Hard Time

by Sara Paretsky

  I read pages of Washington scandal, which I usually avoid; I read about the bodies hauled off the sidewalks after the weekend’s drive–bys—which I also usually skip—and even the sad ending of an unidentified man in his late thirties who’d been pulled out of the water at Belmont Harbor, but no word came for me from on high. I was starting to feel frustrated, which made my sore muscles ache more ferociously.

  Maybe after another night’s rest a different way of probing at Frenada and Global would come to me, but for now all I had energy for was collecting my car—which I hoped was still sitting three blocks from Frenada’s headquarters. As I pushed myself out of the padded armchair, someone I recognized sailed through the revolving door like the Merrimac descending on a wooden frigate. Alex Fisher had such a head of steam that she ignored the doorman holding the side door wide for her. She also ignored a younger woman who was running to catch up with her.

  “I can’t wait around for you,” Alex snapped in a ringing voice.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Fisher, I was paying the cab.” The young woman panted; she was pasty–faced and out of shape, probably from too many late nights dining on pizza while waiting for commands from the studio.

  I had slipped behind a pillar to watch, but Alex was so wrapped up in her own business that not even a marching band could have distracted her. When the hall monitor tried to detain her, Alex jerked away and pushed the elevator call button. I was admiring her forthright tactics when Frank Siekevitz suddenly appeared at her side.

  I couldn’t hear what the security director said, but Alex announced that Lacey Dowell was expecting her, this was urgent, and would he get out of the way. Frank murmured something else, his posture so deprecating that I cringed. The hall monitor used a phone, and in another minute Alex and her satellite were allowed to pass.

  I sat back down, hoping Lacey might decide I could help her after all, but when Alex and her attendant reappeared, no one had asked for me. I couldn’t resist following Alex outside.

  “Vic!” Her greeting was half surprise, half venom. “I thought you—what are you doing here?”

  So Lacey hadn’t told her I’d written to her: interesting. “Yeah, I know, I was supposed to be dead or in jail or something, but here I am. Lacey doing okay?”

  “If you’re trying to see her, you can’t.” Alex waved off a doorman offering her a taxi.

  “She’s not the only guest at the Trianon. I was having tea with my aunt. She’s a permanent resident.”

  “You don’t have an aunt who can afford this place.”

  “You haven’t read the LifeStory report on me very thoroughly, Sandy,” I chided her. “As a matter of fact I do have a rich aunt. Actually, I have a rich uncle. He’s very big in the food industry. And his wife could afford to live here if she wanted to. By the way, where did you get the cocaine you planted on me?”

  Alex became aware of her satellite, who was frowning in an effort to follow our conversation. She gave an unconvincing laugh and said she didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “It has that Hollywood feel to it, the kind of thing Gene Hackman would turn up in French Connection Three. Did you get Teddy Trant to talk to his screenwriters, have them come up with an absurd plotline, then turn it over to Baladine and his tame goons to act out?”

  “Vic, why didn’t you take that assignment I dug up for you? It would have saved everyone a lot of grief.” Her green eyes were dark in the twilight.

  “Was it a bribe or a distraction?” I asked.

  “There are worse things on the planet than bribes. I didn’t remember you as so uncompromising in law school.”

  “No, that was you back then,” I agreed. “Hot politics and stubborn intransigence. If you weren’t part of the solution you were part of the problem. Although maybe in that regard you haven’t changed so much.”

  She bit her lower lip, swollen from collagen injections. “Well, you were always stubborn, that’s for damned sure. But you weren’t ever right about everything. As you’ll find out now if you don’t back off. Felicity, can you get a cab over here? We have a lot of work to do tonight.”

  Felicity scuttled over to the doorman, who blew grandly on his whistle. The lead car in the taxi line pulled forward.

  “Back off? From what?”

  “Don’t play the naive fool with me. I have you pretty well pegged by now. Come on, Felicity. Are you waiting for the Second Coming?”

  “Poor Felicity,” I said. “If her mama knew she’d be working for you, Sandy, maybe she would have named her Anxiety instead.”

  “And you know damned well that regardless of what my mama called me, my name is Alex—Vicki.” On that shot Alex threw herself into the car, Felicity handed the doorman a dollar, and the two of them took off.

  I stood in the drive, watching the street long after the cab’s taillights had disappeared. I know I’m not right about everything, but she’d made it sound like something specific. Was it the same as the egg Murray was going to smear all over my smug face?

  I was too tired and too sore to figure it out this evening. The doorman who’d taken in my letter to Lacey was urging me out of the drive and into a cab. I followed him meekly, although it was the fifth driver he whistled up who agreed to take me—when the first four heard the address I wanted, they shook their heads, willing to lose their place in line to avoid Humboldt Park. I didn’t blame them, exactly, but I could understand why people on the West Side get so frustrated at being denied service. The guy who finally took me to my car barely waited for my feet to touch the street before screeching into a U–turn and heading back to the Gold Coast.

  The Rustmobile fit into the neighborhood so perfectly that no one had removed the tires in the two days I’d left it there. The roar from the exhaust blended in with the vibrating low–riders. Definitely a better car for me than a Jaguar convertible or some other high–rent import. No one looked at me as I went back down Grand. I stopped in front of Special–T’s front door. No lights shone tonight, but I wasn’t going in for another look—I wasn’t in shape to escape a second trap.

  I parked several blocks from my apartment. Now that Alex could tell Lemour I’d surfaced, I needed to watch out for ambushes. No one was lying in wait so far; I stopped to chat with Mr. Contreras and the dogs. My neighbor had received the LifeStory report on Lucian Frenada that I’d mailed Saturday afternoon. I’d forgotten to tell him about it, but I explained its importance to him now.

  “You want me to keep it for you, doll, I’ll be glad to.”

  “Remember how you got shot a couple of years ago when you were helping me out? I don’t want to involve you like that again. Anyway, I need to make a bunch of copies so I can get it into the public arena as fast as possible.”

  He protested his willingness to take on any punk his size or bigger, but I took the report upstairs with me. I wished there was someone I could talk to—about the LifeStory report, or the putative connection between Baladine and Officer Lemour, or even the story Murray was running on Frenada. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d grown on Murray over the years. This was the first major investigation I’d taken on that I couldn’t discuss with him, or tap into his vast knowledge of local corruption. And I badly needed help. This wasn’t even an investigation. It was some kind of demon’s cauldron I’d fallen into. I was bobbing around with the newts’ eyes and bats’ wings, and I wasn’t going to have too much more time to figure out the brew before I drowned in it.

  I suddenly thought of Morrell. He didn’t have Murray’s local connections in politics, but he had an entree into Nicola Aguinaldo’s world. Vishnikov vouched for him. And I didn’t think anyone knew I’d been talking to him.

  I looked up his home number on my Palm Pilot, but as I was dialing I remembered his own nervousness about talking on the phone. If BB Baladine was really riding my ass, he could have a tap on my line or even a remote device to pick up anything I said in my building. That might explain why I hadn’t seen any obvious surveillance on the street: if the
y knew they could track me at home, they could jump me on my way out, without having to leave a man in place twenty–four hours a day.

  I don’t like having to be paranoid about everything I say and do, but I switched on a Mozart CD on my stereo and the Cubs on television and sat between them with my cell phone. It was hard for Morrell to understand me over the interference, but once he did he readily agreed to meet me for a drink.

  If I was right about Baladine not doing on–site surveillance, then I could probably leave again as long as I was quiet about it. I waited until the roar from Wrigley Field rose to a fever pitch, both on the streets behind me and on the set in front of me, and slipped out my door in bare feet, carrying my sandals to avoid making noise on the upper landing. An hour later I was back at Drummers, in Edgewater.

  When I described my exit to Morrell, making a comic story of it, he didn’t laugh. “That’s the trouble with living in fear of the cops: you don’t know if you’re being a fool or taking sensible precautions.”

  “My dad was a cop and a good honest man. And so were his friends. Some of them are still on the force.”

  I thought of Frank Siekevitz. My dad trained him. The three of us used to go to baseball games together. Siekevitz wept at my dad’s funeral and vowed in a tribute that made others cry to remain true to Tony’s principles. Now he was backing away from me because Global Entertainment had leaned on him.

  Maybe that was what was really keeping me from taking my story to my dad’s oldest friend on the force. I was afraid deep down that Bobby Mallory would turn away, too. Not bought—no one could buy him—but any man with six children and a dozen grandchildren is vulnerable. Of course, everyone has a hostage to fortune. If someone kidnapped Lotty, or threatened to hurt her—

  “Where are you, Vic?” Morrell asked.

  I jumped at his voice. “In a place where I feel terrified and alone. That’s why I called you. I need an ally, and I need one who doesn’t have an easy lever to pry him apart. Unless—do you have children or lovers?”

  He blinked. “Are you asking me to risk myself for you because I’m alone in the world and no one cares if I die? Why should I do that?”

  I felt my cheeks stain crimson. “No reason I can think of. Unless you think I could teach you something useful, like how to jump off a building onto a moving freight train.”

  “Probably not a skill I can use: most of the places I’m fleeing don’t have buildings high enough to jump from. Anyway, don’t you do financial investigations? Why were you jumping onto a train?”

  I gave him as complete a rundown of the past two weeks as I could manage. He interrupted with the occasional question, but for the most part he sat quietly, chin in hand, dark eyes watching me.

  “That’s why I’m eager to talk to Nicola Aguinaldo’s mother,” I finished. “I need someone who can tell me who her daughter would run to—or from. Nicola worked for Robert Baladine, and he’s definitely on the visiting team. Would she have gone to him and ended up being beaten or kicked for showing up? It matters terribly that her body’s disappeared, and I’d like to know that Abuelita Mercedes really didn’t bury it without an autopsy.”

  Morrell put a warning hand on my arm; I hadn’t noticed the waiter hovering nearby. I ordered a double espresso and a little gorgonzola–pear pizza. Riding the rods Saturday night had taken away my appetite. I certainly didn’t feel like drinking. No Philip Marlowe I, downing a pint of rye every time I got injured.

  When the waiter had left I said, “When Nicola died she was wearing not a dress but a long T–shirt, a Mad Virgin T–shirt. I think Lucian Frenada made it, and that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. How did she get it after making her break from Coolis? They can wear civilian clothes in jail, but not that kind of flimsy minidress.”

  After the waiter brought our food, Morrell asked me what had happened to make me think someone might be monitoring my apartment. “The last time we talked you weren’t very forthcoming. Now you’re rattled and want to make me an accessory, if not an ally.”

  I grimaced. “You weren’t Chatty Cathy, either. I was willing to let it go because I thought I could get information on Aguinaldo some other way. But I haven’t been able to, and anyway, so much is going on I can’t seem to focus on any one problem. And then, when I got back from an out–of–town assignment this past Saturday, I found that someone was trying to frame me in a major way.”

  I went into more detail about the dope I’d found in my office and the chaos I’d seen at Special–T Uniforms. “I haven’t been able to get hold of Frenada since the phone call—which presumably didn’t come from him at all. I did go to see Lacey Dowell today—which sent her hotfoot to Global’s lawyer, instead.”

  When I finished, Morrell nodded to himself several times, as if digesting what I’d told him. “Abuelita Mercedes really doesn’t have her daughter’s body. If her assailant got the body released, it’s probably been buried or cremated by now: I don’t think we can expect to find it.”

  I agreed. “The jobs are county patronage; it would be easy for a man whose clout owed Baladine or Poilevy a favor to misdirect a body if that was required. I did talk to Vishnikov the other day, and he said he’d check to see whether the body was still there but had been mislabeled. Maybe if my pals know Vishnikov is mounting a major investigation, they’ll tip their hands. But the person I’d most like to talk to is Abuelita Mercedes. I would dearly love to ask her about her daughter’s acquaintances.”

  He shook his head. “You sound like dynamite right now, to be blunt. I don’t want you leading some menace to her doorstep. She fled her old apartment because someone was asking after her. Remember? You told me that yourself, and she confirms it.”

  I ate a slice of my cold pizza. “What if they weren’t from INS or the state? What if they were the people who killed Nicola, come to make sure she hadn’t talked to her mother? No matter how much Abuelita Mercedes denied having heard from Nicola, they’d never believe her. Have you asked her yourself? If Nicola talked to her before she died, I mean?”

  Morrell’s lips twisted in a half smile. “Bryant Vishnikov warned me that you’d wear me out if I got involved with you. No, I haven’t asked her that, and yes, I’ll make time to get back to Señora Mercedes in the next day or two.”

  “Did Vishnikov tell you I’d consulted him about you as well? He didn’t give me a character reading, though.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing people need to be warned about when they meet me,” he said with a sly smile.

  “Or maybe too much to be covered in a single phrase. What does the C.L. stand for?”

  “Good grief. Have you really been investigating me? I didn’t think any record still existed of those initials. My parents didn’t speak English, and they longed for America as for the promised land. They named me in the hopes I’d fit in when we finally got here and instead gave me something that got me beat up regularly. It would have hurt their feelings if I’d changed my name, so I use only my surname. Think of me as someone like Madonna or Prince.”

  I imagined lying in bed with him, whispering “Morrell” instead of—what name could have been that embarrassing? Maybe they’d named him for name brands, like Clorox and Lysol. I blushed at my fantasy and hurried back to business.

  The list of things that needed doing depressed me. I was like a tetherball, gyrating erratically from one side to another, depending on who was punching me. My physical stamina was limited and my emotional energy was not much greater.

  “There’s one other thing I’d like to ask of you,” I said abruptly. “I don’t think it will wear you out, but who knows? I have a videotape of the police goons in my office. I’d like it taken to Cheviot Labs, to an engineer named Rieff who’s been doing some work on Aguinaldo’s dress for me. I was going to send it to him tomorrow, but I want copies made first. I’m too nervous about how much of my phone conversations may have been overheard. I’m thinking my assailant heard me talking to my client about my out–of–town trip and use
d the opportunity to plant drugs in my office. If they heard me leave a message for Rieff Saturday night they’ll go to him, or intercept me, or do something to keep the tape from him. The other thing is a copy of a report on Lucian Frenada’s finances. Global is going to slam him on—on Murray Ryerson’s show tomorrow night, but I have evidence that he’s not living in luxury off the drug business. I want a million photocopies so it’s public.”

  “Fine.” Morrell held out a hand. “I’ll take care of those. What do you want me to do with the copies?”

  “Of the videotape? One to my lawyer, the original to Rieff to see if he can pick up who Lemour was speaking to on his cell phone. One to Murray Ryerson. And the report on Frenada, that should go to all those people, and a bunch of reporters I know—I can make up a list for you.”

  “How’d you videotape Lemour when he had you cuffed?”

  “Carnifice Security isn’t the only high–tech player in the detective world.” I told him about the video glasses as I scribbled a media list on the back of an old parking receipt.

  “I once helped photocopy details of torture conducted by the Brazil secret police,” Morrell said. “It was a project organized by the Archbishop of Rio. We had a terrifying time, sneaking into the office after hours to see the records, copying them, returning them without anyone getting caught out or squealing. We could have used glasses like those. You going to be okay getting home?” he added as the waiter brought a check. “You’d be welcome to stay with me—I’ve got a spare bedroom.”

  It was appealing, the idea of not having to worry about who might be lying in wait outside my door. Besides, there was my fantasy, lying with his long fingers on my body—on my sore body, but maybe he had a lover of some sex and wouldn’t find an exhausted forty–plus detective sexy, anyway.

  Lotty had almost been killed once, helping me in a crisis, and Mr. Contreras had been shot. Conrad had left me after a similar episode. I couldn’t bear to have one more person maimed on my account, even one I didn’t know well. I thanked him but turned my roaring Skylark south toward home.