The South Loop hasn’t yet attracted the kind of chichi shops that stay open on Sunday afternoons. I didn’t have any trouble parking in front of the Pulteney Building. We don’t have a door man or a security guard to keep it open all weekend. The crusty super, Tom Czarnik, locks the front door at noon on Saturday and reopens it at seven on Monday morning. Occasionally he even arranges for someone to run a mop around the lobby floor. I hunted among my keys for the wide brass one that worked the front door dead bolt and wrestled with the stiff lock. Every time I make a Sunday visit I vow to bring a can of graphite with me to loosen the lock, but I do it so seldom that I forget between trips.
Czarnik had shut down the elevator power and locked the fire door at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t do this because he’s safety conscious, but from a bitter enmity against all the tenants. I’d long since managed to make keys for both the elevator and the stairwell, but I took the stairs; the elevator’s too chancy and I didn’t want to spend the next seventeen hours stuck in it.
Up in my office I tried Murray Ryerson at the Herald-Star. He wasn’t at work or at home. I left messages at both places and pulled the cover from my mother’s old Olivetti, the obsolete machine I use for bills and correspondence. It was one of my few tangible legacies from her; its presence comforted me through my six years at the University of Chicago. Even now I can’t bear to turn it in for a computer, let alone an electric typewriter. Besides, using it keeps my gun wrist strong.
I thought carefully before I started to type.
Why was Todd Pichea of Crawford, Mead, Wilton, and Dun-whittie so anxious to take over the legal affairs of Harriet Frizell that he rushed a probate court representative to her Cook County Hospital bedside? Why was his first action on becoming her legal guardian to put her dogs to sleep? Was his sole aim in making her his ward the power to kill her dogs? Or does he have designs on her property as well? Does the firm of Crawford, Mead support Pichea’s action? And if so, why? Inquiring minds want to know.
I signed my name and made five copies—my concession to modernity is a desktop copier. My own copy I stuck in a folder labeled prizell, which I placed in my client files. I put another in an envelope to Murray. The other four I planned to deliver in person: three at Dick’s firm—one to Dick himself, one to Todd, and a third to Leigh Wilton, one of the senior partners whom I knew. The original was addressed to the Chicago Lawyer.
I drove over to the new building on LaSalle where Crawford, Mead had moved their offices last year. It was one of my favorites in the West Loop, with a curved amber facade that reflected the profile of the skyline at sunset. I wouldn’t have minded an office there. It was second on my list of purchases, after a new pair of Nikes.
The guard in the lobby was watching the last of the Sox game; he motioned me toward the sign-in sheet, but didn’t care much what I did as long as I didn’t interrupt the final out. Only one elevator was turned on, its interior upholstered in pale orange to match the building’s amber glass. It sucked me up to the thirtieth floor, where it decanted me in about twenty seconds.
Crawford, Mead had moved the carved wooden doors from their old headquarters. As soon as you saw those massive doors, inlaid into gray worsted walls, you knew you’d be paying three hundred dollars an hour for the privilege of whispering guilty secrets to the high priests beyond.
The doors were locked. I was tempted to pull out my picklocks and leave my messages on my targets’ desks personally, but I heard muffled voices on the far side of the doors. No doubt juniors hard at work, adding to the firm’s blood supply, its billable hours. The door didn’t have a mail slot. I moistened the tips of the envelopes and stuck them to the door, with Dick’s and Todd’s and Leigh Wilton’s names typed in black and underlined in red. I felt a bit like Martin Luther taking on the pope at Wittenberg.
The Chicago Lawyer’s offices were closed. After dropping the original through their mail slot, I felt I’d earned real food for a change. I stopped at a supermarket and loaded up on fruit and vegetables, new yogurt, staples, and a selection of meat and chicken for the freezer. They had some fresh-looking salmon in their fish case. I bought enough for two and grilled some for Mr. Contreras on my miniature back porch.
Before bringing him up-to-date on my search for Mitch Kruger, I had to tell him about Mrs. Frizell’s dogs. He was angry and miserable at the same time.
“I know you don’t think I can handle Peppy, but why couldn’t you bring the dogs over here? They could’ve hung out in the back and not gotten in anyone’s way.”
By the time he finished I was feeling wretched myself. I should have made better arrangements for them; I just didn’t expect Todd Pichea to move so fast, or so cruelly.
“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “You’d think after all these years I’ve worked with human slime I’d have been prepared for him and Chrissie. Somehow you never expect it to happen in your own neighborhood, though.”