“Cops and robbers,” I muttered to the dogs. “Or paranoids and orderlies. This is ludicrous.”
Yesterday I’d accused Alex–Sandy of getting a Hollywood scriptwriter to devise the plot to frame me with cocaine in my office, but today I felt I was acting out a B movie myself, playing at spies, with a guy so nuts he wouldn’t use his first name. I drove up to Edgewater and cadged a container of water for the dogs while I waited for Morrell. When he arrived, he looked more worried than wild, but who knows what face paranoia turns to the world. I asked if this charade was really necessary.
“You’re the one who called me last night worried about eavesdroppers. As to whether it’s necessary—that’s the misery of this kind of situation. You don’t know if you’re being watched or making it up. The psychological toll rises so high that you almost welcome a chance to give in, just to have the uncertainty end. Which is why it’s important that teammates keep each other’s morale up.”
I felt chastened and took the manila envelope he was carrying with a mumbled thanks. “I know I came to you first, but it seems nuts to be playing James Bond in my own hometown.”
He bent over to greet the dogs, who were whining for attention. “That’s quite a collection of bruises you’ve got. They from your jump on Saturday?”
I hadn’t had time to change out of running shorts and top. They revealed large patches of greeny purple on my legs and torso, as if Jackson Pollock had been spray–painting me.
“Well, you weren’t running away from a phantom.” He straightened up and looked at me, brown eyes somber. “I know living in Central America has distorted my judgment, and I try to correct for it when I come home. But you see how easily the lines between police and power get blurred, especially in a country like America, where we’re always on full alert against enemies. After fifty years of the Cold War, we’ve gotten into such a reflexive posture of belligerence that we start to chew up our own citizens. When I come home I like to relax, but it’s hard to put aside the habits that help me survive nine months out of twelve. And in this case—well, you did find drugs in your office. And Lucian Frenada is very dead.”
Robbie Baladine’s late–night call came back to me with a jolt. “There’s something odd about that death. Can you call Vishnikov, ask him to do the autopsy himself? Just in case SMERSH did use some poison known only to Papua natives before putting Frenada into Belmont Harbor.”
He grinned. “You’ll be okay, Vic, as long as you can joke about it.” He looked a little embarrassed, then added, “You have beautiful legs, even with all those bruises on them.”
He turned hurriedly toward his car, as if paying a compliment might leave him open to a hand grenade. When I called out a thanks, he smiled and sketched a wave, then suddenly beckoned me over to the car.
“I forgot. Since we’re playing at James Bond we need a more efficient way to keep in touch. Are you free for dinner tonight? Do you know a restaurant where we could meet?”
I suggested Cockatrice, part of the restaurant explosion in Wicker Park. It was walking distance from my office, where I hoped to spend the afternoon cleaning up files. First, though, I needed to run some errands.
27 Hounding a Newshound
Murray wasn’t at the Herald–Star, but he rated a personal assistant now, so I got to speak to a human voice instead of a machine. When I told her I had important information on the Frenada story—and gave her enough details to convince her I wasn’t one of the horde of nutcases who always have important information on breaking stories—she said Murray was working at home.
“If you leave your number, I’ll give it to him when he calls in for his messages,” she promised.
I told her I’d call back later and didn’t leave a name.
I pulled on clean jeans and a scarlet top and took the Smith & Wesson out of the fanny pack. I balanced it on my palm, trying to decide whether to take it or not. In my present mood I might use it on Murray, but that was a risk he’d have to take: I felt more secure with the weapon. I put it in a leg holster, where I could get to it if I acted like a contortionist. The straps dug into my calf.
No one stopped me on my way to the Rustmobile. I kept checking my mirror on the way to Lake Shore Drive, but if I was being tailed it was expertly done. I detoured downtown to my bank and left a copy of the report on Frenada in my safe deposit box. Heading back north, I swung by Tessa’s mother’s palace on the Gold Coast long enough to leave spare padlock keys with the doorman so that Tessa could get into our building.