Burn Marks

12

Firing Up the Arson Squad

Before leaving the hospital I tried to reach Robin Bessinger at Ajax. I was hoping to cancel our meeting with the Bomb and Arson Squad now that I knew the baby hadn’t been in the Indiana Arms, but I was too late-the insurance receptionist told me he’d already left for the police department. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and headed back to Ellis Avenue and my car.

It used to be you could go to Central Police Headquarters anytime day or night and park with ease. Now that development mania has hit the Near South Side, downtown congestion has clogged the area. It took me half an hour to find a place to park. That made me about ten minutes late for the meeting, which scarcely helped my frayed mood.

Roland Montgomery held court in an office the size of my bed. A regulation metal desk crammed with papers took most of the available space, but he squeezed in chairs for me, Bessinger, Assuevo, and a subordinate. Papers were stacked on the windowsill and on top of the metal filing cabinet. Someone should have told him the place was a fire trap.

Montgomery, a tall, thin man with hollow cheeks, gave me a sour look as I came in. He ignored my outstretched hand, pointed to the empty chair in the corner, and asked if I knew Dominic Assuevo.

Assuevo was bull-shaped-thick neck and wide shoulders tapering into narrow hips. His graying sandy hair was cropped close to his head the way the boys used to wear it when I was in third grade. He greeted me with a jovial courtesy not reflected in his eyes.

“Can’t stay away from fire, huh, Ms. Warshawski?”

“Good to see you again, too, Commander. Hiya, Robin. I tried to get you a little bit ago but your office told me you were already here.” I skirted my way past his long feet to the vacant chair.

Robin Bessinger was sitting in the opposite corner of the tiny room. He seemed a little older than he’d struck me when I first met him, but of course the hard hat had kept me from seeing that his hair had gone gray. He smiled and waved and said hello.

I squeezed in next to the uniformed man and held out a hand. “V. I. Warshawski. I don’t think we’ve met.”

He mumbled something that sounded like “firehorse whiskey.” I never did learn what his name really was.

“So you think there was a baby in the Indiana Arms, Ms. Warshawski?” Montgomery pulled a folder from the stack in front of him. I had to believe he’d practiced it, that he couldn’t know offhand what fire which folder referred to.

“I did when I spoke to Mr. Bessinger this morning. That was before I tracked down the baby’s grandmother. I just finished interviewing her in the hospital and she says she had already sent the child to its other grandmother before the fire broke out.”

“So we’re wasting our time here, is that what you’re telling me?’ Montgomery’s eyebrows rose to his sandy hairline. He made no effort to hide his contempt.

I gave a tight smile. “Guess so, Lieutenant.”

“There were no babies in the Indiana Arms when it burned down?” He swung his neck cranelike across the desk at me.

“I can’t say that categorically. I only know that the one I’d been told was there-Katterina Ramsay-had left the building earlier in the evening. For all I know there might have been others. You should check with Commander Assuevo here.”

The young man next to me had started to write this in his open notebook but stopped at a sign from Montgomery.

“You have something of the reputation of a wit, Ms. Warshawski,” the lieutenant said heavily. “Personally, I have never found your sense of humor entertaining. I hope this wasn’t your idea of a joke, to turn police and fire department resources loose on a wild-goose chase.”

“My comedic talents have always been greatly overrated by Bobby Mallory,” I said coolly. I was feeling pretty angry, but it seemed to me Montgomery was provoking me deliberately. I wanted to be the last one to blink.

“Well, the next time you feel an urge to make a joke, call Mallory, not me. Because if you do abuse departmental resources again, Ms. Warshawski, believe me, I will be calling the lieutenant and asking him to give you a good lesson in legalities.”

That seemed to be the end of the interview. Short of leaping over the desk and pummeling him with my bare hands, I couldn’t think of anything to say or do to express my frustration effectively. I stood up slowly, aligned my belt buckle directly under the black buttons, pulled an imaginary hair from my dress, and shook out the shirt. I beamed happily at Firehorse Whiskey and sketched a wave at Robin Bessinger.

I kept the happy smile on my face all the way down the stairs. Once in the hall I let the waves of anger wash through me. What the hell was eating Montgomery? It could only be his relations with police lieutenant Bobby Mallory. Bobby talks about me one way and thinks about me quite another-he might easily have told the fire commander I was a pain in the butt and a wiseass-his publicly expressed opinion on many occasions. Missing would be Bobby’s affection as an old friend of my parents’.

But that didn’t excuse the squad commander’s behavior. He could have asked me why I had called Robin to begin with. I certainly wasn’t going to start piping out self-exculpation when treated to that kind of routine. And Bessinger-why didn’t the guy speak up? I made a tight face and headed for the south exit.

“You look like a snake stood up and bit you. Can’t you even say hi to your friends?” It was Michael Furey. I hadn’t been scanning faces as I hunched my way down the hall.

“Oh, hiya, Michael. Must be sleep deprivation.”

“What are you doing here? Helping us keep Chicago safe and legal?” His dark blue eyes teased me.

I forced myself to smile. “Something like that. I’ve just been meeting with Roland Montgomery about that fire in the Indiana Arms last week.”

“The one where your aunt got caught? You oughta stay clear of arson-that’s dirty, dirty stuff.”

“Dirty work, but someone’s got to do it. Since Montgomery doesn’t want to, maybe I’ll have a crack at it.”

“Oh, Monty’s not doing the investigation?” His eyebrows shot up and he looked thoughtful.

“Doesn’t seem too interested.” I kept my tone light.

“Well, in that case-” He broke off. “You don’t want me telling you to mind your own business.”

I bowed slightly. “Call the boy a mind reader.”

He laughed a little, but there was a current of annoyance in it. “I won’t, then. But keep it in mind that if Monty isn’t touching it, there may be good reasons to stay away from it.”

I looked at him steadily. “Like what? Well, it doesn’t matter. Just to keep you happy, no one’s asked me to look at the arson. But the more people tell me not to touch something, the more I feel like reaching out a hand just to see what’s so special about it.”

He hunched a shoulder impatiently. “Whatever you say, Vic. I gotta run.”

He went on down the hall, greeting uniformed men with his usual good humor. I shook my head and went on outside.

Bessinger caught up with me as I was crossing State. “Slow down, Vic. I’d like to know what was going on between you and Monty in that meeting.”

I stopped and faced him squarely. “You tell me. I wondered why you didn’t say anything to explain why you thought it worthwhile bothering Montgomery based just on my phone call.”

He held up his hands. “I’ve been around a lot of fires in my time. I don’t step in between the accelerant and the kindling. Besides, I did try to talk to him. That’s why I stayed after you. But I still can’t figure out why he’s so angry about this one. Other than manpower shortages, but he’s taking it as a personal affront. Why?”

I shook my head. “I can see it would piss him and Assuevo to have the lab sifting through ashes for a nonexistent body. But I only called you in the first place to find out if you knew. When you didn’t I took the long route, which meant getting the last name of the baby’s mother and tracking down her mother. The grandmother, I mean.”

“You didn’t know that when you called?” His tone was puzzled, not accusatory.

“I never saw the young woman before-the mother of the baby-until she came to my place late last night. She’d left the kid with her own mother, Zerlina Ramsay, at the Indiana Arms, and she didn’t want me talking to Mrs. Ramsay. She said if I knew their last name it would get her mother in trouble, that she’d never find another place to stay. She’s a junkie, though-I don’t know if that came from drug-related paranoia or real concern about her mother or what.”

We were standing on the pavement near the curb. Patrolmen heading up State toward the entrance kept brushing against us. When I stepped aside to avoid a man being decanted from a stretch limo, I ran into a woman trotting down the street toward Dearborn.

“Can’t you watch where you’re going?” she snapped at me.

I opened my mouth to utter a guerrilla hostility back, then thought maybe I’d done enough fighting for one day and ignored her.

Robin looked at his watch. “I don’t need to go back to the office. Want to get a drink someplace? I’m afraid if someone else bumps into us, Monty’s going to have us arrested, the mood he’s in.”

I suddenly felt very tired. I’d been running since eight this morning cleaning up after Elena and Cerise. People as different as Lotty and Roland Montgomery had been chewing me out. A clean well-lighted place and a glass of whiskey sounded like doctor’s orders to me.

Robin had taken a cab up from Ajax. He walked back to the Chevy with me and we headed through the early rush-hour traffic to the Golden Glow, a bar I know and love in the south Loop. We left the car at a meter down near Congress and walked the three blocks back to the bar, Sal Barthele, the owner, was alone with a couple of men nursing beers at the mahogany horseshoe counter. She nodded majestically at me when I took Robin over to a small round table in the corner. She waited until we were settled and Robin had exclaimed over the genuine Tiffany lamps to take our orders.

“Your usual, Vic?” Sal asked when Robin had ordered a beer.

My usual is Black Label up. I pictured Elena’s flushed, veined face and my missing credit cards. I remembered Zerlina’s admonition to keep three thousand bottles behind Elena. Then I thought, hell, I’m thirty-seven years old. If I was going to get drunk every time life threatened me, I would have started in years ago. When I feel like having a whiskey, I’ll have a whiskey.

“Yes,” I said more vehemently than I’d meant.

“You sure about that, girl?” Sal mocked me gently, then went to the bar to fill our order. Sal’s a shrewd businesswoman. The Glow is only one of her investments and she could easily afford to turn it over to a manager. But it also was her first venture and she likes to preside over it in person.

Robin took a swallow of his draft and opened his eyes in appreciation. “I’ve probably walked by here a hundred times going to the Insurance Exchange. How could I have missed this stuff?”

Sal’s draft is made for her privately by a small brewer in Steven’s Point. I’m not a beer lover, but my pals who are think it’s pretty hot stuff.

I told Robin a little about Sal and her operations, then steered the talk back to the Indiana Arms. “You ever find any evidence that the owner was trying to sell the place?”

Robin shook his head. “Too early to tell. His limits aren’t out of line, but that doesn’t matter. It’s really more a question of what’s going on with the building and him and his finances. We haven’t got that far yet.”

“What does Montgomery say?”

Robin frowned and finished his beer before answering. “Nothing. He’s not going to dedicate any more resources into investigating the arson.”

“And you don’t agree?” I drank a glass of water, then swallowed the rest of my scotch. The warmth spread slowly from my stomach to my arms and some of the tension the day had put into my shoulders disappeared.

“We never pay a claim when arson is involved. I mean, not unless we’re a hundred percent sure the insured didn’t engineer it.”

He held up his glass to Sal and she brought over another draft. She had the Black Label bottle with her but I shook my head over the idea of seconds. Elena must have been affecting me after all.

“I just don’t understand Montgomery, though. I’ve worked with him before. He’s not an easy guy-not much looseness there-but I’ve never seen him as nasty as he was to you this afternoon.”

“Must be my charm,” I said lightly. “It hits some men that way.” I didn’t think it was worth explaining my theory about Montgomery and Bobby Mallory to a stranger.

Robin refused to laugh. “It’s something about this fire. Why else would he tell me the file was closed? He said they’d only reopened it because you thought there might be a body in there. Now they want to put their manpower where it’s more urgently needed.”

“I’ve never worked with the Bomb and Arson unit, but I assume they’re not too different from the rest of the police-too few people, too many crimes. It doesn’t seem so unbelievable to me that Montgomery would abandon an investigation into an underinsured mausoleum in one of the city’s tackier districts. The fire fighters and police may serve and protect everyone, but they’re human- they’ll respond to the neighborhoods with more political clout first.”

Robin made an impatient gesture. “Maybe you’re right. Insurance companies have to be more allergic to arson. Montgomery may want to concentrate on the Gold Coast, but we can’t be so picky. Even if he’s abandoning the Indiana Arms, we won’t. At least not for the time being.”

Or at least not until his boss also got his sense of priorities reorganized. But I kept that last unkind thought to myself and let the talk drift to the joys of home ownership. Robin had just bought a two-flat in Albany Park; he was renting out the ground floor while living on top and trying to rehab the whole place in his spare time on weekends. Stripping varnish and putting up drywall are not my idea of a good time, but I’m perfectly ready to applaud anyone else who wants to do it.

After his third beer it seemed natural to think about moving on to food. We agreed on I Popoli, a seafood restaurant near Clark and Howard. After that it seemed natural to drive up to Albany Park with him to inspect the rehab work. One thing kind of led to another, but I left before they drifted too far-I hadn’t packed any equipment when I left my apartment for the day. Anyway, AIDS is making me more cautious. I like to see a guy more than once before doing anything irrevocable. Still, it’s nice to get an outside opinion of one’s attractions. I went home at midnight in a far better mood than I would have thought possible when I got up twenty hours ago.