I stood behind a scarred wooden counter with other title searchers, waiting for a page to bring me the relevant volume. The man who finally filled my order turned out to be surprisingly helpful—city workers usually seem to be in a secret contest for who can harass the public the most. He found the entry for me in the heavy book and showed me how to read it.
Paige occupied a floor in a converted apartment building, an old five-flat built in 1923. The entries showed that there was some kind of dwelling on that site as far back as 1854. The Harris Bank had owned the current building until 1978 when it was converted to condominiums. Jay Feldspar, a well-known Chicago land developer, had acquired it then and done the conversion. Paige’s unit, number 2, was held as a trust by the Fort Dearborn Trust. Number 1123785-G.
Curiouser and curiouser. Either Paige owned the thing herself as part of a trust, or someone owned it for her. I looked at my watch. I’d already been here forty minutes; might as well take a little more time and risk a parking ticket. I wrote the trust number down on a piece of paper in my shoulder bag, thanked the attendant for his help, and went out to find a pay phone. I’d been to law school with a woman who was now an attorney on the Fort Dearborn’s staff. She and I had never been friends—our aspirations were too different. We’d never been enemies, either, though. I thought I’d call her and give a tug on the old school tie.
It took more than a tug—trust documents were confidential, she could be disbarred, let alone thrown out of the bank. I finally persuaded her that I’d get the Herald-Star to come in and suborn the clerical staff if she didn’t find the name of the person behind the trust number for me.
“You really haven’t changed a bit, Vic. I remember how you bullied everyone during moot court in our senior year.”
I laughed.
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” she said crossly, but she agreed to call me at home that night with the information.
While I was wasting dimes and adding to the risk of a ticket, I checked in with my answering service. Both Ryerson and Pierre Bouchard had called.
I tried Murray first. “Vic, if you’d lived two hundred years ago they would have burned you at the stake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That Arroyo hiking boot. Mattingly was wearing them when he died, and we’re pretty sure they’re a match for the footprint the police found in Boom Boom’s place. We’ll have the story on the front page of the early editions. Got any other hot tips?”
“No. I was hoping you might have something for me. Talk to you later.”
Bouchard wanted to tell me that he had checked around with Mattingly’s cronies on the team. He didn’t think Howard knew how to dive. Oh, and Elsie had given birth to a nine-pound boy two days ago. She was calling him Howard after the worthless snake. The members of the team were pitching in to make a donation to her since Howard had died without a pension and left very little life insurance. Would I give something from Boom Boom? Pierre knew my cousin would want to be included.
Certainly, I told him, and thanked him for his diligence.
“Are you making any progress?”
“Well, Mattingly’s dead. The guy who I’m sure pushed Boom Boom in the water was killed Sunday. Another few weeks like this and the only person left alive will be his murderer. I guess that’s progress.”
He laughed. “I know you will have success. Boom Boom told me many times how clever you are. But if you need some muscle, let me know. I’m a good man for a fight.”
I agreed with him wholeheartedly—I’d watched him cutting people’s heads open on the ice with good-natured enthusiasm many times.
I sprinted back to my car, too late. A zealous meter maid had already filled out a parking ticket for letting the meter run out. I stuck it into my shoulder bag and inched my way across the Loop to Ontario Street, the closest entrance to the Kennedy Expressway.
The weather had finally warmed up slightly. Under a clear blue sky, trees along the expressway put out tentative, pale green leaves toward the sun. The grass was noticeably darker than it had been the week before. I started singing some Elizabethan love songs. They suited the weather and the chirping birds better than Fauré’s moodiness. Off the Kennedy to the Edens, past the painfully tidy bungalows of the Northwest Side where people balanced their paychecks with anxious care, up to the industrial parks lining the middle-class suburbs of Lincolnwood and Skokie, on to the Tri-State Tollway and the rarefied northern reaches of the very rich.
“ ‘Sweet lovers love the spring,’ ” I sang, turning off onto route 137. Over to Green Bay Road, making the loop around to Harbor Road without a single wrong turn. I went on past the Phillips residence and parked the Omega around the southern bend in the road, away from the house. I was wearing my navy Evan Picone pantsuit, a compromise between comfort and the need to look respectable in a house of mourning.