He shook his head. “If that was the case, he’d just be putting an arm on them to use his trucks, not offing Nancy. I’m not saying it’s impossible he was involved. The plant’s certainly in his sphere. But it doesn’t leap out at me on the surface.”
We let the talk drift after that, to friends we had in common at the Illinois bar, to my cousin Boom-Boom, whom Kappelman used to watch at the Stadium when he was with the Hawks.
“There’s never been another player like him,” Kappelman said regretfully.
“You’re telling me.” I got up and put on my coat. “So if you come across something strange—anything, whether it seems to have a direct bearing on Nancy’s death or not—give me a call, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” His gaze seemed a little unfocused. He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind, shook my hand, and escorted me to the door.
18
In His Father’s Shadow
I didn’t disbelieve Kappelman. I didn’t believe him, either. I mean the guy made a living persuading judges and commissioners to support community groups instead of the industrial or political heavyweights they usually favored. Despite his frayed trousers and jacket, I suspected he was pretty convincing. And if Nancy and he were the good buddies he claimed they’d been, was it really credible that she hadn’t given him the ghost of an idea about what she’d learned from the alderman’s office?
Of course it was a little pat on my part looking for Dresberg to be the fall guy. Just because he had made threats in the past and had a lot of muscle and was interested in waste disposal.
I meandered across side streets and headed into East Side, to the ward offices on Avenue M. It was a little after three and the place was hopping. I passed a couple of patrol cops coming out. When I got into the main office my old pals with the paunches were hard at it with a half-dozen or so favor-seekers. Another couple, maybe patronage workers through with street cleaning for the day, were playing checkers in the window.
Nobody really looked at me, but the conversations quieted down, “I’m looking for young Art,” I said amiably in the direction of the bald man who’d been the spokesman on my first visit.
“Not here,” he said briefly, without looking up.
“When do you expect him?”
The three office workers exchanged the silent communication I’d observed earlier and agreed that my question warranted a slight chuckle.
“We don’t,” Baldy said, going back to his client.
“Do you know where else I could find him?”
“We don’t keep tabs on the kid,” Baldy expanded, thinking perhaps of the claim drafts they were expecting from me. “Sometimes he shows up in the afternoon, sometimes he don’t. He hasn’t been in today so he might turn up. You never know.”
“I see.” I picked up the Sun-Times from his desk and sat in one of the chairs lining the wall. It was an old wooden one, yellow and scuffed, extremely uncomfortable. I read “Sylvia,” skimmed the sports pages, and tried interesting myself in the latest Greylord trial, shifting my pelvis around on the hard surface in an unsuccessful search for a spot that wouldn’t rub against my bones. After about half an hour I gave it up and put one of my cards on Baldy’s desk.
“V. I. Warshawski. I’ll try back in a bit. Tell him to call me if I miss him.”
Except for the blueberry muffin Ron Kappelman had given me, I hadn’t really eaten today. I went down to the comer of Ewing, where a neighborhood bar advertised submarines and Italian beef, and had a meatball sub with a draft. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but it seemed more suited to the neighborhood than diet soda.
When I got back to the ward office the visitors had pretty well cleared out except for the checker players in the comer. Baldy shook his head at me to indicate—I think—that young Art hadn’t been in. I felt proud of myself—I was beginning to seem like a regular.
I pulled a little spiral notebook from my bag. To entertain myself while I waited I tried calculating the expenses I’d incurred since starting to look for Caroline Djiak’s old man. I’ve always been a little jealous of Kinsey Milhone’s immaculate record-keeping; I didn’t even have receipts for meals or gas. Certainly not for cleaning up the Magli pumps, which was going to run close to thirty dollars.
I’d gotten up to two hundred and fifty when young Art came in with his usual diffident step. There was something in his face, a naked desire for acceptance from the tired old pols in the room, that made me flinch. They looked at him unblinkingly, waiting for him to speak. And finally he obliged.
“Any—anything for me from my dad?” He licked his lips reflexively.
Baldy shook his head and returned to his paper. “Lady wants to talk to you,” he said from the depths of the Sun-Times.