Blood Shot (16 page)

“Her car?” I stopped in my tracks. “Where is her car?”

“Out front. She’d left it by the SCRAP offices and one of the women who works there brought it over for me after the funeral. I had a spare set of car keys, so they must …” Her voice trailed off as she caught my expression. “Of course. We ought to look in the car, oughtn’t we? If Nancy really did have something a—a killer wanted. Although I can’t imagine what it could be.”

She’d said the same thing earlier and I repeated my own meaningless reassurances: that Nancy probably didn’t know she had something someone else wanted so badly. I went out to Nancy’s sky-blue Honda with Mrs. Cleghorn and pulled the heap of papers from the backseat. Nancy had dumped her briefcase there along with a stack of files too big to fit into the case.

“Why don’t you just take them, dear?” Mrs. Cleghorn smiled tremulously. “If you can look after them, get her work papers back to SCRAP, it would be a big help to me.”

I hoisted the heap under my left arm and put my right arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, sure. Call me if anything else happens, or if you need help with the cops.” It was more work than I wanted, but it seemed the least I could do under the circumstances.

21

Mama’s Boy

I sat in my car with the heater on, flipping through Nancy’s files. Anything that had to do with routine SCRAP business I put to one side. I wanted to drop the lot at the office on Commercial before leaving South Chicago.

I was looking for something that would tell me why Alderman Jurshak was opposing the SCRAP recycling plant. That was what Nancy had been trying to find the last time I talked to her. If she’d been killed because of something hot she knew on the South Side, I assumed it was in connection with the plant.

In the end I did find a document with the Jurshak name on it, but it had nothing to do with the recycling proposal—or any other environmental issue. It was a photocopy of a letter, dated back in 1963, to the Mariners Rest Life Assurance Company, explaining that Jurshak & Parma were now fiduciaries for Humboldt Chemical’s Xerxes plant. Attached to it was an actuarial study showing that Xerxes losses were in line with those of other comparable companies in the area and asking for the same rate consideration.

I read the report through three times. It made no sense to me. That is, it made no sense as being the document that could have gotten Nancy killed. Life and health insurance are not my specialty, but this looked like perfectly ordinary, straightforward insurance stuff. It wouldn’t even have seemed out of place to me except that it was so old and so unconnected to anything Nancy worked on.

There was one person who could explain the significance to me. Well, more than one, but I didn’t feel like going to Big Art with it. Where did you find this, young lady? Oh, blowing around the street, you know how these things happen.

But young Art might tell me. Even though he was clearly on the periphery of his father’s life, he might know enough about the insurance side to explain the document. Or, if Nancy had found it and it had meant something to her, she might have told him. In fact, she must have: that was why he was so nervous. He knew why she’d been killed and he didn’t want to let on.

That seemed like a good theory. How to get Art to reveal what he knew was another question altogether. I contorted my face in an effort to concentrate. When that didn’t produce results I tried relaxing all my muscles and hoped that an idea would float to the top of my mind. Instead I found myself thinking about Nancy and our childhood together. The first time I’d gone to her house for dinner, in fourth grade, when her mother had served canned spaghetti. I’d been afraid to tell Gabriella what we’d eaten—I thought she wouldn’t let me go back to a house where they didn’t make their own pasta.

It was Nancy who got me to try out for the junior high basketball team. I’d always been good at sports, but softball was my game. When I made the team my dad tacked a hoop to the side of the house and played with Nancy and me. He used to come to all our games in high school, and after our last game in college, the one against Lake Forest, he’d taken us to the Empire Room for drinks and dancing. He’d taught us how to fade, how to fake the pass then turn and dunk, and I’d won the game in the last seconds with just that move. The fake and the dunk.

I sat up. Nancy and I had worked it so many times in the past, why not now? I didn’t have any proof, but let young Art think I did.

I pulled Nancy’s most recent diary from the stack on the seat next to me. She had entered three phone numbers for him in her crabbed handwriting. I made my best guess at deciphering them and went to the public phone outside the beach house.

The first number turned out to be the ward office, where Mrs. May’s syrupy tones denied knowledge of young Art’s whereabouts while trying to probe me for who I was and what I wanted. She even offered me to Art, Sr., before I could end the conversation.

I dialed the second number and got the Jurshak, Parma insurance offices. There a nasal-toned receptionist told me at length that she hadn’t seen young Art since Friday and she’d like to know since when she’d been hired to baby-sit for him. The cops had been around this morning looking for him and she was supposed to get a contract typed by noon and how could she possibly do it if—

“Don’t let me keep you,” I said shortly, and hung up on her.

I dug in my pockets for change but I’d used my last two quarters. Nancy had penciled an address next to the third number, down on Avenue G. That had to be Art’s home. Anyway, if I got the kid on the phone, he’d probably hang up. Better to confront him in person.

I got back in the car and drove back down to East Side, to 115th and Avenue G. The house was halfway up the block, a new brick place with a high fence around it and an electronic lock on the gate. I rang the bell and waited. I was just about to ring again when a woman’s voice came uncertainly through the squawk box.

“I’m here to see young Art,” I bellowed. “My name is Warshawski.”

There was a long silence and then the lock clicked. I pushed the gate open and moved into the estate. At least it looked more like an estate than it did your typical East Side bungalow. If this really was Art’s home, I presumed it was because he still lived with his parents.

However modestly Big Art kept his office, he hadn’t stinted on his home comforts. The lot to the right had been annexed and converted into a beautifully landscaped yard. At one end stood a glass building that might have housed an indoor swimming pool. Since a forest preserve ran along the back of the property, one had the sensation of being out in the country while only half a mile from some of the world’s busiest manufacturing sites.

I trotted up the flagstone walk to the entrance, a porticoed porch whose columns looked a little incongruous against the modem brick. A faded blond woman stood in the doorway. The setting had some claim to grandeur but she was pure South Side in her crisply ironed print dress and the starched apron covering it.

She greeted me nervously, without trying to invite me in. “Who—who did you say you were?”

I pulled a card from my bag and handed it to her. “I’m a friend of young Art’s. I wouldn’t be bothering him at home but they haven’t seen him at the ward offices and it’s pretty important that I get in touch with him.”

She shook her head blindly, a movement that gave her a fleeting resemblance to her son. “He—he’s not home.”

“I don’t think he’d mind talking to me. Honestly, Mrs. Jurshak. I know the police are trying to get in touch with him, but I’m on his side, not theirs. Or his father’s,” I added with a flash of inspiration,

“He really isn’t home,” She looked at me wretchedly. “When Sergeant McGonnigal came around asking for him Mr. Jurshak got really angry, but I don’t know where he is, Miss—uh. I haven’t seen him since breakfast yesterday morning.”

I tried to digest that. Maybe young Art hadn’t been fit to drive last night after all. But if he’d been in an accident, his mother would have been the first to know. I shook away an unwelcome vision of Dead Stick Pond.

“Can you give me the names of any of his friends? Anyone he trusts enough to spend the night with uninvited?”

“Sergeant McGonnigal asked me the same thing. But—but he never had any friends. I mean, I liked him to stay here at night. I didn’t want him running around the way so many boys do these days, getting involved in drugs and gangs, and he’s my only child, it’s not like there are others if you lose one. That’s why I’m so worried now. He knows how upset I get if I don’t hear from him and yet here he is, gone all night.”

I didn’t know what to say, since none of the comments I wanted to make would have kept her speaking to me. I finally asked if it was the first time he’d ever stayed away from home.

“Oh, no,” she said simply. “Sometimes he has to work all night. On important presentations to clients or something. He’s been doing a lot of those in the last few months. But never without calling me.”

I grinned a little to myself: the kid was more enterprising than I would have suspected. I thought a minute, then said carefully, “I’m involved in one of those important cases, Mrs. Jurshak. The client’s name is Nancy Cleghorn. Art is looking for some papers from her. Will you tell him that I have them?”

The name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. At least she didn’t turn pale and faint or cower back in alarm. Instead she asked me if I could write it down since she had a terrible memory, and she was so worried about Art she didn’t think she’d get the names straight if she had to. I scribbled Nancy’s name and a brief message about having her files on the back of my card.

“If something comes up, Mrs. Jurshak, you can leave a message for me at that number. Anytime, day or night.”

When I got to the gate she was still standing in the doorway, her hands wrapped in her apron.

I wished I’d been more persistent with young Art last night. He was scared. He knew whatever it was that Nancy knew. So either my coming had been the last turn of the screw—he’d fled to avoid her fate. Or he’d met her fate. I should go to McGonnigal, tell him what I knew, or rather what I suspected. But. But. I really didn’t have anything concrete. Maybe I’d give the kid twenty-four hours to show up. If he was already dead, it wouldn’t matter. But if he was still alive, I should tell McGonnigal so he could help keep him that way. Round and round I went with it.

In the end I postponed a decision by driving back down to South Chicago, first to drop Nancy’s files at SCRAP, then to visit Louisa. She was delighted to see me, using the remote-control button to turn off the tube, then gripping my hand with her brittle fingers.

When I edged the conversation around to Pankowski and Ferraro and their unsuccessful suit, she seemed genuinely surprised.

“I didn’t know them two was so sick,” she said in her raspy voice. “I saw ’em both off and on before they died and they never said word one about it. Didn’t know they was suing Xerxes. Company’s been real good to me—maybe the boys got themselves in some kind of trouble. Could see it with Joey—he was always a problem for someone. Usually a girl who didn’t have her head screwed on right. But old Steve, he was your original straight arrow, if you know what I mean. Hard to see why he wouldn’t get his benefits.”

I told her what I knew about their illnesses and death and about the harried life that Mrs. Pankowski led. That brought her cough-racked laugh.

“Yeah, I could’ve told her a thing or two about Joey. We girls on the night shift all could of, come to that. I didn’t even know he was married the first year I was working there. When I found that out you’d better believe I gave him his walking papers. None of that being the other woman for me. Course there was others who wasn’t as picky, and he could make you laugh. Awful to think of him going through what I’m doing these days.”

We talked until Louisa fell into her gasping sleep. She clearly knew nothing of Caroline’s worries. I had to hand it to the little brat—she did protect her mother.

22

The Doctor’s Dilemma

Mr. Contreras was waiting anxiously on the front walk when I came home. The dog, picking up his worried state, yawned nervously at his feet. When they saw me each expressed his joy: the dog leapt around me in little circles while the old man scolded me for not leaving him my day’s route.

I put an arm around him. “You aren’t going to start breathing down my neck, are you? Repeat twenty times a day—she’s a big girl, she can fall on her butt if she wants to.”

“Don’t joke about it, cookie. You know I shouldn’t say this, I shouldn’t even think it, but you’re more family to me than my own family. Every time I look at Ruthie it beats me how Clara and I coulda had a kid like that. When I see you it’s like looking at my own flesh and blood. I mean that, doll. You gotta look after yourself For me and her royal highness here.”

I gave a wry smile. “I guess I take after you, then—I’m real hardheaded and stubborn.”

He thought it over a minute. “Okay, doll,” he agreed reluctantly. “You gotta do things your way. I don’t like it but I understand.”

When I went in the front door I heard him saying to the dog, “Takes after me. You hear that, princess? She gets it from me.”

Despite my bravado with him, I’d been watching my back off and on all day. I also checked my apartment carefully before sitting down with my mail, but no one had tried getting past the reinforced steel in the front door or the sliding bars on the back.

I couldn’t face another evening of whiskey and peanut butter. Nor did I want my downstairs neighbor feeling he had the right to hover over me. Carefully locking up once more, I headed over to the Treasure Island on Broadway to stock up.

I was sautéeing chicken thighs with garlic and olives when Max Loewenthal phoned. My first thought on hearing from him out of the blue was that something had happened to Lotty.

“No, no, she’s fine, Victoria. But this doctor you asked me about two weeks ago, this Curtis Chigwell—he tried to kill himself You didn’t know that?”

“No.” I smelled burning olive oil and reached my left hand the length of the cord to turn off the stove. “What happened? How do you know?”

It had been on the six o’clock news. Chigwell’s sister had found him when she went to the garage for some gardening tools at four.

“Victoria, I feel most uncomfortable about this. Most uncomfortable. Two weeks ago you ask for his address and today he tries to commit suicide. What was your role in this?”

I stiffened immediately. “Thanks, Max. I appreciate the compliment. Most days I don’t feel that powerful.”

“Please don’t turn this off with your flippancy. You involved me. I want to know if I contributed to a man’s despair.”

I tried to control my anger. “You mean did I go throw his ugly past in his face to the point where he couldn’t stand it and turned on the monoxide?”

“Something like that, yes.” Max was very grave, his strong Viennese accent heavier than usual. “You know, Victoria, in your search for the truth you often force people to face things about themselves they are better off not knowing. I can forgive you for doing it with Lotty—she’s tough, she can take it. And you don’t spare yourself But because you are very strong you don’t see that other people cannot deal with these truths.”

“Look, Max—I don’t know why Chigwell tried to kill himself I haven’t seen a medical report so I don’t even know that he did—maybe he had a stroke as he was turning on the car engine. But if it was because of the questions I was asking, I don’t feel one minute of remorse. He’s involved in a cover-up for Humboldt Chemical. What or why or how serious I don’t know. But that has nothing to do with his personal strengths and weaknesses—it has to do with the lives of a lot of other people. If—and it’s a mighty big if—if I’d known two weeks ago that my seeing him would make him turn on the gas, you’d better believe I’d do it again.” By the time I finished speaking I was breathing hard, my mouth very tight.

“I do believe you, Victoria. And I have no wish to talk to you in such a mood. But I do have one request—that you not think of me the next time you need help in one of your chases.” He hung up before I could say anything.

“Well, damn you anyway, you righteous bastard,” I shouted at the dead phone. “You think you’re my mother? Or just the scales of justice?”

Despite my rage I felt uneasy—I’d sicced Murray Ryerson on the guy in the middle of the night. Maybe they’d hounded him and his imagination had converted a minor peccadillo to murder. Hoping to ease my conscience, I tracked the crime editor down at the Herald-Star’s city desk. He was indignant—he’d sent reporters out to question the doctor about Pankowski and Ferraro, but they’d never been allowed in.

“Don’t give me hounding, Miss Wise-ass. You’re the one who talked to the guy. There’s something you’re not telling me, but I’m not even going to speculate on what it is. We’ve got some gofers down at that Xerxes plant and we’ll get on it faster without mixed signals from you. We’re running a lovely human-interest story on Mrs. Pankowski tomorrow, and I expect to have something from that lawyer, Manheim, who represented them.”

Murray did finally part grudgingly with more details about Chigwell’s attempted suicide. He had disappeared after lunch, but his sister didn’t miss him since she was busy around the house. At four she decided to go to the garage to check over her gardening gear so she’d be ready for spring. Her comments to the press did not include any mention of me or Xerxes, just that her brother had been troubled the last several days. He was prone to depression and she hadn’t thought much about it at the time.

“Is there any doubt he did it himself?”

“You mean did someone come into the garage, bind and gag him, strap him into the car, then undo the ropes when he was unconscious, assuming he’d die and it’d look like suicide? Give me a break, Warshawski.”

When I finally finished the conversation I was in a worse mood than I’d been at the start. I’d made the cardinal sin of giving Murray far more information than I’d received in exchange. As a result he knew as much about Pankowski and Ferraro as I did. Since he had a staff who could follow a range of inquiries, he might well untangle what lay behind Humboldt’s and Chigwell’s lies before I did.

I’m as competitive as the next person—more than many of them—but it wasn’t just fear of finishing behind Murray that upset me. It was Louisa’s right to privacy—she didn’t deserve the press pawing through her past. And it kept bugging me—irrationally, I agree—that I’d never been home when Nancy tried calling the day she died.

I looked balefully at the partly cooked chicken. The only scrap I hadn’t given Murray was the letter to Mariners Rest I’d found in Nancy’s car. And now that young Art had gone missing I wasn’t sure who I could talk to about it. I poured myself a drink (one of the ten warning signs—do you turn to alcohol when you’re upset or frustrated?) and went into the living room.

Mariners Rest was a large life and health insurer based in Boston, but they had a big branch office in Chicago. I’d seen their TV ads a million times, with a confident-looking sailor leaning against a hammock—rest with the mariners and sleep with their peace of mind.

It would be tricky explaining to a corporate actuary where I’d gotten the data. Almost as hard as trying to explain it to Big Art. Insurance companies guard their actuarial data with the care usually associated with the Holy Grail. So even if they’d accept my word on having a right to the documents, it would be hard to get them to tell me if they meant anything—like were the data accurate. They’d have to get clearance from their home office in Boston and that could take a month or more.

Caroline might know what the document meant, but she wasn’t speaking to me. The only other person I could think of to ask was Ron Kappelman. The insurance information didn’t look as though it had anything to do with the SCRAP recycling plant, but Nancy had liked Ron, she worked closely with him. Maybe he’d see the same exciting possibilities in the letter that she had.

By a mercy his home number was listed, and—greater miracle still—he was in. When I told him what I had he seemed most interested, asking a lot of sharp questions about how I’d come to have it. I responded vaguely that Nancy had bequeathed me responsibility for some of her private affairs, and I got him to agree to stop by at nine the next morning before he went to work.

I looked again at the mess in the living room. There was no way putting away back issues of The Wall Street Journal would make my place look as good as his gleaming house on Langley. I stuck the skillet with the chicken into the refrigerator—I’d lost interest in cooking, let alone eating. I called an old friend of mine, Velma Riter, and went to see The Witches of Eastwick with her. By the time I got home I’d gotten enough of Chigwell and Max out of my brain to be able to sleep.