Where had Judy scampered next? If drug dealers got killed or broke their heads wherever she appeared, none of her old associates would welcome her.
It would have been a squeeze for me to follow her, but I could have done it. Unfortunately, as the ferret had said, I wanted my gun. I went back inside and slowly climbed the stairs, massaging my calves every few steps. When I reached the kitchen again, one of Downey’s crew was waiting for me. He didn’t comment on my side trip, just told me that the lieutenant was ready for me.
Downey was in a room that Freddie apparently used as an office. Computers, ledgers, locked cabinets—now opened to display an impressive amount of heroin, unless it was cocaine, as well as old-fashioned apothecary bottles filled with pills—a fifty-inch TV screen, a stack of license plates, a Bose iPod player, and an armchair covered in a black-and-red upholstery that made my eyes hurt.
Downey was sitting in the chair. Easier than looking at it, I guess. I rolled a desk chair over to face him.
He stared at me for a long moment. “I’m going to believe your story. For now. Looking at the video footage, we saw you ringing the bell, then Freddie and his doofuses filmed themselves laughing at you and calling you names. Then the screen went blank, so if you were picking the lock, there’s no way of knowing.”
It seemed prudent not to respond.
“What about the junkie you came looking for?” he asked.
“Judy Binder. I’m thinking she might have been a guest in the apartment next door. I found where she, or some woman, anyway, slid out the back door and under the fence. She fled another drug murder downstate two days ago.”
That got Downey’s attention. We spent a good ten minutes going over the Palfry murder, the connection between Freddie Walker and Derrick Schlafly, between Judy Binder and both men. I gave him Sheriff Kossel’s cell phone number down in Palfry, but added that I knew very little, that I was looking for Judy as a favor for her elderly mother.
“Thought you said a doctor was involved, Warchosi.”
So he’d been listening all along. “Warshawski,” I corrected.
He stared at me. “You related to the auto-parts people?”
“No.” I sighed, repeating my standard line, including the Yiddish writer. “Going back to Judy Binder, she called her doctor. I heard the message on the answering machine. Judy was terrified. The doctor sent me to Judy’s mother. Sheriff Kossel down in Palfry asked me to check on Freddie Walker.”
I paused, but Downey only fingered his mustache. I added, “Judy Binder has a son, kid of about twenty, who’s also gone missing. I didn’t see any sign of him next door. Did you find anything to say he might have been around?”
“Warshawski the Yiddish-Writing PI, you know what it’s like in a drug house: guys and the occasional gal have been camping out in some of the empty apartments downstairs, shooting, smoking, snorting, leaving crap behind that I don’t want to touch with six pairs of gloves on. If the three Wise Men had been here we wouldn’t be able to tell except by the camel droppings. If you have prints from the kid, or a DNA sample, we’ll sort them out when the techs finish with the scene. I can tell you this much for nothing: someone broke into one of these drawers”—he gestured at the desk—“and helped themselves to a fistful of dollars. We found twenties and hundreds floating around. The sarge and I were sorely tempted, weren’t we, Rodman?”
Sergeant Rodman grunted, but didn’t smile. You don’t joke about tens of thousands of dollars in drug loot, I guess.
Downey kept me for another fifteen minutes, just because he was frustrated, but in the end he told Rodman to give me back my Smith & Wesson.
When the sergeant pulled my pistol out of his pocket, my picklocks came with it, jangling to the floor.
“If we keep these, you going to buy another set?” Downey asked me.
“More than likely.”
“Give ’em back,” Downey told Rodman.
“Looey—they’re crime scene evidence,” his sergeant protested.
“Nah, they’re evidence of some Yiddish-writing detective’s stupidity. I still don’t know what Rawlings sees in you,” Downey added as I stuck my picks into a vest pocket.
“I look better in the fresh air,” I said.
“I’ll take your word for it.” His phone was ringing; he pressed the talk button and forgot about me.
It was past five now, glue-time on the expressway. I stuck to the side streets. They took just as long, but weren’t as hard on the nerves. Kids were out playing, people were sitting on their porches talking. I passed boys shooting hoops and prayed that none of them would ever go through the door of a place like Freddie Walker’s apartment.