The Pink Flamingo Murders (4 page)

“Oh, I’m sure she’s seen them,” I said. Love must have melted his brain. Charlie was better at cover-ups than this. But he kept fumbling around like a teenager.

“I mean the South Side,” he snapped.

“Me, too. Good night, Charlie. Night, Nadia.” I sauntered down the alley, which was dangerous, but not as dangerous as what I’d just done. I’d better enjoy this moment, because the rest of the summer was going to be hell. Nails would not forget this encounter.

I woke up to sirens screaming past my flat at seven
A.M
. I ran to the window. A fire truck was roaring down the street, fast and furious as a charging rhino. Two police cars, their sirens echoing off the brick walls, followed. If that wasn’t enough noise, the fire truck let go with a window-rattling blast of its air horn. That brought out Mrs. Gruenloh, three doors down, in a blue seersucker robe. Good heavens. Her gray hair was bristling with Spoolies, those pink rubber curlers that folded down on themselves. I hadn’t seen them since I was a kid, but I still remembered how much they hurt. Mrs. G. must be a masochist. I quit wondering about her pain threshold when a third police car screamed down the street. Something seriously bad had happened. I threw on some jeans, sandals, and a shirt. As I ran down my front stairs, I could see the EMS ambulance, with more flashing lights and sirens. I ran after it.

They were all on North Dakota Place, at Otto’s house. The police and emergency vehicles were parked as if a careless child had dropped them. The medics were trying to revive Otto. I could see them working on his fat, rubbery body, but it seemed useless. Otto was an odd gray-green. He clashed horribly with the purple house paint. His little dog, an ugly black imp, was yapping so hard it was almost bouncing in the air, but no one paid any attention. One of Otto’s ladders
was up against the house. The other was sprawled out on the ground, along with Otto and a spilled bucket of purple paint. It looked like Otto had had a heart attack. I wasn’t surprised. The beer cans and cigar butts littering the yard proclaimed Otto was no heart association poster child.

The North Dakota Place neighbors were clustered together on the sidewalk. Dina the punster was wearing striped Kliban cat pajamas and carrying a matching striped cat. Jeez, that woman even accessorized her sleepwear. That must be her man, Stan. He was a handsome dog, if I can say that about a cat.

Patricia, the tall drink of water, was wearing a navy T-shirt that made her dark blue eyes look like huge blue lakes. Today her shirt said she was saving wetlands waterfowl. Caroline the Rehab Wonderwoman was pushing her usual wheelbarrow. This one was loaded with dead leaves. Her paint-splotched cutoffs and stretched T-shirt looked like the same ones she wore last night. Maybe she never stopped working.

Margie was in an egg-stained pink cotton bathrobe, carrying the
Gazette
she must have just picked off her lawn. She moved very carefully, as if it hurt to walk. Her brown hair needed a wash, and she looked like she needed her morning coffee. I grew up with drunks and thought I recognized a hangover. Maybe whiskey really did give her voice that sexy rasp. By this time the EMS crew had loaded Otto into the ambulance. They drove off with their lights flashing and sirens howling. Hansie, the ugly little dog, added his own howl, a single sad note that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. None of us expected to see Otto alive again.

Dina had no puns for this occasion. “Otto was a slob and a troublemaker,” she said, and looked solemn, even with Stan under her arm and cats cavorting on her pajamas.

“I don’t think anyone will miss him,” Margie said. “I certainly won’t.”

“Maybe now we’ll get a nice couple in Otto’s house,” Caroline said, parking her wheelbarrow in the middle of the sidewalk. She was almost chatty. “His passing will do a lot of good for the neighborhood.”

“Does he have any relatives?” I asked. I had visions of fat, rude junior Ottos polluting the neighborhood with more cigars and noisy dogs.

“Just a grown nephew who lives in Columbia,” Caroline answered. “Richard is a tenured professor at the University of Missouri. He’ll stay there. He’s not interested in uprooting himself a hundred and twenty miles to St. Louis.”

Caroline seemed surprisingly well informed about her old enemy. But before I could ask how she knew all this, both she and Margie said, “Look at that!” and pointed in different directions. I followed Margie’s pointing finger to a glorious sight: a muscular male jogger, glistening with sweat and wearing the briefest possible running shorts. He glided straight down the grassy boulevard. I thought he looked like Daniel Day-Lewis in the opening scene of
The Last of the Mohicans
.

So did Dina. “Holy Hawkeye,” she said, almost dropping Stan in her excitement. The perfect man gets dumped for the perfect bod every time. “That’s why God made running clothes.” The jogger was a dead ringer for Hawkeye, right down to the perky pecs and long dark hair. All he needed was a loincloth. Or maybe not. He’d upped the local temperature enough in this outfit.

“Is he gay?” the practical Margie rasped. She wasn’t going to waste her time admiring a man who couldn’t ask her for a date.

“That is an offensive question,” Patricia said. I took another look at her. I’d considered her scrawny and
rather plain, except for those startling blue eyes. But now I saw how pretty she was. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her mouth was as moist as a lipstick ad. She seemed slender and fit rather than stringy. Then it dawned on my morning-fogged brain: Patricia had a major crush on this man.

“He comes by here at exactly eight o’clock every morning,” she said, checking her watch as if he were the incoming Metroliner. “He runs five miles a day and takes the same route through the neighborhood. He’s into recycling, holistic medicine, and natural foods. He gave me excellent advice about a whey protein drink.”

“I like mine shaken, not stirred,” Margie rasped.

“Whey to go, Hawkeye Hunk,” Dina punned. Her cat Stan squirmed.

“You are both too silly to have a serious discussion,” Patricia sniffed, and waved to the jogger, who slowed down to talk to her. He looked very serious. She looked very happy.

Caroline sounded unhappy and angry. We turned in her direction, now that the distraction of the jogger had run its course. A muscular young black man in baggy gang clothes was shouting “You talkin’ to me, bitch?”

“I am,” Caroline yelled. “How can you sell that poison to your own people? You are destroying your race. Get off my street.”

“You don’t own this street, bitch,” the menacing young man snarled.

“Fat lot he knows,” Margie muttered, but she ran over and grabbed Caroline by the arm. “Come along, Caroline, we’ve already called the police,” she lied. By the time Margie tugged at Caroline’s arm the second time, the young man had melted down the street and was lost in the shadows of the angel fountain, a devil hiding among the angels.

“He was selling crack on my street. In broad daylight. To another young black man, who ran off when I shouted at them,” the outraged Caroline said.

“So call the police,” Margie said. “If you get shot, what will it do to property values?” she added wickedly. Patricia gave her a dirty look. Dina held Stan closer. He struggled to get away, and I didn’t blame him.

“The police won’t do anything,” Caroline fumed. “By the time they get here, he’ll be gone. They know where he lives and where he operates. They have to. I know.”

“Where?” I interrupted. Inquiring minds had to know.

“The first brick rowhouse on Ratley Street,” she said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He’s running a drive-up operation,” Caroline said in a superior tone. The semi-friendly Rehab Wonderwoman was gone. She couldn’t bother hiding her contempt at my ignorance. “Drive by there any night after midnight and you’ll see him in action. He’s using underage kids as runners to the cars, taking orders and money and delivering the drugs. He has everything but kids behind the counter asking ‘May I help you?’”

“McDrug,” Dina chirped.

“Why don’t the neighbors complain to the cops?” Margie asked. I thought it was a reasonable question. Caroline did not.

“On that street? You’ve got a handful of terrified elderly women, some working couples who are never home, and a boardinghouse for people who are no better than he is. They’re probably his customers. If you ask me, somebody ought to clean his house out, the way you’d clean out a nest of cockroaches. I’d crush him the way I’d crush a roach, too,” Caroline said, grinding her foot into the grass. Her face was cold and
hard. “He is ruining everything, and the courts coddle his kind and let them destroy the city for decent hardworking people.”

She looked frightening in her fury. I realized this was the second day in a row I’d seen Caroline pick a fight with someone on North Dakota Place.

“What’s he doing up here?” I asked. “He’s way off his turf. It’s a little early for someone who usually operates at night.”

“He’s expanding his territory,” she said impatiently. “He’s going after the shift change at the furniture factory. They drive right by that corner. I don’t want him on my street.” Caroline didn’t say this street. Or our street. My street.

“And it’s time I had a talk with that jogger, too,” she added sharply. “He’s running on the boulevard grass.”

“That’s what it’s for,” Margie snapped. She was coming to life at the prospect of a rematch with Caroline: Margie the Mauler against Caroline the Rehab Wonderwoman. “Believe me, Caroline, Hawkeye is part of the beautification program. If I could display his bod in the parkway, I would.”

“Not me,” Dina said, looking wicked. “I’d take it home and give it a workout in my bedroom gym. Love those pushups.”

Patricia flushed but said nothing. Caroline picked up her wheelbarrow and rolled off toward the angel fountain in search of stray sticks and beer cans, but she didn’t make it very far before we heard the wheelbarrow thud loudly on the sidewalk. “No! No, no, no!” she cried. I ran over to the other side of the angel fountain, half expecting to see another body. Instead, I saw a crumpled Caroline, making anguished cries, like a new widow in a war-zone news video.

An outraged Margie said, “You’re carrying on like that over a tree?”

“Six trees!” Caroline cried. “He broke my trees! My
babies. My babies are dead.” The sobs were so heartbroken, they could have been for real children. Dina rolled her eyes. It did seem a melodramatic outburst for six broken saplings.

“For heaven’s sake. Get a grip,” Dina said. There was nothing soft about her now. “You got those trees free from the city.”

“But they were doing so well,” Caroline wailed. “Then that no-good . . .”

“How do you know he even did it?” Margie cut in.

Caroline squared off into her fighting stance. “You’re defending a drug dealer?” she said. Her rage was frightening. Her whole body trembled.

Margie stayed irritatingly calm. “I’m just trying to find out if he really did the crime.”

“When I watered those trees this morning, they were fine,” Caroline said. “Not that
you
would notice. All you do is take advantage of my hard work and contribute nothing.”

“It’s true,” Margie said sarcastically. “I’m guilty. I’ve got a life. No thanks to you,” she added mysteriously. I had to admit I was curious about what had happened to the trees, but Otto, the other most likely suspect, had a fairly airtight alibi. So, I said my good-byes to the women, gave the sensible Stan a pat, and left them with the weeping, seething Caroline.

As I headed toward my street, Dale and Kathy came out on their porch. She was wearing the top of a pair of men’s striped pajamas. He was wearing the bottom. “What’s all the noise?” Kathy asked. “This was the one day we could sleep in.”

I told them about Otto’s heart attack and Caroline’s encounter with the drug dealer.

“That guy is pretty brazen,” Dale said. “I’ve seen him selling in broad daylight.”

“C’mon on inside and see our place,” Kathy said. “Dale’s making coffee. It will just take a minute.” I
didn’t know if she meant the coffee or the house tour, but I wanted something to take the bad taste of this morning out of my mouth. Their house looked like a smaller version of Margie’s—red brick with a wide, pillared porch—but it wasn’t as well maintained. The porch railing felt rough with rust. The wooden pillars, decorated with leaves and curlicues, were crusted with peeling paint. Kathy must have seen me staring at them. “We’ll have to burn that paint off with a blow torch,” she said.

“Caroline is pressuring us to do it now,” Dale said. “We want to finish some inside projects before we start on the outside.”

“But we’re afraid she’ll call the city on us if we don’t start soon,” Kathy said. They were so in tune, they finished each other’s sentences. “We don’t have a lot of money, and we’re afraid. She can make real problems for us.” Her pretty face looked ready to cry. Dale kissed her neck in a tender way that made me miss Lyle. “We’ll be okay,” he said to her. “We call Caroline the witch,” he said to me.

“But we mean something else,” Kathy giggled, her good mood restored by his kiss. She threw open the oak-and-beveled glass front door proudly. Inside was a desolate sight, about a half acre of dull, scratched hardwood floor, crusted with gritty gray plaster dust. The main hall led to a double parlor with pocket doors. I saw a drab, dusty staircase and a crooked doorway leading to a back kitchen, where I heard Dale clattering around with the coffee things. The walls were papered with a depressing gray-and-white scroll design that must have been classy fifty years ago. The brown water stains didn’t help.