Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

“Your usual, Vic?” Sal asked when Robin had ordered a beer.

My usual is Black Label up. I pictured Elena’s flushed, veined face and my missing credit cards. I remembered Zerlina’s admonition to keep three thousand bottles behind Elena. Then I thought, hell, I’m thirty-seven years old. If I was going to get drunk every time life threatened me, I would have started in years ago. When I feel like having a whiskey, I’ll have a whiskey.

“Yes,” I said more vehemently than I’d meant.

“You sure about that, girl?” Sal mocked me gently, then went to the bar to fill our order. Sal’s a shrewd businesswoman. The Glow is only one of her investments and she could easily afford to turn it over to a manager. But it also was her first venture and she likes to preside over it in person.

Robin took a swallow of his draft and opened his eyes in appreciation. “I’ve probably walked by here a hundred times going to the Insurance Exchange. How could I have missed this stuff?”

Sal’s draft is made for her privately by a small brewer in Steven’s Point. I’m not a beer lover, but my pals who are think it’s pretty hot stuff.

I told Robin a little about Sal and her operations, then steered the talk back to the Indiana Arms. “You ever find any evidence that the owner was trying to sell the place?”

Robin shook his head. “Too early to tell. His limits aren’t out of line, but that doesn’t matter. It’s really more a question of what’s going on with the building and him and his finances. We haven’t got that far yet.”

“What does Montgomery say?”

Robin frowned and finished his beer before answering. “Nothing. He’s not going to dedicate any more resources into investigating the arson.”

“And you don’t agree?” I drank a glass of water, then swallowed the rest of my scotch. The warmth spread slowly from my stomach to my arms and some of the tension the day had put into my shoulders disappeared.

“We never pay a claim when arson is involved. I mean, not unless we’re a hundred percent sure the insured didn’t engineer it.”

He held up his glass to Sal and she brought over another draft. She had the Black Label bottle with her but I shook my head over the idea of seconds. Elena must have been affecting me after all.

“I just don’t understand Montgomery, though. I’ve worked with him before. He’s not an easy guy-not much looseness there-but I’ve never seen him as nasty as he was to you this afternoon.”

“Must be my charm,” I said lightly. “It hits some men that way.” I didn’t think it was worth explaining my theory about Montgomery and Bobby Mallory to a stranger.

Robin refused to laugh. “It’s something about this fire. Why else would he tell me the file was closed? He said they’d only reopened it because you thought there might be a body in there. Now they want to put their manpower where it’s more urgently needed.”

“I’ve never worked with the Bomb and Arson unit, but I assume they’re not too different from the rest of the police-too few people, too many crimes. It doesn’t seem so unbelievable to me that Montgomery would abandon an investigation into an underinsured mausoleum in one of the city’s tackier districts. The fire fighters and police may serve and protect everyone, but they’re human- they’ll respond to the neighborhoods with more political clout first.”

Robin made an impatient gesture. “Maybe you’re right. Insurance companies have to be more allergic to arson. Montgomery may want to concentrate on the Gold Coast, but we can’t be so picky. Even if he’s abandoning the Indiana Arms, we won’t. At least not for the time being.”

Or at least not until his boss also got his sense of priorities reorganized. But I kept that last unkind thought to myself and let the talk drift to the joys of home ownership. Robin had just bought a two-flat in Albany Park; he was renting out the ground floor while living on top and trying to rehab the whole place in his spare time on weekends. Stripping varnish and putting up drywall are not my idea of a good time, but I’m perfectly ready to applaud anyone else who wants to do it.

After his third beer it seemed natural to think about moving on to food. We agreed on I Popoli, a seafood restaurant near Clark and Howard. After that it seemed natural to drive up to Albany Park with him to inspect the rehab work. One thing kind of led to another, but I left before they drifted too far-I hadn’t packed any equipment when I left my apartment for the day. Anyway, AIDS is making me more cautious. I like to see a guy more than once before doing anything irrevocable. Still, it’s nice to get an outside opinion of one’s attractions. I went home at midnight in a far better mood than I would have thought possible when I got up twenty hours ago.

Washing Up

I slept late the next morning. Usually as soon as I wake up I get out of bed and get going-I’m not a napper or a snoozer. But today I felt a catlike languor envelop me, a sense of well-being that came from knowing I had my castle to myself. The street noises were subdued-the nine-to-fivers were long gone about their business-and I felt suspended in a little bubble of privacy.

By and by I padded into the kitchen to make some coffee. The remains of yesterday’s shambles made a slight dent in my euphoria, enough to decide me not to skip my run two days in a row. I had cleaned up after Cerise, but the dirty rags were still in the sink, giving off a faint smell of Clorox mixed with old vomit. I needed to throw them in the wash and might as well do it at the start of my run.

Down in the basement after doing my stretches, my good mood deteriorated further on finding that someone had dumped my laundry on the floor-wet. A note scribbled in angry haste lay on top: “You don’t own the basement too!” I knew Mr. Contreras would never have done such a thing. The second-floor tenants were Korean; their English didn’t seem up to the pointedness of the message. My third-floor neighbor was a quiet older Norwegian woman who almost never appeared. That left the banker, good old Vincent Bottone.

I put the clothes back in the washer, added the rags, poured in a double measure of soap and a good cup of Clorox, and left Westinghouse to do my dirty work. I stopped on the first floor for the dog, who was more than usually eager to see me-it had been several days since she’d had a good workout. Mr. Contreras was disposed to question me about my aunt and Cerise, but the dog was whimpering so loudly I was able to make my escape in fairly short order.

As I jogged up to Belmont and across to the harbor, my mind kept shifting to Vincent Bottone, trying to come up with some fitting response to his desecration of my laundry. Of course I shouldn’t have gone off and left it all day, but did he really have to dump it on the floor and add a hostile note? My best idea was to break into his apartment some weekend when he was out and steal his briefcase for Peppy to chew to bits. But then he might poison the dog-he was just the type.

By the time Peppy and I got back home my early euphoria had evaporated completely. I turned the dog back to Mr. Contreras and pleaded a heavy work load to escape a second barrage of questions. Halfway up the stairs I remembered my laundry and stomped back to the basement to shift it to the dryer.

The washer was still in its final spin cycle. Propping my elbows on the vibrating machine, I tried to resolve on an action plan for the day. I had to get my driver’s license replaced, which meant trekking up Elston by bus-I shouldn’t even have been driving last night without it. After that-I wondered if it was worthwhile trying to confront Elena about my missing stuff. If she knew, she wouldn’t admit it; anyway, the thought of dealing with her coy evasions nauseated me. If it was Cerise who had robbed me, I didn’t have any desire to find her, even if I knew where to look.