female opened the door along a length of chain and said, “Yeah?”
“Your folks home, young lady?”
“Naw. Ain’t never home ’fore ‘leven or twelve.”
“You get your sweet little butt back over here, LuAnne, and tell whoever that asshole is you’re busy,” a voice said inside the apartment.
“You know where I might reach them at work?”
She shrugged.
“Excuse me, LuAnne,” I said, and kicked the door in.
He was on the couch, thirty-eight or forty maybe, wearing a doubleknit leisure suit with the pants pulled down around his ankles.
“Don’t bother getting up,” I said. “If you do, I’ll kick your balls into Oklahoma. Go put your clothes on, honey,” I told the girl. “You know about statutory rape, mister? Even prison-yard hardasses take a dim view of it.”
“You a cop, man?”
“Are you out of here?”
“You told me not to move. ’Sides, I’m the girl’s uncle.”
He was coming up off the couch and I kicked him in the belly. He grunted and fell back.
“This is a
After a while, when he was able, he hauled himself afoot, pulled up his pants and left. The girl looked after him, tears forming in her round eyes.
“World’s full of them,” I said.
“I loved him,” she said.
The second lead came up just as empty: a used book and record store not far off Veterans near Causeway. It had that fusty, peculiar smell they all have. A girl of twenty or so sat behind the counter braiding lustrous black hair that, unbraided, must have reached her knees.
“I’m looking for Frances Villon,” I said.
“Frances Villon?” Tentatively.
“I was given this address. I could have the spelling wrong.” I spelled it out. “She’d arranged a loan from us.”
“Frances Villon.” First with an English pronunciation, then the French. Her eyes wandered off and came back. “I get it-Francois Villon.”
“What?”
“You’ve been had. Francois Villon was a fifteenth-century French poet. I don’t think he’d be in need of any loans just now.
Someone’s idea of a joke, huh?”
“Any idea who might be inclined to that kind of joke?”
“Not really, but it’s kind of appropriate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Villon himself was a professional thief.”
The address I had for Cherie Smith led me to a converted garage apartment behind a lumberyard. It was empty; through the front window I saw only a sack of trash and some sweepings on the bare floor. I tried the door. It was locked.
Walking around back to look for a rear door or usable window, I discovered another, larger garage apartment. A tall, stooped young man with longish stringy hair was just backing out the door.
“Come to see the place?” he said.
“You the agent?”
“Showing it for them. I’m on my way to class, but I’ve got a few minutes, if you want to look it over. There wouldn’t be any problem with your renting it. You know….”
I knew only too well.
“To tell the truth,” I said, “I was looking for the former tenant.”
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop, son?”
“You sure as hell ain’t her daddy.”
“Friend of her brother’s. He asked me to find her, if I can. Hasn’t heard from her in a long time. He’s been worried.”
“Not much I can tell you. She stayed pretty much to herself. Never had people over, didn’t go out much.”
“She work?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“When’d she leave?”
“Let’s see…. Close to a month, must be.”
“You know why?”
“Couldn’t make the rent. Owner finally had to ask her to move out.”
“Did she?”
“The very next morning. Cleaned the apartment up and all before she went, too. Not many’ll do that anymore.”
“No forwarding address?”
“Not with me, not with the post office. I know because the owner was going to send back part of the deposit even though she missed the last month’s rent. Felt kind of bad about the whole thing, I guess.”
“Okay. Listen, I don’t want to keep you, but if you happen to think of anything, anything that might help, could you give me a call?”
I handed him a card and a ten dollar bill.
“I can’t take your money, Mr.-” He looked down at the card. “-Griffin?”
“Sure you can.”
“Wouldn’t feel right about it.”
“All right. Then you just keep it a while and if nothing comes up, you send it back to me.”
“Well,” he said.
“Listen, I’ve held you up. Which school you go to?”
“Loyola.”
“Then let me drop you. Wouldn’t be a problem. You know….”
He grinned. “I
“Not at all.”
I dropped him off amidst armies of long legs and round bottoms in tight jeans and perfect breasts under sweaters, thinking
I headed back downtown, brewed a pot of coffee at the apartment-Vicky was on a rare day shift-and had just poured some Irish into it when the phone rang.
“Mr. Griffin?”
“Yes.”
“Kirk Woodland.”
I waited.
“At the apartment a little while ago.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I just thought of something, might help you. There’s this kid down the street from where I live. He’s, I don’t
