Mrs. Polter didn’t say anything when I thanked her for letting me look around, but when I was halfway down the stairs she yelled, “Remember: that room’s only paid through Sunday night. After that the old guy better come and collect his stuff.”
I stopped and pondered. Mr. Contreras would not want his old pal back on the living room couch. And come to think of it, neither did I. I stomped back up the stairs and gave her fifty dollars. They disappeared behind the safety pin at her bosom, but she didn’t say anything. Now I had ten left from Mr. Contreras’s advance to get me through the bars of the South Side.
At the bottom of the stairs I stopped the ringleader of the cycling trio. “I’m looking for an old guy who walked out of here Monday afternoon. White man. Lots of gray hair, which he didn’t comb, big stomach, probably had on suspenders and an old pair of work pants. You remember which way he went?”
“He some kind of friend of yours, miss?”
“He—uh, he’s my uncle.” I didn’t think this group would respond well to a detective.
“How much is it worth to you to find him?”
I made a face. “Not a whole lot. Maybe ten.”
“Here he comes right now!” One of the other youths jumped his bicycle up and down the curb in his excitement. “Right behind you, miss!”
Holding tight to my purse I turned my head. The kid was right. An oldish white man with thick gray hair and a paunch was stumbling up the street toward us. In fact, there was another coming out of Tessie’s Tavern just across the way. There were probably a thousand men just like Mitch wandering around the two-mile strip between
Ashland and Western. My shoulders sagged at the prospect. I turned to cross the street.
“Hey, miss, what about our money?” The trio suddenly surrounded me with their bikes.
“Well, that wasn’t my uncle. But he looks the same, so I suppose that’s worth five bucks.”
I dug in my handbag and pulled out a five without taking out my billfold. I shouldn’t copy Mrs. Polter’s suspiciousness, but they had me surrounded.
“You said ten,” the ringleader said accusingly.
“Take it or leave it.” I stared at him coldly, my arms akimbo.
I don’t know whether it was the toughness of my expression, or the sudden movement of Mrs. Polter with her fire extinguisher, but the bikes separated. I sauntered across the street, not looking behind me until I got to the door of Tessie’s Tavern. They had ridden off toward Ashland, presumably to spend their largess.
Chapter 9 - Diamond in the Rough
Tessie’s was a short, narrow room with three pressed-wood tables and a bar long enough to seat eight or nine people. Two men in dusty work shirts were sitting side by side at the counter. One had his sleeves rolled up to show off arms the size of expressway pilings. Neither looked at me when I walked up to the bar, but a middle-aged woman with her back to me turned from the glasses she was rinsing. She had some kind of radar that told her when a customer was arriving.
“What can I do for you, hon?” Her voice was like her face, clear and pleasant.
“I’ll have a draw.” I slid onto a barstool. Beer is not my favourite drink, but you can’t go bar-crawling on whisky and tavern owners aren’t too responsive to club soda fiends.
The man in shirtsleeves finished his beer and said, “Same again, Tessie.” She pulled two more beers and poured a couple of shots and set them in front of the men. She clattered the empties into the sink and washed them briskly, setting them on a shelf under the bottles in front of her. A trio of men drifted in and greeted her by name.
“Your usual, boys?” she asked, grabbing a set of clean steins. They took their beers over to one of the pressed-wood tables and Tessie picked up the Sun-Times.
“You want anything else, honey?” she asked when I forced the last of the thin, bitter brew down.
“Tell you the truth, I’m looking for my uncle. I was wondering if you’d seen him.” I started describing Mitch, but she interrupted me.
“I don’t run a baby-sitting service, hon. That’ll be seventy-five cents for the beer.” ‘
I fished in my jeans pocket for a dollar. “I’m not asking you to. But he disappeared on Monday and he has a bad habit of going on benders. I’m trying to see if I can pick up his trail. He just moved in with Mrs. Polter across the street.”
She smoothed her hands over her plump hips and gave an exaggerated sigh, but she listened to my description of Mitch closely enough. “Could be any of a dozen guys who drink around here,” she said when I’d finished. “But everyone has their regular place; I’d think you’d want to talk to them, not go drinking beer in every bar on Archer. Nice-looking girl like you could get yourself in a lot of trouble in some of them.”