“I’ve dug myself into too deep a financial hole. Of course, I could sell the Trans Am and drive something cheaper. That would save me five hundred a month. Or sell everything and go travel in Tuscany for a few months. I have some friends who did that—just toured Italy and France until their money ran out, and then came back to Chicago to find work.”
“Damn!” Conrad said in admiration. “How do people get the guts to do that? Maybe when you’ve been raised like me, earning money for the family since you were hatched, you can never live like the lilies of the field.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed. “I’d better go see a man about a dog.”
“I’m going to call you tonight, girl. Make sure you get through the day in one piece. You hear?”
We hung up on that note. The conversation didn’t exactly refresh me, but it gave me enough to go on with the day—the usual round of client meetings, research at the County Building, visits to Chicago Title, checking in with a pal at Motor Vehicles. The same stuff I do every day, like a gerbil on an everlasting treadmill.
At three I returned to the Pulteney to make phone calls and put my day’s findings into the computer. Before going up to the fourth floor I checked the basement. There was no sign of Tamar Hawkings or her children, but when I got to my office and called my answering service I had a surprise. Kevin Whiting had called. I reached him at his desk just before he left for the day.
One of the Loop patrol officers had spotted a family that matched my description cadging money in front of the coffee shop at the corner. When he went over to talk to them they scuttled into the Pulteney. He’d followed them in but they’d disappeared—he’d assumed up the stairs. He’d gone up to the second floor before deciding he couldn’t search the place on his own.
“You let us know if you spot them, okay, Vic? We can’t let a family wander around a condemned building.”
“Right, Kevin. Thanks.” As long as he didn’t have to come over and hunt them himself he was ready to play the concerned, efficient cop by phone.
I wondered about undertaking my own detailed hunt through the building. Frankly, my enthusiasm for a floor-by-floor search wasn’t any greater than Kevin’s. I left a message for Lotty, telling her the family had resurfaced, and switched on my computer to stare at the log of my outstanding case files. I had a nice little custom data base that showed investigations by stage, with the last and most welcome labeled FINAL CHECK CLEARED and the date. Not enough of those lines had been filled in lately.
I opened the file for Lamia, Camilla’s tradeswomen’s group. The number of tasks completed was small: I’d dialed up Lexis for the Century Bank’s board of directors, and I’d talked to Cyrus Lavalle at City Hall. I called Cyrus’s office. When he answered the phone I spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Found anything on the Lamia project?”
“Who is this?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
“I can’t tell you my name over the phone. You’d get in trouble. Your bosses might find out you were collecting pictures of your favorite presidents without sharing, and you know they take a dim view of that.”
“You’d better tell me your name or I’m going to call security.”
“And tell them what?” I said in my natural voice. “That I’ve been augmenting your paycheck?”
“Oh, it’s you, Warshawski. You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Then I guess I’d better not give up detection for the Letterman show. Have you heard anything about Lamia?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I looked at the backs of the pigeons huddled on my windowsill. One was checking himself for lice. The others were shrunk in the misery that shrouds cold birds. Cyrus must be afraid of being overheard.
“When will you be alone? I’ll call you back.”
“I won’t be here.”
“Cyrus, what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” he hissed very fast, “is that you’re asking about something people don’t want to talk about.”
I could see him huddled over the receiver like the pigeons, as if he could become inaudible as well as invisible to his companions. “So you took my money yesterday under false pretenses. Someone offered you more not to talk to me. I’m not in a bidding war for your ideas, Cyrus.”
“I’ll give you your money back. I don’t need it that bad.” He hung up before I could say anything else.
Great. Something about the Lamia project was too hot to touch. I knew the whole investigation was trouble the minute Phoebe broached it Tuesday. I punched her number so forcefully, my index finger throbbed.
When her secretary answered with the bright news that Phoebe was in a meeting, I insisted she be interrupted. Yes, it was an emergency. I spelled my last name, just as I did every time I spoke to Gemma.
Phoebe came to the phone in some annoyance. “What is it, Vic? You took me away from something really important.”
“I thought the work you wanted me to do for Camilla and the tradeswomen was really important,” I said reproachfully.
Phoebe was quiet for a long second. “Oh. That.” Her casualness sounded contrived. “I should have called you. We resolved matters with Century.”
“Great. What happened?”
“They explained their situation to me. That they’re overextended in the community. But they persuaded Home Free to give Lamia a crack at rehabbing one of their homeless shelters. You want to send me a bill for any time you’ve put in?”
“Not especially.” I drew a circle on my notepad and peppered it with dots. “We agreed I would donate fifteen hours. You still have thirteen and a half coming.”
“I’ll bank them, then. Thanks for calling, Vic.”
“Not so fast, Phoebe. My City Hall spout, who eats money like a broken vending machine, is too scared even to say the project name. Now you tell me, as though you were announcing the weather, that you had a meeting with Century. Two days ago you said you didn’t know anyone there you could talk to. That changed mighty fast, didn’t it? I called to chew on you for getting me involved in something hot, but you’re making me want to dig in earnest.”
Phoebe laughed. “You’ve been a detective too long, Vic: everything looks suspicious to you. I got a call at noon from Camilla saying they’d worked out a new deal with a different source. I’ve been tied up all afternoon and haven’t had a chance to call you. No big deal.”
I attacked my peppered circle with a series of sharp lines. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was just depressed by the ugliness around me—physical as well as spiritual. The rot of the dying Pulteney was seeping into my mind, withering me and turning me sour.
“Okay, Phoebe. I’m seeing Camilla on Sunday. She can tell me all about it.”
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to.” We hung up on that line, but Phoebe had paused an instant too long before delivering it. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her brain, that she’d have to talk to Conrad’s sister before I did to make sure they were telling the same story.
I typed the first entry in the Lamia file. “Cyrus is scared and Phoebe is lying.”
11
The Old College Tie
Camilla wasn’t at work. The small contractor for whom she did carpentry said they hadn’t had a job for her today. She wasn’t at home either. I left urgent messages with her boss and her answering machine.
I’d never heard of Home Free until my Arcadia board meeting Monday night, and now it was cropping up all over, like the dandelions in Lincoln Park. It was strange that Jasper Heccomb had ended up as head of it. I’d had a crush on him when we were students, when he’d been an upperclassman who ran with the coolest crowd on campus. He’d once bought me a cup of coffee in Swift Hall after a meeting. I’d been ecstatic until I learned he’d been using me to make his girlfriend jealous. She’d been sitting at a corner table with another guy, but I’d only known that when my roommate pointed them out to deflate me.
Jasper hadn’t paid attention to
me after that, other than to get me to do girl-work, like typing and stuffing envelopes. Somehow I’d always thought he’d end up like Jerry Rubin, a Yippie turned yuppie, and not be content with a small advocacy group.
Wondering if he’d even remember me, I looked Home Free up in the phone book. They had an office in Edgewater, a mile or so north of Lotty’s clinic. I picked up the phone to dial, then put it down again. If I called out of the blue to catechize Heccomb about Lamia I might sour a perfectly good deal for the tradeswomen.
“Remember me?” I could say. “I used to hang around the C-Shop hoping for a chance encounter. One of the legion of women who did grunt work for the peace movement while you guys got the headlines, in the hopes you’d honor us with a one-night stand. Now I need to know why you’ve become a savior for Lamia.”
Of course, I could ask about housing for Tamar Hawkings, even though she’d disappeared again. I picked up the phone again and dialed. A woman answered. Naturally.
“Why do you want to talk to him?” She spoke gruffly, as if I were a phone solicitor to be cut off at the slightest provocation.
“To get some information about homeless shelters.”
“We’re not a direct provider. You need to call the city’s emergency housing bureau.”
“I still would like to talk to Jasper. I have some questions that he might be able to answer.”
“Are you a reporter?” she demanded.
I was getting exasperated. “Is there a policy against taking messages in your office? Jasper knew me twenty years ago—he might actually be willing to talk to me.”
As often happens with belligerent people she became apologetic under confrontation. “We get too many people calling up either to find shelter or because they want to do stories on us. He has to be careful not to take too many calls or he won’t have time to work.”
“Well, give it a try. Is he in? I’ll hold while you ask.”
“He’s out. I’ll take a message.”
“Great. Why couldn’t we just have started there?” I spelled my name, wondering if she would bother to tell him.
In the morning, since he hadn’t phoned back, I swung over to Edgewater before going downtown. I promised the thin air I wouldn’t say anything to ruin Camilla’s project. I just wanted to get a feel for how Home Free operated, see whether it smelled legitimate to me.
The office occupied a storefront between a Korean novelty shop and an Arab bakery. An old-fashioned panel truck, the kind they used to use for bread deliveries, took up most of the parking spaces out front. I presumed it belonged to the bakery and wondered why they couldn’t park in the alley—I had to leave my beloved Trans Am close to Leland where teenage boys might strip it in my absence.
It was cold, as it can be in early April. Wearing only a wool suit-jacket over my jeans, I shivered as I trotted past the novelty store.
Home Free didn’t advertise themselves to the public. No name appeared above the discreetly stenciled street number on the door. Vertical blinds, pulled flat against the storefront windows, didn’t allow passersby to peer in. Almost invisible against them were the white plastic circles of an alarm system. I checked the address against the number I’d scrawled in my notebook and pushed the door open.
A woman of about thirty sat at a desk near the entrance typing into a computer. She hunched over the keyboard like a bow, her shapeless print dress hanging on her skinny body like sacking. Her gold-brown hair stood away from her face in corrugated waves. When she looked up, her thick brows contracting into a frown, I saw she had two tiny braids almost buried in the hair around her ears, as if ashamed of a concession to fashion.
“What do you want?”
It was the same gruff voice that had welcomed me on the phone. “I’m V.I. Warshawski. I called yesterday. I want to see Jasper.”
“You don’t have an appointment. He can’t see you—he’s very busy.” Her muddy skin darkened as she flushed.
The room was tiny, barely big enough to hold her desk and a couple of filing cabinets. The printer was wedged against the windows. I looked around for a second chair but didn’t see one. A door between the filing cabinets along the back wall presumably led to Jasper’s space. I debated crashing in on him, but all it would prove was that I was more muscular than the young woman, and I didn’t need to barge through doors to demonstrate that.
“I’ll wait. I only need a few minutes.” If she had asked me, in a normal polite way, what my business was, I might have said some magic words, but her sullenness was getting under my skin.
She frowned more ferociously, trying to make up her mind how to handle me. The problem was suddenly solved when the back door opened. A beefy man in a sheepskin jacket came out, a deep scowl cutting chasms into his jowls. Home Free’s campers were certainly not a happy lot.
“I’m warning you, Heccomb: you’d better not leave me high and dry,” he said over his shoulder.
Jasper Heccomb appeared behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I thought you were going to subcontract the job, Gary.”
I’d forgotten how deep and resonant his voice was—a timbre for rallying the troops when faint of heart. Gary didn’t seem to feel very rallied. He started to snarl that whether he or one of his men did the job, he expected—when he saw me and cut himself off. Jasper came into the room behind him.
I can’t say I would have known him anywhere—it had been twenty years since I’d seen or thought of him. But knowing to expect him I recognized him at once. The gold hair that used to hang around his shoulders like a pre-Raphaelite Jesus was still long, but pulled back in a ponytail. Some thinning at the temples only made his narrow, dreamy face look distinguished.
“Who’s this?” he asked across me to the woman at the desk
“V. I. Warshawski,” I answered. “I called yesterday. Did you get my message?”
“Did we get her message, Tish?”
“She wouldn’t tell me her business; I didn’t think you’d want to be bothered,” she muttered, twisting her hands.
The change in Tish’s attitude, from hostility to gaucherie, seemed to prove women still worked for Jasper out of love.
“We used to do some work together down at the University of Chicago—when you were organizing sit-ins and I helped stuff envelopes,” I said. “Now I’m a private investigator and a ... friend ... of Deirdre Messenger’s. I thought you might be able to answer a few questions for me.”
Gary’s scowl deepened. “Deirdre Messenger? Heccomb—are you coming or going?”
“I’ll handle this, Gary.” Jasper put his hand back on the other man’s shoulder. “Why don’t you head on out. And don’t worry so much. We’ve never let you down in the past, right, big guy?”
Gary started to speak, looked at me in frustration, and stomped out of the office. He climbed into the bakery truck and drove off with a furious clanking of gears.
“So you went from stuffing envelopes to working for Deirdre Messenger, huh? I guess that’s a climb up the career ladder.” His quick smile robbed the words of some of their sting.
“You could say the same about going from sit-ins to this storefront. The University of Chicago no doubt expects better of its alums.”
He grinned. “Judging by the fund-raising solicitations, they expect a lot better.”
Tish banged angrily in a desk drawer. I felt sorry for her, wondering if I, too, had once frowned so obviously when Jasper smiled at someone else.
“So what does Deirdre want you to do?”
“She hasn’t hired me to do anything. Merely, she and Donald Blakely both mentioned your name to me.”
“Donald Blakely?” His brows went up. “Tish—has Blakely called recently about ... sorry, I know I should remember your name if we worked together, but there were so many ... ”
“Yes, indeed,” I said as his voice trailed away. “V.I. You can call me Vic.”
Tish put in, “I can phone Mr. Blakely if you’d like.”
“No, don’t bother—we can do
that later. I’ll just talk to her a minute, see if it’s something we can sort out in a hurry. You’d better sit in, though, in case it’s something you know more about than I.” He smiled again. “I’ve only been with Home Free three years. Tish here kept it going before that, during its lean period.”
It was a meager kind of praise, but the young woman flushed with pride. Her bowed shoulders even straightened a bit.
The back room had been created by the simple addition of a wall down the middle of the storefront, but it was a good quality wall, fully soundproofed. Without windows, it made me feel as though I’d stepped into a tomb, although a modern one: the rest of Home Free’s electronics sat here—a fax machine, another computer, and the latest in Hewlett-Packard printing technology. Jasper gestured me to a folding chair in front of the desk. Tish edged into a battered wing chair wedged in the corner.
“What kind of detective are you, Vic?”
His tone was patronizing enough to make me feel snotty. “A good one. Thorough.”
He smiled, with a genuine touch of humor. “I’m sure you are. But I need to know what kind of good, thorough detecting you’re planning on doing on me.”
“Blakely and Deirdre thought you were the person to talk to about a homeless woman I’d found camped in my office building.”
Jasper turned to Tish. “You could have saved Vic a trip. Told her we didn’t do direct placement.”
“She did,” I assured him. “They were the first words out of her mouth. But I thought that was Home Free’s mission: housing for the homeless.”
“We build it,” Jasper said. “That’s why we keep a low profile, and keep our door locked. Before, we’d have hordes of people lining up every evening trying to find a place to crash. And we do advocacy work—that’s my main job, going to Springfield.”
“So how do you come up with funding for your buildings?”
“I should have added fund-raising—it’s obviously the main job of any not-for-profit.”
“And most of your funds come from ...?”
“Guilty businessmen—and women—who avert their eyes from the derelicts they pass at the station every night on their way home to Lake Forest or Olympia Fields. Why do you want to know?”
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