“No.” I cut him off sharply. “He was not hanging around the hotel. He came there once, and Lacey met with him for an hour in her suite. Frank Siekevitz, the Trianon’s security chief, may be changing his tune now, but he told me that a week ago. I’ll be honest—Lacey has refused to talk to me—but I don’t believe that crock about Frenada harassing her. I think Global wanted me and Frenada both out of the picture. They’d give me so huge a fee for getting dirt on him that I couldn’t speak against them—and he’d be discredited. I know nothing that could interest, or harm, the studio, so why they’re riding me so hard I don’t understand. Whether Frenada did is another matter, but one we’re not too likely to find out at this juncture. But one thing I will stake my reputation on is that he was not in the drug trade.”
Murray’s full lips tightened in a thin line. I realized I wasn’t used to seeing his mouth—in all the years I’d known him he’d covered it with his beard. His face looked naked now, with a kind of bewildered petulance replacing his anger. It made me uncomfortable and I felt myself softening—into his ma or his scoutmaster. Mr. Contreras’s admonition came back to me and made me laugh.
“Yeah, it’s really funny. Maybe I’ll get the joke in a year or two,” Murray said resentfully.
“I was laughing at myself, not you. What are you going to do with this?”
He hunched a shoulder. “Cops found five kilos of coke in his office Saturday night.”
“Put there by the same hand that planted them on me. Unless you think I, too, am running drugs in from Mexico?”
“Nothing you do would surprise me, Warshawski. Although it wouldn’t be like you to do something that actually turned a profit. Where is the stuff you found?”
“St. Louis.”
“St. Louis? Oh. You flushed it.”
The Chicago sewers flow into the Chicago River. To keep the lake clean, we reversed the current of the river so that our sludge—properly treated, of course—flows backward, into the Mississippi. I suppose eventually it reaches New Orleans, but our rivalries are local—we prefer to think we’re dumping on St. Louis.
“In that case, you’ve got no proof. I don’t know what to make of this report. It’s the only thing that contradicts my story. It may be that new evidence came in between when you asked and when I did.”
“In forty–eight hours?” I lost my temper again. “If you go on the air tonight with this slander against Frenada I am going to persuade his sister to sue the studio and you for every dime you have.”
His anger flared up as well. “You are always right, aren’t you? You have one flimsy piece of counterevidence and you come galloping in like some damned Amazon, quivering with omnipotent self–righteousness, and based on your say–so I’m supposed to abandon an investigation I’ve worked hard on. Well, take your story to the Enquirer, or put it on the Web. A lot of people out there love conspiracies. And unless Frenada’s sister is a major enemy of yours, don’t egg her on against the studio: Global breaks bigger people than Celia Caliente like crackers over soup.”
“That what they’re threatening you with?”
His face turned the color of Lake Calumet brick. “Get out! Get out and don’t come near me again.”
I got to my feet. “I’ll give you a hint for nothing. The story on Frenada and Global isn’t about drugs. I’m not sure, but I think it’s about T–shirts. Mad Virgin T–shirts. We could have a nice little coup together—if Global didn’t own you. I mean, the paper, of course.”
He put a hand between my shoulders and pushed me toward the door. When he slammed it behind me, I dearly wanted to put my ear to the keyhole to see if I could hear him on the phone: would he go straight to Alex? I was glad I thought better of it: as I started down the stairs his door opened.
I turned to look at him. “Second thoughts, Murray?”
“Just wondering if you were really leaving, Vic.”
I blew him an airy kiss and continued down the stairs. At the bottom I wondered what I’d really gained from the encounter. It’s a mistake to try to interrogate someone when you’re angry. But at least that cut both ways with Murray this morning.
My car was still in the alley when I got there. One of the few pluses of a difficult day.
28 Friendly Warning
I was explaining to a woman from a temporary agency how to match invoices and case reports when the call came. “Collect for V. I. Wachewski from Veronica Fassler,” the operator said.
I thought for a minute but couldn’t place the name. “Sorry. I think she’s mistaken.”
“Tell her from Coolis, she met me at the hospital,” a voice at the other end gabbled frantically, before we were cut off.
Veronica Fassler. The woman who’d had the baby and was shuffling along the hall chained to the orderly when Mr. Contreras and I left. So much had happened in the last week that I barely remembered the event. I wondered how she’d gotten my name and number, but that wasn’t important—I’d been strewing my cards wholesale around the hospital.
“Oh, yes,” I said slowly. “I’ll accept the call.”
“I been in line thirty minutes and there’s people behind me still waiting. You asking questions about Nicola, right?”
Nicola Aguinaldo. Somehow I’d also lost track of her in the last few days.
“Did you know something about her?” I asked.
“Is there a reward?”
“The family doesn’t have much money,” I said. “If they could find out how she managed to get out of the hospital, it might be worth a hundred dollars.”
“Out of the hospital? I only know how she went. On a stretcher. That ought to be worth a whole lot more than how she left.”