Breakdown (12 page)

A
S
I
PUT ON LIPSTICK AND EYELINER, MY LANDLINE RANG A
few times. In case Leydon was trying to call me again, I let the calls roll over to the answering machine. It turned out I was getting my own fifteen minutes of fame: NPR and the local CBS affiliate both wanted to talk to me about what I’d seen in the cemetery.

The third call, as I was finally walking out the door, came from Max Loewenthal. “Victoria, I will try your office number. Chaim Salanter would like to talk to you and I promised to act as a go-between.”

That was so startling I turned back to pick up the phone, but Max had hung up. Anyway, I was late. I raced to my office, where I dumped my car and picked up the L into the Loop.

In between meetings and teleconferences with the clients who form the backbone of my business, I called Max. He didn’t know why Salanter wanted to talk to me, although we both took for granted it had to do with his granddaughter’s outing and Wuchnik’s death.

“He called me because he knows me from Malina’s board. We’re not at all close; he’s not a person one becomes close to, although of course I’ve cultivated him as a potential donor to Beth Israel. He hoped you could meet him for lunch today.”

“Not possible today. I’ve got commitments until—” I’d been about to say until five, and then I remembered my tangled conversation with Leydon. Assuming I could figure out our old favorite spot, I’d be heading there at five-thirty. “Tell him I’m free this evening after seven or so. And give him my cell-phone number; no need for you to act as his gofer.”

At every meeting I went to that day, people were frankly curious about the girls and the dead Miles Wuchnik. Their voyeurism didn’t trouble me particularly—we’re all human, after all, we most of us take part in a gaper’s gawk when there’s blood and gore all over the floor. What bothered me was to find out the number of my clients who took Helen Kendrick seriously.

Kendrick’s tirade this morning had been on everyone’s smartphone within thirty seconds—all these lawyers and managers subscribe to news feeds, of course. And a number thought Kendrick raised legitimate questions.

“Why was Sophy Durango in the cemetery?” one corporate security VP demanded.

“She wasn’t,” I protested. “She was downstate Saturday night, campaigning in Jacksonville and Roodhouse for the U.S. Senate. I read about it in yesterday’s
Herald-Star.
She didn’t get home until Sunday.”

“That’s what she wants you to think,” the vice president said, pitying me for my gullibility. He scrolled through his phone. “Jacksonville—that’s near St. Louis. She could hop into Chaim Salanter’s private jet, fly here to kill the guy in the cemetery, and get back to Jacksonville before anyone noticed she was missing.”

“Salanter’s private jet? Durango in the cemetery? All this is made up out of nothing!” I said. “If I gave you a report on one of your employees that had this much imagination in it, you’d be right to fire me.”

“It’s not just Kendrick saying it,” the vice president responded. “Wade Lawlor had it on his noon podcast. I’ll e-mail you the link; you can listen to it after we’re done.”

“Yeah, do that.” If I said anything else, I’d lose a client whose chief merit was paying his bills on time. “Let’s get down to the business we actually know nuts and bolts about.”

My day was sprinkled with encounters like that one. To be fair, many other clients were as worried by the GEN commentators as I was.

Along the way, Salanter’s personal assistant phoned. She tried to push me into agreeing to an early meeting:
Mr. Salanter is very busy and is leaving for São Paolo in the morning
, but I said he had to take his place in the queue like everyone else. She gave in grudgingly and told me Mr. Salanter would meet me at the Parterre Club on Elm Street at seven.

I managed to finish my meetings before four o’clock. I was on the northbound L, congratulating myself on having time to type up my notes before I needed to find Leydon, when a text came in from my cousin.

Help, under attck, come @1s, corner DesP &vanB.

Des Plaines and Van Buren Streets. That was the Malina Building. If the building was under attack, I hoped the police already knew about it.
On my way, 10 min,
I wrote back.
Call cops!

I’d already ridden past the Loop stops. I got off at Division, looked at the congestion on the roads below, decided a taxi would be useless, and jumped on the next inbound train.

It seemed as though we were going three miles an hour, waiting at each stop long enough for someone to deliver a baby, crawling into town while the driver did her nails or texted her lover. I hovered by the exit, as if that would make the trains ahead of us speed up and clear the tracks. I scrolled through the news feeds on my phone but couldn’t pick up anything about violence in the Loop.

We finally reached the University of Illinois exit. I sprinted along the platform in my dress sandals, up the stairs, pushing my way past slower commuters with a breathless “Excuse me,” taking curses from people I knocked into.

As soon as I got to the street, I could see the cop cars starting to appear. Gapers had backed up the traffic; drivers were honking madly. Someone had stalled on the bridge over the expressway with a boiled-out radiator, and cops were leaning on their own duck-call horns, trying to find a way through the backup.

Over all the traffic noise I could hear shouts from a crowd near the Malina Building. I moved as fast as I could through the stacked-up cars, ignoring a whistle and a shout from one of the cops who’d managed to get close to the building.

Some forty or fifty people were marching around the foundation’s entrance. Their posters contained such appetizing slogans as
“Nazis out of Illinois!” “Wetbacks, swim home!” “Salanter Belongs in a Death Camp.”

I tried to push past them to look for my cousin. A woman with tightly permed hair blocked my path. “Do you work for the Nazis?”

“Do you work at all?” I snapped.

I ducked under her poster, but a group of protesters had linked arms near the building’s doors; I could see a cluster of people inside the lobby doors but couldn’t get close enough to tell if my cousin was among them.

More cops arrived. Whistles competed with chants, and a couple of patrol officers forced the phalanx blocking the door to start moving. The officers wouldn’t let me into the building, but I was close enough to see that the mob had thrown eggs, tomatoes, and even balls of paint at the façade.

I pulled out my phone to text Petra and was told by a cop I had to keep moving.

“I’m not part of this bunch of cretins; I’m looking for someone they were attacking.”

The officer was uninterested in anything I had to say and told me either to keep moving or face arrest. When the cops are in crowd-control mode, it’s impossible to talk to them.

WGN and GEN already had camera crews on the scene. As I moved back to the street, Fox and NBC both pulled up. I saw a GEN camerawoman I know and thought about worming my way through the crowd in her wake but decided I was better off trying to find Petra by phone.

The only new message from Petra had come in while I was still on the L:
Vic, where r u? girls terfied, me 2.

Me, too, little cousin. I texted Petra, hoping she hadn’t been so mobbed that she’d lost access to her phone. I circled the building, looking in the parking lot, and then started on the side streets. Before I went completely demented, my phone chirped at me. Petra, at a coffee bar two blocks from me.

By the time I got there, my nylons were as tattered as my nerves. Petra was at a table outside with Kira Dudek and Arielle Zitter. The two girls had huddled as close to Petra as the plastic chairs allowed. They had eggshells in their hair and on their T-shirts, and a blotch of red paint covered the left side of Arielle’s face.

“Vic!” My cousin sprang to her feet, tension washing out of her face. “Thank God. This was a horrible afternoon. We were coming back from a trip to a bookstore and this mob attacked us, they chased us all the way to the expressway and threw paint and crap. I thought they were going to push Kira off the bridge, but we finally got away.”

I sat down and took Kira and Arielle each by the hand. “What a dreadful afternoon for all of you. And nothing to drink?”

“They wouldn’t let us inside.” Arielle’s face was pinched with fear. “I wanted to wash off this horrible paint and they acted like we were street people or something, but we were afraid to go back to Malina for Petra’s car. I tried calling and texting my mom but I can’t get through; I’m scared she’s stuck in the building and they’ll hurt her.”

“The police are there now,” I said. “I don’t think anyone’s getting into the building, but why don’t you call your grandfather, or his assistant? They probably have a way to get a message to your mom.”

Arielle pulled out her phone and called the assistant I’d been talking to earlier. The woman apparently put her through to Chaim. “Grandpapa? Where are you? Do you know where Mom is? Do you know what’s happening at the foundation? . . . No, me and Kira, we were the only two from our book group to show up, the rest of the group, their parents were like we had AIDS or something, and Aunt Sophy took Nia downstate to campaign . . . Yes . . . I don’t know, I’ll find out . . . Okay.”

Still holding the phone to her face, she told me, “My mom’s okay, just she’s meeting with our lawyers and not answering phone calls. He says we should go to Schiller Street, if you want to come, Kira, if it’s okay with your mom.”

“Schiller Street?” Kira said.

“Where I live, I mean. You can come home with me and clean up, and when things calm down, Gabe, he’s our houseman, he can give you a lift home.”

Kira shook her head. “I gotta get back to my place. My mom will be leaving for work and I have to stay with Lucy.”

“We’ll go up to my office,” I announced. “It’s just ten minutes from here. There’s a shower and cold drinks and everything, and then Petra can take Kira home, while I drop off Arielle.”

We were far enough from the confusion on Van Buren to find a cab quickly. I bundled my three into it over the driver’s protests—he didn’t want blood in his cab, he wanted to see money up front.

“Don’t whine,” I said. “It’s unattractive and takes away from your tip.”

Out of revenge, he drove as recklessly as possible, accelerating and braking so abruptly that I began to feel seasick. When we got to my office, I counted out the exact amount on the meter.

“Besides whining, it’s a mistake to drive like an idiot. It won’t help you make a living.”

He took off with a great squealing of rubber. The two girls giggled at the exchange and the atmosphere lightened for a brief time.

My leasemate, the famed sculptor Tessa Reynolds, was at her drafting table. As soon as she understood what happened to the girls, she helped me scrub the worst of the paint and egg from them. Between us, we dug up enough old T-shirts and shorts to get everyone into clean clothes.

I looked at Tessa’s wall clock and clucked my tongue with worry—I was going to be late for meeting Leydon, and I didn’t know how well she’d handle it, especially since I still wasn’t sure where I was supposed to find her. I thought about just putting Arielle into a cab by herself, but I didn’t think she should be on her own after this afternoon’s trauma. And besides, I wanted a private word with her.

I took my trio outside and flagged a cab for Petra and Kira. “Peetie, when you’ve seen Kira safe into her apartment, why don’t you go up to your uncle Sal? He’ll be happy to give you a drink or whatever you need. I have to drop off Arielle, then hustle down to the University of Chicago—the woman I’m meeting won’t hold up too well on her own much longer.”

Petra hugged me. “Vic, I know you get tired of flying to my rescue, but I’m so grateful to you.”

“You got yourself out of trouble today, little cousin. And that was terrifying, attacked by a mob like that. Good heads-up thinking.”

She made a face. “I wasn’t thinking, just hopping like a bunny. Anyway, thanks for being our guardian angel.”

I kissed her cheek, patted her shoulder, and gently pulled myself away. Guardian angel—not a role I fancied. The Divinity School Library on the Chicago campus. Angels carved into the beams soared above the readers there, and it was in that room that Leydon Ashford and I used to meet for study sessions that ran until the librarian shooed us into the hallway so he could lock the doors.

The Divinity School Library was far from the prying eyes of men. Well, not of men, but certainly of our competitive, angst-ridden fellow law students.

I pushed Arielle into my car and maneuvered across town to Schiller Street as fast as I could, but my efforts to question her didn’t go well. I was tired, she was scared, and half my mind was on Leydon, anyway.

“You had met Miles Wuchnik, hadn’t you?” I said, glancing at her.

“Is that why you’re driving me home? So you can worm information against my grandfather out of me?”

“I’m on your family’s side, Arielle, but Sunday afternoon, you couldn’t hide your dismay at hearing his name. Nia tried to cover for you: she said she’d never met him. But one of you talked to him, didn’t you?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared stonily ahead.

“Why was it a joke when Nia said he was a genie?” I asked.

“Let me out!” she yelled. “I’m taking a cab.”

“I let you leave on your own on Saturday night, but that won’t happen again. You’re too young and too vulnerable to be running around town on your own right now. You stay with me until Gabe opens the door to your house for you.”

That was the end of the conversation. I tried every approach I could think of, and finally had to admit defeat. I double-parked in front of her house, walked through the gate with her, and watched while Gabe let her inside before I put on the afterburners on Lake Shore Drive. The only blessing about being late was that I easily found a parking place on University Avenue, close to the Divinity School.

12.

MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL