Blood Shot

27

An annoying lassitude gripped my body. Even the short conversation with Caroline had tired me out. I poured some more tea and flicked on the tube. With spring training still two weeks away, there wasn’t much doing during the day. I moved from soap to soap to a tearful prayer meeting-Tammy Faye’s sobbing successor-to Sesame Street and turned the set off in disgust. It was too much to expect me to sort papers or pay bills in my enfeebled state; I wrapped myself in my blanket and lay down on the sofa for a nap.

I woke up about twenty minutes before Kappelman was due and stumbled into the bathroom to rinse my face with cold water. Someone had stolen all the dirty towels, scrubbed the sink and bathtub, and tidied up odds and ends of toiletries and makeup. Peeping into my bedroom, I was staggered to see the bed made and clothes and shoes put away. I hated to admit it, but the tidy rooms were cheering to my sore spirits.

I’d hidden Nancy’s documents in the stacks of music on the piano. The elves had carefully put the music inside the piano bench, but the insurance material lay undisturbed between the Italienisches Liederbuch and Mozart’s Concert Arias.

I was picking my way through “Che no sei capace”- whose title line seemed admirably apt, in that I understood nothing-when Kappelman rang the bell. Before I could get to the intercom Mr. Contreras had bounded out to the lobby to inspect him. When I opened my door I could hear their voices in the stairwell as they came up together-Mr. Contreras trying to tamp down the suspicions he felt toward any man who visited me, Kappelman trying to suppress his impatience with the escort.

My neighbor started talking to me as soon as his head cleared the last turn and he caught sight of me. “Oh, hi there, cookie. You have a good rest? I’m just coming to pick up her highness here, get her some air, a little food. You weren’t feeding her cheese, were you? I meant to tell you-she can’t tolerate it.”

He came into the room and started inspecting Peppy for signs of illness. “You don’t want to go walking her alone, now, nor going off by yourself on one of your runs. And don’t let this young guy here keep you going past when you’ve got yourself worn out. And you want any help with anything, me and the dog’ll be at the ready; you just give us a holler.”

With this thinly veiled warning, he collected Peppy. He hovered at the door with more admonitions until I finally thrust him gently onto the landing.

Kappelman looked at me sourly. “If I’d known the old man was going to investigate my character, I’d’ve brought my own attorney along. I’d say you were safe if you kept him with you-anyone attacks you he’ll talk them to death.”

“He just likes to imagine I’m sixteen and he’s both my parents,” I said with more indulgence than I felt. Owing my life to Mr. Contreras didn’t keep me from finding him a little wearing.

I offered Kappelman a drink. His first choice was beer, which I rarely have in the house, followed by bourbon. I finally unearthed a bottle of that from the back of my liquor cupboard.

“An old South Sider like you ought to be ready with a shot and a beer,” he grumbled.

“I guess it’s just one more sign of how much I’ve abandoned my roots.” I took him into the living room, folding up the blanket I’d left on the couch so he could sit there. My place was never going to be the equal of his Pullman showcase, but at least it was neat. I didn’t get any compliments, but then he couldn’t be expected to know how it usually looked.

After a few polite nothings about my health and his day, I handed Nancy’s packet to him. He pulled a pair of glasses from the breast pocket of his shabby jacket and carefully went through the document a page at a time. I sipped my whiskey and read the day’s papers, trying not to fidget.

When he’d finished he put his glasses away with a little gesture of puzzled helplessness. “I don’t know why Nance had these. Or why she thought they might have been important.”

I gritted my teeth. “Don’t tell me they’re completely meaningless.”

“I don’t know.” He hunched a shoulder. “You can see what they are as easily as I can. I don’t know that much about insurance, but it looks as though Xerxes might have been paying more than these other guys and Jurshak was trying to persuade the company”-he looked at the document searching for the name-“Mariners Rest to lower their rates. It obviously meant something to Nancy, but it sure doesn’t to me. Sorry.”

I scowled horribly, causing the kind of wrinkles they warn starlets against. “Maybe the point isn’t the data but the fact that Jurshak handled the insurance. Maybe still does. He wouldn’t be my first choice as either an agent or a fiduciary.”

Ron smiled a little. “You can afford to be superior-you aren’t trying to do business in South Chicago. Maybe Humboldt felt it was easier to go with the flow on Jurshak than use an independent agent. Or maybe it was genuine altruism, trying to give business to the community where he set up his plant. Jurshak wasn’t very big in South Chicago, let alone the city, back in ’63.”

“Maybe.” I swirled my glass, watching the golden liquid change to amber as it picked up the lamplight. Art and Gustav doing good for the good of the community as a whole. I could see it on a billboard, but not so easily in real life. But I’d grown up around Art so I followed revelations about him-deals that made him or his partner, Freddy Parma, a director-and insurance provider-for a local trucking company, a steel firm, a rail freight hauler, and other outfits. Campaign contributions flowed from these companies in a most gratifying stream. Mariners Rest Assurance Company might not know these things, but Ron Kappelman ought to.

“You’re looking awfully sinister.” Kappelman interrupted my reverie. “Like you think I’m an ax murderer.”

“Just my coldhearted bitch expression. I was wondering how much you know about Art Jurshak’s insurance business.”

“You mean stuff like Mid-States Rail? Of course I do. Why do you-” He broke off mid-sentence, his eyes widening slightly. “Yes. In that light, going to Jurshak for fiduciary assistance doesn’t make much sense. You think Jurshak has something on Humboldt?”

“Could be the other way around. Could be Humboldt has something to cover up and he figures Jurshak is the man to do it for him.”

I wished I knew if I could trust Kappelman-he shouldn’t have needed me to spell that out for him. I took the documents back and looked at them broodingly.

After a pause Kappelman smiled at me quizzically. “How about dinner before I head south? You fit enough to go out?”

Real food. I thought I could make the effort. Just in case Kappelman was leading me back to my pals in the black raincoats, I went into the bedroom to get my gun. And make a call on the extension by my bed.

Young Art’s mother answered the phone; her son still hadn’t shown up, she told me in a worried whisper. Mr. Jurshak didn’t know yet that he had disappeared, so she’d appreciate my keeping it quiet.

“If he shows up, or if you hear from him, make sure he gets in touch with me. I can’t tell you how important it is that he do so.” I hesitated, not sure whether melodrama would make her totally nonfunctional or guarantee her giving my message to her son. “His life may be in danger, but if I can talk to him, I think I can keep anything from happening to him.”

She was starting to hiss questions at me in a strained whisper, but Big Art cut in behind her, wanting to know who she was talking to. She hung up hurriedly.

The longer young Art stayed away, the less I liked it. The kid didn’t have any friends and he didn’t have any street sense. I shook my head uselessly and stuck the Smith & Wesson into the waist of my jeans.

Kappelman was calmly reading The Wall Street Journal when I came back to the living room. He didn’t look as though he’d been monitoring me on the phone, but if he was truly an evil creep, he’d be able to appear innocent. I gave up chewing on it.

“I have to tell Mr. Contreras I’m going out-otherwise, when he realizes I’m not up here he’s going to call the cops and have you arrested for murdering me.”

He made a fatalistic gesture. “I thought I’d left that kind of crap behind when I moved out of my mother’s house. That’s why I’m in Pullman-it was as far as I could reasonably get from Highland Park.”

As I locked the dead bolt the phone started to ring. Thinking it might be young Art, I excused myself to Ron and went back into the apartment. Much to my astonishment it was Ms. Chigwell, in extreme distress. I braced myself, thinking she had called to upbraid me for driving her brother to attempt suicide. I tried a few awkward apologies.

“Yes, yes, it was very sad. But Curtis was never a strong character-it didn’t surprise me. Nor that he wasn’t able to do it successfully. I suspect he meant to be found-he left all the lights on in the garage, and he knew I would come in to see why. After all, he believes I drove him to it.”

I blinked a little at the indulgent contempt in her voice. She surely wasn’t phoning to assuage any putative guilt on my part. I asked an exploratory question.

“Well, really, it’s just something-something very strange happened this afternoon.” She was suddenly stumbling, losing her usual gruff assurance.

“Yes?” I said encouragingly.

“I know it’s inconsiderate of me to bother you, when you just had such a terrible ordeal yourself, but you are an investigator, and it seemed to me you were a more proper person to go to than the police.”

Another long pause. I lay down on the couch to ease the soreness between my shoulders.

“It’s-well, it’s Curtis. I’m sure he broke in here this afternoon.”

That was sufficiently startling that I sat up again. “Broke in? I thought he lived with you!”

“He does, of course. But, well, I rushed him to the hospital when I found him on Tuesday. He wasn’t very sick and they released him on Wednesday. He was terribly embarrassed, didn’t want to face me over the breakfast table, and said he was going to stay with friends. And to be frank with you, Miss Warshawski, I was just as happy to be rid of him for a few days.”

Kappelman came over to where I was sitting. He waved a note under my nose-he would be down with Mr. Contreras getting permission for my outing. I nodded abstractedly and asked Ms. Chigwell to continue.

She took a breath, audible across the lines. “Fridays are my day at the hospital, you know. I do volunteer work with elderly ladies who no longer-well, you don’t want to hear about that now. But when I got back I knew the house had been broken into.”

“And you called the police and stayed with a friend until they arrived?”

“No. No, I didn’t. Because I realized almost immediately it had to be Curtis. Or that he had let someone in who wouldn’t have known the house well enough not to create a disturbance.”

Confusion was making me impatient. I interrupted to ask if any valuables were gone.

“Nothing like that. But you see, Curtis’s medical notebooks are missing. I’d hidden them from him after he tried burning them, and that’s why-” She broke off. “I’m explaining this so badly. It’s why I hoped you would come, even though it’s a great distance and you are most tired yourself I feel sure that whatever Curtis was involved with down at the Xerxes plant that he didn’t want to tell you is in those notebooks.”

“Which are missing,” I interjected shortly.

She gave the ghost of a laugh. “Only his copies. I kept the originals. I typed his notes up for him over the years. That’s all that’s missing. I never told him I kept all the original notebooks.

“You see-he had put the data in Father’s old leather diaries, the ones he had custom-bound for himself in London. It seemed-a kind of desecration to throw them out, but I knew Curtis would be horribly angry to think I was keeping them out of memory for Father. So I never told him.”

I felt a little prickling along the base of my neck, that primitive adrenaline jolt that lets you know you’re getting close to the saber-toothed tiger. I told her I’d be at her house within the hour.