Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (9 page)

“When
did you see him last?”

At
this she turned the chair and the mass of her body to face me. “Who wants to
know?”

“I’m
a detective, Mrs. Polter. I’ve been asked to find Mr. Kruger. So far as I can
tell you’re the last person who saw him.”

I had
called Conrad Rawlings, a police sergeant in my own district, to find out
whether Mitch had been picked up drunk and disorderly in the last few days. The
police don’t have computer capability to check on something like that. Rawlings
gave me the name of a sergeant in Area Four, who obligingly called all the
stations that reported to him. None of them had picked Mitch up recently,
although the guys at the Marquette Station knew who he was.

“What,
he dead or something?” Her hoarse voice shredded words like a cheese grater.

“Just
gone missing. What did he say to you when he left?”

“I
don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention—those damned spies were out riding
around, just like they do every day when school’s out. I can’t keep my mind
both places at once.

“You
saw him walk down the stairs, though,” I persisted. “And you knew he hadn’t
paid you. So you must have wondered when he was coming back with his money.”

She
smacked her forehead with a giant palm. “That’s right. You’re so right, honey.
I hollered at his back as he was on his way down the stairs. ‘Don’t forget you
owe me fifty bucks,’ something like that.” She smiled, pleased with herself,
and rocked so that the metal chair creaked.

“And
what did he do?” I prodded in response.

She
twisted again in her chair and picked up her fire extinguisher, menacing it at
the three laughing kids down below. When they had retreated to the street she
said, “What was that, hon?”

I
repeated my question.

“Oh.
Oh, sure. He turned and winked at me. ‘No need to spray me with that thing,’ he
says, meaning the extinguisher, of course, ”cause I’ve got plenty of money.
Least, I will have pretty soon. Pretty soon.‘“

“Did
he turn left or right at the bottom of the stairs?”

She
puckered her forehead up to her wispy yellow hair in an effort to remember, but
she couldn’t call it back; her mind had been on the kids down below, not on one
more desiccated lodger.

“I’d
like to look at his room before I go.”

“You
got a warrant for that, hon?”

I
pulled out a twenty from my purse. “No warrant. But how about a refill for your
gizmo there?”

She
eyed me, then the money, then the kids down below. “You cops can’t come barging
into someone’s house without a warrant. That’s in the Constitution, in case you
didn’t know. But just this once, seeing as how you’re a female, and dressed
neat, I’ll let you in, but you come back with any men, they’d better have a
warrant. Go up to the second floor. He’s two doors down from the bathroom on
your left.” She turned her head abruptly to the street as I opened the screen
door.

Her
house had the sharp, sour smell of rank dishcloths. It was a dark place, built
deep and narrow with windows only on the front and back walls. By the smell,
they hadn’t been opened for some time. The stairs rose steeply in front of me.
I mounted them cautiously. Even so, I caught my feet several times on pieces of
loose linoleum.

I
fumbled my way down the second-floor hall to the bathroom, then found the
second door on the left. The room was standing open, the bed made with a
careless hand, waiting for Kruger’s return. No individual locks or much privacy
in Mrs. Poker’s domain, but Kruger didn’t have much to be private about. I
rummaged in his vinyl suitcase, but such papers as he had related to his union
membership, his union pension, and a form to send to the Social Security
Administration to let them know his change of address. He’d also kept some old
newspaper clips, apparently about Diamond Head. Maybe the company stood in for
his vanished family as a source of human connection.

His
only possession of any possible value was a portable black-and-white TV. Its
rabbit ears were bent and one of the knobs was broken off, but when I flipped
it on, the picture came with respectable clarity.

Mitch’s
clothes were sufficiently greasy to make me stop in the bathroom on my way out
to wash my hands. A look at the towels convinced me that air-drying was
healthier.

A
middle-aged man in a frayed undershirt and shorts was waiting outside the
bathroom door. He looked me1 over hungrily.

“
‘Bout time the old bitch brought in someone like you, sugar. Sight for sore
eyes. Sight for sore eyes, that’s for damned sure.”

He
rubbed up against me as I passed him. I lost my footing and kicked him on the
side of his exposed leg to steady myself. I felt his malevolent gaze on the
back of my neck all the way downstairs. A better detective would have taken the
opportunity to ask him about Mitch Kruger.

Mrs.
Polter didn’t say anything when I thanked her for letting me look around, but
when I was halfway down the stairs she yelled, “Remember: that room’s only paid
through Sunday night. After that the old guy better come and collect his
stuff.”

I
stopped and pondered. Mr. Contreras would not want his old pal back on the
living room couch. And come to think of it, neither did I. I stomped back up
the stairs and gave her fifty dollars. They disappeared behind the safety pin
at her bosom, but she didn’t say anything. Now I had ten left from Mr.
Contreras’s advance to get me through the bars of the South Side.

At
the bottom of the stairs I stopped the ringleader of the cycling trio. “I’m
looking for an old guy who walked out of here Monday afternoon. White man. Lots
of gray hair, which he didn’t comb, big stomach, probably had on suspenders and
an old pair of work pants. You remember which way he went?”

“He
some kind of friend of yours, miss?”

“He—uh,
he’s my uncle.” I didn’t think this group would respond well to a detective.

“How
much is it worth to you to find him?”

I
made a face. “Not a whole lot. Maybe ten.”

“Here
he comes right now!” One of the other youths jumped his bicycle up and down the
curb in his excitement. “Right behind you, miss!”

Holding
tight to my purse I turned my head. The kid was right. An oldish white man with
thick gray hair and a paunch was stumbling up the street toward us. In fact,
there was another coming out of Tessie’s Tavern just across the way. There were
probably a thousand men just like Mitch wandering around the two-mile strip
between

Ashland
and Western. My shoulders sagged at the prospect. I turned to cross the street.

“Hey,
miss, what about our money?” The trio suddenly surrounded me with their bikes.

“Well,
that wasn’t my uncle. But he looks the same, so I suppose that’s worth five
bucks.”

I dug
in my handbag and pulled out a five without taking out my billfold. I shouldn’t
copy Mrs. Polter’s suspiciousness, but they had me surrounded.

“You
said ten,” the ringleader said accusingly.

“Take
it or leave it.” I stared at him coldly, my arms akimbo.

I
don’t know whether it was the toughness of my expression, or the sudden
movement of Mrs. Polter with her fire extinguisher, but the bikes separated. I
sauntered across the street, not looking behind me until I got to the door of
Tessie’s Tavern. They had ridden off toward Ashland, presumably to spend their
largess.

Tessie’s
was a short, narrow room with three pressed-wood tables and a bar long enough
to seat eight or nine people. Two men in dusty work shirts were sitting side by
side at the counter. One had his sleeves rolled up to show off arms the size of
expressway pilings. Neither looked at me when I walked up to the bar, but a
middle-aged woman with her back to me turned from the glasses she was rinsing.
She had some kind of radar that told her when a customer was arriving.

“What
can I do for you, hon?” Her voice was like her face, clear and pleasant.

“I’ll
have a draw.” I slid onto a barstool. Beer is not my favourite drink, but you
can’t go bar-crawling on whisky and tavern owners aren’t too responsive to club
soda fiends.

The
man in shirtsleeves finished his beer and said, “Same again, Tessie.” She
pulled two more beers and poured a couple of shots and set them in front of the
men. She clattered the empties into the sink and washed them briskly, setting
them on a shelf under the bottles in front of her. A trio of men drifted in and
greeted her by name.

“Your
usual, boys?” she asked, grabbing a set of clean steins. They took their beers
over to one of the pressed-wood tables and Tessie picked up the Sun-Times.

“You
want anything else, honey?” she asked when I forced the last of the thin,
bitter brew down.

“Tell
you the truth, I’m looking for my uncle. I was wondering if you’d seen him.” I
started describing Mitch, but she interrupted me.

“I
don’t run a baby-sitting service, hon. That’ll be seventy-five cents for the
beer.” ‘

I
fished in my jeans pocket for a dollar. “I’m not asking you to. But he
disappeared on Monday and he has a bad habit of going on benders. I’m trying to
see if I can pick up his trail. He just moved in with Mrs. Polter across the
street.”

She
smoothed her hands over her plump hips and gave an exaggerated sigh, but she
listened to my description of Mitch closely enough. “Could be any of a dozen
guys who drink around here,” she said when I’d finished. “But everyone has
their regular place; I’d think you’d want to talk to them, not go drinking beer
in every bar on Archer. Nice-looking girl like you could get yourself in a lot
of trouble in some of them.”

She
handed me a quarter and waved away my efforts to leave it on the bar top. “Hope
you find him, honey. These old drunks eat up a lot of family time.”

I
stood on the curb trying to figure out my next move. Mrs. Polter had
disappeared from her front porch and I didn’t see her three tormentors anywhere
on the street. A tired woman with two small children in tow was coming up the
sidewalk. Another woman was heading into the Excelsior Tap three doors down
from Tessie’s. Not much street life for a June afternoon.

Tessie
was right. If Kruger was going on a bender, he wouldn’t do it here. He’d go
back to his old neighborhood and drink at his usual tavern. I should have
gotten his previous address from Mr. Contreras before I started searching. I
could call my neighbor—there was a pay phone at the corner—but I didn’t have
the stomach for any more landladies or beer this afternoon.

I
climbed back into my car. It was only four-fifteen. Someone might still be in
the office at Diamond Head. If I didn’t go there now it would be Monday before
I could check them out.

The
plant proved difficult to find. The address, on the 2000 block of Thirty-first
Street, was clear enough, but I couldn’t seem to get at it. I went up Damen,
which crosses the canal at Thirty-first Street, and found a promising road that
snaked along the legs of the expressway. Weeds already grew waist-high there,
partly concealing discarded mattresses and tires. Semis roared past me, taking
the curves at fifty. I realized too late that we were being decanted onto the
Stevenson.

By
now rush-hour traffic had turned the two miles to Kedzie into a twenty-minute
drive. When I got off, I didn’t try to make the return on the expressway.
Instead I rode down Thirty-ninth Street and came back up to Damen. This time I
parked the Trans Am at the bottom of the bridge and walked up the pedestrian
path to the disused drawbridge tower in the middle.

It
had been years since anyone had last used the tower. Its windows were boarded
shut. The locks on the small iron door were so badly rusted that they couldn’t
have been opened even if you had a key. Someone had announced the presence of
the Insane Spanish Cobras along one wall; a giant swastika filled another.

The
parapet had also rusted badly. A number of the rails had come loose. I didn’t
risk leaning over it—a misstep would land me headfirst on the log pilings tied
up underneath. Instead I lay flat on my stomach on the walk and peered below.

Weyerhauser’s
giant yards stretched away to the east, with some scrap yards alongside them.
Directly beneath me were the scruffy trees that grew at the water’s edge. They
shielded most of the nearby rooftops from my view, but two down on the left I
could make out an A and an ND. It didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce that
they might be from the word “Diamond.”

If I
had a boat, I could sail right up to its doors. The trick was getting to it
from land. I walked back down the bridge and followed a narrow sidewalk past a
row of bungalows built along the road. The houses seemed much older than the
bridge, which rose above their tiny dormer windows, blocking their light.

The
walk dead-ended at a cyclone fence bordering the canal. I followed the fence,
trying to avoid the worst of the refuse that was dropped along it, but tripped
a few times on cans hidden in the high prairie grasses. After twenty feet or so
of dirty hiking I came to a concrete apron. Right next to it was a loading
dock. Trucks were backed into the docks, looking like horses tied up at a giant
stable getting their oats.