It was the local number for the press agency that represented him. I put it in my hip pocket and turned to cross the street.
“By the way,” he said casually, “who is paying for you to ask these questions?”
I turned to face him again. “Are you asking in a more subtle way if INS is bankrolling me?”
“Just wondering how quixotic you really are.”
I pointed across the street. “See that late–model wreck? I’m quixotic enough for that to be the car I can afford to drive.”
I climbed into the Skylark and turned it around, with a roar of exhaust that made me sound like a teenage boy. Morrell’s Honda moved sleekly to the intersection ahead of me. He must make some money writing about torture victims; the car was new. But what did that prove? Even a person with strong principles has to live on something, and it wasn’t as though he was driving a Mercedes or a Jag. Of course, I had no idea what his principles were.
17 Spinning Wheels, Seeking Traction
In the morning I went to my office early: I had a meeting with potential new clients at eleven, and I didn’t want my personal searches to make me late. I looked Morrell up on the Web.
He had written a book about psychological as well as physical torture as a means to suppress protest in Chile and Argentina. He had covered the return to civilian government in Uruguay and what that meant for the victims of torture in a long essay in The Atlantic Monthly. His work on SAPO forces in Zimbabwe had won a Pulitzer prize after its serialization in The New Yorker.
Zimbabwe? I wondered if he and Baladine had met there. Although Baladine probably hadn’t actually gone to southern Africa. He would have directed operations from the Rapelec tower on east Illinois Street, or perhaps met their South African customers in London.
The Herald–Star had interviewed Morrell when the Chile book came out. From that I learned he was about fifty, that he’d been born in Cuba but grew up in Chicago, had studied journalism at Northwestern, and still followed the Cubs despite living away from home most of his adult life. And that he only went by his last name; the reporter hadn’t been able to dig his first name out of him. Although they had his initials—C.L.—he wouldn’t divulge the name.
I wondered idly what his parents had called him. Maybe he’d been given some name commemorating a great battle or economic triumph that was so embarrassing he dropped it. Was he Cuban, or had his parents been there with a multinational or the army when he was born? Maybe they’d named him for some Cuban epic, like the Ten Years War, and he’d shed it as soon as he could. I was tempted to hunt through old immigration or court records to come up with it, but I knew that impulse was only frustration at not being able to get a sense of direction.
To change sources of frustration, I turned to the LifeStory report I’d requested on Frenada. I’d invested in a priority turnaround—not the fastest, which sets you back a few grand, but overnight, which was expensive enough. I saved the report to a floppy and printed it out.
Frenada’s personal finances were simple enough for a child of eight to decipher. He had an interest–bearing checking account, where his expenses more or less equaled the thirty–five hundred dollars he took home from his business each month. The business, Special–T 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 child–support 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 two–flat in the Irving Park neighborhood, and he had a life–insurance policy worth a hundred thousand dollars, with three children named Caliente listed as the beneficiaries. Besides that munificence, he drove a four–year–old 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 Alex–Sandy 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 quasilegal 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 assignment. Since you came along with Alex to try to hire me, I assume 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 dick 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 button.
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 assignment 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. Aft
er 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 Vanishing 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 reassuring 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 blue–collar 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 butt.
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 book–jacket 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 Señora 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 assured 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 Señora Mercedes doesn’t have her daughter’s body?”
I picked out a minor triad in the bass clef. “I’m getting fed up with people pushing 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 break–dancers 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 Señora 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 self–mocking 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 wild–goose 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 muffler was rumbling more loudly than ever. The air–conditioning didn’t work, so we had to ride with the windows open and our teeth rattling.
“That muffler 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 lead–mining 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 Jean–Claude Poilevy’s wheels, but as we drove through town to the prison, we passed Baladine Hardware, followed by Baladine Lincoln–Mercury. 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.
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