Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  A young man in shirtsleeves and suspenders was waiting just inside the door. He gave me a firm handshake but wanted to know what had taken me so long. He had the nasal twang of the prairies, an accent that always makes the speaker seem ingenuous, unlikely to engage in skulduggery. When I said I’d gone the wrong way he eyed me narrowly but didn’t challenge me, turning instead to lead me down a corridor on the north end of the building. The place was bigger than it seemed on the outside: the short front had long wings tucked behind it.

  “You don’t mind stairs, do you?” my guide asked at the end of the corridor. “It’s only two flights and it’s faster than waiting on the elevator.”

  I responded amiably and trotted up after him. At the top we came to a suite of rooms behind a door whose lettering proclaimed GANTOHOL—FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE. Come to think of it, that had been Alec senior’s political slogan—Gantner for America’s Future. Or maybe it had just been Illinois’s.

  The young man left me in an antechamber with a stack of Fortunes and Business Weeks and a twangy “Just a minute now,” and disappeared behind a closed redwood door. Before I had time to read an impassioned defense of the North American Free Trade Agreement my guide reappeared and led me inside.

  Like the building itself, the office suite was bigger on the inside than I expected. Behind the redwood door lay a short hall with offices stacked on either side. A woman fielded calls at a console at the head of the corridor; inside the rooms people sat two at a desk working on computers or telephones.

  My guide took me to a corner room overlooking the airstrip. Young Alec got up from behind a cluttered desk to shake my hand.

  “Thanks, Bart. Welcome to Gant-Ag, Ms. Warshawski. We didn’t really get a chance to chat last week at Fabian’s. Sad news about Deirdre. I understand they think his daughter may have had a brainstorm and then run away. What can I do for you?”

  His pleasant bass moved quickly between pleasure, muted condolence, and brisk business with the skill of a Samuel Ramey. I shook his well-groomed hand, conscious of the rough skin on my fingers: I did too much heavy work without using hand lotion. Gantner sat back in the leather swivel chair behind his desk and gestured me to an upholstered wing chair facing it.

  “It was good of you to see me without an appointment. Did Jasper tell you I might be calling?”

  Gantner gave an easy, boyish laugh that showed his perfect teeth. “Suppose you tell me what you want—then we won’t have to be second-guessing each other.”

  I leaned back, the woman at ease. “My concerns are the same as yours: Deirdre Messenger’s death and her daughter’s disappearance. But I’m looking at the two events a little differently. The police would certainly like to find Emily Messenger. Chicago’s streets are no place for a teenager, let alone one who’s got young children with her. But the cops have by no means made up their minds that she’s a murder suspect. There are a lot of unanswered questions about the night Deirdre was murdered.”

  “Such as?” Gantner laced his fingertips together.

  Even with the smoky windows the setting sun behind him made it difficult to see his face. I moved the wing chair to the side of his desk. He raised his brows, then nodded appreciatively at my initiative.

  “Such as who she was meeting in my office the night she was murdered. We know she had an appointment with someone—that’s who I’m trying to track down.”

  He nodded again, this time frowning a bit. “We hadn’t heard that. But if it’s true, surely the police are better equipped than you to find out?”

  I ignored his question. “Is ‘we’ you and Jasper, you and Donald, or you and your dad?”

  For the first time his practiced mannerisms slipped and he spoke sharply. “All of us are concerned about Fabian Messenger. Which means all of us are following his wife’s murder investigation. Does that matter?”

  “Since the four of you, or at least you and Donald Blakely, can get the state’s attorney to pay serious attention to your questions, maybe even your directives, your interest matters more than that of ordinary concerned citizens.”

  “And are you one of those? My information is that Fabian does not relish your involvement in his affairs.”

  His tone was of one closing off argument, but I shook my head. “Deirdre’s death isn’t his private business. Even at the rate Americans are falling in action these days, murder is still a crime, not something he or even your distinguished father can declare private business.

  “I’m trying to get a lead on who Deirdre met with the night she died. That person may have seen her murderer—without knowing it was someone committing murder, of course. So I’m talking to people in the organizations where she volunteered. Home Free and Arcadia House. Since you sit on the Home Free board I’m hoping you can give me names of people who worked closely with her.”

  He was sitting straight up in his chair now. “Absolutely not. That’s Jasper’s decision, and if I’m not mistaken he chose not to expose our board to harassment.”

  “You play a major role in Jasper’s decisions, though.” I kept my tone conciliatory. “I’m sure you could persuade him to change his mind.”

  “When he asks for my input I give it to him—that’s all a responsible board member can do.”

  “Such as whether to offer Lamia a shot at rehabbing a Home Free project. What was your view of that?” The words popped out from nowhere, surprising me as much as him.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, Ms. Warshawski: I’m not as good a director as I try to be. I have to confess I can’t remember which specific rehab project you’re discussing.”

  “Even though Phoebe Quirk explained it to you at your meeting yesterday morning?”

  He smiled. “If Phoebe told you that was what we were discussing it was probably because she was too polite to tell you to mind your own business.”

  I laughed. “You don’t know Phoebe very well if you think she’s that restrained.”

  He looked ostentatiously at his desk clock. “Well, neither am I. How Home Free selects contractors has nothing to do with you. Not only that, I fail to see what your questions have to do with Deirdre Messenger’s murder. Assuming that a police investigation is your business, which I doubt.”

  “I’m trying to figure out why you let me come in on you uninvited. Is it because of Deirdre, or because of Home Free? Or could it even be because of JAD Holdings?” I had picked the question carefully, hoping that if he knew who the holding company was I might surprise him into a revelation.

  He was too practiced a poker player; he responded smoothly, without missing a beat. “I know about Home Free, of course, and about Deirdre Messenger. But I’m ignorant about ... what was the third name?”

  “So your papa keeps some things secret from you? I’ve seen the letter he wrote Fabian about the Boland Amendment. In a file marked JAD holdings.”

  His reaction showed that he knew, all right: he spun around in his chair to face the smoky glass. The neon lights gave him a ghostly reflection, turning his square good looks into a lantern jaw, his mouth a knife gash across it. In the window I could see the gash move sideways, a giant splayed wound, as he spoke.

  “You take an extraordinary interest in affairs that don’t concern you, Ms. Warshawski—even our experimental fields. I have to question your true motives in coming out here.”

  I laughed again. “You think I’m really a spy for Pioneer or one of the other big agricultural outfits? You must have some mighty powerful DNA in those fields to photograph anyone who stops to look at them.”

  “Even so, I think I’d like my security force to search your pockets before you go. Just in case.”

  He called Bart, my twangy-voiced escort, and asked him to send up a couple of women security officers. While we waited I tried probing further about Home Free, about Deirdre, Lamia, and JAD Holdings and Century Bank, but he’d decided on a course of action: I’d been there to spy on his uncle’s corn plants and I needed to be given the boot. Despite my frustration I had to
applaud his ingenuity—it made a perfect cover.

  After five minutes—of my relentless questions and his stonewalling—two women in tan uniforms arrived, wearing armbands that sported the ubiquitous Gant-Ag logo in gold. They escorted me to an empty office and looked through my pockets and socks. I offered to show them my bra and panties, but they demurred. When I’d retied my shoes they led me—politely but firmly—to my car and drove with me past the guard station.

  Near the experimental cornfield I pulled over again. Reaching through the fence I pulled up a couple of stalks. I stood for several minutes, ostentatiously studying them, lifting them up to the dull April sky to inspect them against the light, pulling off individual blades. Holding them aloft I made a show of carrying them back to my car.

  Maybe Gantner was more concerned about his corn plants than anything else, but no helicopter stopped to bomb me. All during the long drive back to Chicago I tried to decide why Gantner had agreed to see me. Was it because of Deirdre? Or Home Free? And what was JAD Holdings, to generate such a startling response? I longed to disguise myself as a load of fertilizer and infiltrate the corn company.

  32

  A Needle in a Corncrib

  When I left the remote exurban reaches at First Avenue I saw the city for a moment as an outsider. Compared to the outsize malls and massive roads I’d left behind, Chicago looked decrepit, even useless. I wondered if my beloved briar patch was as tired as I was, and what would keep either of us going.

  I wanted to round out my day by talking to Donald Blakely, the third musketeer, but it was five-thirty when I drove under the post office. I stopped hopefully at the Gateway Bank building. The guard in the lobby told me both Mr. Blakely and Ms. Guziak had gone for the day—even hardworking execs leave on time on Fridays. I managed to get back to my car just before a meter maid reached me. Hot dog—my luck was turning.

  I wished Tish wasn’t such a prickly pear—I’d love to know how Home Free’s decision to drop out of direct placement had been reached. And whether Home Free really was more effective now that they only built housing.

  The building they did was the crux of the matter. It was the one thing about Home Free that smelled funny. Their projects couldn’t be such a secret. Even in Chicago they’d have to pull construction permits.

  I stopped in front of the Pulteney. Maybe that was what Cyrus Lavalle, my City Hall gopher, had found out: that the three musketeers had bribed enough aldermen to keep from having to pull permits. That would certainly make Home Free’s affairs hush-hush around City Hall.

  I smacked the steering wheel. It was before Lamia got involved with Home Free that Cyrus had finked on me. Century Bank was what he hadn’t wanted to talk about. And it was my mentioning Lamia, not Home Free, that had made Eleanor roar off to use her phone in private.

  Heccomb was up to something that Blakely and Gantner knew about. And Phoebe, I supposed. But what could it possibly have to do with Deirdre? On the other hand, if it didn’t, why was Gantner using his powerful daddy to pull strings to track the investigation? Or was that coming from Fabian?

  Gantner was right about one thing: it was hard to see any connection among Home Free, Century Bank, and Deirdre’s murder. So why was I wasting time asking questions about them? Certainly not solely out of concern toward Camilla or spite against Phoebe. Some of it was curiosity, but a big chunk came from my old street fighter’s resentment of rich, powerful people who tried to spin me around.

  Last week I’d told Phoebe I didn’t have time to undertake an investigation without a fee. That was still true this week—how much resentment could I afford? Maybeenough to track down JAD Holdings.

  I climbed out of the car. An old man in a shapeless overcoat was rummaging through a trash can out front. I went into the coffee shop. Melba greeted me with the ease of old friendship but said she hadn’t seen any trace of Emily.

  “I asked around, too, girl—this town ain’t no place for young people to be out in, not on their own without any money or sense. But no one’s seen a sign of them this end of the street.”

  I went around the Pulteney one more time, looking along the alley as well as the front, but saw no trace, either of Emily or Tamar Hawkings. No way in. How had Tamar managed it? Could she have slid inside when I had the door unlocked on one of my forays to the electrical box? I tried a grating in the alley but it was firmly fastened in place.

  Out front I inspected the flaps in the sidewalk that opened for deliveries. They hadn’t been used in years, not since the last of the big retailers had moved out of the Pulteney. They didn’t budge, even when I got my jack out of the trunk and tried to pry them loose.

  The man in the shapeless coat watched me with interest. “You drop something down there, girlie?”

  “An old friend,” I said absently. “You see her? She had a couple of children in tow.”

  He came over to peer through the cracks in the flaps with me, as if hoping to see his fortune in the dark beyond. When I repeated my question he shuffled back to the garbage can mumbling that he minded his own business and he expected other people to do the same.

  I tried to pry at the plywood with my jack. Rensselaer Siding had done a great job—there wasn’t a chink or loose flap anywhere. I could break through the boarding with enough time and the right tools, but this part of the city has too many cops patrolling it, trying to keep it safe for tourists.

  I looked up as the el rattled past overhead. Ten years ago I might have shinnied up a girder and made the ten-foot jump to a window ledge. Now I was almost forty and leaps like that were beyond me.

  “I’m getting smarter, not older,” I said aloud.

  The old man looked up from his trash can. “That’s the spirit, girlie. You keep getting smarter and pretty soon you’ll be back in kindergarten.”

  He chuckled to himself and repeated my remark. “Smarter, not older. Yeah, you keep getting smarter you start getting younger.”

  I fished in my jeans for a dollar bill. “A good thought. Keep working on it. And have a cup of coffee on me.” As I climbed back into the car I could hear him repeating the comment and laughing idiotically.

  MacKenzie Graham’s Spider was parked out front when I got home. I didn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed. He climbed out and tried to take my bag of groceries from me.

  “I’ve been looking at your computer. The files are retrievable, but it’s hot, dull work. I thought you could show your gratitude by coming out to dinner with me.”

  “My boyfriend’s coming to dinner. And I’ll take the bag.” I felt a spurt of irritation at his casual invasion of my evening. “You know, you’d have a community service placement by now if you’d put the energy into looking for one that you’re devoting to me. And you’d be back in college for the summer term—you could graduate with your class.”

  “You only date college grads? What’s your boyfriend do—is he some kind of hotshot lawyer?”

  “He’s in the law, that’s for sure. Your dad gave me until five today to find a placement for you. Do you want me to tell him you’re working for me instead?”

  He gave a saucy grin. “It might get his goat, which would be worth something, but maybe you’d better say I’ll have to go to jail instead. So what would I have to do before you’d go out to dinner with me—kill the guys who are following you?”

  “Get a job. Narrow the gap between us from twenty years to ten.”

  Mr. Contreras had apparently been watching the melodrama from his living room, because his door was open and the dogs bounding out when I went into the foyer. Ken followed me inside. When I saw how happy the old man was some of my irritation evaporated. Mr. Contreras’s life has been a little dreary since the death of one of his old friends last year. Now he told me how much he enjoyed talking to a young kid with a real mind.

  “Great.” I pumped enthusiasm into my tired voice. “You two have a good time. Ken could even run the dogs—that might count as an hour of community service.”

  I went
upstairs on Mr. Contreras’s protests that Ken was a nice young man, why couldn’t I show a little kindness for a change. When I finished unpacking my groceries and checked in with my answering service I found Ken’s father had indeed phoned. Promptly at five, my operator said, just as he’d threatened. Although it was close to seven now, Darraugh was still in the office when I called back.

  “I haven’t had any luck,” I said, before he could speak. “I’ve been to all the charities I know and they don’t want a hacker. They feel he might violate their confidential records.”

  “What’d you tell them for?” Darraugh snapped.

  “Because when it’s court-mandated community service work they have a right to be told the truth. I can’t lie in such a situation.”

  I held my breath, wondering if I would get the ax and what I’d do for my mortgage payments then. Darraugh was a little inhuman, but he wasn’t unreasonable. He grudgingly accepted my explanation and asked me to keep looking.

  “Anything so I can get him back to school. He’s a pain in the ass.”

  “No quarrel here,” I said drily. “Meanwhile I’ve got him working on a project for me. I don’t know whether we could persuade the probation officer that that counted for something: in my current state you could easily prove I was a not-for-profit outfit.”

  Darraugh’s infrequent laugh came out as a rusty wheeze. Adjuring me not to let MacKenzie distract me from my own work he hung up. Conrad phoned a few minutes later to tell me a late meeting with a witness would delay him. He didn’t think he’d get to my place before eight-thirty at the earliest. My heart sank; I was so exhausted I wanted to put him off altogether, but our life together had been through too much strain lately. At least with some time to myself I could bathe and take a nap.