“If he did, he never made it past my secretary.”
“Then I’d like to talk to him.”
“That was crude,” he said contemptuously. “Trying to pretend you haven’t done your homework on our operation to know my secretary is a woman. I’ll ask Angela when she comes in on Monday. And give you a call.”
“Chamfers, I’ll tell you a little secret. If I were really committing industrial espionage, you wouldn’t even know I’d been here. I’d have had you guys staked out and known your comings and goings and made my move after you’d left for the weekend. So relax. Save the strain on your brain and your bankroll. All I want to know is the last time anyone here at Diamond Head saw my boy Mitch. When we know that, we’ll shake hands forever.”
I picked up my license from his desk and handed him one of my cards. “It’ll make it easier for you to call me if you have my number, Chamfers. And I’ll take yours.”
I leaned over the desk and copied the number stuck at the top of his phone buttons before he could stop me. “Want to give me a safe-conduct past Simon?”
He gave a triumphant smirk. “We’re not going through the body of the plant, so don’t get your hopes up, missy. We’ll go the long way around. And I’ll make sure our security forces are on the alert this weekend.”
We went back to the hallway and out a door that fronted the canal. In silence we followed a footpath around the side, past the vibrating truck where Simon stood guard, and on to the main entrance. A cracked road led away from it.
“I don’t know where you hid your car, but it had better not be on our land. I can’t promise to hold on to Simon if he catches sight of you sneaking around here again.”
“I’ll be sure to bring a bag of raw meat with me next time just in case.”
“There won’t be a next time. Get that through your head good and solid, missy.”
It didn’t seem worth it to escalate the conflict further. I blew him a kiss and headed up the drive. Arms akimbo, he glared me out of sight.
10
Going to the Dogs
It was after six when I finally got back to the Trans Am. After hiking down Diamond Head’s cracked access road to Bridgeport’s side streets, I figured out the route. My mistake had been in trying to get at the plant from Thirty-first Street: you had to go down to Thirty-third and snake up and down a few times.
I laughed a little to myself over my encounter with Chamfers. With all the industrial surveillance I’ve done over the years it was funny—as well as embarrassing—to make such a clumsy entrance that they took me for a spy. I should have just waited for Monday morning, when I could have spoken to Chamfers’s secretary in the accepted fashion. Now I’d have to do it anyway, but I’d have a big hurdle of suspicion to jump over.
I wondered if Chamfers would really get his own detectives to check up on me, or if that had been bravado to make me back away from my supposed espionage. I amused myself during the long drive up the Kennedy with figuring out what steps I would take if I were going to investigate myself. It would be hard for me to prove I wasn’t spying: by the time they’d checked with some of my corporate references, they’d realize it made up a significant part of my practice. They’d have to start tailing me; that would take a lot of time and money. It wouldn’t make me cry to think of Chamfers trying to justify it to his corporate masters, whoever they were.
When I got home, Mr. Contreras jumped out of his front door to greet me. “Got anything on Mitch, doll?”
I put an arm around his shoulder and gently propelled him back into his apartment. “I’ve started asking people questions, but I’ve got a long way to go yet. I’m going to tell you the same thing I say to all my clients: I make regular reports, but I work less and less efficiently the more I get hounded for them. So pretend we’re neighbors who are both in love with the same dog, and let me handle the investigation as best I can.”
Mr. Contreras elected to be hurt. “It’s just that I’m worried about him. I ain’t trying to hound you or criticize you.”
I grinned. “Perish the thought. Can you give me Kruger’s old address—the one he had before he came home with you last Friday?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it right here.”
He pulled the cover from the desk that stood in the middle of his living room. I’ve never known either why he keeps it there, where he must bump into it a hundred times a week, or why he thinks it’s a good idea to drape it. From the jumble of papers stacked on top and spilling from the drawers I figured it wasn’t going to be an easy search. I skirted the operation and went over to check on Peppy.
The puppies had grown amazingly in one week. Their soft fur coverings were starting to show distinctive colors. They were still blind, though, and helpless. They squealed and squirmed in terror when Peppy stood up and left them. She sniffed my legs to make sure it was me and indicated that she wanted to go outside.
“Yeah, you take her out, doll. I’m still tracking down Mitch’s address,” Mr. Contreras called to me.
Peppy didn’t want to stay out long. She made a brief circuit of the yard to spot any changes in her domain and headed straight back to the kitchen door. Our quick tour suddenly reminded me of my insane agreement to do evening duty with Mrs. Frizell’s dogs.
When we returned to the living room, Mr. Contreras was leafing through a crumbling address book.
“Got it, cookie,” he announced. “I’ll just write it down for you.” A handful of pages dropped to the floor while he hunted for a pencil and paper.
“Just tell me what it is,” I suggested. “I can remember it long enough to get upstairs.… By the way, did Mrs. Hellstrom up the street drop off keys for Mrs. Frizell’s house?”
“Huh?” He was copying Mitch’s address onto an old envelope with the slow hand of someone who doesn’t write much. “Keys? Oh, yeah, slipped my mind in my worry over Mitch, but I got them here for you. Hang on a second. I thought you wasn’t going to get involved with any more dogs. Isn’t that what you said?”
“My lips said ‘No, no,’ but my imbecile conscience said ‘Yes, yes.’ But I’m not backing down on an addition to our menagerie.”
“Okay, doll, okay. Cool your jets.” He handed me the envelope with Kruger’s old address, Thirty-fifth Street west of Damen, spelled out in caps. Really just walking distance from Diamond Head.
“Is that where you lived too?”
“Huh, doll? Oh, you’re thinking about when we was kids. No, no. My folks lived on Twenty-fourth, off Oakley. Part of Little Tuscany. Mitch lived closer to California. We was always on his case about how he was gonna end up at the county jail. It’s right there, you know.”
“I know.” A lot of my life had been spent at Twenty-sixth and California in my days with the Homicide Task Force.
“You gonna go down to his old place tomorrow?” Mr. Contreras asked as I headed up the stairs.
I turned to look at him and bit off a variety of short answers; the concern in his soft brown eyes was too immediate. “Probably. Anyway, I’ll do my best.”
In my own place I resisted the longing for a bath and a double whisky. I stayed just long enough to dump my handbag and check my messages. Daraugh Graham wanted my report. Lotty hadn’t tried to call—maybe we were still pissed off with each other. I didn’t have the energy to sort that out tonight.
When I got to Mrs. Frizell’s, the house was quiet. The dogs weren’t there. I stood in the hallway, foolishly calling to them even though I could tell the house was empty, then made an even more foolish search of the premises. Someone had been through the place, cleaning it—all the bedding was washed and neatly stacked on a freshly polished bureau in the bedroom; the stairs and floors had been vacuumed and the bathroom scrubbed down. Only the living room was still a wreck, with papers strewn all over it. Presumably Mrs. Hellstrom had been continuing her job of good neighbor. She probably had the dogs too.
Relieved, I headed back to my own home. Now I could take a bath and watch the Cubs-Astros game in peace. I
was at my front stoop when Mrs. Hellstrom caught up with me. Her round, fair face was flushed and she was out of breath from chasing me down the street.
“Oh, young lady! I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name, but I was watching for you—only, the phone rang, so I missed you coming up the block. I’m glad I saw you leaving.”
I mustered an interested expression.
“It’s the dogs, Hattie Frizell’s dogs. They’ve disappeared.”
“Into thin air?”
She spread helpless hands. “I’m sure I locked them in the house this morning. I mean, I can’t leave them in the yard—that big black dog is always all over the neighborhood, and I don’t like it myself. She can’t admit they ever do anything wrong, but he dug up all my irises last fall and ate the bulbs. Then when I went to talk to her about it … well, anyway, I just meant I locked them in the house even if it does seem a little cruel. And I’m sure I did. I don’t think I would have been careless and left the door open. But when I came back from the store and went over to let them out they were gone.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Was the door open when you went over?”
“It was shut but it wasn’t locked, that’s what worries me. What do you think could have happened to them?”
“I don’t think even Bruce could open the door with his jaws. Have you talked to anyone else on the street? Maybe someone broke in and let the dogs out.”
Burglars, like Santa Claus, know when we’ve been sleeping, or away from our houses. And the living room did look as though someone might have ransacked it. On the surface Mrs. Frizell seemed an unlikely candidate for valuables, but she wouldn’t be the first person to live in squalor while sitting on a stack of bearer bonds.
“Burglars?” Mrs. Hellstrom’s pale-blue eyes widened in fear. “Oh, dear, I hope not. This block has always been such a nice place to live, even if we’re not as fancy as that young lawyer across the street or some of the other new people who’ve moved in. I did ask Maud Rezzori—she lives on the other side, you know—but she was out at the same time I was. I’m going to have to go tell Mr. Hellstrom. He’s been annoyed with me, taking on those dogs, but if we have burglars …”
She sounded like a housewife distressed over a plague of mice. Despite my fatigue I couldn’t help laughing.
“It’s not funny, young lady. I mean, it may seem like a joke to you, but you live on the third floor, and it isn’t—”
“I don’t think burglars are a joke,” I cut her off hastily. “But we need to find out if other neighbors saw someone going into Mrs. Frizell’s place before we get too hot about it. It’s possible you forgot to lock the door and the meter reader came around. It could be anything. You’ve lived here a long time—you can probably give me the names of the people on the block.”
All I wanted was a bath and a drink and a Cubs victory, not a night of interrogation. Why do you do this to yourself? a voice in my head demanded while Mrs. Hellstrom detailed the Tertzes’, the Olsens’, and the Singers’ biographies. I certainly couldn’t blame Carol for staying home to look after Cousin Guillermo if I was going to spend my life on the dogs of a disagreeable old woman who didn’t have the faintest tie to me.
“Okay. I’ll scout around and let you know if anyone can tell me anything.”
I walked back up the street with her. Mrs. Hellstrom continued to be worried about burglars, and what her daughters would say, and what Mr. Hellstrom thought, but I wasn’t really paying attention.
11
Man Bites Dog
I tried the Olsens first since they lived directly behind Mrs. Frizell and might have noticed someone going in her back door. Unfortunately they’d been watching TV in their living room in the morning. I could see the disappointment in their faces—they’d missed a ringside seat on a real drama, maybe burglars going after a neighbor they didn’t much care for—but they couldn’t tell me anything.
I went to the Tertzes next. Their frame house on the east side of Racine, facing Mrs. Frizell, was sandwiched between the Picheas’ and another rehab job. The carefully painted scrollwork on either side made the Tertz house look a trifle shabby, but the lawn was carefully tended, with a few early roses in bud.
Mrs. Tertz must have been about seventy. We carried on the conversation in a shout through her locked front door until she was satisfied that I didn’t have assault on my mind. “Oh, yes, I’ve seen you on the street. You have that big red dog, don’t you? I just never saw you close up before, so I didn’t recognize your face. You’ve been helping Marjorie look after Harriet Frizell’s dogs for her, haven’t you?”
I hadn’t heard Mrs. Hellstrom’s first name before. I boiled her ten-minute dither down to a few sentences. “So I wondered if you saw anyone go into the house while she was away.”
“Yes, yes, I did, but they weren’t burglars. What does Marjorie take me for, that I’d let someone break in, even on Hattie Frizell, without calling the police? No, no, they were with the county—I saw it on the side of their van—Cook County Animal Control. I was sure Marjorie knew all about it. They came around eleven o’clock, and that girl next door”—she jerked her head in the direction of the Picheas—“Chrissie, her name is, Chrissie Pichea, was there to let them in.”
“Chrissie Pichea?” I echoed stupidly.
“Why, yes. She often comes around to visit.” Mrs. Tertz smiled a little. “I think she’s doing good works for the elderly. But I don’t resent it—it’s kindly meant, even if my husband and I are perfectly able to manage our own affairs. It gets him angry, you see, the idea that just because the clock’s ticked a little longer for us we’ve suddenly become incompetent in some people’s eyes. So I usually don’t let him know if she’s stopped by. But I knew she wouldn’t have gone into Hattie’s without the intention to help, so I just went back to my own work.”
I stared at her unseeingly, barely listening to her monologue. Chrissie Pichea let in the animal control unit? How had she gotten keys? That question was immaterial at this point. She and Todd had simply outflanked me. They’d somehow made sure I was away, then gotten the county to come for Mrs. Frizell’s dogs.
I left Mrs. Tertz in mid-sentence and tramped down some zinnias as I sprinted across the Picheas’ yard. My finger shook as I stabbed their polished brass doorbell. Todd Pichea came to the door.
“Oh, it’s you.” The trace of a smirk flickered across his mouth, but he looked a little uneasy, his fists tightly bunched inside his linen slacks.
“Yes, it’s me. Nine hours too late, but on the trail nonetheless. How did you and your wife get a key to Mrs. Frizell’s front door? And who gave you the right to send the county to pick up her dogs?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“You made it my business when you came to my building the other night. How did you get her key?”
“The same way you did: I helped myself to one lying in the living room. And I have a lot more right to what goes on in that house than you do. A lot more right.” He swayed forward on the balls of his feet, trying to look intimidating.
I moved forward, not back, and planted my nose about an inch from his. “You’ve got no rights to anything, Pichea. I’m going to call the county and then I’m going to call the cops. You may be a lawyer, but they’ll still be glad to arrest you on a B&E.”
The smirk became pronounced. “You do that, Warshawski. Go home and do it, or better still, come in here. I’d love to see you with egg all over that self-righteous face of yours. I want to be in the front row watching you when the cops show up.”
Chrissie came up behind him, skintight jeans showing off her trim thighs. “What is it, Todd? Oh, that busybody up the street. Did you tell her we got appointed guardians?”
“Guardians?” My voice rose half an octave. “Who was deranged enough to appoint you Mrs. Frizell’s guardian?”
“I called the son Tuesday morning. He was glad to turn his mother over to a competent lawyer. She isn’t capable of handling her own af
fairs, and we—”
“There’s nothing wrong with her mind. Just because she chooses to live in a different world than Yuppieville—”
He cut me off in turn. “The court doesn’t agree. We had an emergency hearing yesterday. And the city emergency services people agreed that those dogs constituted a menace to Mrs. Frizell’s health. If she’s ever able to live at home again.”
The impulse to smash in his face was so strong that I just pulled my fist back before it connected.
“Very smart, Warshawski. I don’t know who your police contacts are, but I don’t think they’d get you off an assault charge.” He was a little pale, breathing hard, but in control.
I turned without speaking. I felt beaten. I wasn’t going to add to it by spewing out empty bravado.
“Have a nice night, Warshawski.” Todd’s mocking voice followed me down the walk.
How could he have done it? I had only the vaguest idea of how probate court and guardianship worked in Cook County. All my legal experience had been on the criminal, not the civil side, although some of my clients had children for whom we’d had to arrange custody. Could you just go to the probate judge and get care of someone else? Mrs. Frizell wasn’t deranged or senile, just unpleasant and reclusive. Or maybe it was her son—in my anger I couldn’t think of his name—maybe all he had to do was call up someone and turn the rights to his mother over to them? That just couldn’t be.
My neck muscles had turned so stiff from rage that when I got to my own front door I was trembling violently. I poured myself a large whisky and started running a bath. While Johnnie Walker worked his magic on my tense shoulders I called the animal control office. The man on the other end was pleasant, even friendly, but after leaving me on hold for ten minutes he told me apologetically that Mrs. Frizell’s dogs had already been destroyed.
I pictured Mrs. Frizell, her wispy gray hair scattered on a hospital pillow, turning her face to the wall and dying when she learned her beloved dogs were dead. I could hear that hoarse whisper of “Bruce,” and Mrs. Hellstrom’s promise that she would look after the dogs. I hadn’t felt this helpless since the day Tony told me Gabriella was going to die.
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