V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (21 page)

I spent the afternoon in Downers Grove hearing a horror story about blatant drug dealing in the little box factory. The owner listened while I sketched out an undercover surveillance plan involving me and a few young men working in the factory. The Streeter brothers, who had a moving and security-guard business, usually help me out on jobs like this. The owner was enthusiastic until I mentioned the fee, which runs about ten thousand a month on such an operation; he decided to spend the weekend mulling it over-deciding whether his losses from theft and downtime were less than my charges.

Even though August was sliding toward September, the days were still sweltering, especially in the late-afternoon jam of traffic on the Eisenhower. I stopped at home long enough to change from business attire into a bathing suit and spent the remainder of the daylight at the lake.

I waited until late evening to return to IckPiff. Mindful of the winos-who could be aggressive when drunk and in a group-I didn’t carry a purse, but stuffed the Smith & Wesson into the belt of my jeans and stuck my wallet into a front pocket. I’d lost my picklocks last winter but I had a makeshift collection of some of the commoner kinds of keys and a plastic ruler in my back pocket.

As I drove over to Wells, I wondered why it mattered so much to me who was paying Dick’s bill. I was very angry, certainly, that Monkfish was getting away scot-free with the destruction of Lotty’s clinic. But would I have been as hot on the trail if some other attorney had represented him? I hated to think I suffered from residual bitterness after all these years.

I parked on the corner of Polk and Wells and covered the remaining block on foot. After dark is not a good time for women to be out alone in this area. In hot, muggy weather all the nightcrawlers come out. I knew I could outrun most of these derelicts, and in a pinch I could use the gun, but I still breathed easier when I made it into the stairwell of Monkfish’s building without any more hassles than some obscene panhandling.

No lights in the stairwells. I turned on the pencil flash on my key chain so I could see as I climbed. Galloping feet behind the wainscoting told of the inevitable rats feasting on the remains of the dying building. A man lay pitched over at the turn of the second landing. He had vomited generously; it dripped down the stairs in large blobs and I stepped in one patch as I carefully climbed over his inert body.

I stood outside Monkfish’s door for a few minutes, listening for signs of life within. I had no real expectation of a welcome committee-no sane person would hang around such a place after dark. Although the kindest well-wisher would not levy a charge of sanity against Monkfish.

I pulled out my collection of keys. Not worrying about the noise, I fiddled with the lock underneath the fetus poster. In deference to his neighbors, Monkfish had installed a dou-ble Jock, which did not yield easily. It took about ten minutes of work to wrestle it open. Once inside I turned on the overhead light. No one who saw me enter the building was going to remember what I looked like, let alone what night I’d been here.

Stacks of envelopes lay sorted into zip codes on the deal table. They were neatly addressed by hand. Why invest in a computer when you had Marjorie? Indeed, a computer in a building like this wouldn’t last a week. Marjorie was the sensible choice. I flipped open one of the envelopes to see what call to action Dieter was trumpeting this week.

“Abortion Mill Shut Down” trumpeted the typescript. “A small group of people dedicated to LIFE risked their lives and went to jail last week to stop a DEATH camp more hideous than Auschwitz.” Thus Dieter rhapsodized about the destruction of Lotty’s clinic. My stomach turned over; I was tempted to add arson to the breaking and entering on my charge sheet tonight.

The room held few places to secure anything. I found the ledgers and the membership list locked in Marjorie’s desk drawer. Activity for the last three years seemed to be crammed into two giant books, one for receipts and one for disbursals. At least it was a system. Or so I thought until I started examining line items.

3/26-bought 20 boxes staples $ 21.13

3/28-paid phone bill 198.42

3/31-paid electricity 12.81

4/2 -cash receipts in mail 212.15

She apparently had started out with a system of disbursals and receipts and then had got in the habit of entering items in whichever log was closest to hand. No breakdown by type of expenditure.

I chewed on a pencil. I need hours with these books and I didn’t want to spend them with the rats and the drunks. Naturally the office didn’t have a photocopier. Monkfish had my name and phone number. If I stole both books or cut out the last few pages from them, he would know to check on me. Inevitably, since I’d just been there making inquiries. On the other hand…

I gathered up the ledgers and stood the card-catalog drawer with donor names in it on top of them. I looked in my wallet. It held a twenty and seven singles. I crumpled the singles together in my fist, stuck two in my shirt pocket and held the others tightly clasped over the top of the file drawer. Thus laden I went back downstairs, leaving the light on and the door open. My pal on the second-floor landing was still there and walking over him was even harder with the load I was carrying. I brushed his head with my left foot but didn’t wake him.

Three men were camped in the hallway when I reached street level. They eyed me suspiciously, making no effort to move. I opened my fist and the wad of bills dropped. They dived for it instantly.

“Hey, that’s mine,” I whined. “I found it myself. You guys want money, you work for it the way I do.”

I put the stack of papers on the floor and made an ineffectual grab for the cash. One of the men saw the singles in my pocket and snatched them out.

“C’mon, guys. Let me have it. There’s plenty more upstairs. You want some, go get it yourself.”

At that they stopped and looked at me hard.

“You got this upstairs?” one of them asked, a man of indeterminate age, perhaps white.

There’s an office open up there,“ I sniveled. ”They left the lights on and everything. I found that in a drawer. There was a whole lot more, not locked up or anything. I didn’t want to steal-I just took enough for a bottle.“

Still eyeing me suspiciously, they muttered to themselves. They saw the box of name cards.

“She’s got money in there,” the speaker announced.

Before he could dump the contents-or steal the box-I opened it and riffled it in front of him. “Now how about my money?”

“Forget it.” The speaker wore an overcoat several sizes too big and five months too warm.

His companions had backed away a little. Now they added menacing support, ordering me out of the way if I knew what was good for me. I shrank back in the malodorous doorway as they shuffled upstairs together, poking each other in the back, giggling in high, obscene cackles.

Outside, as I moved on up Wells Street toward my car, I passed two men having an argument. One was dressed in a three-piece suit tailored for a man thirty pounds heavier, the other in a sleeveless T-shirt and dungarees.

“And I say nobody never hit better’n Billy Williams,” the suit said in the tone of one clinching the matter, his face thrust close to T-shirt’s.

“Hey!” I shouted at them. “There’s an office open in that building with money in it. I found it and these guys tried to muscle me away.”

It took a few repetitions, but they got the message and headed on down the street to Monkfish’s building. I jogged swiftly to my car. The blue-and-whites come through a street like this pretty frequently; I didn’t want to be picked up in the headlights.

Once in the Chevy I took off my foul-smelling running shoes and drove home barefoot. When I pulled up in front of my building I saw Peter’s Maxima across the street. With a guilty start, I remembered we’d been going to have dinner together. My obsession about Monkfish and the afternoon drive to Downers Grove had pushed the date completely out of my mind.

I went into the lobby, expecting to find him there. When I didn’t see him I headed up the stairs. Mr. Contreras’s door opened behind me.

There you are, doll. I’ve been entertaining the doc for you.“

I came back down and went into the overstuffed living room. Peter was sitting in the mustard-colored armchair where Mr. Contreras had fed me hot milk the night of my injury. He was drinking a dear liquid-the foul grappa Mr. Contreras favored.

“Hi, Vic. I thought we had a date. Your neighbor took pity on me and brought me in for some grappa. We’ve been cursing the fickleness of women for some time now.” He didn’t move out of the armchair. I couldn’t figure out whether this was due to anger at being stood up, or paralysis, a typical side effect of grappa.

“With good reason. I apologize. I got a bee in my bonnet or something about how Dieter Monkfish was affording my ex-husband’s legal fees. And I’m afraid I was so intent on getting evidence about it that I forgot our plans.”

I offered to raid my insubstantial larder for him, but Mr. Contreras had grilled ribs in the backyard and they were both content.

“So did you get your evidence? Is that it?” That was Mr. Contreras.

“I hope so. It’s IckPiffs ledgers, and I had to fight off winos to get it, so they’d better be useful.”

Peter sat up, sloshing his drink on his trousers. “You burglarized them, Vic?”

The sharpness in his voice nettled me. “You from the

Legion of Decency or something? All I want to know is who is paying Dick’s monster bill. He won’t tell me, Monkfish won’t tell me, and Crawford, Meade won’t tell me. So I’m going to find out. Then I will return their ledgers. Even though I think they are mad lunatics whose papers should be burned I’m not going to erase a single line item. Though I may call their auditors-these are the most screwed-up books I ever saw.“

“But, Vic. You can’t do that. You really shouldn’t.”

“So call the police. Or take me to church in the morning.”

As I left the room, Mr. Contreras said in an urgent undertone, “Go apologize to her. She’s just doing her job- don’t blow a good thing over a little incident like this.”

Peter seemed to think this was sound advice. He caught up with me as I started up the stairs. “Sorry, Vic. Didn’t mean to criticize. The thing is, I’ve been drinking more than I should. These the documents? Here, let me carry ‘em for you.”

He took the books from me and followed me up the stairs. I carried my malodorous shoes into the kitchen and began pouring water and Clorox on them. I was really furious, both with his criticism, and also with myself for having said anything. It’s never a good idea to let people know that you’ve been obtaining information through questionable means. If I hadn’t been startled, guilty, feeling at ease with Mr. Contreras, and pissed as hell with Dick, I wouldn’t have said one word about it. Goes to show.

Peter gave me a tentative, alcoholic kiss behind my ear. “C’mon, Vic. Scout’s honor, I won’t say anything more about your-uh-business methods. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” I finished rinsing my shoes. My hands now smelled of Clorox, not as bad as vomit, but not good. I rubbed lemon juice into them. Not all the perfumes of Arabia. “No one likes being criticized, Peter.

Least of all me. At least not on stuff that’s connected with my job.“