After a bit my life regained its normal flow—running Peppy, spending time with friends, breaking my heart over Chicago’s sports teams—the Black Hawks at that particular season. I returned, too, to my normal workload, looking at industrial fraud, doing background searches on candidates for sensitive financial positions, that kind of thing.
I worked hard to keep thoughts of Humboldt and South Chicago at bay. In the normal course of things I wouldn’t let loose ends drift away at the end of a case, but I just couldn’t take any more involvement in the old neighborhood. So I decided to leave Ron Kappelman’s role in the mess as an unanswered question. If Bobby’s accusation was true, that he’d been feeding Jurshak news of my whereabouts, I should by rights go down to Pullman and confront him. I just didn’t have the mental energy to pursue it any further, though. Let the state’s attorney figure it all out when Jurshak and Dresberg came to trial.
Sergeant McGonnigal was another loose end that never got tied up. I saw him with Bobby a couple of times while going over endless statements and interrogations. He acted pretty cold until he realized I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on his late-night lapse from policeman decorum. Over time I knew I was better off not getting too cozy with a cop, however empathic, but we never talked about it.
By May, with the Cubs already vying for last place, Humboldt Chemical was trading in the high fifties. Frederick Manheim had consulted enough experts in law and medicine that whispers of possible trouble had followed the trade winds east to Wall Street. Manheim came to consult with me a couple of times, but I was weary to the depths of my spirit of Humboldt.
I told Manheim I’d testify at any trials about my role in learning of the cover-up, but not to count on me for any other support. So I didn’t know what Humboldt was doing to prepare a counterattack. A blurb in the papers a few days after our final encounter said he was being treated for stress at Passavant, but since the Herald-Star ran a photo of him throwing out the first pitch for the Sox on opening day, I guess he’d gotten over it.
Round about that time, as the Cubs moved north from Tempe, I got a postcard from Florence. “Don’t wait until you’re seventy-nine to see it,” ran the brief message in Ms. Chigwell’s spidery hand. When she returned home a few weeks later she called me.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m not living with Curtis anymore. I bought his share in the house from him. He’s gone to a retirement home in Clarendon Hills.”
“How do you like living alone?”
“Very much. I just wish I’d done it sixty years ago, but I didn’t have the courage to do it then. I wanted to tell you, because you’re the one who made it possible, showing me how a woman can live an independent life. That’s all.”
She hung up on my incoherent protest. I smiled a little—gruff to the end. I hoped I was that tough forty years ahead.
The only thing that really troubled me was Caroline Djiak; I couldn’t get her to talk to me. She’d resurfaced after a day’s absence, but she wouldn’t come to the phone, and when I drove down to Houston Street she shut the door on me, not even letting me in to see Louisa. I kept thinking I’d made a terrible mistake—not just in telling her about Jurshak, but in keeping up my dogged search when she’d been trying to call me off.
Lotty shook her head sternly when I fretted about it. “You’re not God, Victoria. You can’t pick and choose what’s best for people’s lives. And if you’re going to spend hours in lachrymose self-pity, please do it someplace else—it’s not an appetizing spectacle. Or find another line of work. Your dogged searches, as you call them, spring from a fundamental clarity of vision. If you no longer have that sight, you no longer are suited to your job.”
Her bracing words didn’t kill my self-doubts, but in time even my worries over Caroline receded. When she called in early June to tell me Louisa had died, I could accept her abrupt conversation with relative equanimity.
I went to the funeral at St. Wenceslaus, but not to the house on Houston for food afterward. Louisa’s parents were running the event, and whether they aped pious grief or murmured sly animadversions on divine providence I would be hard put to control my desire to decimate them.
Caroline made no effort to speak to me at the service; by the time I got home my lachrymose self-pity over her had been replaced by an older, more familiar feeling—irritation at her brattiness. So when I found her waiting on my doorstep a month or so later, I didn’t exactly welcome her with open arms.
“I’ve been here since three,” she said without introduction. “I was afraid you’d gone out of town.”
“Sorry I didn’t leave my schedule with your secretary,” I replied sardonically. “But then, of course, I wasn’t anticipating the pleasure.”