“Since she never bothered to find out my name or my business, I can’t imagine her interest in serving the taxpaying public is enormous.”
I knew where Jonathan’s office was and quickened my pace to move ahead of my attendant. I could hear him speeding up on the carpet behind me calling, “Miss-uh, miss,” as I opened the comer door.
Jonathan was standing in the outer office next to his secretary’s desk. When he saw me his rosy face lightened into a smile. “Oh, it’s you, Vic.”
I grinned at him. “Gloria call to tell you the Weather Underground was heading in to smash up your office and tear your golden hair out by the roots?”
“What’s left of it,” he said plaintively. He had gone partly bald, which made him look like a youthful Father William.
Jonathan Michaels had been a quiet idealist in my law school class. While students like me-locked in our liberal straitjackets, as one conservative JD put it-rushed off to become public defenders, Jonathan had surveyed social issues quietly. He had clerked in a federal circuit court for two years and then moved to the Department of Labor. He was now senior counsel for the Chicago district.
He took me into his office and shut the door. “I’ve got a dozen attorneys from St. Louis in the conference room. Can you do your business in thirty seconds?”
I explained fast. “I want to know if there’s any trail-through OSHA, the NLRB, the Contract Compliance people, or maybe Justice-of Ferraro and Pankowski. The sabotage and the suit.”
I wrote their names on one of his yellow pads and added Louisa Djiak. “She might have been a party. I don’t want to tell you the whole story now-there isn’t time-but I had the news personally from Gustav Humboldt. He’s not anxious to have it made public.”
Jonathan picked up his phone while I was still talking. “Myra, get Dutton over here, will you? I’ve got a research job.” He spelled it out in a few words and hung up. “Vic, next time, do me a big favor and do what the ad says-phone first.”
I kissed his cheek. “I will, Jonathan. But only if I can afford to spend two days playing phone tag before I talk to you. Ciao, ciao, bambino.”
He was back in the conference room before I had made it out the outer door. When Gloria saw me return to the reception area, she started typing furiously again. In a spirit of malice I waited outside for a minute, then peered around the door. She had picked up the Herald-Star.
“Get busy,” I said sternly. “The taxpayers expect value for their money.”
She gave me a glance of loathing. I went to the elevator laughing lightly to myself. I hope someday to outgrow such juvenile pleasures.
I walked the four blocks to my office. When I checked in with my answering service I learned that Nancy Cleghorn had been trying to reach me. Once early this morning, when I was out feeling sorry for myself along the lakefront, and again ten minutes ago. In the tiresome way that people have, she hadn’t bothered to leave a phone number.
I sighed aggrievedly and pulled my city directory from under a stack of papers on the windowsill. The Wabash el runs under my windows and the directory had a fine layer of soot on it, which I smeared on the front of my green wool dress.
Nancy was the environmental affairs director for Caroline’s community development group. I looked up SCRAP, which was a waste of time, since of course it was under South Chicago Reawakening Project. And that was a waste of time because Nancy wasn’t in, she hadn’t been in all day, and they didn’t know when to expect her. And no, they wouldn’t give me her home phone number, especially if I said I was her sister, because everyone knew she had four brothers, and if I didn’t stop harassing them, they’d get the police.
“Can you at least take a message? Without bringing the police into it, I mean?” I spelled my name slowly, twice, not that it would make any difference-it would still probably come out as Watchski or some other hideous mutation. The secretary said she’d see Nancy got the message in that tone that tells you they’re trashing the paper as soon as you hang up.
I turned back to the directory. Nancy wasn’t listed, but Ellen Cleghorn was still living on Muskegon. Talking to Nancy’s mother made a welcome change to the way I’d been greeted today. She remembered me perfectly, loved reading about me when my cases made the papers, wished I’d come down and have dinner with them sometime when I was in the neighborhood.
“Nancy bought herself a place in South Shore. One of those huge old mansions that’s falling to bits. She’s fixing it up on her own. Kind of a big place for a single woman, but she likes it.” She gave me the number and hung up with repeated dinner invitations.
Nancy wasn’t home. I gave it up. If she wanted me that badly, she’d call again.
I looked at the dirt on the front of my dress. My suit was still in the car. If I drove home now, I could change into jeans, dump the lot at the cleaners, and spend the rest of the afternoon on myself
It was close to five-as I was happily working my way through the syncope of “In dem Schatten meiner Locken,” without Kathleen Battle’s voice-when the phone rang. I left the piano unwillingly, and was even sorrier as soon as I picked up the receiver: it was Caroline.
“Vic, I need to talk to you.”
“Talk away,” I said resignedly.
“In person, I mean.” Her husky voice was urgent, but it always was.
“You want to drive up to Lake View, be my guest. But I ain’t trekking down to South Chicago this afternoon.”
“Oh, fuck you, Vic. Can you ever talk to me without being a total snot?”
“Can it, Caroline. You want to talk to me, speak. Otherwise I’m going back to what I was doing when you interrupted.”
There was a pause during which I could picture her gentian eyes smoldering. Then she said, so quickly I almost didn’t understand, “I want you to stop.”
I was confused for a minute. “Caroline, if you ever realized how upsetting I find it to have you spin me around in circles, you might understand why I sound like a snot to you.”
“Not that,” she said impatiently. “Stop trying to find my father, I mean.”
“What!” I shouted. “Two days ago you were batting your baby blues and telling me pathetically you counted on me.”
“That was then. I didn’t see then-I didn’t know-anyway, that’s why I need to see you in person. You can’t possibly understand over the phone if you’re going to get so honked off. Just don’t do any more looking until I can talk to you in person, for God’s sake.”
There was no denying the thread of panic in her voice. I pulled a string from the fringe where my left knee was poking through the denim. She knew about Pankowski and the plant sabotage. I pulled another. She didn’t know.
“You’re too late, babe,” I finally said.
“You mean you’ve found him?”
“Nope. I mean the investigation is beyond your power to stop.”
“Vic, I hired you. I can fire you,” she said with terrifying ferocity.
“Nope,” I repeated steadily. “You could have last week. But the investigation has moved into a new phase. You can’t fire me. I don’t mean that. You can fire me, of course. You just have. What I mean is, you may choose not to pay me but you can’t stop my inquiries now. And the top one, first on the list, is why you didn’t tell me about Ferraro and Pankowski.”
“I don’t even know who they are!” she shouted. “Ma never talks about her old lovers to me. She’s like you-she thinks I’m a fucking baby.”
“Not about their being her lovers. About the sabotage and their getting fired. And the lawsuit.”
“I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about, V. I. Know-it-all Warshawski, and I don’t have to listen to it. As far as I’m concerned, V.I. stands for vicious insect, which I would use Raid on if I had any.” She slammed the phone in my ear.