“There’s a guy on a Harley who’s been keeping tabs on her,” I said, “and at least one on a bicycle. The Harley seems to pick her up after work, but they probably have somebody on foot, since she takes the Green Line home. We haven’t spotted any cars, but that doesn’t mean the trackers aren’t using them.”
“We’ll try to keep an eye on Nabiyev,” an officer from Organized Crime said, “but he’s gone to ground for the time being, may even have left Chicago. If we’d known he was a person of interest in the shooting, we could have taken steps at the airports right away.”
All ten officers glared at me in unison. They had a good choreographer.
“I suggested it to the detective in charge at the crime scene,” I said. “He was so eager to pin the blame on Mr. Villard’s caregiver that he wasn’t interested in anything I had to say.”
“Yeah, well, when you’re with us poor dim-witted coppers, you have a habit of making your suggestions sound like sarcasm. It’s a good trick,” Bobby said, “because it means we don’t take you seriously and then you get to go off and pull your own rabbits out of your own hats and make us look ineffectual. And that also is annoying.”
“Put it in my file,” I couldn’t help saying. “‘When she’s most annoying, she’s on to something worth paying attention to.’”
Bobby made a sour face. “I’d love it if just once you’d act your age. You can go—we’ll take it from here.”
He followed me into the hall. “Vicki, if you see or hear or even smell anything from Nabiyev, you call me or Rawlings at once. Don’t try to tackle him on your own because you can’t. I don’t want your ma greeting me at the Pearly Gates, telling Saint Peter not to admit me because I let you run headfirst into danger, but that’s what will happen if you keep thinking you’re smart enough to handle thugs like Nabiyev. Capisce?”
“Capisco,” I said. I felt my age plus another decade as I walked to the elevator.
IN THE MADHOUSE
My seat used to be up near the rafters, where the noise shook one’s bones. Seventeen thousand fans slamming our chairs up and down, stomping, screaming, whistling, while the foghorn under the scoreboard bellowed whenever Steve Larmer or Boom-Boom scored. The Madhouse on Madison, it was called, and rightly so—decibel level around 130 on average, up to 300 when all the noisemakers were turned on. The sound coming from the rafters could push skaters to their knees.
They tore down the old Stadium about the time injuries forced my cousin into retirement. Just as well—he was superstitious about his success and hadn’t wanted to play in the fancy new place. Tonight, sinking into a plush red seat, I kind of agreed with Boom-Boom. I didn’t want my eardrums shattered, but I missed being right on top of the ice the way you were at the Stadium. The brightly smiling attendants, poised to bring us everything from name-brand cocktails to lobster rolls, made me perversely long for the Stadium’s cheap beer and pretzels, even though I don’t like beer.
The teams were skating warm-ups when I got there. Pierre had invited me to a pre-game dinner with his daughter and some of his old pals from the team, but I’d had to skip that: I’d gone with Conrad and one of his officers to talk to Viola before she left Ajax for the day. We’d done it the right way, gone through corporate HR, corporate security, explained she was dealing with a stalker and we wanted to guarantee her safety to and from the workplace.
Her supervisor turned out to be helpful, even supportive: Viola’s twin might not shine on the job but Viola worked hard and seemed to be a popular member of her unit, at least until the last week or two when she’d become erratic. If she was dealing with a stalker, that explained everything and the company would be glad to help.
Viola wasn’t quite as grateful. She accused me of betraying her trust, then, when I told her I knew she’d received threats of reprisals if she didn’t reveal her brother’s location, she accused me of listening in on her phone calls.
Conrad, at his gentlest, most avuncular, was finally able to persuade her to tell what she knew, although it wasn’t much. He coaxed her into describing the threatening phone calls, but Viola didn’t know who’d been making them. She kept insisting that she knew nothing about what Sebastian had agreed to do for Jerry Fugher, and no idea where her twin might be. She also resisted a police escort to her apartment.
“Don’t you see? They’ll know I went to the police if they see you. They already know I went to Vic. No police, they keep telling me, or they’ll kill me, and what’s to stop them murdering me now? They know where I work, they know where I live.”
She looked at me, her amber eyes once again flooded with tears. Just keeping her in Kleenex was going to bankrupt me.
“You want me dead,” she sobbed. “You’re not really trying to find Sebastian, if I’m dead you won’t have to look for him anymore.”
“She has a point,” I said to Conrad. “Unless you can put a twenty-four/seven detail on her, she’ll be vulnerable as soon as your officer leaves.”
Conrad smacked his thigh, frustrated. “And you can afford to guard her?”
We hashed it over for some time. The only solution we came up with was cumbersome and highly dependent on luck, but in the end, I drove Viola home to pack a suitcase. Conrad trailed us discreetly and hovered a few blocks away until Tom Streeter picked up Viola.
Once they were gone, I drove back to Conrad, who got out of the car to say that a Harley had buzzed the street a few times, but he hadn’t been able to pick up the plate without revealing he was watching.
“You look after yourself, Ms. W. That broken nose doesn’t help your looks any, and a bullet in the chest would definitely reduce your sex appeal, okay?”
The morning had started with Vince Bagby inviting me to dinner. Now Conrad was admiring my sex appeal. Despite the day’s traumas, I drove to the United Center in a cheerful mood.
Pierre was surrounded by old friends and old fans when I got there, while Bernie sat listening to music and texting, looking up only when Pierre pulled out one of her earbuds to introduce her to someone. She gave me a nervous smile, but pulled herself together to ask after Mr. Contreras and the dogs. She was wearing one of Boom-Boom’s jerseys—I’d given it to Pierre after my cousin died, and Bernie was swimming in it. To show that her loyalties lay with her father and her home country, she’d put on earrings with the Canadiens’ logo—the flattened C embracing an H—done in red and blue enamel.
Once the game got under way, father and daughter both focused on the ice. I didn’t recognize the current crop of players on either team—I hadn’t paid much attention to hockey after Boom-Boom’s death, although the Hawks were always generous with tickets whenever I wanted to come.
I tried to focus on the action, but about halfway through the first period, I realized Bernie was paying more attention to me than the game. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she turned red and picked up Pierre’s binoculars to stare at the ice.
“What’s up?” I asked her as Toews and the rest chased the puck to the far end.
She pretended to be too focused on the game to hear me, but the tightness in her shoulders told a different story.
At the end of the first period, Pierre took her with him down to the Blackhawks bench. Since he was scouting now for a rival team, he couldn’t go into the locker room, but I watched him talking to the front office staff, introducing Bernie, who flashed the family’s famous smile.
Someone handed Bernie a stick. She walked out onto the perimeter of the rink and showed off her form. After a certain amount of confabbing and gesturing, someone escorted Bernie to center ice to play the game of “Shoot the Puck”: a board is placed in front of the goal with three slots in the bottom and contestants—usually drawn randomly from the crowd—get three chances to put the puck through a slot.