Touch of the White Tiger (15 page)

“That was nice of him.”

“Hey, sis, it’s the least he can do for ten million. Soji and I brought some dinner. Why don’t you try to eat?” He fluffed up the pillow tucked under my head.

I managed to sit upright, though every inch of my body protested with mutinous spikes of pain. “I have never hurt so much in my entire life.”

Soji entered from the kitchen, carrying a tray a steaming Chinese food. “Hi, Soj. How are you?”

“The question of the hour is how are
you?
” She placed the tray on the coffee table in front of me and gave me one of her knock-out smiles that had, along with her killer instincts, won her a new multiyear reporting contract with WFFY-TV. That’s where she’d met Hank.

In a way, they looked like a mismatched pair. She was nearly six feet tall, as thin as a clothing store manikin, and boasting a luscious caramel candy complexion. She really stood out in a crowd. Plus, she had a rich and creamy voice with a slight colonial British accent.

Hank, on the other hand, was just another overgrown descendant of Irish elves—a charming and handsome, slightly freckled and huggable fellow who stood five foot nine.

I was happy to see them both, and even happier that they’d brought food.

“I just realized I’m famished, and I always enjoy Soji’s cooking.”

“Chinese is one of my specialties,” she replied, filling a plate and handing it to me so I wouldn’t have to reach.

“Chinese take-out, that is,” Hank added.

“I also make very good reservations.” She winked at me, and I appreciated the fact that she wasn’t cooing over me as if I were an invalid.

We chatted as we ate, filling in the gaps over the day’s dramatic events. Soji had been covering the CRS meeting for WFFY and witnessed the chaos that followed my attack. When she realized I was the victim, she handed over the story to a colleague, called Hank, and they helped get me into an ambulance. She then made some calls to find out what was happening with the Shadowman.

The police arrested him, but he refused to point the finger at Cy. There were plenty of retributionists from the meeting who could testify that Cy had threatened Angel, and that was
enough to have him put back in jail. But authorities held out little hope of finding him.

“I’ve never seen such a vicious attack,” Soji shook her head. “It’s a wonder you’re still alive, Angel.”

“You didn’t exactly see it, Soj,” Hank amended.

I let out a rueful chuckle. “I didn’t even see it. But I certainly felt it.”

“That retributionist from New Orleans was quite the hero,” Soji said as she leaned over the coffee table and helped herself to seconds. She could eat a Green Bay Packer under the table and never gain a pound. I swear she had a hollow leg. Soji sat down with a full plate and eyed me curiously, putting on her reporter’s cap. “Who is he? How do you know him?”

“His name is Brad the Impaler.”

Hank’s pale eyebrows curled doubtfully. “With a name like that, he must be a nice guy.”

“He’s a good-looking guy, anyway,” Soji said, then gave me one of those needling woman-to-woman looks. “He seemed very concerned about you, Angel. Are you…dating?”

Laughter burst out just as I swallowed a bite of egg roll and I choked. I slugged down half a glass of water before I could breathe again, then raised an index finger, begging another minute.

“We’ll take that as a no,” Hank translated for me, laughing.

“Or,” Soji said, “it’s a ‘No, but I’d
like
to be dating him, though I’ll never admit it.’”

“Ah, yes,” Hank said, “you’re using that ‘reading between the lines’ special parts assembly given to all women at birth. I don’t have that kind of equipment.”

“Neither does Brad,” I said, finally recovering my composure. “I owe him my life, but he’d be the first one to point that out. He’s not exactly modest or subtle when it comes to in
terpersonal relationships. I’m sure he does care about me, but not as much as he cares about himself.”

“Still, he’s a delectable piece. I think you should grab him.”

I shrugged noncommittally. I couldn’t deny that I found Brad attractive. I always had. And now I could add gratitude and respect to my feelings for him. But it was easy to fall for a guy who dressed like a vampire and crucified a thug on your behalf. Too easy.

How much more intriguing to fall for the guy who might blend into the crowd or the establishment, but whose thoughts were truly unique, who was worth listening to, especially when he spoke quietly. And who listened in return. The same one who wouldn’t grab your tush just because it felt good, and insisted that lovemaking should be exactly that.

“What about Marco?” Hank asked.

I looked up in surprise. “You read my mind, little bro. You may have some intuition after all. I think it’s fair to say that Marco and I are hopelessly stalemated at this point.”

“I liked him a lot. So you’re still interested in him?”

“Oh, yes,” I replied with an exaggerated nod.

Then it struck me, if Marco really cared more about me than Brad did, why hadn’t he called? Marco had been on both murder scenes just minutes after or before I’d arrived. But when I was badly beaten, he was nowhere to be found, even though the local television stations had broken into programming with the story. No phone call. Nada.

“I’m interested,” I clarified, choosing my next words carefully, “maybe that’s just because he’s playing hard to get.”

Hank waved an invisible watch fob back and forth in front of my face and gave me a look that would have made Anton Mesmer proud. “Look into my eyes.”

“No way!” I waved him off with a laugh, avoiding eye con
tact. This was one of our running jokes. Whenever Hank wanted me to spill the beans, he’d pretend to hypnotize me.

“You will tell me the truth, Angel Baker,” he said with a bad Viennese accent. “Is it possible you are the one who is playing hard-to-get with Detective Marco?”

“Not a chance.”

“Analysis paralysis,” Soji said, reprimanding us both and scooping up our empty dishes. She ferried them out to the kitchen, adding for good measure, “Go with the flow. Make love, not war.”

“Any other clichés you want to throw my way?” I called after her.

“Buy low, sell high!” she shouted over the sound of running water and clanking plates.

Hank and I grinned, but tensed when the service elevator clanged, squeaked and groaned to a stop at the top of the stairs.

“What in the hell…?” Hank frowned suspiciously at the closed door to the apartment. “Did the circus just arrive?”

“That was my service elevator.”

“Good God, that thing actually works?”

“I used it once when I first moved in, but it lurched so much I feared for my life.”

“What brave soul is using it now?”

“I’ll let you see for yourself.” I opened the door just as Jimmy was about to knock and stepped aside so he could wheel his way into the living room. I made introductions, explained Jimmy’s presence, assured him that Hank, who was clearly amused, could be trusted, then took a seat. I gratefully accepted the coffee Soji brought me and prepared for a longwinded explanation of another one of Jimmy’s conspiracy theories. He was clearly agitated.

“L-look here, Angel,” he stammered, waving a stack of prints hot off the printer in my downstairs office. “I took
some photographs when Lola left on her date earlier tonight, just as you asked me to. I think you’ll find this very interesting.”

I reluctantly set down my coffee mug and started flipping through the images. All of them were taken from the window behind me. There was the postman, making his once-a-week delivery of snail mail earlier in the day, a return appearance of those antiretributionist kooks with their handmade signs, and several shots of various windows in the old redbrick apartment building across the street.

“Okay, Jimmy,” I said as I quickly flipped past these, “this isn’t a scene out of
Rear Window
. Nobody in the building across from ours has murdered his wife. You’re going to get arrested as a Peeping Tom, if you’re not careful.”

He wiped a graceful hand over his mouth. “Well, you never know when someone has done something they shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, welcome to my life.” I quickly flipped through the rest until I found a shot of Lola crossing the street, decked out in a red sequined gown with a black boa—and it wasn’t a snake. Far from it. She looked like Lucille Ball going to the Academy Awards. Okay, Lucille Ball after losing a serious battle with gravity. Still, I had no idea Lola could clean up this well. She’d been holding out on me.

“Wow!” I whispered.

“What is it?” Hank leaned forward, eager to see.

“My birth mother. I had no clue….”

He grabbed the photo and whistled in appreciation, sharing the photo with Soji.

“This is your mother?” Soji’s chestnut eyes twinkled. She crossed a long, svelte leg over the other and leaned toward Hank for a closer look. “She’s lovely.”

I grimaced. “Sort of. I’m not sure she’d look so great if it were a close-up. She’s been around the block a time or
two. She’s kind of like the main character in the movie
Stella Dallas
, played by Barbara Stanwycke. Pretty but hardened by life.”

“You really love those old movies, don’t you?” Soji remarked.

“When I was little, before Hank’s parents took me in, Lola used to get drunk on a regular basis. Whenever she did, I’d watch classic movies. We both had our way of escaping, but mine didn’t result in hangovers.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a classic movie.”

I gaped at her. “Get out of here.”

“Nothing certainly before 2080, I’d say. I’m invited to lots of premieres because I work in the media.”

“Oh, Soji, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“So tell me, what am I missing?”

“A lot of handsome leading men, classy dames, a wonderful world where everyone has manners and money, where justice always wins in the end.”

“Sounds good to me,” Soji said with a dry smile.

“If you decide to catch up, start with a Spencer Tracy movie. He reminds me of Hank.”

Hank straightened his collar and showed off his profile. “What do you think, Soji? Movie star material?”

“I don’t think so, boy wonder,” she teased.

“At least somebody in my family is good-looking,” he said, wagging his thumb my way. “And now we know where your beauty came from.”

Hank tossed the picture of Lola on the table. I focused on the remaining photos. “Here’s another one. Ooh, she looks even better here. Good shot, Jimmy.”

When he didn’t respond, I glanced up. He was back at his post, watching the street with his binoculars.

“Look at this, Hank,” I said. “Lola’s looking back at the building as she steps toward a waiting limousine. A nice one,
too. Looks like a newer hydro. She must be waiting for her date to catch up.”

I passed that photo to Hank and studied the next one. “Ah, here we go. The man of the hour has stepped into the picture frame, I’d say twenty paces behind her. From what I can tell by looking at the back of his head, he looks handsome enough.”

“Go to the next one,” Jimmy urged me.

I did as he instructed, had to turn it right side up, then let out a slow, hissing gasp when I recognized the man in the picture. I would have screamed, but I couldn’t quite get another breath.

“What is it?” Soji asked. “What’s wrong?”

Hank snatched the offending photo from my hands. “Oh, my God,” he groaned. “It’s Vladimir Gorky.”

Et tu, Brute?

“D
amn!” I pressed my eyes with my fingertips. Fury and betrayal scalded me from the inside out. The painkillers were wearing off, and pain stabbed my head in a screeching rhythm. “Oh, God, I can’t believe Lola would do this to me.”

“I don’t understand,” Soji said, taking the photo from Hank. “Why on Earth would your mother be dating the most notorious mobster in Chicago?”

“Unbelievable,” Hank muttered, thrusting up from his chair, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I need a drink. Soji?”

“No, thanks.”

“Angel?”

I just shook my head. “Damn her! How could Lola be this
irresponsible? Strike that. She’s always been unreliable. But I thought she’d turned a corner.”

“What’s going on, Angel?” Soji asked in a soothing voice. “Lola and Gorky obviously didn’t meet through a dating service. What gives?”

While Hank went to the sideboard next to the fireplace and poured himself a shot of Vivante, I tried to explain the inexplicable.

“My mother and I lived for years in Rogers Park after my father skipped out on us. One night Vladimir Gorky got nailed in a shoot-out in front of our apartment, which also doubled as Lola’s fortune-telling parlor. She heard the ruckus and pulled him into our building, saving his life. She even removed a bullet from his leg so he wouldn’t have to go to the hospital and get arrested. Afterward, she became his favorite fortune-teller and bookmaker. I guess they’re back in business.”

Soji sat back as if she’d been shoved. “What an amazing story. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to—”

“No,” I said emphatically, “I will not repeat it on camera so you can use it on the news.”

“I wouldn’t waste it on the news. I was thinking of a documentary.”

I skewered her with a threatening glare. “No.”

“I’m sorry, of course not. I just can’t resist a good story.” She shook her head wonderingly. “Whatever happened to their association. Was it romantic?”

“No!” was my instant answer. I couldn’t even go there.

Hank sighed. “Give Angel a break. It’s personal.”

I automatically grabbed his hand and squeezed, just like I used to when we were kids. Gigi would make my life a misery, and he would be there to make me feel better.

“When I met with Gorky last month, trying to arrange the release of the Chinese orphans, I asked Lola to contact him
to set up a meeting at Rick’s Café. When she did, they must have rekindled…something. So in a way, this is my fault. Still, I can’t believe Gorky is really romantically interested in her!”

“Maybe she offers him something he can’t get anywhere else,” Soji posited. “She seems attractive enough, but Gorky has been photographed with some of Hollywood’s youngest and sexiest starlets.”

“Lola went to prison for bookmaking,” Hank said. “Do you think they’re running some kind of illegal business together?”

“No. I had to take her in last month after Gorky’s goons destroyed her apartment and killed her cleaning lady. She was broke and had nowhere else to go. That’s why I was suspicious when she recently bought new clothes.”

We wrestled in silence over possible explanations that would prove Lola innocent. Finally, I leaned back in my chair and carefully crossed my arms over my bruised chest. “You know, maybe I’m making too much of this. I did a psychic reading for Gorky in exchange for the girls. When we talked, he seemed genuinely impressed and grateful to Lola for her psychic visions, though she had failed to help him find the Maltese Falcon—his version of it, anyway. Maybe he’s forgiven Lola and she’s just back in the fortune-telling business.”

“Dressed like that?” Hank pointed to the glamour shot of Lola crossing the street in stiletto heels and enough glitter to light a casino marquee in Vegas.

I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, let’s take a stab at a worst-case scenario. Suppose she and Gorky rekindled a friendship—I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt here—when she contacted him last month. Then he decides to use her to keep tabs on me. He’s either paying her to give him information on me, or he’s treating her like a queen-for-a-day in the hopes that she’ll talk too much, which she usually does.”

“No offense,” Soji said in her rich contralto, “but why
would Gorky go to so much trouble to keep tabs on a small fish like you?”

“Because he asked me to locate the Maltese Falcon when Lola failed to deliver. I told him that the statue was back in his homeland, Chechnya. But if my vision was wrong….” I dropped my face in my hands. “God, am I a fake psychic? Wouldn’t that be ironic? That’s what I called Lola for years before I realized she was the real deal.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Hank said, tipping back the last of his drink. “As usual.”

I grabbed his arm. “No, Hank, I’m just trying to be logical here. I know I have visions and hear things that are right on. But it may be a hit-or-miss talent. Gorky warned me that if he couldn’t find the falcon in Chechnya based on my information, he would do me serious bodily harm. Maybe he’s trying to woo Lola to get close to me for the coup de grâce.”

“But he wouldn’t have to do that if all he wanted to do was kill you,” Soji argued. “He could have any one of his minions pick you off in the dark without leaving a clue.”

“Which brings us back to the assassinations,” I said. “I’d already concluded that it would have to be someone as evil and powerful as a syndicate boss, but I’d assumed it was Capone.”

“Why?” Hank leaned back and shoved his hands in his pockets, relishing the role of devil’s advocate. “Why couldn’t it just be some demento fixated on retributionists?”

“Maybe it was Cyclops,” Soji offered.

I paused to mull this over. “I don’t think so. Why go to such elaborate lengths to hide your identity in three murders and then go ape shit in front of a bunch of retributionists and reporters? Now, the mastermind might have set Cy up to cause trouble, but Cy couldn’t have planned those murders. He was locked up in P.S. #1 until recently.”

“Why a mastermind, Angel?” Hank persisted.

“Because someone got into my bank safety deposit box and took my gun and delivered it to the scene of the crime. This same person monkeyed with my phone records. Those are two different legitimate private institutions that are difficult to infiltrate. To do that you’d have to be both well connected and criminally minded.”

“As far as I can see, there is no reason to connect Cy’s attack with the murders,” Hank argued. “He’s obviously a loon.”

“Yes, but Cy knew exactly when and where the CRS meeting was taking place. His attack was elaborately planned. My whereabouts had to have been divulged to this psychotic mole, either by one of my colleagues or by my mother, via Gorky. Either way, it’s not good.”

This prospect was so bleak that no one could respond. Normally, my birth mother’s crimes and emotional misdemeanors embarrassed me, but I no longer had the luxury of that petty emotion. I had to nail down the real murderer soon or I’d be screwed.

“Dad has been working closely with your attorney,” Hank said, trying to cheer me up, and it worked.

“Really?”

“Dad and Berkowitz have assembled a virtual war room of clerks, private investigators, ballistic experts, shrinks, you name it.”

“Henry’s actually helping me?”

Hank frowned. “Angel, come on. This is your foster father we’re talking about here. My dad. He adores you. It’s not exactly a family secret that you were his favorite.”

Tears stung my eyes. I blinked several times, shrugging. “I know your folks have risked everything for my defense. But it’s one thing for Henry to foot the bill. It’s another thing for him to invest his time, his reputation. And I…I thought he might still blame me for Victor’s death.”

“He might,” Hank said, as frank as usual. “But that doesn’t mean he stopped loving you. You are every bit as much of a daughter to Henry as Gigi. And don’t you forget it.”

I nodded, moved beyond words.

After Hank and Soji hugged me goodbye, admonishing me to go directly to bed, I took a long shower. The hot water burned my scrapes and cuts but sluiced soothingly over my throbbing muscles. I gingerly donned a loose nightgown, then went into the kitchen to call Marco.

I just want to see if he has any new information on my case,
I told myself, but myself didn’t buy it. I was growing increasingly agitated over Marco’s lack of contact. God, had he decided to blow me off at a time like this?

When his voice message answered, I hung up, disappointment burning like indigestion. There had to be a reason he’d gone AWOL on me, but I wouldn’t try to figure it out now. I really was exhausted and needed rest. As usual, things would look brighter in the morning. Before I checked out for the night, though, I wanted to see how Cy’s attack was being portrayed in the news.

“Lead story,” I said when my picture appeared over the anchor’s shoulder just after the opening credits. “No surprise there. If it bleeds, it leads.”

I’d learned a thing or two about news judgment, or the lack thereof, growing up in the home of the dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. It would have taken a plane crash at O’Hare to bump me out of the top spot. Not that I wanted to be there.

I splayed myself on the couch, watching a replay of what I had lived through just a few hours earlier. It was downright surreal. The reporter’s news package included shots of me being loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher, the Shadow
man being hauled away in handcuffs, cop cars and flashing red lights everywhere, retributionists milling around like a convention of outlawed superheroes.

The holographic images flashed in the middle of my living room, so lifelike that my survival instinct kicked into high gear. I had to grip the arm of my couch to keep from bolting. My heart pumped like I’d just run a marathon. I was just about to turn it off when the scene then shifted to a two-shot of the reporter and Brad.

With the sound turned down, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could well imagine. With his hands akimbo on a sequin studded white belt, his white shirt splattered with blood, and of course his cape, he made for a dramatic witness. His blue eyes danced as he entranced the reporter. I could tell by the way his lip curled smugly now and then that he was bragging about his rescue.

“Sound. Full.” At my voice command, the digivision produced audio.

“What makes you so certain?” The reporter’s voice came off camera.

“Angel Baker is one of the most capable and moral people I know,” Brad said. “She’s incredible. You should have seen her fighting off the Shadowman in there. The only reason she needed my help was because she couldn’t see in the dark.”

“You’re from New Orleans. Perhaps you’re not aware that Miss Baker is a suspect in a double-murder case involving the mayor’s son. Does that change your opinion of her?”

“I’m aware of it,” Brad said, bobbing his head with obvious, almost pitying disdain for the reporter and anyone else stupid enough to believe that I was guilty. “Let me tell you something. Angel Baker is innocent. Someone has set her up.” Jabbing a forefinger at the camera lens for emphasis, he delivered his last line to the television audience. “And the truth will come out.”

That was the end of Brad’s interview.

“TV. Off.”

The room went silent. I just stood there, blown away by Brad’s generous, virtuoso performance. Clearly, he had matured a great deal since we’d spent that week together in bed.

“Amazing,” I muttered. “Why couldn’t Marco stand up for me like that?”

I padded into the kitchen for a glass of water. I lowered myself into a kitchen chair, every move precise and slow. I would definitely need another pain pill before I went to sleep. I let out a big sigh after what seemed like the longest day of my life.

I flipped through Jimmy’s pictures again, amused over his choice of subjects. He had very capably followed my directions to photograph Lola. I was intrigued by the other choices he’d made on his own. He had been able to discern which passersby were worthy of scrutiny, like the protestors, and which ones should be ignored, like my neighbors. But he hadn’t been able to overcome the
Rear Window
subprogram imbedded in his mainframe. He just couldn’t resist taking a few shots of the neighbors’s windows, like Jimmy Stewart’s character had in the Hitchcock film.

Engineers had made so many improvements in compubots it was almost scary. For years, robotics firms had proudly touted products that looked and felt like human beings, but reacted like computers. They were attractive, brilliant, fast and logical to a fault. As a result, the robotics industry had never really taken off in domestic settings. Human beings didn’t like hanging around walking, talking machines that were clearly and vastly more knowledgeable than they, but didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to figure out they were supposed to hide that fact. Plus, the early models were totally lacking in spontaneity.

AutoMates, Inc. had been the first robotics firm to incor
porate sophisticated “Gray Zone” reasoning and deduction abilities that enabled compubots to wing it, as it were, in circumstances that weren’t preprogrammed, and to show a realistic facsimile of emotions.

Still, I’d noticed that AutoMates Classics, like Bogie and Jimmy, had a tendency to default to their prime film motifs for no reason and often when you least expected it. I should probably pass that feedback along to the company, since I was one of the few people lucky enough to have intimate contact with the Classic models for any length of time.

That reminded me that I’d better try to contact the firm soon just to make sure I wasn’t going to be billed for Jimmy’s little visit. He hadn’t exactly been invited, though I would admit he had been useful.

I put my glass in the sink and collected the photos, then found something in one of the apartment building photos that I’d overlooked at least a dozen times this evening.

“Holy moley,” I whispered.

I flipped on a counter light and held the photo under a bright, narrow beam. Unfortunately, a better view only confirmed what I thought I’d seen—someone standing in one of the windows across the street, taking a photograph of my apartment.