“Then you sure as hell have no business out here. How’d you get past the front gate without a pass or a hard hat?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
He frog-marched me around to the front of the mound, where his crew were sitting on overturned barrels or leaning against their earthmoving machines, watching the forensic teams at work.
A silver Jeep Patriot pulled up, splashing mud on my jeans. The driver, a guy around fifty with a marine haircut, lowered his window.
“Jarvis, what the hell you doing sticking dead bodies out here on the dock? You let a game of hide-and-seek get out of hand?”
He was grinning widely and the Guisar man smiled in turn, but perfunctorily. “Bagby—you saw the news?—it was—”
“Awful. I know,” Bagby cut him off. “Shouldn’t make a joke out of it. Did you find out who the dead man was?”
“The cops just learned. Guy named Jerry Fugher. They say he did odd jobs around the neighborhood, but what he was doing here on the docks, no one knows.”
“Who’s the talent?” Bagby asked, jerking his head at me.
“I’m trying to find out. The lady got in here without a pass. I don’t know how she got past Kipple at the main gate, but I’ll have a talk—”
“You look like you walked up the tracks,” Bagby said to me, taking in my mud-spattered clothes. “Whatever you want must be pretty important. What can we do for you, Ms.— Uh?”
“Warshawski,” I said.
“The hockey player?” Bagby asked.
“I’m retired. These days I’m an investigator.”
Bagby looked startled, then threw back his head and guffawed. “I earned that. You’re related to Boom-Boom Warshawski?”
“Cousin.” I smiled: two can play nice. “I’m the person who ID’d Jerry Fugher for the police. I understand he worked for you?”
Bagby shook his head. “If you told the cops that, they knew before I did. Never heard of the guy.”
I pulled out my cell phone and showed him the picture of Fugher getting into one of his trucks with Gravel.
Bagby took the phone from me and frowned over the picture. “The shot’s too blurry to make out their faces that well, but the short fat guy looks a hell of a lot like Danny DeVito. I recognize the truck, though, damn it. Some SOB is going to be collecting unemployment before the day is over, letting a stranger drive one of our trucks. Huge legal exposure to that. Forward that photo to me, okay? I can read the plate; that’ll tell me who was supposed to be driving that morning.”
“I gave the photo to your daughter on Friday. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown it to you.”
He shook his head, mock sadness. “Delphina! If the guy had looked like Johnny Depp instead of Danny DeVito, she’d have tracked him down by now instead of letting it go completely out of her head.”
I smiled, mock understanding. “She must have your dispatcher wrapped around her finger for him to forget, as well.”
He gave me another appraising look, but dropped the subject, saying he’d give me a ride out to the road. “Save you schlepping all the way back on foot.”
“I’ll stay out here, see what the cops turn up.”
“She can’t stay here,” the Guisar man said to Bagby. “She doesn’t have a pass or a hard hat, she’s not with the city. Drive her out.”
Drive me out. It sounded as though I was a demon possessing a pig.
“Yeah, sorry about that, Ms. Warshawski, but Jarvis is right. No pass, no hard hat, no visit.”
I gave in with as much grace as I could muster, stopping at the squad cars to see if I knew anyone on duty. No luck. Jarvis, who’d followed me, lecturing me on how I was trespassing, started sneezing mid-sentence. I kept my top pulled over my nose.
Bagby honked. “Warshawski! Train’s leaving the station.”
I climbed into his front seat and looked mournfully at my clothes. My running shoes were caked with mud, my socks were soaked through, and my almost-new jeans had a long tear up one leg—I must have caught it on a piece of wire when I was sliding through the fence.
“This guy Fugher must be something special if you wrecked your wardrobe to look at his burial plot. How’d you know him? He part of one of your private investigations?” Bagby asked.
“And that would be your business because . . . ?”
Bagby grinned, but he kept his eyes on the road, swerving around the biggest potholes. “Just making conversation. Although if he was driving one of my trucks, I guess I’d better find out what he was up to. Every now and then a cargo does go missing.”
“You know Frank Guzzo?” I asked.
“Is this a trick question? Of course I know Guzzo. He’s been with the company forever. Don’t tell me you thought he’d be on Guisar’s dock back there.”
“Just making conversation,” I said primly. “When Frank tried out for the Cubs, Bagby’s gave him time off to get in shape.”