Windy City Blues

by Sara Paretsky

  THE MALTESE CAT

  I

  HER VOICE ON the phone had been soft and husky, with just a whiff of the South laid across it like a rare perfume. “I’d rather come to your office; I don’t want people in mine to know I’ve hired a detective.”

  I’d offered to see her at her home in the evening-my Spartan office doesn’t invite client confidences. But she didn’t want to wait until tonight, she wanted to come today, almost at once, and no, she wouldn’t meet me in a restaurant. Far too hard to talk, and this was extremely personal.

  “You know my specialty is financial crime, don’t you?” I asked sharply.

  “Yes, that’s how I got your name. One o’clock, fourth floor of the Pulteney, right?” And she’d hung up without telling me who she was.

  An errand at the County building took me longer than I’d expected; it was close to one-thirty by the time I got back to the Pulteney. My caller’s problem apparently was urgent: she was waiting outside my office door, tapping one high heel impatiently on the floor as I trudged down the hall in my running shoes.

  “Ms. Warshawski! I thought you were standing me up.”

  “No such luck,” I grunted, opening my office door for her.

  In the dimly lit hall she’d just been a slender silhouette. Under the office lights the set of the shoulders and signature buttons told me her suit had come from the hands of someone at Chanel. Its blue enhanced the cobalt of her eyes. Soft makeup hid her natural skin tones-I couldn’t tell if that dark red hair was natural, or merely expertly painted.

  She scanned the spare furnishings and picked the cleaner of my two visitor chairs. “My time is valuable, Ms. Warshawski. If I’d known you were going to keep me waiting without a place to sit I would have finished some phone calls before walking over here.”

  I’d dressed in jeans and a work shirt for a day at the Recorder of Deeds office. Feeling dirty and outclassed made me grumpy. “You hung up without giving me your name or number, so there wasn’t much I could do to let you know you’d have to stand around in your pointy little shoes. My time’s valuable, too. Why don’t you tell me where the fire is so I can start putting it out.”

  She flushed. When I turn red I look blotchy, but in her it only enhanced her makeup. “It’s my sister.” The whiff of Southern increased. “Corinne. She’s run off to Ja-my ex-husband, and I need someone to tell her to come back.”

  I made a disgusted face. “I can’t believe I raced back from the County building to listen to this. It’s not 1890, you know. She may be making a mistake but presumably she can sort it out for herself.”

  Her flush darkened. “I’m not being very clear. I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to ask for things. My sister-Corinne-she’s only fourteen. She’s my ward. I’m sixteen years older than she is. Our parents died three years ago and she’s been living with me since then. It’s not easy, not easy for either of us. Moving from Mobile to here was just the beginning. When she got here she wanted to run around, do all the things you can’t do in Mobile.”

  She waved a hand to indicate what kinds of things those might be. “She thinks I’m a tough bitch and that I was too hard on my ex-husband. She’s known him since she was three and he was a big hero. She couldn’t see he’d changed. Or not changed, just not had the chance to be heroic anymore in public. So when she took off two days ago I assumed she went there. He’s not answering his phone or the doorbell. I don’t know if they’ve left town or he’s just playing possum or what. I need someone who knows how to get people to open their doors and knows how to talk to people. At least if I could see Corinne I might-I don’t know.”

  She broke off with a helpless gesture that didn’t match her sophisticated looks. Nothing like responsibility for a minor to deflate even the most urbane.

  I grimaced more ferociously. “Why don’t we start with your name, and your husband’s name and address, and then move on to her friends.”

  “Her friends?” The deep blue eyes widened. “I’d just as soon this didn’t get around. People talk, and even though it’s not 1890, it could be hard on her when she gets back to school.”

  I suppressed a howl. “You can’t come around demanding my expertise and then tell me what or what not to do. What if she’s not with your husband? What if I can’t get in touch with you when I’ve found that out and she’s in terrible trouble and her life depends on my turning up some new leads? If you can’t bring yourself to divulge a few names-starting with your own-you’d better go find yourself a more pliant detective. I can recommend a couple who have waiting rooms.”

  She set her lips tightly: whatever she did she was in command-people didn’t talk to her that way and get away with it. For a few seconds it looked as though I might be free to get back to the Recorder of Deeds that afternoon, but then she shook her head and forced a smile to her lips.

  “I was told not to mind your abrasiveness because you were the best. I’m Brigitte LeBlanc. My sister’s name is Corinne, also LeBlanc. And my ex-husband is Charles Pierce.” She scooted her chair up to the desk so she could scribble his address on a sheet of paper torn from a memo pad in her bag. She scrawled busily for several minutes, then handed me a list that included Corinne’s three closest school friends, along with Pierce’s address.

  “I’m late for a meeting. I’ll call you tonight to see if you’ve made any progress.” She got up.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “I get a retainer. You have to sign a contract. And I need a number where I can reach you.”

  “I really am late.”

  “And I’m really too busy to hunt for your sister. If you have a sister. You can’t be that worried if your meeting is more important than she is.”

  Her scowl would have terrified me if I’d been alone with her in an alley after dark. “I do have a sister. And I spent two days trying to get into my ex-husband’s place, and then in tracking down people who could recommend a private detective to me. I can’t do anything else to help her except go earn the money to pay your fee.”

  I pulled a contract from my desk drawer and stuck it in the manual Olivetti that had belonged to my mother-a typewriter so old that I had to order special ribbons for it from Italy. A word processor would be cheaper and more impressive but the wrist action keeps my forearms strong. I got Ms. LeBlanc to give me her address, to sign on the dotted line for $400 a day plus expenses, to write in the name of a guaranteeing financial institution and to hand over a check for two hundred.

  When she’d left I wrestled with my office windows, hoping to let some air in to blow her pricey perfume away. Carbon flakes from the el would be better than the lingering scent, but the windows, painted over several hundred times, wouldn’t budge. I turned on a desktop fan and frowned sourly at her bold black signature.

  What was her ex-husband’s real name? She’d bitten off “Ja-” Could be James or Jake, but it sure wasn’t Charles. Did she really have a sister? Was this just a ploy to get back at a guy late on his alimony? Although Pierce’s address on North Winthrop didn’t sound like the place for a man who could afford alimony. Maybe everything went to keep her in Chanel suits while he lived on Skid Row.

  She wasn’t in the phone book, so I couldn’t check her own address on Belden. The operator told me the number was unlisted. I called a friend at the Ft. Dearborn Trust, the bank Brigitte had drawn her check on, and was assured that there was plenty more where that came from. My friend told me Brigitte had parlayed the proceeds of a high-priced modeling career into a successful media consulting firm.

  “And if you ever read the fashion pages you’d know these things. Get your nose out of the sports section from time to time, Vic-it’ll help with your career.”

  “Thanks, Eva.” I hung up with a snap. At least my client wouldn’t turn out to be named something else, always a good beginning to a tawdry case.

  I looked in the little mirror perched over my filing cabinet. A dust smudge on my right cheek instead of peach blush was the only distinction between me and Ms. LeBlan
c. Since I was dressed appropriately for North Winthrop, I shut up my office and went to retrieve my car.

  II

  Charles Pierce lived in a dismal ten-flat built flush onto the Uptown sidewalk. Ragged sheets made haphazard curtains in those windows that weren’t boarded over. Empty bottles lined the entryway, but the smell of stale Ripple couldn’t begin to mask the stench of fresh urine. If Corinne LeBlanc had run away to this place, life with Brigitte must be unmitigated hell.

  My client’s ex-husband lived in 3E. I knew that because she’d told me. Those few mailboxes whose doors still shut wisely didn’t trumpet their owners’ identities. The filthy brass nameplate next to the doorbells was empty and the doorbells didn’t work. Pushing open the rickety door to the hall, I wondered again about my client’s truthfulness: she told me Ja-hadn’t answered his phone or his bell.

  A rheumy-eyed woman was sprawled across the bottom of the stairs, sucking at a half-pint. She stared at me malevolently when I asked her to move, but she didn’t actively try to trip me when I stepped over her. It was only my foot catching in the folds of her overcoat.

  The original building probably held two apartments per floor. At least, on the third floor only two doors at either end looked as though they went back to the massive, elegant construction of the building’s beginnings. The other seven were flimsy newcomers that had been hastily installed when an apartment was subdivided. Peering in the dark I found one labeled B and counted off three more to the right to get to E. After knocking on the peeling veneer several times I noticed a button imbedded in the grime on the jamb. When I pushed it I heard a buzz resonate inside. No one came to the door. With my ear against the filthy panel I could hear the faint hum of a television.

  I held the buzzer down for five minutes. It’s hard on the finger but harder on the ear. If someone was really in there he should have come boiling to the door by now.

  I could go away and come back, but if Pierce was lying doggo to avoid Brigitte, that wouldn’t buy me anything. She said she’d tried off and on for two days. The television might be running as a decoy, or-I pushed more lurid ideas from my mind and took out a collection of skeleton keys. The second worked easily in the insubstantial lock. In two minutes I was inside the apartment, looking at an illustration from House Beautiful in Hell.

  It was a single room with a countertop kitchen on the left side. A tidy person could pull a corrugated screen to shield the room from signs of cooking, but Pierce wasn’t tidy. Ten or fifteen stacked pots, festooned with rotting food and roaches, trembled precariously when I shut the door.

  Dominating the place was a Murphy bed with a grotesquely fat man sprawled in at an ominous angle. He’d been watching TV when he died. He was wearing frayed, shiny pants with the fly lying carelessly open and a lumberjack shirt that didn’t quite cover his enormous belly.

  His monstrous size and the horrible angle at which his bald head was tilted made me gag. I forced it down and walked through a pile of stale clothes to the bed. Lifting an arm the size of a tree trunk, I felt for a pulse. Nothing moved in the heavy arm, but the skin, while clammy, was firm. I couldn’t bring myself to touch any more of him but stumbled around the perimeter to peer at him from several angles. I didn’t see any obvious wounds. Let the medical examiner hunt out the obscure ones.

  By the time I was back in the stairwell I was close to fainting. Only the thought of falling into someone else’s urine or vomit kept me on my feet. On the way down I tripped in earnest over the rheumy-eyed woman’s coat. Sprawled on the floor at the bottom, I couldn’t keep from throwing up myself. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  I dug a water bottle out of the detritus in my trunk and sponged myself off before calling the police. They asked me to stay near the body. I thought the front seat of my car on Winthrop would be close enough.

  While I waited for a meat wagon I wondered about my client. Could Brigitte have come here after leaving me, killed him and taken off while I was phoning around checking up on her? If she had, the rheumy-eyed woman in the stairwell would have seen her. Would the bond forged by my tripping over her and vomiting in the hall be enough to get her to talk to me?

  I got out of the car, but before I could get back to the entrance the police arrived. When we pushed open the rickety door my friend had evaporated. I didn’t bother mentioning her to the boys-and girl-in blue: her description wouldn’t stand out in Uptown, and even if they could find her she wouldn’t be likely to say much.

  We plodded up the stairs in silence. There were four of them. The woman and the youngest of the three men seemed in good shape. The two older men were running sadly to flab. I didn’t think they’d be able to budge my client’s ex-husband’s right leg, let alone his mammoth redwood torso.

  “I got a feeling about this,” the oldest officer muttered, more to himself than the rest of us. “I got a feeling.”

  When we got to 3E and he looked across at the mass on the bed he shook his head a couple of times. “Yup. I kind of knew as soon as I heard the call.”

  “Knew what, Tom?” the woman demanded sharply.

  “Jade Pierce,” he said. “Knew he lived around here. Been a lot of complaints about him. Thought it might be him when I heard we was due to visit a real big guy.”

  The woman stopped her brisk march to the bed. The rest of us looked at the behemoth in shared sorrow. Jade. Not James or Jake but Jade. Once the most famous down lineman the Bears had ever fielded. Now… I shuddered.

  When he played for Alabama some reporter said his bald head was as smooth and cold as a piece of jade, and went on to spin some tiresome simile relating it to his play. When he signed with the Bears, I was as happy as any other Chicago fan, even though his reputation for off-field violence was pretty unappetizing. No wonder Brigitte LeBlanc hadn’t stayed with him, but why hadn’t she wanted to tell me who he really was? I wrestled with that while Tom called for reinforcements over his lapel mike.

  “So what were you doing here?” he asked me.

  “His ex-wife hired me to check up on him.” I don’t usually tell the cops my clients’ business, but I didn’t feel like protecting Brigitte. “She wanted to talk to him and he wasn’t answering his phone or his door.”

  “She wanted to check up on him?” the fit younger officer, a man with high cheekbones and a well-tended mustache, echoed me derisively. “What I hear, that split up was the biggest fight Jade was ever in. Only big fight he ever lost, too.”

  I smiled. “She’s doing well, he isn’t. Wasn’t. Maybe her conscience pricked her. Or maybe she wanted to rub his nose in it hard. You’d have to ask her. All I can say is she asked me to try to get in, I did, and I called you guys.”

  While Tom mulled this over I pulled out a card and handed it to him. “You can find me at this number if you want to talk to me.”

  He called out after me but I went on down the hall, my footsteps echoing hollowly off the bare walls and ceiling.

  III

  Brigitte LeBlanc was with a client and couldn’t be interrupted. The news that her ex-husband had died couldn’t pry her loose. Not even the idea that the cops would be around before long could move her. After a combination of cajoling and heckling, the receptionist leaned across her blond desk and whispered at me confidentially: “The Vice President of the United States had come in for some private media coaching.” Brigitte had said no interruptions unless it was the President or the pope-two people I wouldn’t even leave a dental appointment to see.

  When they made me unwelcome on the forty-third floor I rode downstairs and hung around the lobby. At five-thirty a bevy of Secret Service agents swept me out to the street with the other loiterers. Fifteen minutes later the Vice President came out, his boyish face set in purposeful lines. Even though this was a private visit the vigilant television crews were waiting for him. He grinned and waved but didn’t say anything before climbing into his limo. Brigitte must be really good if she’d persuaded him to shut up.

  At seven I went back to the f
orty-third floor. The double glass doors were locked and the lights turned off. I found a key in my collection that worked the lock, but when I’d prowled through the miles of thick gray plush, explored the secured studios, looked in all the offices, I had to realize my client was smarter than me. She’d left by some back exit.

  I gave a high-pitched snarl. I didn’t lock the door behind me. Let someone come in and steal all the video equipment. I didn’t care.

  I swung by Brigitte’s three-story brownstone on Belden. She wasn’t in. The housekeeper didn’t know when to expect her. She was eating out and had said not to wait up for her.

  “How about Corinne?” I asked, sure that the woman would say “Corinne who?”

  “She’s not here, either.”

  I slipped inside before she could shut the door on me. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. Brigitte hired me to find her sister, said she’d run off to Jade. I went to his apartment. Corinne wasn’t there and Jade was dead. I’ve been trying to talk to Brigitte ever since but she’s avoiding me. I want to know a few things, like if Corinne really exists, and did she really run away, and could either she or Brigitte have killed Jade.”

  The housekeeper stared at me for a few minutes, then made a sour face. “You got some I.D.?”

  I showed her my P.I. license and the contract signed by Brigitte. Her sour look deepened but she gave me a few spare details. Corinne was a fat, unhappy teenager who didn’t know how good she had it. Brigitte gave her everything, taught her how to dress, sent her to St. Scholastica, even tried to get her to special diet clinics, but she was never satisfied, always whining about her friends back home in Mobile, trashy friends to whom she shouldn’t be giving the time of day. And yes, she had run away, three days ago now, and she, the housekeeper, said good riddance, but Brigitte felt responsible. And she was sorry that Jade was dead, but he was a violent man, Corinne had overidealized him, she didn’t realize what a monster he really was.