I walked the short mile to the restaurant. Stepping around a wide hole in the concrete I slipped on a discarded hot dog. Just one more of the joys of city life. I dusted my trouser knees. The fabric was bruised slightly but not torn. Not enough damage to justify a move to Streamwood.
Robin was waiting for me outside the restaurant door, looking elegant in gray flannel slacks and a navy blazer. He had come early to sign up for a table and the manager was just calling his name when we walked in. Perfect. If you’re born lucky, you don’t have to be good. Robin ordered a beer while I had a rum and tonic and some of the cod roe mousse the Calliope was famous for.
“How did you become a detective?” he asked after we’d given our dinner orders.
“I used to be with the public defender.” I spread some of the mousse on a piece of toast. “Trial division. It’s hideous work-you often get briefed on your client only five minutes before the trial begins. You always have more cases than time to work them effectively. And sometimes you’re pleading heart and soul for goons you hope will never see the light of day again.”
“So why didn’t you just go into private practice?” He scooped up some of the mousse. “This is good,” he mumbled, his mouth full. “I never tried it before.”
It was good-just salty enough to go down well with beer or rum. I ate some more and finished my drink before answering.
“I’d spent five years in the PD’s office-I didn’t want to have to start again at the beginning in a private practice. Anyway, I’d solved a case for a friend and realize it was work I could do well and get genuine satisfaction from. Plus, I can be my own boss.” I should have given that as my first reason-it continues to be the most important with me. Maybe from being an only child, used to getting my own way? Or just my mother’s fierce independence seeping into my DNA along with her olive skin.
After the waiter brought salads and a bottle of wine, I asked Robin how he ended up as an arson specialist. He grimaced.
“I don’t know anyone whose first choice is insurance, except maybe the kids whose fathers own agencies. I majored in art history. There wasn’t money to send me to graduate school. So I started work at Ajax. They had me designing policy forms-trying to make use of my artistic background”-he grinned briefly-“but I got out of that as fast as I could.”
During dinner he asked me about some of the earlier work I’d done for Ajax. It was my turn to make a face- the company didn’t know if it loved or hated me for fingering their claims vice president as the mastermind of a workers’ comp fraud scam. Robin was fascinated-he said there’d always been a lot of gossip circulating, but that no one had ever told the lower-downs what their vice president had really been up to.
Over Greek-style bouillabaisse he spent a little time persuading me to go back into the Ajax trenches once again. I knew I needed a major job, not just the nickel-and-dime stuff that had come over the transom the last few days. I knew I didn’t feel up to hustling for new clients right now, I knew I was going to say yes, but I asked him to call me at my office in the morning with some details.
“It’s been a roughish day,” I explained. “Tonight I just want to forget the detecting business and unwind.”
He didn’t seem to mind. The talk drifted to baseball and childhood while we finished eating. Dancing in the back room afterwards, we didn’t talk much at all. Around midnight we decided the time had come to move the few blocks north to my place. Robin said he’d leave his car at the restaurant and pick it up in the morning-we’d both had too much to drink to drive, and anyway, it was a beautiful late-summer night.
We turned the six blocks into a half-hour trek, moving slowly with our arms locked, stopping every few houses for a long kiss. When we finally got to my place I whispered urgent warnings of silence on Robin-I didn’t want Mr. Contreras or Vinnie the banker descending on us. While Robin stood behind me with his arms wrapped around my waist, I fumbled in my bag for my keys.
A car door slammed in front of the house. We moved to one side as footsteps came up the walk. A car searchlight pinned us against the apartment entrance.
“That you, Vicki? Sorry to interrupt, but we need to have a chat.” The voice, laden with heavy irony, was almost as familiar to me as my own father’s. It belonged to Lieutenant Robert Mallory, head of the Violent Crimes Unit at the Chicago Police’s Central District. I could feel my cheeks flame in the dark-no matter how cool you are, it unsettles you when your father’s oldest friend surprises you in a passionate embrace.
“I’m flattered, of course, Bobby. Two and a half million souls in the city, including your seven grandchildren, and when you have insomnia you come to me.”
Bobby ignored me. “Say good night to your friend here-we’re going for a ride.”
Robin made a creditable effort to intervene. I grabbed his arm. “They’ll put you in Cook County with the muggers and the buggers if you hit him-it’s a police lieutenant. Bobby-Robin Bessinger, Ajax Insurance. Robin-Bobby Mallory, Chicago’s finest.”
In the searchlight Bobby’s red face looked grayish-white; lines I didn’t usually notice sprang into craggy relief. He was coming up on his sixtieth birthday, after all. I’d even been invited to the surprise party his wife was planning for him in early October, but I hadn’t thought of the milestone as meaning he might be getting old. I pushed aside the stab of queasiness the idea of his aging gave me and said more loudly than I’d intended, “Where are we riding to and why, Bobby?”
I could see him wrestle with the desire to grab me and drag me forcibly to the waiting car. Most people don’t know that if you’re not under arrest you don’t have to go off with a policeman just because he tells you to. And most people won’t fight it even if they know it. Even a good cop like Bobby starts taking it for granted; a citizen like me helps him keep his powers in perspective.
“Tell your friend to take a hike.” He jerked his head at Robin.
If I obeyed him on that one, he’d play by the rules. It wasn’t a great compromise, but it was a compromise. I grudgingly asked Robin to leave. He agreed on condition that I call him as soon as the police were done with me, but when he got to the end of the walk, he stood to watch. I was touched.
“Okay, he’s gone. What do you need to talk about?”
Bobby frowned and pressed his lips together. Just a reflex of annoyance. “Night watchman found a body near a construction site around nine-thirty. She had something on her linking her to you.”
I had a sudden image of my aunt, dead drunk, getting hit by a car and left to die. I put a hand on the side of the building to steady myself. “Elena?” I asked foolishly.
“Elena?” Bobby was momentarily blank. “Oh, Tony’s sister. Not unless she shed fifty years and had her skin dyed for the occasion.”
It took me a minute to work out what he meant, A young black woman. Cerise. She wasn’t the only young black woman I know, but I couldn’t imagine any of the others dead near a construction site. “Who was it?”
“We want you to tell us.”
“What did you find that made you connect her with me?”
Bobby pressed his lips together again. He just didn’t want to tell me-old habits die hard. I thought he was about to speak when the door opened behind me and Vinnie the banker erupted into the night.
“This is it, Warshawski. This is the last time you get me up in the middle of the night. Just so you know it, the cops are on their way over. Don’t your friends ever think- shining a light straight into a window where people are sleeping? And talking at the top of their lungs? Or are you trying to lure people inside?”
He had changed out of his pajamas into jeans and a white button shirt. His thick brown hair was combed carefully from his face. He might even have taken the extra time to shampoo and blow-dry it before dialing 911.
“I’m glad you phoned them, Vinnie-they’ll be real happy when they get here. And so will the rest of the block when the squad cars cruise in with those new strobes of theirs painting the nighttime blue.�
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Bobby looked at Vinnie. “You call the cops, son?”
The banker stuck his chin out pugnaciously. “Yes, I did. They’ll be here any minute. If you’re her pimp, you’ve got about two minutes to disappear.”
Bobby kept his tone avuncular. “Who you talk to, son-the precinct or the emergency number?”
Vinnie bristled. “I’m not your son. Don’t think you can buy me off too.”
Bobby looked at me, his lips twitching. “You been trying to sell him nickel bags, Vicki?”
He turned back to Vinnie, showing his badge. “I know Miss Warshawski isn’t the easiest neighbor in the world- I’m about to take her off your hands. But I need to know if you called 911 or the precinct so I can cancel the squad cars-I don’t want to waste any more city money tonight pulling patrol officers away from work they ought to be doing because you have a beef with your neighbors.”
Vinnie bunched up his lips, not wanting to back down but knowing he had to. “911,” he muttered, then said more defiantly, “And it’s about time someone took her in.”
Bobby looked toward the street and bellowed, “Furey!”
Michael climbed out of the car and trotted over. Just what I needed to complete the transformation of romance into farce-Michael must have seen me in a clinch with Robin at the door.
“This kid here called 911 when he heard me talking to Vicki-get on the radio and find out who’s coming and cancel them, okay? And turn off the light. Guy needs his beauty sleep.”
Michael, at his most wooden, ignored me completely and headed back to the car. Vinnie tried asking for Bobby’s badge number so he could lodge a complaint with the watch commander-“your boss” as he put it-but Bobby put a heavy hand on his shoulder and assured him that everyone had better things to do with their time, and if Vinnie had to be at the office in the morning, maybe it was time he turned back in.
“Well, at least get this woman to stop conducting her business in the front hall in the middle of the night,” Vinnie demanded petulantly as he opened the front door.
“Is that what you do, Vicki?” Bobby asked. “Lose your lease downtown?”
I gritted my teeth but didn’t try to fight it as he took my arm and ushered me down the walk-Mr. Contreras would doubtless be out next with the dog if we stayed any longer.
“Elena,” I said shortly. “She’s come around a few times in the last week. Always after midnight, of course.”
“I haven’t seen her since Tony’s funeral. Didn’t even know whether she was still in town.”
“I wish I hadn’t seen her since then, either. She got burned out of her place last Wednesday-you know that SRO fire near McCormick Place?”
Bobby grunted. “So she came to you. Underneath it all you’re not that different from your folks, I guess.”
That left me speechless for the remainder of the short walk. Bobby opened the back door for me. I waved at Robin and climbed inside.
Michael was sitting in the front seat, John McGonnigal- the sergeant Bobby most preferred to work with-in the back. I said hello to both of them. They kept up an animated conversation about police business all the way to the morgue. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have joined in.
15
At the Rue Morgue
Some practical bureaucrat put the county morgue on the Near West Side, the area with Chicago’s highest murder rate-it saves wear and tear on the meatwagons having to cart corpses only a few short blocks. Even during the day the concrete cube looks like a bunker in the middle of a war zone; at midnight it’s the most depressing place in town.
As we walked up to the sliding metal doors marked “Deliveries,” Furey began a series of morbid one-liners, a kind of defense against his own mortality I suppose, but still unpleasant. At least McGonnigal didn’t join in. I moved out of earshot, into the entryway-a small box of reinforced glass whose inner door was locked. A knot of clerks at the reception counter inside looked me over and went back to an animated conversation. When Bobby materialized behind my left shoulder, the party broke up and someone unlocked the door.
I pushed it open when the buzzer sounded and held it for Bobby and the boys. Furey still wouldn’t look at me, not even when I went out of my way to be superpolite. Last time I’d go to a political fund-raiser with him, that’s for sure.
For the public brought in to identify their nearest and dearest, the county provides a small furnished waiting room-you can even look at a video screen instead of directly at the body. Bobby didn’t think I needed such amenities. He pushed open the double doors to the autopsy room. I followed, trying to walk nonchalantly.
It was a utilitarian room, with sinks and equipment for four pathologists to work at once. In the middle of the night the only person present was an attendant, a middle-aged man in jeans with a green surgical gown thrown loosely around his shoulders. He was hunched over a car-and-track magazine. The Sox were on a seven-inch screen on the chair in front of him. He looked at us indifferently, taking his time to get up when Bobby identified himself and told him what he wanted. He sauntered to the thick double doors leading to the cooler.
Inside were hundreds of bodies arranged in rows. Their torsos were partially draped in black plastic, but the heads were exposed, arcing back, the mouths open in surprise at death. I could feel the blood drain from my brain, I hoped I wasn’t turning green-it would put the cap to my night if I got sick in front of Furey and McGonnigal. At least Furey had shut up, that was one good thing.
The attendant consulted a list in his pocket and went over to one of the bodies. He checked a tag on the foot against his list and prepared to wheel the gurney into the autopsy room.
“That’s okay,” Bobby said easily. “We’ll look at her in here.”
Bobby took me to the gurney and pulled the plastic wrapping away so that the whole body was exposed. Cerise stared up at me. Stripped of clothes, she looked pathetically thin. Her ribs jutted ominously below her breasts; her pregnancy hadn’t yet given any roundness to her sunken stomach. Her carefully beaded braids lay tousled on the table-I stuck a hand out involuntarily to smooth them for her.
Bobby was watching me closely. “You know who she is, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “She looks like a couple of different women I’ve met briefly. What did she have that made you think I knew her?”
He compressed his lips again-he wanted to yell at me but he belongs to a generation that doesn’t swear at women. “Don’t play games with me, Vicki. If you know who it is, tell us so we can get moving on tracking down her associates.”
“How did she die?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet; they won’t do a postmortem until Friday. Probably a heroin overdose. That help you distinguish her from the others?” Bobby’s sarcasm is always heavy.
“What do you care, anyway? Dead junkies must be a dime a dozen around here. And here are three crack guys from the Violent Crimes Unit only three hours after she was found.”
Bobby’s eyes glittered. “You ain’t running the department, Vicki. I don’t account to you how I decide to spend my time.”
The intensity of his anger surprised me; it also spelled in large block letters that he hadn’t chosen to be here. I stared at Cerise thoughtfully. What about her life or death could bring heat from the top down to the Central Division in such a short stretch?
“Where was she found?” I asked abruptly.
“On the big construction project going up near Navy Pier.” That was McGonnigal. “Watchman found her in the elevator shaft when he was making his rounds, called us. She hadn’t been dead too long when the squad car got there.”
“Rapelec Towers, right? What made him look down the shaft?”
McGonnigal shook his head. “One of those things. Why she was on the site we’ll probably never know, either. Nice secluded place at night if you want to shoot up in peace, but awfully far from where you’d expect to find her.”
“So what did she have that made you think of me?”
; Bobby nodded at Furey, who produced a transparent evidence bag. Inside was a plastic square. My photograph was glued in the left corner, looking just as demented as the one I’d had taken this morning.
“Hmm,” I said after I’d looked at it. “Looks like my driver’s license.”
Bobby smiled savagely. “This isn’t Second City, Victoria, and nobody’s rolling in the aisles. You know this girl or not?”
I nodded reluctantly. Like Bobby, I hate giving information across police barricades. “Cerise Ramsay.”
“How’d she get that license?”
“She stole it from me yesterday morning.” I crossed my arms in front of me.
“Did you report it? Report the theft?”
I shook my head without answering.
Bobby slammed his hand against the side of the cart hard enough that the metal rattled. “Why the hell not?”
He really was pissed. I looked at him squarely. “I thought Elena might have taken it.”
“Oh.” The fire went out of his face. He jerked his head at Furey and McGonnigal. “Why don’t you boys wait for me in the car?”
When they’d left he said in quiet, fatherly tones, “Okay, Vicki, let’s have the whole story. And not just the sections you think I’ll find out anyway. You know Tony would say the same thing if he was here.”
Indeed I did. It’s just that I was too old to do things because my daddy told me to. I didn’t have a client to protect, though. There wasn’t any reason not to tell him the pathetic little I knew about Cerise, just as long as we didn’t do it surrounded by cold bodies.
Bobby got the attendant to show us to a tiny cubicle where the ME’s drink coffee or whiskey or something in between dissections. And I told him everything I knew about Cerise, including Katterina and Zerlina. “I can sign the papers if you want. Her mother’s got a bad heart- I don’t think it would do her any good to come down here.”
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