Keeping my hands in my pockets so as to hide their tremor, I walked with Bobby to the one-way observation window. McGonnigal turned out the lights on our side and the little room beyond sprang into relief
“We’ve got two sets for you,” Bobby murmured in my ear. “You know the routine-take your time, ask for any of them to turn around or whatever.”
Six men walked in with self-conscious pugnacity. They all looked alike to me-white, burly, somewhere around forty. I tried to imagine them with black hoods, the executioner of my nightmare this morning.
“Ask them to talk,” I said abruptly. “Ask them to say ‘Just tell us the time, girlie’ and then ‘Dump her here, Troy. X marks the spot.’”
Finchley conveyed the request to the unseen officers running the show. One by one the men obediently mumbled their lines. I kept watching the second guy from the left. He had a kind of secretive smile-he knew they’d never make a serious charge stick. His eyes. Could I remember the eyes of the man who’d come up to me at the edge of the lagoon? Cold, flat, calculating his words to find my weaknesses.
But when this man spoke I didn’t recognize the voice. It was husky, with the twang of the South Side, not the emotionless tones I remembered.
I shook my head. “I think it’s the second guy from the left. But I don’t recognize the voice and I can’t be absolutely certain.”
Bobby nodded fractionally and Finchley gave orders to dismiss the lineup.
“Well?” I demanded. “Is he the one?”
The lieutenant smiled reluctantly. “I thought it was a long shot, but he’s the guy we picked up outside your front door last night. I don’t know if your ID is strong enough for the state’s attorney. But maybe we can find out who puts up bond for him.”
They brought in the second lineup, a parade of black men. I’d seen only one of my attackers close up. Even though I presumed Troy was one of the men in front of me, I couldn’t pick him out, even with a voice check.
Bobby was in high good humor with my ID of the first man. He ran me genially through the paperwork and got Officer Neely to take me home, sending me off with a pat on the arm and a promise of telling me when the first court date would be.
My own mood wasn’t nearly as pleasant. When Neely had dropped me at my apartment I went up to change into running shoes. I wasn’t up for a run yet, but I needed a long walk to clear my brain before seeing little Caroline this afternoon.
First, though, I had to mend a few fences. Mr. Contreras received me coolly, trying to mask his hurt feelings under a veneer of formality. But subtlety wasn’t really part of his makeup. He unbent after a few minutes, told me he would never come up to my apartment again without phoning first, and fried up some eggs and bacon for lunch. I sat talking with him afterward, curbing my impatience at the long flow of irrelevant reminiscence. Anyway, the longer he talked the longer I could put off facing a tougher conversation. At two, though, I figured I’d avoided Lotty long enough and set off for Sheffield.
Lotty wasn’t as easy to kiss and make up with. She was home in between her morning clinic hours and an afternoon concert with Max. We talked in the kitchen while she whipped tiny stitches into the hem of a black skirt. At least she didn’t slam the door on me.
“I don’t know how many times I have patched you up in the last ten years, Victoria. Many. And almost every time a life-threatening situation. Why do you value yourself so little?”
I stared at the floor. “I don’t want anyone solving my problems for me.”
“But you came here last night. You involved me in your problems, and then you disappeared without a word. That isn’t independence-that is thoughtless cruelty. You must make up your mind about what you want with me. If it is just to be your doctor-the person who patches you up when you’ve decided to run your head in front of a bullet-fine. We will go to such cold encounters. But if you want to be friends, you cannot behave with such careless disregard for my feelings for you. Can you understand that?”
I rubbed my head tiredly. Finally I looked at her. “Lotty, I’m scared. I’ve never been this frightened, not since the day my dad told me Gabriella was dying and nothing could be done for her. I knew then that it was a terrible mistake to depend on someone else to solve my problems for me. Now I seem to be too terrorized to solve them for myself and I’m thrashing around. But when I ask for help it just drives me wild. I know it’s hard on you. I’m sorry for that. But I can’t get enough distance right now to do anything about it.”
Lotty finished pulling the thread through her hem and put the skirt down. She gave a wry little smile. “Yes. It is not an easy thing to lose one’s mother, is it? Could we make a little compromise, my dear? I won’t demand of you responses you can’t make. But when you find yourself in this state, will you tell me, so that I am not making myself so angry with you?”
I nodded a few times, my throat too tight for me to speak. She came over to me and held me close to her. “You are the daughter of my heart, Victoria. I know it’s not the same as having Gabriella, but the love is there.”
I smiled shakily. “In your fierceness you’re two of a kind.”
After that I told her about the notebooks I’d left behind. She promised to look at them on Sunday, to see if she could make anything of them.
“And now I must dress, my dear. But why not come spend the night here? Maybe we’ll both feel a little better.”
31
Old Fireball
When I got back to my apartment I stopped to tell Mr. Contreras I was home and let him know Caroline would be arriving soon. My conversation with Lotty had done something to restore my equilibrium. I felt calm enough to abandon my plan for a walk in favor of a little housekeeping.
The partially cooked chicken I’d stashed in the refrigerator Tuesday night had become pretty rank. I carried it down to the garbage can in the alley, scrubbed the refrigerator with soda to deaden the smell, and bundled my newspapers out front for the recycling team to pick up. By the time Caroline arrived a little after four, I’d paid all my December bills and had organized the receipts for my tax returns. I was also feeling all my sore muscles.
Caroline came quietly up the stairs, smiling a little nervously. She followed me into the living room, turning down my offer of refreshments in a soft, breathy voice. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so ill at ease.
“How’s Louisa doing?” I asked.
She made a throwaway gesture. “She seems stable right now. But kidney failure leaves you pretty depressed-it seems dialysis only gets a fraction of impurities out of the system, so you’re always feeling nightmarish.”
“Did you tell her about the call you got-about Joey Pankowski being your father?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t told her anything. About your looking for him or-or, well, about anything. I had to let her know Nancy was dead, of course-she would have seen it on TV or heard it from her sister. But she can’t take any more upsets like that.”
She played nervously with the fringe on one of the sofa cushions, then burst out, “I wish I’d never asked you to find my father for me. I don’t know what magic I thought you could work. And I don’t know why I thought finding him would alter my life in any way.” She gave a harsh little laugh. “What am I saying? Just having you look for him has changed my life.”
“Could we talk about that a little?” I asked gently. “Someone called you two weeks ago and told you to chase me away, didn’t they? That was when you phoned me with that incredible rigmarole about not wanting me to look for your father.”
Her head was bent down so far all I could see was her wild copper curls. I waited patiently. She would not have made the trek up to Lakeview if she hadn’t decided to tell me the truth-it was just taking her some time to give her courage the last screw.
“It’s the mortgage,” she finally whispered to her feet. “We rented for years and years. Then when I started working we could finally save enough to make a down payment. I got a call. A man-I don’t know wh
o he was. He said-he said-he’d been looking into our loan. He thought-he told me-they would cancel it if I didn’t make you stop looking for my father-stop you from asking all those questions about Ferraro and Pankowski.”
At last she looked up at me, her freckles standing out sharply from the pallor of her face. She held out her hands beseechingly and I moved from my chair to put my arms around her. For a few minutes she nestled against me, trembling, as though she were still little Caroline and I was the big kid who could save her from any danger.
“Did you call the bank?” I asked her presently. “See if they knew anything about it?”
“I was afraid if they heard me asking questions, they might do it, you know.” Her voice was muffled against my armpit.
“What bank is it?”
She sat up at that and looked at me in alarm. “You’re not going to go talk to them about it, Vic! You mustn’t!”
“I may know someone who works there, or someone on the board,” I said patiently. “If I find I can’t ask a few questions very discreetly, I promise not to paw up the dirt. Okay? Anyway, it’s a pretty good bet that it’s Ironworkers Savings & Loan-that’s where everyone in the neighborhood has always gone.”
Her big eyes searched my face anxiously. “It is, Vic. But you have to promise, really promise, you won’t do anything that will jeopardize our mortgage. It would kill Ma if something like that happened now. You know it would.”
I nodded solemnly and gave my word. I didn’t think she was exaggerating the effect on Louisa of any kind of major disturbance. As I thought about Caroline’s frantic response to the threat on her mother, something else occurred to me.
“When Nancy was murdered you told the police I knew why she’d been killed. Why did you do that? Was it because you really wanted me to keep an eye on you and Louisa?”
She blushed violently. “Yes. But it didn’t do me any good.” Her voice was barely a squeak.
“You mean they did it? Cut off your mortgage?”
“Worse. They-they somehow figured out-I’d gone to you about her murder. They called me again. At least it was the same man. And said if I didn’t want to see Ma’s medical benefits cut off, I’d better get you away from South Chicago. So I was really scared then. I tried my best, and when this man called me back I told him-told him I couldn’t-couldn’t stop you, that you were on your own.”
“So they decided to stop me themselves.” My throat was dry; my own voice came out harshly.
She looked at me fearfully. “Can you forgive me, Vic? When I saw the news, saw what happened to you, it shattered me. But if I had to do it again, I’d have to do it the same way. I couldn’t let them hurt Ma. Not after everything she went through for me. Not with all her suffering now.”
I got up and paced angrily to the window. “Didn’t it occur to you, if you told me, I could do something about it? Protect her and you? Instead of running blind, so that I almost got killed myself?”
“I didn’t think you could,” she said simply. “When I asked you to find my father I was still imagining you were my big sister, that you could solve all my problems for me. Then I saw you weren’t as powerful as I’d imagined you to be. It was just, with Ma so sick and everything, I needed someone so badly to look after me, and I thought maybe you’d still be that person.”
Her statement dissipated my anger. I came back to the couch and smiled wryly at her. “I think you’ve finally grown up, Caroline. That’s what it is all right-no big people to clean up all the mess around us. But even if I’m not still the kid who could whip the neighborhood to save your butt, I’m not totally ineffective. I think it’s possible to tidy some of the garbage floating around on this one.”
She gave a shaky smile. “Okay, Vic. I’ll see if I can help you.”
I went to the dining room and pulled a bottle of Barolo from the liquor cupboard, Caroline rarely drank, but the heavy wine helped steady her. We talked for a while, not about our current problems, but general things-whether Caroline really wanted a law degree if she didn’t have to play catch-up with me. After a glass or two we both felt able to return to the discussion at hand.
I told her about Pankowski and Ferraro and the conflicting reports on their suit against Humboldt Chemical. “I don’t know what that has to do with Nancy’s death. Or with the attack on me. But it was when I found out about it and started questioning people about them that someone threatened me.”
She listened to a detailed report on my encounters with Dr. Chigwell and his sister, but she couldn’t shed any light on the blood work he’d kept on Xerxes employees.
“This is the first I ever heard about it. You know the kind of person Ma is-if they sent her in for a medical exam every year, she did it without thinking about it. A lot of things people told her to do on the job didn’t make any sense to her, and this would be one of them. I can’t believe it has anything to do with Nancy’s death.”
“Okay. Let’s try another one. Why did Xerxes buy their insurance through Art? Is Jurshak still the fiduciary on their life-health stuff? Why was it important enough to Nancy that she was carrying it around?”
Caroline shrugged. “Art keeps a pretty tight grip on a number of the businesses down there. He might have gotten their insurance in exchange for a tax break or something. Of course when Washington was elected Art didn’t have as many favors to hand out, but he still can do a lot for a company if they do something for him.”
I pulled Jurshak’s report to Mariners Rest from Mozart’s Concert Arias and handed it to Caroline. She frowned over it for several minutes.
“I don’t know anything about insurance,” she finally said. “All I can tell you is that Ma’s benefits have been first-class. I don’t know about any of these other companies.”
Her words triggered an elusive memory. Something someone had said to me in the last few weeks about Xerxes and insurance. I frowned, trying to drag it the surface, but I couldn’t get hold of it.
“It meant something to Nancy,” I said impatiently. “What? Did she collect data on health and mortality rates for any of these companies? Maybe she had some way of checking the accuracy of this report.” Maybe the report didn’t mean anything. But then why had Nancy been carrying it around?
“Yes. She did track all these health statistics-she was the director of Health and Environmental Services.”
“So let’s go down to SCRAP and check her files.” I got up and started hunting for my boots.
Caroline shook her head. “Nancy’s files are gone. The police impounded what she had in her desk, but someone had cleaned out her health files before the cops got them. We just assumed she’d taken them home with her.”
My anger returned in a rush, fueled by disappointment: I was sure we’d reached a break in the case. “Why the hell didn’t you tell the police that two weeks ago? Or me! Don’t you see, Caroline? Whoever killed her took her papers. We could have been looking exclusively at people involved in these companies, instead of trailing around after vengeful lovers and all that crap!”
She heated up just as fast. “I told you at the time she was killed because of her work! You just were on your usual fucking arrogant head trip and wouldn’t pay any attention to me!”
“You said it was because of the recycling plant, which this has nothing to do with. And anyway, why didn’t you tell me that her files had disappeared?”
We went at it like a couple of six-year-olds, both venting our fury over the threats and humiliations of the past few weeks. I don’t know how we would have extricated ourselves from the escalating insults if we hadn’t been interrupted by the buzzer outside my front door. I left Caroline in the living room and stormed to the entrance.
Mr. Contreras was standing there. “I don’t mean to be butting in, cookie,” he said apologetically, “but this young fella’s been ringing the lobby bell for the last couple of minutes and you two was so wrapped up, I thought maybe you couldn’t hear him.”
Young Art trailed in behind Mr. Contreras. Hi
s square, chiseled face was flushed and his auburn hair disheveled. He was biting his lips, clenching and unclenching his hands, in so much turmoil that his usual beauty was obscured. The family resemblance I saw in his distraught face staggered me so much that it muffled my surprise at seeing him.
I finally said weakly, “What are you doing here? Where have you been? Did your mother send you?”
He cleared his throat, trying to speak, but he couldn’t seem to get any words out.
Mr. Contreras, his promise not to breathe down my neck still present in his mind, didn’t linger to issue his usual unsubtle threats against my male visitors. Or maybe he’d summed up Art and figured he didn’t need to worry.
When the old man had left Art finally spoke. “I need to talk to you. It-things are worse than I thought.” His voice came out in a squawky little whisper.
Caroline came to the living-room door to see what the uproar was about. I turned to her and said as gently as I could, “This is young Art Jurshak, Caroline. I don’t know if you’ve ever met, but he’s the alderman’s son. He’s got something confidential he needs to tell me. Can you call some of your pals at SCRAP, see if any of them know anything about this report Nancy was carrying around with her?”
I was afraid she was going to argue with me, but my stunned mood got across to her. She asked if I was all right, if it was okay to leave me with young Art. When I reassured her she went back to the living room for her coat.
She stopped briefly at the door on her way out and said in a small voice, “I didn’t mean all those things I was saying. I came here to get back on good terms with you, not to shout like that,”
I rubbed her shoulders gently. “It’s okay, fireball-it goes with the territory. I said some stupid things myself Let’s forget it.”
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