Caroline answered the phone on the fifth ring. “Vic. Hi. I was just putting Ma to bed. Can you hold? Or should I call back?”
I told her I’d wait. “But you see,” I added to Lotty, “those notebooks mean bankruptcy now. Not for the whole company necessarily, but certainly for the Xerxes operation. A good lawyer gets hold of that stuff, contacts the employees or their families, and really goes to town. They’ve got all those Manville settlements to use by way of precedent.”
No wonder Humboldt had been desperate enough to seek me out personally. His little empire was being threatened by the Turks. Frederick Manheim had been right—it must have seemed incredible to all of them that a detective could start nosing around Pankowski and Ferraro and not be looking for evidence of the blood work.
Why had Chigwell tried to kill himself? Overcome by remorse? Or did someone threaten him with a fate worse than death if he told Murray or me anything? The people he’d pranced off to on Friday might well have killed him by now if they thought he was going to crack on them.
I didn’t think I’d ever find out exactly what happened. Nor did I see a way of bringing Nancy’s death back to the great shark. The only hope would be if the two thugs Bobby had in custody spilled their guts and somehow managed to implicate Humboldt. But I didn’t pin much hope on that. Even if they did talk, someone like Humboldt knew too many ways of insulating himself from the direct consequences of his actions. Just like Henry II. I shivered.
When Caroline came back on the line I asked her if Louisa had a brochure describing her Xerxes benefits.
“Christ, Vic, I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “What difference does it make?”
“A lot,” I answered shortly. “It could explain why Nancy was killed and a whole lot of other unpleasant stuff.”
Caroline gave an exaggerated sigh. She said she’d ask Louisa, and put the phone down.
Nancy would have known about Xerxes’s real loss experience because she was monitoring that as SCRAP’S environment and health director. So when she’d seen the letter to Mariners Rest and found the company’s rate structure, she’d seen at once that Jurshak was handling some kind of fiddle for them. But who had taken her files out of her office at SCRAP? Or maybe she’d had them on her, preparing for a confrontation with Jurshak, and he’d seen they were found and destroyed. But she’d left the other stuff in her car and he hadn’t looked there.
When Caroline came back on the line she told me that Louisa thought she’d brought a flyer home with her but it would be buried in her papers. Did I want to wait while she looked? I asked her just to find it and leave it out for me to pick up in the morning. She began a barrage of questions. I couldn’t deal with the insistent pressure in her voice.
“Give my love to Louisa,” I interrupted tiredly, and hung up on her indignant squawks.
Lotty and I went out for a sober supper at the Dortmunder. Both of us felt too overwhelmed by the enormity revealed by the Chigwell notebooks to have much appetite, or to want to talk.
When we got home I checked in with Mr. Contreras. Young Arthur had taken off. The old man had locked front and back doors when he took Peppy out for her evening walk, but Art had opened a window and jumped out. Mr. Contreras was miserable—he felt he’d let me down the one time I’d actively sought his help.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said earnestly. “You couldn’t possibly watch him twenty-four hours a day. He came to us for protection—if he doesn’t want it, it’s his neck, after all. You and I can’t spend our lives looking around for scissors if he wants to keep sticking his head into nooses.”
That cheered him slightly. Although he apologized several times more, he was able to talk about something else—like how lonely Peppy was with me away.
“Yeah, I miss both of you,” I said. “Even your hot breath down my neck when I want to be alone.”
He laughed delightedly at that and hung up much happier than I was. Although I really didn’t give a damn what happened to young Art, I wasn’t sure how much he’d learned of what I was figuring out. I didn’t relish the thought of his taking any of it back to his father.
My answering service told me Murray had been trying to reach me. I tracked him down and told him nothing had jelled yet. He didn’t really believe me, but he didn’t have any way to prove I was wrong.
37
The Shark Puts Out Bait