Part 13 (1/2)
I put the Rustmobile into noisy gear and started for home. My route took me past St. Remigio's church and school, where Lacey Dowell and Frenada had been students twenty years ago. Lacey had learned acting there, and Frenada had started his business by making the school's soccer uniforms. I slowed down to read the times for daily ma.s.s from the signboard, wondering whether I might go in the morning, meet the priest, learn something about Frenada. But if Frenada had told his confessor why he had a Mad Virgin Ts.h.i.+rt halfburied under his fabric samples, I didn't think the priest would share it with me.
Was that the secret that Trant wanted me to find? Was Frenada making bootleg Virginwear clothes in his little factory and selling them in the old 'hood? In that case, it was a legitimate inquiry. Although I expected Trant used something like Burmese or Honduran slave labor for his own production, in which case I was just as happy for Frenada to sell pirated s.h.i.+rts employing local workers at living wages.
Sal had called while I was at the factory, wanting to see if I'd like to catch Murray's second program and get some dinner. I took the L down to the Glow so I could drink: it had been a long day and I didn't want to drive anymore, anyway.
The usual crowd of tired traders was drinking, but they let me switch from the Sox on GN to Global-after all, it was only the third inning and the Sox were already down four runs.
After his debut with Lacey Dowell I wondered what Murray could find to t.i.tillate the viewers, but I had to agree with Sal: the second show at least nodded in the direction of respectable journalism. He'd taken a sensational local murder, of a prominent developer, and used it as the springboard for a look at how contracts are awarded in the city and suburbs. Although too much of the footage showed the man at Cancun with three women in string bikinis, Murray did wedge in fiftyseven seconds on how contracts get handed out in Illinois.
”Some of it was respectable, but he was too chicken to mention Poilevy by name,”
I grumbled when the show ended.
”You want egg in your beer?” Sal said. ”Guy can't do everything.”
”I wish he'd covered the women's prison at Coolis. That'd be a great place to showcase a cozy pair of dealmakers. I'm surprised it's not called Baladine City.”
”Vic, this may make sense to you, but it's Greek to me.”
”Ever since that wretched party you threw here last week, I've been running around in circles. Like my dog Mitch chasing his tail, come to think of it-exhausting and about as meaningful.” I told her what I'd been doing. ”And don't tell me it's none of my business, because it is, even if no one is paying me for it.”
”Get off your high horse, St. Joan.” Sal poured me another finger of Black Label. ”It's your time and money; do what you want with it.”
That encouragement didn't cheer me as much as it might have, but dinner at Justin's in the west Loop-where the owner knew Sal and whisked us past a dumbfounded line of beautiful Chicagoans-made me much happier. At least until I caught sight of Alex Fisher halfway through my tuna in putanesca sauce.
I couldn't help staring. Alex was at a table with Teddy Trant and a bald man with the kind of s.h.i.+ny face all Illinois politicians take on after too much time snuffling around in the public trough. JeanClaude Poilevy in person. If Trant would rather eat with him and Alex than the exquisite Abigail, there was something seriously wrong with his taste.
When we got up to leave, Alex and her convoy were still talking over coffee. Sal tried to dissuade me, but I went to their table. Trant was as perfectly groomed as his wife, down to the clear polish on his manicured nails.
”Mr. Trant,” I said. ”V. I. Warshawski. I wanted to let you know I appreciate your willingness to send me some work. I'm sorry I couldn't take it on for you.”
Alex gave me a look that could have done laser surgery on my nose, but Trant shook my hand. ”Global tries to do business with local firms. It helps us anchor ourselves in cities we're new to.”
”Is that why you've been talking to Lucian Frenada?” It was a guess, based on the Mad Virgin decal I'd glimpsed at SpecialT earlier in the evening, but everyone at the table froze.
Poilevy put down his coffee cup with a clatter. ”Is that the guy you were-”
”Lucian Frenada is the man who's been hara.s.sing Lacey.” Alex cut him off quickly and loudly.
”Sure, Sandy, sure. It's not a bad story, even if it has a few holes around the edges. Alex, I mean. She changed nicknames in the last twenty years,” I added to Trant. ”We were such good pals when she was Sandy, I keep forgetting she's Alex now.”
”What do you mean, holes around the edges?” Poilevy asked.
”I did a little looking. I talked to Lucian Frenada. I talked to the head of security at Ms. Dowell's hotel. Maybe the studio is overreacting to the scene between Frenada and Ms. Dowell at the Golden Glow last week-understandable with an important star-but I can't find any evidence that Frenada's been hanging around her.”
”That isn't what I asked you to investigate,” Alex snapped.
”No, but you haven't been asked to pay me anything either, have you.”
Sal came up behind me and put a hand on my arm. ”Let's go, Vic. I've got to get back to the Glow-it's my night to close.”
I reminded Alex and Trant that they knew Sal from last week's party. We all said meaningless nothings, about Murray's debut, about Sal's bar, but I would have given a month's billings to know what they said when Sal and I moved out of earshot. I turned to look when we got to the door; they were bent over the table like the three witches over a pot.
20.
Child in Mourning What with the drive to Coolis and the long night hopping around town, I was glad to crawl into bed. I read a little of Morrell's book on the Disappeared in South America, stretching my legs between clean sheets to pull the kinks out of my spine.
The phone rang as I was drifting off. I groaned but stuck out an arm and mumbled a greeting. There was a pause on the other end, then someone garbled my name in a hurried voice just above a whisper.
”Yes, this is V. I. Warshawski. Who is this?”
”It's-This is Robbie. Robbie Baladine. I was at the gate, you know, when you came last week, you know, when you talked to my mom about-about Nicola.”
I came fully awake in a hurry, turning on the light as I a.s.sured him that I remembered him well. ”You're the expert tracker. What can I do for you?”
”I-It's not for me, but Nicola. I want-want to go to her funeral. Do you know when it is?”
”There's a problem about that,” I said carefully. ”The morgue seems to have lost her body. I don't know how that happened, but until they find it there can't be a funeral.”
”So he was right.” His young voice was filled with a kind of bitterness. ”I thought he was making it up to-to tease me.”
”Your dad?”
”Yeah, old BB.” He was forgetting to whisper in his anguish. ”Him and Eleanor, they've been so mean about Nicola. Since she died and all. When I said I wanted to go to her funeral, they said why, so I could stand around with all the emotional spicks and bawl to my heart's content, and then finally BB said there wouldn't be a funeral because no one could find the body and to-to shut the f.u.c.k up.”
”I'm sorry, honey,” I said inadequately. ”I guess your dad worries about whether he's a tough enough man, and so he's always on guard against any strong feelings. I don't suppose it's much comfort to you now, but can you imagine him as someone who is incredibly weak and scared so he acts like a bully to keep other people from guessing how scared he is?”
”You think that could really be true?” There was wistfulness in the young voice, a hope that his father's meanness wasn't due to his own failings.
I thought of Baladine, casually helping with the dismemberment of African newborns, getting his hands dirty, and wondered if my diagnosis had any basis in reality. Maybe he was someone who enjoyed torture for its own sake, but I gave Robbie a hearty a.s.surance I didn't feel.
”Your father is a cruel man. Whatever the reason for his cruelty, will you try to remember that his sadism is about him, about his needs and weaknesses, and not about you?”
I talked to him for a few more minutes, until he'd recovered enough equilibrium for me to turn the conversation. There were two questions I wanted to put to him before we hung up. The first was about Nicola's smoking. Oh, no, Robbie said, she never smoked, not like Rosario, their nanny now, who was always sneaking off behind the garage for a cigarette, which made Eleanor furious, because she could still smell the smoke on her breath even after Rosario swallowed a zillion peppermints. Nicola said she had to save all her money for her children; she couldn't waste it on cigarettes or drinking.
My second question was whether his dad owned any shoes with horseshoe emblems-and if he did, were any of the emblems missing. Robbie said he didn't know, but he'd look.
It made me feel like a creep, asking Robbie to spy on his own father-but I suppose it also made me feel like I was paying BB back for his frothing over his son's masculinity. If he'd been proud of his sensitive child I might not have done it. But if he could be proud of a sensitive child, he wouldn't be doing other stuff.
Before Robbie hung up I asked, as casually as I could, how he'd gotten my unlisted home number: it wasn't on the business card I left him last week.
”It was in BB's briefcase,” Robbie muttered. ”Don't tell me I'm a criminal to go snooping in his case, it's the only way I know when he's planning something awful, like that camp for fat kids he sent me to last summer. I checked it out, and he had this whole file on you, your home number and everything.”
My blood ran cold. I knew Baladine had done research on me-he'd made that clear enough on Friday-but it seemed worse, somehow, his carrying the information around with him.
”Doesn't he keep his case locked?”