He was out back, turning over his eight-foot square of soil. He had put his seedlings in last week and was anxiously ridding them of microscopic weeds.
“Hi, doll. You want to see the princess? You won’t believe how much the puppies have grown since you went out of town. Hang on a minute. I’ll come open the door. I got something I want to talk to you about before you take off.”
He wiped his calloused hands on a giant bandanna and picked up his rake and trowel. After losing all his garden equipment last summer he didn’t leave the new ones unattended even for a five-minute break.
While he stowed his tools inside the basement he inquired into my trip, but when he asked for the third time how long the flight took I could tell he had something else on his mind. He has delicate ideas of etiquette, though, and wouldn’t bring up his own concerns until I finished petting the dog and admiring her offspring. She didn’t object to my picking them up and stroking them, but she washed each one thoroughly when it squirmed back to her side.
Mr. Contreras watched us jealously, talking me through every detail of Peppy’s days during my absence—how much she’d eaten, how she didn’t mind his picking them up, didn’t I think we could keep one or maybe two—the male with one black and one gold ear seemed to have a special liking for him.
“Whatever you say, boss.” I stood up and picked up my papers from the couch arm. “Long as I don’t have to run them when they’re grown, I don’t care. Is that what you wanted to discuss?”
“Oh…” He broke off in the middle of an expostulation on how he could keep up with three dogs, and anyway, who walked Peppy while I was fooling around in Pittsburgh?
“No. No-It’s kinda personal.” He sat on the edge of his shabby mustard armchair and looked at his hands. “Thing is, doll, I could use some help. I mean, some of your kind of expertise.”
He looked up at that and held up a hand to forestall me, although I hadn’t tried speaking. “I ain’t expecting charity. I’m prepared to pay the same as those bluenoses downtown, so don’t expect I’m asking any favors.”
“Uh, what is it you need my expertise for?”
He took a deep breath and got his story out in a rush. Mitch Kruger had disappeared. Mr. Contreras had thrown him out on Monday, exasperated by his drinking and mooching. Then my neighbor’s conscience started bothering him. On Wednesday he’d gone over to the rooming house on Archer where Kruger had found a place to sleep.
“Only, he wasn’t there.”
“Don’t you think he might’ve been out drinking?”
“Oh, yes, that was my idea too. At first I didn’t give it a second thought. In fact, I turned around and was heading straight for the bus stop when Mrs. Polter, she’s the owner of the place, you know, it’s a real boardinghouse—-just sleeping space for seven, eight guys and she gives ‘em breakfast. Anyway, she hollers at me, thinking I’m looking for a room, and I tell her I’m looking for Mitch.”
It took him a good ten minutes to get the whole story out. Boiled down to the bones it seemed Kruger hadn’t been back to the boardinghouse since checking in Monday afternoon. He’d promised to pay Mrs. Polter on Tuesday morning, and she wanted her money. Or she wanted Mr. Contreras to take Kruger’s belongings away so she could give the bed to someone else. Mr. Contreras shelled out the fifty bucks to hold the bed for a week—retroactive to Monday, he pointed out bitterly—and took the Damen Avenue bus back home.
“So then I called over to Diamond Head and tried to speak to the shop steward, on account of all that smoke Mitch was blowing last week. But the guy didn’t answer my message, so yesterday I took the damn bus all the way down again and they tell me Mitch ain’t been near the place since we left twelve years ago. So anyway, I’d-like you to take it on. Looking for him, I mean.”
When I didn’t answer right away he said, “I’ll pay you, don’t you worry about that.”
“It’s not that.” I was about to add that he didn’t need to pay me anything, but that’s the best way to build grudges between friends and relations—do them professional favors for nothing. “But… well, to be brutally frank, you know he’s probably sleeping off a hangover in some police cell right now.”
“And if he is, you’re in a position to find out. I mean, you know all them cops, they’ll tell you if he’s been picked up drunk somewhere. I just feel kind of responsible.”
“Has he got any family?”