Elena’s SRO had stood a few doors north of the intersection with Indiana. A niggling doubt I’d had in her story vanished when I pulled up across the street from it. The Indiana Arms Hotel—transients welcome, rates by the day or by the month—had joined the other derelicts on the street in retirement. I parked and went over to look at the skeleton.
When I walked around to the north side of the building, I discovered a man in a sport jacket and hard hat poking around in the rubble. Every now and then he’d pick up some piece of debris with a pair of tongs and stick it into a plastic bag. He’d mark the bag and mutter into a pocket Dictaphone before continuing his exploration. He spotted me when he turned east to poke through a promising tell. He finished picking up an object and marking its container before coming over to me.
“You lose something here?” His tone was pleasant but his brown eyes were wary.
“Just sleep. Someone I know lived here until last night—she showed up at my place early this morning.”
He pursed his lips, weighing my story. “In that case, what are you doing here now?”
I hunched a shoulder. “I guess I wanted to see it for myself. See if the place was really gone before I put all my energy into finding her a new home. Come to that, what are you doing here? A suspicious person might think you were making off with valuables.”
He laughed and some of the wariness left his face. “They’d be right—in a way I am.”
“Are you with the fire department?”
He shook his head. “Insurance company.”
“Was it arson?” I’d been so bogged down in the sludge of family relations, I hadn’t even wondered how the fire started.
His caution returned. “I’m just collecting things. The lab will give me a diagnosis.”
I smiled. “You’re right to be careful—you don’t know who might come around in the aftermath of a blaze like this. My name’s V. I. Warshawski. I’m a private investigator when I’m not looking for emergency housing. And I do projects for Ajax Insurance from time to time.” I pulled a card from my bag and handed it to him.
He wiped a sooty hand on a Kleenex and shook mine. “Robin Bessinger. I’m with Ajax’s arson and fraud division. I’m surprised I haven’t heard your name.”
It didn’t surprise me. Ajax employed sixty thousand people around the world—no one could possibly keep track of all of them. I explained that my work for them had been in claims or reinsurance and gave him a few names he’d be likely to recognize. He thawed further and confided that the signs of arson were quite clear.
“I’d show you the places where they poured accelerant but I don’t want you in the building if you don’t have a hard hat. Chunks of plaster keep falling down.”
I showed suitable regret at being denied this treat. “The owner buy a lot of extra insurance lately?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know—I haven’t seen the policies. They just asked me to get on over before the vandals took too much of the evidence. I hope your friend got all her stuff out—not too much survived this blast.”
I’d forgotten to ask Elena if anyone had been badly hurt. Robin told me the police Violent Crimes Unit would have joined the Bomb and Arson Squad in force if anyone bad died.
“You wouldn’t have been allowed to park without showing good reason for being near the premises—it’s a fact of life that torchers like to come back to see if the job got done right. No one was killed, but a good half dozen were ferried to Michael Reese with burns and respiratory problems. Torchers usually like to make sure a building can be cleared—they know an investigation into an old dump like this won’t get too much attention if there aren’t any murder charges to excite the cops.” He looked at his wrist. “I’d like to get back to work. Hope your friend finds a new place okay.”
I agreed fervently and went off to start my hunt with an easy optimism bred of ignorance. I began at the Emergency Housing Bureau on south Michigan where I joined a long line. There were woman and children of all ages, old men muttering to themselves, rolling their eyes wildly, women anxiously clutching suitcases or small appliances— a seemingly endless sea of people left on the streets from some crisis or other yesterday.
The high counters and bare walls made us feel as though we were suppliants at the gates of a Soviet labor camp. There weren’t any chairs; I took a number and leaned against the wall to wait my turn.
Next to me a very pregnant woman of about twenty holding a large infant was struggling with a toddler. I offered to hold the baby or amuse the two-year-old.
“It’s all right,” she said in a soft slow voice. “Todd just be tired after staying up all night. We couldn’t get into the shelter ′cause the one they sent us to don’t allow babies. I couldn’t get me no bus fare to come back here and get them to find us a different place.”
“So what did you do?” I didn’t know which was more horrible—her plight or the resigned gentle way she talked about it.
“Oh, we found us a park bench up at Edgewater by the shelter. The baby sleep but Todd just couldn’t get comfortable.”