Burn Marks (5 page)

6

County Picnic

Once we were on the Kennedy I lost track of Michael. He could afford to do eighty—the highway patrol would give him a professional wink they wouldn’t extend to me. He was waiting for me at the exit to the Northwest Tollway; I had him more or less in view as we started winding our way through the hills that swell to the northwest as you leave Chicago.

I’m not sure I would have found Boots’s spread if I hadn’t been following Michael, at least not on the first go-round. The entrance, which lay on a twisting unlabeled street, was a discreet opening in the hedge separating the road from the gaze of the vulgar. Michael had been going close to sixty around the curves. He braked the Corvette and turned without warning, so that I had to screech to a halt beyond the entrance and find a long enough flat stretch to make a U in. Boys will be boys.

He was waiting for me beside a gate that lay ten feet or so from the hole in the hedge I had turned through. The shrubbery lining the drive partly concealed a ten-foot-high fence connected to the gate. If you tried to breach the ramparts anyway there were a couple of sheriff’s deputies to shoot you down.

“Sorry, Vic,” Furey said penitently, “I thought the turn off was up the road another half mile. Shouldn’t have been showing off on such a dangerous stretch.” When one of the deputies asked me for my invitation, Furey added, “Oh, don’t bother her—she’s with me.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it.” I fished in my pocket for the invitation and held it out, but the guard waved me on without looking at it. This assumption of my relationship to Michael added to my ill humor. I got back into my Chevy while Michael joked with the other men, maneuvered around the Corvette, and drove away with a little spit of gravel. Before the road twisted I could see Furey get back into the Corvette, but I turned a bend and found myself alone on a tree-lined drive.

Whatever damage the summer had done to the corn crop, it hadn’t hurt Boots particularly. The trees here showed full, graceful leaves and the grass beyond them was thick and green. In the distance I could make out a stand of corn. I guess if you’re chairman of the County Board there are ways to get water to your farm.

I turned another bend and found myself at the party. I’d been hearing music blaring in the distance ever since leaving the front gate. Now I could see a big bandstand beyond the main house with a band in straw boaters and navy blazers going full bore. On the other side of the house smoke hovered lazily over what was presumably the barbecue pit. Boots was sacrificing one of his own cows to Roz’s campaign.

A sheriff’s deputy, swinging an outsize flashlight, directed me to a crowd of cars in a big yard northeast of the house. Maybe it was a pasture—I remembered seeing one on a Girl Scout outing when I was eleven. Despite the presence of the deputies—or because of them—I carefully locked the Chevy.

Furey caught up with me as I headed toward the bandstand where most of the party was gathered. “Goddamnit, Vic, what’s making you so shirty?”

I stopped to look at him. “Michael, I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the doubtful pleasure of coming to this shindig. I’m not your date, nor yet ‘the little woman’ whom you can tuck under your arm and hustle past the guards.”

His good-humored face tightened into a scowl. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You treated me like a cipher out there—leaving me standing in the road and then telling the deputies to ignore me because I was your appendage. I don’t like it.”

He flung up his hands in exasperation. “I was trying to do you a favor, save you a little hassle with the boys at the gate. If I’d known you were going to treat it like a mortal insult I’d of saved my breath.”

He strode of toward the crowd. I followed him slowly, irritated as much with myself as with Furey. I didn’t like the little trick stunt he’d pulled at the turnoff, but that didn’t justify my retaliating in kind. Maybe frustration over Elena’s disappearance was making me testy. Or my innate bad humor. Or just being at a Cook County political fund-raiser.

The last time I remembered seeing Boots in the news one of his bodyguards had beaten in the face of a man who had come too close to the boss after a County Board meeting. The man claimed Boots had murdered his daughter— heavy accusations, although he had a long history at Elgin—but breaking someone’s nose seemed like an excessive response to insanity. In fairness to Boots, he’d picked up the guy’s hospital tab later on—but why did he need bodyguards at all?

That was only the most recent public episode Meagher had been involved in. He also had fingers in dozens of business ventures in the state, the kinds of deals where everybody gets rich if they know which way the tax breaks are going to land. Meagher was a you-scratch-my-back kind of guy—he wouldn’t be hosting Rosalyn’s find-raiser if she hadn’t made some significant concessions to him.

It wasn’t as though Roz were a close pal. She’d been a community organizer in Logan Square when I was with the PD. I’d worked with her on some seminars on law and the community—some ABC’s to teach the residents their rights in arenas ranging from housing to immigration officers. Roz was bright, energetic, and a skillful politician. And ambitious. And that meant getting into bed with Boots if she was going to rule a wider sphere than Logan Square. I understood that and I knew it wasn’t any of my business, anyway. So why was I getting my tail in a knot?

I skirted my way through the crowd at the bandstand to a bright canopy covering the refreshment arena. Young women in thigh-high minis were threading their way cheerfully through the throng with canapé-laden trays. Just the costume for a feminist activist like Rosalyn, I snarled to myself. I went up to the bar and got a rum and tonic.

Drink in hand, I jostled aimlessly through the crowd. Behind the refreshment tent people were gathered in a thick, noisy clump, loud enough to drown out the band. Beyond that group the throng thinned down rapidly— the land there was hilly and uncultivated, leading into a small wood.

The terrain and lack of chairs notwithstanding, most of the women were wearing nylons and heels. Two of them had come prepared, though—they were sitting on a blanket, stretching their long, tanned legs and taking innocent pleasure in their own beauty. As I passed they cried out to me in an enthusiastic chorus:

“Vic! Ernie told us you might be here. Come sit down. LeAnn’s pregnant and we didn’t want to spend the afternoon standing in the heat.”

I obligingly stopped for a moment. If LeAnn was pregnant it could only be a matter of months before Clara started a new baby as well. The two had been inseparable since childhood and now, adult and married, they lived in adjoining Oak Brook mansions, were in and out of each other’s houses all day long to borrow clothes, share a cup of coffee, or entertain their children together. And while Clara’s light curls contrasted with LeAnn’s straight dark hair, they looked almost indistinguishable in their Anne Klein shorts suits.

“You having a good time?” Clara asked.

“Great. When is the baby due?”

“Not until the end of March. We’re only telling friends right now.”

I smiled. That included about half the people at the picnic—anyone she knew by name.

I’d met them through Michael Furey. LeAnn was married to Ernie Wunsch and Clara to Ron Grasso. Michael’s continued tightness with the pals of his youth never ceased to astound me. Since leaving South Chicago for college I’ve scarcely seen any of the people I grew up with. But in addition to Ernie and Ron, Michael had seven or eight boyhood friends who got together once a month for poker, went to Eagle River each October to shoot deer, and spent every New Year’s Eve together with their wives. The pals were a major reason I’d never really clicked with Michael. Since I had gone out with him, though, LeAnn and Clara now treated me as if I were one of the girls.

I asked politely about the children, two each, and was gladdened to learn how much they loved school, how happy LeAnn was that they were in Oak Brook now and didn’t have to worry about the public schools, an interjection from Clara on what a good time they’d had themselves as little girls in Norwood Park, but everything was so different now.

“Ron and Ernie here?” I said idly.

“Oh, yes. They went off hours ago to get us something to drink. But they know so many people here I’m sure they got waylaid or sidetracked or something.”

I offered to bring them something, but they laughed and said they didn’t mind waiting. LeAnn put a well-manicured hand on my knee.

“You have such a good heart, Vic. We don’t want to interfere, but we know you’d be great for Michael. We were just talking about the two of you when you showed up.”

I grinned. “Thanks. I appreciate the testimonial.” I pushed myself to my feet, spilling my drink down my pants leg.

LeeAnn looked at me anxiously. “I haven’t offended you, have I? Ernie’s always on my case for saying whatever comes into my head without thinking first.” She reached into a large beach bag and pulled out a handful of Kleenex for me.

I dabbed at the khaki. “Nope. Trouble is, Michael’s a Sox fan—I just don’t think we could ever work things out.”

They gave little shrieks of protesting laughter. I left to their chorus of “You can’t be serious, Vic.”

I turned back through the crowd to replace my drink. Near the entrance to the tent I caught sight of Ron and Ernie. They were deep in conversation with Michael and a couple of other men. Their heads were drawn together so that they could talk over the noise. They were so intent that they didn’t notice my walking up. I tapped Michael on the arm.

He jumped and swore. When he saw it was me he put an arm around me, but he looked cautiously at the other men, as if to see how they took my entrance. “Hiya, Vic. Enjoying yourself?”

“I’m having a great time. You, too, by the looks of it.”

He again looked doubtfully from his companions to me. “We’re right in the middle of something now. Can I find you in about ten minutes?”

So much for gestures of reconciliation. I grinned savagely but tried to keep my tone light. “You can try.”

I turned on my heel, but Ron Grasso put out an arm. “Vic, honey. Good to see you. Don’t mind Furey here— he got out on the wrong side of bed today…. No business is more important than a beautiful lady, Mickey. And nothing’s more dangerous than keeping one of them waiting.”

The other men laughed politely, but Michael looked at me seriously. Maybe he was still pissed. On the other hand, he knows that kind of joke rubs me the wrong way, so maybe he was trying in turn for conciliation. I was barely willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Ron introduced me to the two strangers—Luis Schmidt and Carl Martinez, also in construction. And supporters of Rosalyn’s campaign.

“Vic’s an old friend of Rosalyn’s, aren’t you?” Ron supplied.

I nodded. “We used to work together in Logan Square.”

“You were an organizer?” Schmidt asked.

“I was a lawyer. I used to help out on legal issues—immigration, housing, that kind of thing. I’m a detective now.”

“Detective, huh? Like Sergeant Furey here?” That was Schmidt, a short, stocky man with arms the size of sewer pipes straining his jacket sleeves.

They were just interested enough to require an answer. “I work for myself. Kind of the Magnum, P.I. of Chicago.”

“Vic looks into fraud cases,” Ron put in. “She has quite a track record. Keeps Ernie and me on the straight and narrow, let me tell you.”

Everyone laughed politely. His comment seemed so unanswerable that I didn’t try. “I ran into LeAnn and Clara behind the tent,” I said instead. “They thought you guys were bringing them something to drink.”

Ernie hit his forehead. “Mind like cement after pouring it all these years. I’ll take care of the girls, Ronnie—why don’t you guys wait for me here.”

He took my arm and hustled me away to the refreshment tent. “Buy you something, Vic?”

“No, thanks. I’m heading back to the city soon.”

He looked at me seriously, eyes dark in a thin, weather-beaten face. “Don’t take Mickey too seriously. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

I nodded solemnly. “I know that, Ernie. And I think this is a good time to leave him alone, let him get it sorted out.”

“Could you at least wait until after dinner—go talk to the girls for a while?”

He was hoping I’d take their drinks to them. I smiled gently. “Sorry, Ernie. I know LeAnn would love to see you for a few minutes before you plunge back into it with the boys. She’s sitting around back of here with Clara.”

“Okay, Vic, okay.” He shoved his way to the front of the line. Something in the set of his shoulders told me he was wondering what the hell Mickey saw in me.

7

Speaking in Tongues

On my way toward the parking pasture I saw Marissa standing near the back entrance to Boots’s house. She was laughing heartily at some remark of the middle-aged man talking to her. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Maybe it was just the avid look he was giving Marissa I recognized—with her head thrown back the décolletage of her peach dress sprang into dramatic relief.

Before returning to town I’d let her know I’d done my duty by showing up and that I hadn’t laid tales of housing woes on any sensitive ears. I trotted up the path to the house.

Seen up close, her companion was older than I’d thought, perhaps over sixty, with a lot of distinguished gray in his dark hair. Tanned and still muscular, he bore his years gracefully. Probably was wealthy, too, if his camel-hair jacket and Texas boots were any sign. A good haul for Marissa.

“Great party, Marissa—thanks for inviting me.”

She hadn’t seen me come up. The smile on her dark face dimmed briefly, then glowed again. “Hi, Vic. Glad you could make it.”

She didn’t really look at me—I should have just let well enough alone. In fact, I should have followed my original impulse and stayed in Chicago. I didn’t want to see any of these people and it was abundantly clear that none of them wanted to see me.

“Bye, Marissa. Thanks for letting me participate in this wonderful civic enterprise. Just wanted to let you know I didn’t discuss housing with anyone.”

At that she did look at me. “You leaving, Vic? Why not stay until after the speeches? I know Rosalyn would love to have a chance to see you again.”

My party smile was wearing thin. “She’s got a thousand palms to press this afternoon. I’ll give her a call at campaign headquarters.”

The man in camel hair looked at his watch. “They’re talking right now—down around the other side where the pit is. Won’t take more than fifteen minutes—Boots promised me he wouldn’t go gassing on forever—come along— I should put in an appearance anyway.” He held out a well-groomed hand and flashed a bright white smile. “Ralph MacDonald.”

While I recited my name I shook his hand appreciatively—it’s not often I touch flesh worth several billion dollars. As soon as he’d said his name I knew where I’d seen the face—in the paper a zillion times or so as ground was broken for this or that project he was financing or as he presented a gargantuan check to the symphony. My only question was what he was doing here—I’d kind of assumed he was a Republican.

When I said as much Marissa looked at me with cold disapproval but MacDonald laughed. “Boots and I go back—way back. The boy’d never forgive me if I voted Republican. And he won’t forgive me now unless I listen to him blow smoke rings for a while. Marissa?” He held out his left arm. “And—Vic, is it?” He crooked the right.

Who knows, he might like to hear about some of my cases—maybe he needed a few million dollars’ worth of investigations and didn’t even realize it. Not only that, it would make Marissa steam—in itself a good reason to tag along. I took his arm and let him guide me toward the pit.

The barbecue had been installed on the far side of the house from the refreshment tent. A good-sized crowd was milling around the thick pungent smoke—I couldn’t see the poor dead cow through the throng, but assumed she was roasting away.

People were standing in an informal horseshoe around a small platform—really a large tree stump with a few boards nailed to it—where Boots stood with his left arm around Roz’s shoulders. A tall man, Boots has become majestic in late middle age—silver hair swept in leonine waves from his craggy face, broad shoulders usually encased in buckskin, and a deep hearty laugh. His head was tilted back now as he roared in amusement. It was his trademark look, the pose he affected for campaign posters, but even a nonbeliever like me found his laugh infectious, and I didn’t know what the joke was.

The crowd near him included men and women of all ages and races. After Boots stopped laughing Rosalyn called out something in Spanish and got a good-natured hand. As I’d expected, she was in faded jeans, her concession to the party a crisp white shirt with a Mexican string tie. She looked just as she used to in Logan Square, her bronze skin clear, her eyes bright. Maybe I was too pessimistic—maybe she was smart enough to figure out how to run with the regular Dems and keep her own agenda intact.

Rosalyn jumped down from a crate she’d been perched on and disappeared from view—she’s not much over five feet tall. As she and Boots began pressing hands and exchanging quips, Marissa pulled MacDonald away from me. I smiled to myself. It had to be the first time I’d ever made Marissa downright jealous, and all for a billionaire I didn’t have any interest in. At least, not much interest.

Farther back from them I caught sight of the two His panic contractors who’d been talking to Michael and the boys. They were watching me narrowly; when they saw me looking at them they smiled guardedly. I sketched a wave and thought maybe the moment had finally come when I could get back to Chicago. Before I could make an escape, though, Rosalyn and Boots materialized near me. Rosalyn caught sight of me and clapped her hands.

“Vic! How wonderful to see you. I was ecstatic when I heard you might be here.” She hugged me enthusiastically, then turned to present me to Boots. “Vic Warshawski. She used to work for you, Boots, in the public defender’s office. But you’re working for yourself now, aren’t you? They tell me as an investigator?”

I felt like a child prodigy being paraded around for the neighbors. I managed to mumble a species of response.

“What kind of investigator, Vic?” Boots poured his geniality over me.

“Private detective. Primarily financial investigations.”

Boots gave his legendary laugh and shook my hand. “I’m sorry the county lost you, Vic-we don’t do enough to keep our good people. But I hope your own work is successful.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said primly. “Good luck on the campaign trail, Roz.”

Boots suddenly caught sight of Ralph MacDonald. Genuine pleasure warmed his smile.

“Mac, you old so-and-so. Knew your contribution would double if I didn’t see your shining face, huh?” Boots stretched a hand over my head to smack Mac-Donald’s shoulder. “And of course you found Marissa Duncan—you always could pick out the best in show, couldn’t you?”

I ducked away from the arm and the hearty bonhomie. Marissa’s face was frozen in the mannequin expression most women assume when they’re getting the wrong kind of compliment. Reflexively she put a hand to pull the collar ends of her dress together. I even found it in me to feel a little sorry for her.

As I slid away from her I saw Rosalyn ahead of me talking to Schmidt and Martinez. To my surprise they were gesturing toward me. Rosalyn turned her head, saw me looking, and flashed a smile. The stainless-steel front tooth she’d acquired in her poverty-ridden childhood glinted briefly. She spoke earnestly to the contractors, then turned once more to me. She made extravagant signs for me to join her. Making a face to myself I shouldered my way through the eager hands stretched out to her.

“Warshawski! The boys and I were talking about you just now. You’ve met little Luis, huh? He’s my cousin— my mother’s sister married a German down in Mexico City and lived to be sorry ever after! You know those old love stories.” She laughed gaily. “We could use your help, Warshawski.”

“You’ve got my vote, Roz. You know that.”

“More than that, though.” Before she could continue, Boots came up with MacDonald in tow. He flashed a perfunctory smile at me and dragged Roz off to confer in the house.

“Wait for me, huh, gringa? I’ll see you in the porch swing—oh, in an hour,” she shouted hoarsely over her shoulder.

I was left glaring at her back. Because I’m a woman in a man’s business people think I’m tough, but a truly tough and decisive person would have headed back to town at that point. Instead I felt the tired old tentacles of responsibility drape themselves around me. Lotty Herschel tells me it comes of being the only child of parents I had to look after during painful illnesses. She thinks a few years with a good analyst would enable me to just say no when someone shouts “I need you, Vic.”

Perhaps she’s right—the sour thought of my parents conjured by her remembered words mingled with the smell of roasting beef and nauseated me. For a moment I felt myself identifying with the dead animal—caught around by people who fed it only to smash its head in with a mallet. I didn’t think I could eat any of it. When the head barbecuer suddenly sang out that they were ready to start carving, I hunched my shoulders and left.

I circled the house to find the porch swing Rosalyn had mentioned. What Boots treated as the back of the house bad actually been designed as the main entrance when the place was built a hundred years ago or so. A set of shallow steps led to a colonnaded veranda and a pair of doors inlaid with opaque etched glass.

The porch faced a flower bed and a small ornamental pond. It was a peaceful spot; the band and the crowd sounds still reached me, but no one else had strayed this far from the action. I strolled over to the pond and peered into it. Clouds turned rosy by the setting sun made the surface of the water shimmer a silvery blue. A cluster of goldfish swam over to beg for bread.

I glared at them. “Everyone else in this country has a fin stuck out—why should you guys be any different? I just don’t have any slush left today.”

I felt someone come up behind me and turned as Michael put an arm around my shoulders. I removed it and backed away a few paces.

“Michael, what’s going on with you today? Are you peeved because I wanted to drive myself? … Is that why you pulled that number on me at the gate and again with your pals back there? You can’t muscle me aside and then come caress me back into good humor.”

“I’m sorry,” he said simply, “I didn’t mean it like that. Ron and Ernie introduced me to those two guys—Schmidt and Martinez. They’re breaking into construction, just getting a few good jobs, and their work sites are being vandalized. The boys thought they could use some free police advice. When you came up we were in the middle of it. I was afraid you were still mad at me and I didn’t know how to handle it and not let them think I wasn’t listening to them, either. So I blew it. Can you still talk to me?”

I hunched a shoulder impatiently. “The trouble is, Michael, you belong to a crowd where the girls sit on a blanket waiting for the boys to finish talking business and bring them drinks. I like LeAnn and Clara, but they’ll never be good friends of mine—it’s not the way I think or act or live or—or anything. I think that style—the segregated way you and Ernie and Ron work—it’s too much part of you. I don’t see how you and I ever can move along together.”

He was quiet for a few minutes while he thought it over. “Maybe you’re right,” he said reluctantly. “I mean, my mother kept house and hung out with her friends and my dad had his bowling club. I never saw them do anything together—even church, it was always her taking the kids to Mass while he slept it off on Sunday mornings. I guess it was a mistake trying to see you at a function like this.” The sun had set but I could see his smile flash briefly, worried, not cocky.

The surface of the pond turned black; behind us the house loomed as a ghostly galleon. It was Michael’s ability to think about himself that set him apart from his pals. There was a time when it might have seemed worth the effort to work things out with someone who was willing to stop and think about it. But I’m thirty-seven now and no longer seem able to put the energy into dubious undertakings.

Before I could make up my mind what I wanted to say, Roz whirled up. I hadn’t expected to see her—at a function like this she’d have so many demands on her time that a desire to meet with me could easily fade from her mind. Schmidt and Martinez were with her.

“Vic!” Her voice had faded to a hoarse whisper after a long day of talking, but it vibrated with her usual energy.

“Thank goodness you waited for me. Can we grab a few minutes on the porch?”

I grunted unenthusiastically.

Schmidt and Martinez were greeting Michael in low-voiced seriousness. I introduced him to Rosalyn. She shook his hand perfunctorily and hustled me across the yard.

The lawn was smoothly trimmed; even at the pace she set we kept our footing in the dark. The porch was outlined by light coming from the other side of the opaque doors. I could see the swing, and Rosalyn’s shape when she settled in it, but her face was in too much shadow for me to make out her expression.

I sat on the top of the shallow steps, my back against the pillar, and waited for her to speak. On the lawn behind us I could make out the shapes of Michael and the two contractors as dark splotches. From the other end of the house the band was revving up to a more feverish pitch; the increased volume and the noise of laughter drifted to us.

“If I win the election I’m finally going to be in a position to really help my people,” Rosalyn said at last.

“You’ve already done a great deal.”

“No soap tonight, Vic. I don’t have time or energy for pats on the back…. I’m setting my sights high. Getting Boots to endorse me—it was difficult but necessary. You do understand that?”

I nodded, but she couldn’t see that, so I gave an affirmative grunt. Anyway, I did understand it.

“This election is just the first step. I’m aiming for Congress and I want to be in a position for a cabinet post if the Democrats win in eight or twelve years.”

I grunted again. The specific shape of her ambition was interesting, but I’d always known she had the ability and the drive to reach for the top. In eight or twelve years maybe the country would even be ready for a Hispanic woman vice president. She must have been born in Mexico, though—that was why she was thinking only of the cabinet.

“Your advice would always be valuable to me.”

I had to strain to hear her, her voice had gotten so hoarse. “Thanks for the testimonial, Roz.”

“Some people—my cousin—think you might do something to hurt me, but I told him you would never do such a thing.”