“They can’t turn it off when they come off the field, you know. As for who killed him, he probably killed himself, drinking too much. I always said it would happen that way. Corinne couldn’t have done it, she doesn’t have enough oomph to her. And Brigitte doesn’t have any call to-she already got him beat six ways from Sunday.”
“Maybe she thought he’d molested her sister.”
“She’d have taken him to court and enjoyed seeing him humiliated all over again.”
What a lovely cast of characters; it filled me with satisfaction to think I’d allied myself to their fates. I persuaded the housekeeper to give me a picture of Corinne before going home. She was indeed an overweight, unhappy-looking child. It must be hard having a picture-perfect older sister trying to turn her into a junior deb. I also got the housekeeper to give me Brigitte’s unlisted home phone number by telling her if she didn’t, I’d be back every hour all night long ringing the bell.
I didn’t turn on the radio going home. I didn’t want to hear the ghoulish excitement lying behind the unctuousness the reporters would bring to discussing Jade Pierce’s catastrophic fall from grace. A rehashing of his nine seasons with the Bears, from the glory years to the last two where nagging knee and back injuries grew too great even for the painkillers. And then to his harsh retirement, putting seventy or eighty pounds of fat over his playing weight of 310, the barroom fights, the guns fired at other drivers from the front seat of his Ferrari Daytona, then the sale of the Ferrari to pay his legal bills, and finally the three-ring circus that was his divorce. Ending on a Murphy bed in a squalid Uptown apartment.
I shut the Trans Am’s door with a viciousness it didn’t deserve and stomped up the three flights to my apartment. Fatigue mixed with bitterness dulled the sixth sense that usually warns me of danger. The man had me pinned against my front door with a gun at my throat before I knew he was there.
I held my shoulder bag out to him. “Be my guest. Then leave. I’ve had a long day and I don’t want to spend too much of it with you.”
He spat. “I don’t want your stupid little wallet.”
“You’re not going to rape me, so you might as well take my stupid little wallet.”
“I’m not interested in your body. Open your apartment. I want to search it.”
“Go to hell.” I kneed him in the stomach and swept my right arm up to knock his gun hand away. He gagged and bent over. I used my handbag as a clumsy bolas and whacked him on the back of the head. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
I grabbed the gun from his flaccid hand. Feeling gingerly inside his coat, I found a wallet. His driver’s license identified him as Joel Sirop, living at a pricey address on Dearborn Parkway. He sported a high-end assortment of credit cards-Bonwit, Neiman Marcus, an American Express platinum-and a card that said he was a member in good standing of the Feline Breeders Association of North America. I slid the papers back into his billfold and returned it to his breast pocket.
He groaned and opened his eyes. After a few diffuse seconds he focused on me in outrage. “My head. You’ve broken my head. I’ll sue you.”
“Go ahead. I’ll hang on to your pistol for use in evidence at the trial. I’ve got your name and address, so if I see you near my place again I’ll know where to send the cops. Now leave.”
“Not until I’ve searched your apartment.” He was unarmed and sickly but stubborn.
I leaned against my door, out of reach but poised to stomp on him if he got cute. “What are you looking for, Mr. Sirop?”
“It was on the news, how you found Jade. If the cat was there, you must have taken it.”
“Rest your soul, there were no cats in that apartment when I got there. Had he stolen yours?”
He shut his eyes, apparently to commune with himself. When he opened them again he said he had no choice but to trust me. I smiled brightly and told him he could always leave so I could have dinner, but he insisted on confiding in me.
“Do you know cats, Ms. Warshawski?”
“Only in a manner of speaking. I have a dog and she knows cats.”
He scowled. “This is not a laughing matter. Have you heard of the Maltese?”
“Cat? I guess I’ve heard of them. They’re the ones without tails, right?”
He shuddered. “No. You are thinking of the Manx. The Maltese-they are usually a bluish gray. Very rarely will you see one that is almost blue. Brigitte LeBlanc has-or had-such a cat. Lady Iva of Cairo.”
“Great. I presume she got it to match her eyes.”
He waved aside my comment as another frivolity. “Her motives do not matter. What matters is that the cat has been very difficult to breed. She has now come into season for only the third time in her four-year life. Brigitte agreed to let me try to mate Lady Iva with my sire, Casper of Valletta. It is imperative that she be sent to stay with him, and soon. But she has disappeared.”
It was my turn to look disgusted. “I took a step down from my usual practice to look for a runaway teenager today. I’m damned if I’m going to hunt a missing cat through the streets of Chicago. Your sire will find her faster than I will. Matter of fact, that’s my advice. Drive around listening for the yowling of mighty sires and eventually you’ll find your Maltese.”
“This runaway teenager, this Corinne, it is probable that she took Lady Iva with her. The kittens, if they are born, if they are purebred, could fetch a thousand or more each. She is not ignorant of that fact. But if Lady Iva is out on the streets and some other sire finds her first, they would be half-breeds, not worth the price of their veterinary care.”
He spoke with the intense passion I usually reserve for discussing Cubs or Bears trades. Keeping myself turned toward him, I unlocked my front door. He flung himself at the opening with a ferocity that proved his long years with felines had rubbed off on him. I grabbed his jacket as he hurtled past me but he tore himself free.
“I am not leaving until I have searched your premises,” he panted.
I rubbed my head tiredly. “Go ahead, then.”
I could have called the cops while he hunted around for Lady Iva. Instead I poured myself a whiskey and watched him crawl on his hands and knees, making little whistling sounds-perhaps the mating call of the Maltese. He went through my cupboards, my stove, the refrigerator, even insisted, his eyes wide with fear, that I open the safe in my bedroom closet. I removed the Smith & Wesson I keep there before letting him look.
When he’d inspected the back landing he had to agree that no cats were on the premises. He tried to argue me into going downtown to check my office. At that point my patience ran out.
“I could have you arrested for attempted assault and criminal trespass. So get out now while the going’s good. Take your guy down to my office. If she’s in there and in heat, he’ll start carrying on and you can call the cops. Just don’t bother me.” I hustled him out the front door, ignoring his protests.
I carefully did up all the locks. I didn’t want some other deranged cat breeder sneaking up on me in the middle of the night.
IV
It was after midnight when I finally reached Brigitte. Yes, she’d gotten my message about Jade. She was terribly sorry, but since she couldn’t do anything to help him now that he was dead, she hadn’t bothered to try to reach me.
“We’re about to part company, Brigitte. If you didn’t know the guy was dead when you sent me up to Winthrop, you’re going to have to prove it. Not to me, but to the cops. I’m talking to Lieutenant Mallory at the Central District in the morning to tell him the rigmarole you spun me. They’ll also be able to figure out if you were more interested in finding Corinne or your cat.”
There was a long silence at the other end. When she finally spoke, the hint of Southern was pronounced. “Can we talk in the morning before you call the police? Maybe I haven’t been as frank as I should have. I’d like you to hear the whole story before you do anything rash.”
Just say no, just say no, I chanted to myself. “You be at the Belmont D
iner at eight, Brigitte. You can lay it out for me but I’m not making any promises.”
I got up at seven, ran the dog over to Belmont Harbor and back and took a long shower. I figured even if I put a half hour into grooming myself I wasn’t going to look as good as Brigitte, so I just scrambled into jeans and a cotton sweater.
It was almost ten minutes after eight when I got to the diner, but Brigitte hadn’t arrived yet. I picked up a Herald-Star from the counter and took it over to a booth to read with a cup of coffee. The headline shook me to the bottom of my stomach.
FOOTBALL HERO SURVIVES FATE
WORSE THAN DEATH
Charles “Jade” Pierce, once the smoothest man on the Bears’ fearsome defense, eluded offensive blockers once again. This time the stakes were higher than a touchdown, though: the offensive lineman was Death.
I thought Jeremy Logan was overdoing it by a wide margin but I read the story to the end. The standard procedure with a body is to take it to a hospital for a death certificate before it goes to the morgue. The patrol team hauled Jade to Beth Israel for a perfunctory exam. There the intern, noticing a slight sweat on Jade’s neck and hands, dug deeper for a pulse than I’d been willing to go. She’d found faint but unmistakable signs of life buried deep in the mountain of flesh and had brought him back to consciousness.
Jade, who’s had substance abuse problems since leaving the Bears, had mainlined a potent mixture of ether and hydrochloric acid before drinking a quart of bourbon. When he came to his first words were characteristic: “Get the f- out of my face.”
Logan then concluded with the obligatory rundown on Jade’s career and its demise, with a pious sniff about the use and abuse of sports heroes left to die in the gutter when they could no longer please the crowd. I read it through twice, including the fulsome last line, before Brigitte arrived.
“You see, Jade’s still alive, so I couldn’t have killed him,” she announced, sweeping into the booth in a cloud of Chanel.
“Did you know he was in a coma when you came to see me yesterday?”
She raised plucked eyebrows in hauteur. “Are you questioning my word?”
One of the waitresses chugged over to take our order. “You want your fruit and yogurt, right, Vic? And what else?”
“Green pepper and cheese omelet with rye toast. Thanks, Barbara. What’ll yours be, Brigitte?” Dry toast and black coffee, no doubt.
“Is your fruit really fresh?” she demanded.
Barbara rolled her eyes. “Honey, the melon pinched me so hard I’m black-and-blue. Better not take a chance if you’re sensitive.”
Brigitte set her shoulder-covered today in green broadcloth with black piping-and got ready to do battle. I cut her off before the first “How dare you” rolled to its ugly conclusion.
“This isn’t the kind of place where the maître d’ wilts at your frown and races over to make sure madam is happy. They don’t care if you come back or not. In fact, about now they’d be happier if you’d leave. You can check out my fruit when it comes and order some if it tastes right to you.”
“I’ll just have wheat toast and black coffee,” she said icily. “And make sure they don’t put any butter on it.”
“Right,” Barbara said. “Wheat toast, margarine instead of butter. Just kidding, hon,” she added as Brigitte started to tear into her again. “You gotta learn to take it if you want to dish it out.”
“Did you bring me here to be insulted?” Brigitte demanded when Barbara had left.
“I brought you here to talk. It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t know diner etiquette. We can fight if you want to. Or you can tell me about Jade and Corinne. And your cat. I had a visit from Joel Sirop last night.”
She swallowed some coffee and made a face. “They should rinse the pots with vinegar.”
“Well, keep it to yourself. They won’t pay you a consulting fee for telling them about it. Joel tell you he’d come around hunting Lady Iva?”
She frowned at me over the rim of the coffee cup, then nodded fractionally.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the damned cat when you were in my office yesterday?”
Her poise deserted her for a moment; she looked briefly ashamed. “I thought you’d look for Corinne. I didn’t think I could persuade you to hunt down my cat. Anyway, Corinne must have taken Iva with her, so I thought if you found her you’d find the cat, too.”
“Which one do you really want back?”
She started to bristle again, then suddenly laughed. It took ten years from her face. “You wouldn’t ask that if you’d ever lived with a teenager. And Corinne’s always been a stranger to me. She was eighteen months old when I left for college and I only saw her a week or two at a time on vacations. She used to worship me. When she moved in with me I thought it would be a piece of cake: I’d get her fixed up with the right crowd and the right school, she’d do her best to be like me, and the system would run itself. Instead, she put on a lot of weight, won’t listen to me about her eating, slouches around with the kids in the neighborhood when my back is turned, the whole nine yards. Jade’s influence. It creeps through every now and then when I’m not thinking.”
She looked at my blueberries. I offered them to her and she helped herself to a generous spoonful.
“And that was the other thing. Jade. We got together when I was an Alabama cheerleader and he was the biggest hero in town. I thought I’d really caught me a prize, my yes, a big prize. But the first, last, and only thing in a marriage with a football player is football. And him, of course, how many sacks he made, how many yards he allowed, all that boring crap. And if he has to sit out a game, or he gives up a touchdown, or he doesn’t get the glory, watch out. Jade was mean. He was mean on the field, he was mean off it. He broke my arm once.”
Her voice was level but her hand shook a little as she lifted the coffee cup to her mouth. “I got me a gun and shot him in the leg the next time he came at me. They put it down as a hunting accident in the papers, but he never tried anything on me after that-not physical, I mean. Until his career ended. Then he got real, real ugly. The papers crucified me for abandoning him when his career was over. They never had to live with him.”
She was panting with emotion by the time she finished. “And Corinne shared the papers’ views?” I asked gently.
She nodded. “We had a bad fight on Sunday. She wanted to go to a sleepover at one of the girls’ in the neighborhood. I don’t like that girl and I said no. We had a gale-force battle after that. When I got home from work on Monday she’d taken off. First I figured she’d gone to this girl’s place. They hadn’t seen her, though, and she hadn’t shown up at school. So I figured she’d run off to Jade. Now… I don’t know. I would truly appreciate it if you’d keep looking, though.”
Just say no, Vic, I chanted to myself. “I’ll need a thousand up front. And more names and addresses of friends, including people in Mobile. I’ll check in with Jade at the hospital. She might have gone to him, you know, and he sent her on someplace else.”
“I stopped by there this morning. They said no visitors.”
I grinned. “I’ve got friends in high places.” I signaled Barbara for the check. “Speaking of which, how was the Vice President?”
She looked as though she were going to give me one of her stiff rebuttals, but then she curled her lip and drawled, “Just like every other good old boy, honey, just like every other good old boy.”
V
Lotty Herschel, an obstetrician associated with Beth Israel, arranged for me to see Jade Pierce. “They tell me he’s been difficult. Don’t stand next to the bed unless you’re wearing a padded jacket.”
“You want him, you can have him,” the floor head told me. “He’s going home tomorrow morning. Frankly, since he won’t let anyone near him, they ought to release him right now.”
My palms felt sweaty when I pushed open the door to Jade’s room. He didn’t throw anything when I came in, didn’t even turn his head to stare through the r
estraining rails surrounding the bed. His mountain of flesh poured through them, ebbing away from a rounded summit in the middle. The back of his head, smooth and shiny as a piece of polished jade, reflected the ceiling light into my eyes.
“I don’t need any goddamned ministering angels, so get the fuck out of here,” he growled to the window.
“That’s a relief. My angel act never really got going.”
He turned his head at that. His black eyes were mean, narrow slits. If I were a quarterback I’d hand him the ball and head for the showers.
“What are you, the goddamned social worker?”
“Nope. I’m the goddamned detective who found you yesterday before you slipped off to the great huddle in the sky.”
“Come on over then, so I can kiss your ass,” he spat venomously.
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. “I didn’t mean to save your life: I tried getting them to send you to the morgue. The meat wagon crew double-crossed me.”
The mountain shook and rumbled. It took me a few seconds to realize he was laughing. “You’re right, detective: you ain’t no angel. So what do you want? True confessions on why I was such a bad boy? The name of the guy who got me the stuff?”
“As long as you’re not hurting anyone but yourself I don’t care what you do or where you get your shit. I’m here because Brigitte hired me to find Corinne.”
His face set in ugly lines again. “Get out.”
I didn’t move.
“I said get out!” He raised his voice to a bellow.
“Just because I mentioned Brigitte’s name?”
“Just because if you’re pally with that broad, you’re a snake by definition.”
Windy City Blues Page 16