Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

“It’s not as funny as all that, Vic-the only reason she hasn’t been arrested is because of the connection between your family and the police. I was hoping you could go talk to her, ask her to stop.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised, gasping for breath, “but she’s never paid much attention to anything anybody said to her.” I couldn’t help it, but started laughing again.

“If I came along?” he suggested tentatively. “Uncle Bobby thought it might make more of an impact if someone from the force was there to back you up.”

“Tell me the truth-he was too chicken to confront her, wasn’t he?”

Michael hedged on that one-he wasn’t about to slander his commander, even if Bobby was his godfather. Instead he asked, even more hesitantly, if I might be free to do it tonight. I looked at my watch. It was only eight-thirty; might as well get it over with.

“If she’s in, she’s probably drunk,” I warned him.

“She won’t be the first one I’ve seen. I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

I still had on the red rayon challis skirt I’d worn to Marissa’s party. I changed it for jeans-I didn’t want Furey to think I was dressing up for him. When he rang the buzzer, right on time, I took Peppy back down to Mr. Contreras. She was totally miffed-no run, no games, and now she had to stay inside when I was setting out on an adventure that would doubtless include chasing a lot of squirrels and ducks.

Michael had recovered a certain amount of his breeziness. He greeted me jauntily, asked if I’d gotten over the shock of identifying Cerise, and solicitously held the door of the Corvette open for me. I gathered my legs together and swung them over the side, the only possible way to get into that kind of car-I’ve always wondered how Magnum leapt in and out of that Ferrari.

“Where does she live?” he asked, starting the car with a great roar.

I told him the address of the Windsor Arms but left him to find his own way. You never have to give a Chicago policeman street directions. Maybe we should require a year of patrol duty for all would-be cabdrivers.

Michael used police privilege to block the hydrant in front of the hotel, A couple of drunks came over to inspect the Corvette but slid into the night when Furey casually let them see his gun. When he got inside no one was at the desk. I had headed toward the stairs, Michael behind me, when a voice shouted from the lounge, “Hey! No one up those stairs but residents.”

We turned to see a man in green work clothes push himself out of a chair and head toward us. Behind him some mindless sitcom was blaring from the high-perched TV. In his youth the man had been muscular, maybe played high school football, but now he was just big and sloppy, his belly straining the buttons on his green work shirt.

Michael flashed his white teeth. “Police, buddy. We need to talk to one of the inmates.”

“You got some ID? Anyone can come in here saying they’re police.”

He might be three-quarters drunk and run to seed, but he had some spunk, Michael seemed to debate playing a police heavy, but when he caught me watching him he pulled his badge from his pants pocket and showed it briefly.

“Who you after?” the night man demanded.

“Elena Warshawski,” I said, before Michael could put out the police none-of-your-business line. “Do you know if she’s in?”

“She ain’t here.”

“How about if we go upstairs and see for ourselves,” Michael said.

The man shook his head. “Wouldn’t do you any good. She took off three days ago. Packed up all her stuff and took off into the night.”

“Thursday?” I asked.

He thought for a minute, counting backward. “Yeah, that’d be right. She in some kind of trouble?”

“She’s my aunt,” I said. “She gets lonesome and tries to find people to keep her company. I want to make sure she’s okay. You know where she went?”

He shook his head. “I was setting in there, watching the two A.M. movie, and seen her sneaking down the stairs. ‘Hey, sis, ain’t no law against you coming downstairs in the middle of the night. You can walk upright,’ I calls to her. She gives a gasp and asks me to go outside to see if the coast is clear. None of my business what business people get up to, so I goes out and watches her head over to Broadway. No one was bothering her so I come back inside. And that’s the last I seen her.”

That was an unsettling scenario. Something had rattled her badly enough to make her scoot from a secure bed, badly enough to keep her from landing at my door.

“Can I go up and look at her room?” I asked abruptly. “Maybe she left something behind, some sign of why she bolted.”

The night man scrutinized me through drink-softened eyes. After asking for a look at my driver’s license, he decided I passed whatever internal test he was running. We went back to the stairs and followed him as he trudged heavily to the third floor. Michael asked me in an urgent whisper if I had any idea where she might have gone.

“Hm-umh.” I shook my head impatiently. “Probably the only friend she had from the Indiana Arms is in the hospital still and doesn’t have a place to stay anyway.”

The night man laboriously fiddled with the keys at his belt until he found one to unlock Elena’s room. He flipped a switch that turned on the naked bulb overhead. The room was bare. Elena had left the nylon bedding jumbled. It hung over the end, trailing on the floor, exposing the thin pad of a mattress as a tawdry indictment of the whole room.

I shook out the bedding. The only thing concealed in it was a bra turned gray and shapeless with age. Elena had emptied the plastic chest. Nothing remained in the box under the bed. Since the night man had a master key it was always possible he’d been there already to clean it out, but as far as I knew Elena didn’t have any valuables to leave. The bra seemed like such a forlorn relic that I folded it and stuffed it in my shoulder bag.

I shook my head uselessly. “Maybe I could talk to some of the other residents. See if any of them know why she might have left.”

The night man rubbed his big hands along the sides of his pants. “You can, of course, but when they see your boyfriend here is a cop, they probably won’t want to talk to you. Besides, I don’t think your aunt knew anyone here that good,”

When she was drunk she might have said anything to anyone, even people she’d never seen before in her life. Someone she’d shared a bottle with would seem like a lifelong friend. I asked the night man when he came on-he would be easier to work with than the daytime chatelaine.

“Six. I’m off tomorrow and Tuesday.”

So if I wanted to question the residents, I should do it tonight. My shoulders slumped dejectedly.

Michael was watching me sympathetically. “Look, Vic. Why don’t you put together a good description. I’ll get it out to the uniforms. If we’re looking for her hard, we have a good chance of turning her up and it’ll save some wear and tear on you.”

“Thanks.” I smiled gratefully. It was that kind of concerned gesture that had always been his most attractive trait.

We followed the night man back downstairs. Before we left I decided to secure Elena’s room for her through October, The night man-I finally got his name-Fred Cameron-took my money and wrote out a receipt in a large clumsy hand.

Back in Michael’s Corvette, I gave a careful description of Elena, including what I could recall of her wardrobe. He relayed it through the radio, underscoring the urgency of finding her, and asking that any sighting be reported directly to him.

As we turned south I asked when Elena had been seen soliciting. “If she’s been seen since Thursday, the places she’s been spotted are probably close to where she’s hanging out.”