Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (14 page)

He
hung up before I’d got the first three digits out.

I sat
on the living room floor, looking at the phone. My mother died when I was
fifteen; there are still nights I wake up missing her so much that a physical
pain sucks at my diaphragm. But I’d rather have that pain every night of the
year than get to be sixty and still be swallowing an undigested lump of anger.

My
stomach interrupted my morose thoughts. My stomach was probably making me more
morose than the situation warranted—I hadn’t eaten breakfast and it was long
past lunchtime. The kitchen didn’t hold anything more appetizing than it had
earlier in the week. I changed into lightweight cotton pants and a T-shirt,
stopped at the Belmont Diner for a BLT with fries, and drove south.

Mitch’s
old address on Thirty-fifth Street proved to be another rooming house, but it
was quite a step up from Mrs. Polter’s. The house, a shabby white-painted
frame, was scrupulously clean, from the well-scrubbed stoop to the living room
where Ms. Coriolano talked to me. A woman of perhaps fifty, she explained that
she managed the place for her mother, who had started renting rooms when her
husband died falling from a scaffolding twenty years ago.

“It
was hard to live on social security then—now it’s impossible and Mama has
arthritis, she can’t walk, can’t get up the stairs no more.”

I
clucked sympathetically and brought the conversation around to Mitch. Ms.
Coriolano threw up her hands. He had lived with them for three years, brought
in by one of the other boarders, Jake Sokolowski. Such a responsible, reliable
man, of course they were happy to take in his friend, but Mr. Kruger never paid
his rent on time. Not once. And stumbling in drunk late at night, waking Mama,
who had trouble sleeping—what could she do? She gave him warning on warning,
extension on extension, but finally had to throw him out.

“He
set fire to the bedding in his sleep when he was drunk. We were lucky it was
one of Mama’s sleepless nights. She smelled smoke—she screamed—I woke up and
put the fire out myself. Otherwise we would all be sleeping on benches in Grant
Park right now.”

She
hadn’t seen Mitch since the morning after the fire, when she’d made him leave,
but she was happy for me to talk to Sokolowski. He was sitting in the minuscule
backyard, sleeping with the Sunday Herald-Star. I had met him three years
earlier when he joined Kruger and Mr. Contreras in trying to defend Lotty’s
clinic. When I woke him it was clear he didn’t recognize me, but like Mitch he
enthusiastically remembered the fight.

Mitch
being missing didn’t worry Sokolowski much. “Probably sleeping off a bender
someplace. It’s not like Sal to worry over a guy like Mitch. He must be
drinking too much of that swill he calls grappa.”

When
pressed, he thought back to the last time he’d seen Mitch. After much internal
debate he decided it had been last Monday afternoon. Mitch had stopped by to
persuade Jake to join him in a drink. “But I know what those drinks with Mitch
are like. The next thing you know he’s had ten and you either have to carry him
home or pay to repair a window.”

As
Tessie had suggested, Mitch had a regular bar near the Coriolano house, Paul’s
Place at the corner of Thirty-sixth and Seely. Jake was sure that’s where Mitch
would have gone on Monday. He resettled himself under the sports pages as I
headed back into the house.

I
thanked Ms. Coriolano for her help and walked over to Paul’s Place. It was a
sparely furnished storefront, more Spartan than Tessie’s, with a half-dozen men
watching the Sox on a small color set high on the wall behind the bar. The
bartender, a bald man in his sixties with big forearms and a tidy round
potbelly, chewed on a toothpick. He leaned against the wall at the end of the
bar, watching the game, bringing refills to his regulars but not paying any
attention to me.

I
waited respectfully until Ozzie Guillen turned a perfect double play, and then
brought out my threadbare inquiries. In a place where people knew Mitch well I
didn’t try to pass myself off as a niece, but explained that I was a friend of
Mr. Contreras. None of them knew him, but they all knew Mitch, as did the
bartender.

“I
know Tonia finally threw him out,” he offered, moving the toothpick to the
corner of his mouth. “He was around here trying to cadge a room. None of us
would bite: we know the guy too well.”

“When
did you see him last?”

They
debated it, but the Sox came to bat before they reached a conclusion. It wasn’t
Jack Morris’s lucky day: the Sox sent seven men to the plate and scored four
runs on a series of errors and Sammy Sosa’s double. The half-inning went on so
long that the group had forgotten me and Mitch Kruger. I brought them back to
the question of when they’d seen him last.

“It
had to be Monday,” the bartender finally said. “He bought drinks for everyone.
Mitch is a generous guy when he’s flush, so we ask him did he win big at
Hawthorne. He says no, but he’s going to be a rich guy before long and he isn’t
one to forget his friends.”

None
of them could add to that, although they murmured agreement—Mitch was generous
when he had money. After a week had passed they couldn’t remember where he’d
been heading when he left, or if he’d said anything else about what was going
to make him rich. I stayed long enough to see the Tigers go down in order in
the sixth before driving northeast to the Loop.

Ever
since phoning Dick on Friday night I’d been wondering what I could do about
Todd Pichea. After all, I’d told Dick I was on Pichea’s case. I could hardly
admit it was just bluster. Besides, I really did want to do something about the
little flea. But between agitation and humiliation

I
hadn’t been able to think of anything until I saw Jake Sokolowski dozing under
the Herald-Star.

The
South Loop hasn’t yet attracted the kind of chichi shops that stay open on
Sunday afternoons. I didn’t have any trouble parking in front of the Pulteney
Building. We don’t have a door man or a security guard to keep it open all
weekend. The crusty super, Tom Czarnik, locks the front door at noon on
Saturday and reopens it at seven on Monday morning. Occasionally he even
arranges for someone to run a mop around the lobby floor. I hunted among my
keys for the wide brass one that worked the front door dead bolt and wrestled
with the stiff lock. Every time I make a Sunday visit I vow to bring a can of
graphite with me to loosen the lock, but I do it so seldom that I forget
between trips.

Czarnik
had shut down the elevator power and locked the fire door at the bottom of the
stairs. He doesn’t do this because he’s safety conscious, but from a bitter
enmity against all the tenants. I’d long since managed to make keys for both
the elevator and the stairwell, but I took the stairs; the elevator’s too
chancy and I didn’t want to spend the next seventeen hours stuck in it.

Up in
my office I tried Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star. He wasn’t at work or at
home. I left messages at both places and pulled the cover from my mother’s old
Olivetti, the obsolete machine I use for bills and correspondence. It was one
of my few tangible legacies from her; its presence comforted me through my six
years at the University of Chicago. Even now I can’t bear to turn it in for a
computer, let alone an electric typewriter. Besides, using it keeps my gun
wrist strong.

I
thought carefully before I started to type.

Why
was Todd Pichea of Crawford, Mead, Wilton, and Dun-whittie so anxious to take
over the legal affairs of Harriet Frizell that he rushed a probate court
representative to her Cook County Hospital bedside? Why was his first action on
becoming her legal guardian to put her dogs to sleep? Was his sole aim in
making her his ward the power to kill her dogs? Or does he have designs on her
property as well? Does the firm of Crawford, Mead support Pichea’s action? And
if so, why? Inquiring minds want to know.

I
signed my name and made five copies—my concession to modernity is a desktop
copier. My own copy I stuck in a folder labeled prizell, which I placed in my
client files. I put another in an envelope to Murray. The other four I planned
to deliver in person: three at Dick’s firm—one to Dick himself, one to Todd,
and a third to Leigh Wilton, one of the senior partners whom I knew. The
original was addressed to the Chicago Lawyer.

I
drove over to the new building on LaSalle where Crawford, Mead had moved their
offices last year. It was one of my favorites in the West Loop, with a curved
amber facade that reflected the profile of the skyline at sunset. I wouldn’t
have minded an office there. It was second on my list of purchases, after a new
pair of Nikes.

The
guard in the lobby was watching the last of the Sox game; he motioned me toward
the sign-in sheet, but didn’t care much what I did as long as I didn’t
interrupt the final out. Only one elevator was turned on, its interior
upholstered in pale orange to match the building’s amber glass. It sucked me up
to the thirtieth floor, where it decanted me in about twenty seconds.

Crawford,
Mead had moved the carved wooden doors from their old headquarters. As soon as
you saw those massive doors, inlaid into gray worsted walls, you knew you’d be
paying three hundred dollars an hour for the privilege of whispering guilty
secrets to the high priests beyond.

The
doors were locked. I was tempted to pull out my picklocks and leave my messages
on my targets’ desks personally, but I heard muffled voices on the far side of
the doors. No doubt juniors hard at work, adding to the firm’s blood supply,
its billable hours. The door didn’t have a mail slot. I moistened the tips of
the envelopes and stuck them to the door, with Dick’s and Todd’s and Leigh
Wilton’s names typed in black and underlined in red. I felt a bit like Martin
Luther taking on the pope at Wittenberg.

The
Chicago Lawyer’s offices were closed. After dropping the original through their
mail slot, I felt I’d earned real food for a change. I stopped at a supermarket
and loaded up on fruit and vegetables, new yogurt, staples, and a selection of
meat and chicken for the freezer. They had some fresh-looking salmon in their
fish case. I bought enough for two and grilled some for Mr. Contreras on my
miniature back porch.

Before
bringing him up-to-date on my search for Mitch Kruger, I had to tell him about
Mrs. Frizell’s dogs. He was angry and miserable at the same time.

“I
know you don’t think I can handle Peppy, but why couldn’t you bring the dogs
over here? They could’ve hung out in the back and not gotten in anyone’s way.”

By
the time he finished I was feeling wretched myself. I should have made better
arrangements for them; I just didn’t expect Todd Pichea to move so fast, or so
cruelly.

“I’m
sorry,” I said inadequately. “You’d think after all these years I’ve worked
with human slime I’d have been prepared for him and Chrissie. Somehow you never
expect it to happen in your own neighborhood, though.”

He
patted my hand. “Yeah, doll, I know. I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just
the thought of those poor helpless animals—and then you think, heck, it could
be Peppy and her puppies… But I don’t mean to pound on you harder than you are
on yourself. What are you going to do? About them Picheas, I mean.”

I
told him what I’d done this afternoon. He was disappointed—he’d hoped for
something more direct and violent. In the end he agreed that we had to move
cautiously—and with the law. After a few glasses of grappa he left, somber, but
not as outraged as I’d feared.

I had
planned to make the probate court my first stop Monday morning, but before my
alarm rang Dick was on the phone to me. It was only seven-thirty. His light,
barking baritone pounded my eardrums before I was awake enough to sort out the
harangue.

“Hold
on, Dick. You woke me up. Can I call you back in ten minutes?”

“No,
you goddamned well cannot. How dare you go pasting envelopes on our office
door? Didn’t anyone ever tell you about the mail?”

I sat
up in bed and rubbed my eyes. “Oh, it’s not the content you object to, but the
paste on the firm’s sacred doors? I’ll come over with an S.O.S. pad and scrub
them down.”

“Yes,
I damned well do object to the contents. How dare you make a totally private
matter public in this way? Fortunately I got here before Leigh did and took his
copy—”

“Good
thing I brought them in person,” I interrupted. “You could be facing arrest for
tampering with the mail instead of just charges of vulgarity for lifting
someone else’s correspondence.”

He
swept past my interruption. “I have a call in to August Dickerson at the
Lawyer. He’s a personal friend; I think I can count on him to quash any mention
of Todd’s private affairs.”

“Why
can’t you just say ‘suppress’?” I asked irritably. “Aren’t you past the age
where you need to show how many wonderful legal terms you know? You make me
think of the Northwestern medical residents who always wear their doctor gowns
to the grocery store across the street… Can you really keep the Chicago Lawyer
from printing my letter? What about the Herald-Star? Is Marshall Townley also a
personal friend? Or is he just a client of Crawford, Mead?” Townley published
the paper.