Fire Sale (33 page)

“What!” Buffalo Bill exploded at his son. “It’s not enough the boy’s gone, and now you’re accusing him of stealing? Your own son? Just what have you misplaced that you’re trying to blame on him?”

“No one thinks he’s stealing, Papa Bill,” Jacqui put in quickly. “But you know one of Billy’s duties at the warehouse is to sort the faxes as they come in. He seemed to think some of the information from our Matagalpa plant down in Nicaragua meant more than it did, and he took it away with him two weeks ago. We thought he might have taken it to give to the Mexican minister, but no one down there seems to have it.”

She sounded so sure of this that I supposed they’d had Carnifice search everyone’s home to look for it—not just the careless once-over that William had given the Dorrado apartment Monday night. So it probably was Carnifice who’d come into Morrell’s place this morning. Did they think Marcena had the Nicaragua faxes, or was there yet something else that they were really looking for?

“Mr. Bysen,” I said to the Buffalo, “you know Bron Czernin was murdered Monday night while he was driving for—”

“It’s not clear he was on the job when he was killed.” Mr. William frowned.

“Now what?” I exclaimed. “Are you going to try to pretend he wasn’t driving Monday night so you can deny his family’s comp claim? Grobian himself has a log of where Bron took his truck!”

“That truck has disappeared. And we know now that he was—dallying with this Love woman, which means he was off the By-Smart clock as far as we’re concerned. If the family wants to take it to court, they can try, but his widow will find it very unpleasant to have the details of her husband’s life revealed in public.”

“But her lawyer won’t be offended at all,” I said coldly. “Freeman Carter will be representing her.” Freeman is my lawyer. If I guaranteed his fee, he might be willing to go up against By-Smart—you never know.

Linus Rankin, the corporate counsel, knew Freeman’s name. He said if Sandra could afford Freeman, she didn’t even need the insurance claim or her cashier’s job.

I could feel anger rising in me, like a blood infection, starting at my toes and sweeping through my body. “Why do you begrudge Sandra Czernin her rightful settlement? A quarter of a million dollars would barely pay for the cars you have parked out front, let alone this massive estate here. She needs to look after her daughter who’s seriously ill, and your company has denied her health insurance by keeping her hours just below forty a week. You claim to be Christians—”

“Enough!” Buffalo Bill roared. “I remember you, young woman, you tried to make some insane argument about fifty thousand dollars meaning nothing to the company, and now you think a quarter of a million means nothing to us. I worked for every dime I ever made, and this Czernin woman can do the same.”

“Yes, Bill, of course,” his wife said. “All of us getting angry about that tonight isn’t going to help find Billy. Was there anything else, Ms. Warshawski?”

I swallowed some of the coffee, which was now cold as well as thin. I’m not a billionaire, but I would never serve a visitor such poor stuff.

“Thanks, Mrs. Bysen. Marcena Love, who was found with Bron Czernin yesterday morning, visited your husband several times. She was doing a series of reports on South Chicago for an English newspaper. I want to know what she and your husband discussed to see if she revealed anything unusual, even illegal, that she’d seen on the South Side. It might explain why she was attacked.”

“What does that have to do with Billy?” Mrs. Bysen said.

“I don’t know. But she was in his car when it was driven off the road under the Skyway. They’re connected in some way.”

Mrs. Bysen turned to her husband and demanded that he recount his meetings with Marcena. Even with Mildred’s prodding, though, he seemed to think they had discussed only the Second World War and his illustrious career in the Army Air Forces.

I was tired, tired of the discussion, the Bysens, the heavy furniture, and when Mrs. Bysen announced that we had talked long enough I was as glad as her son to bring the evening to a close. William went over to collect his wife, announcing gruffly to his mother that it was time Annie Lisa was in bed. Jacqui followed them. While Mildred and Linus Rankin conferred with Buffalo Bill, I asked Mrs. Bysen if their detectives had searched Billy’s room.

“His room, his computer, his books. Poor boy, he tries so hard to live a Christian life, and it’s not always easy to do that, even in a Christian family. I am proud of him, but I have to confess it hurts me that he wouldn’t turn to me. He must know I would help him.”

“He’s confused right now,” I said. “Confused and angry. He feels betrayed in some fundamental way. He didn’t say anything to me about this, but I wonder if he thinks you would tell Mr. Bysen anything he confided in you.”

She started to protest, but then gave a watery smile. “Maybe I would, Ms. Warshawski, maybe I would at that. Bill and I have been married sixty years now—you don’t turn off a lifetime of confiding. But Bill, for all his tough talk and tough business measures, is a fair and good man. I hope Billy hasn’t forgotten that.”

She took me to the hall, where her son Gary was standing with Jacqui. When she sent them to find Sneedham to take me to my car, I asked if there was a back way out of the compound.

“Your son’s detectives are trailing me, and I would like to go home alone if I could.”

She cocked her head, her curls stiff, but her face showed a faint trace of mischief. “They are somewhat heavy-handed, these men, aren’t they? There’s a service drive behind the house—it will take you out onto Silverwood Lane. I’ll release the lock from the kitchen, but you must get out of the car to open the gate. Please close it behind you; it will relock itself.”

As the butler came toward us, she suddenly clasped my hands between her own. “Ms. Warshawski, if you have any idea at all where my grandson is, I beg you to tell me. He is—very dear to me. I have a private telephone number for my children and husband to use; you may call me on that.”

She watched me anxiously until I’d written the number down in my pocket diary, then turned me over to her butler.

38

Primitive Art

M
r. William and his wife were climbing into the Hummer when I got outside. The Porsche belonged to Jacqui and Gary, not surprisingly. The third car, a Jaguar sedan, probably belonged to Linus Rankin. The other children seemed to feel energetic enough, or safe enough, to come on foot.

I waited until Gary and William had driven off before leaving myself—I didn’t want William to see me using the drive behind the house that led to the service road.

What a lot of friction builds up over the years in such close quarters. The conflict between William and his father was the most obvious, but William had told me the brothers fought with each other; Jacqui, who spent lavishly on her wardrobe and worked slavishly on her figure, inspired her own share of hostility in the family. No wonder Annie Lisa had checked into a dreamworld, and her daughter into sex and drugs. Poor thing, how was Candace dealing with life in Korea?

I made it through the back gate without anyone seeing me. Out on Silverwood Lane, I kept my lights off, moving slowly down the unlit road until it merged with a larger artery. When I got to a service station, I pulled in to fill the Mustang and to check my maps. I was a couple of miles from a major expressway here that would ultimately take me into the city. It seemed easier to take a fast route home than to trek cross-country to Morrell’s, especially since I’d be sharing the evening with Don. I took out my cell phone to call Morrell and then remembered my own advice to Billy: my phone, too, had a GSM tracking signal. That was how Carnifice, or whoever, was keeping track of me, of Morrell, of all of us.

I turned it off. I thought about finding a pay phone so I could call Morrell on a landline, but if they were bugging his phone they’d pick that up, anyway. I pulled out of the gas station, feeling oddly liberated by my anonymity, gliding through the night, no one knowing where I was. As I slid onto the expressway, I began belting out “Sempre libera,” although I could tell I was woefully off-key.

There was so little traffic now that I pushed the needle up to eighty, coasting from expressway to Tollway, slowing only for the inevitable knot of traffic around O’Hare, and cruising to my exit in the city in twenty-seven minutes. Keeping time like that, I could replace Patrick Grobian, monitoring his truckers down to the second. I grinned to myself, picturing the family’s reaction if I suggested it.

I wondered why they’d summoned me tonight—to prove they could? Of course, they’d drawn me away from Morrell’s—maybe they wanted Carnifice to go back in for a more thorough search. Or maybe they had acted out of genuine concern about Billy. I supposed that could be true of his grandmother, but neither of his parents showed a tenth the distress that Rose Dorrado was feeling over Josie’s disappearance.

I wished I had taken advantage of the opportunity to ask more questions of my own, such as what had happened to Billy’s Miata—had they brought it home as a memento or sold it for scrap? I might stop by the underpass tomorrow afternoon to see if anything remained of it.

It had been stripped, William had said this afternoon; there was nothing left of it. And what was left had probably been explored pretty thoroughly by his high-powered Carnifice operatives. They could have carried the remains of the car to their private lab and examined every fiber of the floor to tell them when Billy had last driven it. Maybe it was among the ten acres of cars in the pound along 103rd Street, but, either way, the remains were most likely out of my reach.

I also hadn’t brought up the document April mentioned, the one her father said he had—the one that proved the company had agreed to pay April’s medical bills, or, at least, to give him money to cover them. I was crossing Belmont before it dawned on me that whatever document Bron had could be the piece of paper William was so desperate to find. Of course Bron hadn’t had a signed paper that proved the company would take care of April’s medical bills—he had something he was using for blackmail, and By-Smart had lost track of it and wanted it back.

Whatever it was would definitely have to wait until morning. I parked in the garage behind my building: there were only three spaces in it, and when one of them became vacant this summer my name had finally made it to the top of the waiting list. It would be pleasant in the winter to be able to go straight into my building from my car, and it was pleasant on a late night like tonight not to have to worry about leaving my car out on the street where anyone who was trailing me could find it.

On my way up from the basement, I saw that Mr. Contreras’s light was still on. I stopped to tell him I was home. While we shared a glass of his homemade grappa, which smells like fuel oil and packs the kick of six mules, I called Morrell on my neighbor’s landline to explain where I was. He and Don were still up, arguing over geopolitics, or reminiscing about adventures, but they were in good spirits, and definitely not missing me. No one had broken in, as far as they knew—or cared.

In the morning, I got up early to run the dogs before making my nine A.M. appointment with Amy Blount. I was still feeling stiff, but my fingers were down to their normal size, which cheered me greatly—it would make my driving day easier, and if I had to use my gun I wouldn’t have to fret about getting my finger inside the trigger guard.

Amy got to my office right on time. It was a relief to have her there—not so much to take on a chunk of my outstanding workload as just to have someone to go over things with. Working alone is, frankly, a lonely business—I could see why Bron liked having Marcena, or other women, for that matter, in the cab of his truck with him—eight hours hopping around northwest Indiana and south Chicagoland would wear thin after twenty-some years.

Amy and I went over my outstanding caseload. I showed her how to log on to LifeStory, the database I use for doing background checks and getting personal information on people for my clients—or for myself, as I’d done yesterday in looking up the Bysen family.

I found myself telling Amy the whole story of the Bysens, and Bron Czernin, and Marcena; even my jealousy came seeping out. She made notes in her tiny, tidy handwriting. When I finished, she said she’d work the whole narrative up on a flowchart; if she had questions or suggestions, she’d call me.

It was eleven by the time I finished. I had to leave for an appointment in the Loop, a presentation to a law firm that is one of my bread-and-butter clients. I had hoped to get to South Chicago in time to search the underpass before basketball practice, but my clients were unusually demanding, or I was unusually unfocused, and I barely had time to grab a bowl of chicken noodle soup before heading to the South Side. I also made a side stop at a phone store to pick up a charger for Billy’s phone; I could give that to April after practice. And I went to a grocery to buy food for Mary Ann—the day was cold enough that milk and cheese would keep in my trunk. In the end, I made it to Bertha Palmer High only a few minutes ahead of my team.

The practice wasn’t as intense as Monday’s, but the girls did a creditable job. Julia Dorrado came, with María Inés and Betto, who put the baby carrier in the stands and played with his Power Rangers during practice. Julia was out of shape, but I could see why Mary Ann McFarlane was enthusiastic about her game. It wasn’t just the way she moved, but the fact that she could see the whole court, the way players like Larry Bird and M.J. had done. Celine, my gangbanger, was the only other person on the team who really had that gift. Not even Josie and April, both of whom we needed on the squad, had Julia’s sense of timing.

When practice finished, I took them all to Zambrano’s for pizza, even Betto and the baby, but I hustled them through the meal. It was already dark, and I wanted to get down to the underpass where Billy’s Miata had crashed before the streets were completely deserted. I dropped Julia and María Inés at home, with her brother and the baby, but didn’t take the time to see Rose, just sending up a message that Josie and Billy were still deeply hidden.

“I think they’re safe,” I said to Julia. “I think they’re safe because the Bysens are spending a lot of money looking for Billy; if anything bad had happened to him and Josie, they’d have found them by now. Your mom can call me on my cell phone if she wants to talk about it, but I want to look myself in one place I don’t think the detectives searched. Got that?”

“Yeah, okay…Do you think I can still play with the team?”

“You are definitely good enough to play with the team, but you’ve got to get yourself back in school before you can practice again. Can you do that between now and Monday?”

She nodded solemnly and got out of the car. It worried me that she left the baby carrier on the backseat for Betto to deal with, but I couldn’t add a parenting skills class to my current load; I just watched until he and the baby were safely up the walk and inside the house, then turned south, to the underpass where I’d found Billy’s Miata.

Carnifice might have searched this area for William, especially if my hunch was right that he was hot for whatever document Bron had used to threaten the company. Still, South Chicago was my briar patch. I refused to believe that Carnifice would think about it the way I did. The Bysen family was a job for them, not a complicated part of their roots.

The first part of the Skyway is built into an embankment that severs South Chicago—in fact, when it was built it put a lot of little shops and factories I’d grown up with out of business. But as it approaches the Indiana border, the highway rises up on stilts; homeless people build little shelters under them, but mostly commuters and locals use the road as a handy garbage bin. I pulled over to the verge, driving carefully—I didn’t want to puncture a tire down here—and left my lights on, pointing into the thicket of dead branches and discarded appliances.

The bracken showed fresh scarring from where the Miata had plowed into it. It had been three days now, and the area saw a lot of movement, people hiding in the undergrowth or sorting through the debris for salvage, but because of the cold the car tracks were still visible. I was no forensics expert, but it looked to me as though the car had been driven deliberately into the thicket, as if someone wanted to hide it—I couldn’t see any traces of swerving or other signs that the driver (was it Marcena? had it been Bron?) had lost control of the car.

I moved slowly, inspecting every inch of ground as I walked forward. When I got to the end of the broken branches, I got down on my knees—I’d put on old jeans after the basketball practice just for this search.

I was glad of my mittens, as I pushed the undergrowth aside and inspected the area for any trace of—anything. I found a small piece of the front fender, the paint still shiny, unlike the dull, rusted metal all around me. It didn’t mean anything, but I still stuck it into my parka pocket.

Overhead, the traffic was crawling. It was the height of the evening rush, and everyone was creeping out of town to their tidy suburban homes. They were also eating and drinking—which I knew because they tossed out their empty cans and wrappers, which floated down into the garbage underneath. I was almost hit by an empty beer bottle when I started to explore the area to the left of the car’s treadmarks.

I kept picking up stray pieces of paper, hoping that whatever document the Bysens were looking for might have fallen out of the car when it was being dismembered. I kept telling myself that this was futile, a sign of desperation, but I couldn’t stop. Most of what I saw were discarded advertisements, oriental rugs for five dollars, palm readings for ten, which I guess showed we need guarantees about the future more than we need our floors covered, but all kinds of stuff got tossed over the side of the Skyway—bills, letters, even bank statements.

I’d been at it for about an hour when I found the two books that had been in Billy’s trunk—Oscar Romero’s
Violence of Love
and the book that Aunt Jacqui said made her anorexic—
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.
I put them into my parka pocket. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but that seemed to be the net of what I was going to find. I looked disconsolately at the area I’d been searching. The daylight had gone completely, and my car headlights seemed to be getting dimmer as well. There was one last piece of paper near where I’d found the books. I tucked it into
Rich Christians
, and climbed back into my car on stiff legs.

I turned the car around to face north, but parked it while the engine warmed up again to look at my haul. I thumbed eagerly through Billy’s books, hoping that some mysterious document would drop out, his will, for instance, revised to leave all his holdings to the Mt. Ararat church, or a proclamation to By-Smart’s board of directors. Nothing emerged but Billy’s round schoolboy hand making notes in the margins of Archbishop Romero’s book. I squinted at his notes, but what I could make out in the dim light didn’t seem very promising.

The paper I’d found by the books looked like a child’s drawing. It was a crude sketch of a frog, done in Magic Marker, with a big black wart in the middle of its back, sitting on a dubious-looking log. I almost pitched it out the window, but the South Side was everyone’s dumping ground—I, at least, could put it out with my home papers for recycling.

The car was finally warm; I could take off my mittens, which were cumbersome for driving, and head north. I needed to stop at Mary Ann’s; I had groceries in my trunk for her, and I wanted to talk to her about Julia and April. I wondered, too, if she might have an inkling where Josie would choose to go to ground.

It was seven-thirty. Overhead, the traffic was moving fast, but the streets around me were deserted again—anyone who crossed them to get home was long gone. My route took me near the corner where the Czernins lived, but I couldn’t see their bungalow. My heart ached for April, lying in bed with her bear, her daddy dead, her own heart doing something unknown and frightening inside her body.

My mother had died when I was only a year older, and it had been a terrible loss, one that still haunts me in difficult ways, but at least no one had killed Gabriella; she hadn’t died in a pit next to a foreign lover. And the father who stayed behind had adored her, and adored me—an easier journey than April was going to make, with her mother’s relentless anger scorching the house. I would have to talk to April’s teachers, see what could be done to get her academics up to a standard where she’d have a chance at college—if there were even a way she could afford college.