“We are conducting an investigation connected to our national security. This gives us certain warrantless rights.” This was the thug whom Mitch had knocked over. What a good dog.
“And among those rights is the right to shoot the homeowner on her return?” It took a major act of will, but I kept my tone conversational.
“We were acting on information and belief that you have documents that affect our national security.” That was Thug Two.
“So you broke into my home and ripped up my mother’s music?”
“We didn’t rip it up, we were looking for documents. It was a logical hiding place.”
“And then you stole my work papers—”
“We confiscated them,” Thug Two snapped. He had a nice mop of wavy brown hair that he clearly spent a lot of time tending.
“Ooh, good one, Curly, confiscation. When I was with the public defender, a lot of my clients had confiscated cameras, jewelry and so on. I wish I’d known that we could have been pleading national security. ‘Your Honor, we held the plaintiff up at gunpoint and confiscated his belongings because we believe his wallet affected national security.’ I still have colleagues in the PD’s—”
“That’s enough,” the sergeant said. “I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong here, but even if you two are federal agents, firing a gun in a populated apartment building is a recipe for a disaster. There are babies in this building. There are old people.”
He got a squawk on his cell phone, exchanged a few words, turned to me. “Looks like they are really federal agents, not scam artists, Ms. Warshawski. Beats me why they don’t have a warrant, but the local federal magistrate ordered us to stand down.”
He looked at the thugs, or Homeland Security agents as they liked to be called. “You going to give the lady a receipt for those papers?”
“When it’s an issue of national security with a potential tie to terrorism, we don’t have to have a warrant or give a receipt,” Mitch’s agent said. Moe, for short.
“I’ll include that in my report,” the sergeant said. “Ma’am, could you give me a list of what papers they’ve taken? If they’re valuable, and they show up somewhere, at an auction or something, we can produce a police report stating they were taken from you during a home invasion.”
“It’s not a home invasion,” Curly said. “We had—”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” the sergeant said. “Do you want to tell me how you got access to the lady’s apartment? I looked at the locks. You’d need safecracker tools, not just street-grade picklocks.”
“Why are you so bent on obstructing our investigation?” Moe asked. “You verified our IDs, you know we have good reason to be here—”
“That’s what I don’t know,” the sergeant said. “I don’t know why you think this lady’s ma’s music needed tearing apart. I know that this lady’s father trained my dad when my old man joined the force, and that Mrs. Warshawski, her ma, was quite a singer, according to my old man. There wasn’t a better officer in Chicago than Tony Warshawski, ask anyone from the old days. When I was a boy, my dad always quoted him to me: Tony used to say the only end that justifies the means is laziness. A lazy cop is as bad as a bent cop, that’s what Tony Warshawski taught my dad, and I’m betting he taught this lady here the same. Am I right?”
I sat up straighter, blinking back tears. “Yes, Sergeant.” I’d cheated once on a social studies quiz. When Tony found out, he got me out of bed an hour early every day for a month to run errands for a housebound woman on our street. Your mother and I have been letting you get lazy. You run these errands for Mrs. Poilevsky and you’ll work the lazy out of your system. Don’t let me hear of you cheating a second time.
The sergeant gathered up his unit, bent to scratch Mitch under his chin, and took me out into the hall. “They’re going to take you down to question you. I’m leaving your gun with your downstairs neighbor. I don’t want you making your problems worse by shooting one of those federales, however tempting it seems.”
He handed me his card: Anton Javitz, Town Hall Station. “You need anything, you give me a call, okay?”
He was gone before I could do more than stammer out my thanks.
26
MIDNIGHT RIDE
I SPENT SEVERAL HOURS talking to Curly and Moe, while a federal magistrate hovered nearby. As they were carting me off, Mr. Contreras promised to call my lawyer. Partway through the interrogation Deb Steppe, one of my lawyer’s associates, showed up.
It was good that I had Deb with me, because when I learned that the federal agents had been in my office before they came to my home and that they’d taken the hard drive from my big computer, the room turned red in front of my eyes. Deb had a hand on my shoulder as I started to my feet.