Murray was suspicious. “You really didn’t know? It must have been right after you were there. The nurses said he seemed stable, so when a cop came along wanting to interview him, they thought it would be okay. He coded while the cop was questioning him.”
Poor old guy, a sad life, a painful death, and all for what? I thought of Kitty Binder’s last words as she lay in my arms, the German that Lotty translated as “What was the point of it all?” The misery surrounding all those people from Vienna seemed unbearable.
Murray was still talking; he’d tried calling Cordell Breen for a comment. “He and Julius grew up together, so I thought it would be a good angle. I’m hoping Global will buy my report, but I need to get ahead of the rest of the pack with some unusual angle. Breen wasn’t in, but I spoke to his wife, who seemed blitzed. She said it was all very upsetting because Julius had been visiting the house and ran off the road on his way home.”
“Yes?”
“And she added that you had been there.” Murray suddenly sounded savage. “Why couldn’t you tell me?”
“Murray, why don’t you join Homeland Security in putting a GPS monitor on me so you know where I am at all hours of the day or night? Why on earth should I have told you?”
“You could have told me what went on when Julius arrived.”
I saw that my bill was growing on the computer. I copied all my reports to a data stick and logged off. “I wasn’t there. He drove up as I was leaving. I didn’t even know until later it was Julius at the gate.”
“A crumb, Warshawski. I’m begging.”
“It doesn’t suit you,” I said, but I relented and told him about Julius’s arrival, and his accusation to Breen about the library.
“And had Breen?” Murray demanded. “Impersonated Dzornen, I mean?”
“Go talk to the librarians at the University of Chicago,” I said. “That’s what I did yesterday.”
“Save me a trip, Warshawski. You owe me.”
“Murray, you know damned well I owe you nada. But I will tell you what they told me: they never, even with burning catalog cards stuck under their fingernails, reveal who has been in the archives. They won’t even tell you that I was there.”
I hung up.
45
SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES
WHEN I GOT to the coach house, the Basier children were fighting over who got to sit in the front seat of the Volvo parked in the drive. They stopped kicking each other to stare at me as I used my picklocks on Julius’s front door. The lock turned easily; I waved to them; they quietly climbed into the backseat together. The parents should hire me.
Their father appeared a moment later. I waited until he’d backed the car out before I went to the Subaru to fetch my supplies.
I’d parked in the alley, not for secrecy, of which there was none in this neighborhood, but for expedience: I had gone home for a flashlight and my work boots and gloves, but I’d stopped at a hardware store to buy a crowbar, a pick, a shovel, a flex lamp and an industrial breathing mask. I didn’t think I’d find plutonium under the kitchen floor—Julius had lived here unscathed for thirty years—but mold and rats were a distinct possibility. I locked the dead bolt from the inside and went to look for the basement stairs.
I was so sure that there was a root cellar under the kitchen that I was baffled when I couldn’t find a door. I probed the cupboards and looked behind the radiators. I pulled all the junk out of the narrow closet that held the coach house’s mechanicals but didn’t see anything.
Maybe the entrance was outside, next to the barricaded back door. The door was blocked from the inside by the outsized trunk full of birdseed. I tried my crowbar but couldn’t budge the trunk with the load it was holding. I climbed over the side and was lifting one of the fifty-pound bags when I heard a banging on the front door.
“Just a minute,” I muttered, straining to get the bag over the side.
The door opened; the Basier kids’ father came into the kitchen.
“Who are you? Do you have a right to be in here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I gulped in air. “Do you have a key, or did you break in?”
“I live in the main house; we were given keys to this place when we moved in. My daughter says she saw you—”
I cut him off. “Come and give me a hand with this birdseed.”
He stared at me. The bag tipped over the edge and fell to the floor, bursting and scattering seed all over the kitchen.
Basier backed away. “What are you doing? Are you planning on cleaning this up before Julius gets home?”
“Mr. Basier, I will clean up any mess I make but Julius isn’t going to be coming home. He’s dead. This is a very labor-intensive job I’m doing, so if you don’t want to help, leave. I have too long a day in front of me to waste time arguing with you.”
“Julius is dead?” he repeated, stunned.
“You know he was in an accident, right? He died last night.” I looked at the space where the bag had been standing and realized I was looking at linoleum. This wasn’t a trunk, but a cabinet built onto the floor.