Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (5 page)

Mr. Contreras
led me into his living room. Peppy was still stretched behind the sofa, but the
old man had cleaned up her nest, giving her a fresh stack of soft sheets to lie
on. The eight fur balls were squirming at her nipples, squeaking a little if
one got pushed aside by another’s greed. Peppy looked at me and thumped her
tail to show we were still friends, but her total attention was on her babies,
too blind and helpless to survive without her.

“Every
now and then she gets up to go out, but only for thirty seconds, then it’s back
to her station. What a champ. My, oh my.” Mr. Contreras smacked his lips. “Of
course, I feed her regular, just like the doc said, so don’t you go worrying
about her.”

“I’m
not.” I knelt cautiously next to the nursery and stuck my hand slowly behind
the couch, giving Peppy time to growl me off if she wanted to. She watched
warily as I stroked her babies. I longed to pick one up—their tiny bodies would
just about fit in the palm of my hand—but didn’t want to alarm her. She seemed
relieved when I stood back up.

“So
where’s the fire?” I asked. “Your old buddy steal Clara’s silver or something?”
Mr. Contreras’s dead wife had left behind a pair of candlesticks and a silver
salt shaker which he never used but couldn’t bring himself to pass on to his
daughter.

“No,
nothin‘ like that. But I want you to talk to him. He’s got something on his
mind that he’s acting awful cute about. I don’t have time to figure out what
he’s driving at. Besides, it ain’t good for the princess to have him drinking
around her babies, and then snoring all night on the couch right over her head
the way he does. I need to get him out of here today.”

“I
can’t get the guy into A.A., my friend.”

“And
I ain’t asking you to. Crying out loud, you jump to conclusions faster’n a flea
trying to reach the dog.”

“Why
don’t you tell me what the problem is, then, instead of dancing around
it—listening to you is like hearing a mosquito buzz away for an hour while you
wonder where it’s going to land.”

“There’s
no call for that kind of language, cookie, no call at all. You don’t mind my
saying so, but sometimes you’re a little bit fresh.”

I
rolled my eyes but bit back a snappy retort. At this rate I’d be here all day
and I didn’t have a day to spend on it.

“What
seems to be troubling Mr. Kruger?” I asked primly.

Mr.
Contreras scratched the back of his head. “That’s what I can’t exactly figure
out. I thought maybe you could talk to him, being as you’re a trained
investigator and all. See, him and me used to work together out at Diamond
Head—you know, the engine makers on Damen down by the river. Then we retired,
but we picked the wrong year to do it, back in seventy-nine when inflation was
so rough, and our pensions, which seemed good enough at the time, couldn’t keep
up. I wasn’t so bad off, because I owned my house, and then when Clara died I
bought this place, but Mitch kind of outdrank his, and he also don’t have my
luck at the track. Or more to the point, he don’t have my self-control.” He
started for the kitchen as though that explained everything.

“Sorry,”
I said. “I’m short on sleep and can’t make the connection.”

Mr.
Contreras stopped to look at me in exasperation. “So he needs money, of
course.”

“Of
course,” I agreed, trying to keep a sharp edge out of my voice. “What’s he
doing to get it that has you so worried? Holding up 7-Elevens?”

“Of
course he ain’t, doll. Use your head. Would I let someone like that into the
building here?” He stopped a minute, sucking his cheeks in. “Trouble is, I
don’t know what he might be doing. Long as I’ve known him, which is a long time
now, Mitch’s always had some scheme or other going. And now he thinks he’s got
a way to make Diamond Head put him back on the payroll.”

Mr.
Contreras snorted. “I ask you! It isn’t even as if any of the guys we used to
know was still there. They’re all retired or been kicked out or whatever. And
between you and me, he wouldn’t have been kept on the last three years if we
hadn’t had such a tight local. But. nowadays? With the shape he’s in and guys
half our age pounding the sidewalks looking for machine work? But he’s making a
big old mystery out of it, so I thought of you. Where there’s a mystery, you
like to be poking your nose into it.”

Something
about the story didn’t ring quite true to me. I rubbed my eyes, hoping to bring
life into my fuzzy brain.

“What
is it you really want to know? Why do you care if Kruger’s panhandling out at
Diamond Head?”

Mr.
Contreras took out his giant red handkerchief and rubbed his nose. “Mitch and
me grew up together down in McKinley Park. We went to school together, we ran
with the same gang, fought the same guys, all that stuff. We even signed our
apprenticeship papers the same day. He ain’t much, but he’s about all I got
left from that time in my life. I don’t want to see him make a goddam fool of
himself in front of the bosses. I’d like to know what he’s up to.”

He
spoke in a fast, mumbly voice that I had to strain to hear, as if he were
embarrassed to admit sentiment or affection for Kruger. I was touched by both
his feelings and his awkwardness.

“I
can’t promise you anything, but at least I can talk to him.”

Mr.
Contreras blew his nose with a final flourish. “I knew I could count on you,
doll.”

He’d
left Mitch Kruger in the kitchen reading the Sun-Times, but when we got there
the back door was open and his friend was nowhere in sight. A plate of fried
eggs, cold grease glistening on them, sat in front of the newspaper. Kruger had
apparently eaten a few bites before something made him decide to take a hike.

“He
has got problems, hasn’t he?” I said affably. Mr. Contreras’s generous mouth
set in a hard line. “I told him a hunnert times he can’t go off and leave the
door open. This ain’t some high-priced suburb where the people coming in your
back door are the same ones you’d invite in through the front if you thought of
it.”

He
stomped over to bolt the door, then opened it wide. “There you are, Kruger. I
went and got my neighbor, see if she could understand what you’re driving at.
She’s a detective, like I told you—Vic Warshawski. All you had to do was sit on
your butt and eat your eggs and wait for her. That too much to ask?”

Kruger
smiled fuzzily. It was obvious that he’d walked down to Frankie’s Shortstop Inn
on the corner for a few quick ones. By the smell it was bourbon, but it
could’ve been rye.

“Told
you to mind your own business, Sal,” Mitch mumbled. It took me a moment to
remember that my neighbor’s first name was Salvatore.

“Don’t
want any detectives butting their noses into my affairs. No offense to
you”—Kruger nodded at me—“but detectives mean cops and cops mean union
busting.”

“If
it ain’t just like you to get so stewed you can’t think straight.” Mr.
Contreras was harassed. “First you clean me out of grappa, and if that wasn’t
bad enough you got to get pie-eyed first thing in the morning. She ain’t a cop.
You know her—we helped her out a couple years back, took on them thugs outside
the doc’s clinic. You remember.”

Kruger
smiled happily. “Oh, that was a good one, all right. Last good fight I was in.
You need some more help, young lady? That why you’re here?”

I
eyed him narrowly: he wasn’t as drunk as he wanted me to think. If he’d cleaned
Mr. Contreras out of grappa and was strong enough to go out for a few shots, he
had a granite head, anyway.

“Now,
look here, Mitch. You went on all last night about how you was going to stick
it to the bosses, make them see reason, although what about I can’t quite
figure. Seems to me we got some pretty good deals, even if we did have to fight
every step of the way to win them.”

He
turned to me. “I’m sorry, doll. Sorry to drag you out of bed just to see Kruger
act like a prize turkey waiting for them to announce the Thanksgiving
executions.”

Kruger
bristled at that. “I’m no turkey, Sal. You better believe I know what I’m
talking about. And if you think we got some good deals you’re just being a scab
and a stooge. What kind of benefits do guys get now? They have to negotiate pay
cuts just to keep their jobs, while the bosses drive Japanese cars and laugh
‘cause they’re doing all they can to take more jobs away from more Americans.
All I’m saying is I can put a stop to that bullshit. You want to grudge me your
liquor, fine, but I’ll get you Martell and Courvoisier, you won’t have to drink
that turpentine you swill no more.”

“That
ain’t turpentine,” Mr. Contreras snapped. “It’s what my daddy drank and my
granddaddy before him.”

Kruger
winked at me. “Yeah, and look what happened to them. Both dead, ain’t they?
Now, there’s no need to bother the young lady, Sal. I know what I know and
there isn’t anything for her to investigate, or whatever you want her to do.
But see here, Vic,” he added, “you need any help in a fight, you just let me
know. Been a long time since I had as much fun as I did that day Sal and I came
out to help you and your doctor friend.”

Definitely
not as drunk as he wanted us to believe if he could snatch my name out of Mr.
Contreras’s diatribe and hang on to it.

“I
don’t think I’m needed here,” I told my neighbor, interupting a catalog of the
occasions on which Mitch Kruger had been wrong. These ranged from Kruger’s
belief that he could drink Mr. Contreras under the table on his—Mr.
Contreras’s—fiftieth birthday, and the disaster that occurred when
he—Kruger—failed to do so, to Kruger’s mistake in backing Betty-by-Golly
against Ragged Rose at Hawthorne in 1975.

Mr.
Contreras switched his frown to me but didn’t try to stop me when I walked out
the back door to go up to my own kitchen. As I made some fresh coffee I thought
briefly about Kruger. I couldn’t get myself excited about his broad hints of
malfeasance at Diamond Head. He’d been mooching around hoping for some kind of
handout and would be too ashamed to admit that. If they gave him a brush-off he
would exaggerate his grievance with a drunk’s paranoia, talking about a revenge
that would never materialize.

Maybe
someone at Diamond Head was siphoning off inventory, or tools—it wouldn’t be
the only plant in Chicago where that happened. But if he thought he could
blackmail them into cutting him in on some penny-ante deal, it was just typical
drunken mush. And it was more likely that he’d imagined the whole thing.

By
the time I finished my exercises and started to jog up Belmont it was past
eleven. The heels of my running shoes were so worn down that I had to move
slowly on concrete to save my knees. The sides had frayed, too, and weren’t
giving my ankles good support. Someone who runs as much as I do should buy a
new pair every four months. These had gone seven and I was trying to stretch
them to nine. My share of Peppy’s vet bills had eaten away my spring
discretionary money; I just didn’t have ninety bucks to spare for a new pair of
Nikes.

Most
of the people I’d gone to law school with would have been at work for three
hours or more by now. And most of them, as Freeman Carter had implied last
night, didn’t have to defer a new pair of Nikes because their stupid neighbor
let the dog off the leash while she was in heat.

I
stopped in front of Mrs. Frizell’s house to frown at the cause of my financial
woes. The black Lab and the earmuff had been in back, whining and scratching at
the door, but when they heard me they raced to the front to bark at me. Inside
the house I could see two other noses push underneath the ratty shade to join
in the barking.

“Why
don’t you do something useful?” I scolded the Lab. “Get a job, do something to
support the family you started. Or go steal me a pair of running shoes from
Todd Pichea over there.”

Pichea
was the lawyer who wanted the neighborhood improvement association to take Mrs.
Frizell to court. His frame house had been restored to a state of immaculate
Victoriana, painted an eggshell tan with scalloped trim in bright reds and
greens. And the yard, with its early-flowering shrubs and tightly manicured
turf, enhanced the raffish-ness of Mrs. Frizell’s weed bin. It was only
perversity that made me prefer the old woman’s place.

The
Lab wagged his tail in genial agreement, barked at me a few times, and returned
to the back. The earmuff followed. I wondered idly where Mrs. Frizell was; I’d
half expected her to appear behind the noses in the front window, shaking an
angry fist at me.

I did
my five miles to the harbor and back and forgot about the woman and her dogs.
In the afternoon I forced myself to do some routine assignments for regular
clients. Daraugh Graham, my steadiest and best-paying customer, called at
four-thirty. He wasn’t happy with the credentials of a man he wanted to
promote. He wanted information on Clint Moss by the next afternoon, which made
me grind my teeth—but quietly. Besides Peppy’s bills and new running shoes I
had payments on the Trans Am and my apartment to keep up.

I
wrote what information he had about Moss onto a form and labeled a manila
folder with a dark-red magic marker so it would jump out of the desk at me in
the morning. That was the best I could do for the day. As I typed up bills for
the two jobs I’d finished the phone rang again. I was tempted to let it go, but
heightened consciousness of my fiscal state made me answer it. Carol Alvarado
was on the line. I wished I’d let it go.