“If it isn’t Lady Lazarus herself,” she said. “When my big brother said he had to go to work I offered to come baby-sit. I wanted to see you walking and talking with my own eyes.”
I went over to hug her. “Lady Zombie is more like it. Why’d Conrad have to go to work? I thought he was on days until summer.”
“He traded shifts with one of the brothers so he could look over you today. He’ll be off at midnight. Now tell me all. Everything that the TV people didn’t cover in your sixty seconds of fame and glory.”
I scooped up a handful of chips and gave her the highlights of my search through the tunnels. Although she didn’t want to hear it, I also told her about Gary Charpentier’s immigrant scam.
She was quiet when I finished. Over her head I watched the frenzied crews trying to pump water from Chicago’s belly. The Loop was crawling with cops, sanitation workers, and engineering teams.
“You know what really sucks about that?” Camilla suddenly burst out. “Outfits like ours that are scrambling to get a toehold don’t pay union scale so we can compete. But we can’t make a living because creeps like Charpentier are willing to use sharecropper labor.”
“Home Free did give you the rehab job,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but we wanted new construction. Of course, that building we wanted to put up didn’t have anything to do with Home Free, but at the same time you don’t see them opening up jobs like the one you looked at to outfits like ours.”
She followed me to Conrad’s kitchen while I made some coffee. I wanted to rest for a week, but somehow I had to find the reserves to keep going. Caffeine wasn’t the answer, but it might provide the illusion of energy.
While I drank, Camilla rummaged in the refrigerator. “Ever since Conrad got that bad cholesterol report there’s been nothing to eat here. I want a ham sandwich after my hard day on the job, not low-fat yogurt.”
“Tell me something, Zu-Zu. What city ordinance would Charpentier have been violating out at the worksite?”
She shook her head. “Beats me. Feds deal with immigrants. Of course, far as the job itself goes, you name it, the city has an inspector. Plumbing’s the worst—their guys are like the hounds of hell.”
I couldn’t imagine a problem with plumbing inspectors that would have made Cyrus Lavalle, my little City Hall spout, so nervous. I tried to imagine what other kinds of things the city might worry about.
Camilla found a can of tuna fish and divided her attention between me and making a plate of sandwiches. “There’s Wage and Hour sheets.” She licked low-fat mayonnaise from a spoon and made a face. “You know, they come around to see if you’re paying prevailing wage. Of course, they don’t do a site audit—say you’re paying out five thousand a week in payroll. At prevailing wage that would mean you might have six people working full-time. But maybe you have twelve and you’re paying them half the scale—the city wouldn’t come around to check how many were there. If you told them six they’d believe you.”
I thought about it. Wages aren’t the limit of payroll expense. There are taxes. Workers’ compensation, which must cost a bundle in construction. Health insurance, if you’re a union shop.
Eight men had been at the site I’d stumbled on. If Charpentier was paying them prevailing wage that would be sixty-four hundred in wages. Plus maybe another thirty-six in benefits, insurance, and payroll taxes. Ten thousand a week. But since all these guys were here illegally Charpentier wasn’t paying taxes. Clearly the men weren’t getting union wages. Charpentier—and Heccomb—were probably shaving six or seven thousand off the cost of the job. No wonder Home Free fulfilled the liberal dream of building affordable housing.
Were they bribing the inspectors to stay away—at a sufficiently high level that Lavalle would be warned off for asking questions? I needed to call my informant, but his unlisted home number was in my address book. Which was either buried in the rubble of my apartment or stolen by my assailants on Saturday in an effort to track Emily.
I ate one of Camilla’s tuna sandwiches, ignoring her protest. She’d made four, and even a hardworking carpenter could survive on three. If I couldn’t find Cyrus until tomorrow—oh, no. Not even at work. City Hall was closed indefinitely because of the flood. For the same reason I couldn’t try to find him at the Golden Glow.
“Phoebe,” I said out loud. “Do you have Phoebe’s home number on you?”
“Maybe.” Camilla ate the last sandwich. “Not if you’re going to call to harangue her about Lamia. Jasper may be a scumbag, using illegal workers to take bread out of American mouths, but I don’t want to jeopardize our first real contract.”
I cocked my head. “I think I can talk to Phoebe without getting into your affairs.”
“Promise? In writing?”
I took Conrad’s shopping list from the refrigerator and scribbled a promise on the back. Camilla laughed and went to the living room to dig out her address book. I called Phoebe from the kitchen, while Camilla watched me from the doorway.
“Phoebe!” I cried heartily. “Good work! I saw it in yesterday’s paper but couldn’t reach you sooner. I got tied up—you might have seen the story on last night’s news.”
“What do you want, Vic?” She did not sound as if I were her long-lost sister.
“To congratulate you on getting FDA approval for clinical trials for Mr. T—your T-cell enhancer, I mean. I’ve always admired your moves, but this one was something special.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. We were delighted, of course, that it happened sooner.” Her voice was cautious.
“And what did you give Senator Gantner in return? Not a hundred thousand for his war chest. It must have been something else. Can I have three guesses?”
“You can mind your own damned business.” She was angry but she didn’t hang up.
“Camilla’s standing here watching me. I promised not to mention Lamia or the tradeswomen. So I won’t. But what was it about Century Bank that Gantner and Heccomb wanted to protect—bad enough that young Alec got his daddy to pressure the FDA for you?”
“You know, in all the years we were in school together I didn’t realize you had such a vivid imagination.” Phoebe had mastered her temper, at least on the surface, and spoke with light mockery. “There’s nothing wrong with Century. They were in a squeeze. They couldn’t afford Lamia’s bid, so they went to Jasper—”
“And got him to dress up as the Easter bunny,” I cut in. “Jasper and Alec Gantner used Mr. T to persuade you to take a hike—Alec promised you his daddy would put in some Republican muscle at the FDA, and he came through. I suppose you could’ve cut Big Alec in on Cellular Enhancement, but I can’t see the owner of Gant-Ag needing a venture capital concern as a revenue enhancer. You must have smelled a rat. You may be the most arrogant woman I’ve ever worked with, but you’ve never been stupid. Or even, as far as I know, dishonest.”
Camilla started to move around the kitchen in her nervousness, opening cupboard doors, straightening Conrad’s already neatly aligned dish towels. She dropped a pot, which clanged loudly against the linoleum.
“You throwing furniture now?” Phoebe asked at the noise. “It’s a red-letter day when a woman like you thinks she can call someone else arrogant. All right—I don’t think it’s a crime to admit I asked Alec for help. Mr. T—Cellular Enhancement—is a good little company. They just needed some high-level attention. So Alec got Jasper to give Lamia a Home Free rehab job. There’s nothing sinister about that.”
Camilla put the pot back on the stove. She frowned at me anxiously and left the kitchen.
“You got two big favors. My, my. And they didn’t ask for anything back. They are both Easter bunnies, I guess. Did Jasper talk to you about who they were buying off at City Hall on their construction sites? And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about—the story of my arrest at a Home Free site made all the networks Saturday.”
I heard a click. “Are they messing around with their Wage and Hour repo
rts, Quirk?” Camilla had picked up the extension in the bedroom.
“Hi, Zu-Zu,” Phoebe said. “If they are they didn’t confide in me.”
We batted it around another futile minute. Phoebe was an experienced high-stakes poker player; she wasn’t about to fold during this phone conversation. Even Camilla’s nervous desire for information about Home Free’s legal standing couldn’t budge Phoebe. Finally, in exasperation, I told her I was going to talk it over with Murray.
“Maybe I’ll never know who’s so spooked down at City Hall. But if the Herald-Star runs a story on the Wage and Hour scam, Murray can at least put a temporary spotlight on the other Home Free job sites. It’ll be a while before they start flying Romanians in again. Maybe it’ll give some American workers a crack at getting jobs. And Senator Gantner will enjoy the publicity on how he comes through for his constituents.”
“Just don’t shine so bright a spotlight on them that we lose the rehab job,” Camilla adjured me sharply from the extension.
“It’s what they got in exchange for giving you the job that I want to know about. The tie-in is through Century Bank.”
“But Home Free didn’t have anything to do with that deal,” Camilla reminded me.
“That’s what I’d like to know. Eleanor Guziak sits on the Century board. She’s Donald Blakely’s right-hand woman, so he must know what’s going on there, and if he does, so do the other two musketeers, Jasper and Alec—” I broke myself off. “JAD Holdings. What an imbecile I am. Jasper, Alec, and Donald. One for all, all for one. Right, Phoebe?”
“I’m sure you know what you’re talking about, Vic,” Phoebe said. “I don’t. Go to Murray if you want. But if you screw up the Lamia deal you’d better have some back-up project up your sleeve for the tradeswomen.”
She hung up. Camilla came back to the kitchen, troubled by the conversation. I couldn’t reassure her that the Lamia project was safe—if my investigations pulled a major rug out from under Home Free, they probably wouldn’t be able to fund even Lamia’s rehab work.
“What are the guys up to?” I demanded. “They’re buying Century and it’s supposed to be a deep, dark secret. If I’ve guessed right about who makes up JAD Holdings, that means Jasper pulled back on your original project, then threw you the rehab job as a crumb. Don’t you want to know why?”
“Aren’t our jobs more important than whether Jasper’s working a fiddle with City Hall or some banks? It’s hard for women to get this kind of work,” Camilla pleaded.
“Someone killed Deirdre,” I told her. “If it was these guys, do you really want to take their money?”
Camilla came over to me and made a great pretense of staring into my ear. “Just like I thought,” she announced at last. “They didn’t put compromise in your head. Look it up in the dictionary. Study it. It’s a useful concept. I’m going home. You don’t need a baby-sitter, you need a straitjacket.”
I didn’t like her leaving angry, but nothing I said could calm her down—unless I agreed to let go of Jasper Heccomb. She even suggested I put my investigation on hold until the end of the summer, when Lamia expected to be done with their job. I shook my head miserably and watched her storm out the door.
I felt the ache between my shoulder blades that I get from fighting with the people I like. I shuffled back to the kitchen to call my answering service. I had a message from Eva Kuhn, the Arcadia House therapist.
She wanted to tell me what she’d learned from Tamar Hawkings. It had been difficult, but in the end she’d managed to get Hawkings to talk. Eva had also persuaded Tamar to let her speak with Sam and Miriam, the surviving children. Tamar’s mistrust of the social welfare system was apparently rooted in the history of her sister Leah.
Leah, married to an abusive man, did all the right things: after getting out of prison, when he continued to batter her, she went to a shelter, she found her own apartment, got an order of protection, went through a jobs program, and landed a position as a data-entry clerk. And then was murdered. Tamar was convinced the same fate awaited her if she went through the shelter route. Her daughter’s death couldn’t persuade her that she wasn’t better off foraging on the streets than putting herself in the hands of the social welfare system.
“I’m working on it, but it won’t be easy. Just thought you’d want to be kept posted on what we’re doing,” Eva finished. “I did check up on the sister, by the way—she was murdered by an angry husband who stalked her for months beforehand. Even beat her up at work one day. She was in the hospital for three weeks that time.”
When I hung up, my bleak mood only deepened. I wanted to crawl back to bed. When I thought about all the men beating on women, beating on their daughters, beating on each other, I couldn’t imagine my own efforts to intervene as anything but futile.
“But if you don’t act there may be one more dead child,” I said out loud. “And then you really had better crawl under a rock.”
I drummed my fingers on the kitchen counter. I would need help if I was going to put the squeeze on Cyrus. I phoned Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star.
“Warshawski!” His voice dripped sarcasm. “The queen herself condescends to speak to the common folk.”
“You’re about as common as they get, that’s for sure. You want to talk business, or trade love songs? I’m ready to tell you everything I know.”
“And in exchange?”
“And in exchange, if you decide any of it’s a story, maybe it’ll goad people into showing their hands. Also, you can buy me dinner. At the Filigree. In which case I may overlook you smearing me with Conrad on Sunday.”
“O Queen, your wish makes me tremble and hasten to obey. Filigree in half an hour.”
I looked at the clock: seven-thirty. Conrad lives in Chatham, almost half an hour south of the Loop, and I needed to make another call. Murray agreed to give me an hour.
I reached Sal Barthele at home. She was depressed about having to shut the Golden Glow indefinitely—in these hard economic times it was her main source of cash flow. Fortunately she wasn’t directly affected by the water in the tunnels—the Glow sat on a shallow basement.
“I’ve been following you around Chicago on the tube,” she said. “One day arrested and almost deported, the next a mighty heroine hauling the homeless out by the scruffs of their necks. I tried the hospital but they told me you’d already left. Where are you now, girlfriend?”
“Down at Conrad’s. Someone tossed my place on Saturday and I didn’t have the stamina to do cleanup.”
“You don’t lack stamina for that, Vic—you lack desire. Me, when something goes wrong, I scrub. You, when something goes wrong, you shoot. You moving in with Conrad as a way to solve your housing problems?”
For some reason that option had never occurred to me. I said No so emphatically that Sal laughed.
“Why I really called was to see if you know how to get in touch with Cyrus Lavalle,” I said.
“What do you want with that ridiculous clotheshorse?” she asked. “If you need a dress, isn’t he thinner than you? ... Someone told me when he doesn’t drink at the Glow he hangs out at the Grand Guignol. That’s up on Broadway, at Corneliaor Brompton, something like that. If you really need him he’ll probably show up there.”
When she’d hung up I called Murray. He grumpily agreed to the Grand Guignol instead of the Filigree—it was a long trek north of the newspaper and we probably wouldn’t be able to eat there. I scribbled a note to Conrad and scrambled into the jeans he’d brought to the hospital for me. I was about to leave when I had a second thought. I took an extra half hour to clean and oil the Smith & Wesson and load a new clip.
49
The Price of a Bottle
As soon as I entered the Grand Guignol I knew I was out of place. The inside of the massive door was lined with beaten bronze. The walls, as nearly as I could tell in the dim light, were covered in matching leather. The customers, perching thickly at tables and along the bar in the narrow entrance hall, were all men. Me
n in leather, men in silk, men in shredded cutoffs with holes to expose tattooed buttocks, men in makeup and high heels, and even a few in business suits. At the rear of the bar the only other woman was crooning throatily into a mike. Her sequined dress just covered the essentials.
As I passed along the bar the men on the stools eyed me narrowly, then fidgeted uneasily in their seats. I felt like Gary Cooper making that solitary walk down Main Street. I tried to stand tall in my loafers, saying, “Easy, boys, and none of us will get hurt,” but kept the remark under my breath.
Cyrus wasn’t in the room, but Murray had arrived ahead of me and bagged a small table in a corner. A young man with olive skin and bleached blond hair, wearing a pink silk jumpsuit open to the navel, was leaning across the table in the facing seat. When I came up to the table he glanced at me, made a face, and went back to cooing something at Murray.
I smiled nicely. “I’m afraid he’s my date, but I’ve only paid for the first hour. When I leave you can claim him.”
The youth got up, languidly, picked up Murray’s hand to plant a kiss in the palm, and strolled to the bar. Murray looked venomous. I couldn’t help laughing, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop. The other patrons turned around to frown.
“You wanted revenge, Warshawski, you got revenge, I’ll give you that,” Murray said in a savage undertone.
“I didn’t know it was a queer bar,” I gasped in between hiccups of laughter. “But if you could have seen your face when the guy kissed your hand ... ” I sat down and clutched my sides. “I’ll cherish that till the grave.”
“Which will greet you soon if you don’t shut up that cackling,” Murray hissed.
When I kept howling he grabbed my shoulder and pointed out a bouncer about the size of a refrigerator, watching me with the gaze of a junkyard dog who’s spied dinner. A waiter was frowning at us as well. I pulled myself together as best I could and ordered a whisky in a gasping voice. Murray was drinking Holstein’s, his favorite beer.
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