Yes, he’d saved my life all right, and that meant he thought he’d acquired property rights in it. But looking at his angry stare, I couldn’t say something that would hurt him so painfully. I couldn’t bring myself to apologize, but I asked in a milder tone what had brought him up to the third floor.
He frowned for another few seconds, then decided to let it go. “It’s that lawyer up the street, that Pichea. He’s downstairs trying to get a posse together, and of course Vinnie Buttone is only too happy to sign on. I was sure you’d want to know about it.”
“Posse to do what?”
“To get the county to come for the old lady’s dogs. He says they’ve been creating a nuisance for twenty-four hours and no one’s answering her bell.”
I remembered wondering why she hadn’t come to her window this morning. “Isn’t the boy worried about Mrs. Frizell?”
“You think something’s happened to her?” His eyes grew large in his weather-beaten face.
“I don’t think anything. She might not answer her door because she knows it’s Pichea and he’s a pain in the tail. On the other hand, she might be unconscious in the bath. I think before we get the county to haul her dogs away we ought to see where she is and what she has to say.”
He trailed behind me when I returned to the living room to describe the situation to Carol. “I’m going to see if some thing’s wrong with her. I know I’ve just been lecturing you against succoring the world—but I would appreciate on-the-spot medical expertise if she’s had a stroke or something.”
Carol gave a twisted smile. “You going to break and enter for a stranger, V.I.? Then I guess I can come along and give her mouth-to-mouth if she needs it.”
The police had confiscated my professional picklocks a number of years ago, but during the winter I’d acquired some new ones—billed, of course, as “state of the art”—at a security conference out at O’Hare. Tonight might be my first chance to use them. The thrill was less than overwhelming: the razor edge of excitement that comes from chasing and being chased seems to diminish with age. I stuck the picklocks in a jacket pocket and went downstairs with Mr. Contreras and Carol.
“Hi, Todd, Vinnie. Getting the lynch mob together?”
The two looked enough alike to be brothers—white men in their mid-thirties with blow-dried, carefully cut hair and square, conventionally good-looking faces now flushed in righteous anger. My neighbor and I had enjoyed, if that’s the word, a rapprochement while he’d been having an affair with a set designer I liked. But when Rick left him, Vinnie and I went back to a more natural hostility. So far I hadn’t found anything that brought me closer to Todd Pichea, even for an afternoon.
Hovering behind Pichea were a couple of women I recognized vaguely from the block. One was a plump blonde in her fifties or sixties, wearing black stretch pants that revealed the sags of time. The second woman made the pair an ad for “Then and Now on Racine Avenue.” Her spandex leggings hugged a body toned to perfection in a gym. The diamond drops in her ears showed up the clunkiness of the older woman’s faux pearls, and the impatient frown marring her perfect complexion contrasted sharply with the other’s expression of plain worry.
Pichea’s scowl deepened when he heard me. “Look, Warshawski, I know you don’t give a damn about the value of your property, but you ought to respect the rights of others.”
“I am. I do. It’s been a while since I studied constitutional law, but isn’t there at least an implication in the Fourth Amendment that Mrs. Frizell has the right to be secure in her own home?”
Pichea tightened his lips into a thin line. “As long as she isn’t creating a public nuisance. I don’t know why you have such a hot spot for the old bag, but if you lived across the street and had those damned dogs keeping you awake you’d change your tune fast enough.”
“Oh, I don’t know. If I knew you were on her case I could probably bring myself to tolerate the barking. You work for some big downtown firm, you’ve got a lot of connections in the courts, and you want to use all your muscle to smash some helpless old woman. She’s been living here a long time, you know—forty or fifty years. She didn’t try to stop you coming in and ruining the street for her. Why don’t you engage in a little reciprocity?”
“That’s the thing,” the older woman broke in in an anxious voice. “Hattie—Harriet—Mrs. Frizell—has never been an easy neighbor, but she minds her own business as long as you mind yours. Only, I’m kind of worried, I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning, so when I saw this gentleman ringing her bell I went over to see what the problem was—”
“Ruining the street? Ruining the street?” The woman in spandex barked sharply. “Todd and I improved this rattail block. We spent a hundred grand fixing up that house and yard—they’d look like her place if not for us.”
“Yeah, but you’re disturbing her peace, trying to force her out of her home, put her dogs to sleep, whatever.”
Before the argument could escalate further, Carol put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go see if the lady’s home and awake, Vic. We can sort out who’s done the most harm to the street later.”
The older woman smiled gratefully at her. “Yes. I’m kind of worried. Only, she can be rude if you bother her, but if we all went together …”
Our convoy moved slowly to the front sidewalk. “I’m giving her fair warning,” Pichea said to Vinnie. “The next time those dogs are out barking past ten I’ll see her ass in court.”
“And that will make you feel like a real he-man, I suppose?” I shot over my shoulder.
Pichea gave a contemptuous laugh. “I can understand why you’re so worked up: you’re scared you’ll end up alone and crazy at eighty-five, with nothing but a bunch of flea-ridden dogs to keep you company.”
“Well, Pichea, if you’re an example of the available talent, I’d rather be alone till I’m eighty-five.”
Carol grabbed my arm and hustled me up the street. “Come on, Vic. I don’t mind you dragging me into your business, but don’t make me listen to this crap. I could lean out my back door and hear it in the alley if I were interested.”
I was sufficiently abashed to ignore Pichea’s follow-up comment—an ostentatious whisper to his wife that I needed a good lay—but not sorry I’d picked up the cudgels to begin with. In fact, I kind of wished I’d given him a good punch in the sternum.
6
Down and Out on Racine Avenue
As soon as Pichea and I stopped brangling we could hear the dogs. The Lab was filling the night with a deep-throated baying; the earmuff responded with a higher-pitched antiphon, and the three inside were providing a faint accompaniment echoed by the rest of the dogs on the street. Behind us even Peppy interrupted her nursing with an occasional bark. So maybe Mrs. Frizell wasn’t the most wonderful neighbor in the world. But why couldn’t the Picheas have stayed in Lincoln Park where they belonged?
When we opened Mrs. Frizell’s front gate the Lab rushed over and jumped up at me. I grabbed his front paws before he could knock me off balance.
“Easy, guy, easy. We just want to see if your mistress is okay.”
I dropped his legs and went up the shallow steps to the door. I knocked my shin against an old metal chair and swore under my breath. Fortunately Mr. Contreras had remembered a flashlight. He shone it on the door while I worked the locks.
“Stupid jerks are afraid of the dogs. Afraid of being caught breaking and entering with you. That lawyer’s the kind of management creep you got to watch out for: can’t do his dirty work for himself, gets on the phone and hires someone to do it for him.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “Hold the light steady, okay?”
The lock should have taken me thirty seconds, but the Lab kept rushing at my legs until Carol managed to grab him by the scruff and hang on to him. After that I only had to contend with Mr. Contreras’s moving the light as he emphasized his contempt for Todd and Vinnie. It was a good five minutes before I finally felt the simple latch click back.
&nbs
p; As soon as I opened the door the other dogs, who’d been barking and scratching on the other side, came pelting out at us. Behind me I could hear a sharp yell from one of the guys, and then a yelp from one of the dogs.
“Did you see that?” I couldn’t tell if the angry squeak belonged to Todd or Vinnie. “That damned mutt bit me.”
“Will the perpetrator step forward for a dog biscuit and a medal?” I said, but under my breath.
The stench in the house was so bad that I wanted to get in and out as fast as possible. I took the light from Mr. Contreras and shone it around the entryway, hoping to find a light switch. The inside dogs had been relieving themselves by the door and I didn’t want to step in the mess. I couldn’t see a switch, so I got as clear a look as possible at the dimensions of the urine and did a standing broad jump across it.
“Mrs. Frizell! Mrs. Frizell! Are you home?”
Her neighbor, who’d hovered on the front walk while I worked on the lock, came in with Carol, clucking her tongue and making worried sounds in her throat. The dogs rushed past us, spattering our legs with urine.
“Mrs. Frizell? It’s me, Mrs. Hellstrom. We just want to see if you’re all right.”
Mrs. Hellstrom found a lamp inside the living room door. In its feeble glow I finally saw a wall switch for the hall. It had been a long time since Mrs. Frizell had felt the impulse to clean anything. Dust had disintegrated into a thick coat of dirt; our damp shoes turned it to mud. Even through the stench and the chaos, though, it was clear that the only place the dogs had been relieving themselves was by the door. She looked after them even if she didn’t care about herself.
I followed the Lab up the stairs, playing the flashlight on the threadbare carpet, choking and sneezing on the dust I kicked up. The dog led me to the bathroom. Mrs. Frizell was lying on the floor, naked except for a towel clutched to her side.
I turned on the switch but the light was burned out. I called the news down to Carol and knelt down to find Mrs. Frizell’s pulse. The Lab, energetically licking her face, growled at me but didn’t try to bite me. Just as Carol and Mrs. Hellstrom joined me I felt a faint flutter.
“Bruce,” I heard Mrs. Frizell say faintly as I backed away. “Bruce, don’t leave me.”
“No, honey,” Mrs. Hellstrom said. “He won’t leave you. You’re gonna be okay now—you just took a bad fall.”
“Can you get me a better light, Vic?” Carol said sharply. “And call 911. She’s going to need a hospital.”
I shoved my way past the other dogs crowding into the doorway and found the old woman’s bedroom. As I went in I tripped and fell over the piles of bedding on the floor. I supposed they were for the dogs, although I had assumed they would sleep in bed with her. I unscrewed the twenty-watt bulb from the naked gooseneck lamp by the bed and took it back to the bathroom.
“Blankets, Vic, and get that ambulance,” Carol said sharply, not looking up.
“Mrs. Hellstrom? Can you bring some blankets while I hunt for a telephone?”
Mrs. Hellstrom was glad to be useful, but clucked again in dismay when she saw the blankets. “These are so dirty, maybe I ought to go home and get something clean.”
“I think it’s just important to get her warm. She can’t get much dirtier than she already is, lying on that floor all day.”
Downstairs I found Mr. Contreras trying to clean up the worst of the mess by the front door. “You found her, doll? She alive?”
I gave him a brief report while I hunted around for a phone. I finally found an old-fashioned black model buried under a stack of newspapers in the living room. The dial was stiff but the phone was still connected. So she was at least in touch with reality enough to pay her bills.
I called the emergency number and explained the problem, then went to the kitchen to find something to use as a cleanser. It seemed important that Todd Pichea and Vinnie not know the dogs had been defecating in the house. Although anyone who thought about it would know they’d have to. Even the best-trained dogs can’t hold on to themselves for twenty-four hours.
I took the dogs’ water dish and a bottle of Joy so old the detergent had hardened in it. I dug a spoonful of soap out, mixed it with water, and started scrubbing with some kitchen towels I found in the back of a cupboard. The kitchen was as bad as the front hallway, so I emptied the dogs’ food dish and dug some soap into it for Mr. Contreras. By the time the paramedics arrived, escorted by a couple of blue-and-whites, we’d cleaned up the worst of the mess. The stretcher bearers wrinkled their noses against the clouds of dust as they climbed the stairs, but at least they wouldn’t be able to report a heap of dog shit to the city.
“You her daughter?” one of the cops asked as the medics brought Mrs. Frizell down.
“No. We’re all neighbors,” I said. “We just got concerned because we hadn’t seen her for a few days.”
“She got any kids?”
“Just one son. He lives in San Francisco, but he comes to see her every now and then. He grew up here but I don’t really know him; I never can remember his first name.” That was Mrs. Hellstrom.
One of the medics leaned over the stretcher. “Can you tell us your son’s name, honey? Or his phone number?”
Mrs. Frizell’s eyes were open, but they were unfocused. “Bruce. Don’t let them take Bruce away from me.”
Mrs. Hellstrom knelt clumsily next to her. “I’ll look after Bruce for you, honey, but what’s your son’s phone number?”
“Bruce,” the old woman called hoarsely. “Bruce.”
The paramedics picked her up and took her out the front door. I could see Vinnie and the Picheas still waiting by the gate.
“Bruce isn’t her son?” I asked.
“No, honey,” Mrs. Hellstrom said. “That’s the big dog, the black one.”
“Can you take care of the dogs while she’s in the hospital? Or at least until we can get her son out here?”
Mrs. Hellstrom looked unhappy. “I don’t want to. But I guess I can feed them and let them out as long as they stay over here.”
The police stayed a bit longer, asking how we discovered Mrs. Frizell, what our relationship to her was, and so on. They didn’t pay attention to Todd’s annoyed squawks about my breaking and entering. “At least she found the old lady, son. You think she should have been left to die?” an officer who looked close to retirement said.
When they realized Carol was a nurse, they took her to one side for a more detailed set of questions.
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” I asked Carol when the cops finally left.
“I think she broke something, probably her hip, getting out of the tub. She’s badly dehydrated, so her mind’s wandering a bit. I couldn’t get a clear picture of when she might have fallen. She might have been lying there a couple of days. We’re lucky we came down, Vic; I don’t think she’d’ve made it through the night.”
“So it’s a good thing I decided to get involved,” Todd put in.
“Involved?” Mr. Contreras huffed. “Involved? Who found her? Who got the medics? You just stood out there keeping your wing tips clean.”
That wasn’t a fair comment: Pichea was wearing Top-Siders.
“Look, here, old man,” he began, leaning toward Mr. Contreras.
“Don’t try to argue with them, Todd. They’re not the kind who can understand you.” Mrs. Pichea linked her arm through her husband’s and looked around the dirty hall, her nose wrinkling in contempt.
Mrs. Hellstrom touched my arm. “You gonna try to find her son, honey? Because I should be going home. I want to change these clothes, anyway.”
“Oh, there’s a son?” Pichea said. “Maybe it’s time he came home and took charge of his mother.”
“And maybe she wants to live her own life,” I snapped. “Why don’t you go to bed now, Pichea? You’ve done your good deed for the day.”
“Nope. I want to talk to the son, get him to understand that his mother’s gotten way out of hand.”
The dogs, who’d
been barking at the ambulance, came roaring back into the house and started jumping up on us. Pichea stuck out one of his Top-Siders to kick the earmuff. As the little dog went yelping down the hall I clipped Pichea on the shin.
“It’s not your house, big guy. If you’re scared of dogs, stay at home.”
His tight, square face looked ugly. “I could have you brought in for assault, Warshawski.”
“You could, but you won’t. You’re too chicken to take on someone your own size.” I muscled my way past him and started a dispiriting search for a piece of paper with Mrs. Frizell’s son’s name on it. It took me only half an hour to realize I could call directory assistance in San Francisco—how many Frizells could there be? Six, as it turned out, with a couple of different spellings. The fourth one I reached, Byron, was her son. Tepid would be a strong description for his response to the news about his mother.
“You’ve got her to a hospital? Good, good. Thanks for taking the time to call.”
“You want to know what hospital?”
“What? Oh, might as well. Look, I’m in the middle of something right now—Sharansky, did you say your name was? Why don’t I call you in the morning.”
“Warshawski.” I started to spell it but he’d broken the connection.
Todd waited around until Byron cut me off. “So what’s he going to do?”
“He’s not catching the first plane out. Mrs. Hellstrom will look after the dogs. Why don’t the rest of us just go home and give it a rest.”
Like Mrs. Hellstrom, I was anxious to change my clothes. Carol had already gone while I was trying the second Frizell. Mr. Contreras had wandered out to the kitchen to put out fresh food and water for the dogs. He was anxious to get back to Peppy, but was too chivalrous to leave me alone here.
“You think they’ll be okay, doll?”
“I think they’ll be fine,” I said firmly. I was damned if he’d saddle me with five more dogs to look after.
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