Tunnel Vision (V.I. Warshawski Novels) - Hardcover

Paretsky, Sara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038529932X ISBN 13: 9780385299329

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1994

Synopsis

Stubbornness has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office.  With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors.  Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear.  Worst of all, she's been implicated in a murder--after the body of Deirdre Messenger, a prominent lawyer's wife, turns up sprawled across her desk.

V.I., who had volunteered with Deirdre at a women's shelter, suspects her death is linked to a case of upper-class domestic abuse so slickly concealed that the police refuse to believe it.  Increasingly at odds with the cops, V.I. is blindly plunging ahead after the truth.  And her path may lead to corruption at the highest levels.or deep into the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago's streets, where secrets are hiding in the dark like a child's--or V.I.'s--worst nightmare.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office. With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors. Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear. Worst of all, she's been implicated in a murder--after the body of Deirdre Messenger, a prominent lawyer's wife, turns up sprawled across her desk.

V.I., who had volunteered with Deirdre at a women's shelter, suspects her death is linked to a case of upper-class domestic abuse so slickly concealed that the police refuse to believe it. Increasingly at odds with the cops, V.I. is blindly plunging ahead after the truth. And her path may lead to corruption at the highest levels.or deep into the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago's streets, where secrets are hiding in the dark like a child's--or V.I.'s--worst nightmare.

Reviews

Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski (Guardian Angel, 1992, etc.) discovers frail, frightened Tamar Hawkings and her three children living in the rat-infested basement of V.I.'s soon-to-be-abandoned office building. Seeking help for the family from the city's shelter organizations, V.I. comes across some odd information about a small group of women in construction trades seeking a contract to build low-cost housing. Something is going on that connects one- time radical Jasper Heccomb; Alec Gantner, a senator's son whose family has megaholdings in an agricultural concern called Gant-Ag; banker Donald Blakely; and law professor Fabian Messenger. An invitation to the Messengers' party brings V.I. into close contact with Fabian's dysfunctional family; and in the party's aftermath, wife Deirdre is found bludgeoned to death in V.I.'s office while teenaged daughter Emily has vanished with two younger brothers in tow. Chaos is furthered by flooded tunnels deep below Chicago's streets, a theatrical backdrop for V.I.'s rescue of the children, with help from valiant neighbor Contreras. The wind-up of the big scam, on Gant-Ag's airfield, is equally melodramatic, ending an overstuffed saga that's as much fun to read as your newspaper on a bad day. Strictly overkill for a heroine gone from hard-edged to hard- bitten and a creative writer on a self-indulgent rampage. (Literary Guild main selection; Mystery Guild selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

YA?The world seems to be caving in on V.I. Warshawski?the building that houses her office is dilapidated; her bills are mounting rapidly; and the one client who is saving her from financial collapse insists that she find his computer-hacking son a community service job to keep him out of jail. Added to this is her concern about a homeless family living in her soon-to-be condemned building. The family takes on greater significance when an acquaintance of Warshawski's is murdered in her office. She strongly suspects the victim's spouse, but on her way to proving his guilt more obstacles arise that jeopardize her investigation. While certainly a fine mystery, this book also addresses the social issues of child abuse and homelessness, illegal aliens, political power, and payoffs. Paretsky has again woven a tale of intrigue that's sure to keep readers engrossed.?Diane Goheen, Topeka West High School,
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As prickly and principled as ever, Chicago's preeminent female PI, V.I. Warshawski, forcefully unravels several knotted mysteries in Paretsky's ( Guardian Angel ) latest complex, satisfying novel. V.I. encounters a homeless woman and her children in the basement of her derelict downtown office building. When she mentions the family at a board meeting of a shelter for abused women, board member Deirdre Messenger offers to seek help from Home Free, another organization she is involved with. Soon, however, Deirdre's bludgeoned body is found in V.I.'s office. Setting out to find the murderer, the almost-40 detective gradually uncovers a mammoth financial scam that may link the dead woman's husband (an ambitious University of Chicago Law School professor), the ranking U.S. Senator from Illinois, a Chicago bank owner and Home Free's director, a radical activist who was at law school with V.I. in the '60s. Equally compelling--to V.I. and the reader--are the plights of the homeless family and of the Messenger children, teenaged Emily and her two young brothers, who disappear soon after their mother's death. Breaking laws and alienating friends--including her lover Conrad, a Chicago police detective--V.I. faces down rats in high places and low, from the cornfields of the Senator's agribusiness to the tunnels, deep under the Chicago Loop, flooded by a water-main break. Paretsky's V.I. is a rare literary entity, a woman quick to anger and action, yet sympathetic and credible. Literary Guild, Mystery Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

V. I. Warshawski, perhaps the most popular of the "new breed" of female private investigators, is back in what is without a doubt her best adventure yet, a complex, authentic, and gripping story that shows our heroine at both her bravest and most vulnerable. V. I. is not afraid to take on controversial subjects--spouse and child abuse, the homeless, incest, interracial couples, self-help groups, and alternative lifestyles. Nor is she afraid of taking pot shots at corrupt politicians, big government, political coverups, and the idle rich. This time out, she's up against all of the above and more as part of a group of community activists helping the homeless, the helpless, and the heartbroken. Trouble is, for every do-gooder, there's a crooked politician or corrupt official who's using the system to get rich quick. When one of V. I.'s do-gooder friends is murdered, V. I. is convinced the victim's law-prof husband is the killer. But the more she digs, the more confusing and convoluted the case becomes. Before it's over, V. I. is mugged, shot, burned, battered, and bruised; the whole of the Chicago police force is mad at her; she's offended at least one influential senator; and a giant agricultural conglomerate is ready to sue her. Good thing V. I. is brave, brash, tough, resilient, good-hearted, and so darn bent on stamping out injustice that she survives it all. A whopping good story that will have Paretsky's millions of fans screaming for more. Emily Melton

Popular sleuth V.I. Warshawsky investigates a homeless advocates' group in the ninth installment of Paretsky's best-selling mystery series.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

TUNNEL VISION

Chapter 1: Power Failure

When the power went I was finishing a ten-page report. My office turned black; the computer groaned to a halt. Helpless, I watched my words fade to a ghostly outline that glowed on the screen before vanishing, like the mocking grin of a Cheshire cat.

        I cursed myself  and the building owners impartially. If I'd stuck with my mother's old Olivetti instead of going electronic I could have finished mywork by candlelight and left. But if the Culpepper brothers weren't scuttling the Pulteney Building the power wouldn't have gone off.

        I'd had my office there for ten years, so long I'd come to overlook its litany of ills. Decades of grime obscured the bas-reliefs on the brass doors and filled in missing chips in the lobby's marble floor; great chunks of plaster were missing from the cornices in the upper floors; three ladies' rooms served the whole building, and the toilets backed up more often than they worked. For that matter, I'd just about memorized the design on the elevator panels during the hours I'd been stuck in it.

    All these evils were made palatable by the Pulteney's low rents. I should have realized long since that the Culpepper boys were waiting for the wave of Loop redevelopment to wash this far south, waiting for the day when the building would be worth more dead than alive. The dickering we did every fall, in which I walked away triumphant without a rent hike and they left without agreeing to put in new plumbing or wiring, should have been a warning to a detective like me who specializes in fraud, arson, and commercial misbehavior. But as with many of my clients, cash flow was too insistent a problem for me to look beyond relief from my immediate woes.

        The building had already been one-third empty when the Culpeppers handed out their notice at New Year's. They tried first to bribe, then to force, the rest of us into leaving. Some did, but tenants who could take the Pulteney couldn't easily afford new space. Hard times were pushing everyone who operates in the margins right off the page. As a private eye in a solo practice, I felt the pinch as much as anyone. Along with a hatmaker, a dealer in oriental health and beauty aids, someone who might have been a bookie, an addressing firm, and a few others, I was sticking it out to the bitter end.

        I picked up my flashlight and moved with the speed of much practice through the dark hall to the stairwell. The report I'd been writing had to be in Darraugh Graham's hands by eight tomorrow. If I could find a faulty wire or blown fuse fast enough, I could pull in enough material from my data files to reconstruct the essentials. Otherwise I'd have to start from the beginning on the Olivetti.

        I undid the locks on the stairwell door but left them open against my return. With Tom Czarnik gone I'd put padlocks on the doors that all worked to the same key. Czarnik, who'd been the super--alleged super--during my tenure in the building, had done nothing for the last two years but deliver angry tirades against the tenants, so it was no hardship to manage without him. In fact it had dawned on me lately that the Culpeppers probably paid him to speed the Pulteney's disintegration.

        The brothers were certainly doing what they could to drive our feeble group out ahead of schedule. They'd halted any pretense of maintenance immediately. Next they tried turning off the utilities; a court order restored electricity and water. Now it was just their negligence and sabotage against our wits--mostly, it must be confessed, mine. While the other tenants had signed on to the emergency petition to restore power, none of them ever came below stairs with me to mess with the wiring and plumbing.

        Today overconfidence did me in. I was so used to the basement stairs that I didn't shine a light on my feet. I tripped on a loose piece of plaster. As I flailed to regain my balance I dropped the flash. I could hear the glass shatter as it bounced off the steps.

        I took a breath. Was Darraugh Graham's wrath worth worrying about at this point? Wouldn't it make sense to go home, get a new flash, and deal with the power in themorning? Besides, I wanted to get to a meeting of the board I sit on for a battered women's shelter.

        Trouble was, Darraugh's fee was going toward my deposit for a new office. If I didn't deliver on time, there was nothing to keep him coming back to me--he worked with a number of investigative firms, most of them twenty times my size.

        I moved crablike down the stairs. I had a work light and a toolbox stowed by the electrical box on the far wall. If I could get there without breaking my neck on the intervening rubble I'd be okay. My real fear was the rats: they knew the place belonged to them now. When I shone my flash on them they would saunter slowly from the circle of light, flipping their tails with oily insolence, but making no effort to silence their scrabbling while I worked.

        I was fumbling in the dark for an outlet, trying not to feel whiskers in every piece of dangling wire, when I realized a sound I was hearing came from human, not rodent, lips. I froze. The hair stood up on my arms. Had the Culpeppers hired thugs to frighten me into leaving? Or were these thieves, thinking the building vacant, come to strip copper and other valuables from the walls?

        I knelt slowly in the dark and shifted to my right, where a packing case filled with wood scraps would give me cover. I strained to listen. There was more than one person in the room. One of them sounded on the verge of an asthmatic attack. They were as scared as I was. That didn't cheer me: a frightened burglar may behave more violently than one who feels he's in charge of the situation.

        I moved farther to my right, where some discarded pipes might provide a weapon. One of the intruders whimpered and was instantly silenced. The noise startled me into banging into the stack of pipes; they clattered around me like a steel band. It didn't matter: that brief cry had come from a small child. I backtracked to my work light, found the plug, and switched on the bulb.

        Even after my eyes had adjusted to the light it took some time to find the source of the cry. I poked cautiously among crates and old office furniture. I peered into the elevator shaft and looked underneath the stairwell. I was beginning to wonder if I'd imagined it when the muffled cry came again.

        A woman was crouched behind the boiler. Three children huddled next to her. The youngest was shaking almost soundlessly, its face buried in her leg, an occasional squeak emerging when it shuddered too violently. The biggest, who couldn't have been more than nine or ten, was letting out asthmatic whoops, in earnest now that their terrors had come true: discovery by someone with power.

        If it hadn't been for the asthma and the whimpering I could have passed them a dozen times in the dim light without noticing them. They were dressed in layers of sweaters and jackets that turned their emaciated bodies into heaps of rags.

"This damp air down here can't be too good for your son."It was so feeble a comment, I felt a fool as soon as the words were out.

        The woman stared at me dumbly. In the dim light I couldn't tell what part of the soup of anger and fear was boiling closer to the surface.

"Ain't a boy."The middle child spoke, in such a soft gabble I could barely make out the words. "That Jessie. She a girl. I the only boy."

"Well, maybe we should get Jessie up where she can breathe some dry air. What's your name, honey?"

"Don't talk to her. Ain't I told you, don't talk to no one unless you hear me say  "talk'?" The woman shook the boy hard and he subsided against her with a thin halfhearted wail.

        The shadows cast by the boiler turned her face and hair gray. She couldn't have been very old, maybe not even thirty, but if I'd passed her on the street without her children I would have taken her for seventy.

"How long have you been living down here?"

        She gave me a hard stare but said nothing. She could have watched me come and go a dozen times; she'd know I was on my own, that not too much could threaten her down here.

"They're tearing the place down in six weeks," I said.

"You know that?" She stared at me fiercely but didn't move her head.

"Look. It's not my business if you want to camp out down here. But you know it's bad for your kids. Bad for their eyes, their lungs, their morale. If you want to take Jessie to a doctor for her asthma, I know one who'll look at her for nothing."

        I waited a long pause but still got no answer. "I've got to work on the wiring right now, and then I'm going back to my office. Four-oh-seven. If you change your mind about the doctor, come up there and I'll take you. Any time."

        I moved back to the electrical panel. The Culpeppers sometimes deliberately sliced wire...

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 038529932X
• ISBN 13: 9780385299329
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432