Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  “We don’t have time to screw around,” I snapped at him. “Even though it’s Saturday, Tish or Jasper may come into the office.”

  The wood veneer on Jasper’s door covered a steel plate and a couple of sophisticated locks. I squatted in the narrow space and set carefully to work while Ken began studying files. Working with gloves on slows you down because you lose some of the sensitivity in your fingertips, but I wanted to make sure I left no prints behind. At the end of half an hour I managed to get both locks undone.

  Before going inside I went to see what Ken was finding. He had Home Free’s payables on the screen for March. I scanned it. They had paid payroll taxes, insurance for Tish and Jasper and the premises in Chicago and Springfield, and had made various payments to what I presumed were construction firms, since Charpentier’s name figured several times in the list. Poor Tish got only thirty thousand a year—not much for all the work she did. Jasper didn’t treat himself much more royally: he earned fifty thousand. Their travel budget seemed large, but Jasper said he went to Springfield a great deal.

  Total payables for the month came to a little more than a million dollars. Since their state filing last year had shown them with ten million in funds, that seemed like a reasonable monthly payout. I asked Ken to print out last year’s accounts and to keep hunting for the names I’d mentioned.

  Inside Jasper’s office I moved gingerly among the electronic equipment—I didn’t want to trip off some ancillary alarm. I poked around the room hunting for a back exit, just in case, and found it finally in the small bathroom that had been carved out of the far corner. It seemed kind of funny to have a shower with a bolted steel door for a back, but it was an efficient use of space.

  I glanced nervously at the clock built into the desk console: almost five now. I went back to the front room for Ken and saw with annoyance that he’d shed his gloves.

  “You fool! You can’t leave prints in here. You’re on file, you know. If we mess something up or have to run for it they may be suspicious enough to print the place!”

  “I can’t work with them. I thought you saw me take them off when I spliced the phone line.”

  “Put them on or go home.”

  He looked at my face and decided against argument. When he’d pulled them from his jeans pocket and put them on again I asked him to come into Jasper’s office with me.

  “I’m getting nervous now that day has arrived. I want to switch on his street monitor. I’m afraid if I hit a wrong switch I’ll trip some secondary alarm.”

  Ken inspected the controls on the left side of the desk, then knelt to look underneath. “I can’t tell what all these are, but this one seems to be attached to the wire that goes out to the camera on the front door.”

  He turned on the screen and hit a switch. The Korean restaurant across from Home Free came into focus, followed by a picture of a car coming up the street. I thanked him and began looking through drawers, briefly scanning paper files.

  A rosewood cabinet underneath the desk had a lock built into it, and not a trivial one. In the interests of time I was tempted to let it go, but was too curious about what had to be secured inside a locked office. When I had it undone I glanced nervously at the clock: it was five-thirty. I checked the monitor. Someone was getting into a car in front of Home Free; more cars were starting to pass the building. I was thankful for the thick shielding Jasper had placed on the front windows.

  I pulled open the cabinet. My jaw dropped. The drawer was packed with neatly wrapped packets of bills. The top layer showed hundreds except for a corner sectioned off with cardboard that held twenties. I lifted a few packs. Hundred dollar bills as far as the eye could see. I did some quick calculations, trying to estimate the hoard. As near as I could reckon it would be close to five million dollars. No wonder the building was so secure.

  In such large quantities the money didn’t look real. The only context I had for that kind of cache was television news pictures of drug stashes. Was Jasper dealing on the side? I remembered my words to Conrad earlier—drugs were trite. What else could generate that much cash—and why else would it be in cash? Maybe it was counterfeit—maybe Jasper was funneling funny money into the system. That would explain why he needed both an acquiescent bank and to put the lid on City Hall.

  “Hey, Vic—come here a minute. I’ve found something that might interest you.” Ken called from the front room.

  I shot a quick look at the monitor as I stood up, and nearly froze. Jasper Heccomb was climbing out of a car in front of the building.

  “Ken!” I screamed. “Come in here now!”

  I ran to the door. He was gaping at me, bewildered.

  “Now!” I hissed, “Jasper’s here. Move!”

  As he stared, immobilized, we could hear Jasper’s key scrabbling in the lock. Running to Tish’s desk, I grabbed Ken’s arm. Yanked him in my wake into the inner office. Slammed Jasper’s door shut, turned the dead bolt, hustled Ken into the bathroom with me. I took an extra second to shove that lock home. It was a flimsy one, but probably didn’t open from the outside.

  I climbed into the shower. “Stand behind me while I move these bolts. There isn’t room in here for two.”

  The hair was standing up on my head. Sweat poured down my neck. My fingers were clumsy with fear but I finally slid the bolt free. I pushed the door open into the alley just as Jasper started pounding on the bathroom door, demanding that we come out with our arms above our heads.

  As we loped down the alley I heard a shot—Jasper breaking the door down. “Come with me. Don’t worry about your car—you can pick it up later.”

  I opened the Trans Am and was in with the motor running while he was still fumbling with the door, looking worriedly at his own car. At last he climbed in beside me. I roared down the street.

  Lawrence Avenue was coming alive in the thin gray morning. It was after six now—I’d goggled at the money longer than I thought. The Korean and Arab merchants who dotted the area were starting to arrive at restaurants and bakeries. Traffic was still thin enough that I could keep an eye on the road behind me. I didn’t think Jasper was after us. I wasn’t sure what he drove—when I saw him on the monitor I’d been too shocked to pay much attention to the vehicle. A little sports coupe, I thought, trying to remember the image. Maybe a Miata.

  At Burton I turned north, drove up to Foster, and made a giant U on the side streets to the Kennedy. I thought we were clear. I took the expressway to Belmont but parked several blocks from my apartment. If Jasper had alerted my watchers I wanted to come at them on foot.

  “Go down to my building and see whether you can spot anyone—either hanging around the entrance or sitting in a car. I’ll wait up here by the diner.”

  How had Jasper known we were there? Maybe one of those wires on his desk console fed an alarm in the rosewood cabinet, something that went off in his house. He wouldn’t want the cops, or the alarm company, to come in on that wad.

  The image of Deirdre floated to my mind, her brains and blood forming a sticky mass on my desk top. Had she found the money in the course of her volunteer work and taxed Jasper with it? Was he the man who was meeting her in my office that Friday night?

  Jasper could easily guess I was behind this morning’s break-in—I’d been asking questions with the subtlety of an elephant in musth. Maybe he assumed I knew something was amiss at Home Free—he probably thought I was trying to goad him. No wonder he had been so scornful when I asked if he could find a placement for Ken.

  I felt the skin on the back of my head tingle and tighten, in the spot where they’d hit Deirdre. Why was I still walking around? Why hadn’t my followers taken advantage of any number of opportunities to assault me? Maybe they were waiting to find out how much I knew. After this morning they wouldn’t wait much longer.

  As soon as Ken returned with an all clear I took him into the diner, stopping at the counter to snag orange juice from the cooler. I forced Ken to drink a glass. His green-gray pallor eased slightly.
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  I took him to a booth. Barbara, the waitress who usually looks after me, came over with the coffeepot. She wanted to check out my date, teasing Ken until someone at a neighboring table asked for her. For once he let sexual innuendos roll past him without a response.

  “Eggs for me this morning, Barb—poached with hash browns,” I called after her.

  “How can you eat?” Ken muttered. “I feel like I might throw up. Do you think he’ll check my fingerprints?”

  “You feel sick because you’ve been up all night and you’ve had too much excitement on an empty stomach. Believe me, food is what you need.” I flagged Barbara and got Ken to order something. “As for your prints—you probably rubbed them out when you put the gloves on. Even so, he’s sitting on something so volatile I doubt he would call the cops in. Unless he’s got exceptionally cool nerves. What did you see down the street?”

  “There’s no one in front of your place, but your cop pal’s car is there. How did you shake him off when you left last night?”

  “He’d gone out after a murderer. What had you seen in the files—you called to me just before we ran away.”

  “Oh, that.” He swallowed coffee and rubbed his head, trying to make himself behave with my own coolness. “I’d found a couple of interesting things. The first was a contributors’ list. Someone had given a huge amount of money to Home Free last year—a good quarter million dollars.”

  “Do you remember the name?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking, then gave an embarrassed smile. “Running away chased it out of my head.”

  “I’m going to write out a list of names. You tell me if you recognize any of them. Do you have a pen on you?”

  He fumbled in his pocket and came up with a grimy ballpoint. I took one of the napkins and listed a dozen names, including Fabian, Gantner, and Blakely along with nine others that I made up at random. Ken studied the list, squinting at the fuzzy writing on the napkin.

  “Gantner. I’m pretty sure. I think Blakely was a donor—big, but not as huge as Gantner. Bill Buckner sounds familiar too.”

  “He should.” I took the napkin and shredded it. “He used to play first base for the Cubs. Back when you were in kindergarten.”

  “You think I’m a baby because I got scared this morning,” he muttered.

  “I’m delighted you got scared. I’ve been feeling a hundred brands of guilt for encouraging you to break the law with me. It’s a relief to see you have normal feelings underneath your punk exterior.”

  Barbara dumped our eggs in front of us. “You two look like you’ve been up all night. Doing something fun, I trust. What’s Conrad got to say about it?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough. Nothing very happy, I fear.”

  I wolfed down my eggs and buttered my toast with a lavish hand. Ken ate a tentative bite of an omelet, realized how hungry he was, and began eating as greedily as I.

  “I also saw Century Bank’s name. That was what I was looking at just before we took off,” Ken said through a mouthful of potatoes. “I found some secured accounts—you needed a special password to get at them. Century is running a fifty-million-dollar line of credit for Home Free.”

  My jaw dropped. “What ever for?”

  His cocky smile appeared briefly. “You figure that one out, Sherlock—I’m just the hacker.”

  35

  Promises, Promises

  Mr. Contreras was divided between pleasure at helping out and annoyance that I’d gone burgling without him. After doing penance for ten minutes I finally was able to leave Ken to give him the play-by-play and stagger wearily up to my own place.

  I slipped into the apartment as quietly as possible, but Conrad was sitting in the living room with a cup of coffee and the Herald-Star. He had on jeans but he was barefoot and bare-chested. The scar from his old knife wound showed faintly pink against his copper skin. He looked at me soberly.

  “What’ve you been up to, babe? What kind of errand takes you out for four hours in the middle of the night?”

  “Oh.” I sat down on the piano bench and slumped against the piano, suddenly too tired to hold myself upright. “I was inspecting the Home Free premises.”

  “You had to do that in the dark?”

  “You think I took the chicken’s route not trying to pick a lock in full view of the street?”

  He set his cup down so hard, coffee splashed over him and onto the couch. “You broke into the place? For Christ sake, Vic! I spend my life arresting people for that kind of shit. What’d you want to do it for—to prove how cool you are?”

  “Jasper Heccomb keeps about five million dollars in hundreds in a drawer in his office. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”

  “I don’t want you treating this as a joke. You can’t go around breaking the law like you’re above it.”

  “It’s not a joke. He really does. Makes you wonder.”

  “The only thing I wonder about is how far you’ll go to prove a point.” He finally became aware of the trickle of coffee on his abdomen and fished in his pocket for a handkerchief to mop it up. “I remember last year someone broke into this place and trashed it pretty good. That seem reasonable to you? Or is it only a good idea when you’re doing it to someone else?”

  “I didn’t like it, but I didn’t come squealing to you, either, if I recall. How else could I have gotten that kind of information?”

  He put the paper down and came over to sit next to me. “Look, Vic, it’s why we have laws and give jobs to people like me to enforce them—so everyone doesn’t go buzzing through the streets defining justice however it suits them that morning. It’s bad enough we got a million guns in this town so every second jerk can play Shane if he wants to. You think someone’s hurting you, go to court and swear out a complaint. You think Heccomb’s sitting on vital information, go to the Finch and he’ll get a warrant.”

  I eyed him thoughtfully. “You think he would? Or just tell me to run away and play? For that matter, just because the guy was stiff-arming me would a judge have granted a warrant?”

  “Either way, girl, you can’t keep doing this stuff.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was too tired to argue. Anyway, he was right. No one should set herself above the law. Worse still, I’d encouraged a kid on probation to commit a felony. And even worse yet, I would do it again, even knowing I was wrong. Maybe I was a latent psychopath.

  Conrad, relenting, put his arm around me and pulled me next to him. I leaned into his shoulder and asked what kind of night he’d had.

  “Oh, the usual ugly residue of the kind of street justice you like to practice. I’m fed up to my eyeballs with it. I’m going to the park this afternoon, play a little ball with some of the guys. My old team is having a reunion, trying to show those young sprouts what we can do. Terry and I may go out for a beer afterward. I’ll probably spend the night with my mother. Tomorrow’s Palm Sunday; she likes her chickens to gather round for the occasion. What are you up to?”

  “I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

  “And then what?”

  “Depends on how long I sleep. I need to figure out where all that money came from.”

  He gripped my shoulder and pushed me away, far enough to be able to look at me sternly. “Not by breaking in someplace. Promise, Vic?”

  I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor, Sarge.” I leaned against his shoulder again and started to drift to sleep.

  “Bed for you, Ms. W.” He got up and pulled me to my feet.

  In the bedroom I kicked off my shoes and socks and lay down in my jeans, too tired to finish undressing. Conrad unbuckled my holster and put it on the bedside table. He gave me a long, sweet kiss, but I couldn’t tell if it meant absolution or withdrawal. I was asleep before he’d left the room.

  I woke at noon so thickheaded I couldn’t remember at first the events of the previous night. The dogs were barking out back—that’s what had roused me. I stumbled to the kitchen to look, but they’d found nothing more e
xciting than a passing cat, now perched on the fence and yawning delicately at their frenzy.

  I went back to bed but couldn’t get back to sleep. With the edge off my exhaustion I kept churning around questions about Jasper’s money. Maybe Deirdre had stumbled on the stash and confronted him with it. But where did that leave Fabian? Her violent bludgeoning looked like the work of an angry man, letting slip the last threads of control. I’d seen Fabian like that, but not Jasper.

  Maybe Fabian was somehow involved in whatever project had generated the stash—maybe his advising Senator Gantner extended far beyond implications of the Boland Amendment. To what? I didn’t have enough information to speculate on a scenario.

  But say Deirdre did know about the money. And that she’d arranged to meet Jasper in my office the night she died. So she’s talking to him and Fabian walks in, sees her in her taunting, gloating mood, and blows his mind. Then Jasper really would stay quiet because he couldn’t afford to lead the cops to his stash.

  I sat up suddenly, a cold chill down my spine. If Jasper had killed Deirdre over his cache, my life wasn’t worth a plugged nickel about now. I needed to get moving, to find out something concrete enough that Finchley would get a warrant. What I needed to do was come in on the other end of the story. What was he doing with all that cash? And the only place I knew to look were those construction projects he guarded so tightly.

  I lumbered down the hall to the bathroom, where I stood under a cold shower until my teeth were chattering. Looking through my closet I tried to pick something that would make me a mistress of disguise in case Charpentier remembered seeing me at Home Free. In the end I put on a navy blazer over jeans with an outsize straw hat that would effectively hide my face. Suburban maps, the newspaper, and my gun completed my portfolio.

  Before I left the building I peeked through the blinds at the street. No one was lounging on the walks, but I couldn’t see into the cars. I went out the back way just to be safe. You can see the whole yard and most of the stairwell from my tiny square of porch, but going down the front you can be blindsided at almost any point.