Blood Shot (14 page)

“Nope. If you know Mrs. Cleghorn at all, you must realize her mind doesn’t run to vengeance.”

“So who’s your client?” He turned to the refrigerator and laid out cream and a plate of muffins.

I absentmindedly watched the seat of his trousers tighten across his rear while he bent over. The seam was fraying; a few more deep bends could create an interesting situation. I nobly refrained from dropping a plate at his feet, but waited to answer until he was facing me again.

“Part of what my clients buy when they hire me is confidentiality. If I blabbed their secrets to you, I could hardly expect you to blab yours to me, could I?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t got any secrets. At least not relating to Nancy Cleghorn. I’m the counsel for SCRAP. I work for a number of community groups—public interest law’s my specialty. Nancy was great to work with. She was organized, clearheaded, knew when to fight and when to drop back. Unlike her boss.”

“Caroline?” It was hard to picture Caroline Djiak as any-one’s boss. “So all your dealings with Nancy were purely professional?”

He pointed a coffee spoon at me. “Don’t try to trip me up, Warshawski. I play ball with the big boys. Cream? You ought to, you know—binds with the caffeine and keeps you from getting stomach cancer.”

He set a heavy porcelain mug in front of me and stuck the plate of muffins into the microwave. “No. Nance and I had a brief fling a couple of years back. When I started at SCRAP. She was getting over a heavy thing and I’d been divorced about ten months. We cheered each other up, but we didn’t have anything special to offer each other. Besides friendship, which is special enough that you don’t screw it up. Certainly not by banging your friends on the head and dropping them in a swamp.”

He took the muffins out of the oven and climbed onto a stool at the end of the counter on my left. I drank some of the rich coffee and took a blueberry muffin.

“I’ll let the cops take you through your paces. Where were you Thursday afternoon at two P.M. and so on. What I really want to know, though, is who Nancy thought was following her. Did she think she’d got Dresberg’s back up? Or did it really have anything to do with the recycling plant?”

He grimaced. “Little Caroline’s theory—which makes me want to trash it. Not a good attitude for her outfit’s counsel to take. Truth is, I don’t know. We were both pissed as hell after the hearing two weeks ago. When we talked on Tuesday, Nance said she’d cover the political angle, see if she could find out if and why Jurshak was blocking it. I was working on the legal stuff, wondering if we could finesse the MSD—Metropolitan Sanitary District—to get the permit. Maybe get the state and U.S. EPA departments involved.”

He absentmindedly ate a second muffin and buttered a third. His bulging waistline made me shake my head when he offered me the plate.

“So you don’t know who she talked to in Jurshak’s office?”

He shook his head. “I had the impression, nothing concrete to go on, but I think she had a lover there. Someone she was a little ashamed of seeing and didn’t want her pals to know about, or someone she thought she had to protect.” He stared into the distance, trying to put his feelings into words. “Canceling dinner plans, not wanting to go to the Hawks games, which we shared season tickets to. Stuff like that. So she could’ve been getting information from him and not wanting me to know about it. The last time we spoke—a week ago today it must have been—she said she thought she was onto something but she needed more evidence. I never talked to her again.” He stopped abruptly and busied himself with his coffee.

“Well, what about Dresberg? Based on what you know of the situation down there, would you think he might’ve been against this recycling center?”

“God, I wouldn’t think so. Although with a guy like that you never know. Look.”

He set down his coffee cup and leaned intently across the counter, sketching Dresberg’s operations with sweeping gestures. The garbage empire included hauling, incinerating, storage-container and landfill operations. Within his domain Dresberg was protective of any perceived encroachments—even any questioning. Hence the threats a year before when Caroline and Nancy had tried to oppose a new PCB incinerator that didn’t meet code standards.

“But the recycling center didn’t have anything to do with any of his operations,” he finished. “Xerxes and Glow-Rite are just dumping into their own lagoons right now. All SCRAP would do is take the wastes and recycle them.”

I thought about it. “He could see expansion potential cutting into his business down the road. Or maybe he wants SCRAP to use his trucks to do the hauling.”

He shook his head. “If that was the case, he’d just be putting an arm on them to use his trucks, not offing Nancy. I’m not saying it’s impossible he was involved. The plant’s certainly in his sphere. But it doesn’t leap out at me on the surface.”

We let the talk drift after that, to friends we had in common at the Illinois bar, to my cousin Boom-Boom, whom Kappelman used to watch at the Stadium when he was with the Hawks.

“There’s never been another player like him,” Kappelman said regretfully.

“You’re telling me.” I got up and put on my coat. “So if you come across something strange—anything, whether it seems to have a direct bearing on Nancy’s death or not—give me a call, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” His gaze seemed a little unfocused. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind, shook my hand, and escorted me to the door.

18

In His Father’s Shadow

I didn’t disbelieve Kappelman. I didn’t believe him, either. I mean the guy made a living persuading judges and commissioners to support community groups instead of the industrial or political heavyweights they usually favored. Despite his frayed trousers and jacket, I suspected he was pretty convincing. And if Nancy and he were the good buddies he claimed they’d been, was it really credible that she hadn’t given him the ghost of an idea about what she’d learned from the alderman’s office?

Of course it was a little pat on my part looking for Dresberg to be the fall guy. Just because he had made threats in the past and had a lot of muscle and was interested in waste disposal.

I meandered across side streets and headed into East Side, to the ward offices on Avenue M. It was a little after three and the place was hopping. I passed a couple of patrol cops coming out. When I got into the main office my old pals with the paunches were hard at it with a half-dozen or so favor-seekers. Another couple, maybe patronage workers through with street cleaning for the day, were playing checkers in the window.

Nobody really looked at me, but the conversations quieted down, “I’m looking for young Art,” I said amiably in the direction of the bald man who’d been the spokesman on my first visit.

“Not here,” he said briefly, without looking up.

“When do you expect him?”

The three office workers exchanged the silent communication I’d observed earlier and agreed that my question warranted a slight chuckle.

“We don’t,” Baldy said, going back to his client.

“Do you know where else I could find him?”

“We don’t keep tabs on the kid,” Baldy expanded, thinking perhaps of the claim drafts they were expecting from me. “Sometimes he shows up in the afternoon, sometimes he don’t. He hasn’t been in today so he might turn up. You never know.”

“I see.” I picked up the Sun-Times from his desk and sat in one of the chairs lining the wall. It was an old wooden one, yellow and scuffed, extremely uncomfortable. I read “Sylvia,” skimmed the sports pages, and tried interesting myself in the latest Greylord trial, shifting my pelvis around on the hard surface in an unsuccessful search for a spot that wouldn’t rub against my bones. After about half an hour I gave it up and put one of my cards on Baldy’s desk.

“V. I. Warshawski. I’ll try back in a bit. Tell him to call me if I miss him.”

Except for the blueberry muffin Ron Kappelman had given me, I hadn’t really eaten today. I went down to the comer of Ewing, where a neighborhood bar advertised submarines and Italian beef, and had a meatball sub with a draft. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but it seemed more suited to the neighborhood than diet soda.

When I got back to the ward office the visitors had pretty well cleared out except for the checker players in the comer. Baldy shook his head at me to indicate—I think—that young Art hadn’t been in. I felt proud of myself—I was beginning to seem like a regular.

I pulled a little spiral notebook from my bag. To entertain myself while I waited I tried calculating the expenses I’d incurred since starting to look for Caroline Djiak’s old man. I’ve always been a little jealous of Kinsey Milhone’s immaculate record-keeping; I didn’t even have receipts for meals or gas. Certainly not for cleaning up the Magli pumps, which was going to run close to thirty dollars.

I’d gotten up to two hundred and fifty when young Art came in with his usual diffident step. There was something in his face, a naked desire for acceptance from the tired old pols in the room, that made me flinch. They looked at him unblinkingly, waiting for him to speak. And finally he obliged.

“Any—anything for me from my dad?” He licked his lips reflexively.

Baldy shook his head and returned to his paper. “Lady wants to talk to you,” he said from the depths of the Sun-Times.

Art hadn’t seen me until then—he’d been too intent on the disappointment he felt bound to suffer from the men. He looked around the room then and located me. He didn’t recognize me at first: his perfect forehead furrowed in a momentary question. It wasn’t until he’d come over to shake my hand that he remembered where he’d seen me, and then he didn’t think he could flee without achieving total humiliation.

“Where can we go to talk?” I asked briskly, taking his hand in a firm grasp in case he decided to chance the indignity.

He smiled unhappily. “Upstairs, I guess. I—I have an office. A small office.”

I followed him up the linoleum-covered stairs to a suite with his father’s name on it. A middle-aged woman, her brown hair neatly coiffed above a well-cut dress, was sitting in the outer office. Her desk was a little jungle of potted plants twined around family photographs. Behind her were doors to the inner offices, one with Art, Sr.’s, name repeated on it, the other blank.

“Your dad isn’t here, Art,” she said in a motherly way. “He’s been at a Council meeting all day. I really don’t expect him until Wednesday.”

He flushed miserably. “Thanks, Mrs. May. I just need to use my office for a few minutes.”

“Of course, Art. You don’t need my permission to do that.” She continued to stare at me, hoping to force me to introduce myself It seemed to me it would be a small but important victory for Art if she didn’t know whom he was seeing. I smiled at her without speaking, but I’d underestimated her tenacity.

“I’m Ida Maiercyk, but everyone calls me Mrs. May,” she said as I passed her desk.

“How do you do?” I continued to smile and went on by to where Art was standing miserably in front of his office. I hoped she was scowling impotently, but didn’t turn around to check.

Art flipped on a wall switch and illuminated one of the most barren cubicles I’d seen outside a monastery. It held a plain pressed-wood desk and two metal folding chairs. Nothing else. Not even a filing cabinet to give the pretense of work. A wise alderman knows better than to live above the community that’s supporting him, especially when half that community is out of work, but this was downright insulting. Even the secretary had more lavish appointments.

“Why do you put up with this?” I demanded.

“With what?” he said, flushing again.

“You know—with that loathsome woman out there treating you like a submoronic two-year-old. With those ward heelers waiting to bait you like a carp. Why don’t you go get a position in someone else’s agency?”

He shook his head. “These things aren’t as easy as they look to you. I just graduated two years ago. If—if I can prove to my dad that I can handle some of his workload …” His voice trailed away.

“If you’re hanging around hoping for his approval, you’ll be here the rest of your life,” I said brutally. “If he doesn’t want to give it to you, there’s nothing you can do to make him. You’re better off stopping the effort, because you’re only making yourself miserable and you’re not impressing him.”

He gave an unhappy little smile that made me want to take him by the scruff of the neck and shake him. “You don’t know him and you don’t know me, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just—I’ve always been—just too big a disappointment. But it’s nothing to do with you. If you’ve come around to talk to me about Nancy Cleghorn, I can’t help you any more than I could this morning.”

“You and she were lovers, weren’t you?” I wondered if his chiseled good looks could possibly have compensated Nancy for his youth and insecurity.

He shook his head without speaking.

“Nancy had a lover here that she didn’t want any of her friends to know about. It doesn’t seem too likely that it was Moe, Curly, or Larry downstairs. Or even Mrs. May—Nancy had better taste than that. And anyway, why else would you go to her funeral?”

“Maybe I just respected the work she was doing here in the community,” he muttered.

Mrs. May opened the door without knocking. “You two need anything? If you don’t, I’m going to take off now. You want to leave any message for your father about your meeting, Art?”

He looked helplessly at me for a second, then just shook his head again without speaking.

“Thanks, Mrs. May,” I said genially. “It was good to meet you.”

She shot me a look of venom and snapped the door to. I could see her shadow outlined against the glass upper half of the door as she hesitated over a possible retaliatory strike, then her silhouette faded as she marched off toward home.

“If you don’t want to talk about your relations with Nancy, maybe you can just give me the same information you gave her about Big Art’s interest in SCRAP’S recycling plant.”

He gripped the front of the pressed-wood desk and looked at me imploringly. “I didn’t tell her anything. I hardly knew her. And I don’t know what my dad is doing about their recycling plant. Now can you please go away? I’d be as happy as—as anybody if you found her killer, but you must see I don’t know anything about her.”

I scowled in frustration. He was upset, but it sure wasn’t because of me. He had to have been Nancy’s lover. Had to. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been in church this morning. But I couldn’t think of any way to get him to trust me enough to talk about it.

“Yeah, I guess I’ll go. One last question. How well do you know Leon Haas?”

He looked at me blankly. “I never heard of him.”

“Steve Dresberg?”

His face went totally white and he fainted on me.