Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Do

Tess felt an instant’s sympathy. She sure didn’t want anyone digging around in her private graveyard.

Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the new police chief. What skeletons was Jarek Denko hiding?

The Plaza Apartments’ one elevator was out-of-order again. Tess shifted the bag of groceries in her arms to open the fire door, propping it with her hip so her mother could walk through.

“I wish you’d let me take you out for dinner instead,” Tess said.

Isadora DeLucca smiled shakily. “Oh, cooking’s no trouble.”

No trouble for who? Tess wanted to ask, but years of protecting her mother’s feelings made her bite her tongue. If her mother needed to cook her a high-fat lunch to make up for all the years when Tess had opened cans to feed herself and her brother, well… Whatever her mother needed was fine with Tess.

The hallway smelled like cabbage and mold. No one who could afford to live anywhere else paid rent at the Plaza. The paint peeled, the radiators sweated and the toilets over-flowed. But the aging building provided a first shot at freedom for the very young, a last stab at independence for the very old.

Even on a reporter’s salary, Tess could afford better now. Mark thought she was crazy for not buying into one of the snazzy new condos going up by the lake or even moving to a newer, nicer apartment. But Tess told herself this apartment was fine. Mark was back. Her mother was on the wagon. Her life was fine. And if anything happened to make it not fine again, at least she wouldn’t be forced out of her home.

Tess had lived at the Plaza ten years, longer than any other resident except ninety-four-year-old Mrs. McMurty on the second floor. Against the advice of her doctors and the pleas of her son, Mrs. McMurty swore she would leave the Plaza only to go to her grave.

On her bad days, Tess imagined she’d escape the same way. Feetfirst and alone, having died of old age.

She unlocked her door.

“I don’t know why you don’t get yourself a cat,” Isadora said as the door opened on Tess’s apartment. “You used to love animals.”

She still loved animals. But sometime during her twenties, Tess had decided she didn’t have the energy left to tackle the care of a house plant, let alone a pet.

“I don’t have time for a cat,” she muttered, cramming the groceries onto the narrow ledge that passed for a counter.

“You should make time.” Isadora puttered around the galley kitchen. She waved a spatula at her daughter. “Love is all you need, you know!”

“Mom.” Tess started unloading bags. What on earth was she going to do with an entire bunch of celery? She didn’t need celery in her life. She didn’t need love, either. Love meant dealing with someone else she was bound either to support or disappoint, and she really, really didn’t want that.

She dumped the celery on an empty refrigerator shelf and turned back to her mother. “That was a catchy song. But it’s not a very practical philosophy.”

“Little Teresa.” Isadora smiled in fond disappointment at her only daughter. “Always so practical.”

Like she had a choice? Tess had been eight or nine when she figured out that somebody in the DeLucca family had to get the laundry done and the kids to school and dinner on the table. But she didn’t want to remind her mother of that. Isadora had been doing so well lately.

The phone shrilled. Her mother stood in the way, poking into a cabinet. Tess sprinted down the hall to pick up in the living room.

“Tess DeLucca,” she said breathlessly. Oh, great. She sounded like a phone sex girl.

“This is Butler in News Affairs.”

News Affairs. The Chicago Police Department. She had been after them to return her calls for two days.

“Officer Butler.” She forced warmth into her voice. “I really appreciate you taking the time to—”

“Sergeant.”

“What?”

“It’s Sergeant Butler, ma’am.”

“Oh. Excuse me. Sergeant.” Deliberately, Tess relaxed her grip on the receiver. “Anyway, my newspaper is doing a profile on former detective Jarek Denko, and I was hoping your department could give me some background information.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What kind of information?” her caller asked cautiously.

“Well, anything. Everything. Maybe we could start with his employment history, and then—”

“Personnel can give you his rank and dates of employment.”

She was hoping for an exposé, not a résumé. Denko was hiding something. Had to be. And it was up to Tess to strip the luster from the police chief’s shiny gold star. “I have those, thanks. I was hoping for something more substantial? Commendations, complaints…”

“Let me see.”

Another pause, while Tess’s mother drifted into the living room. “Don’t you have any garlic powder?”

Tess covered the mouthpiece of the receiver. “You didn’t tell me you needed garlic powder.”

“Well, no, dear, I just assumed you had some.”

“I don’t cook, Mom. Why would I have garlic powder?”

“You still there?” Sergeant Butler asked.

Tess turned her back on the kitchen and grabbed for a pad and pen. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay. Well, Detective Denko received an Award of Valor as a patrol officer.”

She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Thanks. Yes, I found that on your Web site. And that was fifteen years ago. Can’t you give me something a little more current?”

Like, Chief Check-Out-Those-Biceps Denko beat his ex-wife. Or was on the take. Something, anything, to make the man less of a saint, and this story more than a board member’s bio in a corporate newsletter.

“You want current, talk to Denko,” Butler said. “I don’t have anything for you. You understand.”

Oh, she understood all right. She understood no cop in Chicago was going to rat on one of their own to a reporter from Eden.

She could let it go.

Or she could go digging for the truth and deliver more dirt than a home and garden feature on Big Boy Tomatoes.

No neon sign hung over the door of the Joint on Belmont Street, only a black-and-white ad for Old Style: Bottles And Cans. The bar’s patrons—cops and police groupies—didn’t need more. Either you knew what waited beyond the heavy wood door, or you didn’t belong.

Jarek belonged. One week away didn’t change that.

Responding to a tip, a middle of the night phone call, he’d left his king-size bed and tidy three-bedroom house to drive an hour and twenty minutes south to Chicago. When he opened the bar door, the warmth and the smells, the smoke and the noise, swirled to greet him. He breathed them all in, let them wrap him like a favorite old sweater.

The place was full. The four-to-midnight shift had ended two hours ago. Four-to-fours, they called it, because most cops didn’t roll home until four in the morning. His ex-wife had hated that part of the job. Had hated most parts of his job, actually.

Jarek scanned the room. His brother Aleksy—Alex—was sitting in a booth by the pay phone with a beer in front of him and three off-duty detectives beside him. Catching Jarek’s eye, he raised his beer in silent salute before tipping the neck of the bottle toward the bar.

Jarek looked where his brother pointed. And there, perched on a bar stool like any badge bunny, sat Teresa DeLucca in black leather pants and a midriff-skimming top that raised the temperature in the crowded, narrow bar another twenty degrees. She was talking with his former partner, Steve Nowicki, a good detective with the biggest mouth in Area 3. And Stevie, who looked like he couldn’t believe his luck, was pouring out his heart and practically drooling down her cleavage.