32
Sand in the Pocket
On my way over to Mona’s place, I stopped at La Llorona for tortilla-chicken soup, which I ate at traffic lights. Between my bulky clothes and my sore hand, I spilled a lot of it and got to Mona’s building looking like a toddler who’d just been introduced to solid food. I dabbed at the spots with a tissue but gave up when I realized I was covering my coat with white pilling. I definitely should join the slow-food movement—this eating on the run is as hard on the wardrobe as it is on the digestion.
Parking on the North Side is always a challenge, and with the improvised territorial markers, as well as the ridges of ice blocking access to curbs, it was impossible. I finally left the car in front of a hydrant and hoped the police had too much else on their minds to bother with ticketing side streets.
Up on the fourth floor, Mona’s apartment looked much the same as it had on my first visit. As I worked my picks into the padlock, cumbrously because of my sore hand, a door opened at the far end of the corridor. I glanced down the hall and saw that it was the same unit where someone had peered out when I first came here with Chad’s parents. In the dim light I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Hello!” I called. “Can you come here and hold a flashlight on the lock for me?”
The figure scuttled back into its own apartment. I laughed softly, but hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to call the cops. The lock finally clicked loose, and I went into Mona’s vestibule.
I turned on all the lights. A week had added a film of dust to the room, making the destruction look more wanton and more permanent. No wonder Mona was staying with her ex-husband. The room was so cold, so dreary, that I found myself tiptoeing through it to the bedroom.
Chad’s duffel bag was still on the floor, with clothes spilling out of the top like beer foam over the brim of a glass. When I’d been here before, I’d given the bag only a cursory look. Now I pulled everything out, laying each piece on the bed, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a vest. I looked in Mona’s closets and behind all the doors, where people sometimes drape coats or bathrobes. I found Mona’s pink flannel bathrobe, with a fuzzy rabbit stitched to one pocket, and Chad’s parka. I searched the parka but discovered only chewing gum, a business card from a tattoo parlor, and half a bagel, rock-hard by now.
I went back into the bedroom to return Chad’s clothes to his bag. I ran my hand around the bottom to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything and felt sand. I wondered if Chad had brought back part of the Iraqi desert as a souvenir.
I probably wouldn’t have looked at it, except I was frustrated by all the dead ends I’d run into recently. I hunted around the apartment for a newspaper that I could empty it onto, and finally found a roll of butcher paper in the kitchen. I laid a sheet of it on the bed and carefully emptied the bag onto it. The stuff looked like gray sand, or maybe crushed gravel. I stared at it for a long minute, then folded the butcher paper into a tidy oblong. I tucked the ends inside each other to keep the gravelly sand from spilling out, and stuck the little bundle into my red leather bag.
I took the duffel into the bathroom to shake the last grains in the tub. A black pocket fell out, too. Perhaps it had been caught in the duffel bag’s seams—I hadn’t felt it when I ran my hand through the interior.
The pocket was made of a thick black cloth, about the size of an oven mitt. There were a number of holes in the heavy fabric, which went all the way through both sides. I guess that was how the sand had leaked out. I stuck my fingers inside the mitt and felt more sand inside. THIS SIDE FACES OUT had been embossed on the outside, although the holes partially obliterated the words.
A black oblong. This was what Chad had been holding out to Nadia in the parking lot the night before she was murdered. Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is, he’d said. But what was it?
I went back to Mona’s kitchen for a clean plastic bag. It was when I was putting the black mitt in the bag that I felt the image stamped into the fabric just below one of the holes. I held the mitt under the light. The design, a kind of trefoil, looked familiar, and I frowned trying to remember where I’d seen it. As I turned the mitt sideways to fit into the resealable bag, I suddenly recognized the design—the pink-and-gray scrolls Nadia had painted on the Body Artist looked just like this.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was what connected Nadia to Chad. But what was it? When Chad saw the scrolls, he was sure that Nadia was making fun of him. I stared at the mitt in the plastic bag, then pulled the butcher paper from my purse and put it in the bag with the mitt.
I looked around the apartment. What else had I overlooked when I was here before? I went through the garbage in the bathroom, the bedroom, and the kitchen, but I only found a discarded razor blade, a bunch of tissues, and some fairly ripe banana skins. If I had infinite resources, I’d bag all the garbage and send it up to Cheviot for analysis, but the mitt seemed the one important item. I finally left, putting the hasp back in the padlock.
Just as the elevator doors opened, I decided I needed to be more thorough. I went down the hall to see who had come out to watch me. As nearly as I could tell, it had been the third apartment on the left. I knocked, several times, and finally a woman of eighty or so peered through a crack in the door.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski.” I flashed my ID at her. “I’m a detective working on the Vishneski case. You seem like the only observant person on this floor. Have you seen people coming in and out of the Vishneski apartment besides the family?”
“Can I see that ID of yours again, Missy? How do I know it’s not a fake?”
“You don’t, of course.” I held it up to the crack in the door.
The State of Illinois, Division of Professional Regulation, had duly certified that I had completed all required training, and was of good moral character. I could be a licensed private detective. The woman frowned from the card to my face and decided we were the same person, even though it didn’t have my picture on it.
I repeated my question. The hall was so dimly lit, I couldn’t believe she’d be able to identify anyone even if she’d noticed them.
“I haven’t seen anyone. Of course, Mona Vishneski, when she came home Monday, that was a shock for her to find her door broken in like that. I don’t know why the cops thought they had to do that. When I heard the noise, well, it woke me up—I’m sure it woke everyone up. Only, you know what people are like, don’t get involved, MYOB. That’s what gets people killed, too much MYOB—”
“Right,” I interrupted. “I could tell you’re a concerned citizen. What about the night before the police picked up Chad? When did he come home?”
Her mouth scrunched up in thought.
“I couldn’t sleep. I was watching TV in the front room and heard them going down the hall, him and his buddies. He knew they made too much noise, but he isn’t careful about it. That one time Mr. Dorrit complained, Chad swore at him in an ugly way, and it really did frighten us. He’s so big, you know, and he’s a soldier. If he shot us, he’d just tell the judge he was protecting America from terrorists and the judge’d let him go.”
I started to wonder how reliable anything she said might be, but she knew where she was heading.
“See, that night, that night he shot that woman in the nightclub, I heard them coming off the elevator. And I just peeked, you know. Turned out my light so they couldn’t see me. Like I did this afternoon when you showed up.”
“And? Who was with Chad?”
“Not his usual friends. These men, they came out of an office, not off the streets like the bums he usually brings home. They were laughing, slapping him on the back, like they were encouraging him to get louder, and I thought, that’s not very responsible of you even if you do work in an office instead of digging sewers. There’s Mrs. Lacey, with a new baby, and Mr. Dorrit, he has cancer, you got to be more considerate. But then they went into Mrs. Vishneski’s place, and, I will say this, the soundproofing in this building is good enough, once he gets inside, you don’t really hear him carrying on.”
“When did the other men leave?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell you that, Missy. I’d gone to bed, I was asleep, I didn’t hear them. But Mr. Dorrit, he was out walking his dog, he’s got that little dachshund. He said they took out Mona Vishneski’s garbage with them, put it in the dumpster out in the alley. Those other boys would never have done such a thoughtful thing.”
No, indeed. I thanked the woman and backed away from her down the hall. She was ready to keep talking all night; she believed minding your own business got people killed, and, by gum, she was going to keep her whole building safe by reporting every detail that she could.
When I was here last week, I should have followed my first impulse, to canvass the building. Damn it, why hadn’t I? It was inexcusably sloppy detective work. I’d assumed Chad came home alone. And even after the people at Cheviot labs found roofies in his beer can, I hadn’t tried to see who might have doctored the beer.
While I’d been talking to the woman, Petra had been texting me, Tim R here, don’t no wht u want him 2 do.
On my way, I texted back. I guessed she was nervous about being left in charge and didn’t want to give him instructions on her own.
Before I left, though, I knocked on Mr. Dorrit’s door. Maybe I was doing too little, too late, but he might be able to describe Chad’s companions. The dachshund barked frenziedly, hurling itself at the door.
After a moment, I heard a slow step on the other side, saw a ghastly eye magnified at the peephole, and finally the sound of locks being turned back.
“No solicitation in this building, young lady.”
I’ve never enjoyed the “young lady” greeting, and as I age I like it less and less, but I put on my best public face: confident, friendly. “No solicitation intended. I’m a detective investigating Chad Vishneski. I hear you saw the men who came home with him last week.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
I jerked my head down the hall toward his neighbor.
“Mrs. Murdstone,” he sighed. “Always minding everyone else’s business but her own.”
“What did they look like?”
“How should I know? I barely saw them. I was just trying to keep Wood-E here from going after them. He bites strangers.” He had the dachshund in his arms, but the dog was squirming, wanting to get at me.
I tried to look even friendlier. “How many were there?” I asked.
“Two, far as I could tell.”
“Were they white? Chinese?”
“White, I guess,” he said grudgingly after a moment.
“Tall? Short?”
“About average. Taller than you, but not by much.”
“About Chad’s age?”
“Maybe some older. More like your age, I reckon. What are you, forty?”
“Lucky guess.” In the dim light, anything was possible. “You know how they always have some trick in the detective stories: the guy limped, he had a scar on his face, he wore a ring with a Celtic cross in it. Anything stand out for you?”
“A Celtic cross? I don’t think . . . Oh, I get it. You mean, did one of them have anything odd that would make you know him if you saw him again?”
He was definitely going to the head of the class after this. I nodded, my warm, empathic smile beginning to make my cheeks ache.
“Not so I could say,” he said. “Real expensive clothes—I thought that at the time. You know, soft overcoat, not a parka like the rest of us put on. That all?”
He closed the door on Wood-E’s disappointed whine—my nose apparently had looked like a tasty snack. Dorrit was sliding the dead bolt home when he changed his mind and opened the door again. “One of them, he had this gold pin. It was like a military medal. Sort of like my Vietnam service medal, don’t you see. The guy didn’t look like a soldier, but I thought at the time that that was how they knew Chad. They’d been in Iraq together.”
“Thanks, Mr. Dorrit.” I stopped trying to grin and felt embarrassed instead. He really did belong at the head of the class.
I thought it over as I got on the elevator. Expensive clothes, military service medal. Maybe Tim Radke would know. Maybe one of them had been Tim Radke. True, he wasn’t anywhere near forty. But his pock-marked face made him look older, especially in a bad light.
The building super was out front salting the walks again. I asked him when garbage was picked up for the building. Tuesdays. Even if I’d talked to the old woman my first time here, I would have been too late to look in the Dumpster. A very minor consolation.
I started to build a frame, an outline, of what had happened the night Nadia was murdered. Two men came home with Chad. Where had they picked him up? Outside Plotzky’s bar? Or had they been waiting for him to come home? They took him upstairs, they fed him doctored beer, they put the Baby Glock in his flaccid hand when he’d passed out. And then they’d taken something—the vest Chad wanted?—out to the garbage. They’d waited until morning to call the cops, maybe figuring that Chad would be dead by then. One of them wore an Armed Forces service medal. But who were they?
While I waited at the long light on Broadway, I called Lotty, who was working late at her clinic. “Your Dr. Rafael worked a miracle with Chad Vishneski. He came to and asked for his vest.”
“Vic, I have eleven people waiting to see me. Don’t bother me with talk about clothes.”
“Lotty, before you hang up . . . We shouldn’t advertise the fact that he’s recovering. I don’t want the state’s attorney to pronounce him fit enough to move to County Jail. I’d like to see him live until his trial date, if we can’t get them to vacate the arrest.”
“I’ll talk to Eve about it.” Lotty’s mind wasn’t on my problem. “I’m backed up here for another two hours, so if that’s all—”
“Lotty, if he goes back to the prison hospital, or to the jail itself, he may be murdered, with his death conveniently blamed on some gang-banger in the jail. I think he was supposed to die of an overdose, and it’s only because he’s got some superhuman genes that he’s still alive now. We can’t risk sending—”
“Victoria, I don’t care why you think this: it doesn’t matter. What matters is my intensive care unit. I cannot have it turned into a war zone. If someone may attack Chad Vishneski in my hospital, then you must move him somewhere else. Too many other lives are at stake.”
“Find out how movable he is. If he doesn’t need to be on a ventilator, or whatever, maybe I can park him with Mr. Contreras.”
“With those dogs bounding around? Victoria, you have no . . . Oh, never mind. I can’t think about it now. I’ll call Eve Rafael tomorrow. We’ll go over Chad’s situation and get back to you.”