“You make it sound real attractive.” He laughed quietly. “I told you about the threat I got when I was preparing to appeal. I don’t think I have much choice. I mean, I don’t see how I could live with myself if I had a chance now to win that case and passed it up just so I wouldn’t have to give up my quiet practice. When can I get your cartload?”
“Tonight, if you can drive up to the North Side. Seven-thirty okay?” I gave him Lotty’s address.
When he’d hung up I phoned Max at the hospital. After a few minutes on my late-night adventure-which had made the morning papers in skeleton form-he agreed to get the Chigwell documents copied. When I said I’d come by at the end of the day for the originals, he protested graciously: it would be his pleasure to bring them to Lotty’s for me.
After that I really couldn’t delay a heart-to-heart with Bobby. I tracked him down by phone at the Central District and agreed to meet him there in an hour. That gave me time for a soak in Lotty’s tub to limber up my sore shoulders and a call to Mr. Contreras assuring him I was alive, moderately well, and would return home in the morning. He started a long, anxious dump about how he’d felt when he saw the news this morning; I cut him off gently.
“I’ve got a date with the police. I’ll be pretty well tied up today, but we’ll have a late breakfast tomorrow and catch up.”
“Sounds good, doll. French toast or pancakes?”
“French toast.” I couldn’t help laughing. It got me down to police headquarters in a light enough mood to deal with Bobby.
His pride was badly wounded by my nailing the Emperor of Trash. Dresberg had been dancing rings around Chicago’s finest for years. For any private investigator to have caught him dead to rights would have hurt Mallory. But that it had to be me so upset him that he kept me downtown for four hours.
He interrogated me himself, while Officer Neely took notes, then sent in relays of people from the Organized Crime Division, followed by the Special Functions Unit, finishing with an escorted interview with a couple of feds. By then my fatigue had come back full force. I kept dropping off between questions and it was getting hard for me to remember what I was revealing and what I’d decided belonged to me alone. The third time the feds had to poke me awake they decided they’d had enough of a good time and urged Bobby to send me home.
“Yeah, I guess we’ve got everything we’re going to get.” He waited until his office was empty, then said edgily, “What’d you do to McGonnigal last night, Vicki? He made it real clear he wasn’t going to be present while I talked to you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “He turn into a boar or something?”
Bobby frowned at me. “If you’re trying to level any charges against John McGonnigal, who is one of the finest-”
“Circe,” I cut in hastily. “That’s what she did to Odysseus’s crew. I assumed you were thinking of that. Or something like it.”
Bobby narrowed his eyes but all he said was, “Go on home, Vicki. I don’t have the energy for your sense of humor right now.”
I was at the door when he lighted his last squib. “How well do you know Ron Kappelman?” His voice had a studied casualness that warned me to be careful.
I turned to look at him, my hand still on the doorknob. “I’ve talked to him three or four times. We’re not lovers, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Bobby’s gray eyes measured me steadily. “You know Jurshak did a few favors for him when he signed on as SCRAP’S counsel?”
I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. “Like what?”
“Oh, cleared the way for him to do all the renovation work on his house. That kind of thing.”
“And in exchange?”
“Information. Nothing unethical. He wouldn’t jeopardize his clients’ standing. Just let the alderman’s office know what moves they might make. Or what moves a smart PI like you might be making.”
“I see.” It was an effort to get words out, let alone keep my voice steady. I braced myself against the door. “How do you know all this?”
“Jurshak talked a lot this morning. Nothing like the fear of death to get someone babbling. Of course the courts will throw it all out, information obtained under duress. But watch who you talk to, Vicki. You’re a smart girl-smart young lady. I’ll even agree you’ve done some good work. But you’re one person alone. You just can’t do the job the cops are paid to do.”
I was too tired and soul-sick to argue. I felt too bad even to think he was wrong. My shoulders slumped, I slogged my way down the long corridors to the parking lot and headed back to Lotty.
41
When I got to Lotty’s, Max was already there. I felt so down after my talk with Mallory that I would have preferred canceling my meeting with Manheim: What could one person do alone, anyway? As it was I only had time to explain to Lotty who Frederick Manheim was and why I’d invited him when he showed up. His round solemn face was flushed with excitement, but he shook hands politely with Max and Lotty and offered Lotty a bottle of wine. It was a ’78 Gruaud-Larose. Max raised his brows appreciately, so I assumed it was a good bottle.
As we talked in the kitchen my drooping self-confidence began to revive. After all, I had been worried about Kappelman’s role all along. It wasn’t a failure on my part. Bobby just was trying to skewer me because I’d stopped Steve Dresberg when he and his thousands of backups hadn’t been able to touch him.
I whipped up omelets while Max opened the wine, reverentially letting it breathe. While we ate at Lotty’s kitchen table we talked about general topics-the wine was too splendid to pollute with Xerxine.
Afterward, though, we moved into Lotty’s sitting room. I spelled out the story for Max and Manheim. Lounging on the daybed, I explained what I’d learned from Chigwell-that they’d done the tests because they could see their high rates of illness as early as 1955.
“You should see if you can talk to Ajax. They were handling Xerxes’s life and health insurance at the time. I know they went to Mariners Rest in 1963 with evidence of how good and pure they were, but if you find out why Ajax dropped them back in the fifties you may get some inside dope on why they decided to look at blood instead of-I don’t know, some other choice.”
Manheim, propped on his elbows on the floor, was naturally most interested in what lay in Chigwell’s notebooks. Lotty sketched the data for him, but warned him he would have to get an array of specialists.
“I am only a perinatologist, you know. So what I’m telling you is only what I’ve learned from Dr. Christophersen. You will need many people-blood specialists, a good renal pathologist. And above all, you will need a team in occupational health.”
Manheim nodded soberly at all their advice. His rosy cherub’s cheeks glowed deeper red as he filled legal pads with notes. Every now and then he asked me a question about the plant and the employees.
Lotty finally put a halt to the discussion-she had to get up early, I was her patient and wasn’t fit for another all-night session, and so on. Manheim stood up reluctantly.
“I’m not going to do anything in a hurry,” he warned me. “I want to double-check the data, find the lab that did the blood work for them, all that kind of stuff. And I’m going to have to consult with a specialist in environmental law.”
I held up my hands. “It’s your baby now. You do what you want with it. You just need to keep in mind that Gustav Humboldt isn’t going to lie down with his legs up in the air while you’re gathering facts-for all I know he’s already figured out a way to put the clamps on the lab. You want one last chance to back out?”