Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (46 page)

“Ready
for viewing?” My jaw dropped slackly. “Is he—he isn’t dead, is he?”

“Isn’t
that why you came? I wondered how you knew so fast. I thought maybe that was
your father with you.”

Mr.
Contreras clutched my arm, his legs suddenly unsteady. “I just talked to him
this morning, doll. He—he was expecting us. I… He sounded fine to me then.”

I
turned to look at him, but none of the things I wanted to say were appropriate
at such a moment. No wonder he’d been so subdued: he knew I wanted to try to
catch Eddie unawares. He may have felt he was betraying the local, but he
probably thought he was betraying me too.

“I’m
sorry,” I said to Mrs. Johnson. “Sorry to intrude at such a time. This must
have come as a terrible shock. I didn’t know he was ill.”

“It
wasn’t his heart, if that’s what you’re thinking.

Someone
shot him. Just as he was walking up Albany. Shot him in cold blood and drove on
up the street. Damned niggers. Not satisfied with tearing up Englewood and
shooting each other up. They have to come up and kill people in McKinley Park.
Why can’t they just stay where they are and mind their own business?“ Her face
turned red with anger, but tears were swimming in the protuberant eyes.

“When
did this happen?” I kept my voice gentle, but only by digging my nails into my
palms.

“About
one this afternoon. Mother called me, and of course I came right over, even
though it meant turning the register over to Maggie, which is always a mistake.
It’s not that she’s dishonest—she just can’t add or subtract. Chicago schools
just don’t do the job they did when I was growing up.”

It’s
the little things that worry us at moments of great loss. Maggie at the cash
register… you can get your mind around it. Father shot dead on the street——-No,
leave that one alone.

Mr.
Contreras was stirring restively behind me, not wanting me to probe like a
ghoul. I ignored him and asked Mrs. Johnson if anyone had seen the niggers in
question.

“There
were only two people on the street—Mrs. Yuall and Mrs. Joyce were coming back
from the store. They didn’t pay any attention to the car. You don’t expect to
see someone shot down in broad daylight in your own community, do you? Then
they heard the shots and saw Daddy fall over. At first they thought he’d had a
heart attack. It was only later they realized they’d been hearing shots.”

She
stopped talking and turned her head, listening to someone behind her. “I’ll be
right there, Mother. It’s one of Daddy’s old friends. He called this morning.
Do you want to see him?… Excuse me a minute,” she added to us, going back into
the house.

“This
is terrible, doll, terrible,” Mr. Contreras whispered urgently. “We can’t
intrude on these people.”

I
gave him a tight smile. “I think it would be a good idea if we found out what
he was doing out on the street. After all, he had two cars. Why was he walking
instead of driving? And why were you calling him to let him know we were
coming?”

Mr.
Contreras turned red. “It was only fair. I couldn’t have you barging in, trying
to pin Mitch’s death on the union, without giving him some notice—”

Mrs.
Johnson came back to the door and he cut himself off in mid-sentence. “Mother’s
lying down. She’s with a friend, but she’d like to know if Daddy said anything
special this morning when he talked to you. Can you come on in?”

Mr.
Contreras, beet-colored at the idea of talking to Mrs. Mohr while she was lying
down, tried excusing himself. I grabbed his arm and propelled him forward.

The
bedroom scene was actually as chaste as could be. Instead of the normal
pint-sized bungalow room, Mrs. Mohr occupied a master suite. A ruffled duvet
hid the bed. Mrs. Mohr was slumped in a large chintz armchair, her feet on a
matching footstool. She was dressed for day, in stockings and heels, her face
fully made-up, so that the furrows cut by tears and terror emphasized her age.
The neighbor sat next to her in a straight-backed chair. A pitcher of iced tea
and a glass were at Mrs. Mohr’s elbow.

The
curtains, done in the same bright floral pattern, were pulled back so that only
white gauze covered the windows. A set of French doors led to a patio. Beyond
it I could see a swimming pool. A remarkable addition for a South Side home.

“Here
are some more friends for you, Gladys,” the neighbor said, getting up. “I’m
going to go home for a while, but I’ll bring some supper over to you later.”

“You
don’t have to do that, Judy,” Mrs. Mohr said in the thread of a voice. “Cindy
here can take care of me.”

Cindy,
Kerry, Kim—all those cute, girlish names parents love to bestow on their
daughters, which don’t suit us when we’re middle-aged and grief-stricken. I
thanked my mother’s memory for her fierce correction of anyone who called me
Vicky.

When
Judy left I moved over to Mrs. Mohr’s side. “I’m V. I. Warshawski, Mrs. Mohr,
and this is Mr. Contreras, who used to work with your husband. I’m so sorry
about his death. And sorry we have to bother you.”

Mrs.
Mohr looked at me apathetically. “That’s all right. It doesn’t matter, really.
I just wanted to know what the two of them talked about this morning. It seemed
like afterwards he was angry and upset, and I hate to have to remember him like
that.”

“It
looks as though you have a lot to remember him by,” I said, indicating the room
and the pool beyond with a sweep of my hand. “He seems to have been a wonderful
provider.”

“It
was when he retired,” Mrs. Mohr explained. “He worked hard all his life and
earned himself a good pension. Young people complain nowadays. Like all those
niggers, they just want something for nothing. They don’t understand you have
to work hard, the way Eddie and I did, to earn the nice things in life.”

“Yes,
indeed,” I said enthusiastically. “I know Mr. Contreras here, who worked with
Eddie for—was it thirty years?—would love to put a pool in our backyard, but
our co-op board won’t let him.”

“Come
on, doll,” Mr. Contreras said indignantly. “You know I don’t want to do
anything like that. And even if I did, I don’t have the money for it.”

“You
don’t?” I said, reproachful. “I thought you worked hard all your life, just
like Eddie Mohr. I know you said you could afford a car if you wanted one,
although not necessarily a Buick Riviera along with an Oldsmobile.”

A
shade of alarm crossed Mrs. Mohr’s face. “Eddie was the president of the local
for a long time. He did a lot for them at Diamond Head, and he got a
special—special agreement when he retired. We didn’t want to say anything to
any of the other men on the floor, because we knew it might not seem fair. We
only could afford all this when he retired. They just finished work on the room
here and the kitchen two months ago. But there was never anything dishonest
about it. Eddie was a very honest man. He was with the Knights of Columbus and
he was on the parish council. You can ask anyone.”

“Of
course.” I sat in the chair Judy had vacated and patted Mrs. Mohr’s hand in a
soothing way, wondering if I was being as big a scab as I felt. “What kinds of
special things did he do for them at Diamond Head?”

She
shook her head. “Eddie was a decent man. He left his work at work and never
bothered me with it. When we were starting out, when it was the two of us with
Cindy and her brothers, I had to work too. I baked cakes at Davison’s. It’s too
bad we couldn’t have had some of düs money back then.”

“It’s
only because the neighborhood went down so much that Dad could afford to do
this,” Mrs. Johnson said. “Lots of houses standing empty. He could have moved
away. He should have moved away. But he wanted to stay here because he grew up
here, so he bought the lot behind us and added the pool. He was only helping
the neighborhood and then they had to go and shoot him.”

In
the distance we heard the doorbell ring. Cindy Johnson moved off to answer it,
patting her matted hair without seeming to feel it.

Tears
welled in Mrs. Mohr’s large eyes. She looked past me to Mr. Contreras. “What
did he say to you? Or you to him? After he hung up he went back to his den—we
turned the old kitchen into a den for him when we put the new one on last
winter—and called some people. He wouldn’t tell me what the problem was, just
went out and left me and I never saw him again. What did you say to him?”

Despite
the air-conditioning, Mr. Contreras was wiping sweat from his neck, but he
answered manfully. “Him and me—we were never very close when we was working. He
hung with a different crowd, you know how that goes. But I heard from one of
the boys that he was giving a lot of money to a charity. I never heard of the
outfit, but Vic here has some friends who played the piano or violin or
something at one of their benefits. I told him we wanted to come talk to him
about it. I don’t know why it got him so upset, and that’s a fact.”

“What
did he say to you?” Mrs. Mohr asked painfully.

“He
thanked me. Thanked me for calling him in advance, I guess was how he put it.
If I’d known… I sure wish I hadn’t made that call.”

“You
think he went out to meet someone?” I asked Mrs. Mohr.

She
plaited and unplaited her fingers. “I… yes, I guess he must have. He said he
was going to Barney’s—that’s a bar, but you can get sandwiches there—that he
had to talk to a man and he wouldn’t be eating lunch with me.”

“Is
Barney’s where he went when he needed to talk to people privately?”

“Men
need a place where they can go and be with other men. You young girls don’t
always understand that. But you can’t keep them tied to your apron strings all
day long, it doesn’t do your marriage any good. And I know Barney; we grew up
together. His father used to own the saloon before him. They’ve been there on
the corner of Forty-first and Kedzie for sixty years now. They serve good
sandwiches, good corned beef, none of that packaged stuff they sell you at
these fast-food places. It was a good place for Eddie to go. He could shoot a
little pool too. He always liked that. But I wish I hadn’t let him go today. If
I’d kept him here, found out what made him so upset, he wouldn’t have been
walking down the street when that car drove by. He’d be with me still.”

Cindy
came back in and bent over her mother. “There’s a nigger out front now, Mother.
He says he’s a detective and he has a badge and everything, but he’s not
wearing a uniform. Do you want to talk to him? Or do you want me to call the
precinct and make sure?”

Mrs.
Mohr shook her head. “What’s he coming to do? Apologize?”

I
felt my face turning hot. “He probably has some questions, Mrs. Mohr. It’s
probably the same detective who answered the call the night your husband’s car
was stolen and used to attack a doctor on the North Side.”

I got
up and went to the front door. As I’d thought, it was Conrad Rawlings. He did
not look overwhelmed with delight at seeing me, and I felt my face grow hotter
still.

“Well,
well, Ms. W. I might have guessed you’d beat me here.”

“It’s
not what you think,” I stammered. “I didn’t know he was dead. I came to talk to
him to try to get a lead on Mitch Kruger.”

“That
a fact?”

Mr.
Contreras, glad to make an escape, had come down the hall behind me. The
nerve-wracking experiences of the last half hour made him more belligerent than
usual.

“It
sure is a fact. I’m tired of watching you cops harass Vic here instead of
trying to catch murderers. You never listen to her, so she gets soaked in the
canal and then you come around blaming her. Matter of fact, I talked to Eddie

Mohr
this morning. He was fine then. I told him we was coming down this afternoon
and next thing I know he’s been shot dead on the street.“

“Okay,
okay,” Rawlings said. “You didn’t try to finesse me. What did you want to talk
to him about?”

“Money.
What about you?”

“Oh,
I heard about the shooting and I kind of connected his name with the car that
hit the doc. So I thought maybe I’d nose around a little. I’m not as fast as
you, Ms. W., but I do try to get there. Tonight was your night for working
late; I do remember you telling me that yesterday.”

Cindy
joined us in the hallway before I could think of something to say that might
ease some of the bitterness in his voice. I could kiss him in front of Mr.
Contreras, but not in front of Cindy. It would seem patronizing, and make his
interview with them too difficult.

“Do
you know him?” she asked.

“Yes.
He’s a friend of mine. A good friend, even if he’s a little quick to judge me
sometimes.”

“I
guess you can talk to my mother. But keep it brief. She’s had a bad shock
today.”

“Yes,
ma’am,” Rawlings said. “I’ll keep that in mind… Drive that heap of yours
carefully on the way home, Vic. I don’t want to hear any of the boys had to
pull you over.”

A New
Profession Beckons

“Do
you think I killed him, doll?” Mr. Contreras asked when we were back in the
car.

His
anxiety robbed me of any desire to upbraid him for warning Eddie Mohr this
morning. “Of course not. If either of us did, it was me, pushing on the
investigation.”