Sara Paretsky - Hardball

Ms. Crandon looked like a senior citizen in here. Most of the staff was Petra’s age. Regardless of race or sex, they all seemed to share my cousin’s exuberant energy. Maybe Krumas really did signal a change in politics as usual in Illinois.

Various youths scurried up to Tania with questions. One asked for Petra. They couldn’t respond to some rumor on drilling for oil in the Shawnee National Forest without her input, she’d been doing the research.

“See me after lunch,” Tania said. “I’ll have something for you by then.”

Our destination was the southwest corner of the floor. This part of the operation was quieter, with a row of offices banked along the south wall. The corner suite included a secretary, who was handling a phone console with the panache of Solti on the podium. Tania bent to murmur in the secretary’s ear. The woman looked at me in surprise, made a call of her own, hit a key on the computer on the desk, and unlocked the inner-office door.

Tania followed close behind her. They shut the door too fast for me to see inside, but not too fast for me to hear my uncle’s voice raised in a hoarse shout. So Peter, too, wanted to know what Strangwell had his daughter doing. That was a help. The politico might share more with her father than with her PI cousin.

A few armchairs were arranged to give visitors a view of the Bean, the big sculpture in Millennium Park in which you can see sky, city, and self reflected in its stainless steel curves. I stood for a few moments at the window, watching tourists photograph themselves, but the light was so bright that I had to put my dark glasses on, and then I couldn’t see much.

As the minutes stretched on, I left the window. I tried the office door, but it was locked. I scowled at it, then left the area looking for the NetSquad. I had a feeling that if I didn’t find Petra’s coworkers now, I’d be hustled off the floor before I could talk to them.

The campaigners were deep in conferences or text messages and cellphones. A youth who finally responded to me told me the NetSquad was in Sector 8.

“Sector 8 is which way?”

“We’re in pods. Communications is Pod 1, nearest the elevators. Pod 2 is R and D. Sector 8, the NetSquad, straddles the two.” He went back to his computer, finished with me.

Pods, sectors: they’d clearly grown up playing too many sci-fi games on their handhelds. The energy and self-absorption of the campaigners, which had seemed entertaining at first, began to grate on me.

When I finally found Sector 8, I saw the young woman who’d wanted Petra’s input on oil drilling in the Shawnee Forest. About five kids were at their computers. It was hard to get a real count because they never sat still for long. Someone would type furiously for a bit, yell, “I’m sending you this, read it before it goes live,” and then take off, while another two or three staffers would emerge from other pods, look at what was on-screen, sit down to type a comment, then drift away again.

I finally managed to get a young man with a shock of black hair falling into his eyes to pay attention to me. “Petra Warshawski.”

“Petra? She’s not here. She disappeared. They think she’s been kidnapped.”

The magic words brought the whole pod to his desk, where they started arguing about whether Petra had been kidnapped or had disappeared on a secret assignment for Strangwell.

“Petra could be doing an undercover assignment for the Chicago Strangler,” a young woman with a number of piercings said. “She never says what the Strangler has her doing.”

“Running a hit squad,” the sole African-American youth on the team suggested.

“The Strangler feels free to machine-gun the whole opposition in broad daylight,” the pierced woman said. “You wouldn’t have to be undercover for that.”

“Who would Petra talk to if she had a tough problem to unknot?” I asked.

That quieted the group for a minute, but a young woman in jeans and layered tank tops said, “We don’t work like that. It’s more, like, how do I do this, and we all, like, brainstorm and come up with different ideas. Brian’s campaign, it’s about change. It’s not about personal glory. So we, like, all work together.”

“What if Petra had a personal problem?” I asked.

The African-American kid said, “She didn’t have personal problems that I could see… I mean, before the Strangler pulled her off the team. Then, I don’t know if working for him went to her head or he had her doing something she didn’t like, but she stopped eating with us after work. We don’t know what she’s doing or who she’s talking to.”

“Guy’s a fucking organizing genius,” the first kid I’d spoken to said.

“Granted,” the African-American youth said. “But would you want to go to El Gato Loco with him?”

The pierced woman laughed. Another young woman came along and asked who was going where for lunch. Before they all took off, I handed cards around.

“I’m her cousin. She disappeared in a way that’s got me seriously worried. And the Chicago police and the FBI are on it, too, so I’m surprised they haven’t been around to talk to you. If you can think of anyone she might confide in, or anything she’s said that would tell me why she took off, call me please.”

They were e-mailing with excitement before I even left the pod. Police, FBI: way too cool to keep to yourself. I walked slowly back to Strangwell-the Strangler’s-corner of the floor. The kids admired him, but he frightened them. And, at the same time, they had been jealous of Petra for being singled out to work for him.

Strangwell’s door stood open now. Tania Crandon was next to it, working her cellphone. The secretary was standing next to her desk, talking on the landline. Strangwell, frowning, watched from the doorway.

“We didn’t know what happened to you!” Tania pocketed her phone.

“I know. It’s a big operation, easy to get lost in.” I smiled amiably. “I wanted to talk to Petra’s coworkers, to see if she’d been in touch with any of them.”

“And had she?” Strangwell asked.

“I don’t think so. They say that she turned standoffish when she started working for you. Was that one of your conditions?”

His cold eyes turned fractionally chillier. “I expect everyone who works for me to protect the confidentiality of our clients. The fact that NetSquad talked to you without permission makes me think I haven’t been clear in communicating that rule.”

Tania Crandon flushed again. It was clearly supposed to be her fault that her team had chatted with me. She started to apologize, but I cut her short.

“You have a young and energetic team. And I’m guessing that if you tamp down their exuberance, you’ll lose the best qualities of their work. I’m V. I. War-”

“I know who you are. Your uncle is here. We’d all like to talk to you, to make sure you don’t do something that might jeopardize our ability to find Petra.”

I didn’t know if he was being an SOB because I’d spoken to the NetSquad, or because I was Petra’s cousin and she’d disappeared on him-or because it was his nature-but I followed him into his office. I knew Peter was there, of course, and it wasn’t surprising to see George Dornick, since he was advising the campaign on security, but I was startled to see Harvey Krumas as well.

Of the four men, only Strangwell looked at ease, his cold, shrewd eyes surveying me to see how I was reacting to the group. Harvey and Peter were both flushed-whether from anger, fear, or some other emotion-I couldn’t decipher their expressions. Even Dornick, a vision in pearl-gray shantung and pink shirting, looked ill at ease.

I moved forward before Strangwell could take complete control of the encounter. “Mr. Krumas, we met at your son’s fundraiser on Navy Pier. George, have you come in to augment police efforts to find Petra? Mr. Strangwell, can you tell us what Petra’s been working on the last ten days or so? She’s been seen in some odd places, and it would help if I knew whether you’d sent her to them or she’d been going on her own.”