“Community service?” Jasper raised his brows. “What’d he get busted for? A few lines?”
“A few telephone lines. Into DOE files. He needs to put in about five weeks in a not-for-profit. I’m sure the judge would be extremely enthusiastic about Home Free.”
Jasper narrowed his eyes at me. “A hacker, Vic? Do you think I was born yesterday? Or were you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’d rather have someone who might sell your electronics to support a drug habit than a computer whiz? He could get this office automated and straightened out in a week.”
“Tish is a computer whiz too. And don’t be naive, Vic. I don’t want a hacker who can poke into my files. If that’s a big letdown for Darraugh Graham, I’m sorry. We’ll write him off as a donor. Tish will see you this afternoon. I’ve got to get back to my meeting.” He stalked back to his office, for once forgetting to smile.
What was in his damned files that he had to protect—unreported income? I was consumed now with curiosity about who in that back room needed such careful sheltering. Once outside the office I looked around for a convenient place to watch the entrance. The vertical blinds still shut out any view of the inside. When I glanced up at the lintel I found an electronic eye watching me. An important precaution in a neighborhood like this? Or overly vigilant for a storefront operation?
I went back to the Korean novelty shop. The lamp I’d admired last week was still there. Dust was gathering on the baby’s upper lip, but the shade still trumpeted “Oh, Mama” in bright red letters. If I went inside to look at it, though, I wouldn’t be able to tell when the Home Free door opened.
For the benefit of the electronic eye I drove my car around the block and parked close to Leland. Picking up the towels that I kept in the backseat for the dogs, I crossed to the far side of the street and went into a Laundromat. It was about three doors south of Home Free, with big windows that afforded a good view of the street.
A couple of women in Azeri headscarves were chatting in one corner. Another young woman sat by herself reading a Korean newspaper. None of them paid any attention to me; I didn’t really even need the verisimilitude of doing laundry, but it wouldn’t hurt the towels to be clean once a year.
The water had just started roaring into the machine when the Home Free door opened. I squinted and then felt my jaw go slack in surprise. Phoebe Quirk came out, accompanied by young Alec Gantner, the senator’s son whom I’d met at Deirdre’s last week. The impulse to run outside and grab hold of her, to shake her until she told me what the two of them wanted together with Jasper Heccomb, was so strong my legs ached from the effort of standing still.
It wasn’t surprising for Phoebe to meet with Heccomb: she was a backer of Lamia, and Lamia was rehabbing a building for them. It wasn’t surprising for Alec Gantner to be there—he was a director of Home Free. Why, then, did Jasper and Tish feel they had to shroud the meeting in secrecy? Was there some conflict of interest—were Phoebe and Alec involved in some other deal that should have precluded the Lamia project? But what could that be?
I looked at the washing machine. It would take almost an hour for it to complete the cycle. I was coming back this afternoon to see Tish: if someone wanted to steal the towels in the interim, she was welcome to them. While Gantner and Phoebe climbed into her BMW I scuttled down the street for my Trans Am. By the time Phoebe got to her office I was sitting in the antechamber waiting for her.
25
The Old Girl Spiderweb
Phoebe was humming under her breath. She gave a cheery “good morning” to the receptionist before noticing me.
“Vic! What are you doing here? I thought—” she broke off.
“I know. You thought Jasper had successfully booted me out the Home Free door and I’d taken off in my sporty roadster. The three of you sat in Jasper’s little office watching me on the TV monitor and cheering. But I snuck back in time to see you and young Alec waltz away together.”
“So?”
“So why is your seeing the head of Home Free such a secret?”
She looked from me to the receptionist, suddenly aware of how public our conversation was. “It’s not a secret, Vic. And, as Jasper told you, when you drop in on people unannounced you can’t expect them to find time for you. I have a meeting to get to.”
I stood up. “I know, sweet pea. It’s with me. We can have it out here in the foyer, in your office, or downstairs in the coffee shop, but we are going to talk.”
Her face bunched together in frustration. “Oh, very well. We’ll go to my office. Hold my calls, Laura.”
She walked down the hall at race-qualifying speed, ignoring greetings from co-workers and a frantic demand from one man that she respond to a Japanese fax immediately. In her office she sat at her desk, an imposing piece of ebony about a tennis court wide. Her desk chair built up her height; wing chairs in front put visitors a foot below her head. I opted for one of the corner couches behind the desk. She swiveled and glared, angry at losing her barricade.
“Okay, Vic. This had better be good.”
I blinked. “You stole my line, Phoebe. I want to know what you and Alec Gantner are up to. With Heccomb thrown in for sauce.”
“Private business. You’re on retainer for me, in case you’d forgotten. Not to investigate me.”
“We seem to keep having this conversation. You paid for my professional help. You did not buy me. In case you’d forgotten, last week you used that same line to coerce me into investigating why Century Bank had pulled the plug on Lamia. When, just two days later, Home Free agreed to give them a rehab job, you trotted out those very words to pull me off the investigation.”
She started to say something, but I spoke through her. “In a minute. I want to spell this out clearly for you. I left the investigation most reluctantly. My main City Hall informant was so nervous about it that I knew I’d inadvertently walked in on something sensitive. Ordinarily I would not have dropped such an inquiry, but two things decided me: Camilla Rawlings’s ardent pleading for Lamia, and Deirdre’s murder. Her death, and the disappearance of her three children, pushed other less-important questions out of my mind. Also, I had inspected Home Free’s 990 filing and their finances looked good enough to pay Lamia’s bills.”
“So why come around now?” Phoebe’s fists were knotted in her lap. “Leave it alone for good, Vic.”
I pressed my fingertips into my forehead. “You’re not listening, Phoebe. I didn’t drop the inquiry on your orders, but for the reasons I just outlined.”
“What’s made you change your mind?”
“Nothing. Until I saw you and Alec Gantner waltzing out of Home Free this morning I had scrupulously avoided all mention of Lamia in my few sessions with Jasper Heccomb. Now—all bets are off.”
She pounded her right thigh in frustration. “Then what were you doing there?”
“Looking for leads into Deirdre’s murder. She was an active Home Free volunteer. I’m trying to find someone she talked to the night she died. Now you tell me what you were up to this morning.”
She swiveled around to commune with her desk. “I was going over some details of the Lamia deal.”
“With Alec Gantner?”
“He is on the Home Free board, Vic,” she shot over her shoulder “He has a legitimate interest in their projects.”
“I see.” I walked to a sideboard against the far wall and opened its doors.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking for a refrigerator. I thought you might have eggs. Which you’d be willing to show me how to suck.” I shut the cupboard doors and leaned against the edge.
Phoebe frowned ferociously, her jaw jutting out far enough to cause permanent damage to her overbite. “It’s time for you to return Capital Concerns’s retainer, Vic.”
“Great. I’ll be happy to. I can’t work for someone who’s as secretive as you are about your actions. You keep me totally in the dark and then are outraged if I bump into a giant sofa
you’ve stuck in the middle of the room.”
“Don’t bring furniture into this, Vic. You promised me—Camilla and me—last Sunday you would leave Lamia’s affairs alone. I can’t have someone on my payroll who’s so untrustworthy.”
“Pot calling the kettle, Quirk.” It was an effort to keep my voice light. “My accounting records are boarded up in the Pulteney. I’ll send you a check as soon as I can get in to see how much of your retainer is owed you—I’ve done some work on Mr. T that I haven’t billed you for yet.”
“Mr. T? What’s he got to do with me? You’re not just arrogant, you’re insane.”
“Your little T-cell company. That’s what you called it when you gave me the assignment. I don’t remember its formal name offhand.”
Her skin turned so pale that her freckles stood out like drops of blood against her skin. “I want you to drop that investigation at once. What have you found out?”
“I’ll look it up this afternoon and send you a report and a bill.” I spoke stiffly, uninterested in masking my own anger.
“I don’t want you looking it up. I don’t want you sending me a report. I’ll write off the retainer in lieu of a fee for the work on that company.” She got up. “And stay away from Home Free. Neither Camilla nor I want those waters muddied any further.”
“Phoebe, you just fired me. You can’t order me around. And anyway, you never have realized I’m not a blender to start and stop by throwing a switch. You need to remember I’m a professional with whom you contracted—not hired—to get work done. And that means I design the work plan. If I turn up startling material that changes the work plan, I make that decision.”
“Professional?” She curled her lip. “With your accounts boarded up in an abandoned building? What a joke! I hired you out of pity for a struggling woman entrepreneur. But there are plenty of other firms around town who will do what I need with a lot less grief.”
As I rode the elevator down to the ground I felt a sour taste in my mouth. There was too much truth in her criticism. Nothing about my life these days looked remotely successful, let alone professional.
I tried to find a quick place for lunch on my way up Dearborn. I’d have liked a bowl of old-fashioned barley or matzo ball soup, but the mom-and-pop delis have all disappeared—replaced by trendy cappuccino bars to gratify yuppified palates such as my own.
I found some ersatz minestrone and a lump of dough calling itself a bagel and went on up to the Herald-Star. Without my modem I had to revert to slogging the streets like an old-fashioned gumshoe. Good thing I’d worn my Nikes—I was dressed for the part.
I climbed the stairs to the second-floor news offices and made my way through the labyrinth of cubicles to Murray Ryerson’s desk. My lucky day. Murray was in, hunched over the phone. He looked up when I tapped his shoulder, wound up his call, and stood to hug me. An outsize Viking in a red beard, he tops my five-eight by a good nine inches.
“Nancy Drew in the flesh.” His voice boomed around the floor; a woman in the next cubicle poked her head around to stare.
Murray, oblivious, fingered my hair. “You’ve got some white in that curly mop of yours. It’s been so long since you’ve spoken to me, you’ve grown old.”
I disengaged myself; the woman next door scooted back to her desk. “Just showing the effects of working with you all these years.”
“With me?” he mocked. “When was it ever cooperative? I never got anything from you except with a crowbar, and then only if you needed a favor back. Which makes me wonder what you’re doing here now.”
Murray and I go back to my days in the PD’s office when he’d been a rookie reporter trying to find who was leaking defense files to the state’s attorney. He had interviewed me for the story. Even though I’d suspected my assistant director, residual clannishness from growing up on the South Side kept me from squealing. Murray eventually got the information from a disgruntled secretary. I’d taken the heat anyway at my next performance review and had always wondered if Murray fingered me out of pique for not making his job easier.
Over the years, as he became one of the city’s preeminent investigative reporters, our relations remained colored by that early experience: he came to me for stories; I held on to information to protect clients or friends; he got angry; I got burned. For a brief time we’d compounded the mess by becoming lovers, and that interlude added to the ambivalence we felt on seeing each other. Did we welcome a meeting or recoil from it? Did we gain or get hurt by it? Neither of us could figure that out.
“Oh, well, since you know I’ve come to beg for help, I won’t beat around the bush. I want to look up some stories on the news data bases.” Murray had access to the Times, Tribune, and Herald-Star as well as the Dow Jones News Service.
“Whoa, there, Nancy. I’m not running the public library here.”
“Okay. I’ll go to the library. You know, the police impounded my computer after Deirdre Messenger died, on account of they think they can bully me into explaining why the murderer erased my hard disk. Or maybe Deirdre did it because she was in a bad mood. And the Culpeppers boarded my modem up in the Pulteney on Wednesday. Otherwise I’d do this myself. But the library’s a good tip. Thanks.”
I sauntered toward the door. Murray caught up with me at the elevator.
“Not so fast, Vic. This in connection with Messenger? I was in Washington last week—they’ve got me poring over Congressional finance records now. I forgot you were sitting in the front seat on this one. What’s with Deirdre’s kids? They’ve hogged the front page the last two days. Someone said Messenger beat his wife and killed her because she was having an affair.”
“Could be.” I pushed the button.
“Oh, damn you, Warshawski.” He got down on one knee, with more agility than you might expect from a guy his size, and kissed my right hand. “O She-who-must-be-obeyed, I will dial up all data bases for you with my own fingers if you will only tell me about the murder, omitting no details however trivial they may seem to you, and tying them up with the computer search you are undertaking.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure how what I want to know ties to Deirdre’s death. I’m just fishing around. But I’ll tell you something for nothing that the cops aren’t interested in: Deirdre had made an appointment to see someone in my office. I’m trying to find out who.”
Murray loved it. He danced me around the hall and told me he took back all the mean, ugly things he’d ever even thought about me, let alone said, adding that the white hairs looked sexy, and whisked me down to Lucy Moynihan’s hamburger joint to talk. While he ate three burgers and I supplemented my soup with a basket of onion rings we discussed the pros and cons of Fabian as a suspect.
“I know he beat her: I heard him do it once,” I said. “But who was she supposed to be sleeping with?”
He shook his head. “Idle talk—no one had any serious names to throw around. You know the odds-on suspect is the daughter. That’s why she’s supposed to have run away.”
“I know. But I don’t believe it. I think it was Fabian. And I think the only thing I can do to help the kid is find who Deirdre was meeting in my office last Friday. It might even have been Alec Gantner or Donald Blakely—she was making suggestive remarks to them at her dinner party last week. If they saw Fabian enter the building, maybe they’re not squealing out of brotherly solidarity. I want a lever that will make them talk to me.”
“And what’s your pal Conrad saying while you show the police how to do their job?” Murray jeered. “Aren’t he and the officer in charge good old boys together?”
“You want to do a story on my love life or on Deirdre’s death?” I snapped.
Murray laughed. “I love to catch you off guard, Warshawski. It’s good for you.”
“Yeah, like castor oil.”
I looked at my wrist. Even if I’d had an inheritance I wouldn’t have spent it on a pimp watch like Jasper Heccomb’s. My father’s old steel watch, which I’d had fitted with a new band so it didn’
t fall off my wrist, told time just as well as a Rolex. Right now it told me I had two hours before I was due back at Home Free. I herded Murray back up to daylight and his computer.
26
Whirling Dervish
Endless stories had been filed on the Gantners. Alec senior was a U.S. senator and had been a secretary of agriculture. His wife served on the Symphony and Ravinia boards; their eldest daughter, Melanie, had flirted briefly with the Weather Underground before buying a farm in Oregon. She lived there in ostentatious simplicity, cultivating a hundred acres without modern chemistry or machinery, and writing well-publicized polemics against modern agribusiness.
Gantner family money derived from agriculture, the kind Melanie blasted—twenty-five-thousand-acre spreads kept going with tons of pesticides, herbicides, and diesel fuel. The endless miles of corn that bore Easterners as they zip through Illinois and Iowa on their way to California turn to gold in the right hands. Corn oil and syrup can be found in everything from coffee whiteners to plastic. And the Gantners had a kernel of every cob.
Young Alec, trying to set himself up independently from his powerful papa—without going to his sister’s extremes—had turned to gasohol. He led the Illinois lobby for price supports for corn fuel production and distribution. He also dabbled in real estate and banking.
Young Alec’s desire to prove himself hadn’t led him to set up independent shop: Gantohol, as he called his subsidiary, had offices in the Gant-Ag headquarters near Morris. It was hard to picture the urban sophisticate in the middle of Illinois’s corn fields.
By three I was growing dizzy from the information scrolling across the screen. I had to stop anyway to meet with Tish, but I couldn’t have gone on reading the fuzzy type much longer. I asked Murray to queue the stories for overnight printing—I’d pick them up in the morning.
“You be sure to leave anything hot on my desk,” he warned me in parting. “Big Alec always tiptoes on the edge of breaking scandals. He and the old gov did a lot of interesting state contracts together. Your ass is grass if you sit on something juicy about him, Warshawski. It’s not easy to bag a U.S. senator. I could retire on that.”
Tunnel Vision Page 18