Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (52 page)

He
frog-marched me into the building, his partner covering us. We went down the
long hall past the assembly room where the women had been so sympathetic about
my uncle. Past the T-intersection that led to the loading bays. On around to
the small stretch of corridor that housed the offices. The Hulk pounded on
Chamfers’s door. A voice told us to come in.

Milt
Chamfers was sitting on a chair in front of his desk. Jason Felitti was facing
him. Behind the desk sat the big brother, Peter.

“Thanks,
Simon,” Chamfers said. “You can wait for us outside.”

Simon.
Why could I never remember his name?

“She
had a gun when she was here before,” the Hulk said.

“Ah…
a gun. Have you searched her?” That was Peter Felitti.

It
didn’t take Simon long to find the Smith & Wesson. His hand lingered longer
than was necessary on my left breast. I stared past him stonily, hoping there
would be a chance to respond more appropriately in the future.

“Good
afternoon, Ms. Warshawski. You did go back to your maiden name, didn’t you,
after your divorce?” Peter Felitti asked when Simon had closed the door behind
him.

“No.”
I massaged my shoulder where the Hulk had yanked it from the socket.

“No,
what?” Chamfers demanded.

“I
didn’t go back to my own name: I never gave it up. Thank God, of all the
imbecile things I did when I was young and in love, I never allowed myself to
be called

Mrs.
Yarborough. Speaking of which, where is the distinguished counselor?“

Jason
and Peter exchanged angry looks.

“I
wanted to bring him,” Jason began, but Peter cut him off.

“I
tell you, the less he knows, the better.”

“You
mean if it gets to court,” Jason said. “But you keep telling me we can keep
things from going that far.”

“So
how much of your shenanigans is Dick privy to, anyway?” That was probably the
least essential thing to worry about right now, but it seemed important to know
Dick hadn’t been involved in the attempts on my life.

“We
thought you might listen to him,” Peter said. “The way you clung to his arm
that night at the concert I thought you were still carrying a torch for him. He
said you’d never pay attention to him in a million years. It’s too bad he was
right.”

“Carrying
a torch?” I echoed. “No one says that anymore. What was I supposed to listen
to, anyway?”

“To
keep your goddammed snooper’s nose out of Diamond Head.” Peter slammed the
desktop. Its hollow metal top buckled at the blow; he rubbed the side of his
hand. “We were managing perfectly well until—”

“Until
I came along and found out about the bond parking and defrauding old ladies and
stealing raw materials from Paragon. Not to mention fooling around with the
pension fund.”

“That
was perfectly legal,” Jason said. “Dick told me so.”

“And
stealing copper from Paragon? He okay that too?”

“Everything
would have been fine if Jason hadn’t felt he had to make a fast buck under the
table.”

“It
was Milt’s idea,” Jason whined. “He’d take a cut instead of a production
bonus.”

Chamfers
moved angrily in his chair and started to protest, but shut up at a gesture
from Peter.

“You
were always such a fucking two-bit operator, Jason. You pissed and moaned
because Papa didn’t leave you the company, but he knew you were too stupid to
run it. Then you pissed for forty years while you screwed around on the fringes
of big-time politics, so I helped you get your own company. And now you’ve
fucked that up.”

“Whose
fault is that?” Jason’s round face looked green in the uncertain light. “You
had to use your hotshot son-in-law to do the legal work. I could have got it—”

“You
could have got it screwed nine ways from Sunday if I’d left it to your Du Page
County Board cronies. I’m cleaning up after Warshawski for you, but you know
the condition. You stop funneling supplies away from Paragon.”

My
legs felt wobbly at his words. I grabbed the doorknob behind me for support. It
had a little button lock in it. I pressed it home. That wouldn’t keep Simon out
long, but any fraction of a second would help.

“Cleaning
up after me?” I repeated the scary words, trying to tame them. “Come on, guys.
Ben Loring at Paragon knows all about this. The city cops know about Chamfers
getting the Hulk to knock Mitch Kruger into the canal. Did he also kill Eddie
Mohr, Milt? Or did you do that yourself?”

“I
told you she knew too much,” Jason said. “You should have done something
sooner.”

“Oh,
for Christ sake, Jason. I’m telling you this really is the last time I get
involved in your problems.”

“Got
that right, big guy,” I said brightly. “This one is probably going to take the
rest of your life to sort out.”

“I
can see why Yarborough ditched you as fast as he could,” Peter said. “If you’d
been mine I would have beaten some sense into you.”

A
cold rage gripped me, straightening my legs. “You might have tried it once,
Felitti, but you sure wouldn’t have wanted to do it twice.”

I
noticed the light switch out of the corner of my eye. For the first time since
arriving I felt able to think clearly, to plan for action.

Felitti
tightened his lips. “You’re everything I’m glad my daughters aren’t. I just
can’t see what attracted a man like Yarborough to a—a dyke like you.”

It
was such a feeble insult and he looked so steamed up saying it that I couldn’t
help laughing.

“Yeah,
laugh,” Jason said. “You’ll do it out of the other side of your mouth in a
minute. Why’d you have to come around here, anyway?”

“Mitch
Kruger. He was an old friend of a good friend of mine. And he ended up dead in
the canal. If everything you were doing with the pension fund and the bonds was
so open, why did Chamfers get so bent out of shape when Mitch Kruger showed up
last month demanding a piece of the pie in order to keep his mouth shut?”

“I
told you Eddie Mohr would be a weak link,” Milt said to Peter. “He claimed he
never said anything to any of the boys that would make them think he got his
money from the company. But I always had my doubts.”

“And
what about Eddie Mohr and Chicago Settlement?” I persisted, “Why on earth was
he giving money to that outfit?”

“That
was Dick’s idea,” Jason said. “I told him it was a mistake, but he said they’d
take a lot of the bonds, only we had to encourage people who’d benefited from
the deal to contribute.”

“And
you’ve got to admit that the guy preened at getting his picture taken with a
lot of downtown money,” Chamfers said.

“I
see.” I smiled. “My… uh… partner couldn’t figure it out—he said Eddie was a
Knights of Columbus man all the way.”

“Your
partner?” Peter demanded. “Since when do you have a partner?”

“Since
when are my business affairs any concern of yours?” I pulled down on the light
switch and fell to the floor.

“Simon!”
they bellowed.

I
could hear Simon on the other side try the knob, swear, and put his shoulder
into the door. Someone came up behind me, trying to get at the switch. I
grabbed him at the knees and pulled hard. He came crashing over at the same
time that Simon kicked the door open. I squirmed out from under the body I’d
tackled. Staying on my hands and knees, I made it past Simon and out the door.

Simon’s
pal was rushing in behind him. He grabbed at me as I went past, but missed. I
ran down the hall, trying to get back to the entrance. Someone fired at me. I
started moving from side to side as I ran, but I was too exposed a target. When
they fired again I turned down the T-intersection to the loading bays.

The
same subdued industry I’d interrupted last week was taking place on the work
floor. A couple of men overhead were steadying a load on a gantry while another
couple stood at the open back of a trailer to receive it.

I
sprinted past them out onto the bay and jumped to the ground. I couldn’t hear
anything over the truck engines, to know whether the Hulk was close at hand or
not, and I didn’t stop to look. I could feel the gravel under the thin soles of
my Tigers, could feel my toes wet with sweat or blood. It was still raining. I
didn’t waste energy wiping water from my eyes, just kept running until I
reached the Impala.

“Don’t
flood now,” I gasped at it, turning the key while I slammed the door shut. The
engine caught and I reversed with a great squeal of rubber. A bullet tore
through one of the back windows. I shoved the car into drive without braking.
The gears ground, but Luke’s magic fingers on die transmission kept it running
smoothly and we leaped forward.

I
careened down the drive toward Thirty-first Place. I was almost at the
intersection when I saw the lights of one of the semis bearing down on me from
behind. I turned right, sharply, so sharply that the car skidded on the wet
road. I spun around in a circle, my arms cold with fear, chanting to myself my
father’s lessons for managing a skid. I straightened out without flipping over,
but the truck was now right behind me, almost touching the back of the Impala.
I accelerated hard, but he was bearing down on me too fast.

We
were running on an access road to the expressway, next to the stilts of the
exit ramp to Damen, where pylons lowered the road notch by notch. I could just
make out a fence through the rain.

Another
semi was coming toward us, its lights flashing, its horn blaring. At the last
second I pulled off the road into the prairie grass. I had the door open before
I left the road. Just before the Impala hit the cyclone fence I jumped free and
rolled onto the grass.

There
was a terrible scream of metal on metal as the truck behind me drove through
the Impala, knocking it from its path. I scrambled up the cyclone fence, did a
belly flop across its pointed top that raked open my shirt and my stomach, and
landed on the cement floor beyond.

I
made myself get up and start moving again, but red pain was searing my lungs
and I was starting to black out. I stumbled over a hubcap and fell down. Lying
on my back I watched the semi plow through the fence, heading straight toward
me, its headlights pinning me.

I
staggered upright. My right foot caught in a discarded tire and I started to
fall back to the concrete. I seemed to be dropping in free-fall: I was landing
slowly enough to watch the tractor rush toward me.

Just
as I hit the pavement sparks erupted from the cab top. A cannon exploded, making
my head vibrate against the concrete. The engine ruptured the cab’s grille and
a geyser of antifreeze sprayed the night. As I wrenched my ankle free of the
tire and dove away I heard a heart-shattering scream. A starburst the color of
blood decorated the truck’s windshield.

I lay
behind a pylon, panting. The exit ramp notched down too low here for a truck to
clear, but Simon had been so intent on killing me that he hadn’t noticed. The
top of the truck had caught the edge of the ramp.

I
looked up at the cracked concrete. In the dim night air I could just make out
pieces of exposed rebars. Traffic roared overhead. It seemed so queer that
people rushed to and fro above me, utterly oblivious of the violence down here.
The world should have paused a moment to catch its breath, make some
acknowledgment. The expressway itself should have shuddered. But the pylons
towered over me, unmoved.

I
ended up in my own bed that night, although for a while it didn’t look as though
I’d get there. The trucker who’d been heading toward me had called the cops on
his CB once he’d extricated himself from his cab. He had slammed into the side
of Simon’s trailer as it jackknifed across the road. His own cab had flipped
over, but he’d been wearing a seat belt and mercifully walked away from the
accident with minor bruises. By later accounts he’d been threatening to sue
everyone involved until he saw Simon’s pulpy head.

I’d
stayed on the pavement under the Stevenson until the cops came looking for
me—not me specifically, of course, but the driver of the Impala. I’d been too
exhausted by then to move, or to care much what happened next. Shivering in the
back of the squad car, I tried giving a coherent story about the evening’s
events.

The
patrolmen gave me a clearer picture of what had happened to Simon. His momentum
had been so great that when he rammed the expressway roof it drove the back
tires into the ground, exploding them. That explained the cannon shot which was
still ringing in my head. The same force expelled the engine from its blocks,
propelling it through the radiator. The cab perched rakishly on its hind wheels
while firefighters extricated Simon’s remains from the windshield.

After
we’d talked, the patrolmen radioed their base and sent someone over to pick up
the Felitti boys and Chamfers.

The
three of them had been waiting in Chamfers’s office, presumably for word from
the Hulk that I’d gone to my lesser reward.