I finally managed to get a young man with a shock of black hair falling into his eyes to pay attention to me. “Petra Warshawski.”
“Petra? She’s not here. She disappeared. They think she’s been kidnapped.”
The magic words brought the whole pod to his desk, where they started arguing about whether Petra had been kidnapped or had disappeared on a secret assignment for Strangwell.
“Petra could be doing an undercover assignment for the Chicago Strangler,” a young woman with a number of piercings said. “She never says what the Strangler has her doing.”
“Running a hit squad,” the sole African-American youth on the team suggested.
“The Strangler feels free to machine-gun the whole opposition in broad daylight,” the pierced woman said. “You wouldn’t have to be undercover for that.”
“Who would Petra talk to if she had a tough problem to unknot?” I asked.
That quieted the group for a minute, but a young woman in jeans and layered tank tops said, “We don’t work like that. It’s more, like, how do I do this, and we all, like, brainstorm and come up with different ideas. Brian’s campaign, it’s about change. It’s not about personal glory. So we, like, all work together.”
“What if Petra had a personal problem?” I asked.
The African-American kid said, “She didn’t have personal problems that I could see… I mean, before the Strangler pulled her off the team. Then, I don’t know if working for him went to her head or he had her doing something she didn’t like, but she stopped eating with us after work. We don’t know what she’s doing or who she’s talking to.”
“Guy’s a fucking organizing genius,” the first kid I’d spoken to said.
“Granted,” the African-American youth said. “But would you want to go to El Gato Loco with him?”
The pierced woman laughed. Another young woman came along and asked who was going where for lunch. Before they all took off, I handed cards around.
“I’m her cousin. She disappeared in a way that’s got me seriously worried. And the Chicago police and the FBI are on it, too, so I’m surprised they haven’t been around to talk to you. If you can think of anyone she might confide in, or anything she’s said that would tell me why she took off, call me please.”
They were e-mailing with excitement before I even left the pod. Police, FBI: way too cool to keep to yourself. I walked slowly back to Strangwell-the Strangler’s-corner of the floor. The kids admired him, but he frightened them. And, at the same time, they had been jealous of Petra for being singled out to work for him.
Strangwell’s door stood open now. Tania Crandon was next to it, working her cellphone. The secretary was standing next to her desk, talking on the landline. Strangwell, frowning, watched from the doorway.
“We didn’t know what happened to you!” Tania pocketed her phone.
“I know. It’s a big operation, easy to get lost in.” I smiled amiably. “I wanted to talk to Petra’s coworkers, to see if she’d been in touch with any of them.”
“And had she?” Strangwell asked.
“I don’t think so. They say that she turned standoffish when she started working for you. Was that one of your conditions?”
His cold eyes turned fractionally chillier. “I expect everyone who works for me to protect the confidentiality of our clients. The fact that NetSquad talked to you without permission makes me think I haven’t been clear in communicating that rule.”
Tania Crandon flushed again. It was clearly supposed to be her fault that her team had chatted with me. She started to apologize, but I cut her short.
“You have a young and energetic team. And I’m guessing that if you tamp down their exuberance, you’ll lose the best qualities of their work. I’m V. I. War-”
“I know who you are. Your uncle is here. We’d all like to talk to you, to make sure you don’t do something that might jeopardize our ability to find Petra.”
I didn’t know if he was being an SOB because I’d spoken to the NetSquad, or because I was Petra’s cousin and she’d disappeared on him-or because it was his nature-but I followed him into his office. I knew Peter was there, of course, and it wasn’t surprising to see George Dornick, since he was advising the campaign on security, but I was startled to see Harvey Krumas as well.
Of the four men, only Strangwell looked at ease, his cold, shrewd eyes surveying me to see how I was reacting to the group. Harvey and Peter were both flushed-whether from anger, fear, or some other emotion-I couldn’t decipher their expressions. Even Dornick, a vision in pearl-gray shantung and pink shirting, looked ill at ease.
I moved forward before Strangwell could take complete control of the encounter. “Mr. Krumas, we met at your son’s fundraiser on Navy Pier. George, have you come in to augment police efforts to find Petra? Mr. Strangwell, can you tell us what Petra’s been working on the last ten days or so? She’s been seen in some odd places, and it would help if I knew whether you’d sent her to them or she’d been going on her own.”
“Odd places?” Dornick said. “Like what?”
“Like the Mighty Waters Freedom Center a few nights after it was fire-bombed.” I touched my face inadvertently. “Like my childhood home the night someone threw a smoke bomb through the window.”
“Petra wouldn’t go to South Chicago, not unless you took her there. Damn it, Vic, if you put her in front of a crew of gangbangers-” My uncle’s outburst lacked conviction, apparently even to himself, since he let Dornick cut him off midsentence.
“Les says Petra was playing at detective for you, Vicki.”
“Vic,” I corrected.
Strangwell ignored me. “I had to read Petra the riot act when I found she was looking up information for Vicki here on campaign time. I’m sorry, Peter. Now I can’t help wondering if I wounded her pride, and she ran away.”
“It’s not like Petra to be hypersensitive,” my uncle said, “but you’re such a ruthless SOB, Strangwell, maybe you were crueler than you realized at the moment.”
“This is a very strange chorus.” I was trying not to lose my temper because that would cost me judgment. “Is that what you did while I was waiting? Agree on the song and the harmony? Petra ran away because big, mean Les was too tough for her? I chewed her out good and hard for rummaging through my private possessions, and she bounced back like the proverbial Pillsbury Doughboy. But now you want me to think she might have run off because Les hurt her feelings?”
“George is putting a team together for us,” Harvey Krumas said. “We know you love your cousin. But someone like you will hurt us more than help us.”
“Someone like me being what?”
“A pretty ineffectual solo op,” Strangwell said crisply. “You haven’t found a person you’ve been hunting for over a month. But you did get a wonderful nun killed.”
I felt it where he intended it, right below the diaphragm, that place where your insides collapse in on you when you think of all the terrible mistakes you’ve made.
“I’m impressed that you’ve gone to so much trouble to uncover my workload.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Still, I don’t think you should discount what I can do.”
“I don’t want you to do anything.” My uncle was close to tears. “Rachel has left town to be with the girls, and I’m turning everything over to George. He’s in charge.”
“What did Derek Hatfield tell you when you met with the FBI?” I asked. “Is he comfortable, too, with letting George’s team run the search?”
“They’re overworked, Vicki,” Dornick said. “Of course they’ll put some agents in play. But Hatfield knows what I can do, and he knows he can trust my operatives to behave sensibly if it turns out we have a ransom or hostage situation on our hands.”