Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (8 page)

The
dogs greeted me with a combination of suspicion and delight. They rushed up to
me when I opened the door, then backed down the hall toward the kitchen,
growling and making menacing forays. Since the Lab was the ringleader, I
concentrated my attention on him, squatting down to let him sniff my hand and
remember that we’d met before.

“Only
not in nylons and pumps. What a lunatic I am,” I addressed the company. “To
offer to look after you in the first place and then to do so in my work
clothes.”

They
wagged their tails in agreement. I debated going home to change into my jeans
and worn-out Nikes, but I didn’t want to have to come back to this squalor
tonight. The afternoon sun picked out stains on the wallpaper that hadn’t been
visible in the dim hall light last night. From the look and the smell, water
had been leaking from the roof through the walls. The sun also made the grime
covering the floors—and every other surface—more noticeable.

I
leashed up the Lab and led the quintet up Racine toward Belmont. He strained
against his collar, but I held him in a firm grip: I wasn’t going to spend the
night hunting for him around the neighborhood. The other four didn’t need to be
chained—they followed in their ringleader’s steps.

When
Peppy is in her normal state we do a five-mile run to the harbor together. I
didn’t feel like investing so much energy in Mrs. Frizell’s outfit; I gave them
a circuit of the block, saw that they had food and water, and locked them in.
They howled dismally when I left. I felt a little guilty, but I didn’t want
them on my hands past this weekend. When I got back from Pittsburgh I’d see
what shape Mrs. Frizell was in and try to make some arrangements for their care
until she was fit again. I’d call her enthusiastic son, Byron, to see what kind
of financial guardianship he was working out for her, and if we could get some
money for a dog-walking service.

Back
at my own place I sank thankfully into my spick-and-span bathtub. I wondered if
Mrs. Frizell’s horrific example would make me change my habits.

“No,”
Lotty said, when I shared the thought with her later on the phone. “Perhaps for
one week you can be immaculate, but then the mess will start to accrete again…
Carol says she came over to discuss her plans with you last night. Are you
going to join Max in snarling at me?”

“Nooo,”
I said slowly. “But I’m not going to try arguing with her, either. Maybe you
and I are too allergic to family ties, the ties that bind and gag, to see what
positive things she gets out of, well, tying herself to her relations.”

“Why
don’t you concentrate on catching criminals, Vic, and leave deep insights to
the psychiatrists,” Lotty snapped.

We
hung up on that brittle note. It sent me to Pittsburgh in a low frame of mind,
but I conscientiously devoted two days to Daraugh. His man Moss had been born
and raised in one of Pittsburgh’s tonier suburbs. His life had followed the
usual round of Little League, summer camp, high school sports, drugs, arrests,
college drop outs, and finally a steady job at a chemical company. That he had
been a stockroom boy instead of a division manager shouldn’t have embarrassed
him: he’d worked hard for five years and his boss had been sorry to see him
leave.

I
wrote my report for Daraugh on the plane home. All I had to do was spend an
hour in the morning typing it and sixteen hundred dollars was mine. I went from
the airport to dancing at the Cotton Club to celebrate my safe return, my
virtuous work habits, and my fee.

I
took my time getting up on Friday, going for a slow run over to Belmont Harbor
and stopping at the Dort-munder Restaurant on my way back for breakfast. Around
eleven I packed up my report to take down to the Pulteney to type. I stopped on
my way out to let Mr. Contreras know I was home.

He
was out back, turning over his eight-foot square of soil. He had put his
seedlings in last week and was anxiously ridding them of microscopic weeds.

“Hi,
doll. You want to see the princess? You won’t believe how much the puppies have
grown since you went out of town. Hang on a minute. I’ll come open the door. I
got something I want to talk to you about before you take off.”

He
wiped his calloused hands on a giant bandanna and picked up his rake and
trowel. After losing all his garden equipment last summer he didn’t leave the
new ones unattended even for a five-minute break.

While
he stowed his tools inside the basement he inquired into my trip, but when he
asked for the third time how long the flight took I could tell he had something
else on his mind. He has delicate ideas of etiquette, though, and wouldn’t bring
up his own concerns until I finished petting the dog and admiring her
offspring. She didn’t object to my picking them up and stroking them, but she
washed each one thoroughly when it squirmed back to her side.

Mr.
Contreras watched us jealously, talking me through every detail of Peppy’s days
during my absence—how much she’d eaten, how she didn’t mind his picking them
up, didn’t I think we could keep one or maybe two—the male with one black and
one gold ear seemed to have a special liking for him.

“Whatever
you say, boss.” I stood up and picked up my papers from the couch arm. “Long as
I don’t have to run them when they’re grown, I don’t care. Is that what you
wanted to discuss?”

“Oh…”
He broke off in the middle of an expostulation on how he could keep up with
three dogs, and anyway, who walked Peppy while I was fooling around in
Pittsburgh?

“No.
No- It’s kinda personal.” He sat on the edge of his shabby mustard armchair and
looked at his hands. “Thing is, doll, I could use some help. I mean, some of your
kind of expertise.”

He
looked up at that and held up a hand to forestall me, although I hadn’t tried
speaking. “I ain’t expecting charity. I’m prepared to pay the same as those
bluenoses downtown, so don’t expect I’m asking any favors.”

“Uh,
what is it you need my expertise for?”

He
took a deep breath and got his story out in a rush. Mitch Kruger had
disappeared. Mr. Contreras had thrown him out on Monday, exasperated by his
drinking and mooching. Then my neighbor’s conscience started bothering him. On
Wednesday he’d gone over to the rooming house on Archer where Kruger had found
a place to sleep.

“Only,
he wasn’t there.”

“Don’t
you think he might’ve been out drinking?”

“Oh,
yes, that was my idea too. At first I didn’t give it a second thought. In fact,
I turned around and was heading straight for the bus stop when Mrs. Polter,
she’s the owner of the place, you know, it’s a real boardinghouse—-just
sleeping space for seven, eight guys and she gives ‘em breakfast. Anyway, she
hollers at me, thinking I’m looking for a room, and I tell her I’m looking for
Mitch.”

It
took him a good ten minutes to get the whole story out. Boiled down to the
bones it seemed Kruger hadn’t been back to the boardinghouse since checking in
Monday afternoon. He’d promised to pay Mrs. Polter on Tuesday morning, and she
wanted her money. Or she wanted Mr. Contreras to take Kruger’s belongings away
so she could give the bed to someone else. Mr. Contreras shelled out the fifty
bucks to hold the bed for a week—retroactive to Monday, he pointed out
bitterly—and took the Damen Avenue bus back home.

“So
then I called over to Diamond Head and tried to speak to the shop steward, on
account of all that smoke Mitch was blowing last week. But the guy didn’t
answer my message, so yesterday I took the damn bus all the way down again and
they tell me Mitch ain’t been near the place since we left twelve years ago. So
anyway, I’d-like you to take it on. Looking for him, I mean.”

When
I didn’t answer right away he said, “I’ll pay you, don’t you worry about that.”

“It’s
not that.” I was about to add that he didn’t need to pay me anything, but
that’s the best way to build grudges between friends and relations—do them
professional favors for nothing. “But… well, to be brutally frank, you know
he’s probably sleeping off a hangover in some police cell right now.”

“And
if he is, you’re in a position to find out. I mean, you know all them cops,
they’ll tell you if he’s been picked up drunk somewhere. I just feel kind of
responsible.”

“Has
he got any family?”

Mr. Contreras
shook his head. “Not really. His wife up and left him—oh, way back. Must be
going on forty years ago. They had a kid and even then he was drinking the pay.
Can’t say I blame her. I stole Clara from him back when we was all in high
school. Night of our homecoming dance. She used to get all over me when I’d
come home with one too many in me, and I’d remind her at least I hadn’t let her
get stuck with that prize jackass Kruger.”

His
soft brown eyes clouded over as he dwelt on a sixty-year-old dance. “Well, all
that past is dead and gone, and I know Mitch ain’t worth much, ain’t much to
look at, but I’d kinda like to know he’s okay.”

When
he put it like that I didn’t have any choice. I drove him down to my office and
solemnly filled out one of my standard contracts for him. I wrote down Mrs.
Poker’s address. I took Diamond Head’s location, too—I had a feeling I was
going to need all the dead ends I could find to justify my retainer.

Mr.
Contreras pulled a roll of bills from his front pocket. Licking his fingers, he
separated four twenties and counted them over to me. That would pay for a day
of bar-crawling along Archer and Cermak.

I
dropped my report to Daraugh Graham in the mail on my way to the Stevenson, the
expressway that follows the main industrial route through the heart of
Chicago’s southwest side. Actually, it runs parallel to the Sanitary and Ship
Canal, which was built to connect the Illinois and Chicago rivers back in 1900.
The thirty-mile stretch of water, crisscrossed by rail beds, houses every
variety of industry along its banks. Grain and cement elevators hover over
heaps of scrap metal; truck terminals stand alongside the yards where Chicago’s
mariners dry-dock their boats for the winter.

I got
off at Damen, sliding past the little cluster of bungalows perched
incongruously next to the exit ramp, and made a sharp left onto Archer. Like
the expressway, the street follows the path of the Sanitary Canal; it used to
be the main road through the industrial belt, back before the Stevenson was
built.

Although
this part of the city has pockets of quiet, well-kept streets, Archer isn’t one
of them. Shabby two-flats and run-down bungalows are built flush with the
sidewalk. The only grocery stores are holes in the wall that also sell beer,
liquor, and school supplies. With the number of taverns the avenue supports
it’s hard to know who keeps the grocers in business.

Mrs.
Polter’s house was about five blocks up from

Damen.
It was a long, narrow box covered in asphalt shingles, which had fallen off in
places to reveal rotting wood underneath. Mrs. Polter was moodily surveying the
street from her front porch when I pulled up. “Porch” actually was a grand name
for the rickety square of peeling boards. Perched on top of a flight of
dilapidated stairs, it was just big enough to hold a green metal chair and
leave room for the torn screen door to open.

Mrs.
Polter was a massive woman, her neck missing in the circles of fat that rose
from her shoulders. Her brown-checked housedress, which looked like a relic
from the twenties, had long ago lost the struggle to cover her cleavage. A
safety pin tried to make up the deficiency of cotton, but only succeeded in
fraying the edges of the fabric.

As
far as I could tell she hadn’t turned her head while I stumbled up the stairs,
and she didn’t bother to look at me when I stood looking down at her. “Mrs.
Polter?” I said after a long silence.

She
gave me a grudging glance, then turned her attention back to the street, where
three boys on bikes were trying to rear up and ride on their hind wheels. A
piece of asphalt siding flapped behind us.

“I
wanted to ask you a few questions about Mitch Kruger.”

“Don’t
you boys think you can get on my property,” she shouted when the cyclists
jumped their bikes over the curb.

“Sidewalk
belongs to everyone, fat bitch,” one of them yelled back.

The
other two laughed immoderately, dancing their bikes up and down the curb. Mrs.
Polter, moving with the speed of a boxer, picked up a fire extinguisher and
began spraying over the railing at them. They jumped back onto Archer, out of
range, and continued to laugh. Mrs. Polter put the extinguisher on the floor
next to her chair. It was clearly a game all parties had played before.

“Too
many places get vandalized along here because people don’t have the guts to
stand up for their own property. Damned little spies. Neighborhood was a hell
of a lot different before they moved in, bringing all their dirt and crime with
them, breeding like flies.” The asphalt shingle behind us flapped in time to
her speech.

“Yep.
This neighborhood used to be the garden spot of the Midwest… Mitch Kruger?”

“Oh,
him.” She flicked washed-out blue eyes at me. “Old guy came by and paid his
rent. That’s good enough for me.”