Guardian Angel

by Sara Paretsky

  “Both,” Finchley said. “They like sticking out their chests and looking like storm troopers. And the guy they pulled out was dead before he went in the water. You think you know him?”

  “We didn’t get that far. We’d like to be able to look at the body.” I tried to keep from sounding acerbic—Finchley had saved us from grief that might have taken the form of a blow to the jaw or an arrest.

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Salvatore Contreras. The closest thing to family the guy we’re looking for has.”

  Mr. Contreras held out a hand to Finchley automatically, but said, “Strictly speaking, you know that ain’t so, doll. He’s got a wife and a kid out in Arizona, at least they was last I heard about them. She walked out on him thirty-five years ago, same as any sensible woman would do if her husband was drinking away his paycheck every Friday and leaving her and the kid in rags. But Mitch and I go way back, and he really doesn’t have anyone else, Officer, Detective, I mean.”

  Finchley blinked under the barrage. “I don’t think we need to send to Arizona for a next of kin. Let’s just take a look at him.”

  He headed toward the dissecting room that lay to the right of the entrance. I put a hand on his arm.

  “Maybe Mr. Contreras would rather look at the video screen. He’s not as case-hardened as you are.”

  If you’re too squeamish for a direct look at a body, the county will run a video camera over it; you can watch a screen in a small viewing room outside the cooler. That way it can seem like one more TV show where the dead all rise to walk again.

  “Don’t worry about me, cookie,” Mr. Contreras assured me when I explained the procedure. “I was at Anzio, in case you forgot.”

  One of the attendants wheeled the body out of the cooler for us. A black plastic bag covered it up to the throat, but we got a good look at the head.

  It had been in the Sanitary Canal for some days and the last week had been warm. The face was swollen and purple. I wouldn’t have sworn to my own father in that shape, let alone a man I’d only met three or four times. The hair looked like Kruger’s and the general shape of the head, beneath its bruised distension, seemed the same.

  I felt a little queasy. I’m not as used to looking at dead bodies as I got to be in my days on the county defender’s homicide task force. Mr. Contreras, by the greenish cast to his face, had likewise lost the immunity he’d acquired on the battlefields of Italy fifty years ago.

  He cleared his throat and spoke in a husky voice. “It kinda looks like Mitch. I just can’t be sure. The face—the face …” He waved a hand and his legs buckled.

  The attendant caught him before he fell. I found a chair against one wall and pushed it over. The attendant sat him down and pushed his head into his lap. In the bustle of looking after him, finding a glass of water, and getting him to drink it, my own nausea passed.

  After a few minutes Mr. Contreras sat up. “I’m sorry. Can’t think what came over me. I don’t know if that’s Mitch or not. It’s kind of hard to tell. Could you look at his left hand, cookie? He sliced off the top of his middle finger maybe thirty years ago, working drunk like he did too many afternoons. I was there and I shoulda seen what was coming, got him off the mill, but I just didn’t think it was dangerous.” Tears that had nothing to do with the old injury were flowing down his cheeks.

  I forced myself back to the distended body. The attendant pulled the plastic down so that the left hand was visible. The fingers, too, were swollen and discolored, but it was clear that the middle one was missing most of its first joint.

  Finchley nodded at me across the gurney. “That’s good enough for me to go on. I need to ask the two of you some questions. Think your friend can keep going for another few minutes?”

  Mr. Contreras joined in my assurances about his toughness. Finchley led the way to a barren lounge around the corner from the cooler. Mr. Contreras didn’t move with his usual bounce, but he’d recovered some of his color by the time we sat down.

  “Not my lucky day,” Finchley said, “finding you on top of a stiff I’m sent to look at.”

  “You mean it is your lucky day,” I corrected. “For one thing, you wouldn’t have an ID without me. For another, you’ll be glad to have my help. I can work full-time on this, and you have dozens of other cases on your plate.… That is, was he killed? Or did he hit his head on something and fall in?”

  Finchley pulled a scribbled note from his jacket pocket. “He had a pretty hefty blow to the back of the head, Vishnikov says. If he fell and hurt himself, he fell backward. And since he was dead before he went into the water, it would have had to’ve happened on the way in. It’s possible some lowlife found him dead and rolled him in—lots of drugs get done along the water there. The punks wouldn’t want to be burdened with calling the cops on a dead body. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happened that way.”

  I agreed. “Or Mitch was lurching around down there and interrupted a buy and some guy knocked him cold for his pains. And then panicked when he realized he was dead. I can see that.”

  “But why was he at the canal?” Finchley asked. “It’s all industry down there—not the kind of place you go for a midnight stroll, no matter how drunk you are.”

  I looked over at Mr. Contreras. He didn’t seem to be listening to our conversation.

  “He used to work for Diamond Head Motors, down at Thirty-first and Damen. He might have been over there to see about work—he was pretty hard up by all reports.”

  Finchley jotted Diamond Head on the crumpled paper on his knee. “And what are you doing down here, Warshawski? You know that’s the first question the lieutenant’s going to ask me.”

  The lieutenant being Bobby Mallory, less hostile to me than he used to be, but still not a big fan of my life’s work. “Just pure dumb luck, detective. Mr. Contreras and I are neighbors. He hired me to find his friend. This is not my favorite way of meeting my professional obligations.… How long does Vishnikov think he was in the water?”

  “About a week. When did either of you see him last?”

  I shook my neighbor’s arm gently and repeated the question to him. That jerked him back to the present, and he gave a stumbling account of his final weekend with Mitch, filled with self-reproach for kicking his friend out. Finchley asked him a few gentle questions and let us go.

  “Just don’t go charging around the South Side on this without talking to me first, okay, Vic?”

  “If Mitch interrupted some druggies, they’re all yours. I don’t have the resources to go hunting out dopeheads, even if I had the desire. But something tells me that a dead old man without much family or connections isn’t going to demand round-the-clock resources at Area One, either.”

  Finchley’s shoulders sagged. “Don’t lecture me on police and the community, Warshawski. I don’t need it.”

  “Just talking about real life, Terry. It wasn’t meant as an insult.” I got up. “Thanks for saving Mr. Contreras and me from a rubber hose at the sheriff’s office.”

  Finchley flashed one of his rare smiles. “We serve and protect, Vic; you know that.”

  Mr. Contreras didn’t speak during the slow drive home. I was exhausted, so tired I could barely focus on the changing lights as we drifted north. If someone wanted to trail us back again, they were welcome to the job.

  The day had begun with Dick’s bellowing and ended with a decomposed corpse, with a trip to Schaumburg thrown in for light relief. I longed for some remote mountainside, for snow and a sense of perfect peace, but tomorrow I would have to rise and be ready to do battle again.

  I waited with Mr. Contreras until he managed to undo his front door. “I’m coming in with you. You need hot tea with lots of milk and sugar.”

  He put up a half-hearted protest. “I’m going to have some too,” I told him. “Not a night for grappa or whisky.”

  The hands on his kitchen clock stood at midnight. It wasn’t that late, not really. Surely it wasn’t age that made my hands shake as I hunted
in drawers and cupboards for tea. I finally found an old box of Lipton buried under some greasy potholders. It smelled stale, but tea never really goes bad. I used two bags to make a black potful. Mixed with sugar and milk it was a good restorative.

  I watched Mr. Contreras while he drank his; his face lost some of its blankness and he wanted to talk. I listened while he went over stories from his and Mitch’s boyhood, the time they’d put a frog in the collection bag at church, how they’d signed their apprenticeship papers the same morning—a detour about Ted Balbini, who sponsored them—and then how Mr. Contreras got drafted but Mitch was 4-F.

  “He was already drinking too much, even then, but it was his flat feet that did him in. Broke his heart. Wouldn’t come see me off when I left for Fort Hood, silly old goat. But we hooked up again after the war. Diamond Head took me back soon as I got home. That was when it was still owned by the family, not like nowadays when it’s all a bunch of bosses out in the suburbs who don’t care if you live or die.” He paused to finish his tea. “You gotta do something about it, doll, go find who killed him.”

  I sat up, startled. “I don’t think the police are treating it like a murder case. You heard what Finchley said. He stumbled and fell while he was drunk and someone rolled him into the canal. I suppose some punk might have killed him after rolling him.” I tried to imagine canvassing Pilsen for teenage drug lords and shuddered.

  “Damn you, no!” Mr. Contreras shouted. “What would he’ve been walking around the river there for? That ain’t sense. There’s no place for anyone to walk—it’s all company docks and barbed wire and dumps. You going to join the cops in pinning accident or suicide on him, you can just take your butt to hell as fast as possible.”

  I looked at him, astonished by the violence of his language, and saw the tears coursing down his leathery face again. I knelt by his chair and put an arm around his shoulders. “Hey, hey, don’t carry on like that. I’ll talk to Vishnikov in the morning and see what he thinks.”

  He grabbed my hand in a fierce hold, his jaw working as he tried to control his face. “Sorry, doll,” he said huskily. “Sorry to break down and take it out on you. I know he was a pain in the tail, all that drink, but when it’s your oldest friend you kinda overlook it.”

  He took his hand from mine and collapsed his face into his palms, sobbing. “I should never have made him leave. Why did I have to make such a goddam fuss over the puppies? Peppy don’t notice that kind of stuff, people snoring, it’s all one to her. Why didn’t I just let him camp out here a few days?”

  18

  Not the Jewel in the Crown

  When I went for my run the next morning, I slipped out the back gate. Instead of my normal route to the harbor and back I ran west along side streets as far as the river. I kept my pace slow, not so much to check on my tail as to protect myself from shin splints on the rough roadway—it’s hard to follow someone who’s on foot when you’re driving. I didn’t think I was in physical danger from any tracking Chamfers might choose to do; I just hate for anyone to nose into my whereabouts.

  I stopped to see Mr. Contreras before going up to shower. He’d recovered some of his normal vitality—his color was better and he was moving at a more natural gait than he had last night. I told him I was going down to Diamond Head and asked if he knew anyone who still worked there.

  “It’s all new people since my time, cookie. It might be there’s one or two guys on the line who I’d recognize if I saw ’em, but the bosses are all new; the foreman and the shop steward, I don’t even know their names. You want me to come along with you?”

  I grinned at the eagerness in his voice. “Not this trip. Maybe later if I don’t make any headway.” I was planning a surreptitious approach to the plant; I figured I’d have better luck doing it solo.

  I’d have even better success if whoever had tailed me yesterday didn’t follow me there. And that meant shedding my wheels. My Trans Am, like Magnum’s Ferrari, is about as easy to track as the linseed oil Sherlock Holmes laid down for Toby.

  Lotty is the only person I know well enough to trade cars with. Since hers always show dents within the first month she owns them, I didn’t want to turn my baby over to her. But the client must come first, I admonished myself sternly. After all, what was I paying two-fifty a month in insurance for?

  While I finished dressing, I phoned Lotty at the clinic and explained my problem. She was happy to let me have the Cressida.

  “I haven’t driven a sports car since I had the use of a Morgan in 1948.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

  Lotty elected to be hurt. “I’ve been driving since before you were born, Victoria.”

  I bit back the obvious retorts—after all, she was doing me a favor. I told her where she’d find my car—Carol would drop her off at my place on her way home. I kissed the Trans Am good-bye as I passed it on my way to Belmont. “It’s only for one day. Be brave and don’t let her strip your gears.”

  When I got to the clinic, after a couple of bus changes, I was pretty sure I hadn’t been followed. Even so, I made a few loops around the north side in Lotty’s Cressida. When I decided I was clean I went over to the Kennedy and turned south.

  In addition to the inevitable dents on the fenders, the gears were hard to find and the bearings seemed to be going on the clutch. I hoped I didn’t have to get away from anyplace in a hurry. At least the car fit into Pilsen well.

  Diamond Head was at the bottom of a cul-de-sac. I didn’t want to drive up to the front door, where I’d not only be spotted easily but could also be trapped. I parked on Thirty-second Street and walked the few blocks north to the plant.

  Semis were rocking the side streets, bringing materials in and out of the nearby factories, deepening the holes in the pockmarked asphalt. I stayed off the roadway and hiked along the weedy verge, tripping occasionally on the hillocks hidden in the high grasses. By the time I got to Diamond Head’s entrance I was sweating freely and cursing myself for wearing loafers instead of my beat-up Nikes.

  A few cars were parked on an asphalt square near the entrance. One was a late-model green Nissan, the others more pedestrian—Fords, Chevys, and a maroon Honda. I went over to look at it, but couldn’t tell if it was the one that had been on my tail yesterday or not.

  Inside the old brick building the air was cool and quiet. I stood in the small foyer for a few minutes to recover from the heat. A hall opened in front of me, leading straight ahead to some old iron stairs and to metal double doors.

  The doors and interior walls must have been built quite thick—I had to strain to hear any sounds of activity from the other side. Diamond Head made small motors for highly specialized use, primarily for controlling aircraft flaps. Maybe that didn’t involve the kind of screaming tools I associate with industrial plants.

  I tried to place the entrance in relation to where Chamfers had brought me last week. I was at the south end of the building and the loading bays were on the east. When I’d come in I’d been at the north end. Chamfers’s office must lie somewhere on the other side of the iron staircase directly in front of me. I’d have to make a circuit of the place.

  The heavy metal doors were locked shut. I tried both sets for several minutes, straining my shoulder muscles with the effort, but I had to give it up. I could go back out and retrace my ignominious entry through the loading bay, or I could see if the iron staircase led anywhere promising.

  I started up the stairs when I noticed a normal-size door behind them. It was unpainted and in the dim hall light I hadn’t seen it earlier. I came back down and tried it. It opened fairly easily and took me to the hall where Chamfers’s office lay.

  Six or seven office doors topped with chicken-wire glass were cut into the hall wall on the left side. On the right, just beyond the entrance I’d used, was another set of metal double doors. I tried these out of curiosity and found myself looking at a long, open assembly room. A dozen or so women were standing at high tables putting screws or som
ething into the machines in front of them. A lone man was going over a piece of equipment with one of them. The room could easily have handled five times that number. It looked as though Diamond Head might have fallen on hard times.

  I shut the doors and went on down the hall to try to find Chamfers. Or actually his secretary. I was hoping not to see the plant manager at all. I raked my fingers through my hair, hoping to make myself look a bit more professional, and poked my nose into the first door I came to.

  Like most offices carved out of industrial space the room was a tiny cube, just big enough to hold some filing cabinets and a battered desk. A middle-aged man was hunched over a stack of papers, grasping the phone in his left hand as if it might float away otherwise. A few brown strands were combed over the receding hairline in front, but he’d given up the struggle to fit into his seersucker trousers. I didn’t think he’d been part of the team I’d seen with Chamfers on Friday.

  He didn’t look up when I opened the door, but continued frowning over his papers. Finally he said, “Of course you haven’t been paid. That’s because you’re not paying attention to our new payables policy. Everything has to be routed through Garfield in Bolingbroke.” He listened some more, then said, “No, it wouldn’t make sense for them to handle the orders as well. How can they possibly know out there what our requirements are? I can talk to the federal prosecutor if you won’t deliver the copper by Friday.”

  They went back and forth some more on whether the feds needed to be involved. I eavesdropped unashamedly. My man apparently won, because he dusted his hands triumphantly when he hung up the phone. It was only then that he noticed me.

  “I’m looking for your benefits manager,” I said.

  “What for?” His victory over the copper supplier made him truculent.

  “Because I have a question about some benefits. For my father, who was laid off seven weeks ago. He’s had to go into the hospital.” That seemed like a safe bet, given the empty benches in the assembly room.