Sara Paretsky - Deadlock

I lifted my right leg out of the water and ran a soapy sponge over it while I considered. “This is V. I. Warshawski,” I said, spelling it for him. “Tell him that Mr. Argus’s auditors will want to know where the missing invoices are.”

The boy repeated the message back to me dubiously. “You got it.” I gave him both my and Lotty’s phone numbers and hung up.

The pasta was bubbling nicely and I took it into the bedroom with me while I got dressed-black velvet pants with a high-necked blouse and a form-fitting red and black velvet toreador jacket. High heels and very dangly earrings and I was set for an evening at the theater. Or the end of an evening at the theater. By some miracle I hadn’t spilled tomato juice on the white blouse. My luck really was turning.

I got to the Windy City Balletworks just at ten-thirty. A bored young woman in a leotard and stretchy wraparound skirt told me the performance would end in ten minutes. She gave me a program and let me go in without paying.

The tiny theater was filled and I didn’t bother trying to find a seat in the dim light. I lounged against the back wall, taking off my shoes to stand in my stocking feet next to the ushers. A spirited pas de deux from a classical ballet was in progress. Paige was not the female dancer. Whoever it was, she seemed technically competent but lacked the special spark with which Paige infused her performance. The whole company appeared on stage for a complex finale, and the show was over.

When the lights came on, I squinted at the program to make sure Paige was, indeed, dancing tonight. Yes, Pavane for a Dope Dealer had been performed right before the second act of Giselle , which we’d just seen.

I went back out the hallway and followed a small group down to the door leading directly to the dressing rooms. Rather than accost Paige in her shared dressing room, I sat on a folding chair outside to wait. The dancers began coming out in twos and threes, not sparing me a glance. I’d provided myself with a novel, remembering the forty-five-minute wait here the last time I’d tried talking to Paige, and flicked through the pages, looking up in vain every time the door opened.

Fifty minutes went by. Just as I was thinking she might have left at the end of the Pavane , she finally emerged. As usual, her exquisite good looks made me feel a little wistful. Tonight she had on a silvery fur coat, possibly fox, which made her resemble Geraldine Chaplin in the middle of the Russian winter in Dr. Zhivago .

“Hello, Paige. I’m afraid I got here too late to see the Pavane . Perhaps I can make the matinee tomorrow.”

She gave a slight start and then a wary smile. “Hello, Vic. What impertinent questions have you come to ask me? I hope they’re not long, because I’m late for a dinner engagement.”

“Trying to drown your sorrows?”

She gave me an indignant look. “Life goes on, Vic. You need to learn that.”

“So it does, Paige. I’m sorry to have to drag you into a past you’re trying to forget, but I’d like to know who took you to Guy Odinflute’s party.”

“Who-what?”

“Remember the Christmas party where you met Boom Boom? Niels Grafalk wanted to meet some hockey players, trying to decide whether to buy into the Black Hawks, and Odinflute gave a party for him. Or have you blocked that out along with the rest of the dead past?”

Her eyes blazed suddenly dark and her cheeks turned red. Without a word, she lifted her hand to slap me in the face. I caught her by the wrist and gently lowered her hand to her side. “Don’t hit me, Paige-I learned my fighting in the streets and I wouldn’t want to lose my temper and hurt you… Who took you to Odinflute’s party?”

“None of your damned business. Now will you leave the theater before I call the guard and tell him you’re molesting me? And please do not ever come back. It will make me ill to have you watch me dance.”

She moved with angry grace down the hall and out the front door. I followed in time to see her get into a dark sedan. A man was driving but I couldn’t make out his face in the dim light.

I didn’t feel in the humor for company, even Lotty’s astringent love. I gave her a call from my apartment to tell her not to worry. She didn’t, usually, but I knew she’d been pretty upset after the destruction of the Lucella .

In the morning I went down to the corner for the Sunday Herald-Star and some croissants. While the coffee dripped in my porcelain coffeepot I tried Mattingly. No one answered. I wondered if Elsie had gone to the hospital. I tried Phillips, but no one answered there either. It was almost eleven-maybe they had to put in a ritual appearance at the Lake Bluff Presbyterian Church.

I propped the paper up against the coffeepot and sat down to work my way through it. I’d once told Murray the only reason I buy the Herald-Star is because it has the most comics in the city. Actually, it has the best crime coverage, too. But I always read the funnies first.

I was halfway through my second cup when I came to the squib about Mattingly. I’d almost passed it over. The headline on an inner page read “Hit-and-run Victim in Kosciuszko Park” but his name must have caught my eye and I went back and read the story through completely.

The body of a man identified as Howard Mattingly was found late last night in Kosciuszko Park. Victor Golun, 23, of North Central Avenue, was jogging through the park at ten last evening when he found Mattingly’s body concealed behind a tree on one of the jogging paths. Mattingly, 33, was a reserve wing for the Chicago Black Hawks. Police say he had been hit by a car and carried to the park to die. They estimated he had been dead at least twenty hours when Golun found the body. Mattingly is survived by his wife, Elsie, 20, by two brothers, and by his mother.

I counted back in my head. He’d died by two Saturday morning at the latest, probably been hit sometime Friday evening, maybe right after he got back from Sault Ste. Marie. I knew I should call Bobby Mallory and tell him to trace Mattingly’s movements from when he got off Bledsoe’s plane Friday night. But I wanted to talk to Bledsoe myself first and find out why Mattingly had flown home in his plane.

Bledsoe’s home phone wasn’t listed in any of the Chicago or suburban directories. On an off chance I tried the Pole Star Line, but of course no one was there on Sunday.

I called Bobby Mallory to find out if anything had happened in the Henry Kelvin murder. “I got the keys back and went down there. The place was pretty grim. You guys make an arrest yet?”

“You on their payroll or something, Vicki? That family’s bugging us day in and day out. We don’t solve crimes faster for that kind of hassling.”

Depends on who’s doing the hassling, I thought. But I kept that comment to myself-I wanted information more than I wanted to hear Bobby scream at me. So I made a sympathetic clucking in my throat.

“I read about that hit-and-run case in Kosciuszko Park. You know, that guy Mattingly used to play with Boom Boom on the Black Hawks. I hope the Hawks have got a good employee benefits plan-the team doesn’t seem to be holding up too well.”

“You know I don’t like you calling up and chatting about crime with me, Vicki. And I hope you wouldn’t do it just to get my goat. So it must be you’ve got some special interest in the case. What is it?”

“No, not that,” I said hastily. “But I know his wife. She’s a fragile woman-just a child, really, and I don’t think this shock’ll be too good for her. Her first baby is due any second.”

“Yeah, she had it this morning. Between you and me, she’s well rid of that specimen. He was a petty grafter, had his hand stuck in everybody’s pocket. He owed gambling money, too. If he’d been a starter they’d of had him fixing games.”