Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (35 page)

He
nodded frantically.

“What
I wanted to tell you, someone came around the boardinghouse where the old guy
was living and scooped up all his papers. Guy claiming to be his son. Why’d he
do that? The papers a derelict carries around are useless. Then when I come
back to the boardinghouse the landlady calk the Diamond Head plant manager to
tell him I’m back in the neighborhood. I heard the guys at the plant say that
when I was there tonight. I know that a big steel company is funneling cash
their way and I see copper spools disappearing in the middle of the night with
this steel company’s name printed on the side.”

I
shoved the blanket out of my eyes and turned to Rawlings. “And meanwhile, Eddie
Mohr, the old local president, his car is stolen by creeps who bash Lotty
Herschel three ways from Sunday. That was on your turf, Rawlings, remember? So
you guys tell me what the point is!”

“How
do you know it wasn’t his son?” Rawlings skipped all the stuff about Paragon
Steel and went for the inessential.

“I
don’t. But the son grew up in Arizona. He hadn’t heard from his old man for
thirty-five years. Finchley here didn’t try to get in touch with him. How’d he
know to show up out of the blue? And on top of that, how’d he find the
flophouse Kruger’d picked to crash in only eight days earlier?”

I
stopped for a minute, fishing in the depths of my weary mind for an essential
piece of information. It surfaced just as Officer Neely came back into the room
to lean over Finchley’s shoulder.

I
turned to Rawlings. “We ID’d Mitch Kruger on Monday. The so-called son came to
Mrs. Polter’s on Tuesday. Even if someone called the son in Arizona, how’d he
get here so fast?” Unless, of course, he’d been here all along after murdering
his father.

“Take
it easy, Ms. W., take it easy.” Rawlings went over to join Finchley and Neely
in the huddle.

While
they talked, my sudden spurt of energy died. I shrank back inside the blanket,
the skin on my arms trembling from fatigue. Finchley’s slender, muscled frame
was as still as a statue, like one of the Buddhas at the Art Institute.

I’d
first seen the Buddhas when I was six and my mother took me downtown to look at
masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. They sat outside the main exhibit
hall. Their faces were so calm, so unblinkingly benign, 1 wanted to stroke
them. Gabriella couldn’t understand my fascination with them; we were there for
me to experience the glory of her ancestry, not gawk at lower art forms.

The
Buddha grew large and beckoned me. I let go of Gabriella’s hand and climbed
onto his lap. One cool stone hand clasped me lightly while his soothing voice
uttered great truths.

“When
you wake up you will remember everything, my daughter, everything of
importance.” He kept stroking me with his cool hand and repeating the mantra,
until I became aware of Rawlings’s arm around me and his deep voice adjuring me
to wake up.

“You
gotta get to bed, Warshawski. You’re no use to anyone like this. Want me to run
you home?”

“Take
me to a motel,” I mumbled. “You don’t believe anyone’s after me, but they chased
me this morning. Yesterday morning. Ask Barbara at the Belmont Diner— she’ll
tell you it’s the truth.”

“You
know a motel that’s gonna let you in looking like this? You don’t even have any
shoes on. You better let me take you home, Nancy Drew. If you’re seriously
worried I’ll get someone to drive by your place every twenty minutes.”

I
felt weak and helpless, abandoned by the Buddha. I fought back the impulse to
collapse on the floor in tears. “You better see me up into my apartment. I
can’t deal with anyone jumping me tonight.”

“Okay,
girl, okay. Personal police escort. Round-the-clock protection, at least until
you leave the crib again. Now, come on home. Detective Finchley has to do some
thinking. It’s ugly work and he doesn’t like an audience.”

I looked
at Finchley. “So do you believe me? What did Neely tell you?”

He
permitted himself a small smile. “A man at Christ Hospital came in around
two-thirty with a bullet in the left thigh. Claims his gun went off
accidentally when he was cleaning it. Could be your guy, or—it could be what he
says.

“As
for the rest of your story—it’s not a story, Vic. It’s just another way of
looking at a company and a death. But I will take a second look at it. Now, let
Conrad take you home. He’s been jumping out of his skin ever since he heard we
pulled you from the drink.”

Yet
another way of looking at the same story. Rawlings wasn’t mad at me, just
worried. Maybe the Buddha was looking out for me after all.

“I
want my gun back, Terry. I’ve got a license for it.” I let the horse blanket
drop and dug in my back pocket for my wallet. It was gummy with mud and water.
I pried it open and tried separating the different bits of identification and
credit cards from its sodden slots.

Finchley
watched me fumble with it for a minute or two, then relented and handed me the
Smith & Wesson. “I ought to get ballistics to check you against the slug
Christ Hospital dug out. And then I ought to arrest you for assaulting the
guy.”

“And
then I’d have to have a big trial proving self-defense, and his buddies would
be the only witnesses.”

“It’s
tempting, Vic, very tempting. I bet the lieutenant would get me promoted on the
basis of it. You be careful how you fire that thing in the future.”

“Yes,
Detective,” I agreed meekly. I took the clip out and stuck it in my jeans
pocket before putting the gun back in the holster. A rusty gun could misbehave
in some ugly ways.

Rawlings
picked up the blanket and draped it across my shoulders. I leaned gratefully
into the strength of his arm on my way out the door.

The
Strong Arm of the Law

I was
so exhausted, it wasn’t until I had fumbled uselessly with my keys for several
minutes that I realized something was wrong. “Someone’s been trying to break
in, but all they did was smash up the lock.”

My
lips were swollen with fatigue; the words came out in an incomprehensible
mumble.‘ Rawlings took one look at the door frame and saw the damage at once.
He was starting to bark commands into his lapel mike before I realized it.

I put
a hand over the speaker. “Not now, Sergeant, please. I need to sleep—I just
can’t face any more servants or protectors tonight. We can go around the back
way, see if we can get in through there. And if not… I’ll sleep on Mr.
Contreras’s couch.” Sharing my rest with Mitch Kruger’s ghost. The thought made
me shudder.

Rawlings
looked at me dubiously. “Let’s see what we find when we get around back,” he
temporized.

My
legs seemed to have come unhinged from my torso. They moved with heavy,
robotlike strides, but showed a distressing tendency to buckle without warning.
Rawlings, his gun in his right hand, kept an arm around me after my first
collapse. When he saw how feeble I was he drove around the block to the alley.

Before
going into the yard he shone a brilliant spot up and down the stairs and into all
the corners. I heard

Peppy’s
faint bark from behind Mr. Contreras’s door. A curtain twitched in the north
corner bedroom of Vinnie’s place.

I’ve
had so many work-related break-ins over the years that I’ve encased my
apartment in stainless steel. The front door, in addition to its treble locks,
is reinforced with steel plate. The back has conventional grates on the door
and windows. These were intact, but by now I was past being able to negotiate
the locks. I handed my key ring to Rawlings and slumped against the window bars
while he figured out the keys he needed.

All I
wanted was to be left alone so I could fall into a hole of sleep. I almost
screamed from exhaustion when Rawlings insisted on searching the place.

“No
one’s here, Conrad. They tried the front, couldn’t do it, and decided the back
was too exposed to mess with. Please… I just need to sleep.”

“Yeah,
I know you do, Ms. W. But I won’t sleep myself if I don’t just make a quick
run-through.”

I
slumped at the kitchen table, knocking yesterday’s papers to the floor with my
elbows. I dropped off at once; it took Rawlings’s lifting my head forcibly from
my forearms to wake me again.

“I
hate to do this to you, Vic, but unless your housekeeping’s reached new lows
someone sure has been in here.”

My
brain had jelled; I couldn’t even think of a response, let alone force my
swollen lips to say anything. I followed him dumbly into the living room.

Someone
had broken one of my north-facing windows, climbed in, and torn the place to
shreds. They hadn’t been very subtle about it. Broken glass lay on the floor
under the sill. One piece had migrated as far as the piano bench. The bench
itself stood open. All the music lay on the floor or the piano, spines broken,
sheets hanging by a single thread. Every book and paper in the room looked as
though it had been similarly treated.

“I’ve
got to call this in,” Rawlings said sharply.

“It’ll
keep until morning,” I said as forcefully as I could. “I’m not tampering with
the evidence tonight. But you’re going to have to pack me off to Elgin if I
don’t get to bed. I just can’t cope with this right now.”

“But
that window—”

“I’ve
got a hammer and nails. There must be some boards in the basement.”

“You
can’t! There might be fingerprints.”

“And
then what? I’ve never known yet ”when you guys had the resources to spare to
track down a residential B&E. Give me a break, Rawlings.“

He
rubbed his eyes. “Oh, nuts, Vic. I could sleep in here on your couch, but
there’d be hell to pay at the station for why I didn’t call in a team as soon
as I saw it. Let alone why I spent the night here. I’ve got to call it in.
Didn’t you say you’d crash at your neighbor’s?”

“I
said it, but I don’t want to do it. Look, call the boys in blue if you have to,
but let me go to bed.”

He
agreed after an examination of the bedroom. My clothes had been turned out of
their drawers, but no furniture was broken. I looked in the closet. They’d
rifled the clothes, but had missed the little wall safe at the back. Amateurs.
And angry, at that.

“You
know anything about this, Ms. W.? Why someone would go to all the trouble? You
know, if they were just street punks they would’ve given up after they found
they couldn’t trash the front door.”

“My
brain isn’t working, Sergeant. Call your pals if you want, but leave me alone.”
My voice was cracking now, but I was past minding.

Rawlings
gave me a long look, seemed to decide he wouldn’t get anything more out of me
even if he beat me, and walked back down the hall to the living room. I could
hear his mike crackling as he went.

Even
so, I couldn’t go to bed until I’d stood under the shower for twenty minutes,
washing the grime from the canal out of my pores. The troops were arriving as I
returned to my bedroom. I ostentatiously slammed my door, then fell deeply and
heavily asleep, into dreams of climbing walls, trying to reach a Buddha who sat
always just out of my reach while giant men chased me in trucks. At one point I
slipped and fell from a high scaffolding. Just before smashing into the
concrete I woke with a jolt. It was twelve-thirty.

I
made a half-hearted effort to get up, but my legs and arms seemed too thick to
move. I sank back against the mattress and watched sun motes dancing between
the top of the curtains and the ceiling.

If
someone asked me to recommend a good private eye about now, I’d have to send
them to one of the big suburban firms. I was trying to be an advocate for a
woman sunk deep in senility whose life when sane had been pretty dreadful.
After a week of prodding Diamond Head Motors to give me information on Mitch Kruger,
the only thing I had to show for my pains was sore muscles, a rusty gun, and a
busted-up apartment. Oh, no. Also a two-thousand dollar repair bill for the
Trans Am. And Lotty Herschel hurt, scared, and angry up in Evan-ston.

“What
a tiger,” I said aloud in bitter mockery. “What a fucking useless waste of time
you are. You ought to go back to serving subpoenas. At least that’s something
you know how to do. Although you’d probably trip over your feet and break your
neck going upstairs.”

“You
always talk that loud to yourself, Warshawski? No wonder the neighbors complain
about you.” Conrad Rawlings appeared in the doorway.

I had
jumped out of bed when I first heard a voice, looking wildly around my bedroom
for a defensive weapon. When I saw who it was, my cheeks burned. I grabbed a
sweatshirt and a pair of shorts at random from the floor and pulled them on.

“You
always walk unannounced into people’s bedrooms? If my gun didn’t need cleaning,
you might be dead. I should haul your ass into court.”

Rawlings
laughed and handed me a cup of coffee. “Officer of the law serving and
protecting, Ms. W. Although after the way you failed to cooperate last night, I
shouldn’t bother.”

“Failed
to cooperate? I give you guys a story on a platter and all you do is harass me
over a stupid broken window… You spend the night here, or just let yourself in
first thing in the morning?”