Richter flashed a perfect Ipana smile. “And I can assure you there’s nothing amiss with them.”
“Splendid.” I put my arms on the desk and propped my chin on my hands. “I’m really exhausted. If Velma’s told you all about me, you know I almost died in a fire in an abandoned hotel last week. I’m still not quite over it, so I’m not going to make any effort to be subtle.
“Two weeks ago at a fund-raiser out at Boots’s place Roz made a special point of taking me to one side and asking me not to sandbag her campaign. Since that was the farthest thing from my mind, I was irked to say the least. And it made me think she must be hiding some secret.”
“If it was secret, then it was none of your business, Warshawski,” Velma interjected.
I sat up at that. “She made it my business. She—or anyway, Marissa Duncan—got me to put my name to a public roster announcing my support. And I backed it up with more money than I gave to all other political candidates this year. If Roz was pulling off something illegal or unethical behind my name, I damned well did have a right to know about it.”
I was panting by the time I finished. I took a minute to calm myself and focus my thoughts. Camellia and Loren were sitting stiffly, willing to hear me out but ready to slam the door on me as soon as I’d finished.
“When I started asking questions a long list of people began telling me I was a pain in the ass and to mind my own business. The first, of course, was Velma here, followed by Roz. And then, interestingly enough, Ralph MacDonald, the big guy himself—Boots’s pal, you know—warned me off. A little more subtly than Velma and Roz, but a warning nonetheless. And after the fire he warned me again, this time not nearly as subtly.”
Ralph’s name took them all by surprise. If Boots had told Roz he was siccing MacDonald on me, she’d kept it to herself.
“Well, when I was at Roz’s fund-raiser she had her cousin with her—Luis Schmidt—and Carl Martinez, his partner in Alma Mejicana. And it seemed to me that it was they who pointed me out to her, suggesting I was up to no good.”
I stopped. Something in that picture, the scene of Wunsch and Grasso huddled with Furey and the two men from Alma Mejicana, was tugging at my brain. If I wasn’t so tired, if Velma wasn’t so hostile, I’d get it. It was because he’d been talking to Wunsch and Grasso that Schmidt warned Roz. They were all connected, Wunsch and Grasso, Alma, Farmworks. And Farmworks was connected to Seligman, through Rita Donnelly’s daughter Star. Did that mean that Wunsch and Grasso were connected to the arson? My brain spun around.
“We’re waiting, Vic.” Velma’s cold voice interrupted my flurried thoughts. “Or are you trying to embellish your story to make it more credible?”
I gave her a bitter smile. “I’ll wrap it up fast. And believe it or not as you please, but worse is going to follow soon. Alma Mejicana was on the fringes of the construction business up until two years ago. They had a couple of suits against the county, claiming discrimination in the matter of bids, but they were strictly small potatoes-parking lots, a few sidewalks, that kind of thing. They really weren’t big enough for the projects they were bidding on.
“Run the cameras forward. Suddenly they’ve dropped their suits and by a remarkable coincidence they pick up a piece of the Dan Ryan action. You’ve got to be a heavy roller to play at that table. Where did they come up with the equipment and the expertise?
“Now Roz is a partner in Alma Mejicana. I’m just guessing this part—” I ignored an explosive interruption from Velma. “I don’t know whether she went to Boots or he came to her. But his support has eroded badly in the Hispanic wards. They’ve been backing Solomon Hayes to oust Meagher as board chairman. As long as they’re going with Hayes and the blacks have a different candidate, Meagher can scrape by. But lately it’s been sounding like the old Washington coalition is perking up again. And if the Hispanics got together with the black coalitions and united on a black candidate, Boots could kiss his forty years of power and patronage good-bye.”
Velma was muttering to my right, but Camellia Maldonado sat with a look of glassy composure, much as an Edwardian lady might have watched a drunk in her living room.