Dead Land

by Sara Paretsky

  “Victoria, you must wake up.”

  I opened my eyes with an effort. Lotty, not Gabriella. Lotty, bathing my forehead with lavender water. I started to cry, weak invalid tears. I so wanted to see my mother again.

  My chest was sore; when I moved my arms, to lift a cup of water to my mouth, pain stabbed through me. I shut my eyes again.

  Later, Lotty explained that Guillermo Quintana had tried to shoot me, but when I threw the piano, the bullet shattered it. Plastic shards had been driven into my pecs. I’d fallen backward onto a jagged rock on the edge of Lydia’s hole and knocked myself out.

  Lotty barred all visitors for the first two days after my injury. A horde wanted to talk to me—cops, reporters, lawyers, and friends, including, of course, Mr. Contreras. He showed up with the dogs, despite efforts by hospital security to keep them out. When Peppy and Mitch burrowed into the bed next to me, squeaking because they thought they’d never see me again, the nursing staff pretended they didn’t see it happen.

  Sal came by from the Golden Glow. Arlette and Pierre sent the world’s largest bouquet, festooned with Blackhawk and Canadien memorabilia. Darraugh Graham delivered a basket of fruit with a note urging me to rest and recover fully before getting back to work. Don’t push yourself as hard as you like to. You will always be a valued member of my team. That was a relief. I hoped my other clients would be as understanding.

  Luana Giorgini and Sergeant Pizzello arrived together on the third day. At first, all they did was annoy each other, since both felt they had priority in talking to me. Finally they decided to work together.

  “Quintana was surrounded by cops. And weren’t you still hovering there?” I said to Luana. “Why did he shoot me? He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to lose his head.”

  Luana grinned. “My guess is that he carried out so many successful murders it didn’t occur to him that he couldn’t shoot anyone he pleased whenever he wanted. And even though Taggett was there and ordered the cops not to charge Guillermo, there were just way too many witnesses.”

  Pizzello eyed her coldly. “No one in my district shoots someone in cold blood. Quintana has been booked, and is currently waiting for a bond hearing.”

  “And the diplomats and lawyers and whatnot will send him back to Chile.” Luana said.

  “I don’t have any control over that part of the justice system. Just don’t write in your paper that the cops in my district don’t know the law and don’t enforce it. We do, without regard to who’s breaking it.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it, crime doesn’t pay in Chicago’s Second District.” Luana spoke with a kind of impudent friendliness that robbed her words of their sting.

  “What about Taggett?” I asked. “Is your chief still blocking any inquiries into his involvement in the lakefront redesign?”

  Pizzello scowled—I was putting the lie to her claim of operating without fear or favor, but Luana picked up the ball for her.

  “Murray has made a super recovery,” Luana said. “He says he had found evidence that Taggett was squirreling away money in an offshore account and he submitted FOIAs that triggered Taggett’s attention. The police think it was one of Taggett’s bodyguards who killed Leo and Simon, but—get this—it was Guillermo Quintana himself who probably shot Murray!”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Murray told me he got a message from Larry Nieland inviting him to come to the Abundance to talk about the benefits to Chicago of turning the south lakefront over to a private firm. But Guillermo, or whoever, shot him from the yacht while Murray was still up on that overpass over the Drive.”

  Pizzello revived. “Larry Nieland, the hotshot economist, has been backing away from the Quintanas like a crab from a campfire. He says he invited Ryerson to his boat to try to talk over the pros and cons of the lakefront project, but that Quintana shot Ryerson before they spoke. Can you believe that? Then someone—probably Nieland’s crew—carried Ryerson to the Wildlife Corridor, hoping he’d bleed out there and it would be treated like a random mugging. I ask you!”

  “Has Nieland been charged?” I asked.

  Pizzello made a face. “The state’s attorney says that there’s no way to prove Nieland knew Quintana was going to shoot Ryerson. There might be an accessory or obstruction charge, but probably not. He’s famous, the university is about the biggest employer on the South Side, he brings in cash-paying foreign students. And so on.”

  “So there is one law for the rich and another for the rest of us,” I said bitterly.

  “Not in my book,” Pizzello snapped. “I can’t control the S.A., but we had cuffs on Nieland and Señora Quintana, at least long enough to get them to the station. Put them in that cell your kid—goddaughter?—occupied.”

  “What about Taggett?” I asked. “If Murray found out about an offshore account, and learned he was taking money in exchange for giving Nieland and the Quintanas carte blanche on the lakefront?—”

  “Also out of my hands,” Pizzello said. “The White Collar division is subpoenaing all Taggett’s bank accounts. But we did match prints on the gavel that killed Leo Prinz to Taggett’s driver, and he and the bodyguard apparently lured Simon Lensky to that apartment and bludgeoned him to death.”

  Luana shuddered and changed the subject. “Guess what? I did get Filomena’s DNA. She held on to my phone while I took a selfie with her. You know, the way I dress and all, no one takes me seriously as a journalist, so I get stuff no one else can. The phone’s a perfect surface, all shiny, took prints like a charm. They had enough sweat in them for a good DNA sample. I sent the phone to that private lab you use, and they’re running the test for us. Palurdo’s lawyer is salivating at the thought she can go back to court with proof that Hector is Filomena’s first-degree relative.”

  I was still weak enough that Luana and Pizzello didn’t linger longer. When they left, they were exchanging phone numbers and promising to get together for a drink to sort out the myriad loose ends that remained. I wondered if it would ever be possible to implicate the Quintanas in Hector’s murder, or in Artie Morton’s prison death.

  Hector’s lawyer, Samantha Watkins, came to thank me for my support of her clients, dead and alive. After Filomena’s outburst about Hector’s visit to Tocopilla, Watkins found a miner willing to speak out about what had happened when Hector was there.

  “No one wanted to speak when I went to them because they didn’t think I could stand up to the Quintanas, but now they are more hopeful. It’s a pipe dream, to hope Lydia can recover, that I can prove Hector’s right to a share in the mine and prove Lydia has a right to inherit his share. But now—because of your work—people are at least willing to speak.

  “When Hector went to Tocopilla, he was shocked by the conditions the miners worked under. After figuring out that his father was really a member of the Aguilar family, he announced his intention of turning the mine into a workers’ cooperative—exactly what Filomena was spitting out at you that night by the train tracks. And so she and her husband put together this extraordinary plot to murder their nephew. I don’t think we can ever prove that, but if the DNA on Luana’s phone proves a match with Hector’s, I can go back to the Chilean courts.”

  I didn’t tell her I wasn’t optimistic. Maybe she would prevail. Every now and then, you do have luck on your side. I’d had more than my share this time. Even though I didn’t think the charges against Guillermo Quintana would stick, it had been luck that saved me in the canyon, luck that brought Filomena to the Wildlife Corridor, luck that saved Murray and Lydia.

  The most infuriating reaction came from Larry Nieland. He actually came to the hospital to lecture me on the importance of turning public lands over to private developers.

  “Giff Taggett made a few bad decisions about using offshore banking, but his head was in the right place. How many people use that lakefront every day, and how much do they contribute to keeping the paths in good shape and the garbage picked up? People like me are subsidizing people like them, and yet I can’t use the lake
for what I most want, namely a place to keep my boat close to where I live. Taxes are always an unfair burden on people with the most money. The rest of the city, or state, or country, suck on us like leeches.

  “Chile showed how you could make true monetary policy work for the good of the whole economy. If you hadn’t been so officious and, really, so totally ignorant, I could have prepared a blueprint for showing how monetarism could work in America. It’s disappointing to think that this university awarded you your degrees. We need to set higher standards.”

  I looked at him in disbelief. “You know, there’s a ward in this hospital where you could build cities out of blocks and knock them over for fun. They’d probably also let you have a little tub and a toy boat to splash around. You’d be happy and the rest of us would be safer.”

  I pressed the call button and told the nurse who answered that my visitor had been pushing on my wounds and wouldn’t leave me alone.

  “That’s a goddamn—”

  “Truth,” I said. “I have a lot of wounds from the general mayhem you and your pals inflicted on people like Lydia Zamir and Elisa Palurdo. You go home and play with your toys and don’t talk to me again until you know how to think straight.”

  If Nieland’s was the worst reaction, the best came from Murray. He came to see me the day he himself was being sent home. He had lost twenty pounds and some of his swagger, but his beard was reappearing.

  He sat on the edge of my bed, playing with the call button cord. “I was grandstanding, you know.”

  I shook my head. “You were shot. You know the mantra: don’t blame the victim.”

  “I was grandstanding. Go down to Forty-seventh Street at night for an exclusive, don’t tell anyone, especially not the damned righteous Warshawski. I was going to show her that I could dig up a story with one computer tied behind my back.”

  “Luana told me—you found Taggett’s offshore account. That took some serious doing.”

  “Oh, you know—I know a guy at the SEC. He knows a guy who knows a gal. The big story was about Global. Big to me, anyway. Global is a principal investor in Globo Giratorio in Santiago. That’s the cable-TV outfit that airs Filomena Quintana’s show. Minas y Puentes owns the maximum permissible share in Global Entertainment by a foreign entity; Global owns a chunk of Minas y Puentes. That’s why Bolton wanted to keep an eye on the Lydia investigation. It would have broken all their hearts to have Lydia alive and well and litigating.”

  “Bolton will never let that story see the light of day,” I said.

  “You’re right about that, Warshawski. It’s why I’m quitting—as soon as I make sure I’ve got my hospital bills paid by their insurance plan. This is between you and me, but I have a contract with Gaudy Press for a book on the story—how these global media giants withhold news from us and make us live in a world of conspiracy and innuendo.”

  “Start wearing body armor, Ryerson. You getting shot—that was very hard. Don’t make me go through it twice.”

  “Says the lady who took a chestful of shrapnel. Vic—you singing those Italian songs to me—I heard you, it was a lifeline.” He leaned forward to kiss me. “Sansen’s one lucky SOB. Hope he knows it.”

  He left without looking back at me, which was just as well. I cried easily these days.

  Peter flew in from Turkey the day I was released. He came directly to the hospital from the airport and helped me dress, helped me into the wheelchair that you’re required to use when you’re leaving.

  “I told you not to go hanging out of windows without me standing by,” he murmured into my hair. “I didn’t know I needed to beg you to stay away from toy pianos.”

  I got stronger. We took a trip to the Laurentians, where Arlette and Pierre welcomed us almost too enthusiastically. Pierre had the Canadiens’ trainer on tap, and I started each day with a round of physical therapy. In the afternoons we hiked or canoed. Bernie practiced on the rink her father and Boom-Boom had installed in the village hall when they first bought their mountain property, while Arlette drove Angela Creedy to use the village’s gym courts. Angela’s mother was still there, but Angela and Bernie were getting ready to go back to school.

  The Canadiens were making their plane available again to take the young women to Chicago. We all flew down together. Peter had to return to Turkey; it was time for me to show my clients I could still do a job. Bernie’s and Angela’s mothers wanted to oversee their daughters’ choice of housing—no more ramshackle Victorians with doors that thugs could break down.

  “It was so dangerous for weeks, and now, all at once, it isn’t. Why is that?” Angela asked on the plane.

  “It’s the nature of vermin,” I said. “You have to shine a lot of light on them to get other people to pay attention, but once they’ve been well and truly exposed, they end up like the Wizard of Oz, just tiny people using lights and mirrors to prop themselves up.”

  “Do you think Lydia will get the mine and turn it over to the workers, the way Hector wanted?”

  “I think it’s very unlikely,” I said soberly. “Guillermo Quintana has already been released and sent back to Chile under diplomatic cover, and he and his wife have so much power in that country I can’t believe the courts will find in Lydia’s favor.”

  When we landed, Peter came back to my place with me. Before he returned to his dig, he wanted to make sure Donna Lutas didn’t go ahead with eviction proceedings. If she did, he hoped I would move into his own condo.

  Lutas was feeling more bitter toward me than ever, Mr. Contreras reported: after she overheard Mr. Contreras’s and my staged conversation announcing that Lydia had been seen in the park, Lutas rushed to her managing partner with the news. The disastrous way events had unraveled for two of their most important clients caused Devlin & Wickham to make Lutas a scapegoat: Gorbeck fired her.

  When Lutas went to the condo board, she couldn’t muster any support from the other people in my building. My neighbors were sorry for me because I’d been injured. They were grateful to me for drawing gunfire in a park, not in our home, I was down to two dogs. Mrs. Sung even apologized to me for adding to my worries when I was working so hard to protect my goddaughter.

  I accepted the apology with appropriate solemnity, but it seemed a strange takeaway. I thought of all the gritty sleepless nights in Kansas and Chicago, of dodging bullets, of the murder victims in Chile, Horsethief Canyon, and Chicago.

  “You did protect Bernie,” Peter said when I told him about the interchange. “You couldn’t stop people so thoroughly evil—so full of their own entitlement—from murder. Protecting the Bernies in your life is worth something. You saved Lydia’s life, too. You kept the cops from arresting Coop. And for me, most important, you saved your own life.”

  He pulled me to him; the wounds in my chest protested a little, but I told them to shut up and let me enjoy the moment.

  The day after Peter flew out, I went back to Forty-seventh Street. The beaches were officially closed for the year, but the days were still hot and the water was warm. I floated under a cerulean sky, did a few lazy strokes to test my pecs. They had nearly recovered but weren’t ready yet for a strenuous workout.

  I climbed out and sat on one of the rocks, letting the air dry me. A wet nose shoved itself into my leg. A jolt of fear went through me, but then I felt the head and shoulders rub against me.

  “Hey, Bear.” I nuzzled the snout next to me.

  “Hey, yourself, Warshawski,” Coop said. “Quite a ruckus you created. You got them to shut down any talk of turning the park into a resort. You got them to stop wanting me to be that poor kid Leo’s killer. You saved Lydia, and I couldn’t do none of those things.”

  “You did save Lydia. You got her to Cassie, got her the help she needed.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He lapsed into silence.

  “Where did you go when you dropped her off?” I asked. “Franklin Alsop and Cassie protected you, you know.”

  “Yeah. Cassie, she’s like—well, the mother you always hop
e you’ll wake up and find out replaced the one who was whacking you with a hot frying pan.” He gave a laugh that turned into a coughing fit.

  “But, yeah, I dropped off Lydia at Cassie’s and hightailed it for northern Minnesota. I was hanging out near the border, just in case, you know. When I saw the news reports about Taggett and those Chilean dudes, I hitched back to the prairie and then headed over to here. I went to try to find you but you was out of town. Your neighbor, the old guy, I thought he was going to push my brains through my ears with that pipe wrench of his when I tried to find out where you were and what you were doing. Anger management—we all need a dose from time to time.”

  I grunted noncommittally. “You staying around long?”

  “Nah. City life isn’t for me. I’m heading back to the prairie. Just wanted to say thanks in person, that’s all.”

  64

  Still Living in Love

  The prairie in fall seemed to my untrained eye more beautiful than it had been in high summer. The plants had turned different shades of brown, ranging from chestnut to sienna, with touches of gold and purple. Grasses swished against Peter Sansen’s and my legs as we walked along a nearly invisible trail from the lane to Cassie’s house. Franklin Alsop had taken Mr. Contreras there in an electric wagon that he kept for heavy hauling.

  In the months since my shooting, I’d gone back to regular work, the kind you mostly do with the aid of the Internet, not with climbing up and down cliff faces. I was doing serious rehab work; I wanted to climb again, although hopefully not with someone using me for target practice.

  Murray had made a strong recovery himself, and was enthusiastically working on his book. Some of what he knew he put out in a podcast, just enough to whet appetites for the book when it came out.

  Taggett was facing embezzlement charges, but no one was ready to indict him as an accessory in Leo’s or Simon’s murders—the roots of his favor tree in Cook County’s patronage jungle grew too deep. I was less happy when my alma mater defended Larry Nieland’s role. I was trying not to pay attention to the dreary side of the justice system, the side where people with billions of dollars and millions of lawyers skated away from the charges against them.