Blacklist (7 page)

“Did they do a complete autopsy? Are they giving this a lick and a promise because he was a black man in white superpower country?” Hoarseness made it impossible for me to sound as forceful as I wished.

“I can only tell you what I’m told. I’m not very high up the chain of command here, but the summary makes it sound like they did check his

blood alcohol level. And we’d have found him through AFIS, anyway-it turns out he had a sheet. The sheriff slid that into his remarks.”

I frowned, trying to put a record together with the quiet-looking man I’d pulled from the pond. Although I guess we all look quiet in death; I probably will myself.

I tried to invest some enthusiasm in my thanks before hanging upProtheroe hadn’t had to call me, after all.

What had Whitby been doing at the Larchmont estate to begin with? Did the sheriff, or even the New Solway police, care about that question? If the magazine wasn’t saying, did that mean they didn’t know, or that they wouldn’t tell? Maybe Marcus Whitby was thinking of buying Larchmont. Or writing a story about it for T-Square magazine. Or perhaps some wealthy black entrepreneurs had moved onto Coverdale Lane, and Whitby was doing a piece on what it was like to own the house that your mother could only enter as a housekeeper.

Catherine Bayard could shed light on all these speculations. I needed to talk to her as soon as possible. I wanted to do it right now, this minute, but it was an interview I’d need my best wits to handle; the only thing I was smart enough to know right now was that I couldn’t corner a slippery teenager in my present condition.

Instead, I returned to Nexis and looked up Marcus Whitby. He ownedhad owned-a house at Thirty-sixth and Giles, where he was the property’s sole occupant. No spouse, no lover, no tenant to share the mortgage.

I looked up the address on my city map. Bronzeville. The part of Chicago where blacks had been confined when they first started migrating to the city in large numbers after the First World War. After decades of deterioration, the block where Whitby had bought was making a comeback. Black professionals were buying what are some of the most beautiful homes in Chicago and restoring the stained glass and ornate woodwork, returning them to the glory they had when Ida B. Wells lived there. Whitby had borrowed a hundred thousand from the Ft. Dearborn Trust to move into twenty-seven hundred square feet. Of course if he was thinking of buying Larchmont, he’d need about eighty times that.

I logged off and stared at the disarray that had built up on my desk and worktable in the short time since Mary Louise had quit. I hadn’t needed

Christie Weddington from my answering service to remind me that Mary Louise’s resignation had left me with a pressing problem. Mary Louise had brought organizational gifts to my operation, along with eight years’ experience-and contacts-from the Chicago police force. She’d only been working for me while she went to law school; now she’d taken a full-time job with a big downtown firm. I’d interviewed a number of people but hadn’t found anyone yet who had both the street smarts and the organizational skills to take her place.

It hadn’t been a problem the last few weeks, because I’d been so lethargic I wasn’t generating a lot of business. On a day like today, when I was under the weather and clients were getting cranky, I realized I’d better put serious time into finding someone new. Papers on Mary Louise’s old desk, on mine, filing so far in arrears I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to start on it.

At least I’d better not just toss papers about this situation onto Mary Louise’s work space-that’s what I’d been doing with my other open investigations. I dug a hanging folder out of the supply closet and set it up the way she would have, labeled “Larchmont,” subfolders for Darraugh and his mama, for Marcus Whitby, for Catherine Bayard. Stapled to the front, a time sheet. As long as Darraugh was paying me, I’d keep working.

CHAPTER 7

No Rest for the Sick

Before shutting down my system for the day, I opened my message from Morrell. It wasn’t as much of a treat as I’d hoped.

Darling, I’m sorry it’s been so long, but my phone isn’t working. I’m borrowing a hookup through Giulio Carrera at Humane Medicine, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to you again. I love you, I miss you, I wish you were here with me-it would be a help to have someone on my wavelength. I’m doing a tricky investigation, won’t say more on an open line, but it’s not physically dangerous, scout’s honor. Giulio and I don’t go anywhere alone-we’ve made friends with some local toughs who seem to know their way around both literally and metaphorically, so don’t worry, darling, although it may be a week before I can get back to you.

His e-mail left me feeling hollow and lonely-irrationally, I suppose he wasn’t any further away now than he’d been ten minutes ago. But a week before he could write again … somehow the hopeful anxiety of thinking each day might be the one with the message that he was coming home was better than knowing there would be no message at all.

“Okay, Penelope, time to start weaving that tapestry,” I muttered-and realized that underneath my loneliness, I felt a spurt of anger-toward

Morrell, and also myself. I was acting like the woman of tradition, home alone and anxious, while my hero lover wandered the globe seeking adventure. “That is not the story of my life,” I croaked loudly. “I do not sit around waiting, for you or any person, Morrell.”

I called up my phone log again, determined to work my way through the whole backlog before I left my office. I returned a dozen calls from reporters who had learned I’d found Whitby’s body, and even got back to Murray.

By then my cold and my sore legs made me long for bed, but in the end I decided to make one last call. A maid answered Geraldine Graham’s phone. “Madam” was resting. I was Ms. Warshawski? “Madam” wanted to speak to me.

When Geraldine Graham’s high flutey voice came on, I croaked out my name.

“Are you ill, young woman? Is that your excuse for not returning my phone calls sooner?”

“I return calls as I have time, Ms. Graham. I did speak to Darraugh this afternoon, since he’s my client. Did he tell you what happened at Larchmont last night?”

“Young woman, I know what happened, since I had a visit from an extremely impertinent policeman this morning. He called himself Schorr; I should think it would be `Boor. I was seriously annoyed that you had not seen fit to advise me of what happened in my pool last evening.”

“The Larchmont pool, ma’am. By the time I finished with the police myself and reached home, it was four in the morning. I doubt whether even someone of your restless sleep habits would have welcomed a call then-even if I’d had the stamina to make it. Which I didn’t.”

When that answer seemed to stop her, I asked what Schorr had wanted. I kept my eyes shut, massaging my sinuses.

“That a Negro man had drowned there. He wondered if it was someone who used to work on the estate, but we have had no Negro employees during the last twenty years. And I don’t believe I ever saw one working there after I sold Larchmont. Mexicans, yes, but no Negroes. This Boor, or Schorr, showed me a photograph, but the man’s own mother wouldn’t have known him from it. Who was he?”

“A journalist named Marcus Whitby. I don’t suppose he wanted to interview you?”

“About what, young woman? Journalists lost interest in me after my marriage. I haven’t talked to one since then, not even during a time when I might have had something newsworthy to tell them. Was this man using the Larchmont attics for some purpose?”

“It’s possible.” I wondered what newsworthy events she’d concealed. “It’s hard to know how he would have bypassed the security system.” “What’s that? You have to speak up, young woman: you are not speaking clearly. My hearing is not sufficiently acute to understand mumbling.” I made a face at the phone. “This is as good as I can do tonight, Ms. Graham. We’ll talk later in the week when I feel better.”

She tried to bully me into coming out to New Solway to see her in person, but I deflected that as well. And what should she do if she still saw the lights in the attic?

“Call the cops, ma’am. Or that nice young lawyer who handles your affairs.” I squinted, conjuring up his face, his name. “Larry Yosano.” “What? Who? I know no such person. Julius Arnoff handles my affairs, as he has done for decades.”

Lebold, Arnoff, that was the firm on Larry Yosano’s card. Naturally Geraldine Graham only dealt with principals. I said “Yes, ma’am” and took my aching head home. Mr. Contreras came out into the hall, scolding almost before he had his front door open: how come I went out in this weather as sick as I was, and without letting him know; he hoped I hadn’t turned my cold into pneumonia.

Ordinarily his monitoring of my comings and goings sets up my hackles, but tonight I was weary down to my bones. His concern was a comfort, giving back an illusion of childhood with a mother whose scolding conceals affection and the promise of protection. I agreed to stay put for the rest of the night, agreed to wrap myself in a blanket-an afghan-on the couch while he brought supper up to my place.

We ate spaghetti and meatballs with the dogs at our feet and watched the nine o’clock news on Channel 13 to see how the DuPage sheriff would spin the Whitby story. We had to sit through a report on terrorism first, this

time on some Egyptian immigrant who’d disappeared before the FBI could question him about his links to AlQaeda.

A reporter I didn’t recognize explained that the man was a seventeenyear-old dishwasher whose visa had expired.

“Benjamin Sadawi came to Chicago from Cairo two years ago to learn English and to try to find a better job than he could at home. He lived with his uncle’s family in Uptown, but, when his uncle died, his aunt moved back to Egypt with her children. Sadawi decided to stay here alone. The FBI says the job was a cover, that Sadawi was really here as a terrorist. Our Middle East correspondent spoke with his mother through an interpreter.”

“My son is a good boy.” A tired-looking woman sat cross-legged on a floor with a dozen people crowding around her. “Since my husband is dead, Benji works hard for me, for his sisters, washing dishes, sending money home to us. When would he have time for meeting terrorists? We only want to have him back safe with us. We worry all the time, but we cannot even come to America to look for him, we have only the money that he sends us to live on.”

The anchor switched to an assistant U.S. attorney, who explained that every terrorist had a plausible cover story, and most of them had doting mothers. The anchor thanked him, then said, “Just ahead, a grisly death in one of Chicago’s most exclusive suburbs.”

I muted the set as a group of frantic beer drinkers began jumping and dancing across the screen.

Mr. Contreras grunted. “Kid is probably hand in glove with those AlQaeda thugs. That’s why his ma won’t come here in person to look for him: she knows as soon as Immigration looks at her passport the cat’ll be out of the bag.”

“You don’t think she’s just worried about her son? Morrell did a story last month about reaction in Pakistan to a guy who died out in Coolis prison. He’d been held for eleven weeks without anyone in our government telling his family where he was.”

“All I’m saying, doll . . :’ Mr. Contreras began. We’d had the same disagreement a few dozen times, ever since the FBI and INS started rounding up Middle Easterners on suspicion of terrorism back in September.

“I know, I know,” I said hastily. “Let’s hope he’s not a terrorist and that he hasn’t been kidnapped. Kids do funny things.”

I turned the sound back on as a picture of Larchmont Hall filled the screen. Marcus Whitby’s death was a made-for-TV story: the wealth and power of New Solway, the deserted mansion, the sinister weed-choked pond. The network had dug up file footage of a charity garden party at Larchmont some twenty years ago. We got to see the meadows when horses had roamed in them, and the formal gardens were in full flower. Well cared for, it had been a beautiful place. Channel 13 contrasted that with a view of the ornamental pool, shot at twilight, with a close-up on the dead carp.

“And here is where Chicago private investigator V I. Warshawski found Whitby. Channel 13 has been unable to find out what brought Warshawski to Marcus Whitby’s side; all we know is that she arrived too late to save him.”

DuPage County sheriff Rick Salvi came on as Mr. Contreras was crowing at hearing me mentioned on television. Salvi took most of the juice out of the story by poohpoohing any suggestion that Marcus Whitby had been murdered. “There’s no sign of foul play, no gunshot wounds or blows to the head that would have meant someone put him in that pond to die. We talked to the magazine that employed Whitby. They say he wasn’t working on any stories that involved New Solway.

“For reasons we’ll probably never know, he chose what he thought would be a secluded spot to end his life. If that Chicago investigator hadn’t been out checking on the estate, we probably wouldn’t have found the body until the next time a caretaker checked the pond, probably not for some months. We were lucky we got to see him while we could still identify the body.”

“We heard he had been drinking,” someone from Fox said.

“No one could face that water sober,” the sheriff said, garnering a laugh. Channel 13 moved from the press conference to reporter Beth Blacksin talking to Whitby’s editor at T-Square. An austere-looking man in his fifties with a hatchet-shaped face, he said he wouldn’t discuss an ongoing investigation, “even with our colleagues in the media,” but none of Whitby’s current assignments had a connection to New Solway.

“Marcus Whitby’s family lives in Atlanta,” Blacksin concluded. “His parents and his sister, Harriet, have come to Chicago to claim his body”

We watched a somber trio-the elder Whitbys and a young woman

arrive at O’Hare. They ducked into a cab as cameras and mikes were thrust at them.

“The Whitbys are utterly shocked by their son’s death and insist he was not in any emotional turmoil that might have led him to take his own life. Reporting live from Wheaton, I’m Beth Blacksin, Channel 13.”

“Thank you, Beth,” the anchor said. “Next, Channel 13’s own Len Jimpson is with the Cubs in Tucson. Do they have a prayer going into full workouts this week? Stay tuned.”

I had been a Cubs fan for too many years to have any hope; I switched off the set.

“That the pond you was in, doll?” Mr. Contreras said. “Doesn’t look like the kind of place a man would choose to drown in. Not if he lived in the city and had this whole great big lake right at his doorstep.”

“None of it makes a lot of sense. Unless he was meeting someone out there.” I told the old man about Catherine Bayard. “I don’t know if she was a source he was meeting or a lover-“

“A lover? Sixteen-year-old kid and a black-” He caught my eye and hastily changed to “and a man that age?”

“Please,” I coughed hoarsely. “You’re the only person I’ve told about finding her there. I just learned her name this evening and I am counting the minutes until I can get my hands on her in person. But if Whitby didn’t go out to New Solway to see her, what was he doing there? Maybe his magazine will talk to me. I know they’ve been stiffing reporters, but, after all, I’m the person who found their guy’s body.”

Mr. Contreras patted my arm reassuringly. “You’ll have some bright idea in the morning, cookie: I know you. Right now you need to go back to bed, nurse that cold.”

The phone rang as I got up to help him stack the dishes. I looked at the clock: nine-forty. I almost let it go, figuring it was either Beth Blacksin or Murray Ryerson, wanting to talk about the sheriff’s report on Marcus Whitby, or, even worse, Geraldine Graham wanting more attention. But what if Morrell-I jumped on the phone before my answering service could pick it up.

“Is this V I. Warshawski? It is? You sound different. This is Amy Blount ” “Ms. Blount?” I was surprised. Our paths had crossed last summer: she

had a Ph.D. in economic history and had written a book on an insurance company I was investigating. We’d achieved some degree of mutual respect during the course of my investigation, but we weren’t friends.

“I’m sorry to call so late, but-Harriet Whitby is with me. We were roommates at Spelman. She wants to talk to you.”

“Sure. Put her on.” I tried to mask the dismay I felt: I didn’t have the energy to talk to the dead man’s sister. “Although I doubt I can tell her anything that she hasn’t heard from the sheriff.”

“She wants to talk in person. It’s difficult to explain, and I shouldn’t try to do it on her behalf, but, because I know you, it seemed easier for me than her to call you … I don’t know if you remember, but you gave me your home number last summer.”

Of course Marcus Whitby’s sister would want to talk face-to-face to the person who found her brother’s body. My morning was free; I told Amy I’d be glad to drive down to her Hyde Park apartment if she and Ms. Whitby didn’t feel like coming to my office.

“Can we do it now? I know its late, and I can tell you’ve got a cold, but she’d like to see you tonight. Before all the funeral arrangements get so far under way that they can’t be undone.”

I thought longingly of my bed, but I infused what brightness I could into my hoarse bark and said I’d be on my way in short order. Mr. Contreras frowned at me and deliberately rattled the stack of dishes.

Amy Blount heard him. She apologized again for disturbing me so late, but only perfunctorily-she wanted me to see Harriet now. She did, however, offer to bring Whitby’s sister to me: Harriet was staying with her parents at the Drake; Amy would drive her up to my place before taking her to the hotel.

When we’d hung up, I managed to shoo Mr. Contreras out of the apartment. He disapproved heatedly of my setting up an appointment this late in the day: I was sick, these weren’t people he knew, nothing was so important it couldn’t wait until morning.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sure you are, but this is the dead man’s sister. She needs special consideration. If you take the dogs downstairs, I can rest for twenty minutes until she gets here.”