I saw him looking over at the limo. “Don’t even think it. I’ve got a gun, I know how to use it, and even if your boys finished me off, Murray Ryerson knows I’m meeting with you. Come sit down and get it over with.”
He came over, his head down, his hands jammed into his pockets. “I’m not admitting anything. I think you’re full of hot air, but once the press got their teeth into a story like that, they’d ruin me just with the innuendoes.”
I gave what was meant to be an engaging smile. “All you’d have to do is say I’m blackmailing you. Of course I’d run Caroline’s photo, and they’d interview her mother and all that stuff, but you could give it a shot. Now let’s see—we’ve got so much old family business to talk about, I don’t even know where to begin. With Louisa Djiak’s mortgage, or me in the mud at Dead Stick Pond, or Nancy Cleghorn.”
I spoke musingly, watching him out of the comer of my eye. He seemed a little jumpier at Nancy’s name than Louisa’s.
“I know! That report you sent to Mariners Rest for Xerxes. You’re running a fiddle on the insurance, aren’t you? What are they doing—paying a higher rate than they’re charged so you can pocket the difference? And what difference does it make if someone finds out? It ain’t exactly going to ruin you in the neighborhood. You’ve been charged with worse and been reelected.”
Suddenly the memory that had been eluding me since I talked to Caroline on Saturday popped to the surface. Mrs. Pankowski standing in her doorway, telling me her financial woes, saying Joey didn’t leave her any insurance. Maybe he hadn’t signed up for the group plan. But that was a Xerxes benefit, I thought, noncontributory life insurance. Only maybe it was term; since he hadn’t been with the company when he died, he wouldn’t be covered. Still, it was worth asking.
“When Joey Pankowski died, why didn’t he get any life insurance?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Joey Pankowski. He used to work at Xerxes. You’re the fiduciary on their LHP business, so you must know why an employee doesn’t collect life insurance when he dies.”
He looked suddenly as though he’d collapsed through the middle, I thought frantically, trying to follow up my advantage with piercing questions. But he was an old hand at taking the heat and he could tell I didn’t really have anything. He recovered enough poise to keep up a front of stubborn denial.
“Okay. Let it go. I can figure it out fast enough when I talk to the carrier. Or some other employees. Let’s go back to Nancy Cleghorn. She saw you and Dresberg together at your office, and you know as well as I do that no insurance commissioner will let you keep your license if you hang around with the mob.”
“Oh, knock it off, Warshawski. I don’t know who this Cleghorn girl is, other than reading in the papers that she got herself killed. I may talk to Dresberg from time to time —he does a lot of business in my ward and I’m the alderman for the whole ward. I can’t afford to be a dainty lady holding her nose when she smells garbage. The insurance commissioner isn’t going to think once about it, let alone twice.”
“So it wouldn’t bother you to let it be known that you and Dresberg met in your office late at night?”
“Prove it.”
I yawned. “How do you think I even heard about it? There was a witness, of course. One who’s still alive.”
Even that didn’t shake him enough for me to be able to pry anything from him. When the conversation ended I not only felt frustrated but too young for the job. Art just had too much more experience than I. I felt like grinding my teeth and saying “Just you wait, Black Jack, I’ll get you in the end.” Instead I told him I’d be in touch.
I walked away from him toward Lake Shore Drive. Sprinting across in front of the traffic, I watched him from the far side. He stood for a long moment looking at nothing, then shook himself and headed back toward his limo.
36
Bad Blood
I retrieved my car and headed back to Lotty’s. All I’d really gotten from seeing Jurshak was information that he’d been working some kind of fraud with the Xerxes insurance. And something major, based on his expression. But I didn’t know what it was. And I needed to find out quickly, before all the people who were mad at me converged once and for all and sent me to my permanent rest. The urgency tightened my stomach and congealed my brain.