Guardian Angel

by Sara Paretsky

  Every twenty seconds or so the girder jarred as the operator slammed the spool against it, following me down the track. The cables have built-in brakes to keep their loads from slipping down too fast. Even knowing that, I jumped the last six feet, landing in a rolling heap as far from the crane and the Hulks as I could manage.

  I pulled my gun free as the men came for me. They were brandishing giant wrenches, but when they saw the gun they backed off a bit. From the corner of my eye I could see the other men climbing down the ladder from the upper platform. Seven men, eight bullets. I wouldn’t have time to reload. I couldn’t possibly shoot them all.

  The Hulks were between me and the loading dock. One of them suddenly slid his wrench across the floor to the reinforcements and disappeared outside. The other charged at me, brandishing his wrench like a torch. I fired and missed, fired again. He stumbled as he came up to me. I jumped clear of his flailing wrench and ran past him without stopping to see if I’d winged him.

  I got outside before my pursuers realized what had happened. Jumped off the platform, and sprinted toward the front of the building and the road. Rounded the corner when headlights came up, blinding me.

  The Hulk had gone to get one of the cars. The engine roared as he floored it. My legs knew what to do almost before my brain registered the car. I found myself hugging the foundation of the plant.

  The Smith & Wesson had landed a good eight feet from me. Panting, wet with sweat, I started crawling for it as the car backed up. I reached the gun as the Hulk went into drive again. I could just sense the rest of my pals behind me, when I saw another pair of headlights join the first. I couldn’t run behind the trucks: the rest of the gang would pin me like a trapped rat.

  My arms were quivering so badly, I could hardly lift the gun. I waited for the cars as long as I dared, shot once at each windshield, stuck the gun back in the holster and ran all out toward the canal. With the last strength I could muster I dove clear of the pylons into the middle of the foul water.

  33

  Recollections of a Midnight Swim

  “You were lucky, Warshawski, fucking lucky. What would you have done if that barge hadn’t happened along?” Conrad Rawlings was shouting loudly enough to keep me awake.

  “I wouldn’t have drowned, if that’s what you’re thinking. I had enough left in my shoulders to climb up the side.”

  “You were just goddamn lucky,” he repeated. “That side is solid concrete. It isn’t meant for shinnying.”

  “Out of curiosity, what were you doing along the canal at three in the morning?” That was Terry Finchley, his tone conversational.

  I blinked at him from under the protective shroud of my police-issue blanket. When the Santa Lucia saw me floundering around under the Damen Avenue bridge, they’d fished me out and called the police department’s water patrol. I was blacking out by then and couldn’t see far enough to tell whether my Diamond Head pals were on the far bank dancing up and down in frustration.

  The tugboat crew wrapped me in a blanket and gave me hot soup while we waited for the cops. When the river patrol came, the crew took their blanket back and the police issued me a nice blue-and-white job. It looked like the kind the mounted patrol put on their well-tended horses.

  The river cops were pleasant, so pleasant that I suddenly realized through the mists of fatigue that they thought I’d been trying to kill myself. They took the Smith & Wesson from me and kept trying to find out who they should call.

  “Terry Finchley at Area One,” I muttered, waking with a start every time they asked. “He can tell you about it.”

  It wasn’t until the third or fourth iteration that I figured out they wanted a husband or sister or someone that they could turn me over to. I was exhausted, but I hadn’t lost my wits. I knew I wasn’t in shape to take on anyone who might be waiting for me, either at home or at Mrs. Polter’s. Normally at such a crisis I’d call Lotty, but I couldn’t do that tonight either. Anyway, she was staying with Max. I just kept mumbling Finchley’s name and dozing off.

  It must have been close to four when one of the patrolmen shook my arm. “Up you get, honey. We found Terry Finchley for you.”

  “She doesn’t have any shoes,” I heard one of the patrol crew say.

  “She’s tough.” Finchley’s voice came from several miles away. “Her feet’ll take a few splinters without breaking.”

  I stumbled behind the patrolman who’d awakened me. When we got to the gangway he turned and lifted me over the side and propped me up next to Finchley’s driver. I’m not used to being handled like a negligible load. It added a dimension of helplessness to my fatigue.

  “She was carrying this; I don’t know if she has a license.” The sergeant handed my gun to Finchley.

  “It needs cleaning,” I heard myself saying. “Cleaning and oiling. It’s been underwater, you see.”

  “She needs a doctor and a hot bath, but she wouldn’t tell us who to call.” The sergeant was talking about me as if I were lying dead in the next room.

  I patted myself under the blanket. They’d left the holster. My belt with its seven-hundred-dollar picklocks was gone though. I could just remember struggling free of it underwater, when I shed my jacket and kicked off my shoes, trying to lighten my load. My wallet was still in my back pocket. The cops could have picked it and found my address easily enough, but they were mostly concerned that I not throw myself back into the steamy waters of the Sanitary Canal.

  “Want to talk about it, Warshawski? Klimczak from the water patrol says you insisted on seeing me. I got out of bed to meet you—I’m not going to be a happy cop if you clam up on me now.”

  Finchley’s sharp tone brought me back to the bare Area One interrogation room. In his starched shirt and knife-point trouser creases he didn’t appear to have just tumbled out of bed. Rawlings, whom he’d called at some point in the proceedings, looked more the part in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans. His eyes were red and he seemed angry, or jumpy, or some combination of the two. I was having too much trouble staying awake to sort out the nuances behind their speech.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to get cholera. From the canal, I mean. But I didn’t have any choice. They would have run me over if I hadn’t gone in.” Under the blanket my hair felt matted with sewage.

  Finchley nodded as if my words had made perfect sense.

  “Who?” Rawlings exploded. “Who would have run you over? And what the hell were you doing there? Klimczak was worried you were suicidal, but I told him not a hope of that.”

  “Figure it out, guys.” My words came out slowly, from a great distance. I couldn’t make myself talk faster. “You know what’s going on at Diamond Head, right? I mean, to you, nothing. Nothing’s happening there. To me, it’s where a man got killed. And the head of the plant won’t talk to me. And Jason Felitti, who owns it, throws me out of his house. So I went down to have a look for myself. And voilà!”

  I waved a hand like a comic-book drunk. I couldn’t seem to control such extravagant gestures.

  “And voilà what?” Finchley prodded.

  I jerked my head upright—I’d started to drop off again.

  “They were loading Paragon copper onto trucks in the middle of the night.”

  “You want me to arrest them, Warshawski?” Rawlings demanded.

  I looked at him owlishly. “It’s a thought. A definite thought. Why do they have spools of Paragon copper to begin with? No, that’s an easy question. They bought it to make their little engine gizmos with, I guess. Why are they shipping it out? Secretly in the dark? That’s the hard question.”

  “How do you know they’re doing it secretly? An active business might ship supplies at any time.” Finchley crossed his legs and adjusted the crease.

  “They were loading it onto closed trucks. Spools go on flatbeds. Anyway, when they saw me watching them, why didn’t they call you guys? Why’d they chase me into the canal instead?”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across Finchley’s ebony face. “If
you caught someone on your premises, I doubt your first act would be to call me, Vic. I expect you’d get up a load of steam and drive them off yourself if you could.”

  I couldn’t prod my brain into making cogent arguments. “I shot at them. I think I hit one guy. Has anyone reported that? Maybe come around wanting to file charges?”

  Finchley’s brows went up at that. He gestured at a corner and I saw a uniformed woman get up and slip out the door. I hadn’t noticed her until then.

  “Mary Louise Neely,” I said out loud.

  “Yes, that’s Officer Neely,” Finchley said. “She’ll check on your wounded man. So what’s the point, Warshawski? You’re trying to build a case against Diamond Head, but it’s not holding water—forgive the expression. A drunken old man hits his head and dies and falls or is rolled into the canal. It’s too bad, but it doesn’t mean every corporation in Chicago has to roll over and do tricks because you’re steamed about it.”

  The edge to his words whipped blood to my cheeks and momentarily cleared my brain. “Right, Finchley. I tried calling you tonight because you—no, it was Rawlings here, but I expect you knew about it—called Dr. Herschel to complain I was holding out. You get my message?”

  He nodded frantically.

  “What I wanted to tell you, someone came around the boardinghouse where the old guy was living and scooped up all his papers. Guy claiming to be his son. Why’d he do that? The papers a derelict carries around are useless. Then when I come back to the boardinghouse the landlady calls the Diamond Head plant manager to tell him I’m back in the neighborhood. I heard the guys at the plant say that when I was there tonight. I know that a big steel company is funneling cash their way and I see copper spools disappearing in the middle of the night with this steel company’s name printed on the side.”

  I shoved the blanket out of my eyes and turned to Rawlings. “And meanwhile, Eddie Mohr, the old local president, his car is stolen by creeps who bash Lotty Herschel three ways from Sunday. That was on your turf, Rawlings, remember? So you guys tell me what the point is!”

  “How do you know it wasn’t his son?” Rawlings skipped all the stuff about Paragon Steel and went for the inessential.

  “I don’t. But the son grew up in Arizona. He hadn’t heard from his old man for thirty-five years. Finchley here didn’t try to get in touch with him. How’d he know to show up out of the blue? And on top of that, how’d he find the flophouse Kruger’d picked to crash in only eight days earlier?”

  I stopped for a minute, fishing in the depths of my weary mind for an essential piece of information. It surfaced just as Officer Neely came back into the room to lean over Finchley’s shoulder.

  I turned to Rawlings. “We ID’d Mitch Kruger on Monday. The so-called son came to Mrs. Polter’s on Tuesday. Even if someone called the son in Arizona, how’d he get here so fast?” Unless, of course, he’d been here all along after murdering his father.

  “Take it easy, Ms. W., take it easy.” Rawlings went over to join Finchley and Neely in the huddle.

  While they talked, my sudden spurt of energy died. I shrank back inside the blanket, the skin on my arms trembling from fatigue. Finchley’s slender, muscled frame was as still as a statue, like one of the Buddhas at the Art Institute.

  I’d first seen the Buddhas when I was six and my mother took me downtown to look at masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. They sat outside the main exhibit hall. Their faces were so calm, so unblinkingly benign, I wanted to stroke them. Gabriella couldn’t understand my fascination with them; we were there for me to experience the glory of her ancestry, not gawk at lower art forms.

  The Buddha grew large and beckoned me. I let go of Gabriella’s hand and climbed onto his lap. One cool stone hand clasped me lightly while his soothing voice uttered great truths.

  “When you wake up you will remember everything, my daughter, everything of importance.” He kept stroking me with his cool hand and repeating the mantra, until I became aware of Rawlings’s arm around me and his deep voice adjuring me to wake up.

  “You gotta get to bed, Warshawski. You’re no use to anyone like this. Want me to run you home?”

  “Take me to a motel,” I mumbled. “You don’t believe anyone’s after me, but they chased me this morning. Yesterday morning. Ask Barbara at the Belmont Diner—she’ll tell you it’s the truth.”

  “You know a motel that’s gonna let you in looking like this? You don’t even have any shoes on. You better let me take you home, Nancy Drew. If you’re seriously worried I’ll get someone to drive by your place every twenty minutes.”

  I felt weak and helpless, abandoned by the Buddha. I fought back the impulse to collapse on the floor in tears. “You better see me up into my apartment. I can’t deal with anyone jumping me tonight.”

  “Okay, girl, okay. Personal police escort. Round-the-clock protection, at least until you leave the crib again. Now, come on home. Detective Finchley has to do some thinking. It’s ugly work and he doesn’t like an audience.”

  I looked at Finchley. “So do you believe me? What did Neely tell you?”

  He permitted himself a small smile. “A man at Christ Hospital came in around two-thirty with a bullet in the left thigh. Claims his gun went off accidentally when he was cleaning it. Could be your guy, or—it could be what he says.

  “As for the rest of your story—it’s not a story, Vic. It’s just another way of looking at a company and a death. But I will take a second look at it. Now, let Conrad take you home. He’s been jumping out of his skin ever since he heard we pulled you from the drink.”

  Yet another way of looking at the same story. Rawlings wasn’t mad at me, just worried. Maybe the Buddha was looking out for me after all.

  “I want my gun back, Terry. I’ve got a license for it.” I let the horse blanket drop and dug in my back pocket for my wallet. It was gummy with mud and water. I pried it open and tried separating the different bits of identification and credit cards from its sodden slots.

  Finchley watched me fumble with it for a minute or two, then relented and handed me the Smith & Wesson. “I ought to get ballistics to check you against the slug Christ Hospital dug out. And then I ought to arrest you for assaulting the guy.”

  “And then I’d have to have a big trial proving self-defense, and his six buddies would be the only witnesses.”

  “It’s tempting, Vic, very tempting. I bet the lieutenant would get me promoted on the basis of it. You be careful how you fire that thing in the future.”

  “Yes, Detective,” I agreed meekly. I took the clip out and stuck it in my jeans pocket before putting the gun back in the holster. A rusty gun could misbehave in some ugly ways.

  Rawlings picked up the blanket and draped it across my shoulders. I leaned gratefully into the strength of his arm on my way out the door.

  34

  The Strong Arm of the Law

  I was so exhausted, it wasn’t until I had fumbled uselessly with my keys for several minutes that I realized something was wrong. “Someone’s been trying to break in, but all they did was smash up the lock.”

  My lips were swollen with fatigue; the words came out in an incomprehensible mumble. Rawlings took one look at the door frame and saw the damage at once. He was starting to bark commands into his lapel mike before I realized it.

  I put a hand over the speaker. “Not now, Sergeant, please. I need to sleep—I just can’t face any more servants or protectors tonight. We can go around the back way, see if we can get in through there. And if not … I’ll sleep on Mr. Contreras’s couch.” Sharing my rest with Mitch Kruger’s ghost. The thought made me shudder.

  Rawlings looked at me dubiously. “Let’s see what we find when we get around back,” he temporized.

  My legs seemed to have come unhinged from my torso. They moved with heavy, robotlike strides, but showed a distressing tendency to buckle without warning. Rawlings, his gun in his right hand, kept an arm around me after my first collapse. When he saw how feeble I was he dro
ve around the block to the alley.

  Before going into the yard he shone a brilliant spot up and down the stairs and into all the corners. I heard Peppy’s faint bark from behind Mr. Contreras’s door. A curtain twitched in the north corner bedroom of Vinnie’s place.

  I’ve had so many work-related break-ins over the years that I’ve encased my apartment in stainless steel. The front door, in addition to its treble locks, is reinforced with steel plate. The back has conventional grates on the door and windows. These were intact, but by now I was past being able to negotiate the locks. I handed my key ring to Rawlings and slumped against the window bars while he figured out the keys he needed.

  All I wanted was to be left alone so I could fall into a hole of sleep. I almost screamed from exhaustion when Rawlings insisted on searching the place.

  “No one’s here, Conrad. They tried the front, couldn’t do it, and decided the back was too exposed to mess with. Please … I just need to sleep.”

  “Yeah, I know you do, Ms. W. But I won’t sleep myself if I don’t just make a quick run-through.”

  I slumped at the kitchen table, knocking yesterday’s papers to the floor with my elbows. I dropped off at once; it took Rawlings’s lifting my head forcibly from my forearms to wake me again.

  “I hate to do this to you, Vic, but unless your housekeeping’s reached new lows someone sure has been in here.”

  My brain had jelled; I couldn’t even think of a response, let alone force my swollen lips to say anything. I followed him dumbly into the living room.

  Someone had broken one of my north-facing windows, climbed in, and torn the place to shreds. They hadn’t been very subtle about it. Broken glass lay on the floor under the sill. One piece had migrated as far as the piano bench. The bench itself stood open. All the music lay on the floor or the piano, spines broken, sheets hanging by a single thread. Every book and paper in the room looked as though it had been similarly treated.