“Yeah, you could hardly accuse them of fixing games,” I agreed. “They lose through grit and hard work. The connection has to be to Scanlon, or through Scanlon to Spike Hurlihey. In the recording, Uncle Jerry says ‘everyone has to pay to play,’ which is the defining sentiment of Spike’s life.”
Tom Streeter phoned as Murray and I were deciding we couldn’t come up with any new ideas. Villard’s shooting had completely knocked Viola Mesaline out of my mind—I’d forgotten the Harley that might have been following her when she left my place last night.
“The Harley buzzed around her apartment last night,” Tom told me, “but there was mud on the plate and I couldn’t get the number. This morning a kid on a bicycle seemed to track her as far as the bus stop. What do you want me to do?”
“Pick her up after work this afternoon,” I decided. “Tell her it would be good if she left town. Or went to a safe house, which I do not happen to possess.”
“We could put her up in the back of the warehouse,” Tom suggested doubtfully. “There’s a kind of apartment there we use for Airbnb. Bed, bath, kitchenette. We can keep her safe there, but not at work.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I fretted. “If someone wants to kill her, they’ve had plenty of opportunities. If they’re simply following her around town—”
“They hope she’ll lead them to someone, or to something,” Tom finished the sentence.
“She led them to me,” I said, “and they’ve left me alone. At least, I think they have. Or maybe I haven’t yet found whatever it is they’re looking for. My only guess is that they want Sebastian Mesaline. That’s why Viola is scared every time I try to see her: they’ve been to her, threatened her, but believed her when she said she hired me to find him. And now I’m the stalking horse who’s supposed to lead them to her brother!”
Murray had only been able to follow the conversation from my end, but it was enough to put him in the picture. When I’d hung up, he said, “You know, Warshawski, I’m not any fonder than you of letting the Feds or the cops get between me and an investigation, but if the Grozny Mob really want Sebastian dead and they think you can find him, you should talk to your pals in blue.”
I didn’t like it, but he was right. I spent much of the rest of the day talking first with Conrad Rawlings and Bobby Mallory, and then with an array of officers in Organized Crime. Of course, the hit on Stan Villard had happened in Evanston, not Chicago, but the two cities share a lot of streets, so they have protocols for sharing leads and even resources.
Because Villard had been with the Cubs, the team was breathing down the necks of both forces. Powerful citizens get more police attention than people like the Guzzos. Fact of life, not a nice one, but it meant that both Bobby and Conrad tried to be cordial, instead of snarling at me for keeping Sebastian’s recording from them. They snarled a little, but that was just a reflex.
They also needed to talk to Viola and didn’t really believe me when I said I’d been trying to talk her into going to them.
“Vicki, you need to take us to her, or her to us,” Bobby said. “No dodging around, no sleights of hand.”
We were meeting in a conference room at the CPD headquarters on South Michigan, me, Conrad, Bobby, three officers from Organized Crime, and another trio from Evanston. Also a couple of junior officers to take notes and make coffee runs.
“There’s a guy on a Harley who’s been keeping tabs on her,” I said, “and at least one on a bicycle. The Harley seems to pick her up after work, but they probably have somebody on foot, since she takes the Green Line home. We haven’t spotted any cars, but that doesn’t mean the trackers aren’t using them.”
“We’ll try to keep an eye on Nabiyev,” an officer from Organized Crime said, “but he’s gone to ground for the time being, may even have left Chicago. If we’d known he was a person of interest in the shooting, we could have taken steps at the airports right away.”
All ten officers glared at me in unison. They had a good choreographer.
“I suggested it to the detective in charge at the crime scene,” I said. “He was so eager to pin the blame on Mr. Villard’s caregiver that he wasn’t interested in anything I had to say.”
“Yeah, well, when you’re with us poor dim-witted coppers, you have a habit of making your suggestions sound like sarcasm. It’s a good trick,” Bobby said, “because it means we don’t take you seriously and then you get to go off and pull your own rabbits out of your own hats and make us look ineffectual. And that also is annoying.”
“Put it in my file,” I couldn’t help saying. “‘When she’s most annoying, she’s on to something worth paying attention to.’”
Bobby made a sour face. “I’d love it if just once you’d act your age. You can go—we’ll take it from here.”
He followed me into the hall. “Vicki, if you see or hear or even smell anything from Nabiyev, you call me or Rawlings at once. Don’t try to tackle him on your own because you can’t. I don’t want your ma greeting me at the Pearly Gates, telling Saint Peter not to admit me because I let you run headfirst into danger, but that’s what will happen if you keep thinking you’re smart enough to handle thugs like Nabiyev. Capisce?”
“Capisco,” I said. I felt my age plus another decade as I walked to the elevator.
IN THE MADHOUSE
My seat used to be up near the rafters, where the noise shook one’s bones. Seventeen thousand fans slamming our chairs up and down, stomping, screaming, whistling, while the foghorn under the scoreboard bellowed whenever Steve Larmer or Boom-Boom scored. The Madhouse on Madison, it was called, and rightly so—decibel level around 130 on average, up to 300 when all the noisemakers were turned on. The sound coming from the rafters could push skaters to their knees.
They tore down the old Stadium about the time injuries forced my cousin into retirement. Just as well—he was superstitious about his success and hadn’t wanted to play in the fancy new place. Tonight, sinking into a plush red seat, I kind of agreed with Boom-Boom. I didn’t want my eardrums shattered, but I missed being right on top of the ice the way you were at the Stadium. The brightly smiling attendants, poised to bring us everything from name-brand cocktails to lobster rolls, made me perversely long for the Stadium’s cheap beer and pretzels, even though I don’t like beer.
The teams were skating warm-ups when I got there. Pierre had invited me to a pre-game dinner with his daughter and some of his old pals from the team, but I’d had to skip that: I’d gone with Conrad and one of his officers to talk to Viola before she left Ajax for the day. We’d done it the right way, gone through corporate HR, corporate security, explained she was dealing with a stalker and we wanted to guarantee her safety to and from the workplace.
Her supervisor turned out to be helpful, even supportive: Viola’s twin might not shine on the job but Viola worked hard and seemed to be a popular member of her unit, at least until the last week or two when she’d become erratic. If she was dealing with a stalker, that explained everything and the company would be glad to help.
Viola wasn’t quite as grateful. She accused me of betraying her trust, then, when I told her I knew she’d received threats of reprisals if she didn’t reveal her brother’s location, she accused me of listening in on her phone calls.
Conrad, at his gentlest, most avuncular, was finally able to persuade her to tell what she knew, although it wasn’t much. He coaxed her into describing the threatening phone calls, but Viola didn’t know who’d been making them. She kept insisting that she knew nothing about what Sebastian had agreed to do for Jerry Fugher, and no idea where her twin might be. She also resisted a police escort to her apartment.
“Don’t you see? They’ll know I went to the police if they see you. They already know I went to Vic. No police, they keep telling me, or they’ll kill me, and what’s to stop them murdering me now? They know where I work, they know where I live.”
“You want me dead,” she sobbed. “You’re not really trying to find Sebastian, if I’m dead you won’t have to look for him anymore.”
“She has a point,” I said to Conrad. “Unless you can put a twenty-four/seven detail on her, she’ll be vulnerable as soon as your officer leaves.”
Conrad smacked his thigh, frustrated. “And you can afford to guard her?”
We hashed it over for some time. The only solution we came up with was cumbersome and highly dependent on luck, but in the end, I drove Viola home to pack a suitcase. Conrad trailed us discreetly and hovered a few blocks away until Tom Streeter picked up Viola.
Once they were gone, I drove back to Conrad, who got out of the car to say that a Harley had buzzed the street a few times, but he hadn’t been able to pick up the plate without revealing he was watching.
“You look after yourself, Ms. W. That broken nose doesn’t help your looks any, and a bullet in the chest would definitely reduce your sex appeal, okay?”
The morning had started with Vince Bagby inviting me to dinner. Now Conrad was admiring my sex appeal. Despite the day’s traumas, I drove to the United Center in a cheerful mood.
Pierre was surrounded by old friends and old fans when I got there, while Bernie sat listening to music and texting, looking up only when Pierre pulled out one of her earbuds to introduce her to someone. She gave me a nervous smile, but pulled herself together to ask after Mr. Contreras and the dogs. She was wearing one of Boom-Boom’s jerseys—I’d given it to Pierre after my cousin died, and Bernie was swimming in it. To show that her loyalties lay with her father and her home country, she’d put on earrings with the Canadiens’ logo—the flattened C embracing an H—done in red and blue enamel.
Once the game got under way, father and daughter both focused on the ice. I didn’t recognize the current crop of players on either team—I hadn’t paid much attention to hockey after Boom-Boom’s death, although the Hawks were always generous with tickets whenever I wanted to come.
I tried to focus on the action, but about halfway through the first period, I realized Bernie was paying more attention to me than the game. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she turned red and picked up Pierre’s binoculars to stare at the ice.
“What’s up?” I asked her as Toews and the rest chased the puck to the far end.
She pretended to be too focused on the game to hear me, but the tightness in her shoulders told a different story.
At the end of the first period, Pierre took her with him down to the Blackhawks bench. Since he was scouting now for a rival team, he couldn’t go into the locker room, but I watched him talking to the front office staff, introducing Bernie, who flashed the family’s famous smile.
Someone handed Bernie a stick. She walked out onto the perimeter of the rink and showed off her form. After a certain amount of confabbing and gesturing, someone escorted Bernie to center ice to play the game of “Shoot the Puck”: a board is placed in front of the goal with three slots in the bottom and contestants—usually drawn randomly from the crowd—get three chances to put the puck through a slot.
A woman from media relations was there with a mike, talking to each of the contestants before they addressed the puck. When it was Bernie’s turn, the woman said, “I see you are wearing Boom-Boom Warshawski’s number, even though your dad is with the Canadiens.”
“Boom-Boom was my godfather,” Bernie announced into the microphone. “I wear his number tonight and dedicate my shooting to his memory. Some ignorant people try to deface his reputation, but me, I am proud to show my support of him in public.”
The remark was so pointed, I figured it explained the tenseness she’d been exhibiting in the stands—she must have been planning to toss this barb my way.
The crowd went wild over Bernie when they caught on to her connection to Blackhawks royalty. The cheering and catcalls grew almost to old Stadium decibels. Bernie waved a quick, shy hand, but looked at her feet, not the audience, while the other three contestants took their turns.
When it was Bernie’s time to shoot, she treated the matter with total seriousness, adjusting her stick as if it were a golf club. The puck sailed through the center slot as if someone were pulling it on a string. Bernie permitted herself a small tight smile, bowed briefly to the cheering audience and scurried off the ice, where Pierre was waiting to hug her. The Blackhawks brass slapped her on the shoulders. I could imagine the threadbare comments: too bad the NHL doesn’t let women try out, we’d put you on one of our affiliate teams right away.
I left the stands to join a line for the women’s toilets. By the time I got back to my seat, the second period had started. Pierre and Bernie apparently had accepted an invitation to sit with the Blackhawks officers: their seats were empty, but I saw Pierre in the row of seats right behind the players’ bench. I picked up the binoculars that he’d left on his seat. No Bernie. Bathroom break, maybe. I sat uneasily for half a minute, then texted her.
About halfway into the second period, when she hadn’t responded to that or to my second text, I headed to the ground floor. The entrance to the floor-level seats was blocked by security staff who demanded a ticket that gave me the right to enter. I opened my mouth to argue, decided that was futile and gave a small scream instead.
“A rat! A rat just ran right over my feet—oh, horrible—look—look, it’s over there!”
I pointed dramatically. The three guards couldn’t help following my arm, which gave me a second to duck around the barrier and run into the stands. I pushed and shoved my way past annoyed fans and squawking security staff to the row of seats behind the Blackhawks bench.
“Pierre! Pierre!” I had to shout his name a half dozen times before someone heard me over the fan noise. The guards had caught up with me and were trying to wrestle me away when he turned and saw me struggling in their arms.
He tried to come to me, couldn’t get by the glass barrier separating the team from the crowd, and shook one of the manager’s arms. By this time, the guards had managed to drag me past the excited spectators to one of the aisles. What a wonderful night of violence, even better than a fight on the rink, guard versus berserk fan right in front of them.
Before the guards could turn me over to the Chicago police, Pierre arrived—he’d had to go through the tunnel into the dressing room and then up and around behind me. Someone from the Hawks was with him, explaining to the guards that I was a friend of Pierre’s.
“Vic, what is it? Bernadine, she is ill?”
“Where is Bernadine?” I demanded.
“But—with you. She is saying my old friends are trop ennuyants, she is wanting to watch the game—”
“No,” I said flatly. “She’s gone.”
“But—where? Maybe she is in the toilets?”
“She hasn’t been around since the second period started. It’s been a good twenty minutes, maybe more.”
“No,” he whispered. He grabbed his binoculars from me to inspect the section where we’d been sitting, but the three seats remained empty.
I looked around despairingly: twenty-one thousand fans, another thousand or more guards, press, you can’t search a building like this. Not much in the way of security cameras, either.
“Get the head of security,” I said to the guards who’d just been holding me. “Let’s see what we can do. She was on camera for ‘Shoot the Puck,’ and everyone paid attention because she’s Pierre’s daughter. If she left the building, or someone took— Anyway, you can alert everyone in security to look for her, or report whether they saw her, right?”
The man from the Blackhawks management who’d come up with Pierre nodded at the guards. “Get that going now, guys. Pierre, if she’s here, we’ll find her.”
I called Conrad Rawlings on his per
sonal cell. “We don’t know what happened to her, whether she left on her own, or if Nabiyev or Bagby had someone here waiting for a chance to get her on her own.”
Conrad took the few details I had, promised to call Bobby to see what resources the department could put into a search. “Don’t beat yourself up, Ms. W.,” he added. “Slows down the investigation. You got a current photo you can text?”
“YouTube. Tonight’s ‘Shoot the Puck.’”
The next hour was a blur of frantic, useless activity. The security crew did a crowd scan with their fan cams, trying to match Bernie’s face to anyone in the stands. I joined two women staffers to search the women’s toilets. I felt dull, empty, while my body moved to staircases, ramps, hidden elevators, dark spaces under the rafters, all against the backdrop of the organ, the screams from fans, the blare of foghorns. My injured eye and nose were aching. The pain forced me to know this was happening now, in the body, not some dream from which I might mercifully awaken.
The woman from security I was working with got a call on her radio: they’d found a gate attendant who was pretty sure he’d seen Bernie leave. We all rushed down to the security office, where the Stadium’s staff had been augmented by members of the Chicago police, including Conrad, who nodded a greeting when he spotted me.
The attendant was flustered, not used to this kind of spotlight. Conrad took the questioning away from the security chief.
“You’re not in any trouble, son, but the girl may be in danger, so we need you to think calmly. How sure are you?”
He was pretty sure, yeah, well, during the game not much happened at the gates, you reminded people that once they left, they couldn’t come back in, and other than that, he and his buddies, they kind of hung out.
“Right,” Conrad said as the security chief started to demand what “hanging out” meant. “What time would you say you saw the girl leave?”
The attendant couldn’t pinpoint it, more than to say around the start of the second period. “Because by the third, with the Hawks on cruise control, you start to get a lot of people leaving, trying to beat the traffic.”
Brush Back (V.I. Warshawski Novels Book 17) Page 33