I smiled. “Nothing I need a zoning permit for, sugar, so don’t wear out your brain worrying about it.”
“Well, if you don’t stop doing it in the stairwells, I really will call the cops.” He slammed his door shut on me.
I stomped back up the stairs. Now he’d have something substantial to tell his girlfriend or his mother or whoever he phoned at night. I live to serve others.
Back in my apartment I turned the little oven on again and started cooking mushrooms and onions in some red wine. Getting the picture of Elena heading east on the Diversey bus made me feel a bit easier. That sounded as though she had a specific destination in mind. In the morning, as a sop to my conscience, I’d talk to one of my police department pals. Maybe they wouldn’t mind tracking down the bus driver, find out if he remembered her and where she’d headed when she’d left the bus. Maybe I’d be the first woman on the moon—stranger things have happened.
It was well after ten when I finally sat down with my dinner. The chop was cooked to a turn, just pink inside, and the glazed mushrooms complemented it perfectly. I’d eaten about half of it when the phone rang. I debated letting it go, then thought of Elena. If she’d been trying to sell her ass on Clark Street it could be the cops wanting me to bail her out.
It was a police officer, but he didn’t know Elena and he was calling for purely personal reasons. At least partly personal reasons. I’d met Michael Furey when I went to the Mallorys’ last New Year’s Day for dinner. His father and Bobby had grown up together in Norwood Park. When Michael joined the police fresh out of junior college, Bobby kept an avuncular eye on him. In Chicago people look after their own, but Bobby is a scrupulously honorable cop—he wouldn’t use personal influence to promote a friend’s son’s career. The boy proved himself on his own, though; after fifteen years Bobby was glad to welcome him into the Violent Crimes Unit at the Central District.
For a while following the transfer Eileen invited the two of us up to dinner on a regular basis. She longed not so much for my second marriage as for my children—she kept trotting the brightest and best of the Chicago police by me in the hopes that one of them would look like good father material to me.
Eileen belonged to the generation that believes a guy with a good set of wheels is more appealing than one who can afford only a Honda. Furey had a little money— his father’s life insurance, he said, which he’d been able to invest—and he drove a silver Corvette. He was attractive and cheerful, and I did like driving the Corvette, but we didn’t have much except the Mallorys and a love of sports in common. Our relationship settled into an occasional trip to the Stadium or a ball game together. Eileen masked her disappointment but stopped the dinner invitations.
“Vic! Glad I caught you in,” Michael boomed cheerfully into my ear.
I finished chewing. “Hiya, Michael. What’s up?”
“Just got off shift. Thought I’d check in and see how you’re doing.”
“Why, Michael,” I said with mock sincerity, “how thoughtful of you. How long has it been—a month or so?-and you check in with me at ten P.M.?”
He laughed a little consciously. “Aw, heck, Vic. You know how it is. I got something to ask and I don’t want you taking it the wrong way.”
“Try me.”
“It’s—uh, well, just I didn’t know you were interested in county politics.”
“I’m not especially.” I was surprised.
“Ernie told me you’re listed as a sponsor for the Fuentes fund-raiser out at Boot’s farm on Sunday.”
“News sure do travel fast,” I said lightly, but I felt myself tensing in reflexive annoyance—I hate having my activities monitored. “How does Ernie know and why does he care?”
Ernie Wunsch and Ron Grasso had grown up with Michael on the northwest side. The odd political jobs they’d done as teenagers and young adults hadn’t hurt them any when they decided to join Ernie’s dad’s general contracting firm after college. Their company wasn’t one of the giants, but more and more often you saw cement trucks with Wunsch & Grasso’s red and green stripes at construction sites. Their biggest coup had been getting the bid on the Rapelec complex, an office-condo center under construction near the Gold Coast.
“I was afraid you’d take this the wrong way,” Michael said plaintively. “Ernie doesn’t care. He knows because he and his old man have done a certain amount of work for the county over the years. So of course he gets asked to all the fund-raisers. You know how it is in Chicago, Vic—if you do business with the city or the county, you gotta engage in a little reciprocity.”
I knew how it was.
“So of course they got an advance look at the program. And Ernie knows you and I are—well, friends. So he mentioned it. Not something you really need to get hot about.”