“What exactly did you say to Eddie when you called?”
The old man turned a dull mahogany. “I said I was sorry. I know it sounds like I sent him out to be shot. You can’t be more worried about it than me, doll, so give me
“That’s not what I meant. After you talked to him he felt upset enough to call—apparently—Milt Chamfers, who agreed to meet him, just as a pretext to get him out on the street so someone could shoot at him. What did you say?”
Mr. Contreras scratched his head. “I told him who you was—a detective, I mean. And that that photo of him that Mitch had, the one from the charity, had you all excited. And that we was on our way down to ask him where he got enough money to support a big downtown charity like that, when I knew he was a Knights of Columbus man from the word go. And I just wanted to give him time to think about it first. I just wish—”
I saw a cab coming, a rarity on this stretch of Kedzie, and grabbed Mr. Contreras’s arm to hustle him to the curb.
“Hey, doll, what’re you up to?”
“Get in… We can talk when we get someplace a little less exposed.”
I asked the cabbie to go along Kedzie until we came to a public phone, and then to wait for me while I made a call. A few blocks down he pulled over to the curb.
I phoned a car rental company I know on the North Side called Rent-A-Wreck. I got their machine, and told it I was desperate for some wheels, that I’d be there in half an hour and hoped they’d be picking up their messages in the meantime. Rent-A-Wreck is a shoestring operation that a couple of women run out of their house, with the cars parked in the backyard. I hoped they were just sitting over dinner, not answering their phone but listening to their calls.
Back in the cab Mr. Contreras and the driver seemed to have come to a happy understanding. Both were Sox fans with the delusions common to all Chicago baseball lovers: while mourning the loss of Ivan Calderon they really thought this was the year the Sox could do it. I gave the cabbie Rent-A-Wreck’s address and leaned back against the seat, leaving them to a heated discussion of whether Fisk should step aside for a younger man.
It seemed to me a minor miracle that I was still alive. If Milt Chamfers was going to shoot Eddie Mohr just because he was afraid of what Eddie might say to me, why wasn’t he shooting at me? What had Eddie done for Diamond Head that they funded him on such a lavish scale—but that they didn’t want him talking about? I didn’t think Chamfers was the mastermind, either in paying off Eddie Mohr or in getting him shot. But who stood behind Chamfers— Ben Loring from Paragon Steel? Or Dick’s father-in-law and his brother? Or both, maybe.
By the time we got to Rent-A-Wreck on Cornelia, I was fretting with impatience to be moving, to be doing something, although I wasn’t sure what. I paid off the cabbie, giving him an extra few bucks with the tip to wait in case no one answered our ring. When Bev Cullerton came to the door I waved to the cab. He honked and drove off.
“Hiya, Vic. You’re lucky we were home. Callie and I were heading over to the coffeehouse when we got your message. You trash those fancy wheels of yours? Maybe we could rehab ‘em out back.”
I grinned. “That’s last week’s story. I just need to get around town tonight without anyone on my butt. You got something for me?”
“This hot weather everyone wants a car to get to Door County. We only have one left and she ain’t much.”
Given the condition of most of Bev and Callie’s cars, one that wasn’t much was going to be a real clunker. Beggars can’t be choosers, though. I gave her a twenty as a down payment and took the keys to an old Nova. The odometer was on its second lap and the steering had been devised to train the Bulgarian weight-lifting team, but Bev assured me it would still do eighty if it had to. She gave us cushions to cover the lumpy seats and held the back gate open until we had cleared the alley.