Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (18 page)

that a similar idea had been pitched for the Joseph A. Marsh
building.
“Whatever money was tied into the Neighborhood Alliance for
the houses just got kicked up to the big leagues,” I said to Joe, and
showed him the article. “There’s a fifteen-million-dollar grant involved
in this one, alone.”
While he read the article, I looked through the recorder’s-office
list Amy had included. It showed that the Neighborhood Alliance
currently owned nine houses in addition to the school building, all
on the near west side. Two of the nine were vacant lots now, I
knew, the houses that had once stood on them turned to ashes.
The ninth house on the list had just closed on a sale a week before,
for the inspiring sum of thirty-two thousand dollars. That made
me shake my head. Nine vacant houses, crumbling mortgage foreclosures,
probably, in the neighborhood I’d grown up in. I thought
of the old black-and-white photos on the wall in the Hideaway,
the houses and businesses tall and solid, clean and well maintained,
the men and women standing in front of them with some pride.
“Interesting,” Joe said, finished with the article. “Considering
what your friend had to say about cutting in on somebody else’s
revenue stream, this would seem to have some potential. We’ve got
a couple hours to wait and see if our guy in the mountains can get
a line on Corbett. I suppose we could find that consultant Cancerno
mentioned, the
HUD
guy.”
I shook my head. “I think we’ll use the time to go see Terry Solich,
ask why my dead friend’s dead father would have wanted to
burn down his businesses. Or why Mitch Corbett would have.”
“Guy didn’t help the cops all those years ago,” Joe pointed out.
I smiled. “Right. But the cops didn’t break his arms, either. I’ll
get him to talk.”
“What did I tell you about control?” Joe said. “We don’t need to
start by breaking arms, LP. Not when the man has fingers.”

CHAPTER
18

Terry Solich had liver spots on his face and on his bald head, and
his sunken eyes were rimmed with dark circles. It was closing in on
noon, but he opened the front door of his house wearing a robe,
with a pot of coffee in one hand and a ceramic mug in the other.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he said. “How many times I have to
tell you people, I’m not going to join your stupid neighborhood
watch program.”

“We don’t live around here,” Joe said.
“And the neighborhood looks damn peaceful already,” I said.
“You bet your ass,” Terry Solich said.

Five minutes later we were sitting on the backyard patio. A sprinkler
was hissing out in the grass, casting a fine spray on a row of
flowers that grew along the fence. A little terrier ran in circles out
on the lawn, barking at nothing in high, incessant yips.
“I moved out of that damn neighborhood fifteen years ago,”
Terry Solich was saying. “I’m retired now. I got grandkids. Why
can’t you just leave me alone?”
He’d made the mistake of offering coffee before we’d gotten to
the point of our visit, and right now I figured that was the only
thing preserving our interview. Solich was a cranky old bastard, but
he wasn’t so low as to throw us out of his home before we’d finished
our coffee. Manners.
“We’re not trying to bring you any trouble,” I said. “But you
might be able to help us stop some. We just want to know why
your businesses were burned, Mr. Solich.”
He scowled and slurped his coffee. “How the hell am I supposed
to know? Punk kid vandals set a place on fire, then come by and
tell me why they did it? Is that what you think? Okay, here’s why
they did it: Their parents didn’t love 'em and the schoolteachers
didn’t, neither. Satisfied?”
“Your businesses weren’t burned down by kids, Mr. Solich,” Joe
said, friendly but firm.
“You don’t know that.”
“But you do,” Joe said. “So why don’t you explain it to us?”
Solich’s only response was a belch.
“Seems there were some rumors about you selling stolen merchandise
out of your shops,” I said. “Any chance that had something
to do with these fires?”
Solich put two fingers in his mouth and cut loose with a whistle
that made my hair stand on end. The crazy little terrier bounded
over, gave Joe and me cursory sniffs, then settled down beside Solich,
licking his hand.
“I’m retired,” Solich said again. He crossed his legs over bony
knees, tightened the belt on his robe.
We waited. Five minutes passed, and Solich was silent. We didn’t
push him, though, because it seemed he was working up to it.
“I’m not answering any questions about what I sold twenty
damn years ago,” he said eventually.
“This isn’t about what you sold twenty years ago,” I said. “We
don’t care, and to be honest, the police probably don’t, either. We
just want to know why someone burned three of your pawnshops
down.”
He sighed and scratched his head. “I did have three, didn’t I?
Most I ever had. Started with a little dump over on Superior,
moved into a bigger space, then got another, and another. Yeah, I
was doing all right. Making money.” There was a wistful quality to
his words. “Yeah, I guess I can tell you. I suppose it don’t do no
harm now. Time’s passed.”
“Yes, it has,” I said.
He drank some more coffee. “People brought me quality items,
and I bought them, no questions asked. That was the way I did
business. Should be the way everyone does business. Over the
years, though, I guess I got a pretty good handle on things. Paid
better than some of the other guys, got more merchandise, moved
more merchandise.”

“Swag,” I said. “Stolen goods.”
His lips curled slightly. “Merchandise.”
“Right.”
“Anyhow, the market in that neighborhood, hell, in most of the
west side, was mine. Had been for a few years, and it wasn’t changing.
There was another guy moving in, wanted my network.
Wanted me gone. I told him to screw, he burned down my shops.
Simple as that.” Solich drank some more coffee, then reached
down to refill his cup.

“You’ve got to give us the name,” Joe said.
Solich frowned.

“We aren’t going to drag you into it,” Joe said. “But we’ve got to
know.”
He sighed. “You two were worth a damn, you could figure it out,
anyhow. But I’ll save you the trouble, because I don’t matter to him
anymore, so I doubt he’ll come out here to give me grief. Guy’s
name was Jimmy Cancerno.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Cancerno? He’s in the construction
business.”
Solich regarded me with amusement. “Man’s in a lot of businesses.
Owns half a dozen pawnshops on the west side, too,
though from what I hear he’s moving more into the cash loan operations
now.” He made a sour face. “I never liked that.”

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Sorrow s Anrnen

“Canerno wanted you out of business, so he burned you out?”
Joe said.
Solich nodded. “Uh-huh. That was back when Jimmy was an
up-and-comer. I suspect he’s long outgrown my sort of thing now.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” I said. “Just because you didn’t
want them looking at your business operation?”
“Wasn’t too worried about that, since everything that would’ve
been there to look at was burned up. I just didn’t want Jimmy to
come any harder than he had. Man made his point, and I took it.”
“You think Cancerno would’ve done more than burn down your
buildings?” Joe said.
Solich cocked his head at Joe. “You don’t know much about
Jimmy, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, the man is one ruthless son of a bitch. Didn’t take me but
one fire to figure that out, but he didn’t let it rest there. He didn’t
want me to step out of his way, he wanted me to run out of it, and
not look back. And he got what he wanted.”
“So what exactly is Cancerno into?” I asked. “Swag sales, loansharking?
That it?”
Solich’s sunken eyes went wide, his eyebrows arched. “What isn’t Jimmy Cancerno into? Back then he was a punk kid, and swag and
loan-sharking was about all he had. Man’s gone big-time since
then, though. From what I hear, at least. If there’s an illegal enterprise
on the near west side that he doesn’t run, I’d be surprised.”
“Organized crime, then,” Joe said. “Is he connected?”
“To what, the Italian mob?” Solich shook his head. “Hell, no.
That goombah shit isn’t Jimmy’s style. Too independent for that.
He’s got his hand in everyone’s games, but he keeps his distance. In
that neighborhood, though, he’s the boss. Ain’t a damn thing goes
down between Clark Avenue and Fulton Road that doesn’t get his
stamp of approval first.”
We sat quietly for a moment, Solich stroking the terrier’s head,
the sprinkler hissing away over the flowerbeds.
“You said you didn’t tell the cops anything because you didn’t
want Jimmy to come at you harder,” I said. “What exactly does that
mean? Do you think he’d kill?”

Solich turned to me with solemn eyes. “Mister, there’s a reason I
retired.”

We stayed for a while longer, maybe ten more minutes, but Solich
seemed to grow increasingly uncomfortable. Toward the end he
was almost wincing every time we mentioned Cancerno’s name. I
had the feeling he was beginning to regret being as forthright as he
had been. Fifteen years of sitting on the patio in Parma and watching
his dog and grandkids had lulled him into a sense of comfort.
Now we’d come along and rattled him. I was glad we’d gotten to
him first, though. I doubted he was going to be as cooperative with
the next group that showed up asking what Solich knew about his
old neighborhood and the people who ran crime in it.
“Do you buy his description of Cancerno?” Joe asked as I drove
us back to the office. He spoke loudly, trying to be heard over the
roar of the wind ripping through the cab of the truck.
“Yes. It didn’t seem like he was bullshitting us. Besides, it fits. Cancerno told me something the first time I met him about not
liking the police in his business, and there was more to it than a
general privacy concern.”
“If the guy’s everything Solich says he is,” Joe said, “then this
thing is jumping up a few weight classes. Organized crime, even if
it’s limited to a neighborhood. And, shit, if Cancerno was burning
people out of business, the level he was playing at twenty years ago
wasn’t too lightweight, anyhow.”
“Do we take a run at Cancerno?”

Joe shook his head emphatically. “No way. Far too early. Nothing
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Sorrow s Anthem

to gain, and plenty to lose. I still want Corbett. What that guy
knows about things both past and present could probably go a long
way toward helping us straighten this out.”

Back at the office, a message from our spook in Idaho was waiting.
Joe called him back immediately, but it wasn’t good news. No activity
on any of Corbett’s accounts in the last ten days. He had two
credit cards and a debit card and used both regularly. He’d stopped
ten days ago.
“Tells us a couple things,” Joe said after he’d related the news to
me. “One, Corbett might be dead.”
“Then why were Padgett and Rabold looking for him?”
“Because they didn’t know he was dead,” Joe said. “But that’s not
the only possibility. The other possibility is Corbett’s on the run,
hiding from somebody. And if he is, he’s smart. He’s not using
plastic because it can be traced. If that’s the case, it tells us something
else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“That he expects the guys chasing him might have a pretty
broad reach. Pretty good resources, if they can trace a credit card.”
“Right. Doesn’t help us find him, though.”
Joe nodded and sighed. “On to the next option, then.”
“Wearing out shoe leather.”
“You got it.”

We spent five hours at it and got nothing. For the rest of the afternoon
and into the evening, Joe and I worked the streets together,
trying to find someone who could put us in contact with
Mitch Corbett. We went to his brother’s house and almost got the
cops called on us. We went back to the Clark Recreation Center,
got them to give us a phone list of the other volunteers who’d
worked with Corbett, then went through it looking for someone
who could help. Nobody could. We canvassed Corbett’s neighborhood,
hitting twenty-five houses. Everywhere we went, with the
exception of the brother’s house, we heard the same speech. Mitch
Corbett was a nice enough guy, kept to himself, and, no, he hadn’t
been around for a while. Not for a few days, at least. No, not sure
how to get ahold of him, where he might have gone.
“Shit,” I said as we walked back to the car, “this has been a total
waste, Joe.” We’d devoted most of the day to Corbett and had
nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, a half dozen other aspects of
the investigation sat untouched.
“We had to try,” Joe said. “He’s got answers, LP. You know he
does.”
“Other people might have had answers, too. Instead we just lost
time.
We walked back to the car in a silent, shared frustration. The
humidity had been building throughout the day. Even in the time
it took to walk from the car to the house and back, I’d begun to
sweat. Heavy purple clouds hung on the horizon to the northwest,
out over the lake. Hopefully, they’d work their way down and into
the city, dump some rain on us to cut the heat and humidity that
had been increasing for days. It was hard to tell in August, though.
Sometimes the storms pushed in off the lake late in the day, other
times they simply passed along with a few teasing drops.
Back in the Taurus, Joe started the motor and cranked the air
conditioning up, blasting warm air out of the vents. He’d left his
cell phone sitting on the console, and now he picked it up and
checked the display.
“Missed a couple of calls.”
“You know, the damn things are portable for a reason,” I said,
still awash in my frustration over a fruitless afternoon’s work.
Joe didn’t answer, just put the phone to his ear to play the messages.
I stared out the window, tilting my face away from the hot,
dusty air that was surging out of the vents. I gazed up the street at
Corbett’s empty house, saw the stack of newspapers piled against
the door, the mail bulging out of the box. Where the hell had he
gone? And what did he know?
“That was Amos Lorenzon,” Joe said, breaking into my
thoughts as he lowered the cell phone a minute later. “He wants to
meet us. As soon as possible. He said he got something from the
conduct reports.”
“Only a day late.”
“Yeah.” Joe’s face was intense. “He said it was big, LP. The kind
of big that made him afraid to say a word about it over the phone.”