I looked up Morton’s mother’s and grandmothers’ birth names. They didn’t match any current Global executives. I ran their names against my own current client list and didn’t turn up anything.
My initial approach to the Devlin law firm hadn’t been very skillful. I’d see if a personal approach got me further. Specifically, I’d see whether Jane Cardozo, head of Devlin’s transcription center, would tell me why she’d needed a restraining order against Lydia Zamir.
I’d found a photo of Jane Cardozo on a social media site and uploaded it to my phone. She was a woman of about fifty, with dark hair cut short and a humorous look about her eyes. She’d have to have a strong personality to force the partners of a big firm to treat her with respect. Perhaps she’d see me as a kindred spirit, not an invading force. That was my hope, anyway.
I printed a message to Cardozo. Just the basics—I was an investigator who’d been hired to find Lydia Zamir. I was worried that Zamir might have tried confronting Cardozo or one of the partners and been arrested. I was waiting in the lobby—could Cardozo give me five minutes?
I walked down to the Polonia Triangle to pick up the L into the Loop. Elton was leaning against the fountain, drinking something from a paper bag. I waved, but he turned away. I hoped that wasn’t an omen.
Devlin & Wickham leased eight floors in the Ft. Dearborn Bank Building on South LaSalle. It’s one of those buildings that make you feel exalted for worshipping Mammon—gold leaf and marble pillars in the lobby, inlaid stone on the floors, and a guard behind a barrier made of the kind of material you think St. Peter probably chose for the Pearly Gates.
When I told him I had a message for someone at Devlin, it felt sacrilegious to speak above a whisper. The guard proffered a metal basket; I placed my offering inside; the guard phoned up to the firm.
I settled down on one of the lobby benches to wait. People came and went at the guard stand. They had appointments and showed IDs, they dropped off packets, they came from inner sancta and picked up packets. Finally a woman took my letter and retreated to the elevators.
I checked in with Bernie. She’d had a good day with her kids and was going out with Angela and her other roommates; Arlette was staying on for a few days, but she was astute enough to leave the young women on their own. I’d brought my laptop and tried to do some work, but I couldn’t focus. Five, then five-thirty, came and went.
Donna Lutas, the young woman from my building who constantly complained about me and the dogs, emerged. She didn’t seem to notice me as she passed: she had her phone in one hand and was taking off her ID with the other. She stuck her badge in a pocket of her briefcase. I was tempted to lift it and use it to get in, but I’d save that for an emergency.
I had just decided I was wasting time I could have spent running, swimming, or eating when Cardozo finally appeared. She was with a man who looked vaguely familiar. I packed up my laptop and followed them from the building. They stood talking at the corner of Jackson and Clark for several minutes before the man got into a black car. I was afraid Cardozo might be waiting for a Lyft or Uber, but she started walking west along Jackson. I caught up with her at the next traffic light.
“Ms. Cardozo?”
She turned in surprise, the humorous look not at all visible in her eyes.
“I’m V.I. Warshawski. Sorry to bother you on your way home, but I’m most anxious to discuss Lydia Zamir with you.”
“Yes. I saw your message. You know we have a restraining order against Zamir; in the morning we’ll go to the judge and add your name to the order, since you are her agent.”
“Whoa, there!” I said. “Lawyers, and their agents, cannot afford to jump to conclusions like kangaroos. I am trying to find Ms. Zamir. As my note said, she’s disappeared. Her family is anxious to find her. Since she has a hostile history with you and some of the partners, I wanted to make sure she hadn’t shown up at Devlin’s offices and caused an uproar.”
Cardozo’s mouth bunched—not anger, indecision. “Oh, very well. But I will record the conversation.”
West Jackson near the river doesn’t offer a lot of cozy places to talk. We went into a doughnut shop and sat with overboiled coffee at a table as far from the windows as possible. Cardozo didn’t say so, but she probably didn’t want any coworkers to spot her talking to me.
We both had our phones on the table, ostentatiously recording ourselves.
“No one can tell me why Zamir targeted you after the trial,” I said.
“She blamed the firm for the court’s sentence; you must know that.”
“But surely you didn’t play a role in that,” I said. “Or am I misunderstanding your position in the firm? Are you one of the partners?”
“Nope. Not a lawyer. Just a legal secretary with a head for operations management.”
I lobbed her a few softballs on her career—from setting up the transcription unit while she was PA to old Mr. Devlin—“One of the greatest litigators in the city, but a true gentleman”—to running the unit after he retired.
“Were you still working for Mr. Devlin at the time of the Morton trial?”
“He had retired long before Hector Palurdo was shot. And was dead by the time of the trial. Zamir was trying to get me to give her access to internal confidential emails. She got quite ugly in her accusations.”
“She wanted to know who in the firm decided to take on Morton’s defense? I’m curious about that myself.”
“It was an internal decision by the partners. Not my business, not Lydia Zamir’s, and certainly not yours,” Cardozo said frostily.
“It was Zamir’s business,” I objected. “Her lover had been murdered. Everything about Arthur Morton was her business, including the trial.”
“She had an emotional interest,” Cardozo snapped, “not a legal one.”
“Is that why she targeted you?” I asked, tone all-innocence. “She thought as a woman you might empathize with her emotional distress?”
“Nothing to do with that,” Cardozo said. “She claimed Palurdo had written us a few days before the concert or whatever it was and she wanted to know what he’d written.”
“And?”
“And nothing. If Palurdo had communicated with the firm, it wasn’t handled through my center. And even if I knew anything about it, that’s confidential information. She wasn’t married to him. She didn’t have any legal standing to get access to confidential emails.”
I drank some coffee, forgetting how bitter it was, and choked. “Arthur Morton’s suicide must have come as a shock.”
She nodded. “I don’t think anyone was remembering how desperate he was. His father was dead, the farm was gone and his big gesture had done nothing to solve his problems. Maybe we made a mistake trying to keep him from the death penalty—he could have been looking down a tunnel of a lot of lonely years.”
It was an unexpectedly poetic image, but it made a certain sense. “Had his lawyers brought him those nicotine patches?”
Her face froze, brief goodwill gone. “Is there some reason that’s your business?”
“Sorry. Random curiosity is the besetting sin of a detective.” I tried an apologetic smile. “One thing that seems extraordinary is how many of the details you remember. A firm like Devlin handles so much litigation, I’d think it would all blur in your head. I know it would in mine.”