“It’s not the first time, doll. You forget how I helped you and Dr. Lotty out that time her clinic was attacked. You don’t remember how I took on them guys trying to break into your place. I may be seventy-seven but I’m in good shape, I’m still a good man in a fight.”
It was precisely because I had remembered his assistance that I tried never to involve him in the livelier aspects of my work. If I told him that, though, it would be just too painful for him. I skated around it, saying Elena was so prone to drunken fables, I hadn’t taken her claims of endangerment seriously. By the time I finished he was nodding portentously.
“I know just what you mean, doll. I used to work with a guy like that. Of course he was a danger to the whole shop, showing up drunk most days, and the ones he arrived sober he didn’t stay like that past lunchtime. There was the day he didn’t turn off the surface grinder, and Jake—you remember Jake—lost most of the little finger on his left hand, but Crenshaw—Crenshaw was the drunk— he claimed it was me using the machine when I wasn’t supposed to …”
His good humor restored, Mr. Contreras went on in this vein at some length. The happy drone of his voice, the weight of the meat in my stomach, the warm pleasure I felt at being back in my own home, sent me drowsing in my armchair. I held my hand down and let the dog lick my fingers while I nodded sleepily in tune to the old man’s speech.
The shrill burr of the phone startled me awake. I stretched an arm out to the piano and picked up the receiver.
“Tried to write your obit for you, Warshawski, but you made it through one more time. How many lives you got left, anyway? Three?”
It was Murray, with more vibrant energy than my head could handle. “I hear you called me the most troublesome detective in Chicago.”
“Private eye,” he corrected. “Nothing libelous in that—I checked with the legal department. You can sue me only if it’s not true. What I want to know is, who did it? Did it come out of Roz Fuentes’s camp or your dead junkie, Cerise?”
“Ask the cops—the city pays them to investigate arson and attempted murder.”
“And you’re just going to stay home and watch TV while they sort it out?” He guffawed. “Between us ace investigators, what were you doing down there?”
Black spots were starting to dance in front of me from the resonance of his voice. I moved the earpiece away from my head. “Performing feats of derring-do. I understand it was in all the papers.”
“C’mon, Warshawski,” he said, trying to wheedle. “I do lots of stuff for you. Just a few little words.”
He was right—if I wanted help from him, I had to throw him the occasional quote. I told him everything from the moment Elena called me to my drop from the fire escape.
“Now it’s your turn—what was the fire department doing there so pat?”
Mr. Contreras looked at me as intently as the dog, miffed I was telling my tale to Murray but wanting all the juice. I took the phone over to the couch where I’d dumped my bag and pulled out my memo pad. “Anonymous phone call,” I scribbled on it for Mr. Contreras as Murray boomed the news at me. Someone had called 911 from a pay phone at the corner of Cermak and Michigan. The police didn’t have a clue as to who phoned, except for its having been a man.
“So you think it was someone after your aunt?” Murray asked. “How is she, by the way?”
“I don’t think anything right now. My head hurts like all the cement trucks on the Ryan just ran over it. And my aunt, who has the system of a goat, sat up and took nourishment yesterday. She refused to talk to me, though, when I started asking her pointed questions, and is acting sick enough that the docs are stonewalling the cops for her. You can call Reese and see if the medicine men will let her talk to you, but don’t set your hopes too high. Now you know everything I do. I’m going to bed. Good-bye.”
I hung up before he could say anything else and ignored the phone when it started ringing again. Mr. Contreras solicitously offered to fix me up with pillows and a blanket on the couch, to leave me the dog, to make me tea, to do a thousand things that made the black spots grow into giant spirals.
“I need to be alone in my own bed. I can’t take any more people now. I know you mean well, I know you’re helping like mad, but I’m going to faint or scream or both if you don’t take the dog and leave.”
He was a little hurt but he’d seen concussion cases before, he knew it took time before you really felt yourself, and in the meantime the smallest things got you down—sure, doll, sure, he’d leave me alone, sleep was the best thing for me right now. He gathered up the dishes, clicking over the small amount of steak I’d eaten—gotta get your strength back up, doll, you look like you lost ten pounds the last few days—finally collecting the dog and heading down the stairs. I locked the triple dead bolts and stumbled to my bedroom.