I sat up with a jolt that made my side ache. “Mary Louise, where do you get off with that kind of statement? You were with me when all this started. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was your panic that made me wreck my car. Which has been impounded by the cops and may well never surface again. Exactly what about that am I inventing?”
“Okay, not making up,” she muttered. “And I’m sorry about your car. If I had the money I’d repair it for you. But it’s the same story with you every time. You can’t bear to be scared or beaten, so if someone threatens you, you have to take them on, no matter how big they are. Terry warned me about that when I started working for you, he said he saw you do it over and over again and that no one’s life is worth that much principle. And in this case you’re trying to take on giants. Don’t you see? Don’t you know?”
I clutched the phone so hard my sore palms began to throb. “No. I don’t.”
“Oh, Vic, use your brain. That didn’t take a beating Saturday night. You’re trying to go nose–to–nose with Robert Baladine. Who’s his best friend? Who got him that contract out in Coolis? And who can bury a body, no questions asked, faster than you can say “Jimmy Hoffa?’ Why didn’t you take that nice little assignment Alex Fisher dangled in front of you?”
“What on earth? You yourself advised me not to touch it. And if you think I want to be bought by some—”
“I know. You’re too damned holy to be bought off by a Hollywood slimeball. One thing you’d better believe—I’m not putting Josh and Nate at risk. Thank God Emily’s in France and I don’t have to worry about her. If you keep poking at this hornets’ nest, I’m resigning and flying out of town with the boys.”
You can’t quit, you’re fired. That’s the standard line in such cases, but I only thought it, didn’t say it. When I cooled off I’d regret it—Mary Louise is good for my little operation. But I hadn’t cooled off yet, and our good–byes were unfriendly. Especially after she said she didn’t have time to help put my files back together. She had exams, she was doing some work for a law firm that might let her take an internship, she had the boys in summer camp, she couldn’t possibly spend a week cleaning up the kind of wreck I was describing.
At first I was too angry to think, but I made myself calm down, hobbled around the apartment, studied Lotty’s art collection. Including an alabaster figurine of Andromache that I’d recovered for her by the same methods she and Mary Louise were criticizing in me today. No, dwelling on that was only making me angry all over again.
I drank a glass of water and went back to the balcony to stare at the lake. At the edge, the line where lake meets sky, a cluster of sailboats looked like bits of white paper glued to a child’s collage. I wanted to be on that remote horizon, but I had no way to reach it.
What didn’t I see and know about Baladine? Of course it was Poilevy who got him that contract out in Coolis, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes’s smarter brother to figure that out. But bury a body, no questions asked, as Mary Louise had said, meant Poilevy had mob ties in Du Page County. One of her old pals must have warned her about him while I was in Georgia—probably Terry Finchley.
It also didn’t take a genius to figure that Detective Lemour could do mob work on the side, not after what I’d seen of him on Saturday. And he could do it in the suburbs. Chicago cops were required to live inside the city limits, but no ordinance forbade their moonlighting in the collar counties if they wanted to. We’d had two police superintendents with ties to the mob in recent years, and I guess you have to start somewhere.
Lemour must be on Poilevy’s payroll. No, not Poilevy’s. The House Speaker wasn’t going to get his hands dirty in a way that a reporter like Murray—like Murray used to be—could uncover. Lemour was on someone’s payroll. But I already knew that. It was obvious Saturday afternoon when his unnamed boss had phoned, told him to let me go.
What I couldn’t make sense of was how all this had mushroomed out of Nicola Aguinaldo’s death. What did Lucian Frenada know that mattered to Baladine or Poilevy? Something about the Mad Virgin T–shirt dress Aguinaldo was wearing when she died. Would Lacey Dowell know? And would she tell me if she did?
I looked up the Hotel Trianon number. The operator asked me to spell my last name, put me on hold for a moment, and then said Ms. Dowell wasn’t available. Had Ms. Dowell returned from Santa Monica I asked.
“All I can tell you is that Ms. Dowell isn’t available.” She hung up crisply.
I lay back on the floor. I’d become a non–grata person since talking to Frank Siekevitz in the Trianon’s security department last week. Had Lacey put me on her index, or had Alex Fisher done it for her? I sat up and redialed the hotel and asked for Siekevitz.
“Vicki!” He was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, but the lady doesn’t want to talk to you. She put it in writing.”
“She did, Frank? Or did the studio?”
“That I can’t tell you. But you don’t want to go bothering her if the studio wants you to stay away, do you?”