I was halfway through my tofu when Luke Edwards called to tell me the Trans Am was ready. He gave me a lugubrious account of the patient’s near-death and her survival, due solely to his heroic efforts.
“You can come get it today, Warshawski. In fact, I wish you would—I need the Impala back. I’ve got someone who wants to buy it.”
With a guilty jolt I remembered leaving the Impala around the corner from Barney’s on Forty-first Street. With all the truck traffic in and out of the warehouses there, I sincerely hoped Luke’s baby was in one piece. I calculated times. If Loring arrived soon I’d be able to leave by four, but I’d have to go south on public transportation—otherwise I’d just have to fetch Rent-A-Wreck’s Nova back later.
“I don’t think I can make it before six, Luke.”
“I got plenty to keep me busy here, Warshawski. I’ll be waiting for you.”
When he’d hung up I looked at my watch again. It was close to three now—I guess Loring had to prove he could keep me waiting, since I had made him come south. Corporate egos are a much more disagreeable feature of my job than the occasional thug.
I called a friend of mine who was a senior counsel for the Department of Labor, and was lucky enough to find him in his office.
“Jonathan: V. I. Warshawski.”
It had been some months since we’d last spoken. We had to go through the ritual of discussing baseball—Jonathan, who’d grown up in Kansas City, had a regrettable affection for the Royals—before I could ask what I needed to know. I sketched it as a hypothetical scenario: a company wants to convert a union’s pension fund to an annuity and pocket the cash. They get the duly elected officers of the collective bargaining unit to sign on to the plan.
“Now, suppose the officers sign on without putting it to a vote of the rank and file. Would the courts see that as legal?”
Jonathan thought a bit. “Tough one, Vic. There’ve been some related cases under ERISA, and I think they hinge on how the local conducts its business. If the officers make other financial decisions for the local without a vote, I think they’d probably find that it was legal.”
ERISA was a twelve-year-old law supposedly designed to protect pension and other retirement programs. It had already generated more volumes of federal case law than the Talmud.
“What if the officers received, well, substantial cash for signing on to the plan?”
“A bribe, in fact? I don’t know. If there was evidence of intent to defraud the union… but if it was just to convert a pension to an annuity, it’s possible ERISA would find it unethical but not illegal. Is it important enough that I should check up on it?”
“It’s pretty important, yes.”
He promised to look into it by Friday. When we’d hung up I wondered what position Dick was really in. He must have looked into the legal angle before getting Eddie Mohr to sign over the pension fund. Surely he hadn’t been so blinded by greed that he’d exposed himself to a federal prison sentence.
My spinach was too cold now to be appetizing. I took the plate back to the kitchen. Presumably the folks at Diamond Head killed Mitch Kruger because he saw Eddie living well and wormed out of him how he’d got the money from the company. And when Mitch came around trying to get them to ante up for him, they conked him on the head and pushed him into the San. Did that mean they knew what they’d done was illegal? Or just that they were afraid it might be? People panic at the thought of exposure when they’ve done something shameful. And if the bosses let their panic be felt by underlings whom they’ve hired strictly for brute muscle, anything can happen. Still, Dick was walking a mighty fine line here.
I found myself holding the plate, staring abstractedly out the kitchen window, when Loring finally rang the bell. Mr. Contreras was up and about: I could hear his fierce interrogation of the visitor when I opened my front door.
It wasn’t until then that I remembered the urine in the corner of the stairwell. The stench was unmistakable, but it was too late to do anything about it now.
Loring’s face was set in angry lines when he came in. “Who the hell’s that old man? What business does he have questioning me?”
“He’s my partner. Part of his job is to check my visitors. People’ve been stalking me all week—it makes both of us nervous. Coffee? Wine? Tofu?”
“Nothing for me. I don’t want to be here and I don’t want to prolong it. Your partner, huh? Not much of an operation.”
“But you’re not here as my business consultant, are you? I need some coffee. I’ll be back in a minute.”
The pot I’d made with my lunch was cold. It took about five minutes to brew up some fresh stuff. By the time I returned to the living room Loring himself was coming to a rolling boil—always a critical moment in cooking.