Guardian Angel

by Sara Paretsky

  “Okay, I’m not shirty.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “Tell me how Her Serene Doggedness is doing. And how are the little ones?”

  “Everyone’s a-okay. The princess is a champ, you don’t need me to tell you that. You wanna see her? Your hands are clean, ain’t they?”

  “I just scrubbed myself squeaky clean inside and out and these are fresh jeans,” I said solemnly.

  Mr. Contreras led me into his living room. Peppy was still stretched behind the sofa, but the old man had cleaned up her nest, giving her a fresh stack of soft sheets to lie on. The eight fur balls were squirming at her nipples, squeaking a little if one got pushed aside by another’s greed. Peppy looked at me and thumped her tail to show we were still friends, but her total attention was on her babies, too blind and helpless to survive without her.

  “Every now and then she gets up to go out, but only for thirty seconds, then it’s back to her station. What a champ. My, oh my.” Mr. Contreras smacked his lips. “Of course, I feed her regular, just like the doc said, so don’t you go worrying about her.”

  “I’m not.” I knelt cautiously next to the nursery and stuck my hand slowly behind the couch, giving Peppy time to growl me off if she wanted to. She watched warily as I stroked her babies. I longed to pick one up—their tiny bodies would just about fit in the palm of my hand—but didn’t want to alarm her. She seemed relieved when I stood back up.

  “So where’s the fire?” I asked. “Your old buddy steal Clara’s silver or something?” Mr. Contreras’s dead wife had left behind a pair of candlesticks and a silver salt shaker which he never used but couldn’t bring himself to pass on to his daughter.

  “No, nothin’ like that. But I want you to talk to him. He’s got something on his mind that he’s acting awful cute about. I don’t have time to figure out what he’s driving at. Besides, it ain’t good for the princess to have him drinking around her babies, and then snoring all night on the couch right over her head the way he does. I need to get him out of here today.”

  “I can’t get the guy into A.A., my friend.”

  “And I ain’t asking you to. Crying out loud, you jump to conclusions faster’n a flea trying to reach the dog.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, then, instead of dancing around it—listening to you is like hearing a mosquito buzz away for an hour while you wonder where it’s going to land.”

  “There’s no call for that kind of language, cookie, no call at all. You don’t mind my saying so, but sometimes you’re a little bit fresh.”

  I rolled my eyes but bit back a snappy retort. At this rate I’d be here all day and I didn’t have a day to spend on it.

  “What seems to be troubling Mr. Kruger?” I asked primly.

  Mr. Contreras scratched the back of his head. “That’s what I can’t exactly figure out. I thought maybe you could talk to him, being as you’re a trained investigator and all. See, him and me used to work together out at Diamond Head—you know, the engine makers on Damen down by the river. Then we retired, but we picked the wrong year to do it, back in seventy-nine when inflation was so rough, and our pensions, which seemed good enough at the time, couldn’t keep up. I wasn’t so bad off, because I owned my house, and then when Clara died I bought this place, but Mitch kind of outdrank his, and he also don’t have my luck at the track. Or more to the point, he don’t have my self-control.” He started for the kitchen as though that explained everything.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m short on sleep and can’t make the connection.”

  Mr. Contreras stopped to look at me in exasperation. “So he needs money, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, trying to keep a sharp edge out of my voice. “What’s he doing to get it that has you so worried? Holding up 7-Elevens?”

  “Of course he ain’t, doll. Use your head. Would I let someone like that into the building here?” He stopped a minute, sucking his cheeks in. “Trouble is, I don’t know what he might be doing. Long as I’ve known him, which is a long time now, Mitch’s always had some scheme or other going. And now he thinks he’s got a way to make Diamond Head put him back on the payroll.”

  Mr. Contreras snorted. “I ask you! It isn’t even as if any of the guys we used to know was still there. They’re all retired or been kicked out or whatever. And between you and me, he wouldn’t have been kept on the last three years if we hadn’t had such a tight local. But nowadays? With the shape he’s in and guys half our age pounding the sidewalks looking for machine work? But he’s making a big old mystery out of it, so I thought of you. Where there’s a mystery, you like to be poking your nose into it.”

  Something about the story didn’t ring quite true to me. I rubbed my eyes, hoping to bring life into my fuzzy brain.

  “What is it you really want to know? Why do you care if Kruger’s panhandling out at Diamond Head?”

  Mr. Contreras took out his giant red handkerchief and rubbed his nose. “Mitch and me grew up together down in McKinley Park. We went to school together, we ran with the same gang, fought the same guys, all that stuff. We even signed our apprenticeship papers the same day. He ain’t much, but he’s about all I got left from that time in my life. I don’t want to see him make a goddam fool of himself in front of the bosses. I’d like to know what he’s up to.”

  He spoke in a fast, mumbly voice that I had to strain to hear, as if he were embarrassed to admit sentiment or affection for Kruger. I was touched by both his feelings and his awkwardness.

  “I can’t promise you anything, but at least I can talk to him.”

  Mr. Contreras blew his nose with a final flourish. “I knew I could count on you, doll.”

  He’d left Mitch Kruger in the kitchen reading the Sun-Times, but when we got there the back door was open and his friend was nowhere in sight. A plate of fried eggs, cold grease glistening on them, sat in front of the newspaper. Kruger had apparently eaten a few bites before something made him decide to take a hike.

  “He has got problems, hasn’t he?” I said affably.

  Mr. Contreras’s generous mouth set in a hard line. “I told him a hunnert times he can’t go off and leave the door open. This ain’t some high-priced suburb where the people coming in your back door are the same ones you’d invite in through the front if you thought of it.”

  He stomped over to bolt the door, then opened it wide. “There you are, Kruger. I went and got my neighbor, see if she could understand what you’re driving at. She’s a detective, like I told you—Vic Warshawski. All you had to do was sit on your butt and eat your eggs and wait for her. That too much to ask?”

  Kruger smiled fuzzily. It was obvious that he’d walked down to Frankie’s Shortstop Inn on the corner for a few quick ones. By the smell it was bourbon, but it could’ve been rye.

  “Told you to mind your own business, Sal,” Mitch mumbled. It took me a moment to remember that my neighbor’s first name was Salvatore.

  “Don’t want any detectives butting their noses into my affairs. No offense to you”—Kruger nodded at me—“but detectives mean cops and cops mean union busting.”

  “If it ain’t just like you to get so stewed you can’t think straight.” Mr. Contreras was harassed. “First you clean me out of grappa, and if that wasn’t bad enough you got to get pie-eyed first thing in the morning. She ain’t a cop. You know her—we helped her out a couple years back, took on them thugs outside the doc’s clinic. You remember.”

  Kruger smiled happily. “Oh, that was a good one, all right. Last good fight I was in. You need some more help, young lady? That why you’re here?”

  I eyed him narrowly: he wasn’t as drunk as he wanted me to think. If he’d cleaned Mr. Contreras out of grappa and was strong enough to go out for a few shots, he had a granite head, anyway.

  “Now, look here, Mitch. You went on all last night about how you was going to stick it to the bosses, make them see reason, although what about I can’t quite figure. Seems to me we got some pretty good deals, even if we did
have to fight every step of the way to win them.”

  He turned to me. “I’m sorry, doll. Sorry to drag you out of bed just to see Kruger act like a prize turkey waiting for them to announce the Thanksgiving executions.”

  Kruger bristled at that. “I’m no turkey, Sal. You better believe I know what I’m talking about. And if you think we got some good deals you’re just being a scab and a stooge. What kind of benefits do guys get now? They have to negotiate pay cuts just to keep their jobs, while the bosses drive Japanese cars and laugh ’cause they’re doing all they can to take more jobs away from more Americans. All I’m saying is I can put a stop to that bullshit. You want to grudge me your liquor, fine, but I’ll get you Martell and Courvoisier, you won’t have to drink that turpentine you swill no more.”

  “That ain’t turpentine,” Mr. Contreras snapped. “It’s what my daddy drank and my granddaddy before him.”

  Kruger winked at me. “Yeah, and look what happened to them. Both dead, ain’t they? Now, there’s no need to bother the young lady, Sal. I know what I know and there isn’t anything for her to investigate, or whatever you want her to do. But see here, Vic,” he added, “you need any help in a fight, you just let me know. Been a long time since I had as much fun as I did that day Sal and I came out to help you and your doctor friend.”

  Definitely not as drunk as he wanted us to believe if he could snatch my name out of Mr. Contreras’s diatribe and hang on to it.

  “I don’t think I’m needed here,” I told my neighbor, interrupting a catalog of the occasions on which Mitch Kruger had been wrong. These ranged from Kruger’s belief that he could drink Mr. Contreras under the table on his—Mr. Contreras’s—fiftieth birthday, and the disaster that occurred when he—Kruger—failed to do so, to Kruger’s mistake in backing Betty-by-Golly against Ragged Rose at Hawthorne in 1975.

  Mr. Contreras switched his frown to me but didn’t try to stop me when I walked out the back door to go up to my own kitchen. As I made some fresh coffee I thought briefly about Kruger. I couldn’t get myself excited about his broad hints of malfeasance at Diamond Head. He’d been mooching around hoping for some kind of handout and would be too ashamed to admit that. If they gave him a brush-off he would exaggerate his grievance with a drunk’s paranoia, talking about a revenge that would never materialize.

  Maybe someone at Diamond Head was siphoning off inventory, or tools—it wouldn’t be the only plant in Chicago where that happened. But if he thought he could blackmail them into cutting him in on some penny-ante deal, it was just typical drunken mush. And it was more likely that he’d imagined the whole thing.

  5

  Just a Neighborhood Lynch Mob

  By the time I finished my exercises and started to jog up Belmont it was past eleven. The heels of my running shoes were so worn down that I had to move slowly on concrete to save my knees. The sides had frayed, too, and weren’t giving my ankles good support. Someone who runs as much as I do should buy a new pair every four months. These had gone seven and I was trying to stretch them to nine. My share of Peppy’s vet bills had eaten away my spring discretionary money; I just didn’t have ninety bucks to spare for a new pair of Nikes.

  Most of the people I’d gone to law school with would have been at work for three hours or more by now. And most of them, as Freeman Carter had implied last night, didn’t have to defer a new pair of Nikes because their stupid neighbor let the dog off the leash while she was in heat.

  I stopped in front of Mrs. Frizell’s house to frown at the cause of my financial woes. The black Lab and the earmuff had been in back, whining and scratching at the door, but when they heard me they raced to the front to bark at me. Inside the house I could see two other noses push underneath the ratty shade to join in the barking.

  “Why don’t you do something useful?” I scolded the Lab. “Get a job, do something to support the family you started. Or go steal me a pair of running shoes from Todd Pichea over there.”

  Pichea was the lawyer who wanted the neighborhood improvement association to take Mrs. Frizell to court. His frame house had been restored to a state of immaculate Victoriana, painted an eggshell tan with scalloped trim in bright reds and greens. And the yard, with its early-flowering shrubs and tightly manicured turf, enhanced the raffishness of Mrs. Frizell’s weed bin. It was only perversity that made me prefer the old woman’s place.

  The Lab wagged his tail in genial agreement, barked at me a few times, and returned to the back. The earmuff followed. I wondered idly where Mrs. Frizell was; I’d half expected her to appear behind the noses in the front window, shaking an angry fist at me.

  I did my five miles to the harbor and back and forgot about the woman and her dogs. In the afternoon I forced myself to do some routine assignments for regular clients. Daraugh Graham, my steadiest and best-paying customer, called at four-thirty. He wasn’t happy with the credentials of a man he wanted to promote. He wanted information on Clint Moss by the next afternoon, which made me grind my teeth—but quietly. Besides Peppy’s bills and new running shoes I had payments on the Trans Am and my apartment to keep up.

  I wrote what information he had about Moss onto a form and labeled a manila folder with a dark red magic marker so it would jump out of the desk at me in the morning. That was the best I could do for the day. As I typed up bills for the two jobs I’d finished the phone rang again. I was tempted to let it go, but heightened consciousness of my fiscal state made me answer it. Carol Alvarado was on the line. I wished I’d let it go.

  “Vic, can I come over tonight? I need to talk to you.”

  I ground my teeth again, this time more audibly. I didn’t want to take sides in her struggle with Lotty: it was the easiest way to lose both their friendships forever. But Carol pleaded, and I couldn’t help remembering all the times she’d supported me when Lotty was threatening to take a stripe out of me for bringing in either myself or a client for repairs after a dust-up. I had to accede, and as gracefully as possible.

  Carol arrived at eight, bringing a bottle of Barolo. Out of her nurse’s uniform and in jeans she looked small and young, almost waiflike. I opened the bottle and poured out a couple of glasses.

  “Here’s to old friendships,” I saluted her.

  “And to good friends,” she responded.

  We chatted idly for a few minutes before she brought up her personal business. “Has Lotty told you what I mean to do?”

  “Stay home to nurse your mother’s cousin?”

  “That’s part of the story. Guillermo’s been very ill, pneumonia, complications, and he’s been at County, where they don’t exactly have the resources for round-the-clock care. So Mama wants to bring him home, and of course I’ll help her look after him. With good care, skilled care, we can probably get him back on his feet, maybe for a while anyway. Lotty thinks I’m abandoning her and throwing myself away.…”

  Her voice trailed off and she rubbed the rim of her glass. It was thick, chunky Woolworth’s stock and didn’t make the high-pitched hum that crystal would produce.

  “You couldn’t take a leave of absence instead of quitting?”

  “The truth is, Vic, I’m sick of that clinic. I’ve been doing it day in and out for eight years and I need a change.”

  “And staying home to nurse Guillermo will be the relief you’re looking for?”

  She flushed a little. “Can’t you say what’s on your mind without sarcasm? I know what you and Lotty think—that at thirty-four I should divorce my mother and make a life for myself. But my family isn’t a millstone for me the way it might be for you or Lotty. And anyway, didn’t you come close to being murdered, looking out for your aunt Elena last year?”

  “Yeah, but I sure hated doing it.” I played with a loose thread on the easy chair. Another thing I could do if I’d gone to a high-end law firm: buy new living room furniture. “I helped nurse my mother when I was fifteen and she was dying of cancer. And my dad, who died of emphysema ten years later. I’d do it again if I had to, but I cou
ldn’t give that kind of care to someone who wasn’t important to me.”

  “That’s why you’re a detective, Vic, not a nurse.” She held up a hand as I started to speak. “I’m not sacrificing myself, believe me. I’m burned out at the clinic. I need a change. That’s what Lotty can’t understand: she puts so much of herself, so much energy, into those patients that she can’t see why someone else wouldn’t want to. But being at home, wrestling with one medical problem, it will give me time to think, to decide what I should do next.”

  “And you want me to sell that to Lotty?”

  I didn’t blame Carol for wanting to leave the clinic. I’d burned out at the Public Defender’s office after five years, and Carol’s work was much more intense than mine had ever been. But of course, Lotty felt betrayed. She had no family to speak of—a brother in Montreal and her father’s brother, Stefan, were her only relatives to survive the Second World War—so she couldn’t understand the calls family make on you. Or maybe she had some hidden resentment of those lucky enough to have families making demands on them?

  My doorbell rang before I could chase that unpromising thought further. I looked through the peephole at Mr. Contreras’s face. Opening the door, I felt my blood begin to boil.

  “Sorry, doll, I know you don’t like to be bothered when you have company, but—”

  “You’re right. I don’t. And I can’t even remember the last time you didn’t come huffing up ten minutes after my guests arrived to see who’s here. Look. Carol Alvarado. Not a man after all. So go back downstairs and give it a rest, okay?”

  He put his hands on his hips and looked a little ugly. “You have been way out of line lately, Vic. I mean way out, how you been talking to me. If I left you alone like you’re always claiming to want it, you’d be dead now. Maybe that’s what you want, for me to leave you alone and let you get drowned in a marsh or let someone put a bullet through you.”