Sara Paretsky - Body Work

“What an extraordinary accusation,” I said. “And, by the way, an actionable one, as your friend Prince Rainier would be glad to tell you.”

“Don’t try to play word games with me. You’re way out of your league. You’re in my building under false pretenses, and, believe me, any legal action will be directed against you. By us. Not the other way around.”

He looked at Vijay. “What was she asking?”

“She has a résumé that she pretends came from the Guaman woman. She’s been trying to find out what Guaman did for us in Iraq.”

Scalia shook his head. “Her activities are classified.”

“Whoa, there, Mr. Scalia. You’re a private contractor, not the Department of Defense.”

“When we’re doing DOD’s work, their security clearances extend to our employees. We all regret the death of Alexandra Guaman, but we’re not at liberty to discuss it. Especially not with an ambulance chaser. Time for you to get out, before I bring along a team to throw you out.”

“A whole team?” I said. “That’s flattering, but I’m afraid someone-Olympia, maybe-exaggerated my fighting skills. One person would probably be enough if she knows what she’s doing. Two, if she doesn’t.”

Scalia’s lips tightened. “Before you leave, you’ll hand over whatever document you brought with you.”

“Wrong again. It’s a private document, and you don’t have the necessary security clearance to read it.”

“Where is it?” Scalia asked Vijay.

“She put it into her briefcase.”

“Then call security. We need someone up here to take her case and get the document.”

Scalia had me backed up where he wanted me, which I hated, but I opened my case and took out the spurious résumé. Scalia held out a hand for it, but I ducked under his arm and stuck it into Vijay’s shredder, which gulped it down with a satisfying growl.

Scalia grabbed my case and dumped the contents on Vijay’s desk, his face swollen with rage. My field notebooks that I use in client meetings and off-line research, a tampon that was coming unraveled, and a small makeup kit bounced out. I crossed my arms and leaned against the door while he looked through the papers.

Scalia suddenly ripped a page out of the center of one of the notebooks and fed it through Vijay’s shredder, then dropped the notebook on Vijay’s desk and dusted his hands with a satisfied smirk. I fought back the tide of rage that swept through me. I had just enough self-control to know that if I slugged him, I’d spend the next week either in jail or a hospital.

“What a he-man,” I said, my voice high and bright. “Able to rip a piece of paper with your bare hands. No wonder they put you in charge of war operations.”

“Pick up your shit and get out of my building,” Scalia roared, his face swelling again in anger.

I put the notebooks and the makeup back into my case. As soon as I had the door open, I turned back and stuck the tampon into Scalia’s jacket pocket.

“A souvenir,” I said. “Something to put on your wall along with all those pictures of you in uniform inside the war zone.”

I moved briskly to the stairs. A couple of guys in heavy security costumes appeared as I reached the front doors, but no one shot me, or even tripped me, as I crossed the walk to the visitor’s spot where I’d left my car.

Idrove east until I found a forest preserve where I could take time to pull myself together again. I dug through my case for the notebook that Scalia had mutilated. He’d pulled three pages out of a section where I’d been researching title changes last year. The case was coming to trial next month. I’d been deposed, I’d written the report. It was just the violation of having my papers attacked that I minded.

You might say I had provoked him by shredding the bogus résumé, but his reaction had been designed to humiliate, and, unfortunately, it had worked. My own response, with the tampon, had been briefly satisfying but not too bright. Someone who had as much need to be in power over others as Scalia did would feel it as real indignity, especially since a subordinate had witnessed it. Who knew what he might do next.

I opened one of my notebooks and started doodling. What had I learned? That despite the twenty thousand or so employees Tintrey had worldwide, and the nine thousand in Iraq, there was something about Alexandra Guaman that kept her in the foreground of the company consciousness-so much so that a senior officer had to be summoned when someone asked questions about her. I wished I knew what QL stood for-that was what Vijay had called Alexandra’s file. Maybe “quit living.”

I stared at the bare trees. Even if Alexandra had known Chad in Iraq, why would that be important to Tintrey? Unless Chad had been on some mission that involved Tintrey and he’d learned a discreditable secret about them? If Alexandra had died as part of a truck convoy, maybe Chad had been in one of the trucks. That black oblong he’d waved in front of Nadia, was that something he’d picked up from the detritus around her exploded truck? But a piece of black fabric, something that might be a scarf, as Tim Radke had suggested? I slapped my notebook shut. All this speculation, it led nowhere.

Gilbert Scalia had come to Club Gouge with the head of Tintrey, Jarvis MacLean. If Alexandra Guaman was this big a hot button at Tintrey, I had to believe they’d gone down there to see if the Body Artist’s tribute to Nadia included anything about Alexandra.

More speculation.

I would have to move fast to get some answers before Gilbert Scalia closed every door I knocked at. Rainier Cowles was already hovering over the Guaman family, but maybe if I drove down there now I could find out something from Ernest or the grandmother. That didn’t seem likely, but I didn’t know what else to do. And I felt an urgency to be doing something.

I pulled onto the road and turned back to the Tollway, covering the thirty miles south as fast as I could. Giant tractor trailers roared around me all the way down as the open land bordering the Tollway changed to the bungalows lining the Kennedy and then to the scrap-metal piles and grocery warehouses that bordered Pilsen where the Guamans lived. It was a relief to get away from the noise and into a residential neighborhood, although parking was a challenge. People who’d shoveled out spaces had blocked them off with garbage cans or broken-down furniture, a Chicago tradition. I found a half-legal space around the corner, not quite blocking a fire hydrant.

Bungalows and two-flats stood on lots so small that the buildings almost touched. Many were decorated with ceramic tiles; one even had a mosaic of a jaguar worked all the way across the front. Nativity scenes and Santas still stood in front of some of the houses. The Guamans didn’t have tile or a crèche, only a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She was knee-deep in snow, a black ribbon around her neck serving as a heart-troubling reminder of loss.

A woman came out of a nearby house. She had a wagon, a toddler, and a drawstring bag filled with laundry that she was carrying down the stairs. I hurried over and took the wagon and bag from her. She thanked me but looked me up and down frankly. In my Lario boots and tailored coat, I wasn’t dressed for the neighborhood.

“Is that the Guaman home?” I pointed at the black-ribboned Lady of Guadalupe, just trying to get the woman talking.

“Are you from the lawyer?”

“The lawyer? No, I was a friend of Nadia’s. That was terrible, how she died.”

The woman nodded solemnly. “But why was she in such a place as that nightclub to begin with? It’s very hard on Cristina to have her daughter in the news that way.”