I woke up early the next morning. My would-be intruder convinced me that I didn’t have much time before another accident would overtake me. My anger with Bobby continued: I didn’t report the incident. After all, the police would just treat it as another routine break and entry. I would solve the crimes myself; then they’d be sorry they hadn’t listened to me.
I felt decidedly unheroic as I ran slowly over to Belmont Harbor and back. I only did two miles instead of my normal five, and that left me sweating, the ache returning to my left shoulder. I took a long shower and rubbed some ligament oil into the sore muscles.
I checked the Omega over with extra care. Everything seemed to be working all right, and no one had tied a stick of dynamite to the battery cable. Even taking time for exercise and a proper breakfast, I was on the road by nine o’clock. I whistled Faure’s “Apres un reve” under my breath as I headed for the Loop. My first stop was the Title Office at City Hall. I found an empty parking meter on Madison Street and put in a quarter. Half an hour should be enough time for what I wanted to do.
The Title Office is where you go to register ownership of buildings in Chicago. Maybe all of Cook County. Like other city offices, this was filled with patronage workers. Henry Ford could study a city office and learn something about the ultimate in division of labor. One person gave me a form to fill out. I completed it, copying Paige Carrington’s Astor Street address out of Boom Boom’s address book. The filled-in form went to a second clerk, who date-stamped it and gave it to a heavy black man sitting behind a cage. He, in turn, assigned the form to one of the numerous pages whose job it was to fetch out the title books and carry them to the waiting taxpayers.
I stood behind a scarred wooden counter with other title searchers, waiting for a page to bring me the relevant volume. The man who finally filled my order turned out to be surprisingly helpful-city workers usually seem to be in a secret contest for who can harass the public the most. He found the entry for me in the heavy book and showed me how to read it.
Paige occupied a floor in a converted apartment building, an old five-flat built in 1923. The entries showed that there was some kind of dwelling on that site as far back as 1854. The Harris Bank had owned the current building until 1978 when it was converted to condominiums. Jay Feldspar, a well-known Chicago land developer, had acquired it then and done the conversion. Paige’s unit, number 2, was held as a trust by the Fort Dearborn Trust. Number 1123785-G.
Curiouser and curiouser. Either Paige owned the thing herself as part of a trust, or someone owned it for her. I looked at my watch. I’d already been here forty minutes; might as well take a little more time and risk a parking ticket. I wrote the trust number down on a piece of paper in my shoulder bag, thanked the attendant for his help, and went out to find a pay phone. I’d been to law school with a woman who was now an attorney on the Fort Dearborn’s staff. She and I had never been friends-our aspirations were too different. We’d never been enemies, either, though. I thought I’d call her and give a tug on the old school tie.
It took more than a tug-trust documents were confidential, she could be disbarred, let alone thrown out of the bank. I finally persuaded her that I’d get the
“You really haven’t changed a bit, Vic. I remember how you bullied everyone during moot court in our senior year.”
I laughed.
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” she said crossly, but she agreed to call me at home that night with the information.
While I was wasting dimes and adding to the risk of a ticket, I checked in with my answering service. Both Ryerson and Pierre Bouchard had called.
I tried Murray first. “Vic, if you’d lived two hundred years ago they would have burned you at the stake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That Arroyo hiking boot. Mattingly was wearing them when he died, and we’re pretty sure they’re a match for the footprint the police found in Boom Boom’s place. We’ll have the story on the front page of the early editions. Got any other hot tips?”
“No. I was hoping you might have something for me. Talk to you later.”
Bouchard wanted to tell me that he had checked around with Mattingly’s cronies on the team. He didn’t think Howard knew how to dive. Oh, and Elsie had given birth to a nine-pound boy two days ago. She was calling him Howard after the worthless snake. The members of the team were pitching in to make a donation to her since Howard had died without a pension and left very little life insurance. Would I give something from Boom Boom? Pierre knew my cousin would want to be included.
Certainly, I told him, and thanked him for his diligence.
“Are you making any progress?”
“Well, Mattingly’s dead. The guy who I’m sure pushed Boom Boom in the water was killed Sunday. Another few weeks like this and the only person left alive will be his murderer. I guess that’s progress.”
He laughed. “I know you will have success. Boom Boom told me many times how clever you are. But if you need some muscle, let me know. I’m a good man for a fight.”
I agreed with him wholeheartedly-I’d watched him cutting people’s heads open on the ice with good-natured enthusiasm many times.
I sprinted back to my car, too late. A zealous meter maid had already filled out a parking ticket for letting the meter run out. I stuck it into my shoulder bag and inched my way across the Loop to Ontario Street, the closest entrance to the Kennedy Expressway.
The weather had finally warmed up slightly. Under a clear blue sky, trees along the expressway put out tentative, pale green leaves toward the sun. The grass was noticeably darker than it had been the week before. I started singing some Elizabethan love songs. They suited the weather and the chirping birds better than Faure’s moodiness. Off the Kennedy to the Edens, past the painfully tidy bungalows of the Northwest Side where people balanced their paychecks with anxious care, up to the industrial parks lining the middle-class suburbs of Lincolnwood and Skokie, on to the Tri-State Tollway and the rarefied northern reaches of the very rich.
“ ‘Sweet lovers love the spring,’ ” I sang, turning off onto route 137. Over to Green Bay Road, making the loop around to Harbor Road without a single wrong turn. I went on past the Phillips residence and parked the Omega around the southern bend in the road, away from the house. I was wearing my navy Evan Picone pantsuit, a compromise between comfort and the need to look respectable in a house of mourning.
I walked briskly back along the greensward to the Phillips house in my low-heeled loafers, my legs a little sore from the unaccustomed run this morning.
Once on the driveway, I stopped singing. That would be indecorous. Three cars were parked behind the blue Oldsmobile 88. Phillips’s green Alfa. So he hadn’t driven himself down to the Port Sunday morning? Or had the car been returned? I’d have to ask. A red Monte Carlo, about two years old and not kept up as well as the neighborhood demanded. And a silver Audi 5000. The sight of the Audi drove any desire to sing from my heart.
A pale teenager in Calvin Klein jeans and an Izod shirt answered the door. Her brown hair was cut short and frizzed around her head in a perm. She looked at me with an unfriendly stare. “Well?” she said ungraciously.
“My name is V. I. Warshawski. I’ve come to see your mother.”
“Well, don’t expect me to pronounce that.” She turned her head, still holding onto the doorknob. “Mo-ther,” she yelled. “Some lady’s here to see you. I’m going for a bike ride.”
“Terri. You can’t do that.” Jeannine’s voice floated in from the back.
Terri turned her whole attention to her mother. She put her hands on her hips and shouted down the hall, “You let Paul take the boat out. If he can take the boat out, how come I can’t go for a stupid little bike ride? I’m not going to sit here and talk to you and Grandma all day long.”
“Real charming,” I commented. “You read about that in
She turned her angry face to me. “Who asked you to butt in? She’s back in there.” She jerked her arm down the hall and stomped out the front door.
An older woman with carefully dyed hair came out into the hallway. “Oh dear. Did Terri go out? Are you one of Jeannine’s friends? She’s sitting back in here. It’s awfully nice of you to stop by.” The skin around her mouth had gotten soft, but the pale eyes reminded me of her daughter. She was wearing a long-sleeved beige dress, tasteful but not in the same price range as her daughter’s clothes.
