I bustled around with a skillet and olive oil, chopping mushrooms and olives as if the little bundle held no interest for me. Behind me I could hear the newspaper rattle as Mr. Contreras peeled it off, and then his laborious picking apart of the contents. I dusted the chicken with flour and dropped it in the pan. The sound of frying drowned the noise of the paper.
Finally, after naming some brandy over the chicken and covering the pan, washing my hands with the deliberation of a surgeon, and pouring a large whisky to cover the thin beer that kept making me burp, I sat down next to Mr. Contreras.
He looked at me doubtfully. “I sure hope this isn’t what you almost got yourself killed for, doll. It looks like a whole bunch of nothing. Course, it meant something to Mitch, and some of it’s got sentimental value, his union card and stuff, but the rest… It’s not much, and it don’t mean sh— Well, anyway, see for yourself.”
I felt a sinking in my diaphragm. I’d been expecting too much. I picked up the stack of documents, grimy from the intense handling they’d had lately, and went through them one at a time.
Mitch’s union card. His social security card. A form to send the feds showing his change of address, so he could continue to collect social security. Another for the local. The Sun-Times story on Diamond Head’s change of ownership, so worn it was barely legible. A newspaper photo of a white-haired man, smiling widely enough to show his back molars, shaking hands with a well-fed man of perhaps fifty. The inscription to this had been thumbed over to the point it was also illegible. Picking it up by one of its top corners, I showed it to Mr. Contreras.
“Any idea who either of these gents is?”
“Oh, the guy on the left is the old president of our local, Eddie Mohr.”
“Eddie Mohr?” A prickle ran up the back of my neck. “The man whose car was used to attack Lotty?”
“Yeah… What’re you getting at, doll?” He stirred uneasily in his chair.
“Why did Mitch carry his picture around with his most cherished possessions?”
Mr. Contreras shrugged. “Probably he wasn’t used to seeing people he knew in the paper. Sentimentality, you know.”
“Mitch didn’t strike me as sentimental. He lost track of his son and his wife. He didn’t have one scrap of paper that showed he cared about a soul anywhere on earth. And here, along with the article about Jason Felitti buying Diamond Head, is a photo of Diamond Head’s old local president. But if Mohr was photographed for a newspaper, he couldn’t possibly be doing something he didn’t want known,” I added, more to myself than to the old man.
“That’s just it, doll. You want it to mean something. Heck, I do too. We’ve been scratching around for the better part of two weeks without finding anything—I know how bad you want this to be important.”
I swallowed my whisky and pushed myself away from the table. “Let’s have dinner. Then I’m going to take this down to my office. If I make a copy, the text may show up more clearly: it does sometimes.”
He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder, trying to show sympathy for my desire to chase after wild geese. He helped me serve up the chicken and carry it to the dining room. I brought Mitch’s little stash to the table and laid the papers out in a circle between Mr. Contreras and me.
“He needed his social security card. I guess he needed his union card, too, for his pension. Or maybe it was the one thing he’d achieved in life that he felt he could cling to. Why keep track of who owned Diamond Head?”
I wasn’t expecting an answer, but Mr. Contreras popped up with one unexpectedly. “When did that Felitti fellow buy the company? A year ago? Two years? By then Mitch knew he couldn’t make ends meet on his pension. Maybe he thought he could go to him for work.”
I nodded to myself. That made sense. “And Eddie Mohr? He could help Mitch too?”
“Doubt it.” Mr. Contreras wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Wonderful chicken, doll. You put olives in it? Never would have occurred to me. No, being as how Eddie’s retired, he wouldn’t have any input into who the firm hired. Of course, he could make his recommendations —they’d carry more weight than just someone walking in cold off the street—but him and Mitch wasn’t especially friendly. I can’t see him going out on a limb for a fellow who didn’t have too much going for him to begin with.”
“Who’s that shaking hands with Eddie?”
Mr. Contreras took his glasses out of his shirt pocket and scrutinized the picture again. “Search me. Doesn’t look like anyone I ever saw before… I can see you’re chomping at the bit to get out of here, go see what you can make of this sucker. We can wait to have coffee when we get back.”
I grinned at him. “Didn’t know I was so transparent. You coming?”
“Oh, sure. You going on wild goose chases, I want to see how they come out. Even if I can’t jump off a ledge onto a moving crane anymore. Bet I could, though,” he muttered under his breath as I carefully did up all three locks. “Bet I’ve got more left in me than you imagine.”
I decided our friendship would last longer if I pretended I hadn’t heard.