“He was a potential client. One thing kind of led to another.”
Vinnie’s Mazda pulled up in front of us. He got out with another man, a tall, loosely knit fellow who seemed to be on pretty friendly terms with him. Well, well. Who would have thought it.
“I was wondering if I could come in with you, sort of patch things up.”
“No,” I said as gently as possible. “We’ve been spinning around too much this last week, Michael. I can’t put it all back together right now.”
“So you’ll be off screwing this other guy, this client,” he said bitterly.
“None of your business, Michael-you know that.”
He slapped the steering wheel but didn’t say anything. “Ah, hell, Vic. If I make another scene now, you’ll never give me the time of day again. I’ll let you know when we run your aunt to earth.”
I got out of the car. I’d barely shut the door when he was off down Racine with a great roar from the engine.
22
Tearing Up the Ryan
I slept badly, my dreams again haunted by Elena. I was searching for her through the barren corridors of midnight Chicago. I could hear her whining “Vicki, sweetie, where are you when I need you?” but I never actually saw her. Michael Furey stood nearby shaking his head: “I can’t help you, Vic, because you wouldn’t let me inside.”
I got up around seven, my neck stiff from my restless sleep. I moved sluggishly through my morning routine, wondering if I should have invited Michael up last night. Would he still question Elena’s hotel mates as thoroughly since I’d sent him packing? Should I try to do it myself? Did I even care where my aunt had gone, let alone why? Even as the last bitter thought went through my head I felt ashamed. Who else did she have to care about her, if not me?
Maybe Zerlina Ramsay. I considered her. Of course relations between the two were a bit peculiar, but she might be someone Elena would consider a friend. I drank a second cup of coffee, then took Peppy on a hurried mini-run to the lake. By the time I showered and changed into a respectable pair of trousers, a cotton-ramie beige sweater and a good jacket, it was still just shy of nine.
The penalty for rising and shining early is lolling in traffic. If I’d had a proper breakfast instead of toast while I dressed, I’d have gotten to the hospital just as fast. As it was I only met with disappointment-Zerlina had checked out on Friday. No, the hospital didn’t know where she’d gone, and even if they did, they really couldn’t tell me.
I stomped back to the Chevy in annoyance. How the hell would I ever find her? All I knew about her was that her granddaughter’s other grandmother was called Maisie. Cerise’s boyfriend’s first name was Otis. That gave me a great starting point-comb every apartment in Chicago asking for Otis or Maisie and when people answered to those names find out if they knew someone named Zerlina.
Zerlina’s knowing anything was a long shot, anyway. I’d only gone zooming down to the hospital because it was something to do. Otherwise I was better off leaving the search for Elena to the police. They had the resources; Michael had broadcast her description. Someone would find her.
I drove back north to the Loop, parking my car in the underground garage. Until Ajax asked me to proceed I couldn’t justify any further work on the Indiana Arms. It was time to do some of my bread-and-butter financial work and to send out query letters to small or midsize firms who could use my expert advice. After going to my office to pick up the client letters with the names of their would-be executives, I headed to the Daley Center.
Somehow, though, instead of looking up John Doe and Jane Roe, I found myself checking on Rosalyn Fuentes and her cousin Luis Schmidt. No one was after Roz, but Luis had started several actions a couple of years back. He’d sued the city for turning down his bid to repave the parking lot at the Humboldt Park Community Service Center, He claimed that they had discriminated against him as a Hispanic in favor of a black contractor who was a crony of the mayor’s. That action went back to 1985. More recently, in 1987, he had sued the county on similar charges, this time for not getting the job to build a new court building in Deerfield. His partner, Carl Martinez, had been a party to both suits. He’d withdrawn the complaints about six months ago without a settlement. That sounded as though someone had slipped him a few bucks to soothe his hurt feelings.
I shrugged. If it had happened that way it wasn’t savory, but it was just too common to be the kind of dynamite that would cost Roz an election. If Chicago has one law that everyone obeys, it’s “Look out for your own.” Still, thinking back over Boots’s party, it seemed to me it was Luis who had warned Roz about me-it was only after he’d been talking to her, pointing at me, that she’d come back and sought me out.
I went upstairs to look at partnership and corporation filings. Roz owned a minority interest in Alma Mejicana, her cousin’s contracting business, but no one could conceivably imagine that as even a venial sin. If Ralph MacDonald had been telling the truth and Roz was hiding a youthful indiscretion, then maybe something had happened in her Mexican childhood. If so, I didn’t give a damn and I didn’t see why she would expect me to.
“None of your business, Vic,” I said aloud. “Remember-some people think you’re a pain in the butt.”
A man using the microfiche reader next to me looked up, affronted. I stared intently at the screen in front of me, pursed my lips, scribbled a note, and pretended I hadn’t heard-or said-anything.
It really was time to get to my clients. Still, I made a genuine note, writing down Schmidt’s name, Alma Mejicana, and the address on south Ashland. Maybe there was a way to get a look at his sales figures. Or I could go over to the county side and see if any contracts had been going to Schmidt recently.
That turned out to be a fruitless idea. They did keep a list of contracts, of course, but I had to know the project name to find out who’d gotten the bid. They were not going to let me go through the myriad files looking for one contractor. I sucked on my teeth. Now it was
As I turned to leave, the door at the end of the corridor opened and Boots came in, a handful of men listening as he made a forceful point. He caught sight of me and gave the legendary smile and a wave on his way into his office. He hadn’t remembered me personally, but knew he knew me. It was a strange sensation-against my volition I felt myself warmed by his recognition and smiling eagerly in return.
Perhaps to dispel the hold his magic had on me I butted one step further into Roz’s business. I called Alma Mejicana, said I was with OSHA, and wanted to know where they were pouring today. The man who answered the phone, speaking minimal English in a heavy accent, couldn’t understand my question. After a few fruitless exchanges he put the phone down and went to fetch someone else.
I’d met Luis Schmidt only once, but it seemed to me that the suspicion-laden voice belonged to him. Just in case he had an acute aural memory, I sharpened my tone to the nasality of the South Side and repeated my pitch.
He cut me off before I could get my whole spiel out. “We have no problems; we don’t need anybody coming to watch us, especially not OSHA spies.”
“I’m not suggesting you do have problems.” It was hard to be glib and nasal at the same time. “We’ve been told that minority contractors in Chicago are allowed sloppier safety practices than white-owned enterprises. We’re doing a random spot check to make sure that isn’t the case.”
“That is racism,” he said hotly. “I do not allow racists to look at my work. Period. Now disappear before I sue you for slander.”
“I’m trying to help you out-” I started with nasal righteousness, but he hung up before I could finish the sentence.
Okay. Alma Mejicana didn’t want OSHA hanging around their construction sites. Nothing bizarre about that. A lot of businesses don’t want OSHA crews. So leave it alone, Vic. Get back to projects for people who are paying you.
It was that sage advice that took me over to the University of Illinois library to look up Alma Mejicana in the computer index to the
