When Eleanor and Donald walked to the elevator leading to the building’s underground garage I bit my lip. There’s no natural way to run into someone who’s driving off in a car, unless you rear-end her, which doesn’t make her receptive to your feigned rapturous surprise at the encounter.
The elevator came. Donald stepped in. Eleanor waved good-bye and joined me at the bus stop. I feigned surprised rapture.
“Eleanor Guziak, isn’t it? I’m Vic Warshawski—we met Wednesday night at the Messengers’.”
Of course she remembered me, what a pleasure to see me so soon, what a coincidence that I should be meeting with a client just across from her office.
Now that I had her I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I asked her where she was headed, hoping it was someplace I could tag along naturally, not something like fetching her children from day-care. It proved to be the next worst thing—her health club.
“Time for a drink first?” I suggested hopefully, but Eleanor was adamant: she hadn’t worked out all week.
Since I’d just dismissed a bus, we might with luck have fifteen minutes here at the stop. Not ideal as an interrogation site, but better than nothing. We talked about how hard it was to work full-time, overtime really, and stay in shape, but of course you function better mentally when you’re fit physically, only it was such a drag in the winter to work out, so much easier in the summer when you could ride your bike along the lakefront.
“When do you find time for your other activities?” I asked. “Volunteer work, that kind of thing?”
She didn’t have time for volunteer work, Eleanor confessed, shamefaced. We women always think that holding an important job full-time isn’t enough justification for our existence. If we don’t have pet causes, too, that we give another full-time stint to, we’re embarrassed at our own sloth.
“But you sit on other boards, don’t you? I was just talking to a friend who said you play a really active role at Century Bank. How are they doing, anyway? Uptown isn’t the greatest location for mortgages.”
“Oh, that’s a sad case. They’ve got overextended with the paper they put out in the community. We don’t know how or whether we’ll be able to salvage them.”
“Is that why you canceled the Lamia project? The papers had all been signed. I guess the tradeswomen were taken aback when the loan was withdrawn so suddenly.”
She stiffened and drew away from me. “How did you hear about Lamia?”
“The way you always do—friends. Why, is it some big secret?” I tried to sound casual.
“Secret? Oh, no.” She looked up the street. “Where’s the damned bus? I think it’ll be faster if I walk over to Wacker and flag a cab: you never get them west of the river this late at night. Good to see you, Vic.”
A minute or two after she disappeared across the bridge a number twenty rolled to a stop in front of me. As we passed the corner of Wacker and Washington I saw her huddled in the portico of the opera house. She wasn’t flagging a cab. She was talking into her portable phone. Maybe she’d suddenly remembered her mother’s birthday, but somehow I didn’t think so.
I rode the bus to Michigan Avenue, then raced to the underground garage for my car. If I ever got another financial breather I’d invest in my own portable phone. It had to be cheaper and easier than my current communications system: in my hurry to get home to a phone I was pulled over for doing seventy in the forty-five zone on North Lake Shore Drive. Sometimes I get lucky and run into a patrol cop who knew my dad, but as time passes most of those men have retired. This one was young, earnest, and implacable. And he took his own sweet time writing up the citation. It was seven-thirty before I got to my living room phone to dial Camilla.
“Hey, girl, I hear you’ve been trying to reach me,” she said. “Funny thing, I wanted to talk to you too. You know how we met at Phoebe’s office on Tuesday to talk about the bum deal we got on our permit and financing? Well, today we got—I wouldn’t exactly call it a miracle. More like a reprieve. Not all of the sisters are a hundred percent.”
“I heard Home Free might let you work on some of their stuff. Is that in concrete?”
“More like drywall. Oh, you mean do we have a cast-iron guarantee? I don’t know. I think we get the job of rehabbing a twelve-unit place. Near the corner of Lawrence and California. We drove by to see it today. It doesn’t look great, tell you the truth. The electrics and the plumbing are shot to hell and they get to use their own contractors on those.”
I fished a Chicago street map from the papers by the phone and found the location. “That’s almost a mile south of your original location. Right in the middle of drug alley. Is that what you want?”
“Hey, it’s like Phoebe said the other day: we’ve got to get a track record. This is how we’ll stick our foot in the door, show what we can do, maybe start building a capital base.”
“And the sisters who aren’t behind you?”
“They wanted a place we could build from scratch. And we have a certified electrician, so that’s a shame. It’s harder even for a woman to become an electrician than it is any of the other trades. Except plumbing, of course. That union is so tight—well, never mind.”
I folded the map, trying to put my finger on what didn’t sit quite right about the deal. “Who pulled these strings?”
“I guess Century did—the bank. Jasper Heccomb—he’s head of Home Free—is one of their outside directors, and they went to him to see if he’d do us a good deed since they’d had to pull the rug out.”
“Hey, Zu-Zu, I smell rotting alewives.”
Camilla laughed. “Phoebe’s right, Vic. You’ve been a detective too long. Why should that be fishy?”
“You don’t need me to spell out chapter and verse on back-scratching in Chicago. Guys don’t just pop out of the woodwork to do you favors. Especially not construction-related favors. And most especially not for women in trades.”
Camilla treated me to a spirited defense of her banker, a really good man who merely had the misfortune to be caught in the middle when financing fell through. Maybe he’d cashed in some chips with Jasper Heccomb. Why couldn’t I let people do a good deed once in a while without having to poke it with a pointed stick until it broke into bits?
Why, indeed, I had to ask myself. Especially since Camilla and Phoebe were letting me off the investigation into Lamia’s problems. Somehow, though, instead of feeling good about getting the hook from a job I didn’t want, I was getting angry. People were tossing bright-painted eggs in the air to keep me from looking at the juggler.
I started to tell Camilla about my strange encounter with Eleanor Guziak, then shut my lips on it. She wasn’t in the humor to hear any criticism of the deal. And after all, it is hard for tradeswomen to get funding. The housing business in Chicago was as stagnant as in the rest of the country. At least the job would employ most of the Lamia team for a number of months.
“Now, listen, Vic,” Camilla pushed into my silence. “I want some authentic hip-hip-hoorays from you, not all this antagonism. Phoebe and I agreed we didn’t want you going any further with your investigation. Maybe someone did do a deal under the table for us. Why shouldn’t we take it? Why shouldn’t women get a slice of the pie after all these years? But if they sense you sniffing around they’ll just cut us off.”
She was right. Absolutely right. I made some feeble congratulatory noises and hung up.
I drummed my fingers on the phone table. Oh, yes, I wanted to support women at work. But if someone was using them as a front for ... something ... I cast around for ideas but couldn’t imagine what evil use Home Free might make of them. Still, Eleanor Guziak had raced off to use her phone when I mentioned Lamia. That must mean some problem underlay the deal. And if Lamia took the fall for a corrupt operation, that could kill their chances of ever getting capital.
There was the indisputable fact that Cyrus Lavalle had learned something at City Hall so hot that he wanted to give me back the bribe I’d paid him twenty-four hours earlier. I di
dn’t know all the places Cyrus dropped cash—probably a thousand a month went to Oak Street’s unisex boutiques—but he desperately wanted to live like a drug lord on a city clerk’s pay. For him to send money back, or at least offer to, meant someone had scared him badly.
Monday morning I was going make some phone calls, no matter how much that upset Camilla and Phoebe. At least I’d push more aggressively on Tish at Home Free.
But on Saturday morning my questions got shifted willy-nilly to a new subject. When I went into my office with an armload of boxes, all ready to pack up and move out, I found an appalling sight: Deirdre Messenger’s body sprawled across my desk. I felt a momentary spurt of anger, thinking she had gotten drunk and passed out there.
Almost at once I realized she was dead, dead beyond doubt, dead with an ugliness so extreme I had at first denied it. Someone had savagely beaten her. A pool of brain and blood had congealed around her head.
Gray inkblots floated in front of me and light stabbed at the edges of my retinas. I suddenly found myself on the floor, with my left hand sliding across a sticky mass. I managed to pull one of the packing cartons in front of me before throwing up.
With the loss of my breakfast my head cleared. Keeping my left hand well away from my body I stumbled to my feet. I backed out of the room and ran up the three flights to the women’s bathroom. By some miracle water was running today, although this late in the Pulteney’s life only the cold tap functioned. The bar of soap I’d put in here three days ago was gone, as were the paper towels. I held my hand under the tap until my fingers were red and swollen with cold, long after traces of blood and brain had disappeared down the rusty sinkhole. I wiped my fingers dry against my jeans.
The smell of sewer gas was strong in the bathroom. Together with stale urine the stench made my stomach start to heave again. I held my breath until I found an open office across the hall. I pushed on the window but it was painted shut. Using one of my shoes I pounded on the glass until it broke. I gulped down mouthfuls of the sharp April air, grateful even for the sooty smell of the el wires.
In the abandoned room, with its cracked walls and exposed ceiling wires, my mind finally began to work again. I had to call the police, and soon. My sick leave wouldn’t delay their work unbearably, but the sooner they got started the better. The blood I’d landed in had been cold, with a thick crust, but not hard. Deirdre had been dead long enough that it wasn’t likely I’d surprised her killer.
I shivered slightly at the thought that the murderer might be close by. My Smith & Wesson was locked in my closet at home—I’m no Philip Marlowe forever pulling guns out of armpits or glove compartments. Marlowe probably never fainted, either, from the sight of a dead woman’s splintered skull.
My office door had been locked. Whoever killed Deirdre had taken my spare key. They could come back at any time, but I was fooling them—I was moving my operation home. Of course, maybe it was someone who didn’t know me, who thought they were killing me by assaulting the woman at my desk. But no one had seemed angry enough with me lately to smash my head in.
The likeliest possibility was random slaughter by a street punk looking for money for drugs. The violence of the assault made the murder seem fueled more by rage than premeditation. Why had he bothered to hunt my key from Deirdre’s pockets and lock up, though? That argued a coolness not in keeping with the ferocity of the assault. For that matter, why hadn’t he walked off with my computer? That would have bought a few rocks or lines, depending on his taste. Perhaps Deirdre had been carrying a large wad. For any punk cash is better than carry. But if she’d turned over a hundred dollars, would he have been furious enough to bash her head in?
Tamar Hawkings had been in the building and Deirdre had prowled around after her. She might not have liked Deirdre’s interference. Could someone so slight, so frail, have administered such savage blows? To defend her children ...
Of course, Deirdre had dropped broad hints that she was expecting someone, presumably Fabian, to show up. And I’d seen Fabian boil over quick enough and hot enough to beat her.
I retied my shoe and walked the seven flights down to the lobby. To call the cops I had to use the coffee shop’s phone so as not to blur possible prints on my own.
14
Wiping the Slate Clean
“Not your brightest performance, Vic.” Terry Finchley was talking to me in one of the interrogation rooms at the First District.
Mary Louise Neely, who’d just passed the detective exam, was taking notes. As always, she held herself parade-ground stiff, her copper hair smooth and flat as though painted to her skull.
“I know a professional would never throw up on a crime scene, and I’m filled with abject remorse.” Neely’s pen didn’t falter as she noted my response.
Finchley shook his head. “Save it for the lieutenant—he likes letting you get his goat. Your building’s falling over. Why’d you leave an inexperienced woman like Messenger alone in it?”
This was our third time down that particular path. I was getting tired of it. “You’ve worn me down, Detective. I lured Deirdre into the building—for reasons I’ll reserve so you get some surprises at my trial—and bashed her head in.”
Finchley didn’t smile or frown or, indeed, move in any way, but stared at me as though I were a laboratory specimen—and one he’d seen a million times already. Unblinking silence can be an effective police technique. You find yourself imagining what they’re thinking, what evidence they may be sitting on, until the silence becomes terrifying and you start to babble. I settled back in my chair and began running through “Vissi d’arte” in my head.
I’ve known Terry Finchley for years, since he first joined Bobby Mallory’s investigative team—the lieutenant who liked me to ride him, in Terry’s tableau. Finchley and I used to have a pretty good rap. Since I started dating Conrad, though, his attitude toward me seemed to change.
Terry is Conrad’s closest friend on the force—they went through the academy together, then supported each other through the tribulations that pioneers suffer: they were among the first black officers assigned to tactical units. Now Finchley thinks I’m on some white liberal trip and will dump Conrad when I get to the end of my journey. It’s put frost in the smile he gives me. Today he wasn’t smiling at all.
I kept my eyes away from his face, focusing on Officer Neely’s left hand while strictly keeping my mind on Puccini. I had reached the tragic climax of the aria, where Tosca begs Heaven to tell her why her piety is so ill-repaid, when Finchley finally broke the silence.
“I’m harping on this point because with all your faults you usually aren’t cruel. I’m trying to get a picture of why you left Ms. Messenger there, if not out of vindictiveness.”
“That suggests I knew she was destined for an evil fate,” I objected. “I work late in that building all the time, even now, when there are only five or six other tenants left. The south Loop is spooky at night, but it’s about the safest part of town—you know that.”
“Deirdre made a big point about staying in my office when I was packing up to go home. Her personality was hard to respond to—she could be both roughly aggressive and terribly hurt at the same time. Last night she played those two strings like Paganini. Anyway, she—and everyone who knows both of us—kept saying what an expert on homeless women she was. She was sure she’d know just how to persuade Tamar Hawkings into getting help.”
It was hard for me to put into words how confused I had felt talking to Deirdre last night. I gave in to her demand for a key because she’d thrown me off balance; I’d wanted to get away from her. It troubled me that she’d unsettled me so much that I hadn’t paid attention to her state of mind. Had she been frightened, excited, exultant? I couldn’t say.
“I’d like to know who she expected to join her at the Pulteney,” I added. “My feeling was she’d thrown down a gauntlet for her husband. He’d been pooh-poohing her effectiveness—if you want to see cruel, wait until you meet him—and she was goin
g to prove she was both brave and competent.”
Throughout the interrogation Mary Louise Neely had sat like a manikin with an automated left hand. At my last comment her face changed briefly. I thought she flinched in pain, but the expression was so fugitive I might have imagined it.
Finchley finally let go of my abominable desertion of Deirdre and turned to the trials of Tamar Hawkings. Of course, as soon as I’d explained why Deirdre wanted to stay at the Pulteney he’d detailed a search party for Tamar. If she hadn’t bashed in Deirdre’s head herself—furious, perhaps, at a rich know-it-all telling her what to do—she might have seen the killer.
A five-member crew had swarmed through the basement, he told me, before scouring the upper floors. Tamar had slipped away. I told Finchley about Deirdre’s reporting she’d seen some sign of the homeless family on six. Whatever it was—assuming Deirdre hadn’t made it up—Tamar had erased her presence.
I had to keep reminding myself that I’d seen Tamar Hawkings, spoken to her, not just imagined her. Even with three children in tow she moved like a bug skating on water—no trace of her journey remained behind her.
I was worried about her, worried about her sick, hungry children. Even so, I’d felt a secret surge of pleasure in her disappearance. Keep away from the cops, girl, I urged her wraith: it would be too easy for the state’s attorney to pin Deirdre’s death on a marginally stable homeless woman.
“Okay, Vic,” Finchley said at length. “You can take off. You’re lucky Neely and I got the call. Some stranger finds you with a dead woman in your office you wouldn’t walk out of here without posting bond.”
“Gosh, thanks, Terry. It’s reassuring to know we live in a police state where who you know is all that gives you due-process protection. ... Before I leave I have a question for you. How seriously are you guys taking Fabian Messenger as a suspect?”
Terry tightened his lips. “We don’t need you telling us how to do the job, Vic. Everyone knows that the nearest and dearest are the first suspects. We’ll send someone to talk to him—after we break the news about his wife’s death.”
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