A Picture of Guilt

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Dad’s eyes sparkled as he watched her. “She’s beautiful, Ellie.”

  She was wearing a satiny white blouse that barely skimmed her waist, a short gray skirt, and heels.

  “She’s going to be fighting them off with sticks.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “You’ll live through it.” Chuckling, he squeezed my hand with both of his. “So, you’re okay now, sweetheart?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell him about my visits with DePalma, Morelli, or the FBI, but I did tell him about Dale Reedy. “Looks like I might be getting some work after all. I met with a woman from Great Lakes Oil.”

  “You see? All that worry for nothing. You should listen to your daughter. What does she say? Take a chill pill.”

  I smiled. “Yeah. But something odd did happen. Do you remember us talking about David’s new client? The petrochemical sheik from Saudi Arabia?”

  Dad released my hand and rubbed his nose.

  “He’s buying one of Great Lakes Oil’s chemical plants in Indiana. But apparently, he called my client. Dale Reedy.”

  “So?”

  “She’s in Training and Development, not Acquisitions.”

  “Like I said, so?”

  “So, when we had dinner together a few weeks ago, he said he didn’t know her. In fact, at the time, we both thought she was a he.”

  Dad’s eyes slid toward the dance floor where the Eskin family was gathering. “I’m still waiting for the punch line.”

  “Dad, why would he call her? I can understand him talking to the lawyers. Or the Acquisitions people. But Training and Development?”

  “How do you know this happened?”

  “I found his number on her pad of paper.”

  “Maybe some question came up about training people at the plant.”

  “But he specifically said he didn’t know her. And he knew I was going to be meeting her. Don’t you find that coincidental?”

  My father fixed me with one of his stares: the one that says Back off and stop making trouble. Then he got up from the table and walked over to Rachel, who was scooping up the last of her ice cream. He bowed and held out his hand. A minute later, they were dancing.

  Dad still did an excellent foxtrot, and Rachel followed beautifully. As he waltzed her around the room, people at some of the tables pointed at the elderly gentleman with the young girl. When the music ended, he dipped Rachel with a flourish. She bent back almost prone and pointed her toes like a pro. I heard a smattering of applause.

  It was after four when we got back into the car. The afternoon light was fading, but I felt disoriented, like you do when you come out of a movie in the middle of the day. As I turned out of the lot, Dad fidgeted in the front seat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s poking me in the back.”

  I pulled to the side of the road. He eased himself off the seat and shoved his hand into the space between the seat cushion and back.

  “Something’s stuck in here.”

  “Hold on.” I started to open my door so I could walk around.

  “No. I got it.” He shook his head and pulled out a piece of silver jewelry. The bracelet from Calumet Park. “What is this?”

  I looked over, surprised. “That’s strange. How did that get there?”

  “What is this, a bracelet?”

  “I found it a few weeks ago. I thought it was in my bag.”

  Dad looked puzzled. “You should keep it in your jewelry box.”

  “I guess I should.” I was about to shove it into my pocket when something made me check the rearview mirror. Rachel, her eyes down, kept winding a strand of hair around her fingers. She didn’t look up.

  Mystery solved.

  I retrieved my canvas bag from the floor under Dad’s feet and dropped the bracelet into it. She and I would have to have a chat about privacy. Subhead two, paragraph six of the Boundaries discussion. But that was later.

  Once we were on our way again, Dad looked over and grinned. “I have a confession to make.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ll tell you the truth. I never wanted you to hook up with Danny. It was your mother’s idea.”

  “It wasn’t you? How come?” I expected him to launch into his we-are-German-Jews-and-the-Eskins-aren’t routine, but he surprised me.

  “Danny wasn’t what you’d call an Einstein. And it’s obvious the kid’s not much better.”

  I smiled.

  “By the way, where’s David?”

  My smiled faded. “He’s in Philadelphia.”

  My father cocked his head, as if to ask why.

  I shook my head.

  Rachel dangled her arms over the front seat. “Mom says they’re—”

  My father placed his hand on her arm. “Rachel. Iz genug.”

  That’s enough.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  A chilly breeze swayed branches against the darkening sky, but after the brittle noise of the party, the feel of the wind was soothing. As we pulled into the driveway, I noticed a silver sports car parked at the curb. I didn’t think too much about it until Rachel squealed.

  “Mother, look. I can’t believe it. A Spyder. Right in front of our house.”

  “A Spyder?” I shivered.

  “The car, Mother. It’s only one of the tightest cars ever.”

  “Tight?”

  “Cool, Mom. Tight is cool.”

  I looked, but I’m not much of a car person. Or a teenage linguist.

  “Look, Mom, a guy’s getting out.” She craned her neck and let out a wolf whistle. I giggled, but the giggle died in my throat when Nick LeJeune slid out of the driver’s seat. I threw the Volvo in park.

  Rachel looked over. “You know this guy?”

  “You do too. He was here last week.”

  I climbed out of the car and adjusted my jacket. LeJeune leaned against his car. He was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, and his Different Drummer hat was pulled low on his forehead. I walked over, aware that under the brim, his eyes were on me. “What brings you back this way, Agent LeJeune?”

  “Is this your daughter?” He looked past me.

  I turned around. Rachel was eyeing him curiously. “Rachel, this is Nick LeJeune.”

  He flipped up his hat. “You’re almost as pretty as your mama.” He held out his hand.

  I could see her color, even in the dim light.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

  “I told you I’d get back to you.”

  “On a weekend?”

  “The Bureau never sleeps, chér.”

  ‘Chér’? I paused. “You’re lucky you caught us.”

  “I agree.”

  I made a show of looking him up and down. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping you’d go for a ride with me.”

  Rachel sucked in a breath.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later, I squeezed into the Spyder next to Rachel. I’d changed into jeans, work boots, and a heavy jacket. LeJeune made a loop around the village, cruising the main streets well over the speed limit. Rachel pumped him with car-talk questions, and he seemed genuinely pleased to reply. I kept my eyes peeled to the road, only half listening to their chatter. Our village is known up and down the North Shore for the cops who lurk on side streets just waiting to snare speeders.

  Thankfully, there were none today, and as we dropped her off at Katie’s, Rachel was full of smiles. She agreed to be home by eleven and to call my cell if she needed a ride. Then she raced inside to tell Katie and everybody else she’d ever known about her adventure. LeJeune turned onto the Edens and headed downtown.

  “You made a friend,” I said.

  “She’s a cute kid.”

  “The best.”

  “Knows her stuff about cars.”

  “Rachel?”

  “She knew the model number, the horsepower, the torque. Even knew the manual transmission doesn’t have a clutch.�
�

  I looked down. Sure enough, there was no third pedal on the floor.

  “It’s controlled by computer now.”

  I ran a hand through my hair. I should have listened more carefully. Where did she learn that stuff? Her father? Or someone else—like some kid who’d just gotten his license? Should I worry?

  “You want to know who taught her, don’t you?” He read my mind. “And what she had to fork over in return.”

  My hand dropped to my lap. The guy was pretty sure of himself. Probably thought he was God’s gift to the world of crime fighting. Women, too.

  He grew quiet as he threaded through traffic. The Spyder sat lower on the road than I liked, but it was well balanced, and LeJeune was a good driver.

  “I got it this spring,” he said. “A twenty-year reward to myself.”

  It occurred to me that a sports car was something a single man would buy. Unless the man had money to burn. Which FBI agents didn’t. Or wouldn’t flaunt if they did. “You’ve been an agent for twenty years?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you said you were from Cajun country.”

  “I’ve been here since eighty-two.”

  He was quiet again. The Spyder slipped through traffic with ease, the air was crisp, and the lights on the highway sparkled. I felt lighter than I had in weeks. I didn’t even care where we were going.

  At Fullerton, he turned east and then south when he reached Lincoln Avenue. The street hasn’t changed much, despite the yuppie invasion that followed the urban pioneers. More fake gas lamps and wrought iron, maybe, but a lot of the same restaurants and clubs. The area used to be a mecca for blues joints; some are still there. But the front end of the Chevy that once jutted out of a brick wall twenty feet above the street was gone, and so was the blues club underneath it. In its place was a Thai restaurant with a uninspiring façade.

  “I miss it, too,” he said, following my gaze.

  We parked in a lot just off Lincoln. Summer is Chicago’s best season, but people don’t hibernate until January, and despite the cold, the sidewalks were crowded. As we rounded the corner, we heard the wail of a saxophone. The guy who stations himself on the Michigan Avenue bridge Monday through Friday was moonlighting here tonight. LeJeune threw a bill into his case.

  “Where are we going?” I zipped up my jacket.

  “I thought we’d have a drink…listen to some music.”

  “A drink. Music?”

  “Unless you’ve got other plans…”

  Before I could answer, he opened the door to Blues Alley, and we walked into a large room. Muddy Waters spilled out of the jukebox. Twenty tables surrounded a stage, half of them filled. The blades of a ceiling fan circled lethargically, not doing much to disperse a thick cloud of smoke.

  I sat at a table while LeJeune went to the bar, returning with a draft and glass of wine. I wondered how he knew what I drank.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s going on? Why did we come all this way?”

  “You like blues?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Well…”

  A woman in jeans and a tight green sweater squeezed by us, her attention so focused on LeJeune that when she brushed the edge of the table, a few drops of beer spilled out of his glass. He pretended not to notice. He tapped a fist on the table to the music.

  When the riff ended, he looked over. “You’ve got balls, chér. You know that?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Going to DePalma’s—that took guts. And the way you handled Morelli. You don’t let people give you any shit.”

  An official commendation from the Bureau? Was this why I was here? “I told you. I was desperate.”

  He smiled. “Thoreau says, ‘It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.’ But I’d make an exception in your case.” The jukebox went quiet. “So, Ellie Foreman. How did you get involved with video?”

  The guy jumped around as unpredictably as a fly. He was either very cunning or totally incompetent.

  Feeling off balance, I curled my fingers around my wineglass. “My mother took me to see Old Yeller when I was eight, and I cried my eyes out. Then I saw it again with my best friend and realized I was being jerked around. I decided to figure out how they did it.”

  He laughed. “I was right. You’re a Valkyrie.”

  A literate FBI agent. Wasn’t that an oxymoron? “Thoreau says it’s better to be the jerkor than the jerkee,” I said.

  “Take no prisoners.”

  “War is hell.”

  “C’est vrai, ma petite.”

  “Speaking of being jerked around, what’s with the chér and petite stuff?”

  His grin deepened. “That’s the way we talk to our women back home.”

  “Except you’re not home, and I’m not your woman.”

  He looked away. Smoke from a nearby table drifted over. LeJeune rose and left the table. For an instant, I started to second-guess myself. Had I been too harsh? Too abrasive? Was he ticked off? Maybe I should make nice. Well, at least courteous. He came back a minute later with another round of drinks.

  “So,” I smiled. “How’d you get to be an agent?”

  He leaned back. “I wanted to catch the bad guys.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Oilmen, for starters.” He sipped his beer. “My daddy tried a vacherie, but he lost his shirt.”

  “Vacherie?”

  “Cattle ranch,” he said. “He didn’t make it, so he took a job with the oil company. Had over twenty years in when he lost his leg. They fired him. A year short of retirement. Never gave him another penny.”

  I winced.

  “It’s an old story—at least in my part of the world. Hell, even the Kingfish couldn’t bring them to their knees.”

  “Kingfish,” I said. “As in Huey Long, Kingfish?”

  He nodded. “Before he became governor, he sued an oil company. Trying to get workmen’s comp for men like my father. He lost, but he kept on fighting for the little guy. Problem was, the corporate interests didn’t like that too much, so the same oil company tried to impeach him ten years later. They lost, too.”

  “Nice story.” I shifted. “But the FBI wouldn’t be at the top of my list of crusaders against corporate greed.”

  “You would know.”

  I once wrote for an underground newspaper. I read my three Ms: Marcuse, Marx, and Mao. I tried hard to be a revolutionary. Unfortunately, it didn’t take. I was told I was too bourgeois. That the most I could aspire to was running a safe house. “You’ve been checking up on me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Then you should know I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”

  “That’s okay. Chasing down wise guys isn’t what I do, either.”

  “What is it you do?”

  “Take pretty ladies out for drinks.”

  Who was this guy? First he comes to my house and asks about mafiosos. Now he’s flirting like I’m some Friday night special. I tilted my head, wondering whether I had enough cash for a cab home but hoping I wouldn’t have to use it. Despite his pretense, if that’s what it was, I was enjoying his company. I changed the subject. “Was your mother Acadian, too?”

  “Italian. My daddy met her in New Orleans.”

  “Are they still down there?”

  “My daddy is. My mother passed about five years ago. Cancer.”

  “Mine, too.” And her death burned a hole in my heart that would never heal.

  I finished my wine. “Sit and Cry” jangled out of the jukebox. Buddy Guy.

  People jostled our table as they passed. Though it was barely seven, the place was filling up. LeJeune got the check.

  “Let’s get something to eat.” He stood up and took the check to the bar, ignoring the interested look of the female bartender. I allowed myself just the tiniest gloat.

  Chapter Thirty

  We drove north and east to Diversey Harbor. A veil of navy blue edged the western sky, pierced by an orange glow f
rom Chicago streetlights. LeJeune drove around the inlet and stopped at the end of the Diversey boat launch, a ramp of concrete that slopes down to the water. Hundreds of boats anchor here during the summer, but now only a group of skinny pilings stood sentinel. He cut the engine and leaned an arm across the back of my seat. “There’s a settling quality about water, you know?”

  “Settling?” Traffic whined on Lake Shore Drive.

  “It gives you what you need.”

  Black waves slapped against the pilings. “How do you figure that?”

  “My daddy used to take me fishing on the bayou in our bateau. Sometimes it was so quiet you could hear the heartbeat of a hummingbird. Sometimes it was meaner than a wasp with two stingers. But every day, it gave me something to remember.” He looked out. “You might not like what it’s offering, but it’s there for the taking.”

  A sudden gust of wind rocked the Spyder. I thought back to the rapids of the New River in West Virginia. No metaphysical discussion could ever convince me water would meet my spiritual needs.

  “Water doesn’t give up its secrets. Even when it tears your heart out.”

  “Sounds like Cajun folklore. With a little voodoo thrown in.”

  He grinned, keyed the engine, and made a graceful one eighty. Soon we were heading down Clark Street. He parked on Arlington and guided me to Federico’s, a restaurant with red-checked tablecloths, soft music, and garlic-scented air. As we walked in, the host gave me a once-over and led us to a table in the back. LeJeune took off his leather jacket and draped it over his chair. He was wearing a white button-down shirt that made him look like a young collegiate.

  A waiter appeared. “They are fresh today, Signor Nick. And large.”

  Without asking me, LeJeune ordered a bucket of steamed mussels and more drinks. He settled back in his chair, looking very much at home.

  “You like mussels?”

  Enough already. I blew out a breath. “Look, it’s nice of you to buy me drinks and dinner, but I think you ought to tell me why we’re here. I got that it’s not just social, but I don’t take too well to…to subterfuge. If you want something, ask.”

  “You’re right. It’s time.” He looked over and smiled. “But I want you to know I have been enjoying myself. I don’t meet many women with looks and brains.”