Burn Marks

44

An Old Friend Catches Up

Murray dropped me at the neighborhood car rental. He waited while I checked the engine-whether out of courtesy or because he was hoping for another dynamite story, since he’d missed the first, I didn’t ask. No one could have known I’d called Bad Wheels for a car; it was just my jangling nerves that made me look.

The Tempo’s engine ignited with a lurching rumble, but no flames shot out from under the hood. When Murray saw I wasn’t going up in smoke, he tore off in his battered Fiero, leaving me drumming my fingers on the wheel in indecision.

The sun had set. It would be light for another half hour or so, not really long enough for me to go hunting Elena with any confidence. If Michael had found and killed her, would it matter that her body lay waiting for me until morning? Of course she wouldn’t be alone, exactly-there were all those rats I’d seen last week.

It made my palms and feet tremble when I remembered the little ball of fur I’d encountered groping for my flashlight in the dark. I drove home, parking on Nelson west of Racine and going down the alley to the back of my building.

Peppy set up a terrific barking when I came in the back gate. Mr. Contreras appeared at the kitchen door, holding her on a short leash with his left hand and carrying a pipe wrench in his right.

“Oh, it’s you, doll. Gave me a start. I thought maybe someone was sneaking up on you.”

“Thank you,” I said meekly. “I was just creeping up on myself. I didn’t want to be ambushed in the stairwell.”

“No need to worry about that. Her highness and I are keeping a sharp eye out.”

He let go of the leash-the dog was whimpering in her eagerness to greet me. Her tail was whipping up a great circle-not the portrait of a fierce guard dog. I kissed her and fondled her ears. She danced with me back to the stairs and clattered up with me, convinced this was the prelude to a major run. Mr. Contreras trudged up behind us as fast as his stiff knees would allow.

“What are you doing now, doll?” he asked sharply when he’d invited himself into my apartment.

“I’m trying to remember where I left my flashlight,” I called from the bedroom. It had rolled under the bed, I finally saw. Peppy helped me lie flat to pull it out. She ate a Kleenex she found underneath and started to work on an old running sock half buried under the bedclothes.

“Yummy, is it?” I pulled it away from her and went back to the kitchen.

“I mean, where are you going?” the old man demanded severely when he saw me checking the clip to my gun.

“Just to see if I can locate my aunt. I’m worried that she might be dead and lying in one of those vacant buildings behind McCormick Place.” Come to that, she’d left the hospital in bad shape-she could be dead without anyone lifting a finger to make it happen. Or lying there unconscious.

“I’m coming with you-me and the princess here.” His jaw set in a stubborn line.

I opened my mouth to argue with him, then shut it again. Here was a perfect errand to restore his good humor with me-he could see the action without causing any major havoc. Not only that, Peppy could kill the rats. I accepted his escort graciously and was rewarded with a big smile and a resounding slap on my still-weak shoulders.

“Just don’t swing that pipe wrench around,” I warned him, locking the grate across the kitchen door. “You’re under a peace bond because of that thing, remember?”

He slung it decorously through one of his trouser loops and headed happily up the alley to the car with me. All the way to Lake Shore Drive and the McCormick Place exit he kept up a happy flow of talk.

“You know, your Chevy’s still out front with the hood up. Didn’t no one want to touch it. I tried getting that young fellow, the one with the tow truck, to take if off, but he was too chicken. I said, ‘Let me do it. I’ll hook it up and drive it to the garage for you, you’re too yellow to do it,’ but he just took off like a bat outta hell, if you know what I mean.”

“I know just what you mean.” Besides having steering as stiff as an old-fashioned shirt collar, the Tempo roared rather loudly. Bad Wheels didn’t pay much attention to exhaust systems-“Drive ‘em Till They Drop” was their motto. The noise spared me most of Mr. Contreras’s conversation until I parked on Prairie.

Peppy was thrilled to be part of the expedition. She strained at her leash, sniffing every pile of rubble, investigating trash heaps with the solemnity of Heinrich Schliemann. Mr. Contreras was only a hair less enthusiastic in commenting on the general decay around us.

“Been a lot of fires down here.”

“Yep,” I said shortly. Elena being a creature of rather tiresome habit, she would most likely select a place close to the Indiana Arms, as she had when she’d chosen the Prairie Shores. I was going to look at only one or two of these in the fast-fading light. The rest could wait until morning.

We went first into the warehouse two doors down from the shell of the old hotel. Mr. Contreras’s pipe wrench came in handy knocking out the boarding around the entrance-annoying, since it would make it impossible to get him to leave it at home in the future.

Once inside we let Peppy take the lead. She had a field day chasing rats. I kept my gun out in case one of them turned on her, but there were enough escape routes to keep them from becoming bellicose. After five or ten minutes of sport I called her off and kept her close to me while I explored what was left of the premises.

The interior walls had crumbled, making it easy to go from room to room without hunting for doors. Chunks of plaster lay everywhere. Wires dangled from the exposed ceiling studs. When I ran into one I let out a muffled shriek, it felt so much like a hand trailing through my hair. Mr. Contreras came stumbling through the rotted flooring to see what was wrong.

A giant tractor tire propped against one wall was the only sign that humans had ever been around. I guess it didn’t even prove that-only that tractors had been around.

When we got outside it was dark, too dark to make hunting in rotting buildings very smart. And it was too evocative of my near baking at the Prairie Shores for my taste-my clothes were wet with sweat, my hands grimy from touching the decayed walls. I was glad I’d had the dog’s support in the warehouse.

Even Mr. Contreras had been subdued by the expedition. He put up a token protest that we shouldn’t leave now, just when we were getting our bearings. When I said it was too dark to look farther, he agreed readily, volunteering to return in the morning with the Streeter Brothers.

“Sure,” I said heartily. “They’ll love the help.”

I returned the gun to the back waistband of my jeans and bundled him into the car with Peppy. On the way home he kept shaking his head and muttering comments that drifted to me only sporadically over the roar of the engine-he hoped Elena-roar, roar-not a place for a- roar-you really should do something, doll. I gave the car more gas to drown out what it was I should do.

I found a parking place on Wellington and left the Tempo there. I didn’t want to make it too easy for anyone watching me to connect me with the car. I turned down the old man’s invitation to dinner and headed up the stairs, shining my flashlight on the tread above me.

Furey was waiting at the top of the third flight. I dropped the flashlight and fumbled for my gun. When he launched himself down the stairs at me, I turned to race back down. Fatigue and injuries slowed me. He got my feet and grabbed my head in a brutal armlock.

“You’re coming with me, Vic. You’re going to kiss your aunt good-bye and then have a farewell party yourself.”

He was sitting on my back. I tried twisting underneath him, biting into his leg. He yelped in pain, but grabbed my hands and cuffed them together. Seizing the handcuffs, he started pulling me down the stairs. I let out a great cry that brought Mr. Contreras and the dog to the door of their apartment.

“I’m going to shoot both of them, Vic,” Furey hissed at me. “Interfering with the police in the performance of their duties. You want to watch? Or stop fighting and come along with me.”

I gulped in air, trying to quiet my heart enough to talk. “Go in,” I quavered at Mr. Contreras. “He’ll shoot Peppy.”

When the old man came into the hall anyway, brandishing his pipe wrench, Furey fired at him. The wrench flew to the floor as the old man crumbled. As we left I saw Peppy race over to lick Mr. Contreras’s face. I was choking on my tears, but I thought I saw him put up an arm to pet her.