Burn Marks (27 page)

40

Scared Out of House and Home

I turned on the bath when I got into my own place but my mind was racing too hard for me to relax. I got out of the tub and tried Murray. He wasn’t in, either at the news office or his home. I thought about calling Bobby but I could just imagine his reaction. Accusations against the chairman of the county board and his wealthy sidekick? Much worse than stirring up the officers of his regiment. Just not done, Vic old thing—if you had a touch of class you’d understand.

I went to look out the window. Despite my brave words to Mr. Contreras, I felt lonely and vulnerable by myself. I wondered if the two men who’d come calling had indeed meant to waylay me or if they were, in fact, a harmless duo of salesmen. Were they the answer Ralph MacDonald had promised to give me within twenty-four hours? Was that man idling across the street really waiting on his dog or waiting for me to come out?

I dropped the blind and went back to the phone to call Lotty.

“Vic! I’ve started to become quite worried, not hearing from you for so many days. How are you?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve got a tiger by the tail and I don’t think I’m quite strong enough to wrassle with it.”

“What kind of tiger?” Lotty asked.

I told her where my thinking had been leading me. “I’m just a little scared, Lotty. And I keep worrying about my aunt. I think she must have seen whoever they hired to set the fire. She probably tried a little genteel blackmail, she and Cerise between them, and now she’s hiding out someplace not very safe. I don’t know how to find her. The cops are helping. At least a cop is helping,” I amended, remembering that Finchley hadn’t even known Elena’d skipped again. “And now my car is dead so I can’t …”

My thought died and my voice with it. A cop knew Elena had done a bunk because he’d gone to Michael Reese specifically to see her. Just as he’d gotten me to reveal her address two weeks ago so he could go see her then.

The police didn’t give two hoots if an aging drunk on her uppers tried to pick up young men in Uptown. Michael did.

McGonnigal’s reaction to that gold bracelet came tumbling through my head and I saw it laid out for me in such complete detail that I thought my whole insides would come up through my mouth. I remembered now where I’d seen it before, the time he’d worn it last February when I’d gone to a birthday party the pals had put on for him. McGonnigal thought I’d brought the bracelet around to flaunt my long-cooled affair with Micheal. That’s why he hadn’t told me it was Furey’s.

Only Furey hadn’t left it at my apartment. Elena and Cerise had. The night they slept there they’d laid it on the floor under the mattress, the way people do. And in the morning, when Cerise was so sick, they’d forgotten it.

“Vic—what’s gone wrong? You haven’t fainted, have you?” Lotty spoke sharply; I realized I was standing like an idiot with the mouthpiece in my hand.

“No. No. I just suddenly am seeing something that ought to have hit me long ago.”

“What you need most right now is a hot meal and a night’s sleep. Why don’t I come for you—you can have some soup and sleep in my guest room. Then tomorrow you’ll have the strength to think of an advanced design in tiger traps.”

It was so enticing an offer I couldn’t turn it down, even as my mind was churning over Michael. I pulled my jeans on again and flung a few things into my backpack— including an extra clip for the Smith & Wesson.

The night Elena brought Cerise to my apartment was the night of Boots’s barbecue. Michael had driven back to my place and was waiting for me there when I pulled up. He’d had a police emergency and couldn’t stay, that was what he’d said. A triple homicide. I could check that sometime, if I lived past tonight, but I doubted it had ever occurred.

No—he’d gone into the lobby and found Elena and Cerise sitting there on Elena’s duffel bag. They’d come with their tale of Cerise’s baby, hoping they could use me to screw a little money from the insurance company. Then they’d seen Michael, put some heat on him. They’d seen him hanging around the Indiana Arms before the fire, had to be. He had the connection to Roland Montgomery. He’d be the one the pals would turn to when they wanted a building torched. Why the pals were involved I couldn’t say, except that they did favors for Boots in exchange for contracts. And Michael did favors for the pals because they were all good old boys from the neighborhood.

So Elena recognized him when he came into the lobby after Boots’s party. She told him she loved boys with gorgeous eyes and she wouldn’t tell anyone she’d recognized him if he’d just help her out, give her a little something so she could buy a drink.

He gave them the bracelet, that was the payoff, but the next day he hunted out Cerise and took her to the Rapelec site, got her shot full of heroin, left her to die. No, that wasn’t quite it. He’d gotten the heroin to someone— maybe to the pals or to their night manager. August Cray! The registered agent for Farmworks was also the night manager at the Rapelec site.

Anyway, Michael thought he could get the bracelet back but Cerise didn’t have it. That was why Bobby’s unit was there so fast once the night watchman had spotted her—he had to be the first person to see her. Another police officer might be able to identify the bracelet if she had it on her.

But then? It didn’t explain everything, but it made a certain amount of horrible sense. He needed to find Elena to get her quiet, too, but she’d skipped. When I told her about Cerise she’d hunted him out someplace and he’d said enough to make her know he’d killed Cerise. She’d run for cover. So his whole story about her trying to turn tricks in Uptown, that was made up. Bobby never asked him to find her. That was why Furey had made such a big deal out of my not calling to ask him.

My legs were cotton. They kept bending when I tried walking on them. I had to get to the Streeter Brothers fast—I couldn’t leave Elena out on the loose for Furey to find and pick off at will.

I forced myself to wobble over to the phone. When I dialed their number I reached their answering machine. I left a message, trying to sound urgent without being hysterical, and gave them Lotty’s number to use in the morning.

When I hung up I tried Murray again; he was still out prowling someplace. I checked the street from my window. The man with the dog had disappeared. A few other people were strolling along the block, coming back from their workouts or heading for dinner. I didn’t believe any of them were emissaries of Ralph MacDonald with orders to garrote me on sight, but I still waited behind the blinds until I saw Lotty’s new Camry screech to a halt in front of my building.

Before going downstairs I called Mr. Contreras to let him know his vigilance wouldn’t be required.

He was a tad miffed that I would sleep at Lotty’s but not with him. “Anyway, just because you’re not home don’t mean someone won’t try to sneak in to hit you on the head when you get back. I think me and princess’ll keep up our patrol anyway.”

Calling to tell him my plans was the farthest I could stretch my humanitarian impulses—I couldn’t summon the courtesy to thank him for immolating himself so unnecessarily. It’s true he’d saved my life last winter, but it didn’t make me any more eager to include him in my work. I trotted downstairs, waved cursorily at the dog and Mr. Contreras when they popped their heads into the hall, and got quickly into the car. I hate feeling scared—it makes me run when I’d much rather be walking.

“So you’ve ruined that Chevy of yours with your reckless driving?” was Lotty’s greeting.

I opened my mouth to retort, then shut it as Lotty made a rakish U in front of a Sun-Times delivery van. The driver braked so hard that a bundle of papers flew onto the side-walk. Lotty ignored his mad honking and cursing with an imperiousness worthy of her ancestors—she once told me they’d been advisers to the Hapsburgs.

Lotty drives as if she were responsible for an ambulance during the Blitz—she sees the roads filled with enemy aircraft that she’s either dodging or beating to a likely target. She insists on buying standard transmissions because that’s what she grew up with, but strips the gears so mercilessly that this was her third car in eight years. Like all rotten drivers, she thinks she’s the only person who has a legitimate right to the road. By the time we’d gone the two miles to her apartment, I was thinking I should have stayed home and taken my chances with Ralph MacDonald.

When we stopped the Camry hiccoughed softly—it knew better than to complain too loudly to her. I followed her meekly into her building, up to the second floor, where a brilliant display of color always knocks me back on my heels when I haven’t been there for a time. Lotty dresses in severely tailored clothes—dark skirts, crisp white shirts or sober black knits. It’s in her home that her intense personality emerges in rich reds and oranges.

Even though I’ve stayed there a number of times, Lotty always treats me as a real guest, taking my bag, offering me a drink from her limited repertoire. She almost never uses alcohol herself and keeps brandy on hand only for medical emergencies. I turned it down tonight— my stomach still had a strong memory of the bottle of Georges Goulet I’d put away last evening.

Lotty had a stew simmering on the back of the stove, some kind of Viennese dish reconstructed from her childhood memories. Hearty and simple, it brought back the comforts of my own childhood.

“You must have known I’d be coming when you made this,” I said gratefully, cleaning the last carrot from my plate. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Lotty leaned over to kiss me. “Now a bath for you, and bed. You have black circles the size of craters around your eyes.”

Before I went to bed she checked my hands. The blisters were a bit tender from my gripping the Chevy’s steering wheel too hard, but they continued to heal. She put more salve on them and tucked me into her cool scented sheets. My last thought was that the smell of lavender was the smell of home.

When I woke up again it was past ten. The sun stuck little fingers of light around the edges of the heavy crimson curtains, striating the walls and floor. In the empty apartment all I could hear was the hum of the bedside clock, an oddly comforting noise.

I pulled on my sweatshirt and padded into the kitchen. Lotty had left a glass of orange juice for me and a note to help myself to food. My long sleep had left me with an enormous appetite. I boiled a couple of eggs and ate them with a great stack of toast.

While I was eating I tried to come up with a design for a perfect tiger trap, but as soon as I started thinking about Ralph MacDonald and Furey and the rest of the gang, I got too nervous for logic or design.

I wished I had the beginning of an idea of where to look for Elena. Maybe she did have some cronies who she could turn to when she hit the bottom of her considerable depths. If she had been in any of the other abandoned buildings on the Near South Side, Furey would have found her by now.

I got up abruptly. Maybe he had. Me could have put a bullet through her or strangled her—her body wouldn’t be found until the wrecking crews came through a year or more from now.

I went into the living room to use the phone and tried the Streeter Brothers again. The Streeter Brothers—Tim and Jim—operate a security firm called All Night—All Right. I’ve used them in the past when I had surveillance work too big for me to handle alone. Tim and Jim operate the firm as a collective with a handful of other guys, all big, all with beards. They move furniture as a sideline and most if not all of them spend their spare time reading Kierkegaard and Heidegger. They do a respectable job, but they also make me nostalgic for the dear dead days of yesteryear.

I got Bob Kovacki, whom I knew pretty well, and explained my situation to him. “I need to find her before this mad police sergeant does, but right now I’ve got a sickening idea he may have flushed her in one of the old buildings on the Near South Side and left her body there. I’d like you guys to look down there first, then we can go over some of her old hangouts.”

“God, Vic, we’re pretty booked now.” I could hear him drumming his fingers on the desktop. “I’ll talk to Jim, see if we can shift the schedule any. You going to be around this afternoon?”

“I may be doing errands, but I’ll call my answering service every hour. Look—I—well, I don’t have to spell it out for you. This is urgent. I know you’ll do the best you can, though.”

Once I’d arranged a tow for the Chevy I’d rent a car and go to the Near South Side myself. I called my garage and described what had happened. Luke Edwards, my mechanic, tisked lugubriously.

“Doesn’t sound good, Vic. You shoulda called me when it first started making that grinding noise. You probably drove the transmission dry. I’ll send Jerry over with the truck in an hour or so, but don’t hope for too much.”

I made a face at the phone. “Don’t be so cheerful, Luke—you’ll build up your endorphins too big and your brain’ll blow.”

“You saw what I see every day and you’d be sober too.”

Luke always makes his garage sound like the county morgue. I gave it up and told him I’d be waiting for Jerry with the car keys. I quickly washed the dishes and made up the bed. Leaving an effusive note for Lotty, I hiked to my own home.

41

Unlit Fireworks

I felt honor-bound to stop at Mr. Contreras’s and inquire into any dark doings in the night. He was intensely disappointed—nothing had happened. Peppy had wakened him around three barking her head off, but it turned out to be just a couple of guys climbing into a car across the street.

I finished the conversation as quickly as I tactfully could and went up to the third floor. No one was lurking there. I called a small local rental company to arrange for a car. They had an ′84 Tempo, no power steering, fifty thousand miles. It sounded like a clunker but it was only twenty dollars a day, including taxes, usage fees, franchise charges, and all the other items the big chains stiff you for. I told them I’d be by around one.

My long deep sleep had worked wonders on my sore shoulders. They were stiff but the needles of pain had gone. While waiting for Jerry I got out my small hand weights and did a light set of exercises to loosen them further.

The bright yellow tow truck finally honked in front of my building a little before one—I should have remembered the laws of relativity that apply to garage time and multiplied Luke’s estimate of an hour by three.

I couldn’t find my car keys. Finally I remembered stuffing them into the backpack, where they’d clattered against the Smith & Wesson. I picked up the whole pack and fished the keys out on my way down the stairs. Mr. Contreras stuck his head out the door.

“Just turning my car over to the tow service,” I said brightly, waving good-bye. Sometimes it was easier to tell him everything than to fight him.

Jerry was a small, wiry guy in his late twenties. He owned a towing service but had a contract with Luke and did most of the garage’s work. In his spare time he raced slot cars. We chatted a few minutes about an amazing race he’d won in Milwaukee the previous weekend.

“Let me see if she’ll turn over this morning, Vic. Save you the price of a tow.”

“The car’s dead, Jerry. I had to push it the final three blocks home last night.” Why can’t a car jock admit that a woman might at least know whether her own automobile starts or not.

“Well, maybe we can jump it then. Just open the hood a minute, okay, Vic?”

“Oh, all right.” I stomped ungraciously across the street and undid the hood release. It was already loose, which seemed odd. I wondered if I might have pulled it by mistake while I was fumbling around trying to push the car last night.

Jerry turned his truck around and backed up parallel with the Chevy. Whistling between his teeth, he pulled a set of cables from the back of the truck and came over to join me.

It was the looseness of the catch that made me look inside the engine before he hooked up the cables. Still whistling, Jerry was moving to attach one of them to the battery when I yanked his arm down.

“Get that thing away from the engine.”

“Vic—what—” He broke off when he saw the twin explosive sticks laid near the coil.

“Vic, let’s get the fuck out of here.” He spoke with a casualness belied by his white face. He grabbed my arm and shoved me into the truck. Before I’d shut the door he was at the corner of Belmont.

I was trembling so violently, I’m not sure I could have moved without his pulling me. I tried to stop my teeth chattering long enough to tell him to get the police on his truck radio.

“We can’t leave that bomb there for any passerby to touch,” I said through clenched jaws. “We’ve got to get the cops.”

His face was still so white that his brown eyes looked black, but he coasted to a stop in an empty loading zone near a hardware store. “I don’t want to go near that thing again. Dynamite scares the shit out of me. Who you get so pissed off at you, Warshawski?”

While he dialed 911 I opened the truck door and threw up my eggs and toast in a neat little heap on the curb.

It was three-thirty by the time I finished with the cops. After a squad car duo had taken a quick, fearful look at the bomb, Roland Montgomery showed up with young Firehorse Whiskey, whom I’d seen briefly in his office two weeks ago. As the day wore on I never did get the young man’s real name.

Montgomery sent for a bomb-removal team. They arrived after half an hour or so in something that looked like a moon mobile. In the meantime a half dozen more squad cars roared in to seal off the area. For a few hours the street had more excitement than it usually gets in a year, what with police cordons and lots of guys in space suits moving in on my car. The networks all sent their vans, and children who should have been in school appeared miraculously to wave at their playmates on the four o’clock news.

When he saw the TV crews pull up, Montgomery got out of the car where he’d been questioning Jerry and me and went over to talk to them. I ambled over to join in. He liked that so little that he tried grabbing the mike away from me when I started to explain how Jerry and I found the bomb.

“We don’t have anything to report to the media yet on this device,” the lieutenant said roughly.

“You may not”—I smiled limpidly for the camera crews—“but I’m the owner of the car and I have a lot to say about it. I think my downstairs neighbor heard them putting the bomb in around three this morning.”

Of course they lapped that up and wanted more. There wasn’t anything Montgomery could do about it. “It was the dog who really heard them,” I said. “She probably saw them at my car—that’s why she started barking. You can ask him all about it.”

I gestured broadly at Mr. Contreras, who was standing on the periphery of the crowd with Peppy. Peppy bounded over to me while Mr. Contreras made his way to the eager reporters. Montgomery backed away from the dog and demanded I get rid of her.

“Don’t shoot her, Lieutenant,” I said. “It’ll be on three networks all over the country.”

Dogs make a welcome addition to any picture, especially a golden retriever as beautiful and heroic as Peppy. While Montgomery frowned horribly I told the reporters her name and got her to shake paws with a couple of them. They were naturally enchanted.

I fondled the dog’s ears and listened to Mr. Contreras explain at excruciating length exactly what it was he’d heard and seen. He also told them how the dog had saved my life last winter when she found me bound and gagged in the middle of a swamp. I was glad I wasn’t the one who’d have to listen to it all in order to find one usable comment.

Once the experts had removed the dynamite from the car and whisked it away in a special sealed container, the TV crews departed too. Montgomery’s demeanor changed immediately. He sent Jerry off and informed me we were going downtown for a real talk. A trace of sadism in his expression as he took my arm roughly made my stomach churn. Mr. Contreras pawed anxiously at him, demanding to know what they were doing with me. Montgomery brushed the old man back so roughly, I was afraid he might knock him over.

“Take it easy, Lieutenant, he’s seventy-eight. You don’t need to prove you’re bigger and more powerful.”

“Bobby Mallory puts up with a lot of shit from you I don’t have to take, Warshawski. You button up now and speak when you’re spoken to or I’ll have you in on an assault charge fast enough to make your smug little head spin.”

“Whew, Lieutenant, you been watching too many Dirty Harry movies.”

He yanked my arm hard enough to jar the shoulder socket and hustled me to the car. As he was pushing me inside I turned to scream at Mr. Contreras to call Lotty and get my lawyer’s name from her.

Down at Eleventh Street, Montgomery took me to a small interrogation room and began demanding to know how I’d gotten hold of a supply of dynamite. When it dawned on me that he was trying to accuse me of rigging my own car, I was so furious that the room swam in front of my eyes.

“Get a witness in here, Lieutenant,” I managed to get out in a voice below a scream. “Get a witness in here to what you’re saying.”

He swallowed a triumphant smile so fast I almost missed it. “We’ve got a pretty good case, Warshawski. You’ve been involved in two suspicious fires in the last month. We figure you for a sensationalist. When you couldn’t get the kind of attention you wanted out of those fires, you rigged a bomb up in your car. All I want to know is where you got the dynamite.”

I wanted to jump up from behind the table and seize his long stork neck and pound his head against the wall, but I had just enough reason left to know he was hoping to goad me over the brink. I shut my eyes, panting, trying to force my temper down—the first time I let it go he’d have me in the lockup for assaulting an officer.

“You’ve been hiding behind Bobby Mallory for years, Warshawski. It’s time you learned to fight on your own.”

I felt him moving toward me just in time to back my chair away. The blow he’d aimed for my head got me on the diaphragm.

“I presume this room is wired. Please let the record show that Lieutenant Montgomery just hit a witness in a bombing case,” I shouted.

He aimed another fist at me. I slid from my chair under the legs of the table. Montgomery got down on his hands and knees to pull me out, shouting abuse at me, calling me names out of porn flicks. I scooted away from him. He went flat on his abdomen and grabbed my left ankle. I twisted away and got to my feet on the other side of the table.

Just as I staggered upright Officer Neely walked in. Her professional mask cracked at the sight of a lieutenant on his belly scrabbling around under an interrogation table.

“He lost a contact,” I said helpfully, “We’ve both been down there looking, but he started confusing my ankle with his eyeballs so I thought I’d get out of the way.”

Neely didn’t say anything. By the time Montgomery had climbed awkwardly back to his feet, she had her face composed in its usual rigid lines. She spoke in a monotone. “Lieutenant Mallory heard you were questioning this witness and wanted to talk to her for a few minutes.”

Montgomery glared at her, furious at being caught looking like a fool. I felt sorry for her, her career buffeted by being the wrong person to show up at a bad moment.

“I don’t think the lieutenant here has anything else useful to say to me. He’s got his facts without asking a single question. Let’s go, Officer.” Unfortunately I didn’t feel sorry enough to keep my mouth shut.

I opened the door to the interrogation room and headed down the hall, not waiting to see what Officer Neely would do. She caught up with me on the stairs. I wanted to say something helpful and sisterly to her in support of her law-enforcement career, but I was too badly rattled to think of anything very chipper. She was looking rigidly ahead, making it impossible to know if she was embarrassed, disgusted, or just not very responsive. On the third floor we silently crossed the Violent Crimes area to Bobby’s tiny office along the far wall. Officer Neely knocked and opened the door.

“Miss Warshawski, sir. Did you want me to take notes?”

Bobby was on the phone. He shook his head and motioned me to a chair. Officer Neely shut the door behind her with a sharp snap.

Bobby’s desk and walls were crammed with photographs—pictures of yellow birds in flight, gap-toothed children grinning as they sported his dress uniform cap, Eileen hand in hand with her eldest daughter as a bride. He liked to shift them around every so often so he could see them with a fresh eye. Ordinarily I hunt for the shots of Tony or Gabriella—or even the one of me at five sitting on Tony’s lap. Today I didn’t really care. I sat gripping my hands on the side of the metal chair, waiting for him to finish his conversation. Next to Montgomery, Bobby was the last person I wanted to see today.

“Okay, Vicki, tell me what’s going on and make it fast. I had a call from your lawyer, which is how I knew you were down here, but it doesn’t make me happy to run interference for you with another man on the force.”

I took a deep breath and came out with a tolerably coherent version of the day’s events. Bobby grunted and asked a few questions, like how come I knew it was a bomb and how long it had taken Monty to get there after Jerry called in the report on his car radio.

When I got to the end Bobby made a face. “You’re in an awkward spot, Vicki. I keep telling you not to play around in police business and this just proves my point. You came to me to get you out of hot water you boiled up yourself—”

“What do you mean?” I was so furious, my head seemed to rise a foot from my body. “I did not, repeat not, put that bomb in my car engine. Someone did, but instead of trying to get a description of the men who did it—who may have done it—from a pretty good witness, the police are trying to charge me with attempted suicide.”

“I’m not saying you planted that device, Vicki. I know you well enough to realize you’re not that unbalanced. But if you hadn’t been playing around with arson and a whole lot of things I told you to stay out of, you wouldn’t be in this mess at all.”

He looked at me sternly, daddy to naughty child. “Now I’m going to use a few chips on your behalf, Vicki, with a guy who’s not too easy to work with. In return I want you to promise me that you are not going to touch this business any further. Let alone the trouble you’ve got yourself into, since you started in on that fire three weeks ago you’ve got my whole unit stirred up. You were in last night with some damned piece of jewelry that has the boys in an uproar now. I just can’t have it. Do you understand?”

I pressed my lips together. “I brought in a man’s bracelet I found under my couch because I though Finchley might have dropped it when he and Montgomery were in last week. McGonnigal flipped out when he saw it because he knew it was Furey’s and thought I was flaunting it at him. It was only late last night that I realized it belonged to Furey and came to see what it was doing in my apartment.

“He’d given it to Elena, Bobby, to Elena and the dead junkie you went to see at the Rapelec site two weeks ago. It was just a little extortion, something to keep them from reporting that they’d seen him—”

Bobby slammed his palm hard on the desk. One of the pictures teetered and fell over the side. “I’ve had enough out of you!” he roared. “That’s a loathsome suggestion. You’ve been treated too easy for too long, that’s your problem, so when things don’t go your way you manufacture conspiracy theories. You ought to know better than that, than to come in here and try to lay that kind of sh—something like that on me. Now get out and go home. I told you two weeks ago to stop stirring up my department and I meant it. This had better be the last time I see you around here.”