V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 21

"They set him up," I said. "You live in a world of doctored images; you know how easy it is to make a picture look like the truth. And how did you know the kilo in the bolt of cloth was even in Frenada's shop? But it's not the c.o.ke per se I care about. What I'm trying to understand is why they needed to shut him up. Was it something to do with the Ts.h.i.+rts? Why did he have a Mad Virgin Ts.h.i.+rt in his office?"

"It can't be anything about the Ts.h.i.+rts," she said. "That's not a story at all.

Here's what happened. Lucy and I didn't stay close, but we keep-kept in touch.

He sent me that story that ran in the HeraldStar about him two years ago, how he was the model of the upandcoming minority entrepreneur. Then when we decided to shoot Virgin Six here, of course it was a big story. Lucy saw it. He wrote and asked if I would get the studio to give him a contract for some of the Mad Virgin Ts.h.i.+rts, a Chicago commemorative or something. So I told him I'd talk to Teddy Trant, which I did, and Teddy gave me a sarcastic brush off. And I let it drop."

"You were never a shuffler, Magdalena. You didn't care about Lucy enough to stand up for him?" The priest looked at her over the rim of his teacup.

"We were in the middle of a difficult contract cycle. I know-I should have thought more of Lucy, but I'm thirtyseven; in another few years unless I'm really lucky I won't be able to be a star. And anyway, Father Lou, I moved away more than twenty years ago." She held out her hands, the gesture she often made to her old lover halfway through the Virgin movies.

"But he made some s.h.i.+rts on spec?" I said.

"I guess he must have. Suddenly, the day before I was flying out, Teddy called me and asked for Lucy's number. He wanted to look at the factory or something."

"Then at Murray's party at the Golden Glow two weeks ago, why did you get so angry with Frenada?"

"Were you there?" she said. "Behind another potted palm or something? Teddy said he looked at Lucy's stuff. He said it wasn't up to Global standard. But Lucy claimed Teddy stole one of his s.h.i.+rts. I said that was nuts, we-the studio-manufacture zillions of them, why would Teddy steal one? Lucy threatened to make a scene right there, and I hate being humiliated in public that way. I had him thrown out. And then I felt terrible. I did, Father Lou, I really did. I called him and apologized and invited him up to my hotel for lunch. We talked and talked and he said one of the s.h.i.+rts he'd made really was missing. I couldn't get him to let it drop, so I told him I'd mention it to Alex, but really I thought one of his workers must have stolen it; it's the kind of thing people take."

"Yes, that is possible," Father Lou said. "What did you say to this woman Alex or to your boss?"

She knit her fingers. "I didn't see how I could say anything to Teddy. He'd already a.s.sured me he didn't have the s.h.i.+rt. He said something horrible about Lucy, anyway, and I had to remind him that I'm Mexican, too. But I told Alex and she said to stop fussing about it, if Lucy was missing a s.h.i.+rt she'd send him one. But of course that wasn't the point."

"What was so special about his s.h.i.+rts?" I asked. "The fabric? The picture?"

"Honestly, I don't know," she said, spreading her hands again. "I think Lucy was upset because Global didn't give him the contract, and it distorted his judgment."

"Where does Global make its spinoffs-s.h.i.+rts and dolls and whatnot?" I asked.

"I've never asked. All over, I suppose."

"Third World countries? America?"

She shook her head impatiently. "I don't know."

"You collect the royalties, but you don't ask for fear of what they'll tell you?" I said.

"I've sat here long enough with you thinking I'm a c.o.c.kroach in the sink." She uncoiled her legs and sprang out of the chair. "I'm out of here."

Father Lou reached the door ahead of her and barred her way. "You can leave in a minute, Magdalena. I'm glad you came tonight. I think you'll sleep better, having told the truth, as I'm sure you've done.

"We're having the funeral ma.s.s tomorrow," he added, when she didn't say anything. "I expect you to be there. It will be at eleven. Lucy left his sister's children provided for-he had a lifeinsurance policy-but they could use another bit of cash to pay their school fees. And it would be a graceful gesture if you gave a scholars.h.i.+p to the school in his memory."

Her face was stormy, but after staring at the priest for a long minute she muttered agreement. He let her go. A few minutes later we heard a motor roar into life. Her motorcycle. I'd have to ask young Emily what kind of bike Lacey Dowell rode around town. I was betting on a hog.

Twenty thousand dollars to St. Remigio's instead of three Hail Mary's? That's what it sounded like to me.

"I'm tired; I'd like to go to bed," he said. "Did she tell you what you need to know?"

I wasn't sure-I still didn't understand why the s.h.i.+rt Frenada made was so important. And I wasn't as sure as Father Lou that I'd heard the truth. When I left the rectory I wondered how much time I had before I joined Lucian Frenada in a pine box. Maybe Father Lou would offer a funeral ma.s.s for me, heathen that I was.

31.

A Day in the Country Everything was making me nervous. I was afraid to go home because I didn't know if someone would jump me. I was afraid to go to my car for the same reason. I was afraid to send Mr. Contreras down to my office to fetch the car in case Baladine had planted a bomb under the hood. In the end my nervousness made me angry enough that when I got off the L, I went home the direct way: up the sidewalk, into the front door. Nothing happened, and perversely enough that made me even edgier.

In the morning I took the train down to my office and threw a rock at the hood of the car. It bounced off. The car didn't blow up, but a couple of boys who were lounging across the street scuttled into the alley: it's scary to share the street with a crazy woman.

The woman from the temporary agency was waiting for me inside: Tessa had arrived unusually early and let her in. I got the woman started on organizing papers before calling the Unblinking Eye to discuss a surveillance system for the building. Since Tessa and I really had only one entrance to protect, we didn't need more than two screens, one for each of our work s.p.a.ces. Although it was still money I didn't have, it wasn't as big a hit as I'd feared. The Unblinking Eye would do the installation in the morning and pick up their rental camera from me at the same time.

After that I buckled down at my computer, researching court cases, trying to find Veronica Fa.s.sler. It's a needleinahaystack job: there's no index of cases by defendant. I tried to guess the year she'd been convicted, since she said she'd been at Coolis longer than Nicola Aguinaldo, and finally, with some luck, found her case, dating back four years. Fa.s.sler had been caught with five grams of crack on the corner of Winona and Broadway, and justice had followed its inexorable course of three to five years. A year for every gram. It seems odd that the U.S. is so reluctant to go metric, except in measuring the minute amount of crack it takes to send someone to prison.

I also did a search for information on Coolis. I had ignored stories when it was under construction, since I wasn't with the public defender any longer. I started with Carnifice gets contract for new facility. The Corrections Courier said it was a novel idea, combining jail and prison in northwest Illinois, typical of the innovative approach to vertical integration that is Carnifice Security's hallmark. Because of overcrowding in Cook and Du Page County jails, women arrested and unable to post bond would be housed in a special wing of Coolis. That way they could just move down the hall to the prison once they were convicted-since being in jail for a year or more while awaiting trial greatly increased your chance of conviction. If you couldn't afford bond you must be guilty, I guess.

Because you go from jail to trial, jails are supposed to be close to the courts-a condition obviously not being met at Coolis. An article in the HeraldStar described how House Speaker Poilevy overcame that little obstacle. The year Coolis opened, he held a special legislative session on crime. Fifteen of sixteen bills zipped through the state legislature that session. One designated a particular courtroom to be part of Cook County on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, part of Du Page on Thursdays, and split between Lake and McHenry on Fridays. A couple of public defenders from each county could carpool with the State's Attorney, spend a few nights in Coolis, and save the state the cost of busing large numbers of women from the jail to their local county court.

I could see why Baladine was so tight with Poilevy-the House Speaker worked Springfield as if it were legerdemain, not legislation he was engineering. What I couldn't figure out was where Teddy Trant and Global Entertainment came into the picture. The financial papers didn't shed any light on the problem.

The only story the Wall Street Journal ran had questioned whether Carnifice was making the right kind of investment in a women's multipurpose correctional facility. The REIT Bulletin, in contrast, praised the move highly and gave the project a tripleA rating for investors.

Women prisoners make up the fastest growing segment of the fastgrowing U.S. prison population, the Bulletin said. A twelvefold increase in women in prison in the last decade . . . seventyfive percent with children . . . eighty percent commit nonviolent crimes-possession, prost.i.tution . . . theft usually to pay rent or other bills, unlike men doing it for drugs or thrills.

I skimmed the stories and finished with Model workshops in prison: Coolis is of, for, and by the prisoners. Prison workshops in Coolis allowed prisoners to earn as much as thirty dollars a week manufacturing food and clothes for consumption in the state prison system. The computer produced a blurry picture of smiling inmates in a prison kitchen and two seriouslooking women operating monster sewing machines. Carnifice had invested a lot of money in the workshops when they built the prison; they lobbied unsuccessfully to overturn an Illinois law that prohibited sales of goods outside the prison system. In fact, that was the only bill that failed Poilevy's special crime session.

"The labor unions have a stranglehold on this state," JeanClaude Poilevy grumbled when he was unable to muster the votes to overturn the law. "They make it impossible for efficient use of industrial facilities in order to protect their own fiefdom."

While I waited for the articles to print, I logged back on to LifeStory. I should have done this days ago, but my cocaine adventures had put it out of my mind. I wanted to see what kind of report I would get on Lucian Frenada this time around and contrast it with the first. I pulled up my original report so I could doublecheck the parameters I had specified.

When it came on the screen I thought I was hallucinating: instead of the modest bank accounts and two creditcard balances I'd seen ten days ago, I got pages of detail: bank accounts in Mexico and Panama; eighteen credit cards with charges on each ranging as high as twenty thousand a month for travel and jewelry; a home in Acapulco and one in the Cote d'Azur. The list went on and on in a mindnumbing fas.h.i.+on.

I was so bewildered I couldn't even think for a few minutes. Finally I went to my briefcase and took out the wallet of backup disks I carry between home and office. I found the floppy with the Frenada report on it and opened the file.

The simple figures were the ones I'd shown Murray yesterday morning.

I sat bewildered for a long time before I could think at all. It slowly came to me that when the vandals broke into my office last week, they'd gone into my computer and altered my files. They'd somehow loaded bogus numbers into the LifeStory files and downloaded them onto my machine.

I wondered whether they had messed around with any of my other doc.u.ments-altered my case records, my tax data-they could have done anything. Once again the sense of violation made me feel sick. Someone had helped themselves to what was almost an extension of my mind.

I'd started the day determined to drive out to Coolis to try to see Veronica Fa.s.sler as soon as I found her trial record, but I was too upset to deal with the prison system this morning. I wished I could find my old hacking buddy, Mackenzie Graham. He could have told me how someone had managed to screw around with the LifeStory data, but he was somewhere in East Africa with the Peace Corps these days.

I opened up several old case files but then decided I didn't want to find evidence of a stranger's hands and feet in my life. I zeroed out my disk. Are you sure you want to do this? The system asked me twice and then seemed to shrug its electronic shoulders. Okay, but you will lose all your files. I wiped it clean and reloaded the system from my backup disks, reloaded all my data, offering Mackenzie a million thanks for forcing me to the unwonted discipline of daily offsite backups.

I spent the rest of the day working a.s.siduously with the woman from the agency.

By five we had eightytwo neat piles of papers for which she could type folder labels in the morning. I told her what to do in the morning when the Unblinking Eye came to install our surveillance camera and monitors, then lugged my computer to my car and drove it home. I didn't know where to set it up that would be really safe, but my apartment was less vulnerable than the warehouse, because at least here someone was usually around.

I took my computer to the third floor and sat in my bathtub for half an hour, listening to Bach, trying to relax. It would have helped if I knew what my opponents wanted. Besides to drive me crazy with uncertainty. By and by I poured myself a whisky and went downstairs to see my neighbor. I wanted to persuade him to lie low until this miserable business had come somehow to an end. When he came to the door, I put a hand over his mouth and led him through his apartment to the back. A couple on the second floor was entertaining on the back porch.

The rea.s.suring clink of gla.s.ses and friendly laughter drifted down to us. Under its cover I told Mr. Contreras how someone had frightened Mary Louise into backing away from me and that I didn't want the same people terrorizing him.

"I don't want you to be a sitting target for BB Baladine," I whispered urgently.

"What if he comes around trying to find who went with me to Coolis? For all I know they had a security camera taking pictures of us-I wasn't very bright. I bolted headlong into trouble without stopping to think. I'm worried I put you at risk as well. You were right not to want your name on the record."

"It ain't like you to scare easy, doll."

"It isn't very often that I come across a man who thinks bayoneting newborns is all in a day's work. Will you do me a favor and go to your daughter's until, well, until this Aguinaldo business gets sorted out?"

Of course he wouldn't. Aside from the fact that he and his only child had as much in common as a dog and a fish, he wasn't about to turn tail. Didn't I ever listen to him when he talked to me about Anzio?

"Listen!" I screeched, forgetting to whisper, so that the party above us momentarily grew quiet. "You were twentysomething at Anzio. You may have the will you had then, but you don't have the strength. And if this guy figures out the relations.h.i.+p between us, which he will if he puts any energy into the matter, then he'll know it was you with me at the Coolis hospital, not Nicola Aguinaldo's grandfather."

We argued for an hour, but all he would agree to was to deny any relations.h.i.+p with me if someone came around asking. Oh, Ms. Warshki, she lives in the building, but she's a young woman, we know each other to say hi coming in the door at night. Of course, if someone questioned the rest of the tenants, one of them was bound to say that the old guy and I were pretty tight. The woman on the ground floor, for instance, who complained about the noise the dogs made when I came in late. Or even the party above us tonight: Mitch and Peppy, bored with lying in the yard, went up to the second floor to investigate. I followed just in time to grab Mitch before he helped himself to a plate of hummus. Those neighbors certainly would remember Mr. Contreras and me barbecuing together in the backyard.

"Okay, I won't open the door to no one I don't know while you're away from home, but even if I ain't the guy I was at twenty, I can still look after myself without running off to Hoffman Estates like a scared mutt." That was the best I was going to get out of him.

Thursday morning I got up early, took the dogs for a long swim, and headed out to Coolis. Even though I wasn't stopping for lunch, without Mr. Contreras the ride seemed to take longer than it had last week. Still, I pulled into a visitors' lot at the prison a little before noon.

I had dressed professionally, in my wheat rayon trouser suit. The drive in the unairconditioned car had left my white s.h.i.+rt wet around the armpits and neck, but I thought the front still looked pressed and clean enough for my mission. I carried the briefcase my dad gave me when I graduated from law school. It's almost twenty years old now, the red leather worn pinkywhite around the edges.

To preserve it I use it sparingly, but today I needed to feel his presence in my life.

The prairie sun pounded on me as I walked across the asphalt to the first checkpoint. In the distance I could hear gra.s.shoppers whirring in the high gra.s.ses, but in the prison compound no trees or gra.s.ses mediated the heat, which s.h.i.+mmered from the pavement in kneehigh waves. The white stone was so bright that my eyes watered behind my sungla.s.ses.

I stopped at the first checkpoint, held out my ID, explained I was a lawyer here to see one of the inmates. At the second my briefcase was examined for weapons.

I waited forty minutes there for an escort to the prison entrance. The CO who finally came for me was a short, plump woman who joked with the guard but didn't say anything to me.

At the entrance the door slid slowly open on its pneumatic trolley. We then faced an inner door, which would open only when the one behind us had wheezed shut again. Inside, I was escorted to yet another guard station, where I explained my business: I was a lawyer, here to see Veronica Fa.s.sler.

I was sent to a waiting room, a small windowless s.p.a.ce with plastic chairs on top of worn linoleum and a television mounted high on the wall. Oprah shouted down at me and the three other women in the room.

Two of the waiting women were black, the only faces of color I'd seen since entering the prison compound; all three stared ahead with the weary pa.s.sivity of those accustomed to being of no account to the world around them. A corrections officer looked in periodically, I suppose to make sure we weren't stealing the furniture. When I asked her to turn down the volume, since none of us was watching the program, she told me to mind my own business and retreated again.

Around onethirty the older of the black women was escorted to the visitors' room. Two more people arrived-a Hispanic couple, middleaged, nervous, wanting to know what to expect when they saw their daughter. The white woman continued to stare stolidly ahead, but the second black woman began explaining the procedure, where you sat, what you could talk about. It was hard for the pair to follow her underneath the noise of the television. As she repeated something for the third time, the corrections officer returned to escort me to the warden's office.

CAPTAIN FREDERICK RUZICH, WARDEN, the plaque on the door announced. The CO saluted smartly; the captain dismissed her and invited me to be seated. Despite his military t.i.tle he was wearing civilian clothes, a pearl tropical worsted with a navy tie. He was a big man; even sitting he seemed to loom over me. With his gray hair and eyes he looked almost colorless, certainly terrifying.

"I understand you want to see one of our prisoners, Miss . . . uh . . ."

"Warshawski. Yes. Veronica Fa.s.sler. She's serving a fiveyear sentence for possession and-"

"So you're familiar with her case. I wondered if you were coming out here on a fis.h.i.+ng expedition." He smiled, but with so much condescension that it became an insult.

"No one comes to a prison hunting for clients, Captain. The legalaid money doesn't even cover gas and tolls from Chicago. Do you take a personal interest in every lawyerclient consultation here at Coolis?"

"The important ones I do. Have you talked to Veronica's regular lawyer about her case? I would have expected him to be here with you or at least to call ahead to let us know a different arrangement had been made."

"Ms. Fa.s.sler asked to see me when she called my office. And her representation arrangements are with me, not between the prison and other counsel. Or between me and the prison."

He leaned his ma.s.sive torso back in the chair, his hands clasped behind his head, the smile lurking at the corner of his mouth. "Be that as it may, we had orders to transfer her. She's in another part of the prison system. So you made your trip out here for nothing, Detective."

I stared steadily at his smirk. "It's true I'm a detective, Captain. But I'm also a lawyer, in good standing with the Illinois bar. Where was Ms. Fa.s.sler sent?"

"I wish I could tell you that, but I can't because I don't know. Carnifice Security sent someone in with a van and moved her and the infant yesterday morning, and that's all I can tell you." His gray eyes were transparent, like a guppy's, which made it hard to look at them.

"Why was she moved? She didn't know anything about it when she phoned me."

The superior smile lingered. "There's always a problem in the prison when a prisoner has a baby. The logistics are hard here. No doubt too many of the other inmates complained."

"What a humane place this is, where the women's complaints are taken so seriously by the staff." I was not going to let him goad me into losing my temper, but I couldn't help myself pus.h.i.+ng on him a little. "But a man like you who likes to be in charge, I can't believe you just salute and say yessir when your bosses tell you to move out a prisoner to an unknown destination.

Especially in a private prison, where it affects your bed count and your margins."

The smile hovered at the corner of his mouth. "Whatever you want to believe, Warshawski, whatever you want. How did the Fa.s.sler woman get your number to begin with?"

"Probably from the yellow pages. That's how most people find me."

"Wouldn't have been on your visit to the hospital asking questions about Nicola Aguinaldo, would it? When you came out with her-grandfather, was that what you called him?-making inquiries. Was that as a detective or as a lawyer?"

"When a lawsuit is threatened, it's usually because a lawyer's present."

"And usually someone with standing is present." His smirk turned into a fullfledged grin. "You claimed the man was the girl's grandfather, but she doesn't have a grandfather. At least not an American. And that was definitely an American you brought out here."

I clasped my hands around my right knee in a pretense of thoughtful relaxation.

"Is your information about Ms. Aguinaldo's family from BB Baladine or the INS?

It's hard for me to believe BB pays much attention to the families of the illegal immigrants he hires. Not enough to know whether an American serviceman might have been in the Philippines during World War Two and have a Filipina granddaughter."

Poor Mr. Contreras: he would have protested mightily if he knew I was imputing that kind of immorality to him. He might have had s.e.x with a local woman in his army service days, but he wouldn't have left her alone with a child.

"If he cared so much about the girl I'm surprised he never tried to visit her here."

"Family relations are a neverending mystery, aren't they?" I said affably.

"If this grandfather really exists I'd like to talk to him, especially if he's bringing a suit against the hospital." He wasn't sure whether to believe me or not, but at least his lingering smirk disappeared.

"If he decides to file the suit, the hospital's lawyers will be allowed to interview him for discovery. Until then, if you have any questions for him, you can direct them through me. By the way, it would lessen the chance of a lawsuit if I could get him more concrete information about what made you send Ms.

Aguinaldo to the hospital in the first place, and how she was able to escape from what is clearly a tightly secured ward."

"The information I have from my staff is that she had female difficulties. You'd probably know more than me what that meant." The sneering smile played again around the corners of his mouth.