“No games here, but it sounds pretty playful at your end. I went to your office without knowing your pals had locked the door after you. When I saw Catherine, she offered to do a search for me. Tell me how that spins you around.”
“It’s time you got your own computer, Warshawski. I’m not going to do that kind of errand for you. We may not have parted in the way I’d like best, but I’m not going to sign onto a vendetta against my partners. Former partners.”
I clutched my hair, trying to steady the wobble in my head. “Why is it a vendetta for me to look something up on Lexus—to ask you to look it up, I mean.”
“I wish I could see your face, V. I. I just can’t be sure…”
“About what?”
“About the purity of your heart. You’re not always as frank with your own counsel as a lawyer could wish. Get your own computer,” he repeated. “That’s my best advice for you today.”
He hung up while I was still fishing around for a response. I stared at the phone, too astounded even to feel angry. Dick must have called him to read him the riot act, but why would that make him treat me to such a tirade? Nothing Dick had ever said or done in the past had had that kind of effect on him. The parting from Crawford, Mead must have been exceedingly painful.
I wondered what would take longer—driving the four hundred miles to Springfield and back to look at the paper copy of the corporation files, or buying my own machine and figuring out how to dial up Lexus. I phoned Murray at the Herald-Star.
“You know Lotty Herschel got beat up last night?” I said without preamble.
“Christ, Vic. I’m fine, thanks—how are you? Glad to see you’re not bearing a grudge from the other day.”
“I should be—you ate my sandwich, trough-hound. You care about Lotty?”
“Lots. How is she? How did she get beaten up? Where did it happen?” He sounded as though he was choking down a doughnut as he spoke.
“I’ll tell you the whole story when you’re through with your current snack. Only I need to come down and look at something on Lexus.”
“You never call just to say hi, Warshawski. It’s always because you want something.”
The buzzing in my brain was starting to concentrate into a throb over my right temple. “Maybe if you hadn’t been drooling at my bedside every time I had a close call the last few years I’d feel more like a friend and less like a piece of meat at a barbecue when we talk.”
He paused a second, trying to decide whether that was a justifiable complaint. “Tell me what you want to know and I’ll dial it up for you.”
“N-o, no. You wouldn’t give me the time of day over Pichea and Mrs. Frizell. I’ll tell you what happened to Lotty, but the rest of my business is my business.”
“I can get one of my gofers to find the story on Lotty.”
“True,” I said, “but they wouldn’t have any of the inside details. Like how she happened to be driving my car. Stufflike that.”
“Oh, screw you, Warshawski. Lotty’s important to you, but she’s not big news in this town. And I know neither of you will let me in with a camera. But come on down here. Let’s get it over with.”
“Thank you, Murray,” I said meekly. “See you in two hours, okay?”
He grunted. “I won’t be here, which maybe is just as well. But I’ll fix you up with Lydia Cooper. Just ask for her when you get to the second floor.”
It’s hard to have a professional relationship that turns personal, although maybe the other way round is worse. When Murray and I first met a decade or so ago we’d felt a mutual attraction and had become lovers for a time. But our competition over the financial crime we both cover soured our private life. And now the memory of our love life gave a sour tinge to our professional dealings. Maybe I needed to invite him out for dinner and talk it through. That would certainly be the mature thing to do, but I was still a year from forty, I didn’t have to be mature yet.
I stuck the gun in my shoulder holster and went down to Mr. Contreras’s place. He was dismayed by the news about Lotty. I went through the details with him several times; on the third recital he suddenly realized I might be in danger.
“And you’re just going to romp around the streets with no one looking after you.”
. “No one can look after me,” I said. “Even a bodyguard can’t protect you if someone is determined to get you. Look at whatsis name—the mobster who was gunned down in Lincoln wood.”
“Alan Dorfman,” he supplied. “But even so, doll—”
“Even so, I don’t see the point of you coming along and getting hurt too. You’ve taken a bad hit on the head and a bullet in the shoulder from getting too close to my problems. The next time someone assaults you I’m going to have to hand in my license and find a new career.”
“I just hate sitting on the sidelines,” he muttered.