Burn Marks (21 page)

30

Preparing for the High Jump

When I got up on Sunday I knew I’d turned the critical corner toward recovery. I wasn’t back to my full strength, but I felt clear-headed and energetic. The lingering depression from my breakfast with Robin resolved itself to a manageable problem—my ability to handle the Seligman investigation was in doubt, not my entire career and personality. Even my hands were better. I didn’t take off the gauze, but I could do simple household chores without feeling that the skin was splitting open to the bone.

The early detective gets the worm. Although it was unlikely that anyone would come into the Alma Mejicana offices at all on Sunday, they were less likely to do so first thing in the morning.

Before taking off I went into the living room to do a modified version of my exercises—I wasn’t ready to start running yet, but I needed to keep limber. Ralph MacDonald’s flowers dominated the room. I’d forgotten them. As I stretched my quads and tightened my glutes, I eyed the tropical rain forest balefully. Whether meant as a threat or a humorous compliment, they were overwhelming, too big a gesture from a man who scarcely knew me.

When I finished my leg lifts—twenty-five with each leg instead of my usual hundred left me breathless—I scrambled into my jeans and a sweatshirt. Straining, I carried the flowers down to my car. I drove over to Broadway and picked up a bagel, an apple, and some milk at one of the delis.

My attempts to eat and drive at the same time showed the state of my healing—two-handed, the steering wheel was manageable. With one hand my palms started smarting and my wrist ached. I pulled over at the corner of Diversey and Pine Grove to eat. The tropical flowers stained the car with their heavy scent, making it hard to eat without queasiness. I rolled the window all the way down, but the smell was still heady. Finally I gulped down the milk and started south without finishing the bagel.

Sunday morning is the best time to drive in Chicago, because there isn’t any traffic out. I made the nine miles to Michael Reese in fifteen minutes without pushing the speed limit.

Getting the massive bouquet up to the fourth floor taxed my healing palms and shoulders almost beyond endurance. When I got off the elevator a sympathetic orderly offered to take it from me.

“These are gorgeous. What room you want them in?”

I gave him Elena’s room number. He carried the pot as easily as if it were a football—as easily as I could have done a week ago. I followed him down the hall and into Elena’s room. A woman about my own age in a yellow nylon gown was sitting in Elena’s bed reading the Tribune.

My jaw dropped slightly, the way it does when you’re taken unawares. “My aunt,” I said foolishly. “She was here on Friday.”

“Maybe she checked out,” the orderly suggested.

“She wasn’t in very good shape. Maybe they moved her.” I scurried back to the nursing station.

A middle-aged woman was making elaborate notes in a chart, I tried interrupting but she held up a warning hand and continued writing.

Finally she looked at me. “Yes?”

“I’m V. L Warshawski,” I said. “My aunt, Elena Warshawski, was here—she’d been hit on the head and was unconscious for a day or so. Did they move her or what?”

The nurse shook her head majestically. “She left yesterday.”

“Left?” I echoed, staggered. “But—they told me she was in bad shape, that she ought to have a month or so of convalescent care. How could they just let her go?”

“They didn’t. She took off on her own. Stole the clothes belonging to the lady she shared a room with and disappeared.”

My head started spinning again. I gripped the counter-top to steady myself. “When did this happen? Why didn’t someone call me?”

The nurse disclaimed all knowledge of the particulars. “The hospital called whoever was listed on her forms as next of kin. They may not have felt you needed to know.”

“I am her next of kin.” Maybe she’d given Peter’s name, though—I shouldn’t push my rights as her nearest and dearest too hard. “Can you tell me when she took off?”

She snapped her pencil down in exasperation. “Ask the police. They sent an officer over yesterday afternoon. He was pretty annoyed and got all the details.”

I was close to screaming from frustration and confusion. “Give me the guy’s name and I’ll talk to him with pleasure.”

She sighed audibly and went into the records room behind the counter. The orderly had been standing behind me all this time holding the flowers.

“You want to take these, miss?” he asked while I waited.

“Oh, give them to the person who’s been here longest without any visitors,” I said shortly.

The nurse came back out with a file. “Michael Furey, detective,” she read without looking up. She went back to the chart she’d been working on when I interrupted. The interview as clearly over.

Back in my car my arms trembled—carrying Ralph MacDonald’s flowers in had overstrained them. So Elena’d done another bunk. Should I care? The police knew about it. Presumably they’d keep an eye out for her. I had better things to do.

Instead of driving over to the Alma Mejicana offices on south Ashland, I took the Chevy back to the Prairie Shores Hotel. It started groaning again as I turned onto Indiana.

“You think you feel bad,” I grumbled. “I don’t want to be here, either. And my hands hurt.”

The palms were sore under my mitts. They throbbed against the hard steering wheel. Next car I got would have power steering.

The Prairie Shores made a fitting neighbor now for the Indiana Arms. The two blackened shells leered at each other across the street. Not even Elena could be hiding out in one of them. But there were other abandoned buildings on the block—an old warehouse, a boarded-up school, the remains of a nursing home. She could be in any of them. I didn’t have the energy to hunt through them all. Let the police do it.

I headed down Cermak at fifty, weaving in and out of traffic, sliding through red lights. I was just plain pissed. What kind of cute little game was she playing, anyway? And how much time did I have to spend playing it with her? She’d gotten someone rattled enough to try to kill her. And instead of talking to me about it she was skulking around town thinking she was a smart enough drunk to keep out of his way. Or her way, I amended conscientiously.

I turned left on Halsted in front of a madly honking, braking semi. That cooled me down pretty fast. The worst thing in the world to do with a car is use it when you’re angry. Tony had told me that, as close to angry himself as he ever got, when he took my keys away from me for a month. I’d been seventeen and it was the worst punishment I’d ever endured. It should have cured me of this kind of outburst.

I kept up a sober, alert pace the three miles to the Amphitheater. Alma Mejicana’s offices were behind it on Ashland. Tony used to take me to horse and dog shows there, but it had been a good twenty-five years since I’d been in that part of town. I’d forgotten the maze of dead-end streets between Ashland and Halsted. Even having to double back to Thirty-ninth and make my way on the main streets brought me to the contracting company in twenty minutes.

I drove slowly past their drab brick building. The door was padlocked shut. The high-set dirty windows reflected the gray morning air—no lights were on behind them. I made a careful circuit down the alley behind the building. The rear metal doors had a heavy chain slung through their handles clamped together with a businesslike American Master padlock.

I drove on through the alley and went up Ashland again to Forty-fourth. I left the Chevy at the corner, across from a handkerchief park where an old man was walking a lethargic terrier. Neither of them paid any attention to me. I walked down the alley with my head up, purposeful, I belonged there. When a Dumpster lid clattered shut behind a nearby gate, I didn’t jump, at least not very high.

With an American Master you need either an acetylene torch, a high-quality saw, or the key. I didn’t have any of those. I studied the chain regretfully. It was bigger than me too. After a complete circuit of the building I didn’t think I could get to the windows without a ladder. That left the roof, which also meant coming back and doing it at night.

Down the alley a telephone pole stood close enough to a building that I could shinny up and make my way across to Alma Mejicana. I stretched my arms up against it. The first spikes were about four feet out of reach. Still, some kind of footstool should make the climb possible.

Three flat-topped cubes of varying height lay between the pole and my target. I paced the distance. I’d only have to manage five feet at the widest jump. Even in my feeble state I ought to be able to do that in the dark.

I looked for a landmark that would let me know I’d reached Alma. The buildings facing the alley were lined with undifferentiated high wood fencing, but a garage had been built into the wall catty-corner to the contractor. I should be able to spot that with my flashlight.

The old man and the terrier were sitting on a bench reading the morning paper when I got back to the Chevy. Neither of them looked up even when I slammed the car door shut. I headed over to the Ryan at a brisk clip. The Chevy started its hideous grinding when I pushed it to sixty on the expressway but quieted down at forty. I made it home in time to catch the Bears’ opening kickoff against the unbeaten Bills. Like all good Chicagoans, I turned the TV sound off and caught the radio commentary—we like Dick Butkus’s knowledge and his partisanship.

With the Bears cruising at halftime, I looked at the Sunday papers. I was flipping idly through the Star’s “Chicago Beat” section when the Seligman name jumped up at me. The company offices on Montrose had been burgled. Mrs. Rita Donnelly, fifty-seven, a thirty-year employee, had been killed.

Behind me Jim Hart and Butkus were carrying on about the fine points of Dan Hampton’s first-half play. I switched the radio off and read the story slowly.

The Star had only given it five inches. I went through the Tribune and the Sun-Times and finally found enough detail to let me know the time the police thought it had happened—late Friday afternoon—the mailman’s discovery of her body on Saturday when he went in through the unlocked front door with a registered letter, and Mr. Seligman’s shock. Mrs. Donnelly had left two daughters, Shannon Casey (thirty-two) and Star Wentzel (twenty-nine), both married, and three grandchildren. Mass would be at St. Inanna’s parish Tuesday afternoon; visitation at the Callahan Funeral Home Monday evening. In lieu of flowers money should be sent to the St. Inanna scholarship fund.

The Bears and Bills were stacked in a violent heap on the silent TV screen—the second half had started without me. I switched off the set and went to the window to look out. It could have been random violence—money came into the office. Someone knew that, staked it out, killed her before she could get to the bank.

“Just don’t forget that’s possible,” I lectured myself out loud. “Don’t get so wound up in your favorite theories that you ignore the amount of random ugly violence in this town.” How could it have been random, though, with Cerise dead, the attack on Elena and me, the two fires. It all connected someplace. The murderer had ransacked the files, but no money had been taken, either from the office or from Mrs. Donnelly’s own bag.

Mrs. Donnelly’s death made me do something I had felt too churlish to do earlier—call Furey to see what he knew about Elena.

He sounded pleased enough to hear from me, although I could tell by the background noise I’d interrupted a party. “You got us all kind of worried, Vic. You doing okay?”

“I was feeling better until I went to the hospital this morning to visit my aunt. They told me you’d come around to talk to her and that they gave you all the details.”

“Yeah. I tried calling you a few times but just got your answering service. I was hoping you might have some idea where she went. She’s our only real lead on Wednesday’s fire.”

“Besides me.” I told him about Montgomery’s theory.

“Oh, Monty—he gets a little off balance sometimes. Don’t pay any attention to him. What about your aunt? I checked that hotel on Kenmore, but she hasn’t been back there since she skipped ten days ago.”

I suggested the abandoned buildings on the Near South Side and he promised to get a patrol unit to check them out. The pals had all come over to watch the game—he kind of wanted to get back to it, but he’d talk to me later in the week.

The phone rang as soon as I’d hung up. It was my uncle Peter, frothing because of my letter: What did I think he was, some cretin that he’d expose his children to someone like Elena?

“It’s okay, Peter—she’s vanished. No one’s going to ask anything of you.” Actually I was planning on calling Reese tomorrow to make sure they had his name and address as Elena’s financial guarantor, but I didn’t see it would help him any to learn that this afternoon.

The news didn’t mollify him. “Just get this through your head, Vic—if I’d wanted to stay tied to a bunch of losers, I wouldn’t have moved away from Chicago. If that offends you, I’m sorry, but I want more for my children than Tony wanted for you.”

I was about to launch a full-scale counterattack on how Tony wouldn’t have wanted sleaze for me, but even as I started it I realized the futility of saying anything. Peter and I had been around this track together a good many times. Neither of us was going to change. I hung up without saying good-bye.

I went back to the window and looked down at the drab bungalows facing my building. Maybe Tony would have wanted a mansion in Winnetka for me, but he’d only known bungalows and walk-ups—he wouldn’t think they were any disgrace for me.

My fight with Peter had exhausted me more than carrying around that tropical rain forest had this morning. If I wanted to prance around the rooftops tonight, I needed some rest. I switched off the phones and fell into my bed.

31

House Calls

It was six when I woke up again. My shoulder muscles had stiffened from the aftermath of carrying Ralph MacDonald’s flowers up to Elena. I wanted to soak them under a hot shower. That was impossible with my gauze mitts. Anyway, I needed to keep my hands protected for my upcoming labors.

Although I’d had a little peanut butter while watching the Bears, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal yet today. I still didn’t have any real food in the house. I’d planned to ask Robin to drive me to the store yesterday, but after his squib about taking me off the case it had gone out of my mind. I didn’t think I could do my Santa Claus imitation without dinner.

I pulled on the top to my long underwear and put a black cotton sweater on over that. It might be cool on the rooftops and I didn’t want anything as bulky—or as visible—as a jacket. Jeans and my black basketball high-tops completed the ensemble that the well-dressed burglar was wearing this year. I also needed some kind of dark cap or scarf to keep light from reflecting from my face or hair. I rummaged through my drawers and came up with a soft black linen square Eileen Mallory had given me last Christmas. I didn’t think the green and blue design woven into it would show up at night.

If I’m carrying my gun I usually wear a shoulder holster. Since I wanted to bring a few tools with me tonight, I dug out an old police-style belt with a holster and holes for slinging handcuffs or a truncheon.

My best flashlight was buried in the Prairie Shores rubble, but I had another one someplace. After rooting through the dining-room cupboard and the hall closet, I found it at the back of the refrigerator top. Although a little greasy to the touch, its battery still worked. I strung some twine through the hook on its end and tied it to my belt. A small hammer, a screwdriver, and a dark hand towel completed my supplies. I used to have a set of picklocks given to me by a grateful client in my PD days, but the police had confiscated those several years ago. I picked up my rolling footstool from behind the refrigerator and headed out.

I managed to slink out of the apartment without rousing Mr. Contreras, Peppy, or even Vinnie the banker. The fall twilight had set in, purply-gray and changing quickly to black. No passerby could make out my equipment belt. I stuck it in the Chevy’s trunk with the footstool and drove the four blocks to the Belmont Diner for dinner. After a bowl of hearty cabbage soup and a plate of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, I felt too stuffed to move.

Gluttony is a terrible enemy of the private detective. I’d have to wait a good hour before starting my trek, maybe even longer. You’re disgusting, I admonished myself privately as I paid the bill. Peter Wimsey and Philip Marlowe never had this kind of problem.

Back in the Chevy I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. If I returned to my apartment, the chances were good I’d run into the old man. If his jealous sixth sense warned him I was setting out on an adventure, I might not be able to get away without him. I didn’t want to go to a movie. I didn’t want to sit in my office with a novel.

I put the car into gear and went north, up to Estes. The Chevy seemed to be behaving itself again—maybe I’d been imagining the groan in its engine.

It was only eight when I got to Saul Seligman’s house, not too late for visiting even an old man. I could see a dim glow of light behind the heavily draped windows. A late-model Chrysler stood immediately in front of the house. I parked just behind it and went up the walk to ring the bell.

After a long wait the locks turned back. Seligman’s elder daughter, Barbara Feldman, answered the door. She was close to fifty, well groomed without being fashionable, her reddish hair dyed and carefully set, her sweater and slacks tailored but comfortable.

She looked at me vaguely, not remembering me from the visit I’d paid to her Northbrook home.

“I’m V. I. Warshawski,” I said loudly enough to penetrate the glass. “The private investigator who came to see you last week about the fire at the Indiana Arms.”

Mrs. Feldman cracked the door so she could speak without shouting back at me. “My father isn’t well this evening. He’s not up to seeing anyone.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Mrs. Donnelly’s death must have upset him terribly. That’s why I’ve come. If he’s really ill I won’t stay long, but it’s possible he knows something that would help me get a line on her killer.”

She frowned. “The police have already been here. He doesn’t know anything.”

“They may not have known the right questions to ask. I think I do.”

She thought it over, sucking on her upper lip, then shut the door. At least she didn’t rebolt the myriad locks. While I waited for her to come back I did some gentle quad stretches. I didn’t want to face a five-foot jump and miss because I hadn’t loosened up. A couple passing by with a small dog on a leash eyed me curiously but didn’t say anything.

Mrs. Feldman came back after about five minutes. “My father says you can’t help, that all you do is bring trouble. He thinks you caused Auntie Rita’s death.”

There’s always something unsettling about a grown person using childhood names to discuss friends and relations— as if the world around her is so kaleidoscoped that Auntie Rita or Mummy or Daddy means the same thing to everyone listening to her.

“No,” I said patiently, “I didn’t do that. It’s possible, though, that Mrs. Donnelly knew something the person who torched your father’s hotel didn’t want disclosed. She may not even have known it was a terrible secret. If I talk to Mr. Seligman, maybe we can find out what they’d discussed the last time they were together. That might give me a lead on why she was killed. And that can help us figure out who killed her.”

Mrs. Donnelly had known something. I was sure of that. I hadn’t thought it had anything to do with the arson—more about her children, it had seemed, in some way that had made me wonder vaguely if Mr. Seligman might have been their father. I hadn’t thought it concerned either me or Ajax, but now it seemed I’d been mistaken.

Mrs. Feldman trundled back into the recesses of the house with my message. I felt a little absurd communicating this way, as though she were the wall and I was Thisbe. After a shorter wait she returned to tell me her father would see me.

“He says you’re like one of the plagues and if he doesn’t talk to you now, you’ll just hound him until he does. I don’t think he should, but he never listens to me anyway.”

I followed her into the stale hallway. We went down to the end of the passage into the kitchen, a room even more cramped and dingy than the musty living room where I had seen the old man before. He was huddled at the Formica table in a shabby plaid dressing gown, a mug of tea in front of him. Under the dim ceiling bulb his skin looked like a moldy orange. He kept his eyes on the tea when we came in, stirring it relentlessly.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Seligman,” I began, but he interrupted me with a snarl.

“The hell with that. If you were sorry to bother me, intrude on me, make my life miserable, why do you keep coming around?” He didn’t lift his eyes from the mug.

I sat down across from him, banging my shin against the refrigerator as I pulled one of the grimy chairs away from the table. “I suppose it does look as though I’m the one assaulting your life, since I’m the only stranger you see. But someone out there doesn’t like Seligman Property Management. They torched the Indiana Arms and they killed Mrs. Donnelly. I’d kind of like to see they get stopped before they do anything else, such as come after you.”

“I just want to stop you coming after me,” he muttered sullenly.

I held up my gauze mitts and spoke harshly. “Someone tried to do that last Tuesday, tried to burn me to death so I’d never go after anyone again. Was that your idea?”

He finally looked up at me. “Anyone can wrap bandages around their hands.” The words were truculent but he couldn’t hide the little hiss of breath when he saw the gauze.

I unwrapped the left hand without speaking. Now that the palm was healing it looked worse than before, yellow pustules surrounding the angry red line down the middle. He glanced at it, then looked away, scowling. He couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding back to it. Mrs. Feldman made an uneasy noise in the background but didn’t speak. Finally I put the palm down on my lap.

“After I came by here on Tuesday did you see Mrs. Donnelly or just talk to her on the phone?”

When Mr. Seligman hesitated his daughter answered. “She came by most evenings, didn’t she, Pop? Now that you’ve stopped going into the office every day.”

“So she came by after I was here? And what did you talk about?”

“My business. Which is none of your business, young lady.”

“When you told her I’d asked for a photograph, why did it upset her?” I kept my body completely still, my voice monotonous.

“If you know so much about it why are you asking me?” He muttered the snipe to his tea mug.

“Was it your children or her children she was worried about? Or is that the same thing?”

Behind me Mrs. Feldman gasped. “What are you trying to say? What’s wrong with you, anyway, to come around badgering him when he’s had such a shock.”

I ignored her. “How many daughters do you have, Mr. Seligman?”

I was way off target. I could tell by his look of outraged disgust. “I’m just glad Fanny didn’t have to live to hear this kind of garbage in her own kitchen.”

“So why did it bother her that you gave me the picture?”

“I don’t know.” It was a sudden, frustrated explosion. “She came by, we talked, I told her you’d been around, hounding me, still not letting me have my money, but you wanted a picture of Barbara and Connie. Then, when I told her I let you have the one taken at our fortieth anniversary, Fanny’s and mine, she got all excited. She wanted to know which picture it was. Of course I only gave you one I had a copy of, I don’t expect someone like you to return something sentimental, that’s why I picked that one. I told her all that and she started carrying on about how I was desecrating Fanny’s memory letting you have something from such a personal time.”

By the time he finished his orangey cheeks were spotted with red and he was panting. “Now are you happy? Can you leave me in peace?”

“I think so. Probably. When is the service for Mrs. Donnelly? Tuesday afternoon?”

“Don’t you go barging in destroying her funeral. I still think it’s all because of those questions of yours she’s dead.”

I met his angry glare sadly. I had an uneasy feeling he was right. I got to my feet, wadding the discarded gauze from my left hand into a tight ball.

“I’ll give you back your picture, Mr. Seligman, but it won’t be for a few more days. I won’t come back here again, but I would like to get into your office. Can you arrange that for me?”

“You want the keys? Or you want to just break in like those hoodlums that killed Rita?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t read about a break-in. I thought the door was open for normal business and they walked in.”

“Well, it’s locked now and you can’t have the keys. You’ll just have to do your grave robbing someplace else.”

Fatigue was starting to hit me. I didn’t have any more energy to give to arguing with him. I stuffed the wadded gauze into my jeans pocket and turned without speaking.

Mrs. Feldman bustled me down the hall. “I hope you can leave him alone now. I shouldn’t have let you in in the first place, but he’s never listened to me. If my sister’d been here-she looks just like Mother. Don’t come back again. Not unless you have his check for the Indiana Arms. It’s just a fire to you, but it meant something special to him.”

I started to say something about my own warm and wonderful character but broke it off—she wouldn’t care. I’d barely stepped across the threshold when she began snapping the locks shut.