Burn Marks

by Sara Paretsky

  When she finished she was flushed and panting a little. Only a beast would have persisted.

  “Do you collect the rents in here, Mrs…”

  “Donnelly,” she snapped. “The building managers do that. Look. You’d better show me some kind of authorization if you’re going to come barging in asking questions.”

  I dug my license out of my billfold and handed it to her with one of my cards: V, I, Warshawski, Financial Investigations, She looked them over suspiciously, studying the photo, comparing it to me. For some reason my face had come out a kind of lobster hue in the picture. It always fools people.

  “And how do I know you’re with the insurance company?” It was a halfhearted snipe but a valid one.

  “You can call the company and ask for Robin Bessinger in the arson division. He’ll vouch for me.” I’d have to get something in writing from them-I’d better walk a copy of my contract for services over tomorrow and pick up a letter of authorization.

  Her eye strayed to the phone, but she seemed to decide it was too much trouble to fight me any further. “Okay. Ask what you want, but you’ll never find any proof connecting Mr. Seligman to that fire.”

  “What’s your position with the company, Mrs. Donnelly?”

  “I’m the office manager.” Her face was braced in fierce lines to deflect any attack on Mr. Seligman.

  “And that means you…?”

  “People call in with complaints, I get the building super to check them out, or the property manager, whoever is in charge. I arrange for bids if any work has to get done, that kind of thing. Detectives come in asking questions, I talk to them.”

  It was an unexpected flash of humor; I grinned appreciatively. “How many properties are there?”

  She ticked them off on her fingers-the one on Ashland, the one on Forty-seventh, and so on, seven altogether, ending with the Indiana Arms. I noted the addresses so I could drive by them, but judging by the locations, none of them was a big money-maker.

  No, rents weren’t down any. Yes, they used to have a lot more people in the office, that was when Mr. Seligman was younger-he used to buy and sell properties all the time and he needed more staff to do that. Now it was just her and him, a team like they’d always been, and you wouldn’t find a warmer-hearted person, not if you looked through the suburbs as well as the city.

  “Great.” I got up from the edge of the desk and rubbed the sore spot where the metal had cut into my thigh. “By the way, where do you bank-not you personally, Seligman Properties?”

  The wary look returned to her face but she answered readily enough-the Edgewater National.

  As I was opening the gate something else occurred to me. “Who will take over the business for Mr. Seligman? Does he have any children involved in it?”

  She glared at me again. “I wouldn’t dream of prying into such a personal matter. And don’t go bothering him- he’s never really recovered from Fanny’s death.”

  I let the gate click behind me. Wouldn’t dream of it, indeed. She probably knew every thought Seligman had had for twenty years, even more so now his wife was dead. As I urged the door over the loose linoleum, I wondered idly about Mrs. Donnelly’s own children, whom the old man had so generously educated.

  Before getting into the car I found a phone on the corner to call Robin. He was in a meeting-the perennial location of insurance managers-but his secretary promised to have a letter of authorization waiting for me in the morning.

  The afternoon was wearing on; I hadn’t had a proper meal all day, just some toast with Mr. Contreras’s foul coffee. It’s hard to think when you’re hungry-the demands of the stomach become paramount. I found a storefront Polish restaurant where they gave me a bowl of thick cabbage soup and a plate of homemade rye bread. That was so good that I had some raspberry cake and a cup of overbaked coffee before moving farther north to find Mr. Seligman.

  Estes is a quiet residential street in Rogers Park. Seligman lived in an unprepossessing brick house east of Ridge. The small front yard hadn’t been much tended during the long hot summer; large clumps of crabgrass and weeds had taken over the straggly grass. The walk was badly broken, not the ideal path for an elderly person, especially when the Chicago winter set in.

  The stairs weren’t in much better shape-I sidestepped a major hole on the third riser just in time to keep from twisting my ankle. A threadbare mat lay in front of the door. I skidded on its shiny surface when I rang the bell.

  I could hear the bell echoing dully behind the heavy front door. Nothing happened. I waited a few minutes and rang again. After another wait I began to wonder if I’d passed Seligman somewhere on Ridge. Just as I was getting ready to leave, though, I heard the rasp of bolts sliding back. It was a clumsy, laborious process. When the final lock came apart the door opened slowly inward and an old man blinked at me across the threshold.

  He must have been about Mr. Contreras’s age, but where my neighbor had a vitality and curiosity that kept him fit, Mr. Seligman seemed to have retreated from life. His face had slipped into a series of soft, downward creases that slid into the high collar of his faded beige turtleneck. Over that he wore a torn cardigan, one side of which was partly tucked into his pajama pants. He did not look like the mastermind of an arson and fraud ring.

  “Yes?” His voice was soft and husky.

  I forced a smile to my lips and explained my errand.

  “You’re with the police, young lady?”

  “I’m a private investigator. Your insurance company has hired me to investigate the fire.”

  “The insurance? My insurance is all paid, I’m sure of that, but you’d have to check with Rita.” As he shook his head, bewildered, I caught a glimpse of a hearing aid in his left ear.

  I raised my voice and tried to speak clearly. “I know your insurance is paid. The company hired me. Ajax wants me to find out who burned down your hotel.”

  “Oh. Who burned it down.” He nodded five or six times. “I have no idea. It was a great shock, a very great shock. I’ve been expecting the police or the fire department to come talk to me, but we pay our taxes for nothing these days. Let it burn to the ground and don’t do nothing to stop it, then don’t do nothing to catch the people who did it.”

  “I agree,” I put in. “That’s why Ajax hired me to investigate it for them. I wonder if we could go inside and talk it over.”

  He studied me carefully, decided I didn’t look like a major menace, and invited me in. As soon as he’d shut the door behind me and fastened one of the five locks, I began to wish I’d finished the conversation on the stoop. The smell, combined of must, unwashed dishes, and stale grease, seemed to seep from the walls and furniture. I didn’t know life could exist in such air.

  The living room where he took me was dark and chilly. I tried not to curse when I ran into a low table, but as I backed away from it I caught my left leg on some heavy metal object and couldn’t help swearing.

  “Careful, there, young lady, these were all Fanny’s things and I don’t want them damaged.”

  “No, sir,” I said meekly, waiting for him to finish fumbling with a light before trying to move any farther. When the heavily fringed lamp sprang into life, I saw that I’d tripped on a set of fire irons mysteriously placed in the middle of the room. As there was no fireplace perhaps that was the ideal spot for them. I threaded my way past the rest of the obstacles and sat gingerly on the edge of an overstuffed armchair. My rear sank deep within its soft, dusty upholstery.

  Mr. Seligman sat on a matching couch that was close by, if you discounted an empty brass birdcage hanging between us. “Now what is it you want, young lady?”

  He was hard of hearing and depressed but clearly not mentally impaired. When he took in the gist of my remarks his sagging cheeks mottled with color.

  “My insurance company thinks I burned down my own building? What do I pay rates for? I pay my taxes and the police don’t help me, I pay my insurance and my company insults me-”

  “Mr. Seli
gman,” I cut in, “you’ve lived in Chicago a long time, right? Your whole life? Well, me too. You know as well as I do that people here torch their own property every day just to collect on the insurance. I’m happy to think you’re not one of them, but you can’t blame the company for wanting to make sure.”

  The angry flush died from his cheeks but he continued muttering under his breath about robbers who took your money without giving you anything in return. He calmed down enough to answer routine questions on where he’d been last Wednesday night-home in bed, what did I think he was, a Don Juan at his age to be gallivanting around town all night

  “Can you think of any reason anyone would want to burn down the Indiana Arms?”

  He held up his hands in exasperation. “It was an old building, no good to anybody, even me. You pay the taxes, you pay the insurance, you pay the utilities, and when the rent comes in you don’t have enough to pay for the paint. I know the wiring was old but I couldn’t afford to put in new, you’ve got to believe me on that, young lady.”

  “Why didn’t you just tear it down if it was costing you so much?”

  “You’re like everyone today, just considering a dollar and not people’s hearts. People come to me, it seems like every day, thinking I’m a stupid old man who will just sell them my heart and let them tear it down. Now here you are, another one.”

  He shook his head slowly, depressed over the perfidy of the younger generation. “It was the first building I owned. I put together the money slowly, slowly in the Depression. You wouldn’t understand. I worked on a delivery truck for years and saved every penny, every dime, and when Fanny and I got married everything went into the Indiana Arms.”

  He was talking more to himself now than to me, his husky voice so soft I had to lean forward to hear him. “You should have seen it in those days, it used to be a beautiful hotel. We made deliveries there in the morning and even the kitchens seemed wonderful to me-I grew up in two rooms, eight of us in two rooms, with no kitchen, all the water hauled in by hand. When the owners went bankrupt-everybody went under in those days- scraped together the money and bought it.”

  His faded eyes clouded. “Then the war came and the colored came pouring in and Fanny and I, we moved up here, we had a family then anyway, you couldn’t raise children in a residential hotel, even if the neighborhood was decent. But I never could bring myself to sell it. Now it’s gone, maybe it’s just as well.”

  Out of respect for his memories I waited before speaking again, looking around the room to give him a little privacy. On the low table nearest me was a studio portrait of a solemn young man and a shyly smiling young woman in bridal dress.

  “That was Fanny and me,” he said, catching my glance. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  I took him gently through the routine-who worked for him, what did he know about the night man at the Indiana Arms, who would inherit the business, who would profit by the fire. He answered readily enough, but he couldn’t really think ill of someone who worked for him, nor of his children, who would get the business when he died.

  “Not that it’s much to leave them. You start out, you think you’ll end up like Rubloff, but all I’ve got to show for all my years is seven worn-out buildings.” He gave me his children’s names and addresses and said he’d tell Rita to let me have a list of employees-the building managers and watchmen and maintenance crews.

  “I suppose someone could burn down a building if you paid him enough. It’s true I don’t pay them much, but look at me, look how I live. I’m not Donald Trump after all- pay what I can afford.”

  He saw me to the front door, going over it again and again, how he paid his taxes and got nothing and had nothing, but paid his employees, and would they turn on him anyway? As I walked down the front steps I could hear the locks slowly closing behind me.

  19

  Gentleman Caller

  There was an errand I couldn’t put off before going home. I squared my shoulders and drove south through the rush-hour traffic to Michael Reese. Zerlina was still in her four-pack, but one of the beds was empty and the other two held new inmates who looked at me with vacant faces before returning to Wheel of Fortune.

  Zerlina turned her head away when she saw me. I hesitated at the foot of her bed-it would be easier to take her rejection at face value and go home than to talk to her about her daughter. “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” I encouraged myself, and went to squat near her head.

  “You’ve heard about Cerise, Mrs. Ramsay.”

  The black eyes stared at me unblinkingly, but at length she gave a grudging nod.

  “I’m very sorry-I had to identify her early this morning. She looked terribly young.”

  She scowled horribly in an effort to hold back tears. “What did you do to her, you and that aunt of yours, to drive her to take her own life?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ramsay,” I repeated. “Maybe I should have tried to find her on Monday. But she left the clinic where I’d brought her and I didn’t have any idea where she might go. I tried talking to Elena this morning; if she knew anything, she was keeping it to herself.”

  I stayed another five minutes or so, but she wouldn’t say anything else, nor did her face relent. When I got back in the car I sat for a long time rubbing my tight shoulder muscles and trying to imagine a place I could go to find some peace. Not my apartment-I didn’t want to confront either Mr. Contreras or Vinnie tonight. I was too tired, though, to drive out to the country, too tired to deal with the noise and distraction of a restaurant. What I needed was a club of the kind Peter Wimsey used to retire to-discreet, solicitous servants leaving me in total peace yet willing to spring into immediate action at my slightest whim.

  I put the Chevy into gear and started north, going by side streets, dawdling at lights, finally hitting Racine from Belmont and coasting to a halt in front of my building. On my way in I stopped in the basement for my laundry. Some kind soul had taken it from the dryer and left it on the floor. My limbs heavy and slow, I picked it up one item at a time and put it back into the washer. I stayed in the dimly lit basement while the machine ran, sitting cross-legged on a newspaper on the floor, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. When the washer clanked to a halt I stood up to dump my things once more into the dryer. Easily the equivalent of an evening at the Marlborough Club.

  It was only when I got upstairs that I remembered giving the servants the day off, so there was no dinner ready. I sent out for a pizza and watched a Magnum rerun. Before going to bed I returned to the basement for my clothes. By a miracle I arrived before one of my neighbors had time to dirty them again.

  Thursday morning I brought a contract down to Ajax, got a letter of authorization from them, and proceeded on my investigation. I spent Thursday and Friday tracking down Seligman’s children-both in their forties-and talking to the different night watchmen, janitors, and building managers who made up the Seligman work team. Mrs. Donnelly-Rita to Seligman-even grudgingly let me look at the books. By the end of Friday I was reasonably certain that the old man had had no role in the fire.

  His children didn’t take any active part in the business. One daughter was married to an appliance dealer and didn’t work herself. The other, a marketing manager with a Schaumburg wholesaler, had been in Brazil on business when the fire took place. That didn’t mean she couldn’t have masterminded it, but it was hard to see why. The two stood to inherit the business, and it was possible that they were going to torch the properties for their insurance money to increase the value of the estate, but it was a slow way to dubious wealth. I didn’t write them off, but I wasn’t enthusiastic about them as candidates, either.

  My talks with Mrs. Donnelly left me scratching my head. She seemed loyal to the old man, but I couldn’t help thinking she knew something she wasn’t telling. It wasn’t so much what she said as the sly look I got when the talk drifted to her children and what their expectations of Mr. Seligman might be. If it hadn’t been for that occasional smirk,
I would have given Seligman a complete pass to Ajax.

  On Saturday I finally found the night man from the Indiana Arms. He was holed up with a brother on the South Side, trying to avoid any inquiry into his activities on the night of the fire. We had a long and difficult conversation. At first he assured me he hadn’t left the premises for a minute. Then he came around to the idea that he’d heard a noise outside and gone to investigate.

  Finally a combination of threats and bribes brought forth the information that he’d gotten a list of the races at Sportsman Park along with fifty dollars in betting money. They’d come in Wednesday’s mail, he didn’t know who from, he certainly hadn’t kept the envelope. He didn’t think it would matter if he left for an hour or two; when he got back late-after a snort with his buddies-the hotel was burning beautifully. He took one look at the fire trucks and headed for his brother’s house on Sangamon.

  It was clear that someone had cared enough about burning down the building to study the night man, find out he bet the races, and know he couldn’t resist a free night at the track. But that someone wasn’t Saul Seligman. I put it all together in a report for Ajax, wrote out a bill, and asked whether they wanted me to pursue the matter further.

  If your primary goal is to find the arsonist, then I will try to discover who sent the money. Since no envelope exists and Mr. Tancredi claims never to have seen any strangers regularly lurking around the premises, finding who sent the money will be a long and expensive job. If all you want is a strong probability that your insured did not burn his own proprty, we can stop at this point: I believe Mr. Seligman and his subordinates are innocent of arson.

  After putting it in the mail I walked the ten blocks to Wrigley Field and watched the Cubs die a painful death at the hands of the Expos. Although my hapless heroes were twenty games below five hundred the ballpark was packed; I was lucky to get a seat in the upper deck. Even if I could have gotten a bleacher ticket, I don’t sit there anymore-NBC made such a cult of the Bleacher Bums when the Cubs were in the ′84 playoffs that drunk yuppies who don’t know the game now find it the trendy place to sit.