V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 11

He had an interestbearing checking account, where his expenses more or less equaled the thirtyfive hundred dollars he took home from his business each month. The business, SpecialT Uniforms, was nine years old. It had grown from annual receivables of six thousand to over four hundred thousand.

Frenada was writing regular tuition checks to St. Remigio's Catholic school for two children-not his own as far as I knew. At least there was no record of a marriage, or any indication of a childsupport agreement. He averaged seven hundred dollars a month each on his American Express and MasterCard, for the ordinary business of living. He held a certificate of deposit for twenty thousand dollars. He was paying a mortgage on a $150,000 twoflat in the Irving Park neighborhood, and he had a lifeinsurance policy worth a hundred thousand dollars, with three children named Caliente listed as the beneficiaries. Besides that munificence, he drove a fouryearold Taurus that he'd just about paid for.

No holdings in the Caymans, no portfolio of stocks or options. No residue of the drug trade, no unusual income of any kind that might indicate blackmail. Frenada was either extremely honest, or so clever that not even LifeStory's paid informants could track his holdings.

So what did Murray and AlexSandy think was buried here? If it was a juvenile crime, I wasn't interested in digging that far into his past. Maybe he'd done a quasi legal deal to get preferred treatment in orders or to obtain financing.

That didn't seem any different from Baladine and Rapelec in Africa, except the scale was smaller.

I reached Murray in his office. "I can't take on this Frenada a.s.signment. Since you came along with Alex to try to hire me, I a.s.sume I can tell you without needing to talk to her."

"Yeah, I'll tell her. Any particular reason?"

I stared at the floor, noticing the dust bunnies that had gathered around my copier. "I'm busy these days," I said after too long a silence. "An inquiry like this would take more resources than I have."

"Thanks for trusting me, Vic. I'll tell Alex you're too busy."

His anger, more hurt than rage, made me say quickly, "Murray. You don't know what Global's real agenda is here, do you?"

"Alex talked the situation over with me on Friday," he said stiffly. "If it sounds incredible to you, then it's because you don't understand the way Hollywood operates. Everything is image for them, so the image becomes more real than the actual world around them. Lacey's success and Global's image are intertwined. They want-"

"I know what they want, babe," I said gently. "I just don't know why they want it. In the matter of the actual world, I talked to the house d.i.c.k at the Trianon. I don't know if he'd be as forthcoming with you as he was with me, but you might check him out."

We hung up on that fractured note. Poor Murray. I didn't think I could bear to witness his vulnerability if Global took him to pieces.

Mary Louise came in around ten, after she'd gotten Nate and Josh off to day camp. She was going to make phone calls to Georgia for me while I pitched my wares to a couple of lawyers who were looking for a firm to handle their investigations. Such meetings often lead nowhere, but I have to keep doing it-and with enough enthusiasm that I'm not defeating myself walking in the door.

"You call this Alex woman to say you weren't playing Global's game?" Mary Louise asked as I gathered presentation materials into my briefcase.

"Yes, ma'am, Officer Neely." I saluted her smartly. "At least, I told Murray."

The phone rang before I could leave; I hovered in the doorway while Mary Louise answered. Her expression became wooden.

"Warshawski Investigations . . . No, this is Detective Neely. Ms. Warshawski is leaving for a meeting. I'll see if she can take your call. . . . Speaking of the devil," she added to me, her finger on the HOLD b.u.t.ton.

I came back to the desk.

"Vic, I'm disappointed that you won't take the job for me," Alex said in lieu of a greeting. "I'd like you to think it over-for your sake as well as Lacey's-before I take your no as final."

"I've thought it over, Sandy-Alex, I mean. Thought it over, talked it over with my advisers. We all agree it's not the right a.s.signment for me. But I know the house detective at the Trianon; you can trust him to look after Lacey for you."

"You talked to Lacey after I expressly asked you not to?" Her tone was as sharp as a slap in the face.

"You're piquing me, Sandy. What would Lacey tell me that you'd rather I didn't hear?"

"My name is Alex now. I wish you'd make an effort to remember. Teddy Trant really wants you to take this job. He asked me personally to offer it to you."

So maybe Abigail was putting a finger in my pie. "I'm excited. I didn't think the big guy knew I was on the planet. Unless BB Baladine told him?"

That made her huffy. "He knows about you because I recommended you. After Murray gave you a glowing buildup, I might add."

"I'm grateful to both of you, but the answer is still no."

"Then you're making a big mistake. Think it-"

"That almost sounds like a threat, Sandy. Alex, that is."

"Friendly advice. Although why I bother I don't know. Think it over, think it better. I'll leave the offer open until noon tomorrow." She broke the connection with a snap.

"Murray can do better for himself than that" was Mary Louise's only comment when I repeated the conversation before taking off.

My presentation went well; the lawyers gave me a small job with the prospect of bigger ones to follow. When I got back at four, Mary Louise had completed her calls and typed up a neat report for me to send over to Continental United in the morning. Altogether a more productive day than I'd had lately.

I finished my share of the report and went over to Lotty's. We try to get together once a week, but tonight was our first chance for a relaxed conversation in over a month.

While we ate smoked salmon on her tiny balcony, I caught Lotty up on the little I knew of Nicola Aguinaldo's story. When I told her about Morrell, Lotty went into her study and brought out a copy of Vanis.h.i.+ng into Silence, his book on the Disappeared in Chile and Argentina. I looked at the photograph on the jacket flap. Of course I'd only seen Morrell by candlelight, and he was seven or eight years younger in the picture, but it was obviously the same man. He had a thin face and was smiling slightly, as if mocking himself for posing for a photograph.

I borrowed the book from her-I wanted to get an idea of how Morrell thought, or at least what he thought. After that, Lotty and I talked idly about other matters. Lotty's is an intense, sometimes stormy presence, but in her home, with its polished floors and vivid colors, I always find a rea.s.suring haven.

Lotty's workday starts at six. I left early, my mood benign enough to take on dull household tasks: I put my laundry away, cleaned the mold out of the bathtub, washed down the kitchen cabinets and floor. The bedroom could use a vacuuming, but my domesticity spreads only so far. I planted myself in front of the piano and began picking out a fughetta with slow, loud fingers.

It's possible, as the detective at the Trianon had said yesterday, that my dad would have loved to see me follow in his footsteps, but I knew my mother would not. She wanted me to live a life of erudition if not artistry, to inhabit the milieu the second World War had destroyed for her-concerts, books, voice lessons, friends who lived for music and art. She had made me learn both piano and voice, hoping I would have the vocal career the war had taken from her. She certainly would have resented anyone who called me a bluecollar girl.

I moved from the fughetta to warming up my voice, which I hadn't done for several weeks. I was finding my middle range when the phone rang. It was Morrell.

"Ms. Warshawski. I'm in the neighborhood. Can I come up for a minute?"

"I'm not ready for company. Can't we do this on the phone?"

"I'd rather not. And I won't be company-I'll be gone so fast you almost won't know I was there."

I'd changed into cutoffs for my housework, and my arms and legs were streaked with dirt. So be it. If he wanted to drop in on me unawares, he had to take me as I was. I went back to my middle voice and let Mr. Contreras and the dogs answer the bell when Morrell rang.

I waited a minute before going out to the landing. My neighbor was interrogating Morrell: "Is she expecting you this late at night, young man? She never mentioned you before that I ever heard of."

I laughed a little but ran down the stairs in my bare feet before the woman who lived opposite Mr. Contreras came out to complain about the noise. "It's okay.

He's got some information for a case I'm working on."

I introduced Morrell to Peppy. "This is the police dog. The big guy is her son.

And this is my neighbor and good friend, Mr. Contreras."

The old man had been looking hurt that I hadn't told him about Morrell earlier, but my introduction appeased him slightly. He took the dogs back inside the apartment after only a very small discourse on how I needed to let him know what strangers to expect when the police were on my b.u.t.t.

Morrell followed me up the stairs. "I suppose with a neighbor like that you don't need a security system. Reminds me of the villages in Guatemala, where people seem to look out for each other more than we do here."

"He drives me crazy half the time, but you're right: I'd feel mighty lost without him."

I ushered Morrell to the stuffed armchair and sat astride the piano bench. In the lamplight I saw that his thick hair was streaked with white and the laugh lines around his eyes were more deeply grooved than in his bookjacket photo.

"This really will take only a minute, but my years in South America make me nervous about giving confidential information over the phone. I managed to find Nicola Aguinaldo's mother. She didn't know her daughter was dead. And she definitely doesn't have her body."

I looked at him narrowly, but there's no real way to tell whether people are lying to you or not. "I'd like to talk to Seora Mercedes myself. Can you tell me where you found her?"

He hesitated. "She's not likely to confide in a stranger."

"She confided in you, and last night you a.s.sured me you'd never laid eyes on her."

His mouth twitched in the suggestion of a smile. "I've talked to a couple of people about your work, and they were right: you are a very astute observer. Can you please take my word for it, that Seora Mercedes doesn't have her daughter's body?"

I picked out a minor triad in the ba.s.s clef. "I'm getting fed up with people pus.h.i.+ng me toward Aguinaldo with one hand and pulling me away from her with the other. There's something wrong with how she died, but you seem to be joining the group of breakdancers writhing on stage, saying, "Watch,' "Don't watch.' I need to find someone who knows about Aguinaldo's private life. Her mother may not, but her kid might. Children know a lot about what their mothers get up to."

He drummed his fingers on the chair arm, thinking it over, but finally shook his head. "The trouble is, the more people who talk to Seora Mercedes, the riskier her position becomes."

"Riskier how?"

"Deportation. She wants to stay in America so that her surviving granddaughter can get an education and make something more of herself than being a nanny or a factory hand. I can try to find out something for you, if you'd like. . . ." His voice trailed away, leaving it as a question.

I agreed somewhat grumpily. I hate leaving a crucial piece of an investigation in someone else's hands, especially when I don't know anything about his skills.

He got up to leave but stopped to admire the piano. "You must be a serious musician to keep a baby grand in your living room. I play some, but not on anything this nice."

"My mother was a serious musician. One of her old friends keeps this in shape for me, but I never made it past Thompson's fourth book." I loved action too much, even as a child, and my hours of practice were a misery when I longed to be running or swimming.

Morrell gave the same selfmocking smile he'd shown in his photo and sat down to try the piano. He ran through part of a Chopin nocturne with unusual feeling for an amateur. When he saw "Erbarme dich" on the music rack, he started to play and I began to sing. Bach produces a certain kind of balm. When Morrell got up to go, with an apology for showing off, I felt calmer but no more certain than I was earlier whether he was telling the truth about Nicola Aguinaldo's mother.

But if she didn't have the body, where was it?

Perhaps those researchers who want you to listen to Bach or Mozart to boost your brain are right, because when he left I had an idea for the morning. It wasn't the best idea I ever had, as it turned out, but that wasn't really Bach's fault.

I went down to Mr. Contreras's when I heard the front door shut. As I'd expected, my neighbor was waiting up to see how long I kept a strange man in my apartment.

"How would you like to go on a wildgoose chase with me tomorrow?" I asked him before he could comment on Morrell. "Be a grieving grandfather whose darling baby ran away from jail and died a sad death?"

He revived instantly.

18.

These Walls Do a Prison Make The next morning, while Mary Louise sat at my desk organizing files, I collected my maps and set out with Mr. Contreras and the dogs for the long drive across the state to Coolis. The m.u.f.fler was rumbling more loudly than ever. The airconditioning didn't work, so we had to ride with the windows open and our teeth rattling.

"That m.u.f.fler wasn't this bad when we picked up the car," Mr. Contreras observed when we stopped at the Elgin toll plaza to throw in our quarters. "Guy must have stuck it on with duct tape to sell this heap."

"Let's hope the thing holds together until we're back in Chicago."

The dogs kept their heads out the windows, periodically switching sides as we moved into the real country and they picked up the scent of the river. West of Rockford we pulled over at a rest area for lunch. Mr. Contreras was a willing but uncertain partner in the outing; while the dogs swam in the Fox River we went over his lines until he felt confident enough to fly solo.

Even with that long break, by keeping the Rustmobile roaring at its top speed-around seventy-we managed to get to Coolis a little after twelve. It was a pretty town, built in a valley of two small rivers feeding the Mississippi: the big river lies ten miles to the west. Coolis had been a leadmining hub in the 1800s, but was close to death when the state decided to build its new women's prison here.

I'd never known who in Coolis had enough money or clout to grease JeanClaude Poilevy's wheels, but as we drove through town to the prison, we pa.s.sed Baladine Hardware, followed by Baladine LincolnMercury. I could see BB as a boy at Baladine Hardware, playing with the combination locks and fantasizing about someday playing with really big locks and keys. As a friend of Poilevy's, Baladine would have had the inside track anyway on where the legislature awarded the prison contract, but the decision to build in his family's town must have taken a major contribution to the Republican party coffers.

Illinois seems like a large place when you look at a map, stretching four hundred miles from Wisconsin to Missouri, but it's really just a cozy little hometown, where everybody knows everybody else and n.o.body tells secrets outside the family. Businesses pay money to politicians to get even greater amounts of money pumped back to them via state contracts, and while some of it may be scuzzy, none of its illegal-because the guys who have their hands in one another's pockets are writing the laws.

The prison stood two miles west of town; scraggly strip malls had grown up along the route. Signs warned drivers against hitchhikers, since they might be escaped prisoners and should be considered dangerous. Women like Nicola Aguinaldo, for instance, might bleed all over you; that would be bad.

Even Mr. Contreras grew quiet when we pa.s.sed the front gate. Three layers of high fencing, with razor wire along the tops and current running through the outermost, separated us from the prison. It looked in some ways like a modern industrial park, with its low white buildings laid out in a kind of campus-except that the windows were mere slits, like the arrow holes in a medieval castle. Also like a castle, watchtowers holding armed guards covered the perimeter. A kind of reverse castle, where the guards thought the enemy lay within rather than without.

Although the land around the prison was dotted with wildflowers and trees, inside what wasn't concrete had become hardscrabble from too many marching feet and too little care. In the distance we could see some women playing what might be softball; as they ran they kicked up dust eddies.

"Umph." Mr. Contreras let out a grunt after I turned around and headed back into town. "If you wasn't desperate before you landed in that place, you sure would be after you'd been there a day or two. If that didn't cure you of a life of crime nothing would."

"Or it would get you feeling so hopeless you'd feel you didn't have any choices." My neighbor and I do not think as one on most social issues, but that doesn't stop his wanting to be involved in helping me tilt at whatever windmill I'm charging on a given day.

The hospital lay inside the town boundary, off the main road leading to the prison. Behind it ran Smallpox Creek, flowing northwest to the Mississippi, although not at any great pace. We let the dogs out again to cool off in the water, then checked the side roads around the hospital. Just as my maps had shown, you could either go directly to jail or into town from the hospital, but you didn't have any other choice for escape than the creek. After driving the route long enough to memorize it we returned to the hospital and parked.

Coolis General had started as a small brick building. With the arrival of the prison and wealth, two enormous wings had been attached, giving it the appearance of a dragonfly. We walked up a long path, past beds of summer flowers, to the entrance, which was in the old part, the body of the insect.

Signs directed visitors to the Connie Brest Baladine Surgicenter, to radiology, and to patient information.

"Howdy," Mr. Contreras said to the bored woman at the information desk. "I need to talk to someone about my granddaughter. She-well, she was a patient here up to last week, and things didn't turn out too good for her."

The woman braced herself. I could see what to do if family threatens a malpractice suit running through her mind as she asked Mr. Contreras for his granddaughter's name.

"Nicola Aguinaldo." He spelled it for her. "I ain't saying we blame the hospital or anything, but I sure would like to know how she come in and how she left and all. She-well, she got herself in a little bit of trouble up in Chicago, and she was over here in Coolis, in the jail, when she took sick."

Once he got past his initial nervousness, he was in full stride. I began to believe that Nicola Aguinaldo really had been his granddaughter, with the family that worried about her, but you know how it is with today's young people, you can't ever tell them nothing. The woman at the desk kept trying to interrupt him-she wanted to explain that she couldn't talk to him about patients, especially not when they were prisoners, but she finally gave up and summoned a superior.

In a few minutes a woman about my own age showed up. If she'd been sprayed with polyurethane she couldn't have been glossier or more untouchable. She introduced herself as Muriel Paxton, the head of patient affairs, and invited us to follow her to her office. The back of her crimson suit barely moved as she walked, as though she'd figured out how to use her legs without involving her pelvis.

Like all modern hospitals, Coolis General had spared no expense on their administrative offices. Radical mastectomies may be done now as outpatient procedures, but heaven forbid that management skimps on any attention to comfort. Muriel Paxton enthroned herself behind a slab of rosewood that clashed with the red of her suit. Mr. Contreras and I, feet sinking to our ankles in the lavender pile on the floor, sat in fauxwicker side chairs.

"Why don't we start with your names." Ms. Paxton held a pen like a dagger over a legal pad.

"This is Nicola Aguinaldo's grandfather," I said, "and I'm the family lawyer."

I spelled my last name slowly. As I hoped, the presence of a lawyer kept Ms.

Paxton from demanding Mr. Contreras's name-he didn't want to call himself Aguinaldo, and he'd told me on the way over if he was going to take part in this scheme he didn't want his name taken down.

"And what seems to be the problem?" The administrator's smile was as bright as her lipstick, but no warmth came with it.

"The problem is, my little girl is dead. I want to know how she could have got out of here with no one the wiser."