Guardian Angel

by Sara Paretsky

  As I shut up the house we could hear them whining and scratching at the front door.

  7

  Signing Up a New Client

  The next morning, before leaving for work, I put two hours into cleaning and polishing my apartment. Pichea’s remark last night had flicked me on the raw. Not about finding myself alone at eighty-five—I could envision worse fates—but finding myself like Mrs. Frizell: my stacks of newspaper and dustballs crumbling into lung-choking dirt; so cantankerous that the neighbors didn’t want to call even when they thought I might be ill.

  I baled a month’s worth of newspapers in twine and set them by the front door to drop at the recycling center. I polished the piano and the coffee table until they would have met even Gabriella’s high standard, washed the dishes piled on the sink and kitchen table, threw out all the moldy food in the refrigerator. That left me with a choice of peanut butter or canned minestrone for supper, but maybe I could squeeze in an hour at the grocery on my way home.

  I skipped my run and took the el downtown. The work I’d planned for the day would take me to a variety of government offices scattered around the Loop; the car would only get in my way. By four I was able to call Daraugh Graham to report on Clint Moss. He really was anxious for information: his secretary had word to interrupt the meeting he was in to receive my report.

  When Daraugh learned Moss had invented his class standing in the University of Chicago’s MBA program, he demanded that I go to Pittsburgh to make sure he hadn’t manufactured his previous work history. I didn’t want to do it, but my payments on the Trans Am meant keeping my good customers happy. I agreed to catch an early flight the next day—not at seven, as Daraugh ordered, but eight, which meant getting out of bed at six. That seemed like enough of a sacrifice to me.

  I stopped at Mrs. Hellstrom’s on the way home to see how she was making out with Mrs. Frizell’s dogs. She seemed a little flustered; she was trying to get dinner for her grandchildren and didn’t see how she could manage to look after the dogs at the same time.

  “I’m going out of town in the morning, but when I get back on Friday I’ll give you a hand,” I heard myself saying. “If you take care of them in the morning I’ll feed them and walk them in the afternoon.”

  “Oh, would you? That would be such a relief. Mrs. Frizell is so peculiar, you wouldn’t think she’d care, but we could steal everything she has in the house—not that there’s anything in there I want, mind you—and she wouldn’t notice. But if we didn’t feed her precious poochies she’d probably sue us. It just seems like so much work.”

  She gave me the keys we’d found buried in the living room the night before, confident I planned to start my evening shift at once. “Just put the keys through my mail slot when you’re done. I’ll get duplicates made while you’re away and put them in your mailbox. No, maybe I should give them to that nice man that lives downstairs from you. He seems reliable, and I hate to leave someone’s house keys lying around.”

  I asked if she knew which hospital Mrs. Frizell was in.

  “They took her to Cook County, dear, on account of her not having any insurance—she’d never even signed up for Medicare—it really makes you think, doesn’t it? I don’t know what we’ll do when my man retires. He was thinking of doing it next year. He’ll be fifty-eight, and enough’s enough after a while, but when you see what happens to old people—but anyway, maybe I’ll try to get over to see her tomorrow. You’d think that son of hers—but of course, he didn’t have too easy a time, growing up in that house. Couldn’t wait to leave, and small wonder, when you see how she is. His daddy couldn’t take it, either: scooted a month before he was born.”

  I took the keys from her before she could elaborate on the eccentricities that drove both Mr. Frizell and his son from Harriet Frizell’s side. Maybe she wouldn’t have been so suspicious and inward-turned if her husband had stayed around. And maybe not.

  The dogs greeted me with a combination of suspicion and delight. They rushed up to me when I opened the door, then backed down the hall toward the kitchen, growling and making menacing forays. Since the Lab was the ringleader, I concentrated my attention on him, squatting down to let him sniff my hand and remember that we’d met before.

  “Only not in nylons and pumps. What a lunatic I am,” I addressed the company. “To offer to look after you in the first place and then to do so in my work clothes.”

  They wagged their tails in agreement. I debated going home to change into my jeans and worn-out Nikes, but I didn’t want to have to come back to this squalor tonight. The afternoon sun picked out stains on the wallpaper that hadn’t been visible in the dim hall light last night. From the look and the smell, water had been leaking from the roof through the walls. The sun also made the grime covering the floors—and every other surface—more noticeable.

  I leashed up the Lab and led the quintet up Racine toward Belmont. He strained against his collar, but I held him in a firm grip: I wasn’t going to spend the night hunting for him around the neighborhood. The other four didn’t need to be chained—they followed in their ringleader’s steps.

  When Peppy is in her normal state we do a five-mile run to the harbor together. I didn’t feel like investing so much energy in Mrs. Frizell’s outfit; I gave them a circuit of the block, saw that they had food and water, and locked them in. They howled dismally when I left. I felt a little guilty, but I didn’t want them on my hands past this weekend. When I got back from Pittsburgh I’d see what shape Mrs. Frizell was in and try to make some arrangements for their care until she was fit again. I’d call her enthusiastic son, Byron, to see what kind of financial guardianship he was working out for her, and if we could get some money for a dog-walking service.

  Back at my own place I sank thankfully into my spick-and-span bathtub. I wondered if Mrs. Frizell’s horrific example would make me change my habits.

  “No,” Lotty said, when I shared the thought with her later on the phone. “Perhaps for one week you can be immaculate, but then the mess will start to accrete again.… Carol says she came over to discuss her plans with you last night. Are you going to join Max in snarling at me?”

  “Nooo,” I said slowly. “But I’m not going to try arguing with her, either. Maybe you and I are too allergic to family ties, the ties that bind and gag, to see what positive things she gets out of, well, tying herself to her relations.”

  “Why don’t you concentrate on catching criminals, Vic, and leave deep insights to the psychiatrists,” Lotty snapped.

  We hung up on that brittle note. It sent me to Pittsburgh in a low frame of mind, but I conscientiously devoted two days to Daraugh. His man Moss had been born and raised in one of Pittsburgh’s tonier suburbs. His life had followed the usual round of Little League, summer camp, high school sports, drugs, arrests, college dropouts, and finally a steady job at a chemical company. That he had been a stockroom boy instead of a division manager shouldn’t have embarrassed him: he’d worked hard for five years and his boss had been sorry to see him leave.

  I wrote my report for Daraugh on the plane home. All I had to do was spend an hour in the morning typing it and $1600 was mine. I went from the airport to dancing at the Cotton Club to celebrate my safe return, my virtuous work habits, and my fee.

  I took my time getting up on Friday, going for a slow run over to Belmont Harbor and stopping at the Dortmunder Restaurant on my way back for breakfast. Around eleven I packed up my report to take down to the Pulteney to type. I stopped on my way out to let Mr. Contreras know I was home.

  He was out back, turning over his eight-foot square of soil. He had put his seedlings in last week and was anxiously ridding them of microscopic weeds.

  “Hi, doll. You want to see the princess? You won’t believe how much the puppies have grown since you went out of town. Hang on a minute. I’ll come open the door. I got something I want to talk to you about before you take off.”

  He wiped his callused hands on a giant bandanna and picked up his rake and
trowel. After losing all his garden equipment last summer he didn’t leave the new ones unattended even for a five-minute break.

  While he stowed his tools inside the basement he inquired into my trip, but when he asked for the third time how long the flight took I could tell he had something else on his mind. He has delicate ideas of etiquette, though, and wouldn’t bring up his own concerns until I finished petting the dog and admiring her offspring. She didn’t object to my picking them up and stroking them, but she washed each one thoroughly when it squirmed back to her side.

  Mr. Contreras watched us jealously, talking me through every detail of Peppy’s days during my absence—how much she’d eaten, how she didn’t mind his picking them up, didn’t I think we could keep one or maybe two—the male with one black and one gold ear seemed to have a special liking for him.

  “Whatever you say, boss.” I stood up and picked up my papers from the couch arm. “Long as I don’t have to run them when they’re grown, I don’t care. Is that what you wanted to discuss?”

  “Oh …” He broke off in the middle of an expostulation on how he could keep up with three dogs, and anyway, who walked Peppy while I was fooling around in Pittsburgh?

  “No. No. It’s kinda personal.” He sat on the edge of his shabby mustard armchair and looked at his hands. “Thing is, doll, I could use some help. I mean, some of your kind of expertise.”

  He looked up at that and held up a hand to forestall me, although I hadn’t tried speaking. “I ain’t expecting charity. I’m prepared to pay the same as those bluenoses downtown, so don’t expect I’m asking any favors.”

  “Uh, what is it you need my expertise for?”

  He took a deep breath and got his story out in a rush. Mitch Kruger had disappeared. Mr. Contreras had thrown him out on Monday, exasperated by his drinking and mooching. Then my neighbor’s conscience started bothering him. On Wednesday he’d gone over to the rooming house on Archer where Kruger had found a place to sleep.

  “Only, he wasn’t there.”

  “Don’t you think he might’ve been out drinking?”

  “Oh, yes, that was my idea too. At first I didn’t give it a second thought. In fact, I turned around and was heading straight for the bus stop when Mrs. Polter, she’s the owner of the place, you know, it’s a real boardinghouse—just sleeping space for seven, eight guys and she gives ’em breakfast. Anyway, she hollers at me, thinking I’m looking for a room, and I tell her I’m looking for Mitch.”

  It took him a good ten minutes to get the whole story out. Boiled down to the bones it seemed Kruger hadn’t been back to the boardinghouse since checking in Monday afternoon. He’d promised to pay Mrs. Polter on Tuesday morning, and she wanted her money. Or she wanted Mr. Contreras to take Kruger’s belongings away so she could give the bed to someone else. Mr. Contreras shelled out the fifty bucks to hold the bed for a week—retroactive to Monday, he pointed out bitterly—and took the Damen Avenue bus back home.

  “So then I called over to Diamond Head and tried to speak to the shop steward, on account of all that smoke Mitch was blowing last week. But the guy didn’t answer my message, so yesterday I took the damn bus all the way down again and they tell me Mitch ain’t been near the place since we left twelve years ago. So anyway, I’d like you to take it on. Looking for him, I mean.”

  When I didn’t answer right away he said, “I’ll pay you, don’t you worry about that.”

  “It’s not that.” I was about to add that he didn’t need to pay me anything, but that’s the best way to build grudges between friends and relations—do them professional favors for nothing. “But … well, to be brutally frank, you know he’s probably sleeping off a hangover in some police cell right now.”

  “And if he is, you’re in a position to find out. I mean, you know all them cops, they’ll tell you if he’s been picked up drunk somewhere. I just feel kind of responsible.”

  “Has he got any family?”

  Mr. Contreras shook his head. “Not really. His wife up and left him—oh, way back. Must be going on forty years ago. They had a kid and even then he was drinking the pay. Can’t say I blame her. I stole Clara from him back when we was all in high school. Night of our homecoming dance. She used to get all over me when I’d come home with one too many in me, and I’d remind her at least I hadn’t let her get stuck with that prize jackass Kruger.”

  His soft brown eyes clouded over as he dwelt on a sixty-year-old dance. “Well, all that past is dead and gone, and I know Mitch ain’t worth much, ain’t much to look at, but I’d kinda like to know he’s okay.”

  When he put it like that I didn’t have any choice. I drove him down to my office and solemnly filled out one of my standard contracts for him. I wrote down Mrs. Polter’s address. I took Diamond Head’s location, too—I had a feeling I was going to need all the dead ends I could find to justify my retainer.

  Mr. Contreras pulled a roll of bills from his front pocket. Licking his fingers, he separated four twenties and counted them over to me. That would pay for a day of bar-crawling along Archer and Cermak.

  8

  Extinguish Your Troubles

  I dropped my report to Daraugh Graham in the mail on my way to the Stevenson, the expressway that follows the main industrial route through the heart of Chicago’s southwest side. Actually, it runs parallel to the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was built to connect the Illinois and Chicago rivers back in 1900. The thirty-mile stretch of water, crisscrossed by rail beds, houses every variety of industry along its banks. Grain and cement elevators hover over heaps of scrap metal; truck terminals stand alongside the yards where Chicago’s mariners dry-dock their boats for the winter.

  I got off at Damen, sliding past the little cluster of bungalows perched incongruously next to the exit ramp, and made a sharp left onto Archer. Like the expressway, the street follows the path of the Sanitary Canal; it used to be the main road through the industrial belt, back before the Stevenson was built.

  Although this part of the city has pockets of quiet, well-kept streets, Archer isn’t one of them. Shabby two-flats and run-down bungalows are built flush with the sidewalk. The only grocery stores are holes in the wall that also sell beer, liquor, and school supplies. With the number of taverns the avenue supports it’s hard to know who keeps the grocers in business.

  Mrs. Polter’s house was about five blocks up from Damen. It was a long, narrow box covered in asphalt shingles, which had fallen off in places to reveal rotting wood underneath. Mrs. Polter was moodily surveying the street from her front porch when I pulled up. “Porch” actually was a grand name for the rickety square of peeling boards. Perched on top of a flight of dilapidated stairs, it was just big enough to hold a green metal chair and leave room for the torn screen door to open.

  Mrs. Polter was a massive woman, her neck missing in the circles of fat that rose from her shoulders. Her brown-checked housedress, which looked like a relic from the twenties, had long ago lost the struggle to cover her cleavage. A safety pin tried to make up the deficiency of cotton, but only succeeded in fraying the edges of the fabric.

  As far as I could tell she hadn’t turned her head while I stumbled up the stairs, and she didn’t bother to look at me when I stood looking down at her. “Mrs. Polter?” I said after a long silence.

  She gave me a grudging glance, then turned her attention back to the street, where three boys on bikes were trying to rear up and ride on their hind wheels. A piece of asphalt siding flapped behind us.

  “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Mitch Kruger.”

  “Don’t you boys think you can get on my property,” she shouted when the cyclists jumped their bikes over the curb.

  “Sidewalk belongs to everyone, fat bitch,” one of them yelled back.

  The other two laughed immoderately, dancing their bikes up and down the curb. Mrs. Polter, moving with the speed of a boxer, picked up a fire extinguisher and began spraying over the railing at them. They jumped back onto Archer, out-of range, and
continued to laugh. Mrs. Polter put the extinguisher on the floor next to her chair. It was clearly a game all parties had played before.

  “Too many places get vandalized along here because people don’t have the guts to stand up for their own property. Damned little spics. Neighborhood was a hell of a lot different before they moved in, bringing all their dirt and crime with them, breeding like flies.” The asphalt shingle behind us flapped in time to her speech.

  “Yep. This neighborhood used to be the garden spot of the Midwest.… Mitch Kruger?”

  “Oh, him.” She flicked washed-out blue eyes at me. “Old guy came by and paid his rent. That’s good enough for me.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  At this she turned the chair and the mass of her body to face me. “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m a detective, Mrs. Polter. I’ve been asked to find Mr. Kruger. So far as I can tell you’re the last person who saw him.”

  I had called Conrad Rawlings, a police sergeant in my own district, to find out whether Mitch had been picked up drunk and disorderly in the last few days. The police don’t have computer capability to check on something like that. Rawlings gave me the name of a sergeant in Area Four, who obligingly called all the stations that reported to him. None of them had picked Mitch up recently, although the guys at the Marquette Station knew who he was.

  “What, he dead or something?” Her hoarse voice shredded words like a cheese grater.

  “Just gone missing. What did he say to you when he left?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention—those damned spics were out riding around, just like they do every day when school’s out. I can’t keep my mind both places at once.”

  “You saw him walk down the stairs, though,” I persisted. “And you knew he hadn’t paid you. So you must have wondered when he was coming back with his money.”