She smacked her forehead with a giant palm. “That’s right. You’re so right, honey. I hollered at his back as he was on his way down the stairs. ‘Don’t forget you owe me fifty bucks,’ something like that.” She smiled, pleased with herself, and rocked so that the metal chair creaked.
“And what did he do?” I prodded in response.
She twisted again in her chair and picked up her fire extinguisher, menacing it at the three laughing kids down below. When they had retreated to the street she said, “What was that, hon?”
I repeated my question.
“Oh. Oh, sure. He turned and winked at me. ‘No need to spray me with that thing,’ he says, meaning the extinguisher, of course, ‘’cause I’ve got plenty of money. Least, I will have pretty soon. Pretty soon.’ ”
“Did he turn left or right at the bottom of the stairs?”
She puckered her forehead up to her wispy yellow hair in an effort to remember, but she couldn’t call it back; her mind had been on the kids down below, not on one more desiccated lodger.
“I’d like to look at his room before I go.”
“You got a warrant for that, hon?”
I pulled out a twenty from my purse. “No warrant. But how about a refill for your gizmo there?”
She eyed me, then the money, then the kids down below. “You cops can’t come barging into someone’s house without a warrant. That’s in the Constitution, in case you didn’t know. But just this once, seeing as how you’re a female, and dressed neat, I’ll let you in, but you come back with any men, they’d better have a warrant. Go up to the second floor. He’s two doors down from the bathroom on your left.” She turned her head abruptly to the street as I opened the screen door.
Her house had the sharp, sour smell of rank dishcloths. It was a dark place, built deep and narrow with windows only on the front and back walls. By the smell, they hadn’t been opened for some time. The stairs rose steeply in front of me. I mounted them cautiously. Even so, I caught my feet several times on pieces of loose linoleum.
I fumbled my way down the second-floor hall to the bathroom, then found the second door on the left. The room was standing open, the bed made with a careless hand, waiting for Kruger’s return. No individual locks or much privacy in Mrs. Polter’s domain, but Kruger didn’t have much to be private about. I rummaged in his vinyl suitcase, but such papers as he had related to his union membership, his union pension, and a form to send to the Social Security Administration to let them know his change of address. He’d also kept some old newspaper clips, apparently about Diamond Head. Maybe the company stood in for his vanished family as a source of human connection.
His only possession of any possible value was a portable black-and-white TV. Its rabbit ears were bent and one of the knobs was broken off, but when I flipped it on, the picture came with respectable clarity.
Mitch’s clothes were sufficiently greasy to make me stop in the bathroom on my way out to wash my hands. A look at the towels convinced me that air-drying was healthier.
A middle-aged man in a frayed undershirt and shorts was waiting outside the bathroom door. He looked me over hungrily.
“ ’Bout time the old bitch brought in someone like you, sugar. Sight for sore eyes. Sight for sore eyes, that’s for damned sure.”
He rubbed up against me as I passed him. I lost my footing and kicked him on the side of his exposed leg to steady myself. I felt his malevolent gaze on the back of my neck all the way downstairs. A better detective would have taken the opportunity to ask him about Mitch Kruger.
Mrs. Polter didn’t say anything when I thanked her for letting me look around, but when I was halfway down the stairs she yelled, “Remember: that room’s only paid through Sunday night. After that the old guy better come and collect his stuff.”
I stopped and pondered. Mr. Contreras would not want his old pal back on the living room couch. And come to think of it, neither did I. I stomped back up the stairs and gave her fifty dollars. They disappeared behind the safety pin at her bosom, but she didn’t say anything. Now I had ten left from Mr. Contreras’s advance to get me through the bars of the South Side.
At the bottom of the stairs I stopped the ringleader of the cycling trio. “I’m looking for an old guy who walked out of here Monday afternoon. White man. Lots of gray hair, which he didn’t comb, big stomach, probably had on suspenders and an old pair of work pants. You remember which way he went?”
“He some kind of friend of yours, miss?”
“He—uh, he’s my uncle.” I didn’t think this group would respond well to a detective.
“How much is it worth to you to find him?”
I made a face. “Not a whole lot. Maybe ten.”
“Here he comes right now!” One of the other youths jumped his bicycle up and down the curb in his excitement. “Right behind you, miss!”
Holding tight to my purse I turned my head. The kid was right. An oldish white man with thick gray hair and a paunch was stumbling up the street toward us. In fact, there was another coming out of Tessie’s Tavern just across the way. There were probably a thousand men just like Mitch wandering around the two-mile strip between Ashland and Western. My shoulders sagged at the prospect. I turned to cross the street.
“Hey, miss, what about our money?” The trio suddenly surrounded me with their bikes.
“Well, that wasn’t my uncle. But he looks the same, so I suppose that’s worth five bucks.”
I dug in my handbag and pulled out a five without taking out my billfold. I shouldn’t copy Mrs. Polter’s suspiciousness, but they had me surrounded.
“You said ten,” the ringleader said accusingly.
“Take it or leave it.” I stared at him coldly, my arms akimbo.
I don’t know whether it was the toughness of my expression, or the sudden movement of Mrs. Polter with her fire extinguisher, but the bikes separated. I sauntered across the street, not looking behind me until I got to the door of Tessie’s Tavern. They had ridden off toward Ashland, presumably to spend their largess.
9
Diamond in the Rough
Tessie’s was a short, narrow room with three pressed-wood tables and a bar long enough to seat eight or nine people. Two men in dusty work shirts were sitting side by side at the counter. One had his sleeves rolled up to show off arms the size of expressway pilings. Neither looked at me when I walked up to the bar, but a middle-aged woman with her back to me turned from the glasses she was rinsing. She had some kind of radar that told her when a customer was arriving.
“What can I do for you, hon?” Her voice was like her face, clear and pleasant.
“I’ll have a draw.” I slid onto a barstool. Beer is not my favorite drink, but you can’t go bar-crawling on whisky and tavern owners aren’t too responsive to club soda fiends.
The man in shirtsleeves finished his beer and said, “Same again, Tessie.” She pulled two more beers and poured a couple of shots and set them in front of the men. She clattered the empties into the sink and washed them briskly, setting them on a shelf under the bottles in front of her. A trio of men drifted in and greeted her by name.
“Your usual, boys?” she asked, grabbing a set of clean steins. They took their beers over to one of the pressed-wood tables and Tessie picked up the Sun-Times.
“You want anything else, honey?” she asked when I forced the last of the thin, bitter brew down.
“Tell you the truth, I’m looking for my uncle. I was wondering if you’d seen him.” I started describing Mitch, but she interrupted me.
“I don’t run a baby-sitting service, hon. That’ll be seventy-five cents for the beer.”
I fished in my jeans pocket for a dollar. “I’m not asking you to. But he disappeared on Monday and he has a bad habit of going on benders. I’m trying to see if I can pick up his trail. He just moved in with Mrs. Polter across the street.”
She smoothed her hands over her plump hips and gave an exaggerated sigh, but she listened to my description of Mitc
h closely enough. “Could be any of a dozen guys who drink around here,” she said when I’d finished. “But everyone has their regular place; I’d think you’d want to talk to them, not go drinking beer in every bar on Archer. Nice-looking girl like you could get yourself in a lot of trouble in some of them.”
She handed me a quarter and waved away my efforts to leave it on the bar top. “Hope you find him, honey. These old drunks eat up a lot of family time.”
I stood on the curb trying to figure out my next move. Mrs. Polter had disappeared from her front porch and I didn’t see her three tormentors anywhere on the street. A tired woman with two small children in tow was coming up the sidewalk. Another woman was heading into the Excelsior Tap three doors down from Tessie’s. Not much street life for a June afternoon.
Tessie was right. If Kruger was going on a bender, he wouldn’t do it here. He’d go back to his old neighborhood and drink at his usual tavern. I should have gotten his previous address from Mr. Contreras before I started searching. I could call my neighbor—there was a pay phone at the corner—but I didn’t have the stomach for any more landladies or beer this afternoon.
I climbed back into my car. It was only four-fifteen. Someone might still be in the office at Diamond Head. If I didn’t go there now it would be Monday before I could check them out.
The plant proved difficult to find. The address, on the 2000 block of Thirty-first Street, was clear enough, but I couldn’t seem to get at it. I went up Damen, which crosses the canal at Thirty-first Street, and found a promising road that snaked along the legs of the expressway. Weeds already grew waist-high there, partly concealing discarded mattresses and tires. Semis roared past me, taking the curves at fifty. I realized too late that we were being decanted onto the Stevenson.
By now rush-hour traffic had turned the two miles to Kedzie into a twenty-minute drive. When I got off, I didn’t try to make the return on the expressway. Instead I rode down Thirty-ninth Street and came back up to Damen. This time I parked the Trans Am at the bottom of the bridge and walked up the pedestrian path to the disused drawbridge tower in the middle.
It had been years since anyone had last used the tower. Its windows were boarded shut. The locks on the small iron door were so badly rusted that they couldn’t have been opened even if you had a key. Someone had announced the presence of the Insane Spanish Cobras along one wall; a giant swastika filled another.
The parapet had also rusted badly. A number of the rails had come loose. I didn’t risk leaning over it—a misstep would land me headfirst on the log pilings tied up underneath. Instead I lay flat on my stomach on the walk and peered below.
Weyerhauser’s giant yards stretched away to the east, with some scrap yards alongside them. Directly beneath me were the scruffy trees that grew at the water’s edge. They shielded most of the nearby rooftops from my view, but two down on the left I could make out an A and an ND. It didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to deduce that they might be from the word “Diamond.”
If I had a boat, I could sail right up to its doors. The trick was getting to it from land. I walked back down the bridge and followed a narrow sidewalk past a row of bungalows built along the road. The houses seemed much older than the bridge, which rose above their tiny dormer windows, blocking their light.
The walk dead-ended at a cyclone fence bordering the canal. I followed the fence, trying to avoid the worst of the refuse that was dropped along it, but tripped a few times on cans hidden in the high prairie grasses. After twenty feet or so of dirty hiking I came to a concrete apron. Right next to it was a loading dock. Trucks were backed into the docks, looking like horses tied up at a giant stable getting their oats.
I squinted up at the lettering that ran around the roof. Gammidge Wire. I followed the apron around the building and finally came to Diamond Head.
Only one truck stood in the open bays at the engine plant. I was afraid that my exploration of the South Side had made me too late to find anyone, but I went over to the truck to inquire.
A man in a coverall stood at the bottom of the loading platform, his back against the truck. He was a huge guy, his head topping my five-eight by a good nine inches. The diesel was running, vibrating the body of the truck and making such a racket that I had a hard time getting his attention. I finally touched his arm. He jumped and swore.
“Who are you and what in hell do you want?” I couldn’t hear him over the engine racket, but he mouthed the words pretty distinctly.
He had a big, square face with a scar running down his left jaw. His nose had been broken more than once, judging by the number of twists it took before settling on the right side of his face. I took a step back.
“Anyone inside I can talk to?” I bellowed.
He put his face down close to mine. “I asked who you was, girlie, and what in hell you want here.”
The backs of my knees prickled, but I eyeballed him coldly. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. I want the shop steward. That help you any?”
He narrowed his eyes and stuck out his lower lip, ready to be plenty mad. Before he could decide to do anything really violent I ducked behind him and vaulted up onto the platform. He started after me, but his size and his work boots limited his agility.
I looked around for someone to talk to, but the platform was empty. Only a forklift with a crate on it suggested that someone might be loading—or unloading—the truck.
I didn’t wait for my friend to join me but sprinted along the lip of the dock until I came to an open door going into a long hallway. Here I did find a small cluster of men, all in shirts and ties, deep in conversation. The bosses. Just what I wanted.
They looked up at me in surprise. One of them, a youngish guy with short brown hair and tortoise-shell glasses, took a step forward.
“You lost?”
“Not exactly.” I caught sight of a long tuft of prairie grass stuck in the tongue of my right shoe and wondered how much more debris I was carrying. “I’m looking for someone who might know something about an old Diamond Head employee. Either the shop steward or the plant manager.”
Just then my trucking friend came pounding in. “Oh, there you are,” he roared, a world of menace in his tone. “She came sneaking around the back of the place just now.”
“She did?” The spokesman turned back to me. “Who are you and just what do you want?”
“I’m V. I. Warshawski. And I want to speak either to the shop steward or the plant manager. Despite what Bruno here says, I wasn’t sneaking around. But I spent a frustrating forty minutes trying to find you from the road and finally had to come on foot.”
No one spoke for a minute, then a second man, older than the first speaker, said, “Who are you working for?”
“I’m not an industrial spy, if that’s what you’re wondering. I have only the dimmest notion of what you make here. I’m a detective—” That brought a quick outburst from two of the group. I held up a hand. “I’m a private detective, and I’ve been hired to find an old man who used to work here.”
The older man looked at me sharply for a minute. “I think I’d better talk to her in my office, Hank,” he said to the brown-haired man. “You go back to the truck, Simon. I’ll make sure she’s off the premises when she goes.”
He jerked his head toward the end of the hall and snapped, “Come on.”
He set off down the hall at a good clip. I followed more slowly, stopping to pull the tuft of grass from my shoe. When I stood up he had disappeared. Two thirds of the way down the hall I found a door that led to a short corridor. My guide stood just inside it, his hands on his hips, his dark eyes sharp. When I caught up with him, he whirled without speaking and marched into the utilitarian hole he used as an office.
“Now, just who in hell are you and what are you doing snooping around our plant?” he said as soon as we were seated.
I looked around on his desktop, but didn’t see a nameplate. “You got a name?” I asked. “And a position with the firm?”
“I asked y
ou a question, young lady.”
“I told you out in the hall there. I haven’t got anything to add. But if you want to talk it over, it would be really helpful for me to know your name.” I leaned back in my chair and retied my right shoe.
He glared at me. I took off the left shoe and shook some dirt from it onto the floor.
“My name is Chamfers. And I am the plant manager.” The words came out as though snapped through a peashooter.
“How do you do?” I took my wallet from my handbag and dug out the laminated copy of my PI license and showed it to him.
He looked it over and threw it contemptuously onto the desktop. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who’s employing you, but I’ve got dicks of my own. I can check you out fast enough.”
I made a disgusted face. “And when you’ve spent a couple of thousand bucks doing that, you won’t be any wiser than you are now. I realize it looks strange, me crawling around your premises, but there’s a simple explanation. Your guy Simon was the first person I saw. When I tried talking to him he got kind of ugly, so I scrambled for safety and found you.”
He scowled for a minute. “And what’s your story on what you want with me?”
“My story, as you put it, is also very simple. I’m looking for an old man who used to work here.”
“Did we fire him?”
“Nope. He left the old-fashioned way: he retired.”
“So there’s no reason for him to be here.” He wasn’t believing me. His tone and the curl to his upper lip made that clear enough.
“So it would seem. But the last time my client saw him, on Monday, the guy who’s missing said he was coming over here to see the bosses—his word. He had something on his mind about Diamond Head. So, since no one who knows him has seen him since Monday, I was hoping he might actually have done it. Come over here, I mean.”
“And what is this ex-employee’s name?” He gave a little smile to show he appreciated our game.
I smiled back, just as thinly, but with more contempt. “Mitch Kruger. Did he show up?”
Guardian Angel Page 7