“Want to give me her name and description? I could ask the boys to keep an eye out for her.”
“Ugh.” The last thing I wanted was for someone to drop Cerise on my doorstep again. On the other hand, for the sake of the fetus she was working on, someone ought to try to get her into a drug program. Why not the cops? I gave Michael the details.
“I don’t think this week is a good time for me to set a play date—I’ve been letting too many things slide and it’s starting to get me down. I’ll call next Monday or Tuesday, okay?”
“Yeah, Vic. Fine.” He hung up.
Furey was fundamentally good-natured. Caring enough to look out for a pregnant junkie he’d never seen. Eileen Mallory was right—he was good father material. I just wasn’t looking for a father. At least not for my unborn children.
I called Robin next. The lab they used had reported on the samples from the Indiana Arms. They’d confirmed his initial hunch on the accelerant—it had been paraffin.
I tried to force my mind to care about what he was saying. “Is it hard to buy?”
“It’s common,” he responded. “Easy to get hold of, even in large quantities, so I don’t think we can trace the user by looking for a purchaser. What’s interesting was the timing device they used to set the thing off. A hot plate had been plugged into it in the night man’s quarters.”
“So maybe the watchman had something to do with it.” Hard to think he didn’t if a timer was wired to his own appliance.
“The owner says he had only a night man at the desk, that he didn’t think the building warranted a watchman. We haven’t been able to locate the guy, though…. Vic, you’ve done a lot of work for Ajax in the past. Successful work. I wondered—I talked to my boss—could we hire you on this one?”
“To do what?” I asked cautiously. “I don’t know a thing about arson—I couldn’t tell an accelerant from a match.”
He didn’t respond directly. “Even though the building was underinsured, we’re reserving over a million dollars. People were injured, and that means liability claims on top of the property loss. The police may not care, but it’d be worth it to us to invest several thousand in a professional investigation if we could save the big money. We’d like you to try to find the arsonist.”
I watched the windowpanes vibrate at the continuous stream of rush-hour L’s running just underneath. A little dirt shook loose, but not as much as whirled up to add to the glass’s gray opacity. It wasn’t a scene to bolster my low sense of competence.
“My fan club at Ajax doesn’t exactly include a unanimous chorus of senior staff. Does your boss have the authority to hire me without a lot of other people getting involved in the approval process?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s easy. We budget for outside investigators—they don’t have to be approved on a case-by-case basis.” He paused. “Could I interest you in dinner tonight? Try to help you make up your mind?”
I could picture his head tilted birdlike to one side as he watched to see if the worm would pop out of the ground. The image made me feel like smiling for the first time since finding my laundry on the floor this morning. “Dinner would be great.”
He suggested Calliope, a lively place on north Lincoln that served Greek-style seafood. They didn’t take reservations, but people could dance in the adjoining cabaret while waiting for their tables.
After hanging up I shut my office for the day. Another couple of inquiries had come in that I ought to deal with, but I didn’t have the emotional energy for work this afternoon.
By the time I walked back to the north end of the Loop for my car and picked my way through the rush-hour traffic home, I just had time for a long bath before dressing for dinner. I lay in the tub a good forty-five minutes, letting my mind float to nowhere, letting the water wash away the sharpest edge of self-doubt.
When I finally got out and started dressing, the late-summer twilight was turning the evening air a grayish-purple. I watched Mr. Contreras working in the backyard. The tomato season was ending but he was cultivating a few pumpkins with tender care. He liked to do Halloween in style for the local kids. In the dim light I could just make out Peppy lying on the grass, her nose on her forepaws, gloomily waiting for activity that might include her.
I went down the back way to bid him and the dog good night. The old man was on his dignity, miffed at my shortness with him this morning, but the dog was ecstatic. I had to work hard to keep her from transferring leaf loam or manure or whatever Mr. Contreras was piling on the pumpkins to my black silk trousers.