V.I. Warshawski: Hard Time Part 31

The flashlight swung around in my direction. Baladine couldn't see me, but he shone the light along the altar, the laser sight dancing behind it.

"Go open the front door to the church," he finally said to his henchman. "Lemour can come in and earn his keep, since the priest knocked out Fergus. This place is too big to search alone. Don't try anything, Warshawski: I'll shoot your friends at the first wrong move you make."

The underling went down the aisle and scrabbled with the heavy locks. I didn't know what to do next. Peppy was crying to join me in my turret, and Baladine said irritably that he thought they'd shot the d.a.m.ned dog. The red laser sight moved around the sanctuary, trying to pick out a warm target, but the turret was between Peppy and him. He himself was s.h.i.+elded by one of the pillars, or I would have risked a shot at him.

"Aren't there any lights in this d.a.m.ned place?" It was Lemour's reedy voice coming in to the body of the church. "What do you need me for, boss? Hunt out the Warshki b.i.t.c.h? Turn on the lights and we'll get her in no time. Drabek, go in the back and find the switches. I'll cover the altar."

Under cover of Lemour's voice, I slipped out of the little turret. I had chosen it because I could shoot anyone who came close enough to me to attack it, but I realized it was a stupid hideout: all my friends would be dead while I defended myself, and then I'd run out of bullets and die as well. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled down the center aisle until I came to the pews. Making sure the safety was on, I stuck my gun in a jeans pocket and slithered along the floor toward Baladine. I wished I could have ordered Peppy to stay at the turret, but she was anxiously following me.

"I know you're back there, Warshawski, I can hear you. Come out on the count of five or the first bullet goes into the old man."

"It's okay, cookie, don't give up, I can take it, just don't hold it against me that I let the guy in. You know there's never been anyone like you in my life, all seventynine years, and I ain't having you take a bullet just so I can see eighty."

Baladine savagely ordered him to be quiet, but the old man was either beyond paying attention or deliberately trying to give me cover. He started recounting the first time he saw me, I was wearing a red top and cutoffs and going after a g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger, street punk, but nowhere near as bad as this b.a.s.t.a.r.d, pardon his French.

Baladine smacked him, I think with his pistol. When Mr. Contreras fell silent, Father Lou began to sing, in a loud, tuneless voice, a Latin chant. I risked getting to my feet and running toward Baladine. He had one hand on the flash, the other on the gun pointing at Mr. Contreras's head. He was yelling at Father Lou to shut up or be killed when I got behind him and savagely chopped the back of his head.

He dropped the flashlight. His knees buckled, and I grabbed his right arm with all my might. He wrenched his arm free and his gun went off. A window shattered.

Father Lou stuck out a foot and kicked the flashlight away, and I grappled with Baladine in the dark. Lemour shouted at the henchman to get the d.a.m.ned lights on, he was going to take care of Warshki once and for all.

Baladine was trying to twist his arm around to get a shot at me. I stayed behind him, pinning his left arm so he had only his gun hand free: if he wanted to fight he'd have to drop the gun. He jabbed backward with his gun arm. I stuck my knee in his back and pulled his left shoulder toward me. He dropped the gun, which went off again, and pulled me close to him, bending to flip me over his head. I held on and we landed on the floor together. I lost my grip in the fall and he straddled me, his hands locking around my throat. I brought a knee up to his groin. His hold slackened enough for me to get a breath and to try to pull my gun from my pocket.

In the dark next to me I heard a deep angry growl and felt a heavy furry body lean against me. Baladine gave a loud scream and let go of my neck. I wrenched away from him and bounced to my feet. I kicked out as hard as I could, not able to see him in the dark. I kicked high, wanting to miss the dog. My foot connected with bone. Baladine fell heavily against me. I backed away, ready to kick again, but he wasn't moving. I must have knocked him out. I scrabbled under the pew and picked up the flashlight.

Mitch was lying across Baladine's legs. Mitch, bleeding but alive. I couldn't take time to figure out what had happened, how he'd bitten Baladine-I had Lemour and his partner to deal with. I shone the light briefly on Father Lou, but he and Mr. Contreras were handcuffed together, with their arms behind them. I couldn't free them now.

Father Lou shouted a warning: Lemour had picked his way through the pews to my side. I hurled the flashlight into his face and ran back toward the altar.

A bullet whined and smashed into the altarpiece, and I smelled smoke. I ran behind the altarpiece. Lemour fired again, this time in front of me. Light flooded the building, and I was blinded. Lemour, running toward me, was blinded as well. He tripped across the open trapdoor and fell headlong down the spiral stairs. Gla.s.s splintered as he crashed to the bottom.

I braced myself, waiting for the henchman to come after me, when a fireman appeared behind the altar. I thought at first I was hallucinating, or that Baladine had dragooned the fire department along with the police, and lifted my gun.

"No need to shoot, young lady," the man said. "I'm here to put out the fire."

47.

For Those Who Also Serve "The gunshots woke me and I saw the door to the church was open, so I snuck in.

I heard everything but I didn't know what to do, because BB was saying he had a cop to cover up for him. Then I thought, well, if the church was burning, the fire department would come, so I set fire to a newspaper in the kitchen and called 911 and told them the church was on fire. Then I was afraid I was really going to burn down the building. Is Mitch going to be okay? What did they say at the vet?"

We were sitting in the rectory kitchen, drinking more cambric tea as Father Lou and I tried to clean up the sodden mess the firemen had left behind.

"Robbie, you're a hero. It was a brilliant idea, but next time you don't have to set fire to the kitchen-they can't tell downtown if the place is really burning up or not." I laughed shakily. "Mitch is going to be okay. The vet said he took the bullet in his shoulder, not the heart, and even though he lost a lot of blood he should make it through."

Peppy had stayed at the emergency vet to be a blood donor for her son. After the firemen finished putting out the kitchen fire, they'd gotten an ambulance for the wounded. Mr. Contreras and Baladine had both been carted off to County Hospital, although Mr. Contreras was protesting it was only a head injury, he'd survived worse than that at Anzio.

Detective Lemour was in the morgue. He'd broken his neck when he landed on the reliquary at the bottom of the stairs. The remaining two men from Carnifice Security had been carried off by a squadrol that the firemen had summoned. One of the officers driving the squadrol had been a student at St. Remigio's six years ago. He was horrified at seeing his priest in handcuffs and was happy to accept Father Lou's version of events: that Baladine had broken in with his two thugs, and that Lemour had died trying to rescue the priest.

"Saves trouble," the priest said when the policeman had left. "Hard to get the cops to believe one of their own is bent. If Baladine denies the story when he recovers, he'll have a lot of explaining to do, why Lemour was with him."

The firemen helped me carry Mitch out to their own car. They gave Peppy and me a ride to the emergency vet and even stayed with me to bring me back to the church an hour later.

"Six o'clock," Father Lou announced now. "Ma.s.s. Want to serve, young lady?"

I started to remind him I wasn't even baptized, then saw his fierce look and shut my mouth. I followed him back down the hall to the church. Robbie trailed behind us. There was broken gla.s.s in the side aisle, and a piece of St.

Veronica's arm had been shot off the high altar, but the church looked remarkably placid in the daylight.

I went into the vestry with Father Lou and watched him robe. He told me what vessels to bring and just to do as he said and I'd be fine. I walked behind him to the Lady Chapel, where a half dozen women waited, teachers going to ma.s.s on the first morning of school.

Father Lou bowed to the altar and turned to the women. "I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the House of the Lord."

48.

Meet the Press "This photograph is a closeup of a bruise on my abdomen. A forensic pathologist says he can identify at least the make and size of the boot that made it. There will be a trial, I'm suing the person who kicked me, and I'll make an identification in court, so it doesn't matter now whether he burns the boot or cleans it. The point is, I'm alive, and I can make the identification."

The eleven people whose papers and broadcast stations had decided to send them to St. Remigio's looked at each other with a kind of incredulity that said, is this what she dragged us out here for? I smiled at them, I hoped engagingly.

When they had come into the school library where Morrell had set up the screen and the projector, they'd mobbed me, wanting answers to all kinds of questions, ranging from what I knew about Baladine's injuries to where I'd been since getting out of Coolis. I promised they could ask me anything when I finished my presentation.

Murray Ryerson, looking both belligerent and sheepish, was the only one who hung back from the group swarming around me. He said he knew I couldn't be dead, I was too much of a grandstander for that, then planted himself in a corner and made a big play of studying his own paper when I started speaking.

In the back of the room Father Lou sat with a couple of squarely built men whom the priest identified only as being from his parish council, there to help out if the need arose. Also in the back were Mr. Contreras with Mitch and Peppy, Lotty and Max, and Sal. Neither Mr. Contreras nor Mitch seemed any worse for their night in the church, although Mitch had a large bandage wrapped around his belly and shoulder. He was sitting up, grinning crazily at anyone who wanted to pet him. Morrell was off to one side, operating the projector.

It was a week after Baladine's a.s.sault on the church. We had decided to go ahead with the show, because there were too many openended issues. Baladine was going to recover, and he was already trying to make a case that he had used some fancy equipment to scale the side of the church school, break in through the fourthfloor windows, and attack the priest simply in order to get his son back.

I wanted my version in as many hands as possible.

"I'm starting with this picture because in a curious way it's the crux of a difficult case involving Global Entertainment, Carnifice Security, and that perennial chestnut, Illinois politics. I'm alive, talking to you, but another young woman, who received what I believe are identical injuries, was not so fortunate. Nicola Aguinaldo died in the early hours of June seventeenth from a perforated intestine. Her body disappeared from the medical examiner's office before an autopsy could be performed."

We had made a still of Nicola smiling, from a frame of the home video where she'd been talking to Robbie. I explained who she was, using a slide with bullet points, how she'd landed in prison, and how I'd inadvertently found her.

"I don't think we'll ever know what became of her body: her griefstricken mother was denied the chance to bury it. But my guess is that a political appointee of JeanClaude Poilevy at the county morgue removed the body on Poilevy's orders so that no one would be able to see what kind of boot kicked in Nicola Aguinaldo's abdomen."

I nodded at Morrell, who clicked up the slide of Hartigan standing over me with the stun gun. The audience gasped with shock.

"He was about six foot two, perhaps two hundred, twotwenty pounds. She wasn't five feet tall and weighed maybe ninety pounds. She didn't have too much of a chance against him. I managed to take this picture with a hidden camera seconds after I'd been shot with fifty thousand volts from a stun gun, right before I was kicked into insensibility." I held up my right hand, which was in a kind of brace; I'd reinjured the fingers fighting Baladine. "Two of my fingers and five of the small bones in the back of my hand broke as I tried to protect my head."

I heard another intake of horrified breath but continued with my presentation in a dry, academic voice. It was the only way I could speak without giving way to emotion. I went through the details of Nicola's daughter's death, what I'd been told by the women at Coolis about Nicola's desperate grief and how she'd pounded on the guard's chest when they laughed at her plea to be allowed to attend the baby's funeral. I couldn't look at Mr. Contreras; he was so upset that I knew my own composure would crack. I heard Peppy whining by his side with shared misery.

Morrell put up another slide. This one had a red flas.h.i.+ng header reading Speculation! Speculation! We'd decided to use that to separate fact from guesswork. I told them I was guessing that Nicola was dumped on the Chicago streets in the same way I was.

"What takes some of the guesswork out of this is the fact that the guards changed my s.h.i.+rt before they took me out of Coolis. I was concussed, manacled, and running a high fever and not able to defend myself; they tore off my s.h.i.+rt and put on one that wouldn't show the scorch marks from the stun gun." I stopped for water, remembering Polsen touching the burned skin on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "They made a comment about not making the mistake they had before, where they had to change the victim's s.h.i.+rt in Chicago, so they had clearly done this before. It's just a guess that Nicola Aguinaldo was the person they'd done it to.

"Now here comes more speculation, and mighty interesting it is. The s.h.i.+rt they put on Aguinaldo had been made by Lucian Frenada. You may remember Mr. Frenada's name: his dead body was found floating in Lake Michigan right before the Fourth of July. Everyone who isn't braindead knows Frenada was a boyhood friend of Lacey Dowell, because Global has been trumpeting that information on television and in the HeraldStar for two months. They grew up together right here at St. Remigio's." I glanced at Murray. He was studying the floor.

Beth Blacksin from Channel 8 interrupted with a question about Lacey, and several other reporters jumped in. I ignored them and explained how Frenada had gone to Lacey and asked for a chance to make some of the Global Entertainment spinoff products.

"Money in movies isn't just made on the screen. When your kid has to have that Captain Doberman Ts.h.i.+rt or those s.p.a.ce Beret action figures, the cash registers at Global are ringing. Mad Virgin s.h.i.+rts are very popular with young teens-they're one of the first movie spinoff items to find a huge marketing success with teenage girls. Oversize denim jackets are another hot seller in Global's Virginwear line.

"When Nicola Aguinaldo's body was found, she was wearing one of the Ts.h.i.+rts that Lucian Frenada made as a demo for Teddy Trant at Global. You all remember the party at the Golden Glow back in June, when Frenada came and Lacey had him thrown out? He was demanding to know why Trant had stolen one of the s.h.i.+rts.

Global didn't want to work with him, but Frenada was highly suspicious that Trant might be going to copy some of his workmans.h.i.+p. Of course everyone thought Frenada was trying any tactic he could to get Lacey to influence Global into buying from him: why would a studio head, who could pick up a Mad Virgin Ts.h.i.+rt anytime he walked into his office, go to the trouble of stealing one from a small Humboldt Park entrepreneur?

"But I believe that is exactly what Trant did. He was at Frenada's shop on the Tuesday night right before Nicola died. That's a fact. This next is a guess, but I believe that in some crazy scheme, maybe caused by watching too many of his own movies, Trant stole one of Frenada's s.h.i.+rts to put on Nicola, so that if any questions were asked about her death he could direct attention away from Coolis, from Global, and toward an innocent bystander."

The room was in an uproar. I went back through the argument, ticking off the points on the slide that highlighted them.

When they seemed to be caught up with me, I went back to Baladine and his fury with me. How Global first tried to bribe me by hiring me to frame Frenada, and when I wouldn't play, how Baladine began hounding me, culminating with planting cocaine in my office.

I played the video I'd made in my office. The group was firing so many questions now that I had to play it three times before I could go on.

"I don't know if Baladine wanted me dead or discredited-" I began, when Murray piped up unexpectedly from the back of the room.

"He was spinning around. I don't think he could possibly have told anyone he wanted you dead, but when some of us at theStar caught wind of the discussions going on about your involvement in the case, we-uh, made it as clear as we could that if anything-uh-well, a lot of people in Chicago would want to know why you got-uh-hurt. Also, I got the idea that someone high in the Global organization was lobbying for you, although Al-my contacts there-never said who it was.

Anyway, I have a feeling-I was not involved in any discussions about you-but I think he-Baladine-thought discrediting you was the viable route. I didn't know about the drugs. And I was as amazed as everyone else here when you were arrested for kidnapping. And then, why on G.o.d's green earth you didn't post bail-" He broke off midsentence. "I guess you were being Wonder Woman again.

Take us to the limit one more time, Warshawski."

I blushed but went on with my presentation. "As far as Frenada goes, I think they wanted him dead: he was starting to complain to too many people about Trant taking one of his sample Virginwear s.h.i.+rts. They thought they could discredit him with drugs; they planted some in his shop and planted some data on the Web trying to show he was a high roller. I'm afraid it was something I said that sent him hotfoot out to Oak Brook to try to confront Baladine and Trant the night of June twentysixth."

Morrell ran the footage of Frenada with Baladine and Trant at Baladine's pool.

He stopped it to make sure everyone noticed the date embedded in the film.

"This film doesn't prove that Baladine and Trant killed Frenada, but it does put the three men together the night Frenada died. Lucian Frenada had told me he couldn't compete with Global's current suppliers because his labor costs were too high. He also had other overhead that someone running a factory in a prison doesn't have to deal with. The state of Illinois paid for the machines that Global gets to use. The state of Illinois pays the rent on the s.p.a.ce for the Global factory. You can't get lower production costs for this kind of operation, even if you go to Burma, because you can't beat free s.p.a.ce and machinery. And you have a labor force that can never go on strike, never balk at the working conditions, never complain to OSHA or the NLRB. It's a beauty for the bottom line in these days of the global economy."

There was another barrage of questions about the GlobalCarnifice shop. "You've been most patient to listen to me for such a long period," I finally said.

"There are only a few more things I want to say. All summer, as Baladine and Trent were boxing me in, I kept wondering what was so important about Nicola Aguinaldo that they needed to find someone to take the blame for her death. It wasn't she they cared about, but their manufacturing scheme. It had been operating smoothly, no questions asked, for several years; they didn't want some outsider poking into Nicola's death to upset it.

"Maybe you're wondering how they could run that plant as long as they did with no one noticing. For one thing, they were well connected to the Illinois House Speaker, who's got a lot of power, in and out of Springfield.

"For another, we all a.s.sume that whatever goes on behind those iron bars is protecting all us lawabiding citizens-sorry, all you lawabiding citizens; I'm out on bail facing a felony charge." People laughed more loudly than my little joke merited-they needed some kind of release from the horrors they'd been hearing.

"Some of what goes on may be nasty, but as the corrections officers said to me and my sister inmates many times-like when a woman wasn't allowed medical care after getting a major burn on her arm in the kitchen"-I nodded and Morrell flipped up a slide of the arm-"Coolis isn't a resort. Inmates aren't on vacation. We lawabiding citizens don't necessarily want prisoners rehabilitated, but we sure do want them punished. And they get punished in carloads full of discipline."

I finished with the slides I'd taken of CO Polsen a.s.saulting Dolores in the laundry room. The only sound in the room now was Peppy, crying to be allowed to come to me.

"This kind of thing is a daily occurrence. I witnessed it, I was humiliated in similar ways myself. Women have no recourse against this kind of abuse. Illinois law has no serious provision for removing abusive guards or for disciplining them. It can take over a year for a woman prisoner complaining of rape or battery to get a court hearing. During that year she can be put in segregation.

She can be repeatedly a.s.saulted. And if her case is found to be without merit, then she is cattle fodder for the corrections officers. That's daily life at Coolis.

"I understand Robert Baladine sent around an email, offering to resign. I don't know if it's true or not, but if it weren't for the fact that Lucian Frenada was-probably-killed in an effort to cover up the Global manufacturing operation, I'd think Baladine should resign not because of Frenada but because of the degradation of prisoners that goes on hourly in a prison that his company built and runs for the state of Illinois."

I'd lost my dry composure. I sat down, s.h.i.+vering, my teeth chattering. Morrell was at my side to put a jacket around my shoulders. Murray had stepped forward along with the rest of the team in the room, but when he saw Morrell behind me, he turned on his heel and left.

Lotty and Sal and Mr. Contreras applauded vigorously, and Mr. Contreras finally let Peppy come up to me. I sank my hands gratefully into her gold fur and tried to calm down enough to answer other questions.

What the reporters most wanted to know, besides their fascination with s.e.x in the prison, was how Baladine came to be injured.

"He says he needed to break into the church to get his son back. I believe Father Lou has made a sworn deposition that Baladine never approached him about his son. Indeed, Robbie arrived at the church only a few hours ahead of his father, who could have phoned or come to the door the way most people might. But someone watching my home apparently saw him arrive, tailed him here to St.

Remigio's, and then called Baladine for instructions. He chose to approach his son in this highly unusual way, and a police officer is dead as a result."

One of the Carnifice Security men who'd been in the church last week had decided to do a deal with the State's Attorney. No one in the State's Attorney's office cared much about Lucian Frenada, or Nicola Aguinaldo-or me. But Father Lou was a local legend. For forty years, any policeman who'd ever boxed grew up knowing him. An a.s.sault on him in his church was more than blasphemy. So the guy Father Lou had knocked out, after realizing that the cops were more interested in finding out exactly what punch the priest had used on him than in sympathizing with him, turned on his boss and his partner and told the cops the story of his watch on my building, of seeing Robbie arrive on foot, of calling for instructions.

"Isn't the dead officer the same man who was in your office with the cocaine?"

I smiled. "You'll have to ask the department about that one. I never actually saw the man who died at St. Remigio's: everything took place in the dark."

"And what about Baladine?" Beth Blacksin from Channel 8 asked. "I hear he's undergoing shots for rabies because your dog bit him? Is he suing you?"

"You have it backward," I said. "I'm giving my dog Mitch a series of rabies shots in case Baladine infected him. No, seriously, he shot the dog and thought he'd killed him, because the dog tried to stop him from chaining Father Lou to my old friend and neighbor Salvatore Contreras. When Baladine was strangling me, Mitch somehow made a super canine effort, dragged himself up on his weak legs, and dug his teeth into Baladine's a.s.s. If Baladine chooses to sue me, my lawyer is looking forward to cross.e.xamining him, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there."

Regine Mauger, the HeraldStar 's gossip columnist, got up to demand what right I had to vilify the Trant family. Abigail Trant was a lovely woman who was doing an enormous amount of good for needy Chicagoans, and Regine thought I should be ashamed for attacking her husband in this way.

I didn't tell her I had called Abigail Trant myself the day after the fight in the church. After her efforts to help me, she deserved advance notice of what I was going to say about her husband. She asked only if I was sure. And I said, not about everything but about Trant's being with Baladine and Frenada the night Frenada died. And about the production of Global spinoffs at Coolis.

She didn't say anything else, but two days later she came to see me-again without warning, leaving the Gelaendewagen doubleparked on Racine. She was as exquisite as ever, but the skin on her face was taut with tension.

"Rhiannon and I fell in love with France when we were there this summer. I'm taking her back to Toulouse. I've found a wonderful school she can attend there.

I don't know what Teddy will do, because I don't know what Global will do when they hear your report."

She hesitated, then added, "I don't want you to think I blame you in any way for-for-the collapse of my marriage. I think the time will come when I will be grateful that my eyes were opened, but right now I can't feel much but pain.

There's something else you deserve to know. Teddy came home the night of Global's television debut with the emblem missing from one of his Ferragamo loafers. Maybe it's weak of me, but the day you asked about the emblem I went home and threw out the shoes."

She left abruptly on that line. I didn't think Regine Mauger needed to report any of that in her coy little phrases.

Mauger and some of the others continued to harangue me. Lotty came forward and announced that as my physician she was declaring an end to my stamina: I was recovering from serious injuries, in case they had forgotten. The group looked suitably abashed and packed up ca.s.sette recorders and other equipment. Morrell gave each person a copy of the videotape and slides. The two men sitting with Father Lou grunted and got up to escort the reporters out of the building.

"Now what?" Sal asked when they had gone.