Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

It was a busy, industrious scene, and despite the modern machinery, one that harked to an earlier era. None of the crew was black, and as far as I could tell none of them was Hispanic, either. Most of their hard hats were decorated with the Wunsch and Grasso logo. It’s one thing to borrow someone’s equipment, but even a small firm ought to be able to spring for their own hard hats.

I hopped down from the fence and went up to one of the men surveying the work. Close to the rock crushers the noise was so intense that it took some effort to get the surveyor’s attention.

When he finally looked up at me I bawled in his ear, “Luis Schmidt here today?”

“Who?” he bellowed back.

“Luis Schmidt!”

“Don’t know him.”

He turned back to the road, signaling to one of the men. I thought he was going to pass my inquiry on, but instead he wanted to point out something that had to be done to the roadbed. I tapped his arm.

He jerked around impatiently. “You still here?”

“Is this the Alma Mejicana site?”

He rolled his eyes-dumb broad. He pointed at the machine nearest him. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re with Alma Mejicana and leasing equipment from Wunsch and Grasso.”

He was beginning a scathing put-down when another one of the surveyors came over. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, silencing the first man with a commanding arm wave.

“I’m looking for the Alma Mejicana crew,” I bawled. “I was told they were using Wunsch and Grasso equipment.”

The second man dragged the first off to the side. They had an animated conversation that I couldn’t hear, but it involved a lot of gesturing-at the roadbed and at me. Finally the first man went on down the road another ten yards while the second came back to me.

“Rudy’s new on the site. The crew are A-M men, but the foremen and the equipment are all from Grasso. He didn’t know that. What do you need here?”

He thrust his weather-beaten face close to mine so I could hear him. Maybe I was being fanciful, but behind the film of white dust his expression seemed cold, almost menacing.

“I’m looking for Luis Schmidt.” It was the only line I had so I stuck to it.

“He’s not on the site. I’ll take a message for him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t mind waiting.”

“He won’t be here today, lady. Or tomorrow. So if you have a message, let me have it. If you don’t, get off the site.”

He looked at a couple of men with picks and jerked his head. When they ambled over he said, “Lady got on the site by mistake. You want to see she gets off and stays off.”

I held up my hands placatingly. “It’s okay, big guy-I can find my own way out. Anyway, I got what I came for.”

I trotted northward at a good clip. The pick bearers trotted along next to me, keeping up a line of small talk that I fortunately couldn’t make out. No one could possibly attack me right here on the Dan Ryan with two thousand men to witness it. Assuming my screams penetrated the sound of the machinery, or they didn’t think I was a scab and join in mauling what was left of my body.

About a half mile up the road, when I thought I might throw up from exertion, they decided they’d fulfilled their mission. One of them poked me playfully in the side with his pick. The other told me he guessed I’d learned my lesson but they could really make it stick-ha , ha-if I came back.

I nodded without speaking and staggered clear of the roadbed to collapse on the slope rising up on its west side. I lay there for half an hour, sucking in great mouthfuls of chalky air. They couldn’t have known who I was. If there was some red alert out on me, they could easily have knocked me accidentally under one of the rock crushers. But they must have some general cautionary warning against anyone prying around about Alma Mejicana.

What if I’d been with the feds? Would the second foreman still have behaved so precipitously? Massive bribe-taking doesn’t seem to have penetrated federal bureaucrats yet, but maybe Roz-through Boots-had some other source of protection for her cousin’s firm.

From where I was lying the Sears Tower dominated the near horizon. The sun was low enough in the sky to turn its windows a fiery copper. It was too late for me to go to the Daley Center to look for any background on Farm-works, Inc. I lay there watching the fire on the tower mute into soft oranges, then darken.

Finally I got to my feet and began the long trek back to my car. My legs were a bit wobbly-too much exertion too soon, I told myself sternly. Nothing to do with the surge of fear over the guys with the pickaxes.

Day crews were starting to pack it in. Night shifts hadn’t started yet. There was a lull in the noise and a general relaxation in the work frenzy. The machines were still moving doggedly, but the ground crews were standing around laughing, drinking longnecks that they somehow spirited onto the site.

It took over half an hour to move the mile to my car. By then most of the other vehicles parked around it had left. Alone among the detritus under the giant stilts of the expressway, I shivered. When I got in the car I carefully locked the doors before starting.

It was after five-thirty. I turned up Halsted instead of joining the packed throngs on the expressway or the drive. No one on the site knew who I was, but I didn’t take the hard hat off until I was north of Congress.

When I got home I dumped the overalls and the hard hat in the hall closet and headed straight for the tub, I longed for sleep but I still had several errands to run. I tried to convince my wobbly legs and sore shoulders that a long bath would do them as much good as twelve hours of sleep. More good. It might have worked when I was twenty, but when you’re closer to forty than thirty there are some myths the body won’t believe.

Carbohydrate packing was my next great idea. Although there was no fruit or meat in the house I still had onions, garlic, and frozen pasta. Just the kind of dish my mother thought adequate for a Saturday dinner, while my father, who could never bring himself to criticize her, longed privately for chicken and dumplings.

I found a can of tomatoes in the back of my cupboard. I couldn’t remember buying this brand and studied the label dubiously, trying to figure out if they were still any good. I opened the can and sniffed. How do you tell if something is full of botulism? I shrugged and dumped them in with the onions. It would be fairly entertaining if I escaped the ravages of mad killers only to die of food poisoning in my own kitchen.

If the tomatoes were poisoned they didn’t affect me immediately. In fact, the bath and the dinner did make me feel better-not as good as if I’d had my sleep, but good enough to go on for a bit. I was even whistling a little under my breath when I went into the bedroom to change.

My only lightweight black dress has big silver buttons down the front. With black stockings and pumps I looked more as though I were on my way to the theater than a funeral, but I thought white stockings wouldn’t be much of an improvement. It would have to do.

While I was looking up the Callahan Funeral Home, the phone rang. It was Terry Finchley from the Violent Climes Unit.

“Miss Warshawski! I’ve been trying to reach you the last few days. Did you get my message?”

I thought of all the ringing phones I’d let go lately and realized I hadn’t checked in with my answering service for some time. “Sorry, Detective. What’s up? Any new evidence linking me to the Prairie Shores or Indiana Arms fires?”

I thought I heard him sigh. “Don’t make my life harder than it is, Vic, okay?”

“Okay, Terry,” I agreed meekly. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing from you?”