She put a taco chip between her lips and invited the dog to jump up on her. Before the intern had a stroke or called the cops, I bundled my team into Mr. Contreras’s living room.
“The coals are just about ready,” the old man beamed. “We wasn’t going to wait more than five minutes longer for you, doll, but now I can put the steaks on.”
I don’t much like Spumante. While Mr. Contreras took the steaks—a gift from Uncle Peter—out to the grill, I poured my glass down the sink and went upstairs for whisky. I looked wistfully at my bathtub, but settled for a quick shower. With clean hair and clothes and a glass of Johnnie Walker, I felt, if not revived, at least strong enough to cope with the outgoing personalities on the first floor.
They were all out back now, the dogs sitting at attention around the grill in case one of the steaks dropped to the ground. Petra’s hearty laugh floated up the back stairs to me. I could hear Jake Thibaut playing his bass next door. It would have been pleasant just to sit on the steps, listening to the music, drinking my whisky, but I let duty be my guide and went down to the garden.
I asked Petra about her promotion. “Does this mean you’re working directly for Brian Krumas now?”
“Don’t I wish! Although, maybe I don’t. There’s so much responsibility at the high levels of the campaign, making sure all the facts are right, the speeches are just so, that Brian knows who’s saying what about him and what he needs to think about. I’m happy to be a worker bee, although Mr. Strangwell—he’s, like, Brian’s most important adviser—he met with me personally. He wants me to brief him about the same stuff I tell my real boss.”
“That sounds like a serious jump up the ladder,” I said. “How does your real boss feel about it?”
“Oh, Tania’s used to people moving around in the operation. She’s totally cool. I wish you’d met her at the fundraiser, but she was pretty much spending the whole night with national media types.”
“What’s Strangwell like?” I’d never met him, but you can’t operate on even the fringes of Chicago politics without knowing about him. If he was advising Brian Krumas personally, it meant the national party might well be grooming Brian for a post-Barack Obama presidential run.
Petra gave an exaggerated shudder. “He’s kind of scary, he’s so serious. Everyone else in the campaign, we’re all young and we joke around, it’s how we get the job done, but he’s Mr. Serious. In my pod, they all call him the Chicago Strangler. And when he looks at you and tells you he wants something done, you feel like, gosh, better drop everything and do this now. And, even then, you’re afraid it won’t be good enough.”
“What does he have you doing, then?”
“Really, just more of what I’ve been doing, looking for attacks on Brian, seeing what’s out there, but getting more focused, you know?” She gulped down her Spumante. “That’s enough of the boring old campaign. Did you go see any more snake charmers today?”
“Snake? Oh, Anacondas! Very good, little cousin. I’ll call Johnny Merton that the next time I visit and see what kind of reaction that gets me. No, just burrowing around in the past. Even more boring than the campaign, I assure you.”
“Why would you want to do that? Are you, like, trying to get on America’s Most Wanted, find some criminal who’s been on the run for forty years or something?”
“If Vic ever went after one of them old crimes, she’d only be doing it to prove the FBI or the cops or someone had arrested the wrong person. Nothing gets done right if she ain’t done it herself.” My neighbor’s tone did not make his words a compliment.
“So do they have the wrong man in prison for murder or something?” Petra asked, eyes so wide that her long mascaraed lashes were flat against her brows.
“I don’t know if the guy I’m looking for is guilty or innocent. He’s disappeared.”
“So leave him lay,” Mr. Contreras said roughly.
“I would,” I answered slowly, “but . . . I read the trial transcript . . . and my dad was the person who arrested him. And . . . and I want to know what went on when he picked up the guy.”
Mr. Contreras insisted that that was all the more reason for me to leave it alone. “Who knows what your pa faced when he was on the job. With your cockeyed way of looking at things, you’d put the worst interpretation on it.”
“What if he beat up a helpless man? What good interpretation could I put on that?” I cried.
“I’m saying, what if he did? People look all helpless and defenseless in a courtroom, but, you don’t know, did he pull a gun, did he attack your pa, maybe threaten his life? You can’t go by only the end of the story, cookie, you got to know the beginning and the middle, too.”