Burn Marks

20

Heavy Warning

Bobby’s visit left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wanted to tell Eileen I couldn’t make it to her party. But Bobby was right about one thing-you shouldn’t saw off the limb you’re sitting on just to salve your pride.

I called a couple of friends to see if anyone wanted to take in a movie but everyone was out. I left messages on various machines and stomped off to the kitchen to scramble some eggs. Normally sitting home alone on Saturday doesn’t trouble me, but Bobby’s visit made me wonder if I was doomed for an old age of crabby isolation.

I turned on the TV and moodily changed channels. You’d think Saturday night they could offer something enticing for the stay-at-homes, but the networks thought all America was out dancing. When the phone rang I turned off the set eagerly, thinking maybe someone was returning one of my messages. I was startled to hear Roz Fuentes’s husky voice.

She didn’t even say hello before she started lambasting me for butting my nose into her business. “What are you trying to do to me, Warshawski?” Her voice had recovered its usual rich, throaty timbre; the vibration through the phone made my ear tingle.

“I’m not doing anything to you, Roz. Don’t you have a campaign to run? Why are you picking on me?”

Her rich chuckle came, but it lacked mirth. “Velma called me. She said you were trying to get her to spill some dirt on me, that she put you in your place but she thought I ought to know. What kind of dirt are you looking for, anyway?”

I bared my teeth at the phone. “Hey, Roz-Velma put me in my place. Relax.”

“Vic, I gotta know.” She spoke softly, urgently-it was like listening to the Chicago Symphony string section. “This campaign means everything to me and my people. I told you that last weekend. I can’t afford to have someone lying in the bushes waiting for me with a shotgun.”

It had been too long a day for me to make any great display of subtlety. “Roz, I don’t care if you’ve been sleeping with Boots and the whole county board to get yourself on the ticket. What bugs me is you going out of your way to ask me if I was sandbagging you. What would even make you think such a thing unless you’re getting me to sign on to something I’m going to be very sorry about later? I’m thin-skinned, Roz; it gets me itzy if someone is trying to make a monkey out of me.”

“I came to you as a show of respect for our old relationship,” she said indignantly. “Now you are twisting my friendship into something evil. Velma was right. I should know better than to turn to a white girl with my concerns.”

“A white boy is okay, though?” I was thoroughly riled. “Boots can be your ally but I can’t? Go save the Chicago Hispanics, Roz, but leave me out of it.”

We hung up on that fractured note. I was mad enough to call Velma to demand chapter and verse on not trusting me just because I was white, but a conversation like that can go nowhere constructive.

Sunday morning I got a further indication that the Fuentes-Meagher pot had something cooking in it when Marissa invited me to stop by for drinks that evening. Something spontaneous and casual, was how she put it, for people she hadn’t spent enough time with at Roz’s campaign. I told her I was truly overwhelmed to be remembered by her and that the thought of such an evening was irresistible. Marissa had herself well in hand, though, and refused to be ruffled.

At five I set out for her Lincoln Park town house, one of those three-story jobs on Cleveland where every brick has been sandblasted and the woodwork refinished so it glows warmly. Marissa rented out the ground floor and lived in the upper two.

When I got to the top of the first flight she met me in the landing to escort me into what she called her drawing room. As usual Marissa looked great, her idea of casual being bulky red silk trousers, a matching pajama-style top, and lots of silver jewelry. I hadn’t worn jeans, but I couldn’t help feeling she’d dressed with the intention of making me look dowdy.

The drawing room, which had once been the two front bedrooms, ran the width of the building, its row of mullioned windows looking out on Cleveland. Whatever negative thoughts I had about Marissa didn’t include her taste-the room was simply but beautifully furnished, a high-Victorian look predominating, complete with red Turkish rugs scattered at strategic places. An exotic array of plants gave the whole scene warmth.

When I complimented her she laughed and said it was all due to her sister, who owned a plant rental business and rotated fresh shrubbery for her every few weeks. “Let me introduce you to some of the folks, Vic.”

Some fifteen or twenty people were chattering with the ease of familiarity. As she led me toward the nearest group the doorbell rang again. She excused herself, telling me to help myself to a drink and see if I knew anyone.

I’d half expected to see Roz, or even the Wunsch and Grasso contingent, but the only person I recognized was Ralph MacDonald. I tipped my hat to Marissa-she must be even better connected than I’d realized for the great man to spend a Sunday evening at such a low-profile function as this.

He was talking to a couple of banker-looking types who’d dressed down for the weekend in open-necked shirts and sport jackets. Two women in their little group were talking sotto voce to each other so as not to disturb the boys. This sample of good wifely conduct made me gladder than ever I hadn’t stood by my own man, a lawyer who now lived in palatial splendor in Oak Brook.

The bar, set in the corner behind one of the trees, had just about anything one’s heart could desire, including a bottle of indifferent champagne. The whiskey was J &B, a brand I can take or leave, so I poured myself a glass of the chardonnay. It made me feel too much like a Lincoln Park native for comfort, but it wasn’t a bad wine.

I took it over to an armchair and watched Marissa return with the newcomers, a thirty-something couple I also didn’t recognize. She brought them to a clump not too far from me where they were greeted enthusiastically as Todd and Meryl. Marissa, the perfect hostess, stayed to chat, then moved to the MacDonald group before responding again to the buzzer.

By and by two women in black slacks and white blouses came in with trays of hot hors d’oeuvres. Ralph MacDonald moved over with the two women from his huddle just as I was helping myself to a couple of spinach triangles.

“Vic? I’m Ralph MacDonald-we met at Boots’s shindig last weekend.”

“I remember you, of course-but I’m surprised you know me.” I tried to sound suave while hastily swallowing the last of my pastry.

“Don’t be modest, Vic-you’re a pretty memorable gal.”

The comment was innocuous but the tone seemed charged. Before I could question him he introduced me to the two women, who obviously were as enthusiastic at meeting me as I them. They filled small plates with a sample of treats and retired to the bankers as Marissa brought another unaccompanied man over to us. She introduced him as Clarence Hinton; he and MacDonald clearly knew each other reasonably well.

“You remember Vic from last Sunday, Ralph,” Marissa stated.

“I was just telling her not to undersell herself.” He turned to me. “Actually I probably wouldn’t have remembered you if I hadn’t run into Clarence here after you left.”

I shook my head.

“Clarence and I were both friends of Edward Purcell.”

I flushed against my will. Purcell had been chairman of Transicon and the mastermind of a major fraud I’d uncovered in my first big investigation. It wasn’t my fault he’d committed suicide the day before the federal marshals were coming to pick him up, but I had to fight back a defensive retort.

I forced myself to ask Clarence in a neutral voice if he was a developer too.

“Oh, I play around with putting projects together. I don’t have MacDonald’s energy for that kind of thing. Ralph, I want a drink and the lady here needs a refill. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Mine’s bourbon on the rocks,” MacDonald said as Hinton turned to the bar. To me he added, “I’m glad you came, Vic-I’ve been hoping to have a chance to talk to you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “About Edward Purcell? It’s been almost ten years.”

“Oh, I’ve always felt sort of disappointed with Teddy for that. There’s no lick so hard you can’t fight it in court.”

“Especially in this town,” I said dryly.

He flashed a smile to let me know he got the joke without finding it particularly funny. “I don’t hold Teddy against you. No, I wanted to talk to you about something more contemporary.”

Maybe this was going to be my big break-detective to the stars. My chance to fund an international enterprise that would make my uncle Peter swoon with envy. Before I could ask, Clarence returned with the drinks and Ralph shepherded us down the hall to a small back room. It had probably been a maid’s room in the old days of the house, but Marissa had decorated it in white on white and used it for watching TV.

I sat in one of the hard-upholstered chairs and smoothed my challis skirt over my knees. MacDonald stood across from me, his foot on the rung of the couch, while Hinton leaned against the door. There was no special menace in their faces but the poses were meant to intimidate, I sipped a little wine and waited.

When it was clear I wasn’t going to say anything, MacDonald began. “Donnel Meagher has been chairman of the Cook County Board for a lot of years.”

“And you think the time has come for him to pack it in?” I asked.

MacDonald shook his head. “Far from it. He’s developed a political savvy in that time that no one else in this area can match, I expect you don’t agree with all his positions, but I’m sure you respect his judgment.”

“If I respected his judgment I’d agree with his positions,” I objected.

“His political judgments,” MacDonald smiled thinly, “After Clarence pointed out who you were I asked around about you. The consensus is, you consider yourself a wit,”

“But with good judgment,” I couldn’t help saying.

He declined the gambit. “Boots picked Rosalyn Fuentes for the county slate based strictly on her political merits. That’s the kind of decision I understand you may have a hard time with.”

In my secret heart I hadn’t really expected he wanted to hire me, but it was still a letdown to think he only wished to warn me off Roz. “I don’t have any trouble with that kind of decision. Boots is clearly a political mastermind, and if Roz can get his backing, her future looks golden.”

“So you’re not trying to sandbag her campaign?” That was Hinton’s first contribution to the discussion.

“You guys are making me awful, awful curious,” I said. “Marissa put the arm on me to go to Roz’s fundraiser in the name of a decade-old solidarity. I shelled out more money than I’ve ever given a candidate, was bored out of my head, and was getting ready to leave when Roz talked to me just to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt her. Now you two lock me in a little room to pick my brain. I don’t know anything about Roz’s secrets, and I wouldn’t care what they were if people weren’t going out of their way to make me wonder.”

“It really would be better if you minded your own business this time around,” Hinton said in a toneless voice more ominous than a shout.

MacDonald shook his head. “She’s not going to listen to threats, Clarence-her whole history makes that clear… Look, Vic-Roz needs Boots’s support if she’s going to win her first county-wide contest. But Boots needs her too-the Hispanic wards pretty much vote the way she tells them to.”

That wasn’t news to me so I didn’t say anything.

“Roz committed a major indiscretion in her youth. She confessed it all to Boots when they were talking over the slate and his opinion was that it wouldn’t hurt her if it came out in five years, when she had a big base, but that it could be pretty damaging to her home support if they learned about it now. So someone said something to her at the barbecue that made her think you were probing and she was trying to assure herself that you weren’t.”

“And what was that youthful indiscretion?”

MacDonald shook his head. “Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you-Boots is an old political hand and he doesn’t share secrets with people who don’t need to know them.”

“Well, you know my reputation-I don’t care if she was screwing the village goat, but I don’t sign on for fraud.”

MacDonald laughed. “You see, Vic, everyone has a different notion of morality. There are plenty more people in Humboldt Park who would care about the goat than any money she’d siphoned off a public works project. So don’t set up your own standards to run the county by, okay?”

I smiled sweetly. “Just as long as no one is making me the goat. That’s probably what I most care about.”

He came over and helped me to my feet. “It would take a smarter crew than us to do that. Let’s go back to the party-I want some of those little salmon things before the ignorant mob gets them all.”

When we returned to the drawing room Marissa caught Ralph’s eye anxiously. He nodded fractionally to telegraph all’s well, that I’d been convinced. But of what?