Inside were two pairs of latex gloves, a flashlight, some rope, and a set of picks. I had noticed an index card tacked to the bulletin board in Mulberry’s office. It was for an appointment with a doctor. This morning at eight- thirty. I put on the gloves, zipped up my coat, and checked my watch. Eight forty-five. Time to go.
The front door was a lot easier the second time around. In less than a minute, both locks slipped free and I was inside. Morning light filtered through trees and threw patterns across the walls. I flicked on a flashlight and moved through the sitting room, toward the alcove where the old lady kept her records. The door to the alcove was closed. I pushed it open.
Mulberry was sitting in an old-fashioned swivel chair behind her desk. She was wearing a blue dress with a green brooch. Her hair was pinned up, and high heels hung off her feet. Mulberry was dressed for her appointment. The landlady, however, had no need for a doctor. Now or ever again.
I took a closer look at the face. Her eyes had bulged a bit. The mouth was slack. There was blood crusted under each nostril, on her lips, and chin. I nudged the body an inch or so with my foot. One leg crumpled against the other, revealing a mass of white flesh, spider veins, and just a hint of lividity underneath. The landlady had been dead awhile.
I moved away from the body and cast my light around the room. The filing cabinet was open, contents pulled out and strewn about the floor. I didn’t see anything worth touching or taking. I eased around and nudged open the desk drawers. Nothing there, either. I pulled back, felt a tingle, and looked behind me. A pair of eyes gleamed in the darkness. Oskar moved softly onto the landlady’s shoulder. Mulberry’s body shifted again. The cat jumped lightly to the floor. I noticed, for the first time, two puncture marks surrounded by a bruise high up on the landlady’s arm. I played my light on the sleeve of the old woman’s dress and saw two corresponding holes. The typical Taser delivers fifty thousand volts of electricity in five-second intervals. Enough to knock you to the ground but not kill you. Apparently, someone forgot to tell Mulberry. I turned off the light and decided to take a look upstairs.
Gibbons’ old room was to my left. A floorboard creak, however, pushed me to the right. At the end of the hallway were two doors. I turned the doorknob on the first and inched it open. No light on the other side. I reached in and felt the floor. Cold. Probably a bathroom. I moved across the threshold, maybe half a foot. I heard a ping, felt a sting in my left shoulder. Almost immediately, I knew what it was, knew what was coming, and then felt it.
The first jolt did its job as I went to my knees. I was halfway up when the second blast hit. I felt my chest tighten and my heart accelerate. Another blast and I was on my back, unable to breathe with a Volkswagen on my chest. My final thought before I blacked out was that a heart attack was one hell of a way to die.
CHAPTER 21
I woke up on the floor. The lights were still out, the house quiet. I could hear a truck grinding its gears down the block, felt a breeze from an open window, and saw a sliver of sunlight bouncing off a vanity mirror. I got up slowly and took inventory. Some burns for sure, and my shoulder was tender from the Taser. I was alive, however, and that put me one step ahead of the corpse cooling a floor below. I threw some water on my face and took a walk over to the window.
This is where my guy had gone out, probably along the roofline and then dropped down into the yard. Why he didn’t kill me, I didn’t know. Maybe he thought he had. What he was after was an even better question.
I went back downstairs. A clock on the wall told me it was late afternoon. I’d been out more than a while. I tiptoed through a half-dozen cats and back into the dining room. Mulberry was still sitting in the alcove, still very much dead. Oskar glided past me again and jumped up on the desk. He stared at his owner for a moment, then started to lick at the blood on her face. I figured it was time to go.
Two blocks later I pulled into a White Hen and bought some aspirin, water, and coffee. Then I drove another couple of blocks, found a pay phone, and called in the body.
As I drove home I thought about the landlady, the touch of greed behind her eyes, and wondered if she didn’t invite death across her threshold. Then I pulled a phone number from my pocket. My head hurt, but not too bad. It had already been a long day, and no one was waiting at home to cook me dinner or bandage my wounds. I figured a drink could only help. And I knew just the place.
CHAPTER 22
The bar was warm with wood and light that drifted softly into corners. A woman in a Burberry tweed and a man in a peacoat huddled close by a fire, seasoned with just a touch of peat. On the other side, an old man in a watch cap pulled on a pint while his pal produced a bodhran from its case. A third joined him with the squeeze box. The pint drinker held a fiddle across his lap. Now he took it in one hand and a bow in the other. It appeared a session was in order.
“Can I help you?”
The accent was West Coast. More like Galway. The face was sharp Irish, with a high forehead, brown hair in wisps, and ears sculpted close to her head. The eyes were blue and moving.
“Guinness,” I said.
I sat back to enjoy the ritual. The glass was fresh and held tight against the brass fitting. The pour was clean. She drew it three quarters full and placed it on a wooden box atop the pump. While the pint settled she wiped an ashtray, took an order for an Irish breakfast, and drew off a Smithwick’s. Then she pulled again on the Guinness and topped the pint with a froth slick and sweet as morning cream.
“Brilliant,” I said.
“Ah, fuck off with the brilliant. You’re a Yank and that’s all there is to it.”
I winked and Megan curled a smile my way. She was the best the Hidden Shamrock had to offer and one of my favorites. I hadn’t been through the door in over a year, but it didn’t matter. The Guinness was still the finest in the city. John Gibbons knew that and made the Shamrock his local. I caught Megan’s attention and asked about my former partner.
“Indeed, John was in,” she said. “Last Thursday night, it was. Sat just a bit down from where you’re at now.”
Megan sipped at a cup of Barry’s tea. She drank it strong with milk and two sugars.
“Was there a blonde with him?” I said.
“There was. She’s been coming in most nights. Nothing but fucking trouble.”
I pulled a phone number from my pocket, the one Elaine Remington had scrawled on my bedroom mirror.
“This still the bar’s number?”
“It is.”
“The pay phone?”
A shake of the head. Megan pointed to a phone behind the bar.
“We don’t have pay phones anymore what with the cell phones and that load of crap. Like a fucking switchboard in here on a Friday night.”
“I bet,” I said. “How well did you know John?”
“As well as I know any customer. No more. He in trouble?”
“He was found dead Sunday morning. Down by Navy Pier.”
Megan stared at the dregs in her mug for a moment. Then I followed her gaze up and across the bar. Elaine Remington stood in the doorway.
“That would be her, Michael.”
“Yes, it would.”
I got up from my stool. Elaine met me halfway across the bar. She didn’t have a gun this time. At least not one pointed my way.
“About time you got here,” she said.
“Expecting me?”
