“And you want to find her because . . . ?”
“My editor thinks we need to make sure she has appropriate medical care, housing, the works.”
“Gosh, Murray, I’ll have to take back a tenth of my nasty thoughts about Global Entertainment’s moguls. Big corporation with an even bigger heart. The headline practically writes itself. Can’t wait to see tomorrow’s edition, but right now I have to get to a meeting.”
“Wait a second, Vic.”
I was on Wells Street, where it crosses the Chicago River. I watched a crowded Architecture Center tour boat pass below. People were taking selfies with the Merchandise Mart in the background.
“Murray, I really have to get going.”
He ignored me. “People up the food chain are apparently afraid of legal exposure.”
“Surely your legal team vetted the story before it ran.”
“Of course. But that was before Zamir’s agent saw her old client being chased by our camera crew all over social media. Not to mention ABC, CBS, and the rest of the alphabet.”
“Touching. What’s this agent been doing while Zamir’s been aphasic on the streets?”
“Doesn’t matter. Senior staff needs a head on a block just in case, which means I need to find Lydia and get her into a locked ward.”
“Murray, you have a staff. I have me. You have a budget that flies you to Kansas. Did Zamir run back to her parents? Speaking of running, I’m going to have to sprint not to keep Darraugh Graham waiting.”
Murray hung up but called again an hour later. “You grovel sufficiently to keep Graham happy? Lydia’s parents haven’t heard from her. Look, Vic, can you see if Zamir has gone to Elisa Palurdo? Palurdo absolutely won’t talk to me. And the guy, Coop—I can’t find a last name or an address.”
I was on the L. Between the train noise, people shouting into their mouthpieces, and a group of teens sharing a rap download, it wasn’t possible to talk. I called him again as I walked up Milwaukee to my office.
Before I spoke, Murray said, “Don’t remind me again about all my resources. I want this done privately. Global is a snake pit of rumormongers and backstabbers. I don’t want any sharks smelling my blood in the water.”
I bit back a snarky comment on the mixed imagery. “Global will pay?” I didn’t try to keep the derision out of my tone.
“Of course not. Why do you think I’m calling you? You’re the one person I can trust to investigate without word getting to my management.”
“No freebies, Ryerson. I have bills to pay, just like you.”
“Out of my own pocket.”
“This call has been recorded for quality assurance, Murray. It’s one-fifty an hour plus expenses. Five hundred up front—check, credit card, or even good old-fashioned Ben Franklins.” I typed in the code on my office street door. “I’m about to email you a contract. When you’ve signed it and sent it back, with a down payment, I’ll fit you into my schedule.”
He thanked me meekly.
7
A Teaspoon in the Desert
I started my investigative career right after my thirtieth birthday. I’d been with the public defender for five years. I’d done my share of plea bargains, of trying to save the sorry asses of sorry punks. I’d also seen my share of people railroaded by cops and prosecutors: the State of Illinois compensates courts that have high conviction rates, not high clearance rates. I had often been the one tiny pair of nail scissors cutting at a fitted-up noose.
It used to make me furious that the macroscum, the policy-makers, the good old cronies, the brokers and bankers, almost always got a pass. If you could actually indict one of them, they had a bottomless bucket of money to pay attorneys and investigators. My clients had to share my attention with upward of twenty others in the same hearing.
I figured that as a solo op, without a politically needy boss to tell me whom to save and whom to condemn, I could uncover the vermin hiding in the shadows. When I saw my first business cards, I was so excited I handed them out to passersby on Wabash Avenue: Yes! V.I. Warshawski, Private Investigator, would see that justice rolled down like waters!
Every now and then it did, but most days I felt like a child pouring water on a desert with a teaspoon.
I’d help Murray out because we were old friends with a long history. I’d help him out because Lydia Zamir’s story was an all-too-common American tragedy: she’d lived past a mass murder, but she’d been hideously damaged by it.
I’d help him regardless of money or outcome, because I had an uncomfortable realization—a lurching in the pit of my stomach—that I shared responsibility for this morning’s disaster. It was I who’d told Murray about Zamir. I’d been judgmental, on my high horse, accusing him of selling out. I’d essentially goaded him into writing his big exposé.
I’d do what I could to find her and help her, but I hated knowing that if I was successful, Global’s executives would preen as if they’d done something noble, while nothing would change in the big picture. No assault weapons would be taken off the streets, no assurances that Lydia, and the thousands of others damaged by these assaults, would be the last people to see such harrowing violence. At the end of the story, they would still be packets on an assembly line of death.
My lease mate, Tessa Reynolds, came into our office bathroom as I was frowning at myself in the mirror. “Warshawski, if you looked at me like that, I’d confess on the spot.”
I tried to smile but told her what had been going through my mind.
Tessa looked at me soberly. “Think about it like this, Vic: maybe you are only a drop in a bucket—or a teaspoon in a desert—but there are some fragile plants that will die if your teaspoon goes away. Go up to La Llorona and get yourself a bowl of tortilla soup and get back to scooping and pouring. Oh, and lock the bathroom door if you want privacy.”
At that I did smile. And I did go down the street to La Llorona.
Tessa and I had moved into our warehouse when this stretch of Milwaukee Avenue was still mostly Hispanic and mostly blue-collar. La Llorona was one of the few survivors of the invasion of boutiques, loft apartments, and chic restaurants. It was a comforting place, like the diners of my childhood, where all the regulars knew one another by name. Mrs. Aguilar gave me soup and a glass of her homemade limeade. We talked about our families and mutual friends.
By the time we finished, I wasn’t filled with the thrill of the chase, but I was ready to face the world again. I sat on a bench outside the café to call the hospitals on the near South Side. Posing as a worried sister, I asked for Lydia by name, and then for Jane Does. Not even Provident acknowledged they’d received a Jane Doe today. I guess if Lydia had disappeared without treatment that was understandable, but it still troubled me.
The morning shift would be on duty for another hour. I jogged up the street to my car. Traffic was predictably thick, but I still made it to the hospital with twenty-five minutes to spare.
I bypassed the main entrance and went to the ER, which was full on a weekday afternoon, because American medical insurance dictates that if you’re poor, you go to an emergency room, not to a doctor.
The woman running the admitting desk was experienced, but weary. So many people had passed through her hands today, and so many were clamoring for attention in the moment—including me—that it was hard for her to cast her mind back to the morning’s catastrophes. She called one of the ER techs, who emerged from the back, as harassed as the admitting clerk herself.