Tunnel Vision

by Sara Paretsky

  “That there was a connection between Gantner and Fabian, for one thing. Or that Jasper keeps all that cash lying around. I may solve Deirdre’s murder while you guys are still trying to finger her poor runaway daughter.”

  “Vic, listen. If I solved Deirdre’s murder by getting evidence without a properly issued and executed warrant, the guy would go scot-free. The evidence wouldn’t be admissible. Didn’t you ever study the fucking bill of rights in law school?”

  My face got hot. It shouldn’t be happening this way—a cop lecturing me on illegal search and seizure. I was a progressive.

  “You still there?”

  “Struck dumb. All I can say is—you’re right. So I can’t argue with you, even if my head were up to it, which it isn’t. I’m going back to bed. You have a good time in church tomorrow.”

  “Believe me, babe, I’ll be saying a prayer for you, asking the angels to persuade you not to hug your cards so close to your chest. It makes it hard for anyone else to get in a game with you.”

  39

  Bus to Romania

  A little after five-thirty Lotty’s fingers on my wrist wrenched me out of sleep, interrupting a dream I’m prone to in times of stress: I’m trying to reach my mother behind the maze of equipment in which her final illness wrapped her, but the tubes keep sprouting and spreading like plant roots, knitting a plastic thicket that keeps her from me.

  “Sorry, Liebchen. I have to go into Chicago—there’s an emergency at the hospital. But since you’re awake let’s take a quick look at you.” She prodded me, lifted my eyelids, and listened to my heart. “You’ll do. I’ll check on your CAT scan with the radiologist, but—as long as you don’t take on any hooligans—you should be able to get up today. Remember to drink plenty of fluids, and no alcohol: that’s most important.”

  A few minutes later I heard Max’s Buick pull out of the drive. I got up and fumbled my stiff arms into the dressing gown Max had laid out for me. In the guest bathroom down the hall I stood under a hot shower, slowly moving my arms until I could raise them above my head, then massaging the taut muscles in my neck. After fifteen minutes of home-brewed hydrotherapy I went back to the guest room and went through a longer stretching routine. It’s hard to make yourself do exercises when you’re sore, but you heal much faster if you get the blood flowing vigorously.

  When I got down to the kitchen I found Max drinking coffee over the New York Times. He had driven Lotty into the city—she didn’t have her own car with her and he’d seen Lotty at the wheel too many times to lend her his own.

  “You look well this morning, Victoria. A happy recovery. Coffee?”

  I drank a cup in scalding drafts while Max toasted a bagel for me. Max offered me part of the paper, but I wasn’t interested in New York or Yugoslavian news this morning and the Times has lousy sports coverage. After watching him read for a few minutes I asked when he was going back for Lotty.

  “I’m not. We drove by her apartment for her car. Was there something you needed?”

  “My own car. I have some errands to run.”

  Max put the paper back down. “You must not drive, Victoria. Not after the beating you took yesterday. Why not see if Conrad will take you where you need to go?”

  “I can’t rouse him this early in the morning—especially not when he’s staying with his mother.” And especially not after last night’s conversation.

  “And this is something that can’t wait?”

  Fiddling with a glass of orange juice, I told him I wanted to go back to the construction site, now, while it was early enough that no one would be there. “If I wait until tomorrow, or even this afternoon when Conrad might drive me, I run the risk of finding Anton or Charpentier.”

  The light on his glasses hid his eyes from me, keeping his thoughts secret. “You know Lotty would absolutely forbid such an excursion.”

  “I know: that’s what keeps our relationship so strained all the time. Maybe after this case I’ll resign and go into real estate or teach Italian.”

  “And somehow be the only Italian instructor embroiled on the wrong side of P-2 or the Banco Ambrosiano. ... If you feel an urgent need to go to this construction site I’ll drive you there.”

  “Which Lotty would also absolutely forbid. I can’t put you in danger, not when she’s finally forgiven me for doing it to her.”

  “Not out of concern for my personal safety, I’m happy to hear.” Max’s snort of laughter interrupted my blushing disclaimer. “If it’s likely to be dangerous, you mustn’t go. If it’s not, I’ll drive you.”

  I bit on my thumbnail. If Anton or Charpentier was there it could be quite ugly, and I was in no shape to take them on. But my bet was we would avoid them. I finally asked Max if he could scout the site from the alley while I waited on Montrose. If anyone was there he’d pick me up and we’d come back to Evanston.

  “I don’t suppose they’ll shoot at a strange car just for passing by their work zone,” he agreed.

  Leaving a message for Lotty, in case she finished earlier than she expected, he solicitously took my elbow and helped me into the front seat of the Buick. “Lake Shore Drive?”

  “Edens—the Cicero exit will decant us almost on top of the construction site.” The interior of his car was as immaculate as his house; I saw some crumbs on my T-shirt and tossed them out the window.

  I leaned back in the seat. Max didn’t speak for several minutes, but as we turned onto Dempster, the road that led to the expressway, he asked if I was carrying my gun.

  “Yes. I found it in the stairwell when we went to my apartment yesterday. Does that trouble you?”

  He made a face. “I don’t like the world of guns, but if your hoodlum is going to shoot at you again I suppose it’s good for you to have one. You know how to use it correctly, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, yes. My dad saw too many shooting injuries from kids getting hold of guns. He started taking me to the range with him when I was ten. My mother hated it—he wanted her to learn, also, but she wouldn’t acknowledge that he even carried a weapon.”

  Those Saturday mornings come back to me whenever I go to the range, Gabriella’s back rigid with anger as she settled some child at the piano for a lesson. “If you would work on your breathing as you do on those ghastly toys we could make a singer out of you, Victoria—a creator of life, not of death,” she said when I returned in guilty triumph from hitting a bull’s-eye.

  We moved fast through the empty streets. In the city someone is always about doing something, but in the suburbs people must sleep later: for long stretches of westbound Dempster we were the only car around. It wasn’t even seven-fifteen when we exited the expressway and turned onto Elston. When we reached Montrose I showed Max the entrance to the alley that ran down behind the construction site.

  He left me at the corner of Montrose and Elston, where I could feign waiting for a bus to account for my solitary presence. A pay phone stood nearby. If Max didn’t return in ten minutes I would call Conrad. Some missing chunks of memory had returned in the night, including Mrs. Rawlings’s phone number, but in case excitement fragmented my mind I’d scrawled the number on my wrist.

  I paced the sidewalk to loosen my muscles and sang Italian folk songs under my breath to distract my mind. A cop car slowed to take a closer look at me. I frowned at my watch and looked up the street, miming impatience for the bus. The car drove on. The ten minutes stretched to fourteen. My hand was hovering over the number pad when Max returned.

  “I couldn’t see anyone, but a large truck was standing there. I drove by twice, but there didn’t seem to be anyone about. Do you want to risk it?”

  I couldn’t imagine why Gary would leave his truck at the site. It made me uneasy—it might mean he’d be showing up at any moment. We finally decided to drive down the alley and park south of the site. That way we could get to the car if anyone came in—the pattern of one-way streets made the north end the entrance to the alley. I tried to get Max to agree to wait in the car where he could
call Conrad from his cellular phone, but he vehemently refused.

  We stopped for several minutes just beyond the truck, where we could see the whole site. When no one appeared Max pulled forward to a spot where the remnants of a garage hid the Buick from the mouth of the alley.

  We picked our way across the rubble. We couldn’t see the Elston traffic but we could hear it; every passing car made us jump nervously. My head was starting to ache again. I realized it had been foolish to insist on this pilgrimage.

  As I was starting to inspect the piles of materials, jotting down names of suppliers, Max called to me in a loud whisper. I turned and froze. The back of the truck was opening. I gestured to Max to kneel down behind a stack of lumber and pulled my gun from its holster.

  One of the work crew stumbled over to the high grass beyond the site and urinated. He moved over to a large metal container and fiddled with it. A motor came to life—it apparently was some kind of portable generator. As he returned to the truck he spotted me, gave a wide grin and called out something. Two more of the crew came to the back of the truck and peered at me.

  “Bay-bee!” one of them crowed, jumping down.

  He made an explicit suggestion, using his hands, but lost some of his zest when Max rose up from behind the pile of lumber. Max walked over to the trio and began speaking, not fluently, but apparently making himself understood. The man who’d called out to me clapped Max on the back, and gestured to the truck. A few more crew members stumbled from the truck, shouting out questions, or perhaps greetings.

  I stood idly by, my hand on my holster, although the mood seemed more festive than dangerous. The relation of the language to Italian meant I could pick out words here and there, but not the overall sense. Anton’s name cropped up several times.

  After a few minutes Max turned to me. “They are from Romania, as we thought. And they don’t wish you any harm, but no one is supposed to come onto the site without Anton’s permission. He broke someone’s face—jaw, I guess—for wandering around, and they think you should leave in case he shows up.”

  “Agreed. Could you ask them a couple of questions first? See what they know about the project they’re working on?”

  I watched the crew’s faces while Max fumbled through some questions. They started talking in excited gusts,gesticulating wildly. Max got them to slow down. A wiry man with an outsize black mustache silenced his fellows and spoke slowly, in the loud, simple sentences one uses with foreigners.

  “Someone brought them over here about two months ago,” Max reported. “I didn’t understand the word for the kind of person who did it, but I suppose it might be a labor contractor. They’re working long hours ... ” He turned back to them and asked them something, holding up his fingers to make sure he was understanding them.

  “Yes. They work six days a week, ten hours a day. They’re living in this panel truck.” He peered inside. “It looks like the hold of an old ship—just rows of bunks nailed into the wall.”

  I made a gesture to the men, asking if I could look inside. Letting out more ribald shouts they welcomed me on board. When I hoisted myself up they cheered, with more cries of “Bay-bee.” The main speaker put down a crate for Max, then gave him a hand to help him onto the tailgate. Inside they turned on a flex lamp, throwing a harsh light onto their home.

  Bunks for twelve men were attached to the walls. Eight were occupied. Along the back their clothes dangled from a series of rough hooks. Between the bunks they had hung pictures torn from magazines. Some were frankly pornographic, others scenic posters of home. A few had put up photographs of their families.

  A board across two short sawhorses served as a table. It was crammed with empty beer bottles and cigarette stubs. Another sawhorse table held a hot plate and a small black-and-white TV.

  Two men were still sleeping when we entered. Roused by their comrades’ outbursts they sat up, naked and surly. I turned and swung my legs over the tailgate, sliding off to stand on the crate underneath. My shoulders and head were too sore for me to leap on and off the truck like a goat, but the men deserved a modicum of privacy, they had so little else. It seemed a ghastly way to acquire hard currency.

  A minute or two later Max sat down next to me. He shook his head in dismay, muttering about sights he didn’t think existed in America.

  The spokesman came back out and bent down to ask Max something. He translated for me. “They want to know who you are—if you’re looking for a lover, or if you’re a government official. What should I tell them?”

  “Oh. They think I may be with INS. Tell them I have friends who’ve agreed to do some work for Anton’s boss, and I’m worried about whether they’ll be paid properly—that I wanted to talk to someone who was already working for him to find out their experience.”

  “I’ll do the best I can with that—remember, my Romanian’s pretty rudimentary.”

  They roared with laughter at this question and went into a wild expose. Max kept interrupting, unable to follow what they were saying. At one point he tried German, but they didn’t understand, any more than they did my Italian or schoolgirl French.

  As far as Max could interpret, Anton was an overseer. A Romanian who had been in America for fifteen years, he had a green card. He had met the crew at O’Hare when they arrived two months ago on tourist visas. He told Immigration they were students he was showing around America, and immediately chauffeured them to the truck, where they’d been living ever since. When they first arrived they finished work on a building. They had been here on Elston about two weeks.

  Before they ever collected their pay some money was deducted for the jobber who’d brought them over, and some sent directly to their relatives in Romania. They were charged for their room and board, even though they were living in an old bread truck. Their net pay amounted to about thirty dollars a week.

  “That’s outrageous—it’s like the agricultural exploitation in the South,” I cried. “We need to report this to someone.”

  “The problem is, they’re here illegally,” Max said. “Anton holds the threat of deportation over their heads. They all have families back home they’re trying to help out. Some are married, others have parents they’re supporting. Obviously they’re exploited, but they need the money.”

  I frowned. I knew a lawyer, a woman named Ana Campos, who did advocacy work for low-income immigrants. I didn’t know what choices the men had, but surely something better than this unsanitary cattle car could be provided them. I told Max about Ana.

  “I’m going to have to give her a call—I can’t walk away and leave this situation as it is. How many different crews do you suppose Charpentier has stashed around the city like this?”

  Before Max could answer, one of the crew grabbed me and cried out, “Anton!”

  The urban cowboy was driving down the track in a pickup truck. He hadn’t seen us yet, but if we tried to flee up the alley we’d be easy targets. Anyway, neither Max nor I was fit enough to run for it.

  I scrambled to my feet and stretched a hand down to Max. “Come on. Ask the guys if we can crawl into an empty bunk for a bit.”

  Max followed me, gasping out a few words. The spokesman smiled, said okay, and hollered to his companions in the back. We were hustled handily under some bedding, Max in a lower berth, me in an upper one. One of our new pals stuck his hand inside my shirt and—purely autonomically—I brought my knee up to his stomach. He hastily pulled a blanket over my head and jumped down.

  The back of the truck opened. I could hear Anton but neither see nor understand him. It was terrifying to lie like that, not knowing what the men were saying. I clutched the Smith & Wesson tightly, but my palms were so sweaty it kept slipping in my grip.

  After a sharp exchange between Anton and the men he seemed to be taking roll. My heart started pounding painfully—had he noticed the extra lumps in the bunks? Below me I could hear a faint wheezing from Max, and prayed the sound wouldn’t betray us.

  Anton barked out something ominous.
The men mumbled, and then there was silence. I lay still, breathing as shallowly as I could. When someone pulled the blanket away from me a minute or two later I had my gun out, pointing it at his head. It was our spokesman. He blenched and jumped quickly away.

  “It’s okay, Vic,” Max said quietly. “Anton has taken off. He seemed only to be checking that everyone is here—he told them they were going to move to a different job later today, so to stick around.”

  “Oh.” I pocketed the gun, feeling foolish. “Tell the guy I’m sorry I scared him.”

  When Max finished translating—a long flourish that made me wonder how I was being described—the spokesman blinked and nodded, but didn’t look very happy. I had a feeling our welcome was long outworn. My head was pounding in earnest; Max seemed exhausted. I touched his arm and told him I would get the car.

  “I’m fine, Vic, really. But maybe I will wait here for you.”

  My arms and legs were as weary as though I’d done ten hours’ hard labor. I sat on the tailgate like an old woman, and slowly slid my legs over the edge. I had just made the ground when a car drove up, an old blue Dodge carrying four men.

  I stumbled back into the truck as they ran toward it. Before I could cry out, or offer any kind of warning, they had jumped up on the tailgate. One of them held a gun; another flashed a badge.

  “Immigration, boys. Hands in front where we can see them. We’re going for a nice, long ride.” He repeated the command in Romanian.

  40

  Tops on Everyone’s List

  The INS agents had a van waiting at the top of the alley. They were totally uninterested in Max’s and my protests and refused to look at our identification, shoving us inside so hard that my head was jolted against a seat back. For a dizzying moment I thought I might pass out again. I bit my lip hard enough to use the pain to steady myself.

  The van itself could have held eight comfortably. The fourteen of us were jammed in with legs and elbows at all angles. I was wedged in a corner with one of the workmen on my lap. Garlic and the cloying sweat of fear filled the airless space.