“But, Vic,” Lotty said, absently scraping charred chicken from the skillet, “you still don’t explain why they wouldn’t tell their workers their bodies were being damaged. If the standard wasn’t set until 1975, what difference did it make before then?”
“Insurance,” I said shortly, trying to find Louisa’s number in the directory. She wasn’t listed. Snarling, I went back to the spare room to dig my address book out of my suitcase.
I returned to the kitchen and started dialing. “The only person who might tell us definitely is Dr. Chigwell, and he’s missing right now. I’m not sure I could make him talk even if I could find him-Humboldt scares him much more than I do.”
Caroline answered the phone on the fifth ring. “Vic. Hi. I was just putting Ma to bed. Can you hold? Or should I call back?”
I told her I’d wait. “But you see,” I added to Lotty, “those notebooks mean bankruptcy now. Not for the whole company necessarily, but certainly for the Xerxes operation. A good lawyer gets hold of that stuff, contacts the employees or their families, and really goes to town. They’ve got all those Manville settlements to use by way of precedent.”
No wonder Humboldt had been desperate enough to seek me out personally. His little empire was being threatened by the Turks. Frederick Manheim had been right-it must have seemed incredible to all of them that a detective could start nosing around Pankowski and Ferraro and not be looking for evidence of the blood work.
Why had Chigwell tried to kill himself? Overcome by remorse? Or did someone threaten him with a fate worse than death if he told Murray or me anything? The people he’d pranced off to on Friday might well have killed him by now if they thought he was going to crack on them.
I didn’t think I’d ever find out exactly what happened. Nor did I see a way of bringing Nancy’s death back to the great shark. The only hope would be if the two thugs Bobby had in custody spilled their guts and somehow managed to implicate Humboldt. But I didn’t pin much hope on that. Even if they did talk, someone like Humboldt knew too many ways of insulating himself from the direct consequences of his actions. Just like Henry II. I shivered.
When Caroline came back on the line I asked her if Louisa had a brochure describing her Xerxes benefits.
“Christ, Vic, I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “What difference does it make?”
“A lot,” I answered shortly. “It could explain why Nancy was killed and a whole lot of other unpleasant stuff.”
Caroline gave an exaggerated sigh. She said she’d ask Louisa, and put the phone down.
Nancy would have known about Xerxes’s real loss experience because she was monitoring that as SCRAP’S environment and health director. So when she’d seen the letter to Mariners Rest and found the company’s rate structure, she’d seen at once that Jurshak was handling some kind of fiddle for them. But who had taken her files out of her office at SCRAP? Or maybe she’d had them on her, preparing for a confrontation with Jurshak, and he’d seen they were found and destroyed. But she’d left the other stuff in her car and he hadn’t looked there.
When Caroline came back on the line she told me that Louisa thought she’d brought a flyer home with her but it would be buried in her papers. Did I want to wait while she looked? I asked her just to find it and leave it out for me to pick up in the morning. She began a barrage of questions. I couldn’t deal with the insistent pressure in her voice.
“Give my love to Louisa,” I interrupted tiredly, and hung up on her indignant squawks.
Lotty and I went out for a sober supper at the Dortmunder. Both of us felt too overwhelmed by the enormity revealed by the Chigwell notebooks to have much appetite, or to want to talk.
When we got home I checked in with Mr. Contreras. Young Arthur had taken off. The old man had locked front and back doors when he took Peppy out for her evening walk, but Art had opened a window and jumped out. Mr. Contreras was miserable-he felt he’d let me down the one time I’d actively sought his help.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said earnestly. “You couldn’t possibly watch him twenty-four hours a day. He came to us for protection-if he doesn’t want it, it’s his neck, after all. You and I can’t spend our lives looking around for scissors if he wants to keep sticking his head into nooses.”
That cheered him slightly. Although he apologized several times more, he was able to talk about something else-like how lonely Peppy was with me away.
“Yeah, I miss both of you,” I said. “Even your hot breath down my neck when I want to be alone.”
He laughed delightedly at that and hung up much happier than I was. Although I really didn’t give a damn what happened to young Art, I wasn’t sure how much he’d learned of what I was figuring out. I didn’t relish the thought of his taking any of it back to his father.
My answering service told me Murray had been trying to reach me. I tracked him down and told him nothing had jelled yet. He didn’t really believe me, but he didn’t have any way to prove I was wrong.
37
My brain was in that numbed, feverish state where you sleep as though you are drugged-heavily but without getting any rest. The tragedy of Louisa’s life kept playing itself out in my dreams, with Gabriella scolding me harshly in Italian for not having taken better care of our neighbor.
I woke for good at five and paced restlessly around Lotty’s kitchen, wishing I had the dog with me, wishing I could get some exercise, wishing I could think of a way to force Gustav Humboldt to listen to me. Lotty joined me in the kitchen a little before six. Her drawn face told the tale of her own sleepless night. She put a strong hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently, then went wordlessly to make coffee.
After Lotty had taken off for her early morning rounds at Beth Israel, I headed south once more to see Louisa. She was glad to see me, as always, but seemed tireder than the previous times I’d been there. I questioned her as gently and subtly as I knew how about the onset of her illness, when she’d first started feeling bad.
“You know those blood tests they used to take-old Chigwell the Chigger?”
She gave a scratchy laugh. “Oh my, yes. I saw where the old chigger tried to kill himself It was on all the TV stations last week. He always was a weak little man, scared of his own shadow. Didn’t surprise me he wasn’t married. No woman wants a little shrimp like that who can’t stand up for himself.”
“What did he tell you when he took your blood?”
“One of our benefits, they called it, getting a physical every year like that with the blood work and everything. Not the kind of thing I would of thought of doing. Didn’t know people went in for that sort of thing. But it was okay with the head of the union and the rest of us didn’t care. Got us off the floor with pay one morning every year, you know.”
“They never gave you any results? Or sent them to a doctor for you?”
“Go on, girl.” Louisa flapped her hand and coughed loudly. “If they’d a gave us results, we wouldn’t of known what they meant anyway. Dr. Chigwell showed me my chart once and I’m telling you, it was like Arab scrawl as far as I was concerned-you know those wiggly lines they put on their banners and all? That’s about what medical tests look like to me.”
I forced myself to laugh a little with her and sat talking awhile. She wore out quickly, though, and fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. I stayed with her while she slept, haunted by Gabriella’s accusations in my dreams.
What a life. Growing up in that soul-killing house, raped by her own uncle, poisoned by her employer, and dying slowly and painfully. Yet she wasn’t an unhappy person. When she’d moved next door she was frightened but not angry. She’d raised Caroline with joy and had taken pleasure in the freedom to lead her own life away from her parents. So maybe my pity was not only misplaced but condescending.