I left my gun at home. It’s too hard to run with a shoulder holster under your sweatshirt—the gun digs into your breast in an unpleasant way. I kept to side streets instead of the more pleasant route over to the lake, and made it home again without incident. After a shower and a late breakfast—fruit, yogurt, and a toasted cheese sandwich to make it do for lunch as well—I tried to figure out what to do next.
I had to talk to Chamfers about the attack on Lotty. The cops claimed they’d covered it and that he was clean as hand-laundered money, but I wanted to hear it from him in person. I also needed to go to the public library and do a computer search on Jason Felitti. Presumably he was a brother to Dick’s father-in-law, or maybe an uncle, but I’d like more information than that. I wondered if anyone at the Bank of Lake View would talk to me about Mrs Frizell. Probably not, but it was worth a try.
I looked at my watch. All that would have to wait. The first thing I needed to do was see whether anyone at Paragon Steel would talk to me.
The decision on what to wear was complex. I needed to look professional for a conversation with Paragon managers. I wanted to be cool. I needed to be able to carry my gun. And I needed to be able to run if necessary. In the end I decided on jeans with a silk houndstooth jacket. It would look professional in California. That would have to be close enough.
Before I left I dug out my address book and dialed Freeman Carter’s home number. I was pleased to find him in—he could easily have spent his week off in the country.
“V.I. Warshawski, Freeman. I hope I’m not interrupting your lunch.”
“I’m on my way out the door, Vic. Can it wait?”
“No, it can’t, but I’ll be brief. Until four this morning I had no idea that Dick or his father-in-law were involved with Diamond Head Motors. I think you owe me an apology.”
“Four this morning?” Freeman picked on the least significant part of my remark. “What were you doing at four this morning?”
“Back-breaking labor to find out what you could have told me with no loss of sweat. Did you think I was trying to lasso you into a fight with Dick? It would have been gracious of you to ask first.”
“Back-breaking labor, huh? Well, I never thought it would hurt you to work for a living.”
“But did you think I was trying to rope you into a standoff with Dick?” I persisted.
“The thought did cross my mind,” Freeman said after a pause. “And it hasn’t quite left it. It’s an incredible coincidence, your being interested in Diamond Head.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Crawford, Mead must be involved with a lot of mid-sized firms around Chicago. Those are the ones I typically work with too. We simply have… overlapping spheres of interest, that’s it.” The phrase, pulled from an old course on political history, pleased me more than it did Freeman, who didn’t say anything.
After a long silence I plowed ahead. “You know, I’ve been thinking. About you and Crawford, Mead, I mean. I can’t help wondering if they started working on mergers and acquisitions during the Drexel glory days. I remembered at the concert you said the firm was doing business you didn’t like—I don’t think you would have stayed on board if it was something downright immoral, like fronting for money launderers. But mergers—a lot of firms have found the tail starts wagging the dog when they take that on, so it did seem like that was what you might have had in mind. Since Peter Felitti is Dick’s father-in-law, maybe you thought there was a conflict of interest handling that particular transaction.”
Freeman gave a sharp bark that might have been laughter. “I should know better by now than to say anything in front of you that I don’t want used in court against me later. You come up with this theory on your own? Or you been talking to people?”
“I’ve been thinking. It’s what I do for a living, you know. A lot of my work is figuring out why people do what they do. Diamond Head is carrying a huge debt load—that sounds like junk financing. Dick’s name is on their board. That sounds like he handled the business. You were angry. That sounds like you knew about this and felt I was cutting too close to the bone.”
“Well, I’m still not going to discuss the firm’s business with you, Vic. You could be right—or you could be blowing smoke. That’s all I can tell you about this—except I’m sorry I misjudged you the other day—but I sure as hell wish you would work on something besides Diamond Head. Now I’ve got to go: I’m standing up a friend.”
“There is one other thing,” I said quickly before he could hang up. “I really need someone who will get the plant manager at Diamond Head to talk to me. He’s been stonewalling me for two weeks. That’s why I wanted the names of the directors—I thought I might know one of them.”
“You do, Vic. You know Richard Yarborough. I keep telling you that you misjudge Dick. He might respond to you if you could bring yourself to ask him in a nice way.” The phone clicked in my ear.
It had been an outside chance that Freeman would feel dismayed enough at misjudging me to help me see Chamfers. It would have required his pretending he was still with Crawford, Mead, and he was too scrupulous for that kind of shenanigan.