I clucked sympathetically and brought the conversation around to Mitch. Ms. Coriolano threw up her hands. He had lived with them for three years, brought in by one of the other boarders, Jake Sokolowski. Such a responsible, reliable man, of course they were happy to take in his friend, but Mr. Kruger never paid his rent on time. Not once. And stumbling in drunk late at night, waking Mama, who had trouble sleeping—what could she do? She gave him warning on warning, extension on extension, but finally had to throw him out.
“He set fire to the bedding in his sleep when he was drunk. We were lucky it was one of Mama’s sleepless nights. She smelled smoke—she screamed—I woke up and put the fire out myself. Otherwise we would all be sleeping on benches in Grant Park right now.”
She hadn’t seen Mitch since the morning after the fire, when she’d made him leave, but she was happy for me to talk to Sokolowski. He was sitting in the minuscule backyard, sleeping with the Sunday Herald-Star. I had met him three years earlier when he joined Kruger and Mr. Contreras in trying to defend Lotty’s clinic. When I woke him it was clear he didn’t recognize me, but like Mitch he enthusiastically remembered the fight.
Mitch being missing didn’t worry Sokolowski much. “Probably sleeping off a bender someplace. It’s not like Sal to worry over a guy like Mitch. He must be drinking too much of that swill he calls grappa.”
When pressed, he thought back to the last time he’d seen Mitch. After much internal debate he decided it had been last Monday afternoon. Mitch had stopped by to persuade Jake to join him in a drink. “But I know what those drinks with Mitch are like. The next thing you know he’s had ten and you either have to carry him home or pay to repair a window.”
As Tessie had suggested, Mitch had a regular bar near the Coriolano house, Paul’s Place at the corner of Thirty-sixth and Seely. Jake was sure that’s where Mitch would have gone on Monday. He resettled himself under the sports pages as I headed back into the house.
I thanked Ms. Coriolano for her help and walked over to Paul’s Place. It was a sparely furnished storefront, more Spartan than Tessie’s, with a half-dozen men watching the Sox on a small color set high on the wall behind the bar. The bartender, a bald man in his sixties with big forearms and a tidy round potbelly, chewed on a toothpick. He leaned against the wall at the end of the bar, watching the game, bringing refills to his regulars but not paying any attention to me.
I waited respectfully until Ozzie Guillen turned a perfect double play, and then brought out my threadbare inquiries. In a place where people knew Mitch well I didn’t try to pass myself off as a niece, but explained that I was a friend of Mr. Contreras. None of them knew him, but they all knew Mitch, as did the bartender.
“I know Tonia finally threw him out,” he offered, moving the toothpick to the corner of his mouth. “He was around here trying to cadge a room. None of us would bite: we know the guy too well.”
“When did you see him last?”
They debated it, but the Sox came to bat before they reached a conclusion. It wasn’t Jack Morris’s lucky day: the Sox sent seven men to the plate and scored four runs on a series of errors and Sammy Sosa’s double. The half-inning went on so long that the group had forgotten me and Mitch Kruger. I brought them back to the question of when they’d seen him last.
“It had to be Monday,” the bartender finally said. “He bought drinks for everyone. Mitch is a generous guy when he’s flush, so we ask him did he win big at Hawthorne. He says no, but he’s going to be a rich guy before long and he isn’t one to forget his friends.”
None of them could add to that, although they murmured agreement—Mitch was generous when he had money. After a week had passed they couldn’t remember where he’d been heading when he left, or if he’d said anything else about what was going to make him rich. I stayed long enough to see the Tigers go down in order in the sixth before driving northeast to the Loop.
Ever since phoning Dick on Friday night I’d been wondering what I could do about Todd Pichea. After all, I’d told Dick I was on Pichea’s case. I could hardly admit it was just bluster. Besides, I really did want to do something about the little flea. But between agitation and humiliation
I hadn’t been able to think of anything until I saw Jake Sokolowski dozing under the Herald-Star.