Breakdown (36 page)

“What, you mean like what happened to Miles Wuchnik, after you helped him get into the forensic wing and all? What do you know about the way he was murdered?”

“Nothing. It wasn’t nothing to do with me.”

He was a bulky man, and his bulk filled the whole doorway. We were standing close enough that I could smell the onions he had for lunch on his breath. That old line of Lily Tomlin’s came to me—the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.

“And Ms. Ashford—you don’t know anything about her being pushed from the balcony at Rockefeller Chapel?”

“I don’t know any Ms. Ashford,” he growled. “And I sure as hell don’t know any Rockefellers.”

“Leydon Ashford. You let her into the forensic wing the same day Miles Wuchnik was there.”

“Oh, her. You got me confused there, calling her Ms. Ash-something.”

“Yeah, it can be confusing to hear people called by their actual names. Speaking of which, what was the actual name of the person in the locked ward who Miles Wuchnik spoke to?”

“I don’t know. I mind my business and let other people mind theirs.” He leaned forward so that his Adam’s apple was almost butting my forehead.

“How was Miles Wuchnik’s trip to the locked wing your business?” I asked.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “I thought Wuchnik was with the state, so I let him in. Then Mr. Mulliner told me he was private, same as you are, and I was deep in doo-doo. So from now on, I only talk to people when Mr. Mulliner says it’s okay.”

“Must be a handicap in your social life,” I commented.

“Huh?”

He wasn’t exactly the nimblest goat on the mountain. “If you have to okay your—never mind.”

“Never mind is right. Mr. Mulliner said not to talk to you if you came around, so good-bye and good night.”

“ ‘Good night and good luck,’ ” I corrected, but he was shutting the door and didn’t hear me.

I walked slowly back to my car, massaging the area between my shoulder blades, where the stresses of the day were lodging. I was fifty miles from home right now, and if I hadn’t left Kira and Lucy with Mr. Contreras, I would have checked into the Comfort Suites I passed on my way back to the tollway.

I did pull into a strip mall to call my neighbor before getting onto the expressway. All was quiet so far on the eastern front; it was after five and Petra had come over to help grill hot dogs for the girls. She was going to teach them how to make s’mores when the coals died down.

Once I hit the eastbound Ike, the traffic turned to glue. It was almost seven when I finally pulled into the alley behind my apartment. My phone had rung a number of times as I crept home, but I resolutely refused to look at it. Too many people who’d been weaving around me had had one hand on the wheel and the other on their devices—someone had to pay attention to the road, and I was the designated driver this evening.

I looked at my call log after I turned off the ignition. Chaim Salanter’s PA had phoned three times. The other calls were from other clients. I returned those first, and then phoned Salanter’s PA, Wren Balfour.

“How is Arielle doing?” I asked.

“The family aren’t issuing any new progress reports; they’re hoping to keep her health private. Mr. Salanter wants to see you.”

“I have some time free in the early afternoon tomorrow.”

“Tonight. He got in from Brazil a few hours ago and would like to discuss his granddaughter with you. He’s at the Schiller Street address.”

“I’ve had a very long day, Ms. Balfour, which actually started with a summons to Schiller Street. I’m not responding to those anymore. I found Arielle locked in the trunk of a car, and rescued a couple of other girls, and in return, the Salanter family has refused even to let me know Arielle’s status. I’ve driven a hundred miles in the heat and bad traffic, and I don’t have a PA to organize my life for me. I’m taking a bath and going to bed.”

“But—”

“Good night, Ms. Balfour.” I hung up and climbed stiffly out of the car.

The s’mores party was hard at it in the backyard. The Soongs, the family on the second floor with a new baby, had a boy around Lucy’s age; Mr. Soong had set up a badminton net for them. The kids and Petra were playing, while Mitch chased the shuttlecock, barking as he went. He’d shed the babydoll pajamas, I was thankful to see. The Soongs were talking with Mr. Contreras, the new baby asleep between them. Other neighbors were out on their porches, enjoying the party atmosphere happy children create. I felt better already.

I smiled and waved, told them I’d be down in a bit, and went up to soak the tension out of my shoulders and legs. I lay in the tub, sipping whisky, watching the water turn dark from the day’s dirt.

I’d been planning on sleeping in Jake’s place, letting the girls use my bed, but I decided it would be better to do it the other way around. A lot of people knew I was asking questions. Whether Jana Shatka or Vernon Mulliner—or even Chaim Salanter—was behind the murders of Xavier and Wuchnik, I didn’t want any bears who might come hunting me to find the Dudek girls sleeping in my bed.

For that reason, too, when I finally climbed out of the tub, I went to the safe in my bedroom and got out my Smith & Wesson.
There are no bears on Hemlock Mountain,
I murmured. But on Racine Avenue, that was a different story.

36.

ENTER A BILLIONAIRE

T
HE COALS FROM
M
R.
C
ONTRERAS’S GRILL GLOWED SOFTLY
in the dark backyard. I sat on the ground-floor porch with Mr. Contreras and some of our other neighbors, watching as Petra and Kira toasted s’mores. Even the medical resident from the first floor, who is usually vituperative about the dogs’ and my noise, had put on blue jeans and brought out a six-pack.

All my play clothes were filthy, I’d realized when I got out of the bath. I had carried a load of jeans and T’s down to the basement laundry, and put on my gold cotton dress for the party. Lucy Dudek then smeared marshmallow onto the skirt, but somehow that didn’t bother me.

Lucy and Alan, the Soongs’ seven-year-old, were asleep at our feet, their arms twined around the dogs. It had taken an hour and another whisky, drunk with a bowl of Ms. Soong’s vegetable-rice salad, before I stopped feeling the porch rolling as if it were the interstate. Now I leaned against one of the stairwell posts, drowsing contentedly. Mr. Contreras’s desultory comments were as soothing as a lullaby; I needed only to grunt in reply whenever he paused for air.

Mitch’s short, sharp bark roused me from my torpor. He extricated himself from the sleeping children, the hairs on his neck high. When Peppy joined him, tail low like his, I brought my gun from the folds of my dress and followed them around the side of the building. I was barefoot, and the concrete dug into the blisters on my feet.

“What is it, doll?” Mr. Contreras had come after us.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “Stay here with the girls, okay, and holler if someone comes in at the alley.”

Before he could huff about not needing to holler for my help, I undid the side gate and followed the dogs to the front of the building. A Mercedes sedan was idling at the curb.

A tall woman stood at the front door, pressing doorbells. She spoke into her cell phone. “No one’s answering. Do you want to go over to Dr. Herschel’s?”

I tried to signal the dogs to stay next to me, but Mitch bounded to the front door. The woman screamed as Mitch pinned her against the building. Peppy and I jogged after him. I kept one hand on my gun but pulled Mitch away with the other.

“Who are you, and what do you want with Dr. Herschel?” I demanded.

The driver’s door of the Mercedes opened. I stepped back so that I could cover both the woman and the driver. I had to let go of Mitch, who promptly returned to the woman.

“Is that you, Warshawski?” the driver shouted. “Call off your dogs!”

It was Gabe Eycks, the Salanters’ houseman, doubling as a chauffeur. I lowered the Smith & Wesson and ordered the dogs to sit. Peppy quickly obeyed. After a reluctant moment, Mitch agreed, but he kept his hackles up, and the muscles in his haunches were quivering.

I looked sourly at the woman. “Wren Balfour, I presume?”

“Yes, I’m Wren. Mr. Salanter needs to talk to you.”

“And since I wouldn’t come to Schiller Street, you decided you had to butt in on my evening with family.”

She was watching Mitch, not listening to me. “Will that dog bite?”

“All dogs bite, but as long as you don’t threaten me in some way, you’re probably safe.”

Gabe Eycks joined us just as Mr. Contreras burst through the front door—he’d come through the building from the backyard.

“Is everything okay, doll? I got worried when I didn’t hear nothing. You know these people?”

“Not very well. They’re minions of a billionaire, which means they disregard anything an ordinary person says—like my telling Ms. Balfour here that I was too tired to talk to her boss tonight. She interpreted that as a signal that they should track me down at home.”

“If Vic here said she was too tired to talk, that means it’s time for you to leave,” my neighbor said. “We got a new baby you woke up, people are trying to have a little peace and quiet after a hard day. Not everyone in this economy even has a job, that ever occur to you?”

Balfour looked bewildered, as people often do when they first meet Mr. Contreras, but Gabe said, “We’re not quite as insensitive as you think, but Mr. Salanter is eighty-three, and he’s worried about his granddaughter.”

“Well, I’m eighty-seven, and I’m worried about Vic,” Mr. Contreras snapped. “And I don’t have a secretary or a chauffeur or whoever else your boss has to drive him around and paint his toenails pink.”

I choked back a laugh. Out on the street, the back door to the Mercedes opened. As soon as he realized the billionaire was emerging, Gabe trotted back to the car. Wren Balfour looked nervously from her boss to Mitch. The dog grinned up at her to show it had been a game, just good fun, but the sight of all those teeth kept her glued to the front door.

In the brief quiet, I could hear the Soong baby wailing from behind the building, and then Chaim Salanter and Eycks joined us.

“I’m sorry to bother you at home, Ms. Warshawski. My staff tells me you are tired, and I am weary myself, at my age, after a long flight. But I hope you will put your gun away and let me speak to you for a few minutes.”

I made a face but told him we could talk in my apartment. When Salanter assured me he could manage the three flights without difficulty, I let him and the rest of the entourage into the building.

I pulled Mr. Contreras aside so I could give him a key to Jake’s apartment, explaining that I wanted Lucy and Kira to sleep in there.

“I don’t want Salanter or his acolytes to see the girls or Petra,” I muttered. “It’s not that I don’t trust them, but—I don’t trust them.”

Mr. Contreras had a better plan, to put the girls up in his own place, on the beds his grandsons use when they spend the night with him. He assured me he wouldn’t let Kira or Lucy into the front of the building until Salanter was out of sight, but it was high time they were in bed, not good for little ones to be up at all hours.

Mitch decided the fun part of the encounter was over and followed Mr. Contreras through the hall to the backyard, but Peppy stayed with me as I led Salanter and his pals to my home. My feet were filthy. I was also trailing little specks of blood from where the blisters had come open, I saw when I switched on my entry light.

I waved an arm toward the front room and went into the bathroom to rinse my feet. I still hadn’t found time to take off my flaking nail polish—I, too, needed someone to follow me around, painting my toenails pink.

When I came back to the living room, Salanter was standing at the piano, softly picking out a few notes from my
Don Giovanni
score with a halting hand.

“You sing Mozart?” he asked.

I sat cross-legged in my armchair, smoothing my frock over my knees. Lucy had managed to rub chocolate into the fabric as well as marshmallow. “Surely you didn’t drag your weary bones all this way to discover my musical tastes.”

“Pleasantries are permitted even in a crisis,” Salanter said.

He sat on the piano bench, his shoulders hunched, his heavy black brows low over his eyes. Wren Balfour tried to urge him to the couch but he gave a tired smile and stayed where he was. I wondered if the pantomime was meant to make me feel sorry for him.

When I didn’t respond, Salanter said, “I need to know everything you can tell me about how my granddaughter ended up in the trunk of that orderly’s car.”

I held out my hands, palms up. “Mr. Eycks knows everything I do, and a whole lot more besides. The only thing I can suggest is that you talk to Nia Durango: Arielle shares all her secrets with Nia.”

“I’ve talked to Nia. She can tell me nothing.”

I hesitated, then said, “Did you know Arielle had written to the Holocaust Museum, looking for information about your family’s history in Vilna?”

He looked up, his poker player’s mask slipping briefly—I couldn’t tell if he was angry or astonished, or even, perhaps, afraid. “How do you know that?”

I told him about looking at Arielle’s e-mails. “I assume the FBI is doing the same thing, and that they’re reporting back to you. What is it you don’t want her to find out?”

“Why would she seek that information when I told her I never wanted to revisit that past?” His voice was soft but charged with bitterness.

“Children need rootedness,” I suggested. “Beyond that, though, Arielle is deeply troubled by Wade Lawlor’s attacks on you. She wanted to know what lies behind them.”

“I’ve told her time and again that nothing lies behind them, that he’s attacking me because it’s a way of reaching his paranoid audience, and it’s a way of attacking Sophy Durango. Arielle knows that!” He smacked the piano and the keys crashed discordantly.

I rubbed the middle of my forehead, trying to ease an eyestrain headache. “The last thing a bright child believes is something she knows her parents are lying about. And frankly, I don’t believe you, either. I am ninety-five percent certain that Miles Wuchnik was murdered because he was blackmailing someone. He thought he’d uncovered a big secret about you. Had he put the bite on you?”