“Right.” I gave him a thumbnail sketch of Mitch Kruger and Eddie Mohr and what I’d learned last night from my time in Dick’s files.
“Jason Felitti was just scrambling,” Loring said when I finished. “He was too ignorant to come up with a plan. He got goods from me and stole them, cheated the union out of their pension plan, parked bonds with a charity—all that’s just flailing around.”
“Yes. Not a criminal mastermind. Not even a bust-out artist, as I originally suspected. Just an incompetent schlep who wanted to prove he was as big as his brother. The problem is, I don’t see how I can tag them for murder.
And I care more about that than I do about your theft problem. I’m worried about the pension fund too. I don’t want innocent bystanders screwed out of their rights.“
Loring, of course, only cared about protecting Paragon’s interests. He wanted me to drop everything and plan a stakeout that would provide definitive proof of Diamond Head’s reselling Paragon raw materials. The way it stood right now I only had evidence that they were loading copper onto trucks in the middle of the night, not whether they were reselling it or whether Diamond Head management was involved.
I let him argue his case while I tried to figure out answers to my own problems, but at four-thirty I showed him the door. “You were so late getting here you’ve backed up the rest of my schedule. I need to get going. You can talk to me tomorrow after you’ve spoken to your board.”
“Then you’ll take the case if they approve hiring you?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t discuss it until I know whether you’re a serious customer or not.”
He didn’t like it, but when he saw I wasn’t going to budge he finally left, wrinkling his face in disgust at the stench on the stairs. I stayed long enough to strap on the Smith & Wesson before heading for the el.
Chapter 44 - Saint Stevenson and the Truck
I stopped on my way out to let Mr. Contreras know where I was going. As a full-fledged partner in crime, he deserved to know. Besides, the fact that someone had been waiting in the stairwell last night made me extra cautious. I wanted him to monitor the building’s traffic even more rigorously than he usually did.
“Vinnie may be letting thugs into the place. Just keep an eye out. Don’t expose yourself unnecessarily—but if strangers go clomping up to the third floor, call the cops. In fact, call Conrad.” I gave him Rawlings’s home number as well as the number at the station and took off before he could flood me with accusations over my intimacy with an officer.
During the slow el ride south I wondered what I could do about the Picheas and Vinnie and Mrs. Frizell. Even if I proved Vinnie and Chrissie persuaded Mrs. Frizell to buy some of Diamond Head’s useless bonds, I wasn’t sure the state’s attorney would think that rotten enough to remove the Picheas as her guardian. I wondered whether Mrs. Frizell’s strange, estranged son might be persuaded to take action. Since his main rivals to her affection, the dogs, were out of commission, maybe he would at least want to protect his own measly inheritance.
The el let me out at Twenty-second and Kedzie around five-thirty. It was more than two miles down to Barney’s from there, but I longed for a good walk to clear my body. Thunderheads had started to cloud the sun about the time I changed trains downtown, but I thought I could walk fast enough to beat the storm.
After a few blocks in the dust that the trucks were kicking up on the narrow roadway, I began to doubt the health value of the walk. My old Tigers, too, didn’t have as much left in their soles as I had hoped. My feet started to hurt. Every time I came to a bus stop I’d wait a few minutes to see if one were coming behind the trucks. Plenty of northbound buses trundled by, but they must have been falling off the end of the earth when they got to Congress: nothing was returning south.
I could just see Barney’s sign when the rain broke. I sprinted the last two blocks and rounded the corner onto Forty-first.
The rain and my sore feet made me stupid. A truck was double-parked across the street from me, its engine running. I looked at it cursorily, unlocked the Impala, and started to slide into the driver’s seat.
A movement from the truck startled me and I moved faster into the car, reaching for my Smith & Wesson. My mistake was in trying to do both. The door was wrenched open and a pistol thrust against my head while I was still fumbling for my own gun. Careful not to move my head, I rolled my eyeballs as far up as they would go. I was looking at the Hulk.