pushed into the living room.
Fabian Messenger was holding court near the fireplace, his left arm on the mantel, his right casually touching Manfred Yeo’s shoulder. A half dozen men were laughing at something he was saying.
I fought through the crowd around the drinks. Two bartenders, the only black men in the room, were working flat out to keep up with the group’s thirst. I asked for whisky and was offered Red Label or Jim Beam. I would never serve guests such thin, raw Scotch, and my income is probably a tenth of Fabian’s. I took the Scotch, grumpily—my day had been too long for chardonnay to do me any good.
I moved over to the sidelines to drink. A waitress who’d taken over the tray of hors d’oeuvres offered them to me, but I passed—they looked like the ones I’d just finished picking off the floor. Josh reappeared, his gaiety restored, clutching a bowl of nuts. I took a handful and watched him pirouette through the room.
Fabian apparently was calling to him. I didn’t hear it, but one of the women tapped Josh’s shoulder and pointed him toward his father. He immediately stopped gyrating and walked over, looking like an altar boy summoned to the pope. Fabian put a hand on his head, seeming to pose a question. The group around him laughed and Fabian laughed as well, but Josh squirmed between their legs. He ran through the side door, the nuts still clutched to his stomach.
“Cute kid,” a man next to me said.
“He looks a lot like Deirdre did when I first met her—he even has her dreamy air.”
“Oh, you an old friend of hers? I’ve done a little work with Fabian, but I hardly know her.”
We wended through the laborious party chat of strangers and made it to introductions. He was Donald Blakely, the president of Gateway Bank.
“I’m one of your happy beneficiaries,” I said. “I sit with Deirdre on the board of Arcadia House—we’re terrifically grateful for your generous check.”
“Arcadia House?” Blakely looked blank.
“Domestic violence shelter in Logan Square. You—or your bank—just gave us twenty-five thousand dollars.”
He smiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. We welcome the chance to help out important community service groups. Do you work for them, Ms. ... uh?”
“Warshawski,” I repeated. “No. I’m just on their board.”
He looked around the room, hunting for more important prey. When he didn’t see it he turned back to me and asked what I did, with enough show of politeness that I sketched a description of my work. Who knows—Gateway might need an independent investigator.
“Actually, I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time on nonpaying investigations these days. I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with one of them.”
He took a step away from me. “Not me, Ms. ... uh. The work I do for nonprofits is limited to writing the occasional check. Anyway, I never wanted to be Dick Tracy, running around town with a gun.”
I laughed. “Not that kind of help. But I wondered if you knew anyone at Century Bank who might talk to me.”
Again he scanned the room, then asked why I wanted an introduction. As I explained Camilla’s problem he started to pay closer attention, but when I finished, he said he didn’t know anyone at Century well enough to send me to them. He asked how I would proceed. I gave him a brief precis of my usual methods.
“You’d be that thorough on a pro bono project?” he demanded.
“I’m that thorough on everything I do. It’s the only way I can compete with the big guys.”
He looked around again, finally spotting someone who would release him from me. Briefly clasping my forearm, he wished me well and hurried to the other side of the room.
Emily reappeared, tripping on her scuffed pumps as she interrupted Fabian. Fabian smiled graciously and left the group at the fireplace to head to the hall. The others walked off as well, leaving Manfred Yeo alone for a moment. I took the opportunity to go over to him.
He recognized me at once. “Victoria! How wonderful to see you. How are you, my dear? We’ve graduated many distinguished jurists, and a lot of them are here tonight, but it brings me great pleasure to read about your work—jumping from bridges is much more exciting than filing writs of certiorari.”
Yeo had taught my class in constitutional law my second year. I’d started law school young, through an option the university gave of finishing my last year in college at the same time. My father had begun to show signs of the illness that would kill him five years later, and I was desperate to find a career with some financial security. Yeo’s wit and insight had made me feel the study of law could generate passion as well.
He’d liked something about me, too, and rescued me from summers of factory and clerical work with a couple of good internships. He still sent me hand-signed cards at Christmas, but I felt I’d let him down by leaving law to be a private eye, and a penurious one at that.
I said this, a bit awkwardly, and he put an arm around me. “My dear, I’m proud of you for not abandoning your principles. I’m ashamed of the law these days. It’s not the work I signed on joyfully to do fifty years ago, and I’m ashamed of too many of our graduates for putting billable hours ahead of justice.”
Unexpected tears stung my eyes. My dreary work load, even my fatigue, dwindled in the face of his praise. At the same time I felt a kind of ignominious triumph: Donald Blakely, the banker, was pointing me out to the group he was with. My stock had risen fast at a touch from Manfred’s arm. The thought made me chuckle a little.
“Ah ... the cause of the hubbub,” Manfred said, releasing me. “We can go in to dinner now.”
Fabian was coming back into the room with a man about my age, handsome in the too-perfect way that makes people love themselves more than they ever can someone else. He looked vaguely familiar; I wondered if I’d seen him in the movies.
“Alec Gantner,” Manfred explained. “His father was one of my first students. Fabian brought young Alec to represent the family—I’d better
greet him.”
Of course. Alec senior, the Republican senator from Illinois, had the same chiseled good looks, turned distinguished with age. No wonder Fabian had waited dinner for the son. If Deirdre was right and he was pining for a federal judgeship, courting senators was the easiest way to go about it.
As Manfred went off to shake young Gantner’s hand Emily moved among the guests. When she came to me she whispered her message: we could go into the dining room now.
8
Of Riches,
Drunks, and Rats
A long table dominated the center of the dining room. It was covered in linen so white I thought I might go snowblind if I stared at it too long. Complete with silver, flowers, and candelabra, it might well have been labeled important guests only. Others were relegated to small tables at the sides.
We all hunted our name cards at the main table first, hoping to be among the chosen. Disappointment rippled through the room as people found themselves excluded. Even I felt let down that Manfred’s warm greeting hadn’t extended to a desire to sit next to me at dinner: I was decanted with the dregs to a table near the kitchen door. I had to laugh at myself—all my professional choices have consciously led me away from wealth and power. It was absurd to resent denial from their ranks.
Deirdre arrived suddenly through some swinging doors near my table. She stood stock-still in the center of the room, her head thrust back on her shoulders like a cobra’s, her eyes glittering. As people surged past her they tried to greet her, but she said nothing, until someone asked her point-blank for help in finding his seat.
Deirdre pulled her lips back in a parody of a smile. “If you need help, check with my darling daughter; she did the table arrangements. Like that old Georgie Price cartoon: Yes, there’s something you can do, put around the place cards—while the wife is up to her eyeballs in the kitchen.”
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