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.”
“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, loan-sharking? That it?”
Solich’s sunken eyes went wide, his eyebrows arched. “What
“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 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
