“Is that why you came down here? To lecture me on parenting? Of course, you don’t have any children of your own—it’s always people who’ve turned up their noses at parenthood who think they can lecture the rest of us poor slobs. For your saintly information, we have a housekeeper, but the boys don’t like her because she can’t speak English. They won’t let her baby-sit them.”
“Deirdre came to my office last night.” Fabian was treating me to such a mix of arrogance and intimacy that I couldn’t possibly approach my main questions with finesse. “She was expecting you to meet her there, wasn’t she?”
“No. No, she wasn’t, Warshawski. I had no idea she’d gone downtown. I only found out when I got in from work. After a late meeting I was expecting to find dinner waiting. Instead, she’d left me an insolent note. The last thing I wanted to do was chase after her. Now I see it would have been better—but at the time—anyway, I called Emily down.”
“So Emily made you dinner. And then you went downtown to find Deirdre, to tell her just what you thought of her for going off in that irresponsible way. And she sneered at you and you lost your temper and started pounding on her. Then it got out of hand and before you knew it she was dead. So this morning you called your senator and got him to put some pressure on the cops for you.”
“What are you talking about? Are you trying to imply that I hurt Deirdre? I was here all night. It was Mrs. Sliwa’s night off and Deirdre left me alone with the children. I couldn’t go off. In fact I—”
He broke off abruptly. In fact he what?
“You called the cops? Or sat waiting by the door to beat her up when she might choose to walk in?” I prodded him.
He looked furious but didn’t answer, going instead to the foot of the stairs. “Emily! Emily! Come down here. I want to talk to you!”
At first there was no sound, but when he called her name again, more sharply, I heard a faint shuffling on the upstairs carpet. His daughter came down the stairs, her frizzy blond hair matted to her head on one side and blooming like a giant bush on the other. She was wearing jeans and an ill-fitting yellow blouse that made her blotched skin look muddy. She stopped on the lower landing, five stairs above us. Behind her, like mice, I could see her little brothers huddle in the shadows.
“This is Miss Warshawski, Emily. She’s come here with some impertinent questions that are none of her business, but we’re going to answer them anyway, in the hopes she’ll go away and leave us in peace to do our mourning for your mother.”
“Hi, Emily. I’m Vic. We met Wednesday night.” I climbed up a step and stretched a hand out to her, but she didn’t respond; her face had subsided into the dull mask that made her look retarded.
I moved up to the landing and sat on the stair behind her. “Your mama came to my office last night. Did she tell you where she was going? Or did she just assume you would take charge?”
Emily looked at her father, who sharply adjured her to answer the question.
“She was gone when I got home from school.” Her whisper was so soft I could barely hear her, even sitting four feet from her mouth.
“Did she leave you a note?”
Emily nodded fractionally. “Just that she was out, she didn’t know when she’d be back, but we could have leftovers for dinner. There was a lot of food left over from the party.”
“Do you still have the note? If I saw it maybe it would tell me something about her plans.”
“We didn’t keep it, Warshawski. Not being oracles, we didn’t predict it would be needed as evidence twenty-four hours later.” Fabian’s voice cracked across us, making his daughter flinch.
I ignored him, hoping that if I kept Emily looking at me it would lessen Fabian’s control of her. “She was expecting your dad to meet her at my office last night. Did he go out?”
Emily’s mouth started to move but no words came out. Her shoulders began to heave under the weight of suppressed tears.
“Tell her, Emily,” Fabian commanded. “Tell her whether I went out or was here last night.”
She gulped convulsively, looked at Fabian, and started to cry.
“You don’t have to lie for him,” I said gently.
“Just tell her the truth, Emily,” Fabian insisted. “Was I or was I not here last night?”
“Yes!” she screamed. “You were here! I know you were here!”
She stumbled back up the stairs, tripping on my left hand in passing. The mice detached themselves from the shadows when she passed. They clung to her shirttails as they all three scurried along the upper hallway.
“Satisfied, Warshawski?” Fabian was smiling triumphantly.
“I’m satisfied, yes, Messenger.” I got slowly to my feet. “I’m satisfied that you have terrorized your daughter into lying for you. I’ll pass that message along to the officer in charge of your wife’s murder investigation.”
“Pass this one on to him, too: that I won’t tolerate your interference in my private affairs. I intend to take steps to see that you don’t do so.”
“With what? The same weapon you used on Deirdre? I’ll write a note to alert them to the possibility.”
“I don’t know how you stay in business, Warshawski—I really don’t. You seem to reason with your endocrines instead of your synapses.”
I paused with my hand on the front doorknob. “Is that supposed to be an insult, Fabian? Is that how you started beating down Deirdre, telling her she only had feelings instead of the superior firepower of your masculine mind? And was she needy enough to listen to you? I’ve felt sorry for her for a long time, but what a sad epitaph: I gave up my mind to bolster my husband’s failing ego.”
“Yes, yes, that tired feminist cant. At least Deirdre was smart enough not to fall for it. You got what you came for—now go.”
“Don’t take your rage out on Emily after I leave. She’s too young to know how to stand up to you.”
At that his superior smile vanished and rage boiled over in him. “I want you staying away from my daughter. You’re a terrible influence for a young girl, with the ramshackle way you live. I found out you sneaked into her room in the middle of the night after our party. If I learn you’ve come near her again without my permission, believe me, Miss Know-it-all, I’ll be taking legal action so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
On an impulse so sudden I hadn’t known it was in my head I ran up the stairs to Emily’s room. Fabian remained in the hall for a moment, too taken aback even to call out to me.
I knocked sharply on Emily’s door but didn’t wait for a summons to open it. The three children were huddled together on the bed. It hadn’t been made up and sheets and blankets were churned into a lumpy knot. The little boy, Nathan, was tucked under his sister’s right arm, sucking his thumb. Joshua, the elder, leaned cross-legged against her other shoulder, reading a book aloud.
He stopped when he heard me. The three stared with frightened eyes like birds caught in an ill-made nest. I shoved aside a heap of books and papers to kneel next to the bed.
“Emily, I want to talk to you. I’m very worried by what may happen to you if I leave you here alone with Fabian—with your dad.”
She had her idiot face on, but I was beginning to know that was a shield to cover strong feelings. Joshua had already learned to assume it, but the toddler started whimpering behind his thumb. Emily hugged him closer to herself.
“You don’t have to stay here to be hurt,” I said. “There are safe places for you. If you want to come with me—now or at any time—I can see that you get help.”
Fabian suddenly erupted into the room behind me. “I told you to stay away from my daughter.”
I stayed on my knees next to Emily. “Do you think your grandmother would let you and the boys come stay with her? If she’s someone you trust, call her. Or call me. Or you can come with me now. I’ll wait while you pack a toothbrush.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Fabian bellowed. “You’ll leave my house at once. And as for you, young lady, if I
catch you going near this woman again—”
“You’ll what?” I snapped. “Prove what a he-man you are? ... Emily, I’m parked out front in a red Trans Am. I’m going to wait there for a while in case you decide you want to come with me. And if you don’t, I’m going to check in with you every day or so to make sure you’re okay. Do you still have my card?”
“She certainly does not. I found it on her dresser yesterday and wormed out of her the news you’d been in here trying to seduce her. You don’t need to give her another one.”
I got to my feet. “Fabian, you’re boring. You’re utterly predictable. I would love to appear against you in court—it would be so much fun to watch you turn cartwheels. How did you ever get a professorship here? Influence peddling?”
I saw his hand go back. I put up a forearm in time to block his blow. I grabbed his arm and pulled down hard enough to make him wince.
“Don’t get physical with me, Fabian—I learned to fight on the South Chicago streets. Nobody there knew the Marquess of Queensberry. ... I’ll be out front, Emily.”
When I left the room Fabian slammed the door on me. I lingered in the hall for several minutes to make sure he wasn’t beating on her, but heard only a soft murmur of voices. Bending shamelessly to the keyhole, I could see him perched on the bed next to his children. I couldn’t make out what he was doing, but the snatches of words I heard sounded sympathetic, even loving. I went out to my car scratching my head. I’d heard him strike his wife and bully his daughter, but his tenderness now almost made me doubt my own memory of the abuse.
I waited in front of the house for nearly an hour. No one emerged.
17
A Family Affair
“Listen, Vic, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just trying to lay out life as it is. You may think Fabian Messenger is a psych case—hell, from what you say, the guy needs a straitjacket and some good drugs. But he’s got friends who wield a lot of power in this town. You saw him at six last night, right? And by nine Kajmowicz was talking to the Finch at home. Someone got up the ladder almighty fast.”
Ted Kajmowicz was deputy superintendent of detectives. A call from him to a sergeant at home could be the chance of a lifetime—or career-ending. I could only imagine whether Finchley had been nervous or angry or embarrassed at the idea I’d put him on the spot with his most senior commander. I could only imagine because he hadn’t felt able to talk to me about it—he’d gone to Conrad.
I was trying to explain why this upset me. “It’s the idea that I’m your woman, not a professional whom he should talk to directly. I don’t like being sent messages by my lover telling me to behave.”
“Hey, girl, we know it’s hard on both of us, trying to mix all the things we’re mixing. Not just race, but you being ama—private—and me being public. If you’re saying the Finch should have called you direct, yeah, he should have. He was afraid he’d be too angry to talk to you straight.”
“It’s my perversity that I’d rather face someone’s anger than be ignored.”
I turned my head to stare out the window at a trio of boys playing cops and drug lords. We were in Conrad’s car in front of his mother’s house, trying to clear the air between us before going in to face Mrs. Rawlings’s heavy guns.
Conrad had called me this morning with the news that Fabian Messenger had sworn out a peace bond on me and that I had better never go near his daughter again. When I asked whether Finchley had interviewed Messenger as a serious suspect, Conrad told me he couldn’t discuss the case with me. It had not made our drive south a happy one.
“Well, it’s the cop in me that doesn’t want a civilian mucking up a murder investigation,” Conrad said. “But it’s the friend in me that doesn’t want to see you burned by someone with Fabian Messenger’s connections.”
He put a hand on my arm. “Look, I know you’re upset, but think about this: most of your clients want favors from the U.S. government. Your bread-and-butter, Darraugh Graham, gets three quarters of his business through federal contracts. On top of that he’s probably a Republican who spends a good chunk of change on Alec Gantner. If the senator calls and tells him either to cool you down or stop doing business with you, don’t you think he will?”
Before I could respond, one of Conrad’s nieces danced down the walk to fetch us. She opened the passenger door and pulled on my hand.
“Come on, Vic. Auntie Zu-Zu won’t open her presents until you’re inside. What did you bring her?” Jasmine, at six, was one of the pleasures of joining in Conrad’s family life.
“It’s a surprise. If I tell you it won’t be a surprise anymore.”
I’d found a sterling collar pin of a crossed saw and hammer, which seemed suitable for a woman in the trades. I pulled the little box from my pocket and gave it to Jasmine. She squeezed it and ran down the guest list for me while I fetched tortellini salad, my contribution to the potluck, from the backseat.
Jasmine hurled guesses about my gift at me as she shepherded us up the walk. At the door Conrad turned to me.
“You’re not going to let this spoil Zu-Zu’s birthday, are you?” he asked.
“Of course not, Conrad. I’m not a prima donna—but I am a professional. It’s an uphill battle getting you boys in blue to believe it; but I’m not ready to concede defeat yet.”
He grinned. “I was afraid you’d caught that slip.”
Jasmine, tired of adult procrastination, got behind her uncle and tried shoving him into the house. We laughed a little and let her push us inside.
“I got them, Aunt Zu-Zu. I got them. Now won’t you open your presents? Mommy got you the prettiest sc—”
“Jazzy,” her older sister shrieked, cutting her off. “You spoil everything. Shut up!”
Jasmine, an irrepressible party lover, ignored the outcry. She took my offering over to Camilla, who got up from the floor to hug her brother and me.
The room was packed. The whole Rawlings clan had turned out, all except Conrad’s youngest sister Janice, a neurology resident in Atlanta. In addition, old family friends, the tradeswomen who were working with Camilla to put together the Lamia cooperative, and all their children had arrived. Phoebe Quirk, as Lamia’s main investor, had shown up. And Tessa Reynolds, a sculptor whom Conrad had dated for several years, had been sitting on the floor next to Camilla.
Mrs. Rawlings hoisted herself from the couch where she’d been talking to Elaine, her oldest daughter. She groaned audibly and rubbed her back to let us know how much the effort of courtesy to her son’s girlfriend cost her. I stepped around the thicket of people on the floor to greet her and Elaine.
“Hi, baby,” Mrs. Rawlings said to Conrad. “You’ve been working too hard lately. We’ve missed you. Tessa came by; I know you’ll want to talk to her.”
“Vic’s here, Mama,” Conrad said gently.
“I know she is; I can see. How are you, Vic?” She gave me her hand in a greeting as formal and distant as a queen’s.
A thickset woman in her early sixties, she’d been left a widow with five children when Conrad was twelve. None of them had had an easy time of it; Mrs. Rawlings put in long hours at a bakery. The older ones did odd jobs while still in high school. Only Janice, the baby, had had the middle-class luxury of college, financed by her hard-working siblings.
As the one boy, Conrad had been drafted willy-nilly as man of the family. In that role he’d worked twenty or thirty hours a week all through high school. He’d still managed to be an honor-roll student—a fact that left him with no sympathy for the current crop of high school dropouts.
As Camilla had told me more than once, no woman would have been good enough for Mama’s boy under those circumstances. The fact that I was white made me less desirable than many, but apparently Tessa, now Mrs. Rawlings’s darling, used to get a greeting only marginally less frigid than mine.
Camilla thought Conrad would be living with his mother still if Vietnam hadn’t sucked him up out of high school. “Conrad can’t stand to hur
t anyone,” she’d explained. “Mama would weep and moan about her back any time he talked about moving out, so he’d stay—just a few more weeks until she feels better. And when would that have been? No. That war was a pisser, and Uncle Sam treated Conrad just as shitty as every other South Side black the army got their hands on. But I still gotta think Vietnam had a silver lining.”
I thought of that conversation now, as Mrs. Rawlings answered my conventional greeting by putting a hand on the small of her back. “I’m fine, Vic. These aches and pains are what you get when you’re an old woman. Of course, I wouldn’t have moved the sofa if I’d known for sure Conrad was coming, but now that he’s seeing you his family doesn’t—”
Her son put an arm around her and gently moved her to her seat on the couch. Whatever comment he made to her was swallowed in the shrieks of the children, but in a few minutes I saw her start to smile: a gentle, long-suffering smile—as if to say she was only enjoying herself as a favor to her beloved children—but a definite upturning of the lips nonetheless.
Mrs. Rawlings summoned Tessa Reynolds to the couch. When Conrad gave her his ironic smile and a hug I was surprised to feel a stab of jealousy. Since my divorce I’ve embarked on a number of affairs—relationships—what have you—but I’d never felt jealous of any of my partners’ other loves before. The feeling so astonished me that I stared at Conrad and Tessa, trying to sort out why. I realized suddenly that Elaine was watching me with a sly smirk about her mouth. Kissing my fingers at her I sat down with the group around Camilla. The third sister, Clarissa, embraced me and slid over to make room for me.
Phoebe Quirk, looking about sixteen in baggy jeans and an embroidered peasant blouse, was in the middle of explaining financial details of Lamia’s rehab project to two of the tradeswomen in the group. She eyed me warily, but continued her exposition until Jasmine plopped down briefly to describe the food.
“Vic brought some of her spaghettis,” Jasmine informed us. “The short round ones that look like toffees.”
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