“I forgive you,” he said with a return to his easier tone. “This time, anyway. Next time look before you leap. And go easy on Furey—he’s not a bad guy, just rough around the edges. What’s your number?”
I gave it to him and he hung up. I went to the window and watched the L cart commuters past. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I’d been out of line or whether Finchley overreacted. The problem was, he probably got so many slights so many hours of the week that it didn’t matter what my intentions were—they came out sounding like the crap he was used to hearing.
I looked at the pigeons checking each other for lice regardless of the color of their plumage. On the surface the animal kingdom looked healthier than us humanoids. But one day last summer when a gull had joined them on the ledge the pigeons had pecked and squawked at it until it left, its neck bloody.
I went back to my desk and read the junk mail that had come in the last few days. Seminars on how to manage my office better, seminars on improving surveillance techniques, special offers on weapons and bullets. I swept it all into the garbage impatiently. Finally, irritated with myself for neglecting my business too much the last few weeks, I went through my file of potential customers and started typing query letters.
I’d done three when the phone rang. It wasn’t Finchley but someone from the morgue—he’d asked her to call me directly. Cerise’s body had been released to Otis Armbruster at an address on Christiana.
I thanked the woman and pulled out my city map. Sixteen hundred south Christiana is not in the happiest part of town. It’s not a great place for any woman to be alone at night, especially a white one. I considered putting it off until the morning, then my discomfort over my talk with Finchley returned. If Cerise or Zerlina navigated those streets, I could too.
Just as I was turning out the lights Furey called. I tensed at first, thinking Finchley might have been discussing our conversation with him, but he was calling about Elena.
“You haven’t heard from her, have you?” he asked. “Because we got another soliciting complaint last night— from a bar in Uptown that’s trying to cater to yuppies— and it sounded like it might have been her.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to ease out some of the stiffness. “I haven’t heard from her, but I’m leaving now to see a woman she knew pretty well at the Indiana Arms. I’ll see if Elena’s checked in with her.”
“You want me to come along.?” He tried unsuccessfully to cloak his eagerness.
“No, thanks. She’s not going to be real eager to talk to me to begin with. The sight of a police officer will cause a total shutdown.”
“Give me a call later, okay? Let me know if you learn anything?”
“Sure.” I stood up again. “I’ve got to go. Bye.”
I hung up before he could ask anything more, like Zerlina’s name and address, and left quickly to avoid any more calls. I took the stairs down two at a time—when going on an unpleasant errand do it as fast as possible.
The Chevy had a parking ticket stuck under the wipers. Crime does not pay in Chicago, especially for Loop parking offenders.
I went down Van Buren, took a look at the slow line of cars on the Congress, and elected to go by side streets. Wabash to Twenty-second Street was a good run. Once I was clear of the expressway interchanges the westbound traffic also moved well. It was only a few minutes after six when I turned north onto Christiana.
At this point I was about seven miles southwest of the Rapelec complex on Navy Pier. If Cerise had been living here, why had she gone all that way to find a quiet place to shoot up? I couldn’t make sense of it.
Vacant lots interspersed with gray stone three-flats made up the street. Their broken or boarded windows showed the buildings tottering on the edge of collapse. During the day it looked like Beirut. Now the purple twilight softened the worst outcroppings of rubble in the lots, muting the abandoned cars into soft dark shapes.
The only businesses seemed to be the taverns sprinkled liberally on every corner. There were few cars out. Someone rode on my tail from Cermak to Seventeenth, making me rather nervous, but when I finally slowed and moved to the right, he darted around me with a great blaring of horn. It was a ghost town, seemingly uninhabited except for the occasional knot of young men arguing or joking in front of the bars.
I pulled up across from the Armbruster apartment. It was another stone three-flat. Lights shone yellow through the sheets covering the first-and second-story windows. The third floor was boarded up. As I walked up the crumbled sidewalk I could hear a radio blaring loudly.