Mr. Contreras shook his head. “Not really. His wife up and left him—oh, way back. Must be going on forty years ago. They had a kid and even then he was drinking the pay. Can’t say I blame her. I stole Clara from him back when we was all in high school. Night of our homecoming dance. She used to get all over me when I’d come home with one too many in me, and I’d remind her at least I hadn’t let her get stuck with that prize jackass Kruger.”
His soft brown eyes clouded over as he dwelt on a sixty-year-old dance. “Well, all that past is dead and gone, and I know Mitch ain’t worth much, ain’t much to look at, but I’d kinda like to know he’s okay.”
When he put it like that I didn’t have any choice. I drove him down to my office and solemnly filled out one of my standard contracts for him. I wrote down Mrs. Poker’s address. I took Diamond Head’s location, too—I had a feeling I was going to need all the dead ends I could find to justify my retainer.
Mr. Contreras pulled a roll of bills from his front pocket. Licking his fingers, he separated four twenties and counted them over to me. That would pay for a day of bar-crawling along Archer and Cermak.
Chapter 8 - Extinguish Your Troubles
I dropped my report to Daraugh Graham in the mail on my way to the Stevenson, the expressway that follows the main industrial route through the heart of Chicago’s southwest side. Actually, it runs parallel to the Sanitary and Ship Canal, which was built to connect the Illinois and Chicago rivers back in 1900. The thirty-mile stretch of water, crisscrossed by rail beds, houses every variety of industry along its banks. Grain and cement elevators hover over heaps of scrap metal; truck terminals stand alongside the yards where Chicago’s mariners dry-dock their boats for the winter.
I got off at Damen, sliding past the little cluster of bungalows perched incongruously next to the exit ramp, and made a sharp left onto Archer. Like the expressway, the street follows the path of the Sanitary Canal; it used to be the main road through the industrial belt, back before the Stevenson was built.
Although this part of the city has pockets of quiet, well-kept streets, Archer isn’t one of them. Shabby two-flats and run-down bungalows are built flush with the sidewalk. The only grocery stores are holes in the wall that also sell beer, liquor, and school supplies. With the number of taverns the avenue supports it’s hard to know who keeps the grocers in business.
Mrs. Polter’s house was about five blocks up from
Damen. It was a long, narrow box covered in asphalt shingles, which had fallen off in places to reveal rotting wood underneath. Mrs. Polter was moodily surveying the street from her front porch when I pulled up. “Porch” actually was a grand name for the rickety square of peeling boards. Perched on top of a flight of dilapidated stairs, it was just big enough to hold a green metal chair and leave room for the torn screen door to open.
Mrs. Polter was a massive woman, her neck missing in the circles of fat that rose from her shoulders. Her brown-checked housedress, which looked like a relic from the twenties, had long ago lost the struggle to cover her cleavage. A safety pin tried to make up the deficiency of cotton, but only succeeded in fraying the edges of the fabric.
As far as I could tell she hadn’t turned her head while I stumbled up the stairs, and she didn’t bother to look at me when I stood looking down at her. “Mrs. Polter?” I said after a long silence.
She gave me a grudging glance, then turned her attention back to the street, where three boys on bikes were trying to rear up and ride on their hind wheels. A piece of asphalt siding flapped behind us.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions about Mitch Kruger.”
“Don’t you boys think you can get on my property,” she shouted when the cyclists jumped their bikes over the curb.
“Sidewalk belongs to everyone, fat bitch,” one of them yelled back.
The other two laughed immoderately, dancing their bikes up and down the curb. Mrs. Polter, moving with the speed of a boxer, picked up a fire extinguisher and began spraying over the railing at them. They jumped back onto Archer, out of range, and continued to laugh. Mrs. Polter put the extinguisher on the floor next to her chair. It was clearly a game all parties had played before.
“Too many places get vandalized along here because people don’t have the guts to stand up for their own property. Damned little spies. Neighborhood was a hell of a lot different before they moved in, bringing all their dirt and crime with them, breeding like flies.” The asphalt shingle behind us flapped in time to her speech.
“Yep. This neighborhood used to be the garden spot of the Midwest… Mitch Kruger?”
“Oh, him.” She flicked washed-out blue eyes at me. “Old guy came by and paid his rent. That’s good enough for me.”
“When did you see him last?”
At this she turned the chair and the mass of her body to face me. “Who wants to know?”