Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (6 page)

“Vic,
can I come over tonight? I need to talk to you.” I ground my teeth again, this
time more audibly. I didn’t want to take sides in her struggle with Lotty: it
was the easiest way to lose both their friendships forever. But

Carol
pleaded, and I couldn’t help remembering all the times she’d supported me when
Lotty was threatening to take a stripe out of me for bringing in either myself
or a client for repairs after a dust-up. I had to accede, and as gracefully as
possible.

Carol
arrived at eight, bringing a bottle of Barolo. Out of her nurse’s uniform and
in jeans she looked small and young, almost waiflike. I opened the bottle and
poured out a couple of glasses.

“Here’s
to old friendships,” I saluted her.

“And
to good friends,” she responded.

We
chatted idly for a few minutes before she brought up her personal business.
“Has Lotty told you what I mean to do?”

“Stay
home to nurse your mother’s cousin?”

“That’s
part of the story. Guillermo’s been very ill, pneumonia, complications, and
he’s been at County, where they don’t exactly have the resources for
round-the-clock care. So Mama wants to bring him home, and of course I’ll help
her look after him. With good care, skilled care, we can probably get him back
on his feet, maybe for a while anyway. Lotty thinks I’m abandoning her and
throwing myself away…”

Her
voice trailed off and she rubbed the rim of her glass. It was thick, chunky
Woolworth’s stock and didn’t make the high-pitched hum that crystal would
produce.

“You
couldn’t take a leave of absence instead of quitting?”

“The
truth is, Vic, I’m sick of that clinic. I’ve been doing it day in and out for
eight years and I need a change.”

“And
staying home to nurse Guillermo will be the relief you’re looking for?”

She
flushed a little. “Can’t you say what’s on your mind without sarcasm? I know
what you and Lotty think—that at thirty-four I should divorce my mother and
make a life for myself. But my family isn’t a millstone for me the way it might
be for you or Lotty. And anyway, didn’t you come close to being murdered,
looking out for your aunt Elena last year?”

“Yeah,
but I sure hated doing it.” I played with a loose thread on the easy chair.
Another thing I could do if I’d gone to a high-end law firm: buy new living
room furniture. “I helped nurse my mother when I was fifteen and she was dying
of cancer. And my dad, who died of emphysema ten years later. I’d do it again
if I had to, but I couldn’t give that kind of care to someone who wasn’t
important to me.”

“That’s
why you’re a detective, Vic, not a nurse.” She held up a hand as I started to
speak. “I’m not sacrificing myself, believe me. I’m burned out at the clinic. I
need a change. That’s what Lotty can’t understand: she puts so much of herself,
so much energy, into those patients that she can’t see why someone else
wouldn’t want to. But being at home, wrestling with one medical problem, it
will give me time to think, to decide what I should do next.”

“And
you want me to sell that to Lotty?”

I
didn’t blame Carol for wanting to leave the clinic. I’d burned out at the
public defender’s office after five years, and Carol’s work was much more
intense than mine had ever been. But of course, Lotty felt betrayed. She had no
family to speak of—a brother in Montreal and her father’s brother, Stefan, were
her only relatives to survive the Second World War—so she couldn’t understand
the calls family make on you. Or maybe she had some hidden resentment of those
lucky enough to have families making demands on them?

My
doorbell rang before I could chase that unpromising thought further. I looked
through the peephole at Mr. Contreras’s face. Opening the door, I felt my blood
begin to boil.

“Sorry,
doll, I know you don’t like to be bothered when you have company, but—”

“You’re
right. I don’t. And I can’t even remember the last time you didn’t come huffing
up ten minutes after my guests arrived to see who’s here. Look. Carol Alvarado.
Not a man after all. So go back downstairs and give it a rest, okay?”

He
put his hands on his hips and looked a little ugly. “You have been way out of
line lately, Vic. I mean way out, how you been talking to me. If I left you
alone like you’re always claiming to want it, you’d be dead now. Maybe that’s
what you want, for me to leave you alone and let you get drowned in a marsh or
let someone put a bullet through you.”

Yes,
he’d saved my life all right, and that meant he thought he’d acquired property
rights in it. But looking at his angry stare, I couldn’t say something that
would hurt him so painfully. I couldn’t bring myself to apologize, but I asked
in a milder tone what had brought him up to the third floor.

He
frowned for another few seconds, then decided to let it go. “It’s that lawyer
up the street, that Pichea. He’s downstairs trying to get a posse together, and
of course Vinnie Buttone is only too happy to sign on. I was sure you’d want to
know about it.”

“Posse
to do what?”

“To
get the county to come for the old lady’s dogs. He says they’ve been creating a
nuisance for twenty-four hours and no one’s answering her bell.”

I
remembered wondering why she hadn’t come to her window this morning. “Isn’t the
boy worried about Mrs. Frizell?”

“You
think something’s happened to her?” His eyes grew large in his weather-beaten
face.

“I
don’t think anything. She might not answer her door because she knows it’s
Pichea and he’s a pain in the tail. On the other hand, she might be unconscious
in the bath. I think before we get the county to haul her dogs away we ought to
see where she is and what she has to say.”

He
trailed behind me when I returned to the living room to describe the situation
to Carol. “I’m going to see if something’s wrong with her. I know I’ve just
been lecturing you against succoring the world—but I would appreciate
on-the-spot medical expertise if she’s had a stroke or something.”

Carol
gave a twisted smile. “You going to break and enter for a stranger, V.I.? Then
I guess I can come along and give her mouth-to-mouth if she needs it.”

The
police had confiscated my professional picklocks a number of years ago, but
during the winter I’d acquired some new ones—billed, of course, as “state of
the art”—at a security conference out at O’Hare. Tonight might be my first
chance to use them. The thrill was less than overwhelming: the razor edge of
excitement that comes from chasing and being chased seems to diminish with age.
I stuck the picklocks in a jacket pocket and went downstairs with Mr. Contreras
and Carol.

“Hi,
Todd, Vinnie. Getting the lynch mob together?”

The
two looked enough alike to be brothers—white men in their mid-thirties with
blow-dried, carefully cut hair and square, conventionally good-looking faces
now flushed in righteous anger. My neighbor and I had enjoyed, if that’s the
word, a rapprochement while he’d been having an affair with a set designer I
liked. But when Back left him, Vinnie and I went back to a more natural
hostility. So far I hadn’t found anything that brought me closer to Todd
Pichea, even for an afternoon.

Hovering
behind Pichea were a couple of women I recognized vaguely from the block. One
was a plump blonde in her fifties or sixties, wearing black stretch pants that
revealed the sags of time. The second woman made the pair an ad for “Then and
Now on Racine Avenue.” Her spandex leggings hugged a body toned to perfection
in a gym. The diamond drops in her ears showed up the clunkiness of the older
woman’s faux pearls, and the impatient frown marring her perfect complexion
contrasted sharply with the other’s expression of plain worry.

Pichea’s
scowl deepened when he heard me. “Look, Warshawski, I know you don’t give a
damn about the value of your property, but you ought to respect the rights of
others.”

“I
am. I do. It’s been a while since I studied constitutional law, but isn’t there
at least an implication in the Fourth Amendment that Mrs. Frizell has the right
to be secure in her own home?”

Pichea
tightened his lips into a thin line. “As long as she isn’t creating a public
nuisance. I don’t know why you have such a hot spot for the old bag, but if you
lived across the street and had those damned dogs keeping you awake you’d
change your tune fast enough.”

“Oh,
I don’t know. If I knew you were on her case I could probably bring myself to
tolerate the barking. You work for some big downtown firm, you’ve got a lot of
connections in the courts, and you want to use all your muscle to smash some
helpless old woman. She’s been living here a long time, you know—forty or fifty
years. She didn’t try to stop you coming in and ruining the street for her. Why
don’t you engage in a little reciprocity?”

“That’s
the thing,” the older woman broke in in an anxious voice. “Hattie—Harriet—Mrs.
Frizell—has never been an easy neighbor, but she minds her own business as long
as you mind yours. Only, I’m kind of worried, I haven’t seen her since
yesterday morning, so when I saw this gentleman ringing her bell I went over to
see what the problem was—”

“Ruining
the street? Ruining the street?” The woman in spandex barked sharply. “Todd and
I improved this rattail block. We spent a hundred grand fixing up that house
and yard—they’d look like her place if not for us.”

“Yeah,
but you’re disturbing her peace, trying to force her out of her home, put her
dogs to sleep, whatever.”

Before
the argument could escalate further, Carol put a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go
see if the lady’s home and awake, Vic. We can sort out who’s done the most harm
to the street later.”

The
older woman smiled gratefully at her. “Yes. I’m kind of worried. Only, she can
be rude if you bother her, but if we all went together…”

Our
convoy moved slowly to the front sidewalk. “I’m giving her fair warning,”
Pichea said to Vinnie. “The next time those dogs are out barking past ten I’ll
see her ass in court.”

“And
that will make you feel like a real he-man, I suppose?” I shot over my
shoulder.

Pichea
gave a contemptuous laugh. “I can understand why you’re so worked up: you’re
scared you’ll end up alone and crazy at eighty-five, with nothing but a bunch
of flea-ridden dogs to keep you company.”

“Well,
Pichea, if you’re an example of the available talent, I’d rather be alone till
I’m eighty-five.”

Carol
grabbed my arm and hustled me up the street. “Come on, Vic. I don’t mind you
dragging me into your business, but don’t make me listen to this crap. I could
lean out my back door and hear it in the alley if I were interested.”

I was
sufficiently abashed to ignore Pichea’s follow-up comment—an ostentatious
whisper to his wife that I needed a good lay—but not sorry I’d picked up the
cudgels to begin with. In fact, I kind of wished I’d given him a good punch in
the sternum.

As
soon as Pichea and I stopped brangling we could hear the dogs. The Lab was
filling the night with a deep-throated baying; the earmuff responded with a
higher-pitched antiphon, and the three inside were providing a faint
accompaniment echoed by the rest of the dogs on the street. Behind us even
Peppy interrupted her nursing with an occasional bark. So maybe Mrs. Frizell
wasn’t the most wonderful neighbor in the world. But why couldn’t the Picheas
have stayed in Lincoln Park where they belonged?

When
we opened Mrs. Frizell’s front gate the Lab rushed over and jumped up at me. I
grabbed his front paws before he could knock me off balance.

“Easy,
guy, easy. We just want to see if your mistress is okay.”

I
dropped his legs and went up the shallow steps to the door. I knocked my shin
against an old metal chair and swore under my breath. Fortunately Mr. Contreras
had remembered a flashlight. He shone it on the door while I worked the locks.

“Stupid
jerks are afraid of the dogs. Afraid of being caught breaking and entering with
you. That lawyer’s the kind of management creep you got to watch out for: can’t
do his dirty work for himself, gets on the phone and hires someone to do it for
him.”

“Yeah,”
I grunted. “Hold the light steady, okay?”

The
lock should have taken me thirty seconds, but the Lab kept rushing at my legs
until Carol managed to grab him by the scruff and hang on to him. After that I
only had to contend with Mr. Contreras’s moving the light as he emphasized his contempt
for Todd and Vinnie. It was a good five minutes before I finally felt the
simple latch click back.

As
soon as I opened the door the other dogs, who’d been barking and scratching on
the other side, came pelting out at us. Behind me I could hear a sharp yell
from one of the guys, and then a yelp from one of the dogs.

“Did
you see that?” I couldn’t tell if the angry squeak belonged to Todd or Vinnie.
“That damned mutt bit me.”

“Will
the perpetrator step forward for a dog biscuit and a medal?” I said, but under
my breath.

The
stench in the house was so bad that I wanted to get in and out as fast as
possible. I took the light from Mr. Contreras and shone it around the entryway,
hoping to find a light switch. The inside dogs had been relieving themselves by
the door and I didn’t want to step in the mess. I couldn’t see a switch, so I
got as clear a look as possible at the dimensions of the urine and did a
standing broad jump across it.