Warshawski 09 - Hard Time (10 page)

12 The Lion’s Den

Carnifice headquarters were what you wanted in your security provider if you were a rich parent or wealthy multinational: enormous Persian carpets floating on polished parquet, desks and cabinets that a lot of rain forest had been hacked down to provide, doors opened by magnetic card or guard only, a beautiful young woman who took you from the guard in the lobby to your destination. It was quite a contrast to Warshawski Investigations, where the lone PI or her part–time assistant brought you into a converted warehouse.

My young escort smiled politely when I commented on the ambience, but when I asked how long she’d been at Carnifice, she said that company policy forbade her answering any questions.

“Not even to tell me the time or the weather?”

She only smiled again and opened Baladine’s door for me. She mentioned my name, perfectly pronounced, to the woman who sat enthroned in the antechamber, then left, although not, to my disappointment, walking backward.

“Ah, Ms. Warshawski. I’ll let Mr. Baladine know you’re here.” The woman’s skin and hair matched her smooth rich voice; the bias–cut dress she wore would have paid the Trans Am’s repair bill and left something over for gas.

The great man kept me waiting twelve minutes—exactly the amount of time that I was late. A perfect system of punishments, no doubt learned in running private prisons around the country. I wandered around the room while I waited, looking at photographs of a lean, tanned man with various sheiks and presidents, and at the exhibits of memorabilia, ranging from a Presidential Medal of Freedom to a mock–up of the women’s correctional facility at Coolis. I was particularly interested in that, since it made escape seem impossible. The back abutted the Smallpox Creek, but there were no windows or gates on that side. Three layers of razor–wire fencing looped around the front.

“Are you interested in prison security, Ms. Warshawski?”

The lean, tanned man of the photos was standing behind me. I turned and shook his proffered hand. He was fifteen years older than his wife, as I’d learned from my afternoon’s research, but looked well able to keep up with her in the pool, or any other arena.

“Only at Coolis, Mr. Baladine—I wondered how a small person like Nicola Aguinaldo could circumnavigate all those fences and guard boxes and so on.”

“Ah, yes, poor Nicola. I understand she faked an illness and was taken to the Coolis Hospital, where it was easier to escape. An unhappy life and, I gather, an unhappy death.” He put a hand on my shoulder and shepherded me toward his own office. “Claudia, can you bring us something to drink? I understand you like Black Label, Ms. Warshawski.”

“Not when I’m negotiating the Eisenhower. Mineral water will be fine, thanks.” Since I’d investigated him I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d done the same to me.

His private office was filled with more photographs and trophies—and exotic hardwoods and carpets and art. A diploma issued by the Naval Academy held a prominent place near his desk, next to a photograph of a much younger Baladine on board a destroyer, shaking hands with Nixon’s Secretary of Defense.

“Yes, I was in Vietnam in the sixties. And then had my own ship for a few years.”

“That was before you joined Rapelec’s defense division, wasn’t it?”

I said it without looking at him: I didn’t want to overplay my hand by scanning his face for any surprise at my research into his life—which had not garnered his drinking preferences. Still, I’d learned that at Rapelec he had moved rapidly from a job in systems procurement to managing their submarine division, and then to heading the manufacture of all rapid–deployment weapons, before the end of the Cold War shrank the importance of the unit. Carnifice brought him in as CEO five years ago. Their private prison business was one of the divisions that had grown the most rapidly under his command.

Claudia brought a bottle of Malvern water and poured for both of us, with a murmured reminder that his conference call with Tokyo would be coming through in half an hour.

“Thanks, Claudia.” He waited for the door to shut. “A picture like that probably doesn’t inspire you in the same way as it does me, since I gather you and I were on opposite sides in Vietnam.”

Okay, he had a staff of three thousand plus to go looking at everything from my drinking habits to my college protest activities, but it still made me uncomfortable. I knew I would have to work hard to keep my temper—since his research had probably also told him that was a vulnerable spot on my heel.

“I was on the side of Washington and Jefferson,” I said, “perhaps the side of naïveté and idealism. And you?”

“Certainly I’ve never been naive. Either about America’s external enemies or her internal.” He gestured me to a seat next to a coffee table made out of some kind of gold burl.

“And so it was a natural progression for you. To move from killing Zimbabweans to incarcerating Americans. Although exactly why Zimbabwe was an American enemy I’m not sure.”

At that his face did twist in brief surprise: Rapelec’s arming of the South African secret forces’ raids into Zimbabwe during the eighties had been the most deeply buried item I’d found in my afternoon’s research. I didn’t think it had anything to do with Nicola Aguinaldo’s death, but it did shed some insight into Baladine’s character.

“Unfortunately, in matters of national security it’s not possible to be idealistic. I always think that’s a luxury for people who aren’t willing to dirty their hands. But perhaps we should move to matters of more immediate importance. My wife was most upset by your questioning her yesterday under pretense of being a detective.”

I shook my head. “No pretense. I am a detective. I’m licensed by the state of Illinois and everything.”

He smiled condescendingly. “You know you’re splitting hairs: she never would have admitted you, let alone spoken to you, if she hadn’t believed you were with the Chicago police.”

I smiled back. “You should be pleased with me, Baladine—it shows I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty.”

He frowned briefly. “I’d prefer you demonstrated that someplace other than with my family. Particularly with my son, who has an unfortunate streak of naïveté of his own and is an easy prey for anyone willing to take advantage of his vulnerability.”

“Yes. I suppose one always thinks one’s own family ought to be off–limits, no matter how much one claims to inhabit the world of realpolitik. It’s what makes it so confusing, don’t you think? Everyone has a family, even Gadhafi, that they think should be off–limits. Everyone has a point of view, and who is to judge which point of view is more reliable or more worthy of protection?”

“And what point of view were you trying to protect by harassing my wife?”

He kept his tone light, but he was upset that I’d one–upped him in a philosophy discussion—he controlled his hands, but he couldn’t control a pulse in his temple. I made sure that the breath of relief I exhaled went out very softly indeed.

“My own, Mr. Baladine. With all the money you spent finding out about my whisky preferences, I’m sure you must have put a dollar or two into learning about the State’s Attorney’s attempt to arrest me for a hit–and–run involving your former nanny. Or was he doing that at your and Jean–Claude Poilevy’s request?”

He laughed with a practiced humor that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m honored you have that much respect for my power, but I don’t think Nicola’s death was anything but an unfortunate accident. She ran away from jail; she got hit by a car. I can’t even say I’m sorry: she was a liar and she was a thief. My strongest feeling is annoyance, because my hyper–emotional son is having another tiresome episode over her death.”

“Poor Robbie,” I said. “Not the son for a manly man. Maybe he was swapped at birth with an artist’s child.”

Irony was wasted on him; he made a face. “I sometimes think so. His kid sister is twice the man that he is. But you didn’t bother my wife to find out whether J.C. and I were framing you, because you didn’t know we were friends until you ran into Jennifer out there.”

He was rattled by my investigation, or he wouldn’t have the chronology so pat in his mind. “I had hoped your wife could tell me something about Ms. Aguinaldo’s private life, but she apparently had no interest in a woman who was the most intimate caregiver of her children. Maybe you delved deeper?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He picked up his water glass but eyed me over the rim as he spoke.

I crossed my legs, smoothing out the crease in the silk—I’d taken time to go home to change before trekking out here. “Carnifice provides in–home surveillance and a reference service for nannies. I assume you employed it when you hired Nicola Aguinaldo.”

“It’s the old truth about the shoemaker’s children, I suppose: we relied on the credentials of the agency we had used in the past. It didn’t occur to me that Nicola was illegal. And I knew about her children, of course, but I wasn’t interested in any private life she might have had on her days off, as long as it didn’t spill over into my family.” He forced a smile. “Into my private point of view.”

“So you don’t know who she would have run to for help when she escaped last week? No lovers, no one who might have beaten her up?”

“Beaten her up?” he echoed. “I understood she was hit and killed by a car. One other than yours, of course.”

“Funny,” I said. “Your wife and her friends knew she’d been attacked. If they didn’t learn it from you, where did they hear it?”

Once again I could see the pulse jump at his temple, although he put his fingers together and spoke condescendingly. “I’m not going to try to untangle a game of who said what to whom. It’s childish and not good investigative work, as I often tell our new operatives. Perhaps I spoke to my wife before I had all the information from the Cook County State’s Attorney and the Chicago police. The latest word from them is that she was killed in a hit–and–run.”

“Then you should get your team to talk to the doctor who operated on her. Even though her body has disappeared, so the medical examiner can’t perform an autopsy, the ER doctor at Beth Israel saw that she’d been killed by a blow that perforated her small intestine. Inconsistent with being hit by a car.”

“So all you wanted from Eleanor was a lead on Nicola’s private life. I’m sorry we can’t help you with that.”

“Woman worked for you what—two years?—and you know nothing about who she saw on her days off, but in one afternoon you nail down my whisky preferences? I think you care more about your children’s welfare than that.”

He chuckled. “Maybe you’re more interesting to me than a diaper–changing immigrant.”

“She seemed to make a deep impression on your son. That didn’t concern you?”

Again his mouth twisted in slight distaste. “Robbie cried when the cat caught a bird. Then he cried when the cat had to be put to sleep. Everything makes a deep impression on him. Military school might help cure that.”

Poor kid. I wondered if he knew that lay in his future. “So what did you want with me that entailed my making the journey all the way out here?”

“I wanted to see whether you would make the trip.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. His point: to prove he was big and I was small. Let him think he had made it successfully.

“You’ve been an investigator for sixteen years, Vic.” He shifted deliberately to my first name: I was small, he could patronize me. “What keeps you going when your annual billings barely cover your expenses?”

I grinned and stood up. “Idealism and naïveté, Bob. And curiosity, of course, about what happens next.”

He leaned against the padded leather of his armchair and crossed his hands behind his head. “You’re a good investigator, everyone agrees with that. But they say you have a funny kink in you that keeps you picking up stray dogs and that stops you from making a success of yourself. Haven’t you ever thought about giving up your solo practice and coming to work for—well, an outfit like mine? You wouldn’t have to worry about overhead. You’d even have a fully funded retirement plan.”

“This isn’t a job offer, by any chance?”

“Something for you to think about. Not an offer. What would you do if outfits like Continental United stopped tossing you their small jobs? We handle their big ones already; they might agree to roll everything into one package with us, after all.”

My constant nightmare, but I made myself laugh, hoping the smile reached my eyes. “I’d cash in my CD’s and go live in Italy for a while.”

“You don’t have enough CD’s to live on.”

“Your people have been thorough, haven’t they? I guess I’d hang out in the alley and share a bone with the rest of the strays. Maybe chew on your old shoes—you know, if you’ve got a Ferragamo loafer missing its little tag and you’re thinking of throwing it out anyway.”

He stared at me without speaking. Before I could poke any deeper, Claudia came in to say that his Tokyo call was waiting for him.

I smiled. “Catch you later, Bob.”

“Yes, Ms. Warshawski. I can guarantee our paths will cross.”

The young woman who’d brought me up was waiting in the hall to escort me back down. To keep me from getting lost? Or to keep me from filching some of Carnifice’s high–tech gadgetry and using it to steal their clients? I asked her, but of course company policy forbade her telling me.

13 Saturday at the Mall

The last dregs of light were staining the western sky pink when I got home. I took the dogs for a walk, then sat chatting in the backyard with Mr. Contreras until the mosquitoes drove us inside. All the time we were discussing whether the Cubs could stay alive in a race for the playoffs, whether Max and Lotty would ever get married, if a lump on Peppy’s chest required a trip to the vet, I kept wondering what the real story of Nicola Aguinaldo’s death was.

Something about it worried Baladine enough to pull me out to Oak Brook and alternately threaten and bribe me. Maybe his only agenda was to flex his muscles in my face, but I thought he was too sophisticated for simple acts of thuggery. Had my last idle remark, about his shoes, really caught him off guard, or was it my imagination?

And who had claimed Nicola Aguinaldo’s body so pat? Was it her mother—or had it been Baladine, trying to prevent Vishnikov from performing an autopsy? That seemed hard to imagine, since the body wasn’t claimed until late Wednesday night, and Vishnikov might well have made his examination as soon as Aguinaldo’s remains arrived.

“Whatcha thinking about, doll? I asked you three times if you wanted any grappa, and you’re staring into space like there was UFO’s flying past the window.”

“That poor young woman in the road,” I said. “What is so important about her? You’d think she was a fugitive Iraqi dissident or something, the way she’s become the focus of so much attention.”

Mr. Contreras was glad to talk it over with me, but after an hour of thrashing out the events of the week I didn’t feel I had any more insight into what was going on. I finally told him I’d have to sleep on it and stumped slowly up to bed. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but I was too worn out to do anything but sleep.

Saturday I woke so early that I was able to get a proper run in before the heat settled on the city. I even took the dogs swimming and still was out of the shower by eight.

Of the women around the Baladine pool two days ago, the most approachable seemed to be Global magnate Teddy Trant’s wife. Maybe I could catch up with her someplace in the morning.

It was a pain having all my computing capability at the office. If Carnifice took over my little operation, I suppose Baladine would pay me enough to install a terminal at home. Until then I had to trundle down to Leavitt to look up the Trant family. I didn’t want to spend the time or money on the kind of search I’d done on Baladine yesterday—all I wanted was Mrs. Trant’s name and home address. Her first name was Abigail, she used her husband’s last name, and they lived four miles northwest of the Baladines with their nine–year–old daughter, Rhiannon. I packed binoculars, picked up a couple of daily papers and a copy of
Streetwise
from Elton, and once again pointed the Rustmobile toward the Eisenhower and the western suburbs.

As soon as I got to Thornfield Demesne I realized the Skylark was badly suited for surveillance. For one thing it stood out hideously against the Range Rovers and other all–terrain vehicles needed to navigate the perilous ground between mansion and mall. More to the point, you can’t park on these leafy winding roads in front of the gated communities out here. The demesne’s entrance was protected by a guard station that would have put the old Berlin Wall to shame. Not only that, a private security patrol—probably from Carnifice—periodically sent out a cruiser, no doubt to pick riffraff like me up and throw us back across the border.

I drove to a curve in the road about fifty feet from the entrance and pulled my maps out—I could probably pretend one time to the security patrol that I was lost. With the maps propped up on the steering wheel, I tried using my binoculars, but all I could see were tree leaves. If I was really going to survey the place, I needed a horse, or maybe a bicycle. I was on the point of driving to the nearest mall to see if I could rent one—preferably a bike, since I’d never been on a horse—when I had a bit of luck. The great wrought gates of the demesne opened, and the Mercedes Gelaendewagen with the
GLOBAL 2
plates shot out.

I wrenched the Buick into a clumsy U–turn and followed at a discreet distance. Once we got onto a main road I let a few cars get in between me and Abigail. To my relief she drove past all the entrances to the Oak Brook shopping mall—I couldn’t imagine trying to engineer a meeting with her in there. We’d gone south a couple of miles when the Mercedes turned at a sign announcing the Leafy Vale Stables. It looked as though I could get my wish for a horse after all.

Fortunately, the leafy vale lay on the far side of the stables and house; I could see the Mercedes clearly from the road. I parked on the verge and watched as the little girl from the Baladine pool jumped out of the passenger seat. Abigail Trant climbed out and escorted her toward one of the buildings. The child was wearing riding clothes, but the mother had on knee–length shorts and a body–hugging top. Mother seemed to be giving directions to a woman who cocked her head deferentially. Abigail Trant kissed her daughter and climbed back into her sports utility tank. I drove a little further and backed the Rustmobile onto the verge where I could turn in either direction. The Mercedes turned toward Oak Brook.

My heart sank when she headed into the mall. It’s one thing to strike up a conversation over the produce counter, quite another in the middle of the couture salon at Neiman Marcus. I followed her gamely, parking a few cars beyond the Mercedes on the east side of the mall, and trailed behind her to the Parruca Salon. Parruca had a grand set of double doors. They were lined on the inside with red leather. I was able to detect that when a doorman opened them and greeted Abigail Trant by name. The doors closed as she asked after him with the graciousness of the true grande dame.

Short of pretending to be the new shampooer, I could hardly follow her while she had her weekly hair appointment. I wondered how long beautification took. At least long enough for me to wander into the maze of shops in search of a bathroom and a tall iced tea.

After half an hour I came back outside and waited with my newspaper. There wasn’t anyplace to sit, since you’re not supposed to be outside a mall—you’re supposed to be inside buying. As the sun rose toward the middle of the sky, the shade cast by the buildings became a thin wedge. I pushed my shoulders against the stone wall separating Parruca from the sportswear shop to its south and tried to pay attention to the problems besetting Kosovo.

Teenagers swarmed past me, chattering about hair, clothes, boys, girls. Solitary shoppers strode past, their faces set in grim lines, as though buying were an onerous duty. Every now and then the doorman opened Parruca’s red leather doors to decant a client or admit a new one. Finally, when my shirt was so soaked with sweat that I thought I’d have to slip into the sportswear shop to get a fresh one, Abigail Trant came out.

“We’ll see you next week, Mrs. Trant,” the doorman said, gracefully pocketing her tip.

I unglued my shoulders from the wall. Her honey–streaked hair was carefully combed into the right suggestion of windblown disorder, her makeup painted on with a subtle hand, her nails a gleaming pearl. To approach her in my sweaty sunburned state seemed almost sacrilegious, but I did it anyway.

She was startled but didn’t run shrieking for a security guard. Yes, her pleasant face showing no disdain, she certainly remembered my visit to Eleanor Baladine’s pool two days ago. But it was all she could do to keep track of her own daughter’s nanny—she certainly didn’t know anything about Eleanor’s.

“And you know, Teddy and I didn’t move back to the Chicago area until eighteen months ago, so that girl who was killed the other day wasn’t even around then. I’m afraid I can’t answer any questions about her.”

“Can you take ten minutes for a cup of coffee and answer a few other questions?”

A dimple appeared briefly at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve never been interrogated by a detective—maybe it will help me understand how to respond to the girls I’m sponsoring for the You Can Do It Foundation. Many of them seem to have been arrested before reaching high school, although usually for shoplifting.” She looked at her wrist. “I have just about fifteen minutes before my next engagement.”

The coffee bar was so mobbed we didn’t bother waiting for drinks but perched at the high counter. Mrs. Trant readily stepped me through a few basics—she had grown up not too far from here, gone to school with Jennifer Poilevy, had been thrilled when Global sent her and her husband back from Los Angeles to the Midwest.

“L.A. is a difficult place to raise a child. Everyone is on perpetual display, and the kids get sucked into that precocious environment far too young. Out here Rhiannon can simply be a child.”

With her swimming exercises, her horse, and all those other accoutrements of the simple life. But I wanted help, so I kept my sardonic observations to myself.

“It doesn’t seem as though Eleanor Baladine’s children have that same freedom,” I said. “Although I guess the girls are following her swimming regimen pretty enthusiastically.”

“I admire Eleanor, I really do. She’s lucky to have a gift that absorbs her so completely. And she’s wonderful to take Rhiannon under her wing, especially since Rhiannon’s started to outperform Madison. But I think it’s a mistake to push children too hard. When they get to adolescence that can come back to haunt you, you know.”

I grunted noncommittally. “You said that you grew up with Jennifer Poilevy. Was Eleanor Baladine part of your childhood as well?”

Looking briefly at her watch, Abigail Trant explained she’d gotten to know Eleanor before they moved to Oak Brook when their husbands started doing business together four years ago. “BB was solving a lot of Global’s security problems, and the two of them seemed to hit it off. And of course, Jean–Claude Poilevy has been incredibly helpful to us since we moved out here.”

I could imagine how helpful the Illinois Speaker could be to someone with money to fling in his direction—zoning regulations bent, tax breaks for Global, a special deal on the mansion in Thornfield Demesne. “I know the prison notified Baladine as soon as Nicola Aguinaldo got away, so Eleanor knew all about her death before I showed up. Do you have any hunches about why she was so rattled?”

Abigail shrugged. “It’s hard when violence comes close to your children, and the girl had been her children’s nanny.”

I smiled in a way I hoped invited bad–girl chat. “But really—I know she’s your friend and you’ve known her for years—watching her with her son, she doesn’t strike me as the warmly concerned mother.”

Abigail smiled back but refused to play. “BB is such an athletic man, and his naval service was the most important part of his life. It’s understandable he wants his only son to follow his path, and that may blind him and Eleanor to how hard they are on him. And it’s a tough world for a boy these days, it would be better if he could develop the ability to compete in it. If that’s all you need to know, I have to get going. We have twenty people coming to dinner and the caterer is going to need directions from me.”

She slid from her stool; I followed and said, “BB called me out to his office last night to threaten to put me out of business for asking questions about how his kid’s old nanny died. Do you have any idea why?”

She paused next to her stool. A teenager demanded to know whether we could make up our minds—were we going or staying—other people are waiting for seats, you know. The rudeness made Abigail Trant lean a hand on her stool and say we’d be through in a minute. The teenager gave an exasperated sigh and swung around, deliberately hitting Trant with her bag.

“Mall brats,” Abigail Trant said. “Why Rhiannon is not allowed to hang out here—I don’t want her acquiring these manners. Tell me a little about your business. I gather you’re not as big as Carnifice.”

Thank heaven for mall brats—Trant would be in her Mercedes by now if she hadn’t wanted to stomp on the kid. I gave her a thumbnail sketch of the difference between Warshawski Investigations and Carnifice Security. Something about it piqued a genuine interest from her—she forgot about the time and asked me how I’d gotten into detection, what special training I’d needed, how long I’d been doing it.

“Do you enjoy having your own business? Doing all the work yourself, do you ever have time for a private life?”

I admitted a private life was hard for me to maintain. “Since I have to work for a living, I’m happier working for myself than I would be in a big outfit like Carnifice. Anyway, I like knowing that it’s my work that’s solved a problem.”

“Do you think BB could put you out of business?”

I hunched an impatient shoulder. “I don’t know. But I’m curious to know why my asking questions about his kid’s old nanny makes him want to.”

She tapped the wooden counter with one pearl–colored nail. “I don’t think there’s any special mystery about the dead girl. I think it has to do with BB’s personality. You came to his house, you interrogated his wife and his son, and it makes him feel that you proved he was vulnerable. He’s threatening you so he can feel better about the fact that a private detective with a very small company could penetrate his security systems.” She looked at her watch and gave a little gasp. “The time! I really have to run now.”

She threaded her way expertly through the crowds of shoppers. Everything about Abigail Trant depressed me—her polished good looks and manners, the fact that she had stiffed me half a dozen times with perfect good manners, and the possibility she could be right about Nicola Aguinaldo. She was only thirty–five, but she could dance rings about me—no wonder she was entertaining important guests in Oak Brook and I was taking my sweaty body back to my un–air–conditioned car.