Part 30 (1/2)
I sat back in my chair. ”No proof, but very suggestive,” I said to Morrell.
”Let's get some copies of this before I send it back to the Baladines.”
He grunted agreement, although he pointed out there wasn't enough there to get Baladine arrested, let alone convicted. I agreed and put in the first of the Nicola tapes to see if it might give us something more concrete.
The tape was dated about six months before Nicola's arrest for theft. We watched Nicola waking Utah and Madison, a sleepy Utah clinging to her nanny while Madison chatted vivaciously about the many things she was doing better in at school than anyone else. We saw Eleanor and BB kissing briefly as he left for the office on a ”don't know how late I'll be tonight, sweetheart” line and Eleanor in the nursery adjuring Nicola not to baby Utah. ”She's almost three.
It's time you stopped carrying her everywhere.” When Nicola said brokenly that she didn't understand, Eleanor told her not to play stupid and plunked Utah from Nicola's arms onto the floor. Utah began to howl. As soon as Eleanor left the room, Nicola picked her up and began soothing her in a language I didn't know, presumably Tagalog.
It was unnerving to watch Nicola Aguinaldo alive, even in the grainy production of the home video. She was pet.i.te, so small that next to Eleanor Baladine she looked like a child herself. In Eleanor's presence she became as waxen as one of the children's dolls, but alone with the little girls she grew more relaxed.
Robbie came in and began playing with Utah. He spoke Spanish to Nicola, who teased him about his accent and got him to laugh back at her. I had never seen Robbie happy. Talking in Spanish to him, Nicola became vivacious, almost beautiful. Eleanor called up to say the school bus was there.
The tape covered a twoweek period. Scenes broke off abruptly as people either moved out of camera range or turned off the camera. A conversation Eleanor was having with a gardener ended suddenly as Baladine called Nicola to his study. We watched her enter and stand with a face drained of expression. When she quietly took off and folded her clothes, she seemed to treat it as the same kind of ch.o.r.e that putting away Madison and Utah's clothes was. Baladine himself did not undress. It was unbearable, and I couldn't watch. When Morrell heard me crying he switched off the machine.
”I can't show that to a roomful of reporters,” I muttered. ”It's too indecent.”
”Do you want me to watch the other reel and summarize it for you?” he asked.
”Yes. No. I think I'd better see for myself.”
The second reel was similar to the first, except for the scene in Baladine's study. This time Nicola was begging for money for her child's hospital bills and Baladine was telling her impatiently that he paid her a good wage and that she had a h.e.l.l of a nerve to try begging for money on a madeup story. Nicola offered herself to him and he laughed at her. It was a scene of such agonizing humiliation that I finally left the library to pace the school corridor. When I came back, Morrell had finished the tape and rewound it. Father Lou had slipped into the room while I was walking around.
”There wasn't anything on it about the necklace or her arrest. We'll have to imagine that part,” Morrell said.
”That poor child,” Father Lou said. ”What a crucifixion she endured. That man, her boss, he's the one you're after?”
I was as sweaty and depleted as if I'd run a marathon and could only nod.
”I still don't know if you're doing the right thing or not, but I'll help you out. Let you use the library here for your press conference.”
I blinked. ”But, Father, you know-Baladine not only has a lot of artillery at his disposal, he's not afraid to use it. Women and children don't mean anything special to him. I couldn't possibly guarantee your safety, or the safety of the school. Unless . . .”
”Unless what?” Morrell said sharply when I didn't finish the sentence.
”Unless I get Baladine to come to me first. Before we lay the case out to the media. Especially since we can prove Frenada was at his pool the night he died.
If I bring him to me, I won't have to lie here tensely waiting for him to make some kind of move.”
”No,” Morrell said. ”Putting your head on the block for him to chop off is nuts.
You know Freeman Carter would give you the same advice.”
I scrunched up my mouth in a monkey face. ”More than likely. But I'm tired of walking around in terror. Ever since he sicced Lemour on me in June, I've had to watch every step I take, and my time in Coolis has only made me more nervous. If I let him know I've got these tapes and the tape he made of him and Alex, I think he'll come get them. And if I leave the church, he won't do it here where the kids will be in danger.”
”Your press presentation is your best route,” Morrell said patiently. ”Bringing that much publicity not just to his Coolis operation but to his use of a Chicago police officer to plant drugs in your office will force Baladine to stop hara.s.sing you. Probably force his board to make him quit, too.”
”Abigail Trant told me that he can't stand the notion of being bested. I saw it-or heard it-yesterday: he was furious when Alex got the tape from him. He hurt her to get it back: it wasn't a game to him. There's no telling what he might do.”
”Think about it overnight,” Father Lou suggested. ”Offer a special intention at ma.s.s in the morning. Do some manual labor in the crypt. Nothing like hard work to clear the mind.”
So Morrell and I spent the rest of the morning in the chamber underneath the altar, s.h.i.+fting old boxes of hymnals that Father Lou had decided the church would never use again, digging out the costumes the children wore in their Christmas pageant, and uncovering an actual reliquary that the Italians who built the church a hundred years ago had brought with them. This caused an explosion of nervous ribaldry from the boys working with us.
I hadn't resolved matters by three, when Father Lou called a halt to our work so that the boys could attend the parish picnic. Nor did a nap while Morrell joined them in a baseball game in Humboldt Park bring any special vision. I still wanted to call Baladine and tell him I had his videotapes: something like a childhood taunt-come catch me if you can.
The problem remained where I would be when I issued the taunt. At the church I endangered Father Lou and his schoolchildren. In my own home there were Mr.
Contreras and the other tenants. Tessa's studio ruled out using my office. And he might be so berserk that he'd go after someone like Lotty out of sheer terrorism, even if I wasn't near her.
All evening long, as Morrell and I worked on my presentation-preparing the photographs in order, figuring out what video sequences to show of Lemour in action against me, where to put Trant and Frenada with Baladine at his pool, discussing whether to use any of the Aguinaldo footage, typing up cameraready copy in St. Remigio's school computer lab-Morrell and I debated the question. At midnight, when Morrell left with the material-he was taking it to the Unblinking Eye in the morning for production-I was no nearer a solution.
I went to bed and fell into a restless sleep. It was only an hour later when Father Lou shook me awake. ”Old man's at the door with a kid and some dogs. Says he's your neighbor.”
”My neighbor?” I pulled on my jeans and jammed my feet into my running shoes and sprinted down the hall, Father Lou following on his rolling boxer's gait.
I looked through the peephole at the figures on the doorstep. Mr. Contreras.
With Mitch, Peppy, and Robbie Baladine. My heart sank, but I told Father Lou it was, in fact, my neighbor.
”With the kid whose father had me arrested the last time he ran away to me.”
Father Lou unsc.r.a.ped the dead bolts and let them in. Mr. Contreras started speaking as the door opened. All I caught was, ”Sorry, doll, but I didn't want to use the phone in case they was tapping my line,” before the dogs overwhelmed me with their ecstatic greeting and Robbie, painfully thin and grubby, started apologizing: ”I know you said to wait until I heard from you, but BB called.”
Father Lou shut the door. ”Okay. Into the kitchen for tea, and let's sort this out one voice at a time. These dogs housebroken?”
”Where's the car?” I asked, before Father Lou pushed the dead bolts home.
”Sorry, doll, sorry, it's out front, you want me to move it?”
”It needs to go away from here. It's very identifiable, and if Baladine is scouring the city for me, he'll find it.”
”Rectory garage,” Father Lou said. ”Filled with old junk but room for the car.
I'll show-what's your name?-Contreras the garage. You take the boy into the kitchen. Put on the kettle.”
Robbie and the dogs bounded down the hall with me to the kitchen. Robbie was trying hard not to flinch from Mitch, which seemed more heartbreaking than anything else about him.
”I'm sorry, Ms. Warshawski,” he whispered, ”but they figured out you weren't Aunt Claudia. They were going to lock me in the punishment barracks. I didn't know when I'd ever get out. And I thought if BB did something else bad to you because you came to see me, I'd have to kill myself. So I ran away. But now I see he can put you in prison no matter what I do.”
”Sh, sh,poverino. It's okay. You're here, let's deal with that. Tell me the story when Father Lou and Mr. Contreras get back; that way we'll all get the same version and you'll only have to tell it once.”
When the two men came in, the kettle was boiling. Father Lou made a large mug of cambric tea for Robbie and black tea with sugar for himself. I poured more hot milk into a mug for myself.
Mr. Contreras impatiently waved away refreshments. ”He showed up about an hour ago, doll. He's done in. I didn't know what to do-like I say, I was afraid to use the phone-but I figured if they had any kind of watch on the place, it wasn't good to leave him there. I guess I could have gone up to Morrell, but all I thought was, you'd be in real trouble now if that creep Baladine-sorry, son, I know he's your old man-”
”Let's have it from the beginning, and short,” Father Lou said. ”Have to say ma.s.s in a few hours, don't want to stay up all night.”