“Baking soda,” I called sharply to Mrs. Djiak.
The demand for a commonplace household item helped her regain some balance. I watched her feet move to a cupboard. She crouched down and handed me the box across her husband’s body. I dumped the contents on the blue flames flickering around the set and watched the fire go out.
Mr. Djiak slowly untangled himself from the mess of chair and broken glass. He stood for a moment looking at the wreck on the floor, at the wet stains on his pants. Then, without saying anything, he left the room. I could hear his heavy footsteps pass down the hall. Martha Djiak and I listened to the front door slam.
She was shaking. I seated her in one of the plastic-covered chairs and heated water in the teakettle. She watched me dumbly while I rummaged through her cupboards looking for tea. When I found the Lipton bags tucked neatly into a canister, I made her a cup, mixing it well with sugar and milk. She drank it obediently in scalding gulps.
“Do you think you can tell me about Louisa now?” I asked when she’d turned down a second cup.
“How did you find out?” Her eyes were lifeless, her voice little more than a tired thread.
“Your brother’s son came to visit me this afternoon. Each time I’ve seen him I thought he looked familiar, but I put it down to years of looking at Art on posters or TV. But today Caroline was with me. She and I were in the middle of an argument. Young Art walked in with his face flushed, all agitated, and suddenly I realized how much he resembled Caroline. They might almost be twins, you know-I just hadn’t connected them before because I wasn’t expecting it. Of course he’s got that unearthly beauty and she’s always so disheveled, it wasn’t until they were both upset at the same time that you could really see it.”
She listened to my explanation with her face screwed up painfully, as if I were lecturing in Latin and she was trying to make me think she could follow me. When she didn’t say anything I prodded her a little.
“Why did you throw Louisa out of the house when she got pregnant?”
She looked at me directly then, some mix of fear and disgust on her face. “Keep her in the house? With that shame for all the world to know about?”
“It wasn’t her shame. It was Art’s, your brother’s. How can you even compare the two?”
“She wouldn’t have gotten-gotten in trouble if she hadn’t led him on. She saw how much he liked her to dance for him and kiss him. He-he had a weakness. She should have kept away from him.”
My nausea was so acute, it took all my will not to jump on her physically, to slam her body into the debris under the table. “If you knew he had a weakness for little girls, why the hell did you let him near your daughters?”
“He-he said he wouldn’t do it again. After I saw him-playing with-with Connie when she was five, I told him I would tell Ed about it if he ever did it again. He promised. He was afraid of Ed. But Louisa was too much for him, she was too evil-minded, she led him on against his own strength. When we saw she was going to have a baby, she told us how it happened and Art explained it to us, how she led him on against his own strength.”
“So you threw her out into the world. If it hadn’t been for Gabriella, who knows what would have happened to her? The two of you-what a couple of sanctimonious righteous bastards you are.”
She took my insults unflinchingly. She couldn’t understand why I would be angry over such logical parental behavior, but she’d seen me beat up her husband. She wasn’t going to risk exciting me.
“Was Art already married then?” I asked abruptly.
“No. We told him he was going to have to find a wife, start a family, or we’d have to tell Father Stepanek, tell the priest, about Louisa. We promised we wouldn’t say anything if she moved away and he started a family.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I could think of was Louisa at sixteen, pregnant, out on her own, the holy ladies of St. Wenceslaus parading in front of her door. And Gabriella riding in on her white horse to the rescue. All the old insults from the Djiaks about Gabriella’s being a Jew came back to me.
“How can you pretend to call yourselves Christians? My mother was a thousand times the Christian you ever were. She didn’t go around blathering a lot of sanctimonious bullshit; she lived charity. But you and Ed, you let your brother seduce your child and you call her wicked. If there really was a god he would annihilate you for daring to come to his altar, babbling about your righteousness. If there is a god, my only prayer is that I never have to be within a mile of you again.”
I lurched to my feet, my eyes hot with furious tears. She shrank back in her chair.
“I won’t hit you,” I said. “What good would it do either of us?”
Before I’d reached the hall she was already on her hands and knees cleaning up the broken glass.
34
Bank Shot
I staggered from the house to the car, my stomach heaving, my throat tight and tainted with bile. All I could think of was to get to Lotty, not to stop for anything, for a toothbrush or a change of underwear. Just go straight to sanity.
I made it there on luck. A blaring horn at Seventy-first Street brought me briefly to myself I skirted my way carefully through Jackson Park, but I almost hit a bicyclist darting across the Drive at Fifty-ninth. Even after that I kept finding the speedometer needle around seventy.
Max was drinking cognac in Lotty’s sitting room when I got there. I smiled jerkily at him. With a great effort, I remembered the two had gone to a recital together and asked how they’d enjoyed the music.
“Superb. The Cellini Quintet. We knew them in London when they were just getting started after the war.” He reminded Lotty of an evening in Wigmore Hall when the power had gone off, and how the two of them had stood holding flashlights over the music so their friends could continue the concert.
Lotty laughed and was adding a memoir of her own when she broke off. “Vic! I hadn’t seen your face in the light when you came up. What is the matter?”
I forced my lips to the form of a smile. “Nothing life-threatening. Just a strange conversation that I’ll tell you about sometime.”
“I must be off anyway, my dear,” Max said, rising. “I’ve stayed far too long drinking your excellent cognac.”
Lotty saw him to the door, then hurried back to me. “What is it, Liebchen? You look like death.”
I tried smiling again. To my dismay, I found myself sobbing instead. “Lotty, I thought I’d seen every horrible thing people could do to each other in this town. Men killing each other for a bottle of wine. Women pouring lye on their lovers. Why this should upset me so much I don’t know.”
“Here.” Lotty put some brandy to my mouth. “Drink this and settle yourself a bit. Try to tell me what happened.”
I swallowed some of the cognac. It washed the taste of bile from my throat. With Lotty holding my hand, I blurted out the story. How I’d seen the resemblance between young Art and Caroline, and thought his mother must have been related to Caroline’s father. Only to learn that it was his father who was related to Caroline’s grandmother.
“That part wasn’t so awful,” I gulped. “I mean, of course it’s awful. But what made me so sick is their horrible scrubbed piety and the way they insist Louisa was to blame. Do you know how they raised her? How strictly those two sisters were watched? No dates, no boys, no talk about sex. And then her mother’s brother. He molested the one girl and they let him stay around to molest the other. And then they punish her.”
My voice was rising; I couldn’t seem to control it. “It can’t be, Lotty. It shouldn’t be. I should be able to stop something that vile from going on, but I don’t have any power.”
Lotty took me in her arms and held me without speaking. After a time my sobbing dried up, but I continued to lie against her shoulder.
“You can’t heal the world, Liebchen. I know you know that. You can only work with one person at a time, in a very small way. And over the individuals you help you have much effect. It’s only the megal
omaniacs, the Hitlers and their ilk, who think they have the answer for everyone’s life. You are in the world of the sane, Victoria, the world of the limited.”
She took me into the kitchen and fed me the remains of the chicken she’d cooked for Max. She continued to pour brandy into me until I was ready for sleep. After that she took me to her spare room and undressed me.
“Mr. Contreras,” I said thickly. “I forgot to tell him I was spending the night here. Can you call him for me? Otherwise he’ll have Bobby Mallory dragging the lake for me.”
“Certainly, my dear. I’ll do it as soon as I see you’re sleeping. Just rest and don’t worry.”
When I woke Sunday morning I felt light-headed, the result of too much brandy and tears. But I’d had my first thorough sleep since my attack; the soreness in my shoulders had diminished to the point where I no longer noticed it every time I moved.
Lotty brought in The New York Times with a plate of crisp rolls and jam. We spent a leisurely morning over papers and coffee. At noon, when I wanted to start talking about Art Jurshak-about some way to get past his ubiquitous bodyguards to speak to him-Lotty silenced me.
“This will be a day of rest for you, Victoria. We’re going to the country, get fresh air, turn the mind off completely from all worries. It will make everything seem more possible tomorrow.”
I gave in with as good grace as I could muster, but she was right. We drove into Michigan, spent the day walking at the sand dunes, letting the cold lake air whip our hair. We dawdled around in the little wineries, buying a bottle of cherry-cranberry wine as a souvenir for Max, who prided himself on his palate. When we finally returned home around ten that night, I felt clean throughout.
It was a good thing I’d had that day of rest. Monday turned into a long, frustrating day. Lotty was gone when I woke up-she makes rounds at Beth Israel before opening her clinic at eight-thirty. She left me a note saying she’d looked at Dr. Chigwell’s notebooks after I went to bed, but didn’t feel confident in interpreting the blood values he’d been recording. She was taking them to a friend who specialized in nephrology for a reading.
I called Mr. Contreras. He reported a quiet night, but said that young Art was getting restless. He’d loaned him a razor and a change of underwear, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep the boy at the apartment.
“If he wants to leave, let him,” I said. “He’s the one who wanted protection. I don’t really care too much if he doesn’t want to accept it.”
I told him I’d be by to pack a small suitcase, but that I was going to stay with Lotty until I felt more secure against midnight marauders. He agreed, wistfully-he’d much rather I sent young Art to Lotty and stayed with him and Peppy.
After stopping at my place for a shower and a change of clothes, I went downstairs to spend a few minutes with Peppy and Mr. Contreras. The strain of the last few weeks was starting to etch hollow lines in young Art’s face. Or maybe it was just thirty-six hours spent with Mr. Contreras.
“Do you-have you done anything?” His uncertain voice had faded to a pathetic whisper.
“I can’t do anything until I’ve talked to your old man. You can help make that happen. I don’t see how I can get past his security guards to see him alone.”
That alarmed him-he didn’t want Art, Sr., to know he’d come to me; that would really get him in hot water. I reasoned and cajoled to no avail. Finally, getting a little testy, I headed for the door.
“I’ll just have to call your mother and tell her I know where you are. I’m sure she’d be glad to set up a meeting between me and your old man in exchange for knowing her precious baby was safe and sound.”
“Goddamn you, Warshawski,” he squeaked. “You know I don’t want you talking to her.”
Mr. Contreras took umbrage at the young man’s swearing at me and started to interrupt. I held up a hand, which mercifully stopped him.
“Then help me get in touch with your dad.”
At last, fulminating, he agreed to call his father, to say he needed to talk to him alone and to set up a meeting in front of Buckingham Fountain.
I told Art to try to set the appointment for two today-that I’d call back at eleven to check on the time. As I left I could hear Mr. Contreras upbraiding him for talking so rudely to me. It sent me southward with my only laugh of the day.
My parents had banked at Ironworkers Savings & Loan. My mother had opened my first savings account for me there when I was ten so I could stash stray quarters and baby-sitting earnings against the college education she long had promised me. In my memory it remained an imposing, gilt-covered palace.
When I walked up to the grimy stone building at Ninety-third and Commercial, it seemed to have shrunk so with the years that I checked the name over the entrance to make sure I was at the right place. The vaulted ceiling, which had awed me as a child, now seemed merely grubby. Instead of having to stand on tiptoe to peer into the teller’s cage, I towered over the acned young woman behind the counter.
She didn’t know anything about the bank’s annual report, but she directed me indifferently to an officer in the back. The glib story I’d prepared to explain why I wanted it proved unnecessary. The middle-aged man who spoke to me was only too glad to find someone interested in a decaying savings and loan. He talked to me at length about the strong ethical values of the community, where people did everything to keep their little homes in order, and how the bank itself renegotiated loans for its longtime customers when hard times hit them.
“We don’t have an annual report of the kind you’re used to examining, since we’re privately owned,” he concluded. “But you can look at our year-end statements if you want.”
“It’s really the names of your board I’d like to see,” I told him.
“Of course.” He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. “You’re sure you don’t want to inspect the statements? If you were thinking of investing, I can assure you we are in extremely sound condition despite the death of the mills down here.”
If I’d had a few thousand to spare, I would have felt obligated to give it to the bank to cover my embarrassment. As it was I muttered something noncommittal and took the directors list from him. It held thirteen names, but I knew only one of them: Gustav Humboldt.
Oh, yes, my informant told me proudly, Mr. Humboldt had agreed to become a director back in the forties when he first started doing business down here. Even now that his company had become one of the largest in the world and he was a director of a dozen Fortune 500 companies, he still stayed on the Ironworkers board.
“Mr. Humboldt has missed only eight meetings in the last fifteen years,” he finished.
I murmured something that could be taken for extravagant awe at the great man’s dedication. The picture was becoming tolerably clear to me. There was some problem with the insurance on the work force at the Xerxes plant that Humboldt was determined not come to light. I couldn’t see what that had to do with the lawsuit or the deaths of Ferraro and Pankowski. But maybe Chigwell knew what the actuarial data I’d found meant-perhaps that was what his medical notebooks would reveal. That part didn’t bother me too much. It was Humboldt’s personal role that both scared and angered me. I was tired of being jerked around by him. It was time to beard him directly. I extricated myself from the Ironworkers’ hopeful officer and headed for the Loop.
I wasn’t in the mood to waste time hunting out cheap parking. I pulled into the lot next to the Humboldt Building on Madison. Stopping just long enough to comb my hair in the rearview mirror, I headed into the shark’s cove.
The Humboldt Building housed the company’s corporate offices. Like most manufacturing conglomerates, the real business went on in the plants spread across the globe, so I wasn’t surprised that their headquarters could be squeezed into twenty-five stories. It was a strictly functional building, with no trees or sculptures in the lobby. The floor was covered with the utilitarian tile you used to see in all skyscrapers before Helmut Jahn and his pa
ls started filling them with marble-lined atria.
The old-fashioned black notice board in the hallway didn’t list Gustav Humboldt, but it told me the corporate offices were on twenty-two. I summoned one of the bronze-doored elevators and made my slow way up.
The hall that I entered from the elevator was austere, but the tone had changed subtly. The lower half of the walls was paneled in a dark wood that also showed on either side of the pale green carpet. Framed prints of medieval alchemists with retorts, toads, and bats hung above the paneling.
I headed down the green pile to an open door on my right. The green carpeting continued past the door, where it spread into a large pool. The dark wood was picked up in a polished desk. Behind it sat a woman with a phone bank and a word processor. She was impeccably polished herself, her dark hair pulled back in a smooth chignon to show the large pearls in her shell-shaped ears. She turned from the word processor to greet me with practiced courtesy.
“I’m here to see Gustav Humboldt,” I said, trying to sound authoritative.
“T see. May I have your name please?”
I handed her a card and she turned with it to the phones. When she’d finished she smiled apologetically.
“You don’t seem to be in the appointment calendar, Ms. Warshawski. Is Mr. Humboldt expecting you?”
“Yes. He’s been leaving messages for me all over town. This is just my first opportunity to get back to him.”
She returned to the phones. This time when she finished she asked me to take a seat. I lowered myself into an overstuffed armchair and flipped through a copy of the annual report thoughtfully placed next to it. Humboldt’s Brazil operations had shown a staggering growth last year, accounting for sixty percent of overseas profits. Their capital investment of $500 million in the Amazon River Project was now paying handsome dividends. I couldn’t help wondering how much capital development it would take before the Amazon looked like the Calumet.
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