He looked at his wrist in an ostentatious show of how tight his time was. I couldn’t be sure from across the desk, but it looked like heavy gold—maybe Rolex or Patek.
“Just curious. You usually build new units, don’t you? But you do some rehabbing?”
He smiled, but not quite as warmly. “Maybe being a detective gets in your blood the same way that organizing does—you can’t stop asking questions that aren’t any of your business.”
“Maybe so.” I smiled, too, to show an amiable disposition. “How do you decide whether to do a rehab job or start from scratch?”
“We factor in costs, availability of site, quality of building scheduled for rehab, all those things.”
“And put the job out to bid?”
Jasper leaned forward across his desk. “Vic. What is it you really came here for? I don’t have a lot of time this morning.”
“I really came here to see what kind of work you were doing.”
He leaned back in his chair again. “Good work. Thorough.”
I laughed. “Could I look at one of your rehab jobs?”
Jasper raised his eyebrows. “You sound like a potential investor, Vic, but you don’t look like one.”
“Don’t go by appearances. If I only went by your watch I’d say you couldn’t possibly be head of a shoestring advocacy group.”
He glanced again at his wrist. “Oh, that. It was a legacy and I had a moment of self-pity, wishing I’d gone into medicine or investment banking, like so many of my old friends. We have a couple of projects that we could let you look at. Talk to Tish here—she’ll schedule an appointment with the managers for you.”
“Under construction?”
“There’s nothing much in the works. And now, Vic, you’ll have to let me go. We’ll get together some time for a drink, catch up on the old days.”
I wanted to ask him what he owed Century Bank, to let them pressure him into giving Lamia the rehab project. I wanted to ask him how he handled bids, since Lamia had been awarded the job so suddenly. But either of those questions would have exposed the group and I didn’t have a good reason, except my annoyance with Phoebe, for doing that. I allowed him to shepherd me to the front office.
“Gary didn’t seem very happy,” I said as he turned to his own office. “He’s not an investor who got stiffed, is he?”
Jasper’s smile played around his mouth. “No, indeed. One of our contractors, and a born worrier. If you’re trying to smell out our investments you should go downtown to look at our 990 filing: it’s there in the State of Illinois building, just as it should be. Good to see you after all these years.”
Tish smirked as she took my phone number, pleased to see Jasper put me down. She said she’d call me when they had a site I could look at. Somehow I didn’t believe I’d ever hear from her again.
On my way back to my car I stopped to look in the window of the novelty shop. I decided that if I could choose any item in the store window for my very own, it would have to be the lamp whose base was in the shape of a baby, and whose shade read “Oh, Mama,” over and over in different shades of crimson.
12
Return of the Hostess
It was close to five when I got to my office. I’d divided the afternoon between the State of Illinois building and the city-county building, looking up records. Since I was in Helmut Jahn’s glass cupcake anyway I’d looked up Home Free’s 990 filing with the state. They did work on a bigger scope than I would have believed, judging by their tiny office, but since most of it was in contracting and downstate lobbying I guess that wasn’t too surprising.
Grants and private donations had given them almost ten million in revenue last year. About a third had gone directly to construction, another third to maintenance of existing programs, and the rest to administrative overhead, maintenance of an office in Springfield, and establishment of a trust fund. It all looked very solid. At least Lamia didn’t need to worry about their bills being paid. Still, Home Free must be doing gold-plated work on their job sites. I was curious to see some of them.
Their accounts were audited by Strong and Ardmore, a biggish CPA firm in town. And both Alec Gantner and Donald Blakely served as directors. Again no surprise.
I took the information back to my office along with the data I’d gathered on other jobs and started entering it all into appropriate categories on my machine. So absorbed was I in my work that when Deirdre Messenger spoke close to my shoulder I jumped and swore; I hadn’t even heard the door open.
“So you’re here, Vic. I wondered when you were going to show up. I’ve gotten tired of the coffee shop down the street.”
I stared doggedly at the screen, waiting for my pulse to come back to my body. “We have an appointment, Deirdre?”
“I talked to you on Monday about trying to do some work with the woman who’s living in your cellar. I thought we had a date for tonight. Or do I have the wrong day?” Her jocularity seemed more forced than usual.
“I didn’t think we’d set a time. Anyway, after Wednesday night all bets are off.”
She planted herself in one of my guest chairs. It had been so long since I’d allowed anyone into the office that it was black with soot from the el. “You can eat my food, but I can’t visit your office?”
I turned to look at her squarely. “Let’s not pretend Wednesday night didn’t happen, Deirdre.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tone was belligerent, but her eyes shifted away from mine.
“I saw you and Fabian and Emily together. You did not strike me as someone with the strengths to take on a troubled family.” When she didn’t say anything I added, “You do remember my coming back for my coat after the party, don’t you?”
“I remember you coming to my bedroom and getting Emily so upset that she yelled at her father and me. I didn’t appreciate it much and neither did Fabian.”
“We weren’t in the same room, if that’s what you recall. I don’t pretend to know what goes on between you and your husband—who goads whom into doing what—do you drink because he’s intolerable? Is he intolerable because you drink? Does he often hit you? Is your daughter the sacrifice you offer up to his anger? But I won’t pretend I didn’t see you jettison Emily all evening long.”
The veins around her nose glowed red. “You’re right about one thing, Vic: you don’t know what goes on between Fabian and me. If you’d ever been married—”
“I was,” I interrupted.
“Oh, that’s right—you and Dick Yarborough. But you couldn’t stick around to make it work out. Marriage entails sacrifices, you know.”
I tried to keep my jaw from falling open. “You been studying Rush Limbaugh in your spare time? I never thought marriage meant sacrificing my humanity.”
“Not everyone has such inflated ideas about their value as you do, Vic. I thought it was worth my while to give up my own career to help Fabian in his. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make an effective contribution as a volunteer. You know, I don’t just work at Arcadia House. I do a lot for Home Free too. I’ve taken courses in social work. This woman might talk to me where she wouldn’t talk to you, especially since I have children and have some common bond with her. Most people find me empathic.”
I pressed my hands against my face, trying to pull my splintering emotions back together. Everything Deirdre said about herself seemed totally different from the character she’d exhibited two nights before. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t aware of it, that below the surface of her prattling about her children she must have had an image of her daughter struggling with the little boys, and of herself remote from them. It’s a commonplace joke that mental health professionals have the most ruinous home lives, but I couldn’t imagine Deirdre being effective with someone as needy as Tamar Hawkings.
“All you women who went on to have careers are the same,” Deirdre exploded into my silence. “You don’t think those of us who stayed home and put our children and husbands first are worth anything.”<
br />
I let my hands fall to my sides, too exhausted to hold them up any longer. “Oh, Deirdre, do you even hear what you’re saying?” I began, then broke off. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can talk to this woman in a way I can’t. If her story can be believed, she left her husband because he beat her up and was threatening her older daughter. You’d have some common ground there.”
As soon as the words were out I regretted them. Deirdre flinched and seemed to shrink inside her coat. Her face became a mask. Stripped both of jocularity and belligerence she seemed to have no personality at all. Against my will I felt a stir of pity for her.
“Why did you come up here, Deirdre? What did you hope I could do?”
Her face remained stolid. I had done the unpardonable—not only spoken the taboo words about her husband, but done so with disdain. As too often happens when I’m nervous or ashamed I started talking too much. I explained how I’d taken Tamar Hawkings’s children to the hospital Tuesday night only to have her run away Wednesday morning.
“And the cops say she’s probably come back here—that a beat officer saw someone who’s likely to be Hawkings disappear in here with the kids. But it would be a job to find them—she seems to have some escape hatch I can’t discover. So unless you have enough people to mount a thorough search party, I’d give it up for today. She’d be gone before anyone laid eyes on her.”
Deirdre nodded when I finished my speech. “Believe me, Vic, I know more about homeless women than you give me credit for. And whatever she does she’s going to be trying to find a safe berth for the children.”
“I went to see Jasper Heccomb this morning. You and Donald didn’t—”
“Why did you go see him? I thought you were going to leave that to me.”
I ground my teeth. “You’re assuming we’ve had conversations and agreements that never took place. Anyway, since you do so much work for them, you must know that they don’t do any direct placement of people, so they never were a good place to go to. I’ve tried Marilyn at Arcadia House and Lotty called Fiona’s Place. We’ve come up empty.”
“Jasper knows me. He’ll do things for me that he wouldn’t do for you. It really upsets me that you’d go behind my back this way.”
She spoke loudly, as she had the other night when she was trying to stand up to her husband. I was starting to get angry myself when I noticed that she was gripping her hands together so tightly that the knuckles showed white.
“Okay,” I said lightly. “Be my guest. Use your powers to get Jasper to find a place for Tamar Hawkings to live.”
Her face took on a secretive, almost triumphant look. I wondered if she and Jasper had been lovers all those years ago—or even recently. When she shed her angry, pinched look she was still beautiful.
While I stared at her speculatively she suddenly bounced to her feet and draped her coat across the chair back. “I’m going to scout around for Tamar. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I’m not staying much longer. And because of my electronics I need to keep the office door locked.” The only reason it had been open for Deirdre to barge in was my vague thought that Tamar Hawkings might seek me out again.
“I won’t take long.” Before I could protest further she had sped out to the hall.
I was still fulminating over her audacity when she poked her head around the door. “If anyone comes looking for me, tell them I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
At that I dashed after her. “Just one sweet minute, Deirdre. Did you set up a meeting in my office? Without consulting me?”
In the unlighted hall I couldn’t make out her expression, but I could see the silhouette of her body. She looked the way she had Wednesday night at dinner, her head thrust cobra-style back on her neck.
“Don’t get on your high horse, Vic. I didn’t set up a meeting in your precious hideaway. Merely, I let ... people ... know where I’d be.”
I sucked in air in an angry whistle. In other words, she’d had a fight with Fabian and had come down here as a mark of bravado. I’m going to Vic’s office to prove what a heroine I really am, try and stop me, or words to that effect. All that garbage about what she knew about Tamar Hawkings and Jasper Heccomb had been just that: garbage. I turned on my heel and slammed my office door shut behind me.
Back at my desk I glared at my computer. My name flashed in blue across the screen every time I stopped working. The sight seemed to mock me. I hit the space bar and returned to the Lamia file.
Before Deirdre’s arrival I’d put in the data from Home Free’s 990 filing. My last task for the day was to enter the names of Century Bank’s directors from the list Lexis had given me on Tuesday. That would conclude anything I’d do on the Lamia project.
The directors’ names had come in alphabetical order. Near the top of the list was Eleanor Guziak. My jaw dropped slightly. She was the banker who’d sat across from me at Deirdre’s party Wednesday night. Right-hand woman of Gateway Bank president Donald Blakely, who’d blandly told me he didn’t know anyone at the Century Bank well. My, my. How little we know of our own subordinates.
Gateway was a big downtown bank. Not in the same league as the Ft. Dearborn Trust or First Chicago, but part of the little group that made policy—both private and public—in the city.
Century, on the other hand, was a small community bank whose only office lay in the Forty-eighth ward, where Camilla’s group wanted to put up their experimental project. It wasn’t unusual for the officer of a big bank to serve on the board of a small one. What was strange was Donald Blakely’s unwillingness to acknowledge the relationship.
I whistled tunelessly through my front teeth. I could call Guziak, and get her voice mail or her secretary and hope for a return call.
“None of your business, Vic,” a voice inside my brain warned me. “You aren’t going to jeopardize Lamia’s deal, are you?”
It was close to five-thirty. If I hurried, and if I guessed right, I could intercept Guziak on her way out of the Gateway building. Turning off the machine, I pulled my papers into my briefcase and switched off the desk lamp.
As I got up I saw Deirdre’s coat. In my excitement over Eleanor Guziak I’d forgotten Deirdre. I was damned if I’d wait while she futzed around hoping to stir up Fabian. She could retrieve her coat from my doorknob if she ever condescended to return. I wasn’t running a checkroom.
She arrived just as I was balancing it on the knob. “Oh. You leaving, Vic? I was hoping I could use your phone.”
“Sorry. I’ve got an appointment across the Loop.” I handed her coat to her. “Any luck?”
“I may have found where they were sleeping for a few nights. One of the offices on six. If you have a spare key I could put it through the mail slot on your door when I leave.”
My astonishment at her sheer gall was so great that I found myself fumbling in the zip compartment of my briefcase for a spare key. I handed it to her wordlessly. If she forgot to put it through the mail slot it wouldn’t matter; I was going to move my office home in the morning. This dying building was dragging me down with it.
“Is there a washroom on this floor?” she asked, pocketing the key.
“You have to go up to seven. Unless you’re desperate,I’d wait till I got home: the lighting’s bad and the hygiene is ... well, sketchy. Or go to the coffee shop you used this afternoon—they’re pretty accommodating.”
She followed me down the hall. “I’ll manage. With the hygiene, I mean. And I brought a flashlight.”
“And I’d use the stairs,” I added. “The elevator is temperamental. Although, if it stops, you can open the trap door and climb out over the top. That’s what I do these days.”
She looked startled, but she was determined to show me that she was just as tough as I was. She hit the button and the elevator groaned into a semblance of life.
As I started down the stairs I called, “And make sure you don’t leave my office unlocked. If I come back in the morning to find that computer missing I’m goi
ng to make sure you replace it.”
Deirdre didn’t say anything, but as I looked over my shoulder at her she touched her hair in a mock salute. I ran down the steps two at a time to keep from going back up to throttle her.
13
An Unsightly Mess
Gateway Bank named themselves a century ago when Chicago was called the Gateway to the West. In a more recent fit of corporate adventurousness, they’d built one of the first skyscrapers when the Loop moved west of the Chicago River in the early eighties. Gateway’s ads had been trumpeting their resurgent pioneer spirit ever since.
It was a quarter to six when I panted into their building. By this point in the evening the bulk of the work force was on its way home. I shared the lobby with a security guard and a few desultory late-stayers. There was a good chance that Guziak was already gone for the day, of course, but most senior officers stay late. Even if they have no real work to do, such devotion sets them apart from the rank and file.
The Gateway lobby was a marvel of red marble and brass, but it didn’t offer much entertainment. The owners hadn’t thought to fill the ground floor with shops; the only artwork was a photo display of bank employees grinning happily at customers. I studied smiling tellers handing cash to old women, laughing officers in hard hats on top of oil rigs, hearty officers in business suits at the controls of combines, until my own mouth ached vicariously.
At six-ten the guard ambled over to see if I needed help. I smiled politely and said I was just waiting for a friend who had to work late. He let me borrow his Sun-Times. At six-thirty I’d gleaned what counsel the paper had to offer and decided I must have missed Guziak. I returned the guard’s paper and left.
Some impulse made me look back into the building as I was boarding an east-bound bus. Eleanor Guziak was crossing the lobby, briefcase in hand, her head cocked deferentially as she absorbed wisdom from Donald Blakely. I stepped back off the bus. The driver swore at me and roared off.
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