Blindside

NINE

Jenny Conners was late, giving me plenty of time to catch up with my other campaigns.

According to the internals we were starting to pull away slowly in Madison, though we should already have been at least double our lead by now. One race was still virtually tied and the fourth one appeared to be coming our way. We’d made up four points in the last few days thanks to an opponent who said that when he was elected he would ban non-Christians from running for office and would make homosexuality illegal. He said he was doing this on direct orders from the Lord, who was apparently busier than hell this election cycle. And it was clear by now that the Lord had no more time for progressives than that not-news network did. Maybe he was a stockholder.

So far my people in Chicago hadn’t had much luck in identifying the true owners of the Pellucidar Corporation. Its first address was a PO Box outside of St Louis. Its present address was a PO Box in Boca Raton, Florida. The man listed as the CEO didn’t Google, either. A mystery corporation and a mystery CEO. And a very good-looking blonde driving a car that the corporation was paying for.

I logged on to various local media outlets to see if anybody had filed any stories about the press conference so far. Only one had. The headline on that one was ‘Gritty Granny at Congressman Ward’s Press Conference.’ Under a photo of Mrs Watkins grinning, the line was ‘Wishes husband was still alive so he could kick reporter’s a**.’ As I’d hoped, they didn’t get to the murder of Jim Waters and Ward’s possible involvement until the third graph. What was more important anyway? A homicide affecting a political campaign or a gritty granny?

Essentially Ward got the kind of pass on the Tribune website that would warm the black American Express card of any consultant. They didn’t lead with Granny but four graphs on there were three different pics of her and a few colorful quotes she’d given out after the press conference was officially over. Gritty grannies were a gold mine.

I could imagine Sylvia over at Burkhart’s putting a cyanide capsule under her tongue. Though knowing Sylvia, she’d probably use a suppository.

I knew Jenny was here when the people at the table across from my booth raised their heads, quit talking, and began gaping at something approaching them. I was on the wrong side of the booth to see what they were ogling but I found out soon enough.

She looked pretty much the same as last night except now her black dress had silk sleeves down to just above her wrists. Despite trying to hide her attractive face and body in Goth she succeeded in being a beguiling figure anyway.

‘Sorry I’m late. I went to church and said some prayers for Jimmy.’ She didn’t wait long to pounce. ‘You look like you want to make one of your smart-ass remarks. If I go to church it’s my business.’

‘Glad to see you, too, Jenny.’

‘My father says how can I be a Catholic and worship the devil? Hello. Goth people don’t worship the devil. That’s Satanists. Have you ever noticed that people who belong to country clubs are really dumb shits?’

‘I take it your father belongs to a country club.’

‘His home away from home, as he likes to say. My mother’s there even more than he is. He says she’s a booze hound; of course she says the same thing about him. I haven’t seen either of them sober after seven at night since I was fourteen years old.’

‘You’re nineteen. You could always move out.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m pretty spoiled. I mean, I could try to bullshit you but that’s the truth. And my mother wants me to stay even if my dad does try to throw me out every once in a while.’

‘Are you close to your mother?’

‘Are you kidding? She likes to have me around so she can bitch at me. She’s a real drama queen. When I was sixteen she found my birth control pills. She claims she had a slight stroke because of them and made my father call an ambulance. She was in the hospital for a week until her doctor said that there was a flu epidemic going on and they’d have to move her on a gurney to the parking lot if she didn’t leave on her own. My father still tells that story. I always liked it, that picture of my mother on a gurney in the parking lot. You know, rain and snow and all that. She’d have a fifth of gin with her of course.’

She could wear you out with words. In self-defense I waved to the waitress.

I had coffee; she had the Caesar salad.

‘Do you eat dead animals?’ she asked.

‘Sometimes I eat soy substitutes. Several people at my office in Chicago eat them all the time. I’m starting to get used to them.’

‘I get sick to my stomach just thinking about eating a dead animal.’

‘You mind if we talk about Jim Waters a little?’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Well, first of all I should tell you that I really feel like shit about this. I gave my solemn word. Solemn. You know what that means?’

‘I have a pretty good idea.’

She kind of threw herself back against the booth as if she’d been electrocuted. Then she crossed herself. I couldn’t tell if she was kidding. She squeezed her eyes shut and said, ‘Forgive me, Jimmy.’

The only thing I could do was wait through her sighs, her lower-lip biting and her nail drumming on the table between us. ‘About a week before he died Jimmy told me that there was a kind of trapdoor in his kitchen. Only it wasn’t really a trapdoor that led anywhere. They must have made it at the time the house was built. Anyway, it was about a foot deep and two feet wide, he told me. He said it was underneath the refrigerator. That’s how he found it. One day he had to pull the refrigerator out because he accidentally broke a bottle of something and it was leaking everywhere. He didn’t want it under the refrigerator. That’s how he spotted it — the trapdoor, I mean. He said it was pretty cool. He wondered if it had been built when the mob was strong out here.

‘Jimmy read up on the mob in this part of the state all the time. He thought they were pretty cool even though they killed people. Anyway, he said that if he ever wanted to hide something, that’s where he’d put it.’

‘You think he hid something there?’

‘Maybe. It’d be worth a look.’

That one I had to think about. The police wouldn’t have had any reason to move the refrigerator. The apartment wasn’t the crime scene. On the other hand they were probably still going through his things, looking for anything that might lead them to the killer. Which meant that they wouldn’t want anybody prowling around in there. And despite the fact that a trapdoor had a nice Hardy Boys ring to it, the chances of finding anything meaningful was a long shot at best.

‘Your forehead wrinkles when you think.’

‘Ah.’

‘Makes you look older.’

‘I see.’

‘You’re not a bad-looking guy from certain angles. But not when you’re thinking like that.’

‘I’ll have to be careful not to think.’

‘And to just hold your head at certain angles.’

‘That, too.’

Halfway through her food, Jenny said, ‘I can tell you’re thinking again.’

‘The wrinkles?’

‘Uh-huh. Personally, if I had wrinkles like that I’d try Botox.’

‘I was thinking of Botox for my butt.’

Her explosive laughter caused several tables full of people to gawk in our direction.

‘God, I wish my father would say stuff like that.’

Every time she mentioned her father I thought of my shortcomings with my own daughter. She loved me and forgave me for all the times I wasn’t there but I wondered if she had the kind of moments I did. I’d see a father strolling with his four-year-old little girl and I’d regret all the moments I could have shared with my own little girl.

‘One of the things that’s been giving me wrinkles is how we might get into Jim’s apartment now. The police probably told the manager not to let anybody in. It’ll be locked and there’s probably a piece of yellow crime scene tape across it.’

‘The manager? He’s an idiot. I can get him to do anything. He thinks we’re going to sleep together.’

‘Why would he think that?’

‘Because I sort of told him we would if he’d let me in when I forgot my key and stuff like that.’

‘So you could convince him to let us in?’

‘Not ‘us.’ No way he’d let you in. He’d get jealous if he thought there was something between you and me. You know, like you were moving in on his territory.’

‘I see.’ She was a passing fair judge of male psychology. We get territorial about women who wouldn’t have anything to do with us even if we had a bag of cash and an Uzi.

‘But when I get in there I can open the window off the fire escape and let you in.’

My recollection of the place — I’d only seen it at night — was that Waters’ apartment had a fire escape running past his bedroom window. I also recalled, or thought I did, seeing the side of another apartment building next to it. I didn’t particularly look forward to being seen on a fire escape in daylight.

I told her about that.

‘Well, his wife works at the supermarket down the street during the day. He’s always hinting that we could “have some fun” when she’s gone. I’ll just get Pierce to let me inside his apartment for a few minutes then you can sneak upstairs and hide somewhere.’

‘I don’t like the idea of you being alone with him.’

‘He’s a moron. I won’t have any trouble with him at all.’

‘What if he decides to stay with you in Jim’s room?’

‘I’ll tell him to go get nice and spruced up and wait for me downstairs.’

At first I thought she’d had a seizure of some kind. Her body jerked and then jerked again. Her hands went to her Goth face and covered it. Her wail wasn’t quite as loud as her laugh had been but now, when the other diners shot glances my way, they were filled with recrimination. Surely I’d said something terrible to this strange girl. Mean bastard.

‘He’s dead,’ she managed to say. ‘I just realized that I’ll never be able to see him again. Never.’ At least she kept her crying in the low decibels. ‘I never thought of that till now. That I’ll never be able to see him again. I loved him and his apartment and all his comic books. He was the only person who understood me.’ Her mascara had started running. That much makeup, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

‘I’m sorry, Jenny.’

She plucked some Kleenex from her purse and went to work on her face. ‘I know you are. And I know his other friends are, too. But sorry doesn’t do much good, does it?’

‘It’s about all we’ve got.’

‘I just want to go home and hide under the covers and pretend it didn’t happen.’

‘Can we go to his apartment first?’

‘Oh, sure. I just need a little while to sit here and sort of suck it up. Is that okay?’