Breakdown (22 page)

At the end of fifteen minutes, the nurse took me away. “Try to come back. I know it’s painful to see her like this, and it’s difficult to put on all the gear, but you being here will do her good, believe me.”

When I got back onto Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward home, I knew I wasn’t in the mood for solitude, but I wasn’t up to an evening with Mr. Contreras. I drove to the Golden Glow, the bar near the Board of Trade owned by my friend Sal Barthele. The traders had finished their postpartum gulping. Only a handful of dedicated drinkers, with a sprinkling of local residents, sat at her mahogany horseshoe bar.

I persuaded Sal to turn the Glow over to Erica, her senior bartender, and come out with me for a meal. We went to a quiet restaurant in the west Loop, and ate a civilized dinner. Sal knew Leydon, and she shared my sadness over the trajectory of Leydon’s life.

Even while I was relaxing with Sal, in the back of my mind I continued to fret about what I’d learned at Ruhetal today, enough that I looked up some of the players when I got home. Although Tania Metzger, Leydon’s social worker, had seemed like a level person, I wondered what swings in fortune had moved her family from running Ruhetal to working there.

I did a search on Metzger through LifeStory. What if she had taken a job at the hospital to get back at the people who she imagined had wrested control of the hospital from her family?

Just because Eric Waxman and his waxed mustache had rubbed me the wrong way, I requested information on him, as well as on the woman who was head of patient services, and on the director of security.

The Metzger family’s control of the hospital had ended when German funds dried up in the mid-thirties. LifeStory couldn’t tell me what her grandparents had done next, but her parents had served as missionaries in Korea for an Evangelical church. I lifted my brows: Metzger had grown up in Korea and apparently was fluent in the language. That was quite an accomplishment but not one that made you think of revenge fantasies, although it did explain her hobby—Korean drumming and dancing.

Social workers don’t earn extravagant salaries. Metzger had bought a small ranch house in Forest Park, one of the suburbs close to Chicago’s western border. That seemed to be the limit of her assets, along with a CD for twenty-five thousand left to her by her grandparents.

The administrators all made better money, of course, and spent it in flashier ways as well. The woman who directed patient services liked to take spa vacations in Mexico, Eric Waxman belonged to two very pricey golf clubs, and Vernon Mulliner, the head of security, had just moved into a five-million-dollar home in Naperville. Six bedrooms and seven baths—the extra one was attached to the pool—might offer just enough space for Mulliner, his wife, and their two teenage children.

I watched a slideshow of twenty photographs of the house. It was huge, and ugly in a way that was embarrassing—the dining room appeared to be a Disney version of a European wine cellar, and the bedrooms had vaulted ceilings covered in paintings that looked, at least in the slideshow, like bad Fragonards.

I imagined a blackmailer who threatened to divulge Mulliner’s lack of taste to the Ruhetal management. More likely, someone who spent that much money on something that garish bragged about it. What really interested me was where he’d gotten the money to buy such a monstrosity. LifeStory didn’t show him inheriting a windfall, and he wasn’t over his head in debt.

Jake called while I was looking at the financial reports on the other administrators, just to say that he’d arrived safely, the place was beautiful, and he couldn’t wait for me to see it. It felt good to be missed, and I got a solid night’s sleep for a change.

22.

WADE’S WORLD

M
Y COUSIN PHONED THE NEXT MORNING AS
I
WAS DRIVING
back from the lake with the dogs.

“Vic, I think I’m in trouble at work.”

I pulled over to the curb and put on my flashers. “I thought they gave you a big vote of confidence after that riot or whatever it was two days ago.”

“Vic, didn’t you see the paper yesterday? You know how I said Murray called me about the attack on me and Kira and Arielle? I think, I mean, I know I shouldn’t have talked to a reporter without clearing it with my boss, but he’s a friend of yours, so I didn’t think he’d use what I said—but now I just had a message from Julia Salanter.
She
wants to see me. What should I say to her?”

“I didn’t read yesterday’s paper, so I don’t know how bad the damage is, but tell her what you just told me. Tell her she can call me if she wants to talk about Murray further. If he abused his personal relationship with me, well, I’m going home; I’ll read the paper. I can’t do anything until I see what he said. Call me after you’ve seen Julia.”

I hotfooted it home with the dogs and left them in the backyard while I ran up to my place and found yesterday’s paper. I’d tucked it into my briefcase but hadn’t remembered to read it.

The protest at the Malina Foundation was inside, in the
MetroBeat
segment. Time was when the local news had its own ten-page section, but that was before Harold Weekes and Global’s top brass decided to turn the
Star
into a version of
My Weekly Reader.
All the national and international bureaus had been closed; any major news came from Reuters or the AP and was trimmed down to a bite-sized paragraph that wouldn’t tax the brain of the texting generation. The front page looked as though it was the inside of a celebrity magazine.

Only my waning loyalty to Murray kept me as a subscriber—a loyalty that waned down near zero when I read his story on the mêlée at the Malina Foundation. After a brief paragraph about the violence, which was described as a “demonstration,” Murray turned to Petra.

Petra Warshawski is a cousin of Chicago’s well-known private eye, V. I. Warshawski. Petra, who’s been leading book groups for the Malina Foundation that focus on the popular vampire series
Carmilla: Queen of the Night,
seems to have been a special target of the protesters. It was girls in Petra’s group who were with another private eye, Miles Wuchnik, when he was murdered vampire-style in Mount Moriah cemetery on Saturday night. Nia Durango, daughter of U.S. Senate candidate Sophy Durango, was part of the graveyard group, as was Arielle Zitter, granddaughter of billionaire trader Chaim Salanter, who is advising Durango’s campaign.

Petra Warshawski refused to comment on the connection between Nia or Sophy Durango and the vampire murder. She also denies any connection between her book group and Wuchnik’s death, or the Carmilla series and the demonstration outside Malina’s Van Buren Street headquarters. Petra agreed that if the foundation was harboring illegal immigrants they were in violation of the law. She added that even if they were breaking the law, that was no reason to throw rocks or eggs at her and her girls.

When people say they see red, it’s because a mist of blood covers the eyes and coats everything they look at. I returned the paper to my briefcase. I took just enough time to wash the sand out of my hair, then flung on the first clothes I picked up from the chair in my bedroom. I was so angry on the drive downtown, it was a miracle I didn’t smash into anyone else.

I found a meter around the corner from the
Star
’s building on Kinzie and Canal. One of Global’s economizing measures had been to close down the
Star’
s
beaux arts building in the Loop and to move the reporting and editorial staff out to the press building along the Chicago River. Given the four-hundred-million-dollar price tag for Global’s corporate headquarters on Wacker, I suppose every penny saved on investigative journalism was essential; through my haze of anger I felt a brief twinge of sympathy for Murray, moved into this dingy building in the shadow of the rail yards and expressways.

The twinge was fleeting, but it helped keep the fury out of my voice when I demanded a meeting with him. When the security guard asked for my name and business, I said I was one of Murray’s street sources, and that I preferred not to give my name.

The guard told me to wait; “Mr. Ryerson” would be right out. He waved a vague arm toward a long bench near the front door, but it was covered with dust. I paced up and down the sidewalk outside the front door until Murray showed.

He was startled to see me, but he tried for a light touch. “The mighty goddess is coming down from Mount Olympus to meet and greet the mortals?”

“If I were a goddess, you would be watching your family jewels fry on the sidewalk in front of your eyes.” I pulled the paper out of my briefcase. “Your report of your conversation with Petra didn’t cross a line, it drove right over a median strip into oncoming traffic.”

Murray flushed. “I thought you didn’t do bodyguard or babysitting work. You Petra’s publicist? She have to clear everything she says in public with you first?”

“What happens in that damned ‘huddle’ in the morning?” I said. “Did Harold Weekes call you and say, ‘Global’s official line is to make it sound as if Sophy Durango and Julia Salanter’s daughters brought Miles Wuchnik to the cemetery, therefore, if you write anything connected with the Malina Foundation, ignore all other issues and twist the story to be about Malina girls in the cemetery?’ ”

“The story isn’t about the book group. It’s about girls who want to be vampires—that brings people to TV and even to the printed word.”

“And that’s a reason to lie?”

“You
are
on Mount Olympus.” Murray was now as angry as I was. “What ‘lies’ are you talking about?”

“Those girls were not with Miles Wuchnik when he died.”

“What? They were in the south of France? I thought they were prancing right in front of him.”

“But they didn’t know he was there,” I shouted.

“Sez you! And since when do I take your word, oh, Queen of Crime, instead of checking it out?”

A trio of
Star
employees came outside to smoke. They moved a few feet up the sidewalk from us but stayed in earshot, making no secret of their interest. Murray and I were both too angry to care.

“Oh. You’ve checked it out, and Wuchnik’s ghost came back and said, ‘Yes, I brought Nia and Arielle and their girlfriends to Mount Moriah with me?’ Were they also the ones who tossed his apartment?”

“Tossed his apartment?” Murray echoed. “When did that happen?”

The anger had gone out of his face, but I was still furious. “Don’t ask me—check it out for yourself.”

I turned to leave, but Murray grabbed my arm. “Warshawski, you can’t go marching out of here in the middle of this conversation. When did it happen?”

“Why would you believe my answer if I gave it? You’ve accused me of lying, you’ve put my cousin’s job at risk by implying that she knows Malina is harboring illegal immigrants—”

Murray put both hands on my shoulders. “Vic. Come inside and talk to me before we need a federal mediator.”

Still smoldering, I followed him into the old press building and up a flight of metal stairs to the newsroom. The trio of smokers seemed to sigh with disappointment as we left.

Back when the old presses ran here, they took up the equivalent of two stories. Global had gutted the building, saving one of the presses as a sort of museum piece. They’d installed two floors of offices and cubicles, but they’d left an opening at the north end, with a catwalk where you could look down at the heirloom press.

To do the company justice, despite the building’s seedy exterior, they hadn’t stinted on the interior. Not that they’d spent the bucks they’d given to furnishing Global One, where all the TV operations were housed, but the computers and the networking system were modern, sleek, and fast.

Flat-screen monitors on the walls showed competing networks as well as GEN’s own local and national output. GEN’s national monitor was on commercial break; the local station was showing a fire at a South Chicago factory. On the CNN screen, rioters in Ivory Coast were throwing things at soldiers. On yet another monitor, I could see the pulsing green of worldwide stock indices. As I watched, the Dow went down and the fire turned to a commercial for an anti-anxiety drug.

I was turning to follow Murray to his cubicle when Wade Lawlor appeared on the screen that was airing GEN’s national programs. And in a pop-up window to his left, I saw my own face.

I was so stunned that I stopped where I was. “How do I turn up the sound on this thing?” I called out.

Murray was out of earshot, but the smokers had come up the stairs behind me. One of them handed me a set of earphones and asked which channel I wanted to listen to.

“Lawlor,” I said grimly.

He looked from the screen to me and did a double take. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

“I believe it is, and I’d like to know what the King of Slime is saying.”

The smoker pushed a button on the earphone control, and Wade Lawlor’s voice filled my head.

“I met Warshawski at my tenth-anniversary party last Saturday. I thought she was just a friend and collaborator of one of my colleagues on the print side, Murray Ryerson, but I see now her mission is to bring illegal aliens into this country and take jobs away from hardworking Americans like you and me. She’s teamed up with our own favorite Communist,
Chame
Salanter, to protect illegals at the Malign Foundation.”

A cartoon picture of the Malina Foundation building covered in oozing sores appeared on the screen. The camera zoomed in on the pustules. Each had a little message:
Communists
;
Nazis
;
illegals
;
drugs
;
disease
;
crime
.

“The billionaire invited her to dinner at his Gold Coast club, which must be where they hatched their plot. Of course, Warshawski’s own mother was an illegal, just like Salanter, so I guess she knows what she’s talking about.”