Washburn meets the Great Atte fountain

The confrontation at Buckingham Fountain brings V. I. Warshawski face to face with Art Jurshak, an influential alderman whose family history and insurance business intersect with several of her investigations. Warshawski tries to turn what she knows into leverage: she confronts him about his abuse of a niece, Caroline’s parentage, a Xerxes insurance report, and Nancy Cleghorn’s sighting of him with Steve Dresberg. The exchange exposes the scope of her suspicions, but not the answers she wants. Jurshak leaves without confessing, and Warshawski walks away frustrated by the advantage his experience and political reach give him.

Setting and Stakes

The meeting takes place in Grant Park on a winter afternoon. The park is nearly empty beneath a dull sky; discarded chip bags and whiskey bottles lie among dead leaves. Warshawski waits in the rose garden on the south side of the fountain, perched on a statue’s base with her Smith & Wesson in her jacket pocket and her thumb on the safety. Intermittent drizzle and the damp chill have numbed her ungloved fingers. She has left off gloves so she can handle the gun quickly, yet by the time Jurshak arrives she is not sure she could fire it. The weapon establishes the danger surrounding the encounter, while her physical discomfort undercuts any sense that she controls the situation.

Around a quarter to three, a limousine drops Jurshak and a companion on Lake Shore Drive, then circles toward Monroe and stops about a quarter mile from the fountain. Warshawski waits to see whether anyone will get out and watch or take aim before crossing back into the park. Jurshak initially scans the area for his son, Art, and only turns his attention to Warshawski when he realizes she means to speak with him. His companion, Manny, stays nearby until Jurshak sends him back to the car. The meeting is therefore both a private confrontation and a wary negotiation conducted in a public place, with an armed investigator facing a politically connected man accompanied by a guard.

The Family Secret

Warshawski first redirects Jurshak’s demand to know where his son is being held. She tells him that Art came to her on Saturday afraid for his life, after saying that his father had told his mother he was as good as dead for letting Warshawski obtain a report he had filed for Xerxes with Mariners Rest. Warshawski says Art is somewhere safe, but makes clear that she has not come to discuss him. She wants to speak about Jurshak’s daughter—and asks that his companion leave them alone.

Jurshak insists that Art is his only child and threatens to bring in the police. Warshawski counters by invoking a quarter-century-old family history: Jurshak’s sister’s daughters, and the afternoons when one niece danced for him while her father was away at work. The accusation changes Jurshak’s expression from anger to fear, and he orders Manny to wait in the car. Once they are alone, Warshawski names the abuse directly and tells Jurshak that Ed Djiak and Martha Djiak have given her the story. She adds that Caroline’s marked physical resemblance to him would make the allegation easy to pursue publicly. Her threat is to expose that Jurshak molested a child and that Caroline is both his daughter and his great-niece. He answers that she cannot prove it; he does not leave, but neither does he confirm the accusation.

Insurance and Nancy Cleghorn

Warshawski expands the confrontation beyond the family secret, listing Louisa Djiak’s mortgage, her own experience in the mud at Dead Stick Pond, and Nancy Cleghorn. She watches Jurshak’s response and notices that Nancy’s name seems to unsettle him more than Louisa’s. She then raises the report he filed for Xerxes with Mariners Rest, suspecting that Jurshak has manipulated insurance payments so he can keep the difference between what is charged and what is paid. The exchange presents this as Warshawski’s accusation, not a proven scheme; Jurshak dismisses her and demands to know what she is talking about.

A remembered detail about Joey Pankowski gives Warshawski another line of inquiry. Pankowski’s mother had told her of her financial troubles and said that Joey had left no insurance. Warshawski reasons that Xerxes offered noncontributory group life insurance, but that the coverage might have been term insurance and might not have applied because he was no longer with the company when he died. She asks Jurshak why Joey received no life insurance. Jurshak disclaims knowledge, though Warshawski believes his composure briefly falters. She recognizes that she has not yet established enough to press the point, and says she can find out by speaking with the carrier or other employees.

Nancy supplies a separate pressure point. Warshawski says Nancy saw Jurshak and Dresberg together at Jurshak’s office and warns that an insurance commissioner might not tolerate an alderman’s association with organized crime. Jurshak says he did not know Nancy apart from what he read in the papers about her death. He acknowledges that he sometimes spoke with Dresberg, explaining that Dresberg did substantial business in his ward and that an alderman could not avoid every unsavory contact. When Warshawski asks whether he would mind the late-night meeting becoming public, he challenges her to prove it. She replies that a witness is the source of her knowledge and that the witness is still alive. The warning does not make him disclose what happened.

The Stalemate and Its Significance

The meeting closes without a confession or a decisive breakthrough. Even the surviving witness does not shake Jurshak enough for Warshawski to pry anything from him. She feels frustrated and too young for the job, measuring herself against a man who has had far more experience taking political heat. Rather than voice the angry promise she imagines, she tells him she will be in touch and walks toward Lake Shore Drive. From across the traffic she watches him stand still for a long moment, then shake himself and head back to his limousine.

The scene’s reversals are deliberately incomplete. Jurshak’s fear when Warshawski recalls his nieces suggests that the family accusation has struck home, but his denial leaves it contested within the encounter. His apparent reaction to Joey Pankowski’s missing insurance raises suspicion without resolving the coverage question. Nancy’s reported sighting gives Warshawski a witness, yet Jurshak’s challenge exposes the difference between possessing a lead and being able to make it count against a powerful adversary. The park meeting therefore advances several investigations at once while preserving their uncertainties. Warshawski has forced Jurshak to hear the risks attached to his family history and business dealings, but she leaves without the evidence or admission needed to turn pressure into a result.