“You didn’t know that when you called?” His tone was puzzled, not accusatory.
“I never saw the young woman before-the mother of the baby—until she came to my place late last night. She’d left the kid with her own mother, Zerlina Ramsay, at the Indiana Arms, and she didn’t want me talking to Mrs. Ramsay. She said if I knew their last name it would get her mother in trouble, that she’d never find another place to stay. She’s a junkie, though—I don’t know if that came from drug-related paranoia or real concern about her mother or what.”
We were standing on the pavement near the curb. Patrolmen heading up State toward the entrance kept brushing against us. When I stepped aside to avoid a man being decanted from a stretch limo, I ran into a woman trotting down the street toward Dearborn.
“Can’t you watch where you’re going?” she snapped at me.
I opened my mouth to utter a guerrilla hostility back, then thought maybe I’d done enough fighting for one day and ignored her.
Robin looked at his watch. “I don’t need to go back to the office. Want to get a drink someplace? I’m afraid if someone else bumps into us, Monty’s going to have us arrested, the mood he’s in.”
I suddenly felt very tired. I’d been running since eight this morning cleaning up after Elena and Cerise. People as different as Lotty and Roland Montgomery had been chewing me out. A clean well-lighted place and a glass of whiskey sounded like doctor’s orders to me.
Robin had taken a cab up from Ajax. He walked back to the Chevy with me and we headed through the early rush-hour traffic to the Golden Glow, a bar I know and love in the south Loop. We left the car at a meter down near Congress and walked the three blocks back to the bar, Sal Barthele, the owner, was alone with a couple of men nursing beers at the mahogany horseshoe counter. She nodded majestically at me when I took Robin over to a small round table in the corner. She waited until we were settled and Robin had exclaimed over the genuine Tiffany lamps to take our orders.
“Your usual, Vic?” Sal asked when Robin had ordered a beer.
My usual is Black Label up. I pictured Elena’s flushed, veined face and my missing credit cards. I remembered Zerlina’s admonition to keep three thousand bottles behind Elena. Then I thought, hell, I’m thirty-seven years old. If I was going to get drunk every time life threatened me, I would have started in years ago. When I feel like having a whiskey, I’ll have a whiskey.
“Yes,” I said more vehemently than I’d meant.
“You sure about that, girl?” Sal mocked me gently, then went to the bar to fill our order. Sal’s a shrewd businesswoman. The Glow is only one of her investments and she could easily afford to turn it over to a manager. But it also was her first venture and she likes to preside over it in person.
Robin took a swallow of his draft and opened his eyes in appreciation. “I’ve probably walked by here a hundred times going to the Insurance Exchange. How could I have missed this stuff?”
Sal’s draft is made for her privately by a small brewer in Steven’s Point. I’m not a beer lover, but my pals who are think it’s pretty hot stuff.
I told Robin a little about Sal and her operations, then steered the talk back to the Indiana Arms. “You ever find any evidence that the owner was trying to sell the place?”
Robin shook his head. “Too early to tell. His limits aren’t out of line, but that doesn’t matter. It’s really more a question of what’s going on with the building and him and his finances. We haven’t got that far yet.”
“What does Montgomery say?”
Robin frowned and finished his beer before answering. “Nothing. He’s not going to dedicate any more resources into investigating the arson.”
“And you don’t agree?” I drank a glass of water, then swallowed the rest of my scotch. The warmth spread slowly from my stomach to my arms and some of the tension the day had put into my shoulders disappeared.
“We never pay a claim when arson is involved. I mean, not unless we’re a hundred percent sure the insured didn’t engineer it.”
He held up his glass to Sal and she brought over another draft. She had the Black Label bottle with her but I shook my head over the idea of seconds. Elena must have been affecting me after all.
“I just don’t understand Montgomery, though. I’ve worked with him before. He’s not an easy guy—not much looseness there—but I’ve never seen him as nasty as he was to you this afternoon.”
“Must be my charm,” I said lightly. “It hits some men that way.” I didn’t think it was worth explaining my theory about Montgomery and Bobby Mallory to a stranger.