Fire Sale

As the butler came toward us, she suddenly clasped my hands between her own. “Ms. Warshawski, if you have any idea at all where my grandson is, I beg you to tell me. He is-very dear to me. I have a private telephone number for my children and husband to use; you may call me on that.”

She watched me anxiously until I’d written the number down in my pocket diary, then turned me over to her butler.

38 Primitive Art

Mr. William and his wife were climbing into the Hummer when I got outside. The Porsche belonged to Jacqui and Gary, not surprisingly. The third car, a Jaguar sedan, probably belonged to Linus Rankin. The other children seemed to feel energetic enough, or safe enough, to come on foot.

I waited until Gary and William had driven off before leaving myself-I didn’t want William to see me using the drive behind the house that led to the service road.

What a lot of friction builds up over the years in such close quarters. The conflict between William and his father was the most obvious, but William had told me the brothers fought with each other; Jacqui, who spent lavishly on her wardrobe and worked slavishly on her figure, inspired her own share of hostility in the family. No wonder A

I made it through the back gate without anyone seeing me. Out on Silverwood Lane, I kept my lights off, moving slowly down the unlit road until it merged with a larger artery. When I got to a service station, I pulled in to fill the Mustang and to check my maps. I was a couple of miles from a major expressway here that would ultimately take me into the city. It seemed easier to take a fast route home than to trek cross-country to Morrell’s, especially since I’d be sharing the evening with Don. I took out my cell phone to call Morrell and then remembered my own advice to Billy: my phone, too, had a GSM tracking signal. That was how Carnifice, or whoever, was keeping track of me, of Morrell, of all of us.

I turned it off. I thought about finding a pay phone so I could call Morrell on a landline, but if they were bugging his phone they’d pick that up, anyway. I pulled out of the gas station, feeling oddly liberated by my anonymity, gliding through the night, no one knowing where I was. As I slid onto the expressway, I began belting out “Sempre libera,” although I could tell I was woefully off-key.

There was so little traffic now that I pushed the needle up to eighty, coasting from expressway to Tollway, slowing only for the inevitable knot of traffic around O’Hare, and cruising to my exit in the city in twenty-seven minutes. Keeping time like that, I could replace Patrick Grobian, monitoring his truckers down to the second. I gri

I wondered why they’d summoned me tonight-to prove they could? Of course, they’d drawn me away from Morrell’s-maybe they wanted Carnifice to go back in for a more thorough search. Or maybe they had acted out of genuine concern about Billy. I supposed that could be true of his grandmother, but neither of his parents showed a tenth the distress that Rose Dorrado was feeling over Josie’s disappearance.

I wished I had taken advantage of the opportunity to ask more questions of my own, such as what had happened to Billy’s Miata-had they brought it home as a memento or sold it for scrap? I might stop by the underpass tomorrow afternoon to see if anything remained of it.

It had been stripped, William had said this afternoon; there was nothing left of it. And what was left had probably been explored pretty thoroughly by his high-powered Carnifice operatives. They could have carried the remains of the car to their private lab and examined every fiber of the floor to tell them when Billy had last driven it. Maybe it was among the ten acres of cars in the pound along 103rd Street, but, either way, the remains were most likely out of my reach.

I also hadn’t brought up the document April mentioned, the one her father said he had-the one that proved the company had agreed to pay April’s medical bills, or, at least, to give him money to cover them. I was crossing Belmont before it dawned on me that whatever document Bron had could be the piece of paper William was so desperate to find. Of course Bron hadn’t had a signed paper that proved the company would take care of April’s medical bills-he had something he was using for blackmail, and By-Smart had lost track of it and wanted it back.

Whatever it was would definitely have to wait until morning. I parked in the garage behind my building: there were only three spaces in it, and when one of them became vacant this summer my name had finally made it to the top of the waiting list. It would be pleasant in the winter to be able to go straight into my building from my car, and it was pleasant on a late night like tonight not to have to worry about leaving my car out on the street where anyone who was trailing me could find it.

On my way up from the basement, I saw that Mr. Contreras’s light was still on. I stopped to tell him I was home. While we shared a glass of his homemade grappa, which smells like fuel oil and packs the kick of six mules, I called Morrell on my neighbor’s landline to explain where I was. He and Don were still up, arguing over geopolitics, or reminiscing about adventures, but they were in good spirits, and definitely not missing me. No one had broken in, as far as they knew-or cared.

In the morning, I got up early to run the dogs before making my nine A.M. appointment with Amy Blount. I was still feeling stiff, but my fingers were down to their normal size, which cheered me greatly-it would make my driving day easier, and if I had to use my gun I wouldn’t have to fret about getting my finger inside the trigger guard.

Amy got to my office right on time. It was a relief to have her there-not so much to take on a chunk of my outstanding workload as just to have someone to go over things with. Working alone is, frankly, a lonely business-I could see why Bron liked having Marcena, or other women, for that matter, in the cab of his truck with him-eight hours hopping around northwest Indiana and south Chicagoland would wear thin after twenty-some years.

Amy and I went over my outstanding caseload. I showed her how to log on to LifeStory, the database I use for doing background checks and getting personal information on people for my clients-or for myself, as I’d done yesterday in looking up the Bysen family.

I found myself telling Amy the whole story of the Bysens, and Bron Czernin, and Marcena; even my jealousy came seeping out. She made notes in her tiny, tidy handwriting. When I finished, she said she’d work the whole narrative up on a flowchart; if she had questions or suggestions, she’d call me.

It was eleven by the time I finished. I had to leave for an appointment in the Loop, a presentation to a law firm that is one of my bread-and-butter clients. I had hoped to get to South Chicago in time to search the underpass before basketball practice, but my clients were unusually demanding, or I was unusually unfocused, and I barely had time to grab a bowl of chicken noodle soup before heading to the South Side. I also made a side stop at a phone store to pick up a charger for Billy’s phone; I could give that to April after practice. And I went to a grocery to buy food for Mary A

The practice wasn’t as intense as Monday’s, but the girls did a creditable job. Julia Dorrado came, with María Inés and Betto, who put the baby carrier in the stands and played with his Power Rangers during practice. Julia was out of shape, but I could see why Mary A