Barbara D'Amato - [Cat Marsala 09]

by Hard Road (html)

  "I think it's pretty damn good either way."

  "All right. Don't help me. I'll decide for myself. Cat, why are you so pale and wan?"

  "It's too complicated to explain right now. Boiled down, I got my brother into a horrible jam and have to get him out."

  "Eat more chocolate."

  "That's a help. Hermione, lately I've been wondering a lot about commercialization."

  "You're thinking of going commercial, maybe?"

  "I wish. If I could do commercial, I'd do it. No, I was thinking about the commercialization of pleasant, unassuming things. Like children's books. Does it make them less, mm, less a delight? Does it spoil them in some way? If somebody tries to make a buck off a fun thing, does that make the project in some way less sincere?"

  "Commercialization of pleasant things! What do you call this?"

  "This restaurant?"

  "Exactly. I make double chocolate cake. Coq au vin. Snails in puff pastry. Onion soup roofed with the best Swiss cheese baked on top of chewy French bread. These items are very pleasant. But I don't give them away. I love to cook but I don't cook for love; I cook for money. And if somebody wants to commission me to teach my recipes to a thousand chefs for a thousand franchises and pay me a million dollars, hey! Let them do it."

  * * *

  Mazzanovich, the contractor, was at the construction site. A man of little politesse, he said, "You again!"

  "I suppose you're more agreeable to your constituents. How do you know I don't live in your district?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Well, I wanted to warn you. The evidence that seemed to show Plumly had been stabbed after he left the three of you turns out to be wrong."

  All of Mazzanovich's wrinkles came together in the middle of his face. The man had a frown that would sour a sugarplum.

  "Whattaya mean by that?"

  "Just that what gave the police the idea that only Barry could have killed Plumly turns out to be irrelevant." I hesitated to tell him I had misinterpreted what I saw.

  "Well, listen, Marsala. You're not gonna get me for this. I didn't kill the guy."

  "And I suppose the other two will testify that you didn't kill him?"

  A very odd look came over the rubbery face. It's dangerous to assume you know what a person is thinking, but it seemed to me his response shifted from confidence to doubt, to increasingly serious worry.

  Finally, he said, "Yeah. They would."

  He walked away from me, out into the construction zone.

  * * *

  Still no one had tried to attack me. I hoped that meant I was right; there was no longer any need. Briefly, I had a terrible fear that my whole analysis had been wrong and Jeremy had been the target all along. But that simply didn't make sense. Jeremy knew nothing that I didn't know. And what he did know he had told the cops about. Also, it didn't accord with my observations of the gunshots. Either way, I did my best to watch my back when I went to the festival offices.

  "Barry, you have to talk with me."

  "No, I don't."

  He was in his office in the Emerald City castle, which was a good thing because I could stand between him and the only exterior door.

  "Barry, why don't I just put a bag over my head and you can pretend you're talking to somebody else."

  He snorted and folded his arms.

  "I'm trying to help you. And before you say I've already helped you more than enough or make some other lame remark, let's just take it as read."

  He took a dart out of the desk drawer and threw it at a picture of the Wicked Witch on the plywood wall to my left.

  "Whatever helps you," I said. The small children's roller coaster that went around the outside of the castle rumbled noisily to a stop. Barry got up and retrieved the dart.

  "First question. Had Plumly been acting different in the last couple of days?"

  In a flat but audible voice, Barry said, "Yes. He seemed upset."

  "Upset? What kind of upset? Worried? Hyper? Angry? Fearful?" Barry was not especially a word person. He threw the dart at the witch again.

  "Huffy," he said.

  "Like impatient? Indignant?"

  "Indignant. Huffy."

  "What kinds of documents on the festival would he have access to?"

  "Pretty much everything." He went and got the dart. "This is a temporary office. Hell, it's just a bunch of plywood sheets painted green with a small roller coaster rolling around its outside. We all have other offices. He had. I have. The Park District has. The city has."

  "You're saying they all have duplicate documents?" Plumly had told me this as well.

  "Sure. The reason we have a full set here is in case something comes up. Say an inspector comes in and says the funnel cakes stand doesn't have a permit. We have to be able to say, 'Oh yes, it has. Here it is.' We need to have all the forms, the insurance, the lawyer's address, emergency electricians, the companies who sent the products, the owners of the merry-go-round and roller coaster, and whatever. We can't go rushing over to some office building for a sheet of paper at ten o'clock at night. So everything was here and he had access to it."

  He threw the dart. He was really quite good at hitting the witch in the nose.

  I said, "You see what I'm getting at. Could he have come on to a permission form or a bid price for a service or anything like that which would tell him somebody paid somebody else off?"

  He left the dart there for now. Sighing, he said, "Cat, I really think you're barking up the wrong tree on this. Let's suppose somebody took a payoff to give out the contract on Porta Pottis. I don't mean the actual brand Porta Potti, but just as an example."

  "Right. Like we say Kleenex when we mean facial tissue. Do you remember Aunt Helen used to say facial tissue and nobody knew what she was talking about? Cousin Brenda thought she meant the muscles and fibers of the skin."

  He threw the dart hard. He was not going to engage in family reminiscences with me.

  He said, "You might be able to find a list of bids, or several sheets of bids, but it wouldn't tell you anything."

  "Suppose the committee passed over the lowest bid?"

  "Suppose they did. They could perfectly well say that they were choosing the company with the best track record. The most dependable company for the price. What more would you know?"

  I thought about that while the roller-coaster cars cranked their way back to the top.

  Barry said, "If there are payoffs, they're in cash or cash equivalent, and they for sure aren't recorded anywhere."

  The roller coaster started down, making the office vibrate. Kids shrieked. Barry went and pulled the dart out of the witch's nose.

  "Did the cops take the festival papers you have here, or could I look at them?"

  "They took them. But we brought in a fresh set. And no, you can't look at them. Sorry."

  "I'll whine and beg later. Let me change gears. Plumly told me that there were security cameras in the festival area. What do they show?"

  "Look in here." He walked over to a doorway with no door in it. The space beyond was small, like the offices. It was the other half of the castle interior. In it were monitors showing different parts of the festival. A man in an OZ security shirt was scanning them alertly. But he was looking alive because he had heard us coming. I saw the edge of a paperback novel sticking out from under a multiline telephone box.

  Barry pointed at the monitors. "These four show the four ticket booths, because that's where the most money is. These two show the two first-aid tents, in case of emergency. Plus these eight show the outside of all the different potty areas. That's because if you're going to have sexual assaults, the potties are the most likely place."

  "That's all?"

  "Yup. And I sure wish there had been one on me Thursday night," he said bitterly, and he stomped back to his office.

  "Well, then," I said, standing in the middle of his office, "Barry, how did you get hired?"

  "You mean did I bribe somebody?"

  "Or kno
w somebody."

  "The position of manager isn't glamorous. When things work right, nobody even knows the manager's name. But it's the one position that has to work right. There's no arguing, like there is about style or color schemes. The elements— equipment, staff, and all— have to be here, and they have to be here on time, and they have to work. You can believe me or not. I got hired on simple reputation. I do this kind of thing all the time. Corporate weekends, fairs, conferences, you name it. I get hired because I'm good at it, I have a track record, which I'm trying to build up, and one more thing."

  "What's that?"

  "I'm cheap."

  21

  WAY UP ABOVE THE CHIMNEY TOPS—

  In my early days of reporting, some of the other reporters and I would play a game we called "contacts." The idea was that one person would come up with the name of a real person, known to him but not the player, and the player would have to contact him through a friend of a friend of a friend. You got more points the fewer people you needed to use, but we considered anything over four a bad job not worthy of a real reporter. This is a lot like the "six degrees of separation" idea.

  As far as getting close to a person in Chicago is concerned, though, if I couldn't achieve it with just two intervening people, I'd be ashamed of myself.

  Actually, it took me one call for Taubman, two for Mazzanovich, and three for Pottle, which averages out okay. I could have done it in one for Mazzanovich, because he was an alderman and I know several aldermen, but the point was to get hold of somebody who would know where the guy went and what he did when he got there and who was willing to tell me about it. Somebody, in other words, who didn't love the guy.

  That evening I began to shadow the three suspects. My three suspects, that is, which didn't include Barry. My idea was that they would constantly run into me, which should shake them up. When possible, I wanted to get to where they were going even before they got there. It was a desperation move. But if Barry was innocent, as I believed he was, then one of them must have stabbed Plumly. And only one of them had wielded the knife, whether the others had been in on the plan or had been taken by surprise. Among them, there should be one weak link. I wanted him to freak out and talk.

  Did that make me a stalker? Yeah, I guess so.

  * * *

  Larry Mazzanovich's house in Northbrook was impressive. Six two-story pillars ran along the front although they were more for looks than architectural necessity. There was a veranda behind the pillars with several white settees in which no one was sitting and probably no one ever sat.

  Large beds of begonias and petunias in sculptured ovals swept down the lawn, flanking the curving front walk. A graceful curving drive led to a three-stall garage.

  I drove past, since Mazzanovich wouldn't be home in the middle of the workday. Mainly I had wanted to see where he lived. When he lived here, that is.

  His wife spent pretty much all her time here, my informant said. They had two children who were at boarding school someplace. Probably that decision had been made so that they hadn't had to choose between school in Chicago or school out here.

  Because Mazzanovich claimed he lived in his aldermanic district. He had a small house there, and he hung around the neighborhood bars. He pretended to live there. He claimed to be a Chicagoan through and through. I guess that was sort of a political fiction.

  Well, this certainly was a nice place to visit. But I had to get back to town before dinnertime. I had plans.

  * * *

  Pinning the men down to a time and place was easiest with Taubman, the lighting designer. I had talked to a friend who works for the Civic Opera Company, helping to hire the supernumeraries. A person like that would certainly have to know the Taubmans, and she did.

  * * *

  A string quartet wearing evening dress was tuning up. An evening of music in the Gold Coast apartment of Howard Stoddard would begin in twenty minutes. The glittering crowd of perhaps a hundred music lovers milled around, chattering and checking out each other's clothes.

  It was a benefit for literacy, which in my profession I could hardly sneer at, although they could have just donated money, including the large amount spent on white wine, hors d'oeuvres, and the staff of at least seven waiters. My informant told me that the minimum donation was one thousand dollars, and many had probably ponied up more than that. Not me, of course. My friend squeaked me in as a reporter. Making this more believable, I asked for the guest list from Mrs. Stoddard and made notes on the food and the names of the musicians and the music— Haydn, Borodin— even before Taubman walked in. My injured left shoulder was so painful that I had to hold my notebook at about waist level, which was awkward for writing, but otherwise I looked official.

  Taubman's wife was raven-haired. Her dress was black with spaghetti straps, her jewelry was silver, and she looked like a million dollars. She air-kissed Mrs. Stoddard, who looked like a billion dollars.

  Taubman saw me and blinked. But I was on the far side of the room and he toughened right up and waved at a man, ignoring me. The two men moved toward each other, Taubman seizing a glass of wine as he crossed the room. I let them talk for a few minutes while I munched pastry stuffed with crab. Then I meandered over to them. Taubman saw me coming and turned away.

  A waiter passed near us carrying a tray full of glasses. Taubman leaned over and put his empty wineglass on the proffered tray, taking up another with scarcely a beat missed. Within a few seconds, other people had gracefully but quickly snatched the other glasses on the tray.

  Taubman gave me one of those glance-and-look-away things that meant he'd rather I left. I didn't.

  "Boozy crowd, isn't it?" I said.

  "And no bad thing," said the slender man Taubman had been chatting with.

  "My name is Cat Marsala," I said.

  "Sumner Britten," he said, holding out his hand. The one without the wineglass.

  "It's Dr. Britten," Taubman said, pointedly. "He's chair of the cardiology department at the University of Chicago."

  "And you're going to tell me wine is good for you, right?"

  He blinked in astonishment. "How on earth did you know?"

  "Wild guess."

  "Alcohol in moderation is perfectly healthful," he said. "Quite a tonic, in fact. It tends to lower cholesterol and improve cardiovascular fitness. Reduces the incidence of strokes. Alcohol has some effect in preventing peripheral clots, as well."

  "No kidding."

  "Moderate drinking produces a twenty to forty percent drop in coronary disease. That's about as much as regular exercise. It's as good as Pepto-Bismol for travelers' digestive upsets. And it seems to reduce memory loss in the elderly."

  "Well, why don't you doctors tell people this?"

  Taubman broke in. "Ms. Marsala, they couldn't possibly do that. Not everybody is moderate."

  Britten said, "Some of our patients would start to drink to excess."

  "And you know how people are," Taubman said. "They'd take the recommendation as a license to go out binge drinking. And then when they got into trouble, they'd blame the doctors."

  "So you're in favor of leaving everybody misinformed in order to prevent a few from making a mistake? Big Brother has made the decision for us?"

  "Well," said Britten, "I'm telling you."

  "People," I said, "are taking away all my vices."

  * * *

  I left the party before the music started. This was no time for idle entertainment. My next stop was a local North Side bar called the Bucket of Blood. That's really the name. It's a very old neighborhood place just a bit north of Uptown.

  In the Jeep I had wriggled into Levi's and then out of the skirt part of my all-black Gold Coast ensemble, the writhing doing further damage to my shoulder. My black top, when paired with the jeans, looked a whole lot less expensive than it had with the skirt and sling-back heels. It became more honest, because in fact it was a thrift-shop find, like my sofa. A pair of black running shoes and the switch was done. I keep a box o
f clothes in the car for exactly this kind of blending in.

  Much as I had hoped to get to the bar before Mazzanovich, the chance had been small, so it was no surprise to me that he was there already. He was surprised, though, when I walked in.