“Murray—when I left you, I didn’t know I was going to a crime scene.”
“And when you got to Mount Moriah cemetery, you didn’t think you could call me? You’d just left me, you know how much I could use a scoop. I told you how hard it is for me to get face time with my boss. Instead, I find out at our morning huddle that the vampire corpse not only has a connection to Vina Fields, but to Crawford, Mead.”
I sat up. Murray had dropped that squib deliberately. The Vina Fields part was easy enough to understand: Kira had said that the parents of one of the girls in her group, Jessie Something, were connected to the mayor. They must have started their Sunday by calling their clout and getting him (or her) to intervene with the police for them. And once that happened, word would start floating around the city.
But Crawford, Mead? There are a handful of outsize law firms in Chicago that work for the state’s heaviest hitters in politics and business. Since I specialize in financial crime—when I’m not crawling through cemeteries in the mud—I’ve met members of most of the big firms in court, but it’s only a managing partner at Crawford, Mead whose taste in socks and sex I know. Or had known, back in the days when we were married.
Richard Yarborough wasn’t a bad guy, just one who wanted power and money badly enough to sacrifice anything that got between him and his goal—such as my career, my feelings, little kittens. Not that I was still bitter or anything, twenty years later.
“What’s the connection?” I asked weakly.
“If you won’t share, I don’t have to, either.”
“Murray, I’m too tired for games—I was up past three with recalcitrant schoolgirls. How did you find out I was involved, by the way?”
“These things leak out, Warshawski, you know how that goes. I have a friend at the 13th District who thought a body with a stake through its heart was freaky enough to merit coverage. Of course, she mentioned you, because she knows you and I are pals, although a pal would have called me from the cemetery.
“This morning, I had to listen to Lawlor’s broadly smeared innuendoes about what a great legwoman you were, and how great it was that you went out and created news for me. Of course, I pretended I knew all about it, and at least I’d had the heads-up from the 13th, but you listen to me and listen good, V. I. Warshawski: if you ever leave me looking that stupid again you will never ever get another line of print from me, even if you’ve uncovered proof that the president was born on the planet Krypton.”
“Believe me, Murray, when you’re slogging through mud with a bunch of screaming tweens, the last thing on your mind is texting your friends. Although, of course, if I’d known you wanted to take over my babysitting gig I would have called you in a heartbeat.”
Murray was too angry to be placated. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if you hadn’t just been with me. Lawlor’s an asshole, but Weekes is no dummy, and he put the twos together very fast.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, inadequately.
The truth was, I hadn’t wanted to give Murray a heads-up. I was worried about my cousin, and about the immigrant girls in her group. Given how much Lawlor and Weekes railed against illegals in the country, I wanted to protect Kira and her mother from GEN scrutiny. Time was when you could cover Murray with syrup and send him into a nest of fire ants and he wouldn’t talk. Now, given how desperate he was to make an impression on his boss, I wasn’t so sure.
“Of course, you could start making it up to me,” Murray said.
“Oh?”
“Get me in to see Yarborough.”
“Murray, Dick and I have been divorced for a good twenty years, and the parting wasn’t harmonious. It’s unlikely that I could get him to talk to me, let alone a reporter.” I sat on the edge of the bed and did a few leg lifts, flexing my toes to increase the stretch. “What on earth was Wuchnik doing for Crawford, Mead?”
“He died without confiding in me. All I know is that he was on Yarborough’s payroll.”
“Along with thirteen hundred other people. Dick probably didn’t know his name.” I put the phone on speaker and started loosening my shoulders. “I’m going back to the cemetery this afternoon. I’ll be glad to show you the tomb where Wuchnik died.”
“We had a photographer out there first thing this morning. And a camera crew. By the way, Helen Kendrick had a really passionate segment on her Sunday Values show on how a woman who wants to deny Americans the right to read their Bibles raised a daughter to worship Satan in a graveyard.”
I stopped my exercises. “Murray, I don’t know if it’s you or me, but this makes no sense. Are you trying to say that Helen Kendrick was attacking me? Does she think Petra is my daughter? An assumption that depresses me on every conceivable parameter, by the way.”
“You really don’t know?”