Michael Harvey - The Chicago Way

The door cracked open a couple of inches, then maybe four more. The pointed face of a woman peeked across the threshold.

“Hello there,” I said.

The woman shifted and pale light washed over us both. Her face carried a bit more oval that I’d first thought, with high cheekbones and deep shadows underneath. The hair was thin, diluted by time and a lack of sun. Thick glasses sealed up small brown eyes pinpricked with black. They crawled over me and then beyond.

I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me and was about to speak again when the woman gave forth with a noise, somewhere between a squeak, a grunt, and a snicker. Then I heard the shifting of feet inside.

“I’m a friend of John’s,” I said. “John Gibbons, that is.”

I moved one foot onto the threshold, just inside the doorjamb. The heavy maple door crushed my big toe.

“Keep your foot back there,” she said through the now-closed portal.

I hopped lightly and pretended it didn’t hurt.

“You caught my foot there, Ms…”

I looked at the mailbox name above GIBBONS.

“Ms. Mulberry.”

I swore I heard a cackle although I’d be hard pressed to say I knew exactly what a cackle sounded like.

“Serves you right there, Mr. John Gibbons’ friend. What do you want?”

“Nothing, Ms. Mulberry. Just some back rent I know John was owing. I wanted to make up the difference…”

The big door suddenly swung open, and an interior light clicked on. Through the screen I could see a woman, ageless in the worst way possible. Maybe sixty, maybe eighty, she was too dusty and out of focus to get a handle on. Perched on each shoulder was a calico cat, entwined around her legs four or five others. Kittens and cats lounged on the stairs behind her. Some of them wore miniature ice bags strapped to their little cat heads. Mulberry must have caught me staring.

“They have migraines. From the heat, you know.”

“But it’s October.”

She flashed me a look, magnified by the Harry Caray glasses.

“Never mind,” I said.

I was inside the house now, inside a sitting room stuffed with felines and their respective droppings. I managed to get a handkerchief close to my face and found a spot on the sofa. To my left was a small alcove. Inside it, a desk littered with cuttings from newspapers, plates of half-eaten food, and an ashtray filled to overflowing. On the wall was a bulletin board with Post-it notes and index cards skewered with thumbtacks. Mulberry pulled a ledger out of a gray filing cabinet she kept next to the desk and laid it flat between us. The entries were handwritten in ballpoint, and immaculate. The landlady admired her handiwork for a moment, then looked up.

“Bring a check?” she said.

Her eyes fastened on my hand as I reached inside a coat pocket.

“Actually, Ms. Mulberry, I have something better than that.” I flashed my investigator’s license.

“I’m here because John Gibbons is dead.”

The ledger flew shut. She glanced at the name on the license, then threw the look back my way.

“The police have already been here. Been and gone, Mr. Kelly. I wish you’d go, too.”

Little cat faces gleamed at me from various corners of the room. Something drifted by my ankles, but I didn’t jump.

“I need your help, Ms. Mulberry.”

“He was murdered, wasn’t he?” Her smile revealed a set of teeth that were better left undisturbed.

“Yes, he was, ma’am.”

“The police didn’t tell me that. But I knew all the same. Just like Law amp; Order. Was it brutal?”

“Shot in the stomach and left to die down at Navy Pier. That’s no picnic.”

Now the landlady leaned forward and touched my arm.

“Was he in the lake? They’re supposed to be blue when they’re pulled from the lake.”

I shook my head.

“No, his body was found just past the pier.”

Her eyes had widened and glowed a warm copper. An angora moved to the couch and settled close by her cheek. The other cats drifted away.

“This is Oskar. Spelled with a k. He’s my alter ego.” I nodded and looked from purring angora to fruitcake landlady. “I put Sun-In in Oskar’s hair. Now it matches mine.” I had to admit the resemblance was uncanny. “You want to go upstairs and see John’s room?” I nodded again, and she pointed to a set of darkened stairs.

I went up the stairs, down a brown hall, and into an even browner room. A bed with gray sheets tilted in one corner. A torn shade covered the only window. A slice of sunlight backed through it and onto an opposite wall.

I turned to find Mulberry at my shoulder. Her angora wrapped itself around my ankle.

“Can you give me a little room?” I said.

The landlady took a half step back. I guess she called that room. Her nose flared a bit as she spoke.

“The police went through the drawers.”

She pointed to a crooked dresser that sat by the window.

“They didn’t take anything, though. I told them if they did, I’d make them sign. Want to see the form? I typed it up with a Gateway computer.”

I drifted toward the dresser and opened a few drawers. Nothing much. A couple of pairs of pants, some shirts.

“No wallet here or nothing, Ms. Mulberry?”

“No. He only had the one suit he was wearing. A simple man.”

I nodded.

“Nice enough man,” she said. As if I didn’t believe her.

“Any other personal stuff?” I said. “Papers, books, that sort of thing?”

Mulberry held her chin with one hand and shook her head. Then she picked up the angora and began to stroke it. The cat looked at me and I found it difficult to look away.

“She asked about that, too,” Mulberry said.

“The detective?” I said.

“Not the detective. The woman that called later.”

“What woman would that be?”

“The one on television. You know. The bitch with the red hair.”

“On Channel 6?”

“That’s the one. She came yesterday afternoon and looked through this stuff. Just like you.”

“Just like me, huh?”

“Yep. She didn’t get anything either. Told me not to talk to anyone else.”

I sat down on the bed.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

The angora hissed and Mulberry arched her back. Or maybe it was the other way around.

“Don’t swear in front of Oskar. He doesn’t like it from strangers.”

The old woman laid out Gibbons’ clothes, put what looked like a shaving kit on top of them, and got the whole thing ready to bundle into a bag. My old partner had died alone and already found his hole in the ground. The rest of his life was here, in a dirty brown room and a Dominick’s shopping bag.

“It’s not so bad.”

Mulberry spoke softly and kept one eye closed. The other loomed large through the thick corrective lens.

“What’s not so bad?” I said.

“Dying alone. Once you lose your choices, it’s not so bad.”

“You think so?”

“I do. You should leave it be now and go.”

I shrugged, took a twenty out of my clip, and dropped it on the bed. For Kibbles ’n Bits, I told the woman. I told her if she ran across any of Gibbons’ personal papers or books to call me.

“What about the police?” she said.

I dropped her another twenty.

“What about the redhead?”

Two more twenties.

“Give the bitch nothing,” I said.

Mulberry smiled. Bubbles of green saliva kicked up between her front teeth. I left the house quickly, promising myself to brush and floss. Regularly and with determination.

I returned to my office and sat in the quiet of midmorning, waiting for the new women in my life to fall into place.

The landlady was lying to me. Why, I had no idea.