Burn Marks

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.