The Ultimate Exit Strategy, page 18
The no murder explanation was certainly one I would have liked to believe – no murder and the Gold Rush deal would have been back on. Better for me, better for everyone. Except I hadn’t seen any evidence of a wild drug-crazed life at Winslow’s flat. I hadn’t seen evidence of much life at all.
“Whatever,” Naomi concluded. “I’m just filling you in because your girlfriend won’t. True love is fine, Virginia, but you just need to remember who your friends are. And,” Naomi winked, “God, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a lesbian on the planet who could just break up without a back-up plan.”
She was right. I supposed what was wrong with Spike had been wrong with her well before I’d rediscovered Cassandra.
“What is it you like about your police detective, Virginia?” Naomi’s voice held genuine curiosity, as if my answer might explain what Maria Sacchi had liked about the lesbian jeweler she’d dumped Naomi for, but I couldn’t really say right off.
Mostly I liked that she wasn’t Spike, I guess. “I don’t know.” I said, “I guess she was just there.” Naomi’s shadowy head went up and down in the dark, nodding yes, sometimes that was all it took. Then she leaned over and kissed my forehead.
It was nice; the kind of magic kiss you got as a kid when you had a stubbed toe or a scraped knee. It didn’t fix things, but somehow it made them better.
“You know what I think the cop thing is? A bad case of seven year itch,” Naomi was certifying with her typical self-satisfaction, “the four year psoriasis in your case but then you always were precocious. Just don’t let her hurt you – that police detective.” Naomi took my hand, and squeezed it.
“Warm hands,” I said.
“Cold heart.” She gave the top of my hand a few little pats then let my fingers drop unsentimentally.
XX
The weekend was a blur of bad long distance phone calls, from Spike, to Spike. It was forty-eight hours of painfully exhausting rehash, and lesbian blame processing all managed without transportation as I hadn’t collected the energy to call AAA about my car, which with my luck I expected to be stripped and torched when I got back to it. If I had known what it was that got me into work on Monday, I would have licensed and bottled it, but beyond arrival, I was patently unprepared for the remaining trials of my day. These began with Camille calling in sick (I thought more than coincidentally), further postponing our discussion of her sixty-odd thousand dollars, ten thousand of which I was still carrying around on my person, a responsibility that was making me increasingly nervous with every passing minute, as if the availability of airline flights from Blue River to Chicago and Spike’s current inconsolable state of mind, didn’t offer enough to be anxious and nervous about.
My trials continued with the long and complicated search for the right person in the building management office to see about my stolen parking and security cards – the person in the building management office with whom I could agree that solving my parking card problem was part of their job.
In that respect, Camille’s absence was almost fortuitous because it put me in just the right mood to talk to the card dispensing man who resided in the bowels of the building and told me stubbornly that a new card would cost me fifty bucks, a dollar amount on which he would not budge, unmoved by any hard luck story. Stolen, lost, mutilated, it was all the same to him – one free card to a customer; for another, pay up.
Fifty dollars lighter, I went to talk to Rupert Dean. His office was four rooms down the hall from mine, and I could see him now through the smoky glass partition of his office wall, typing just as furiously at his computer table, as he had been when I’d come into work that morning. With his back to the door, Rupert hadn’t heard the turn of the latch or my push when I’d opened it. He’d been absorbed enough in composing his resumé that I was able to read over his shoulder for a good five minutes, learning that Rupert Dean had graduated Bradley University with honors. Surprise. Surprise. I startled him. “I didn’t even know you could read.”
“What the hell?” Rupert scrambled to cover his work, then he turned from his computer to face me at the desk, and demanded, “Don’t you knock?” which is what I imagined he’d said when Linda Tibbits had caught him masturbating.
I asserted the door was open, which we both knew was not quite accurate, but Rupert had declined to debate it.
“Well, now that you’re here. What can I do for you?” Switching off the power to his monitor, Rupert crab-walked his rolling chair across the plastic carpet protector, the few short feet from his computer table to a position of puffed-up authority behind his desk. I’d taken the visitor’s chair, surveying his office, which I noticed then was bigger than mine and executively free from dust and clutter. The mountains of paper that in my office would have been strewn around haphazardly resided in orderly piles at the far upper corner of his desk. Rupert’s further aspirations were revealed by the little copy-cat, wannabe big man sports tribute area of his own he had started on his file credenza, photos from his college baseball days and a recent picture of him, Herb Symon and Jon Patel holding up a big fish on some corporate outing I hadn’t been invited to.
Rupert reached across the shiny wooden desk to one of the work piles and rustled some papers loudly, looking rather put out when he saw that the sound hadn’t frightened me away.
“Just thought I’d ask how are things going.” I had on my friendly voice disguise. “Polishing up the old resumé. Never hurts at times like these.” Rupert didn’t ask me what times I meant; instead he just looked very cross. I was watching him watching me straining to read the papers he’d been working on by the computer. “So how are things?”
“Well, I’ve been busy,” he told me with what I expected he thought was finality. “I still am – very busy.”
As if I hadn’t caught the hint, I continued to linger, musing on a photo of one of Rupert’s many offspring, “Well, he looks like a good strong boy,” my butt parked comfortably in his guest chair as if it were my unshakable intention to shoot the breeze with him forever. “And I hear you’re expecting another little bundle of happiness. You know, at times like this, people say they don’t know where the money goes.”
“Would you mind getting to the point,” Rupert finally said, “because like I’ve told you, I don’t have very much time today.”
His attitude didn’t seem very sociable to me, but if that was how he wanted to be, I told him, I was more than willing in the interest of time to forego the niceties. “I need some information on a special charity you seem to be supporting, specifically on a series of checks you wrote to Camille Gutierrez.” Rupert visibly tensed every muscle from his ear to his baby toe as I took out the examples in my possession and laid them on his desk. “These are yours, aren’t they?”
We were both staring at the fan of checks I’d made on his desk for a while. Rupert breathed and untensed, then his hand reached over and played with the pull chain on his desk light. “How did you get those?”
“First,” I said, “tell me why you wrote them.”
Rupert clicked his desk light on and, then, off a few more times, “I asked you first,” he said.
I said, “Beggars can’t be choosers,” and felt a little like I was back in second grade. All the time, Rupert’s hand kept working the chain switch and the light clicked on and off, on and off. “So, do you want your checks back?” I asked, “or should I give them to the cops?”
Rupert’s fingers moved away from the light chain and came to rest, palm down on his desk where he drummed them, thinking so hard I could almost hear the rusty little wheels and cogs banging away. Every option registered and dismissed in a series of little flashes of micro-excitement and dejection that came up on his face.
“All I want to know is why you’re paying Camille. Easy.” I picked up a check, and let the paper waggle back and forth in my hand like a worm on a hook, then I put it back on the desk with the others. “Certainly, you can have these back when I know what’s going on. It’s up to you.”
Rupert seemed to be considering his reflection in the glass wall of his office. Both he and it wore a murderous expression. “All right,” he finally agreed, “but it’s none of your FUCKING business.
“They’re for Elana,” Rupert admitted, “Camille’s daughter, Elana. When she got pregnant, they shipped her out of the neighborhood to stay with her grandmother in Oak Park. She has a special tutor so she can finish high school while she waits to have her baby. I’m paying for it, that and doctor’s bills until they can put it up for adoption.”
Rupert huffed as if he’d had nothing to do with his current predicament. “Jesus freaks. They wouldn’t even talk about an abortion. You know it wasn’t like I was the first guy she’d slept with. She said no, but I knew Winslow had been there. I was just the one to get caught, that’s all. She’s eighteen. She’s legal. They see a young guy with some bucks and they figured they’ll burn me.” Somehow though I hadn’t pegged Rupert Dean for the guilty-conscience club, and there was still the matter of $50,000 extra American dollars, for which Rupert hadn’t bothered to account.
“So, you’re just a poor guy who made a mistake and wanted to do the right thing? So, you started writing out two thousand dollar checks every month, because you wanted your kid to enjoy prenatal care, new shoes and piano lessons?” I didn’t much try to bridle my sarcasm.
Put this way, even the shameless Rupert couldn’t help looking a little shamefaced, but only a little. “All right. The Irishman was making me pay her. Camille told Wes I’d gotten Elana pregnant and she expected Wes to fire me. Hell,” Rupert was saying, “so did I. He threatened to, probably because I had gotten some of his little thing, but he doesn’t. You know? Time passes. I’m waiting for the shoe to drop, then one day Wes comes by my office and he says it could all be just water under the bridge, that a big shareholder vote might be coming up, of course he can’t tell me what it is, and if I promise to vote my shares the way he tells me he might forget about my indiscretion and he’ll make sure I have enough money to fulfill my obligations to the girl. What Winslow doesn’t want, he tells me, is a scandal.” Rupert laughed derisively. “So, I keep my job because with the Gold Rush deal in the offing, Winslow doesn’t want to do the paperwork. But Camille thinks all I got was a slap on the hand and she’s irate, takes her case to The Irishman. Then, Zemluski says for me to make it right or he’d make sure Camille gets to tell her story to my wife. Look, I’ve got three kids and another one on the way. I’ve got a wife who won’t stop having kids; and I’ve got what The Irishman tells me is ‘a marriage of long duration’ which means if Kitty leaves me, I won’t have a dime between the child support and the alimony. Tom claims he knows how it’s going to go for me in divorce court and Camille’s $2,000 dollars a month for a year or so until they place the baby is a lot cheaper. He made me write out the checks pre-dated because he didn’t trust me. So first Tom’s all about how I have to do the ‘right thing.’ Next, it’s all about doing whatever he tells me to do for the rest of my miserable life. So suddenly, I was supposed to vote my stock however he told me, because if I don’t he says he’ll call my wife.” Rupert shrugged, opening his hands in a victimized appeal to my sense of fairness. “I kept my bargain. I paid Camille and I’ve still got to vote the same stock two different ways or I’m screwed.”
Somehow I just couldn’t manage to feel very sorry for him. “Then Winslow dies and all you have to do is pay for your illegitimate kid. Poor you.” I said, “Why did Winslow demote Camille?” I wanted the complete, full-service revelation.
He shrugged again. “Wes didn’t like her attitude no matter what I did. She’d made waves with The Irishman. It was unseemly.” Rupert made a contemptuous snort. “Big man, huh.”
But I didn’t think that was quite all. “What about the $50,000,” I said and Rupert managed to look more stupid than usual.
“What?” It seemed as if he didn’t know.
I told him, “There’s sixty-four thousand dollars in the account Camille set up for Elana. You’ve only told me about fourteen thousand dollars of that money. Someone wrote Camille a check for fifty grand.” I said, “I intend to find out who.”
“Not me,” Rupert had begun to laugh. “Are you crazy? If I had fifty thousand bucks I could give away, do you think I’d be stuck with Kitty and the kids?” Much as I hated to let him off the hook, I thought Rupert made a convincing point. “Fifty thousand dollars.” He’d been snorting again in disbelief when his face had suddenly darkened with an ugly epiphany. “That dirty bitch,” Rupert clapped himself hard in the head with both hands. “I’m not the father.”
Maybe old Rupert wasn’t so stupid after all. “Sharp as a tack,” I told him. “Any idea where Camille might be now?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“When I find her though,” he promised, “she’s giving me my money back or going to jail.” Rupert snapped his fingers twice in angry impatience. “I’ll take those checks now, Virginia?”
“Where does the grandmother live?” For me there was still the matter of the mysterious fifty thousand. I said, “I know you have the address.” I didn’t have to see Rupert to feel him sizing me up, wondering if he was fast enough to beat me to the money. He wasn’t. “If you try anything, I’ll scream,” I assured him, pleasantly.
He was looking at me with his checks in my hand for a while rather sullenly. Then he gave up and wrote the address on a Post-it Note, pushing it across the desk at me.
“You know Rupert,” I told him, “I think you ought to know Wes changed The List before he died.”
He was appraising me like a playground bully. “So?”
“So,” I said, “On the new List Wes was recommending that you get fired, sport.”
“That prick.” Rupert’s face just about made my day.
“It takes one to know one,” I’d stood up to leave. “Better keep working on that resumé.”
“You bitch,” Rupert worked his way out from behind the desk with surprising speed. “Hey,” he was shouting, “what about my money?” But the checks were safely tucked in my suit coat pocket and I was already a few long steps away in his office doorway.
“I think I’ll hang on to these a while,” I told him as I closed the door.
Downstairs in the garage the AAA man was standing by my car. He had it jacked up and the tire was halfway off. In another five minutes the flat was changed, I’d signed the little authorization paper, thanked him and was on my way to Oak Park on my temporary tire. I thought it was nice sometimes when things worked out.
* * *
Elana’s grandmother lived in a 70s neo-colonial style apartment complex on the Oak Park/Cicero border, up a set of open metal stairs and down a long concrete gallery full of insubstantial-looking, badly varnished, wooden doors, the hollow core-looking kind you’d expect to find inside the house rather than out. I pounded steadily on Number 1245.
After a few minutes, there was a shuffling sound and then a woman’s voice, “Quien es? Un momento.” The door opened a crack and two black eyes peered out at me.
“I’m looking for Camille Gutierrez.” I said, but my request didn’t rate much of a welcome.
“No hablo Ingles,” said the old woman inside. “Lo siento.” The door was closing, and I tried to stop it in my halting, high school Spanish.
“Puedo hablar con Camille Gutierrez,” but no more sound came from behind the tired, old door. “I could get the police out here,” I spoke a little more loudly with a recall I owned as absolutely miraculous, “Voy a llamar a un policia.” That immediately got the door open about four inches, which was good, as I had nearly exhausted my store of handy phrases.
“Camille is not here.”
In light of the woman’s substantially improved English, I asked perhaps, with a misplaced confidence, if she could tell me when Camille would be back.
“Lo siento,” she said.
“Can you tell her, then, I was here?” I took a card from my purse and added my home number on the back. “She knows what this is about. She should see me, or I will get the police.”
“Un momento.” The door closed, opening again in a few moments as promised. “Como se llama?”
“Aqui, tiene mi numero de teléfono,” I said. “If she calls me there will be no need for the police,” I held out my card. “Comprende usted, Señora?”
A hand reached out and took the card, then the door snapped shut like those old-time mechanical penny banks. Across the yard some little boys were throwing a football back and forth in the street. I headed back home and waited for my phone to ring.
* * *
Camille Gutierrez returned my call at about six-thirty. “What’s the big idea,” she demanded, “frightening my mother like that?” I told her I knew that Rupert was writing her those checks for Elana.
“You talked to him?” Her voice had become small and even fearful.
I told her, “Yeah, I talked to him, but it’s none of my business. I don’t blame you.”
This was followed by silence from which I was picking up an indefinite, but much improved interpersonal vibe, and then a mumbled prayer on her end that I didn’t quite catch.
“Do you want your checks back?”
“Praise the Lord,” she’d answered quite distinctly.
I told Camille we could meet that night at Whytebread about eight-thirty. That gave me enough time to scarf down a turkey and tomato sandwich from the White Hen Pantry’s deli. I ate my dinner standing up, letting the crumbs fall into the kitchen sink so I didn’t have to wash any dishes.
XXI
By quarter to eight, it was dark as midnight. The street was empty of people with only a train of headlights filing onto the Lakeshore Drive expressway.
