The Hinky Bearskin Rug Read online

  Jewel dragged herself back to the coffee urn for a refill. The cow plops were gone, so she scored a doughnut.

  The peep show seemed to be over. Her coworkers were off to their rounds: Weights and Measures to the delis and gas stations, Taxis to O’Hare inspection, or home to test response times, Immigration to their undercover stings, Credit Card Fraud to burrowing into their mountains of paperwork. Maxwell Street detail went back to the land of hot dogs and cheap tee-shirts, Child Support to their phones. Target Investigations was wrapping up a big identity theft case, organizing evidence for indictments.

  Jewel had been like them, once, rotating from duty to duty, learning new scams, busting new crooks, keeping up with every possible way Chicago could protect its citizens from chicanery, sharp practice, and other forms of financial abuse.

  Now she was going undercover to find out if some secretary had been dropping acid, or if the wave of daytime sex enlivening the summer had its root in something hinky.

  My job is so glamorous.

  Chapter Three

  Later that morning Jewel presented herself at the offices of Baysdorter Boncil, a real estate development firm located within eyeshot of Neiman Marcus. It was like walking into a cigar box. The walls were rare mahogany below the chair rail and ornate, tan-flocked, Skokie-baroque wallpaper above. Every window office had a kind of corral in front of it made of the same expensive wood, and inside every corral sat a beautiful girl at a computer. Checking out the secretaries in their flirty little I’m-a-virgin-but-I’m-desperate-not-to-be dresses, Jewel knew her navy polyester pantsuit was not adequate.

  In fact, it seemed nothing about her was adequate.

  The complainant was a Ms. Sacker, who turned out to be the office manager. As arranged, she interviewed Jewel for a temp job — Jewel’s cover — behind closed doors. Maida Sacker had that pinched blondeness that doesn’t age well. Her pastel skirt suit was just a shade over into the desperate zone, with white eyelet at her suit collar and in the bosom of her low-cut, hot-pink shell. Her makeup was perfect, if bland. Jewel felt more like a dairy-farmer’s daughter than ever.

  Ms. Sacker said, “It is very important, Ms. Heiss, that management doesn’t know about your presence at Baysdorter Boncil.”

  “Good thing, if one of them put Viagra in the coffee. You were present for the incident?”

  Ms. Sacker said, “I wasn’t involved in the — the incident. I discovered it.”

  “You don’t seem comfortable. Shall we meet outside of work?”

  Ms. Sacker scowled.

  Boy, that must have been some orgy. “I understand that there were, ah, hinky elements. Magical,” Jewel added, when Ms. Sacker raised her pencilled eyebrows. “You suspect that management was involved.”

  Silence.

  And now Ms. Sacker doesn’t want to talk about it. Letting understanding into her voice, Jewel said, “If there is a corporate culture of abuse, I’m not the right officer to prosecute it, but I can certainly go between for you. Is that a problem here at Baysdorter Boncil?”

  Ms. Sacker pressed her bloodless lips together.

  Okay, that was an admission that some shit was going down. Jewel realized she was dealing with a tricky legal moment. As a woman and as office manager, over the girls but under the men in the window offices, Ms. Sacker was in an equivocal position.

  “Are you telling me there was a rape? Were you—” she tried to soften her manner, “were you raped, Ms. Sacker?”

  “No!” Ms. Sacker turned her head to the side and glared, apparently at a lucite teamwork trophy sitting on her sideboard.

  Through the floor-to-ceiling window by the door, Jewel spotted a dark suit, a pale face. “Date rape counts. Coercion, even subtle coercion without the threat of force, counts. If your employer exerts pressure—”

  “There may have been drugs,” Ms. Sacker burst out.

  “Date rape drugs also count.”

  “I can’t discuss that here,” Ms. Sacker said.

  “O-kay. Can we proceed with the portion of this discussion you are willing to have?”

  The door burst open. A sleek, forty-something man in an expensive suit swept in.

  Ms. Sacker snapped, “I’m busy, Mr. Tannyhill.”

  “This won’t take long, Maida,” the man called Tannyhill said. He flicked a glance at Jewel and then away, as if she didn’t register on his people meter.

  Maida Sacker looked up at him. “This is the new temp. You remember Mr. Boncil said we might—”

  “Mr. Boncil approved it. I didn’t.”

  Jewel pretended to be fascinated with the teamwork award.

  “Mr. Boncil is the firm’s principal,” Ms. Sacker came back.

  There was a prolonged silence. Jewel noticed a bandaid on the back of Maida’s left hand.

  Without breaking eye contact with Tannyhill, Ms. Sacker handed Jewel a glossy maroon folder with Baysdorter Boncil embossed on it.

  Jewel looked in the folder. It was empty except for a yellow sticky note: Billy Goat at six.

  “Are you the boss now, Maida?” Tannyhill said nastily.

  Jewel thought for a minute that Ms. Sacker would cave. Then the woman stood up slowly and looked Tannyhill in the eye.

  To Jewel’s surprise, Tannyhill left.

  Maida Sacker turned an face of covert triumph to Jewel. “It’s difficult for me to talk about possible negative aspects of our corporate culture. Part of my job is keeping those aspects under control and preventing them from becoming public knowledge. Those are two very different tasks. It all depends—”

  “Whether the cut-up is a boss or a secretary. Or both.”

  Maida closed her eyes. “Administrative assistant. Well. Let’s get on with our entry interview.” Her lips twitched. “Can you type?”

  o0o

  Luckily for Jewel’s patience, Maida handed her over to Sharisse, one of the secretaries, I beg your pardon, we call them administrative assistants, for orientation, after it was established that, yes, Jewel knew her way around a computer. Sharisse showed Jewel her own corral and made sure she could find the files she would need. Pretty girls in cheap, fragile, girlish, flirty-tailored outfits passed by, one at a time. Sharisse introduced the new temp. Jewel felt like a milch cow trying to pass as a racehorse.

  Sharisse was the assistant of Hugh Boncil, surviving partner and now the only principal since old John Baysdorter had handed in his dinner pail. In a confidential tone she informed Jewel that Mr. Tannyhill, who had been “First Senior” for years, whatever that meant, would soon add his name to the company.

  “Lovely. And I care because?” Jewel snarled before she could get control of her mouth.

  Sharisse looked at her with huge, shocked eyes. “But you’re Steven’s temporary assistant.”

  Jewel whistled. Maida hadn’t had the nerve to tell her this. Either that or Maida had a sadistic sense of humor. Jewel stared at Sharisse and wondered which of them was getting punished, the undercover temp or Mr. Tannyhill. “That dickhead is my boss?”

  A tiny smile creased the corners of Sharisse’s mouth.

  Jewel whispered, “I don’t suppose you drink mudslides.”

  Sharisse dimpled. “Maybe Wednesday lunch?”

  “It’s a date.”

  Sharisse was a lot more relaxed after this, and Jewel began to see past her glossy finish to the shy, earnest girl underneath. She sat with Jewel in her new corral and helped her puzzle through the paperwork stacked up in Steven Tannyhill’s assistant’s tray.

  Steven showed up at length, striding right past Jewel into the window office behind her, swinging a briefcase as if it were a tennis racket. In spite of his attempt to bully Maida Sacker this morning, his taut, well-groomed machismo appealed to Jewel. He gave off the message, I can have any woman in this room.

  This was not to be encouraged, however.

  “Yo, temp,” he commanded casually, sticking his head out of his office. “Call me a cab.”

  Sharisse glanced sideways at Jewel.
/>   Jewel called back to him, “Is your finger broken? Call it yourself.”

  Sharisse gasped.

  Steven stared at Jewel, his head showing past the door sideways like a hound dog peering around a fence. A puzzled smile crossed his face. He sighted along his pistol-finger. “Bang.” Then he disappeared into his office.

  “Holy shit,” Jewel said. “That guy is spoiled rotten.”

  Sharisse tittered. “C’mon on, Jewel, tell us how you really feel.” She seemed more shocked by Jewel’s language than by her defiance to the next partner of BB. She whispered, “He doesn’t treat his girl near as nice as the other guys do.”

  Jewel would have asked a question, but at this moment an older man walked up to her corral and laid a slightly trembly, age-spotted hand on the top rail. He said cozily, “Sharisse, honey, did I give you that Franklin letter?”

  Sharisse looked up with a dazzling smile. “You did, and I finished it. It’s in your briefcase.”

  “Thanks. No, don’t get up, I’m fine.” He patted the mahogany rail as if it were Sharisse’s head. “You just keep on with what you’re doing.” With a pleasant, denture-assisted smile, he strolled on.

  “My boss,” Sharisse said with pride. “Mr. Boncil.” There was a funny little tone in her voice, and Jewel turned to look searchingly at her.

  Sharisse raised her eyebrows. “What?”

  “You’re sleeping with him,” Jewel blurted. Then she shook her head. “Never mind.” She’d never get the informant outside of a pitcher of mudslides this way. “Sorry I spoke.”

  Sharisse went back to the file she was sorting. “I’m a single mother,” she said quietly.

  “I see,” Jewel said, wondering what the hell she had stepped into. And, because of those yet-undrunk mudslides, she added, “Of course.”

  Chapter Four

  “Might I indeed be arrested for driving with too much spirit?” Randy said to Clay as they waited in Jewel’s Tercel for Jewel to get off work.

  Clay shrugged. “I guess.”

  “But on television only criminals and comely women are detained for driving.”

  “Sadly, life is not enough like TV. I wish she wasn’t doing this stupid job.” In Clay’s view, undercover should take place only in the haunts of the rich and famous.

  It was four-thirty. Men in fancy suits came out of the office tower, looking at their fancy watches, talking on their phones. They jumped into cabs or private cars or marched briskly into the bar on the street level of the tower.

  Clay drummed on the steering wheel. “Where’s all the women?”

  “Is that why I am not permitted to drive this evening?” Randy said with an edge in his voice. Good, it was about time he started acting needled. Clay had been needling him for nearly three weeks, since the end of the last job. He’d begun to think the haughty Englishman had no nerves at all.

  When Clay didn’t answer, Randy said drily, “Perhaps I drive not too badly but too well.”

  Bingo. The mark takes the fly. “It’s rush hour, dude,” Clay said in a kinder tone. “You’d hash it, and she would hate that. Didn’t they have traffic cops when you came from?”

  “We had no traffic control of any kind. Bow Street Runners had more important things to do than to harass gentlemen for the speed of their horses.” Randy was silent a moment. “I once drove from London to Brighton in four and a half hours. Not at ‘rush hour,’ as you call it. By moonlight, before dawn. Match bays, two teams, one stabled in town, one on the Brighton road.” He sounded wistful and off-guard.

  “Fast, huh. How fast was considered fast?”

  “Sixteen miles an hour at a canter. Faster if you put ’em along, but one could not, of course, spring ’em in town.”

  “And you never hit anything?”

  “I was no whipster,” Randy said with amusement. “Any man may own blood cattle if he can afford them, but he won’t drive them hard more than twice. Horses are tricksier than cars.”

  “Cars are hard,” Clay said indignantly. “Try handling a clunker like this on the expressway in the rain at rush hour.”

  “It’s not raining now.”

  Clay let that remark lie between them a couple of beats. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “I want to drive. There is no subterfuge.”

  Clay huffed. “Criminy! All right, all right.” He switched seats with Randy.

  Randy settled behind the wheel with a satisfied little wiggle.

  “Seat belt,” Clay said.

  “We are stationary.”

  “Seat belt.”

  “Such petty tyranny,” Randy said.

  “It’s the law.”

  “Which you honor so much.”

  Clay said with as much annoying patience as possible, “A con artist has the sense not to get busted for a lousy seat-belt charge.”

  At that moment the office building started tossing out dozens and dozens of women. Out they poured, fat ones, skinny ones, tall ones, short ones, every single one dressed like a real female, high heels flashing, all legs and hair and flirty clothes, chattering and giggling and shouldering against each other through the door of the bar on the street level.

  Clay sighed. “Ed should have sent me in there.”

  Randy looked at his watch. “She’s late.”

  “She’s the boss. And she won’t let you drive.”

  “She wants me to acquire independence.”

  “The least you could do is stay home once in a while and, like, do the laundry or something. Run the vac. Cook dinner.”

  “If you have tired of teaching me,” Randy said pointedly, “I will ask her.”

  “All right, all right. Let’s work on your identity. What’s your social security number?”

  “Two zero four, nine one, nine eight five three.”

  “Born?”

  “Guam, 1980.”

  “Employment?”

  Randy paused. “Companion,” he grated.

  “I’m thinking we change that to houseboy,” Clay said thoughtfully. “A companion doesn’t skank off and bone the suspect in the middle of an undercover operation and then disappear for days when the person he’s companioning needs backup,” he said, referring to how Randy had messed up on their last undercover case.

  “You found my absence convenient,” Randy said, now sounding pissed off.

  “I certainly did. Jewel knows who she can count on. Plus, she’s good company,” Clay said, alluding delicately to the fact that he’d got Jewel into bed twice while Randy was waiting for Jewel to rescue him from being magically trapped in the suspect’s bed. “I was surprised you gave us a chance for quality time — surprised and grateful.”

  Randy grunted.

  Clay pushed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how many times did you do my stepmother while you were haunting that bed?”

  “I never kiss and tell,” Randy said drily, and Clay felt himself go hot. “She’s a very sweet woman.”

  Sheesh! So Clay had a little Oedipal something for his stepmother. Randy sure knew where to stick the knife in. Clay said with less than his usual finesse, “One thing Jewel told me. She can’t wait to get you shut of this curse. She’s sick of having you underfoot.”

  “I’m sick of the curse myself. Perhaps when I am shut of it, and can support myself, I’ll be able to woo her in form.”

  “Woo her!” Clay blurted. “Is that what you call it? Sending her to work bowlegged every morning?”

  The one area where he felt definitely outclassed was this sex demon thing. If Jewel had been one of these giggly virgins clattering out of this office tower on high heels, she’d have tried Randy for one night and never slept on that brass bed again.

  On the other hand, if Jewel had been one of those virgins, Clay wouldn’t be the least bit interested.

  “Do you call what you do wooing?” Randy sounded genuinely curious.

  Clay didn’t have an answer to that one. He’d put off closing the deal with Jewel a hundred times
this summer, blaming Randy’s eternal underfootedness. He couldn’t pursue his interest in her until Randy was out of the way. Could he?

  While he pondered this question, Jewel opened the driver’s door of the Tercel. “Out.”

  “Clay said I might drive,” Randy said, sounding like a four-year-old.

  “Not after yesterday’s performance. Out.” She seemed to be in a temper.

  They played musical car seats. Clay got out and got into the back seat. Randy took the front passenger seat, looking smug.

  Clay felt pretty smug, too. Let him think he has an advantage, sharing the front seat with her when she’s like this.

  Randy could take the edge off her.

  And then Clay could soothe her.

  Jewel got in, handed her purse to Clay in the back seat, and banged the door. “Morons.”

  Nobody said anything while she turned on the traffic report, then switched to “Ask Your Shrink.”

  Ask Your Shrink was taking call-ins. “—Wife is never interested! Is that fair?”

  “No, it isn’t,” said the soothing voice of Your Shrink. “You could take her to dinner or a spa. Offer her chocolate. Get her drunk.”

  “It’s ruining my marriage!”

  “Or, if the marriage is more important than the sex, you can try taking salpetre to match your libido levels to hers—”

  Jewel slapped the radio button to off.

  “How was your first day at work?” Clay said.

  “Sucked. My boss is hot and knows it, the girls screw their bosses, and the office manager is a wimp. My best informant so far is taking child support, and pipe, from a man forty years too old for her.”

  “It must have been bad.”

  “Why do you say that?” she said dangerously, changing lanes and cutting off a taxi.

  “You’re driving crazy.”

  “Fucking moron!” she yelled at the taxi.

  “And swearing.”

  “Forced abstinence. Those girls—” She snorted. “I’d call them women, but they’re so desperately afraid to seem adult. They dress up like ice cream frappès to fucking type and answer the phone, they sneak and they backbite and they get chewed up in politics between the white guys in suits, they get sexually harassed, and then they lose their rag because I cuss a little.”