Guardian Angel

by Sara Paretsky

Teri and I were both stunned into silence, but she recovered first. “Dick! I can’t believe you would be such a—such a traitor. After everything Daddy’s done for you! You promised me—”

  “I promised you nothing.” Dick kept his back to us. “I finally agreed to come today because you were so hot on the idea. I told you if you could get Vic to listen to you I’d undertake drawing up a proper agreement with her. But I’ve been trying to get you to understand all night that I cannot represent your father and uncle.”

  “But Daddy’s counting on you.”

  He finally turned around. “We’ve been through this a hundred times, but you won’t hear it. Leigh Wilton advised me very strongly not to represent them—that the appearance of impropriety would be too great, given my position on the Diamond Head board. I would do them more harm than good. And, Teri, I just don’t believe in them. I’ve talked to enough of their employees the last few days to believe they wanted to kill Vic. Your father set me up: he got me to deliver warnings to Vic under the guise of protecting me—keeping her from getting too close to the pension reversion. He must have known I’d never countenance an attack on her life.”

  Teri sprang to her feet, spots of color blooming under her blusher. “You’re still in love with her! I don’t believe it.”

  Dick gave a tired smile. “I’m not in love with her, Teri. I guess I should have said I wouldn’t countenance their trying to kill anyone, regardless of race, creed, sex, or inquisitiveness.”

  Teri’s eyes were bright with tears. She ran to the door. “Find your own way home, Mr. Hotshot. I’m not riding with you.”

  I expected him to race off after her, but he stood frozen in the room, his shoulders slumped, long after the echo of the slamming door had died down.

  “I’m sorry, Dick. Sorry for the bad time that lies ahead for you.”

  “I was sure you’d brandish your gun in triumph and tell me I have only myself to thank.”

  I shook my head, not trusting my voice.

  “You’d be right. I do have only myself to thank. You’ve always known how weak I am. Teri … if she saw through my—my facade of strength … didn’t let on. She built me up. Turned me into one of those see-through buildings.” He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “It’s not that I think of you often, but I did hope over the years when you saw how important I’d gotten you’d be sorry. Not sorry you left me, but sorry you despised me.”

  I felt my cheeks flame in embarrassment. “I’m a street fighter, Dick. I had to be as a kid just to survive, but I’m afraid I never outgrew it. Someone like Teri suits you better than I do. You’ll see; you two will get through this time somehow.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. Look—it was that damned pension agreement that started all the trouble. Not all of it—that prize asshole, Jason, letting his crew bilk Paragon didn’t help any. But trying to keep the reversion secret—two men died over that. And when it comes out—the legal stuff’s clean, but it could keep us in court for a decade. I talked to Ben Loring at Paragon this morning. He’s willing to help restructure the agreement, buy out the annuity and refund the plan, if the local wants to vote on it. We’d take it out of U.S. Met and give it back to Ajax Insurance to manage.”

  I felt my shoulders sag in relief. Mr. Contreras’s pension—all the guys in the local—had been worrying me all week. “Can you afford it? I thought most of the money was in Diamond Head junk.”

  Dick nodded. “Loring’ll work something out. And Peter will have to agree to put up some Amalgamated Portage shares as collateral. He doesn’t want to, but he’ll come around in the end. It’ll be his only hope for a plea bargain.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t know. I offered Leigh my resignation. He wouldn’t take it. He did agree that we didn’t need young Pichea in the firm anymore after this year: that should please you. But—I need a leave of absence from the law, and Leigh supported that—more because he doesn’t want me embarrassing the firm than for any other reason, but I’ll still be gone six months. If I join an ashram, I’ll let you know.”

  I offered him a lift downtown to the train, but he said he needed to walk, to clear his head. I went downstairs with him.

  He took my hand and held it between both of his. “We had some good times together, didn’t we, Vic? It wasn’t all fighting and contempt, was it?”

  I suddenly remembered Dick going with me every weekend to stay with my dad when Tony was dying. I’d forgotten that in the curtain of bitterness I’d draped across the past, but Dick, orphaned at five, adored Tony, and wept openly at his grave.

  “We had some important times together.” I squeezed his hand, then pulled mine away. “Now you’d better go.”

  He left without looking back.

  54

  A Long Way from Home

  The next four weeks were a long, slow period of legal discovery, of hiring people to fix up Mrs. Frizell’s house, of finding someone to help her once she got home, and arranging with the state to pick up the tab. Carol Alvarado did a lot of the legwork for that.

  I called Mrs. Frizell’s son, Byron, in San Francisco to let him know how his mother was doing. He was almost as excited by the call as she had been to learn we’d been talking to him.

  About the time Mrs. Frizell was ready to come home we found homes for the last of the puppies. Mr. Contreras out-talked me and kept his favorite, an all-gold male with two black ears. He insisted on naming it Mitch.

  The same day the old lady returned, Todd and Chrissie put their house on the market. Even with the recession in real estate we didn’t expect it would take long to sell: they had done a beautiful job of rehabbing it, and Lake View has become prime yuppie real estate.

  Lotty and I started talking again, but Lotty seemed brittle, almost fragile. We couldn’t seem to recover our old, profound intimacy. She was working ferociously, so much so that the flesh was beginning to leach from her bones. Despite her frantic pace, her usual vital spark was missing.

  When I tried telling her what had happened to Simon and the other thugs who most likely had attacked her, she refused to listen to me. Her injuries, or her fear, had given her a repugnance to my work. I worried she was feeling a repugnance, a withdrawal, from my whole life. I talked to Carol as well as to Max about her. They were both worried, but could give no counsel besides patience.

  “She’s forgiven me,” Carol said. “She’ll come round with you too. Give her time, Vic.”

  I didn’t say anything, but it looked like a more serious problem to me than that.

  Probably the most amazing event of that period was the afternoon that Mitch Kruger’s son showed up. Mitch, Jr., turned out to be a petroleum engineer, sunburned from months in the Persian Gulf—he’d been in Kuwait helping restart production there. His mother had seen our ad in one of the Arizona papers and sent it off to him in Kuwait City. Mitch, Jr., stopped in Chicago on his way home to find out what we had to say to him.

  He thanked us for our efforts in tracking down his father’s killers, but added depressingly, “I can’t get too excited about it—I hardly remember the guy. I’m glad he had some friends to help him out when he died, though.”

  When I told Conrad about it later, he laughed. “Don’t look so disconsolate, Ms. W. At least the guy thanked you. Hell, ninety percent of the time all I get is hate mail for my efforts.”

  I was working hard during this time—not just helping build the case against the Felittis and fixing up Mrs. Frizell’s home, but also taking jobs for real clients with real money. My first retainer had gone to new running shoes. Still, I spent as much time as our frantic schedules allowed with Conrad.

  Mr. Contreras, trying valiantly not to meddle, couldn’t hide his discomfort from the sergeant. I was upset by it and tried discussing it with Rawlings.

  “At least he’s talking to you. My sister heard about you from some busybody on the grapevine and won’t let me sully her living room now.”

  I gasped out loud and Rawlings laughed a little. “Yeah, white girl:
cuts both ways. So don’t let the old guy worry you.”

  I tried not to, nor to wonder how long we could stay close before our careers collided, but it was hard just to relax into the relationship.

  Despite my barricade of work I found myself waking time and again from nightmares of my mother’s death, dreams in which Lotty and Gabriella were inextricably entangled.

  Conrad was with me one night when the unbearable phantoms broke open my sleep. Trying not to wake him, I slid from my bed to the living room and went to the window. I could just make out the corner of the Picheas’ house. I wanted to go out in the night and run, run so fast and so far I could break away from my nightmares.

  I was trying to imagine a place where you could safely be outside at three in the morning, when Conrad came up behind me. “What’s the problem, Ms. W.?”

  I put my hands over his arms, but continued to look out the window. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “I’m a light sleeper. I’ve been hearing you get out of bed every night we’ve spent together this month. If you don’t want me to stay the night, just tell me so, Vic.”

  “It’s not that.” I was whispering, as if the dark imposed silence.

  He stroked my hair lightly. We stood silent a long minute.

  I hadn’t planned on telling him about Lotty or my nightmares, but in the dark, with the warmth of his body against mine, I suddenly blurted, “It’s Lotty. I’m so scared—scared she’s going to leave me the way my mother did. It didn’t matter that I loved my mother, that I did what I could to look after her. She left me anyway. I don’t think I can bear it if Lotty abandons me too.”

  “So you have to keep everyone around you on pins and needles all the time? Is that it? So guys like me, or even the old man downstairs, don’t get enough of a hold on you to leave you in the lurch?”

  I held him more tightly, but couldn’t say anything else. Maybe he was right though. Maybe that’s why I reacted so roughly every time Mr. Contreras, or Lotty, or anyone else worried about my safety. It could even be why I pushed myself to the brink time and again. When my muscles slowed down, would I find other strengths to get me across those chasms? I shivered in the summer air.

  For Matt and Eve

  (Eva Maria, that is, the once and future princess)

  Thanks

  Dan Paretsky, World’s Greatest Vet, provided valuable information on Peppy’s condition. Norma Singer and Loretta Lim, both registered nurses at Cook County Hospital, used one of their rare days off to give me a tour of the hospital. They explained its intricate workings in detail and showed me the pride they have in their own very difficult jobs. Norma Singer helped solve the problems that beset Mrs. Frizell in this novel.

  Madelyn Iris, from Northwestern University’s Center on Aging, was most helpful on questions of guardianship, city and county emergency services, and the procedure used to appoint someone as an elderly person’s guardian. This book accelerates the timetable for that procedure, but the process described here is depressingly close to reality.

  Rob Flater showed me where to start research so I could grapple with the skullduggery this novel discusses. Jay Topkis killed an impertinent dragon that was trying to spray fire in my direction.

  An expert on mechanics—both quantum and otherwise—worked out the technical problems in Chapter Fifty.

  This novel is a work of fiction. As is always the case, none of the people or events detailed here is based on anything except the distortions of reality caused by an overheated, morbid imagination. And as is also always true, any mistakes in the text are due to my ignorance, sloth, or stupidity, not to the advice of the experts I consulted.

  Bonnie Alexander and Mary Ellen Modica made it possible for me to return to work. Without their help I might never have been able to do so again. Diann Smith made the connections for me, as she has done for Chicago women for thirty years. Professor Wright and Dr. Cardhu supported my spirits through long months of pain.

  Chicago

  May 1991

  Also by Sara Paretsky

  WINDY CITY BLUES

  TUNNEL VISION

  BURN MARKS

  BLOOD SHOT

  BITTER MEDICINE

  KILLING ORDERS

  DEADLOCK

  INDEMNITY ONLY

  Edited by Sara Paretsky

  WOMEN ON THE CASE

  A WOMAN’S EYE