Windy City Blues Read Online Free

indiscretion.” It was signed with his full name.
    I wondered now if he’d been my mother’s lover. My stomach tightened, as it does when you think of your parents stepping outside their prescribed roles, and I folded the paper back into the envelope. Fifteen years ago the same notion must have prompted me to put his letter inside
Don Giovanni
. For want of a better idea I stuck it back in the score and returned everything to the trunk. I needed to rummage through a different carton to find my own birth certificate, and it was getting too late in the morning for me to indulge in nostalgia.

II
    Malcolm Ranier’s office overlooked the Chicago River and all the new glass and marble flanking it. It was a spectacular view—if you squinted to shut out the burnt-out waste of Chicago’s west side that lay beyond. I arrived just at twelve-thirty, dressed in myone good suit, black, with a white crepe-de-chine blouse. I looked feminine, but austere—or at least that was my intention.
    Ranier’s assistant-cum-receptionist was buried in Danielle Steel. When I handed her my card, she marked her page without haste and took the card into an inner office. After a ten-minute wait to let me understand his importance, Ranier came out to greet me in person. He was a soft round man of about sixty, with gray eyes that lay like pebbles above an apparently jovial smile.
    “Ms. Warshawski. Good of you to stop by. I understand you can help us with our inquiry into Mrs. Sestieri.” He gave my mother’s name a genuine Italian lilt, but his voice was as hard as his eyes.
    “Hold my calls, Cindy.” He put a hand on the nape of my neck to steer me into his office.
    Before we’d shut the door Cindy was reabsorbed into Danielle. I moved away from the hand—I didn’t want grease on my five-hundred-dollar jacket—and went to admire a bronze nymph on a shelf at the window.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it.” Ranier might have been commenting on the weather. “One of my clients brought it from France.”
    “It looks as though it should be in a museum.”
    A call to the bar association before I left my apartment told me he was an import-export lawyer. Various imports seemed to have attached themselves tohim on their way into the country. The room was dominated by a slab of rose marble, presumably a work table, but several antique chairs were also worth a second glance. A marquetry credenza stood against the far wall. The Modigliani above it was probably an original.
    “Coffee, Ms.”—he glanced at my card again—“Warshawski?”
    “No, thank you. I understand you’re very busy, and so am I. So let’s talk about Gabriella Sestieri.”
    “D’accordo.”
He motioned me to one of the spindly antiques near the marble slab. “You know where she is?”
    The chair didn’t look as though it could support my hundred and forty pounds, but when Ranier perched on a similar one I sat, with a wariness that made me think he had them to keep people deliberately off balance. I leaned back and crossed my legs. The woman at ease.
    “I’d like to make sure we’re talking about the same person. And that I know why you want to find her.”
    A smile crossed his full lips, again not touching the slate chips of his eyes. “We could fence all day, Ms. Warshawski, but as you say, time is valuable to us both. The Gabriella Sestieri I seek was born in Pitigliano on October thirtieth, 1921. She left Italy sometime early in 1941, no one knows exactly when, but she was last heard of in Siena that February. And there’s some belief she came to Chicago. As to why Iwant to find her, a relative of hers, now in Florence, but from the Pitigliano family, is interested in locating her. My specialty is import-export law, particularly with Italy: I’m no expert in finding missing persons, but I agreed to assist as a favor to a client. The relative—Mrs. Sestieri’s relative—has a professional connection to my client. And now it is your turn, Ms. Warshawski.”
    “Ms.