“Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’ll just let the princess out first.”
While I waited for Mr. Contreras to go through the laborious business of securing his front door, I suddenly thought of the phone call that woke me up. If I’d lost someone I was following that’s what I might do: phone her home base to see if she answered. If my companions were back in business, did it matter if they followed me to the morgue? If they belonged to Diamond Head it couldn’t possibly be of interest to them.
“What did they say that made you think it might be Mitch?” Mr. Contreras asked when we were buckled into the Trans Am.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It just sounded possible. I’d been down Friday looking at the Sanitary Canal. Diamond Head fronts it; Mrs. Poker’s boardinghouse isn’t that far away. I could just see it happening somehow, his being drunk and going over the side while trying to make his way around the Diamond Head property.”
“I ain’t saying you’re wrong, but Mitch and me worked there forty years, just about. He knows that place.”
“You’re right. I’m sure you’re right.” I forbore reminding him that it had been over a decade since they’d quit. I couldn’t have found my way around the public defender’s office drunk and in the dark after all these years. Probably not sober, either.
I turned right onto Diversey without signaling and looked in the rearview mirror. A couple of seconds later another set of lights followed me around the corner. It wasn’t a Honda. Maybe someone else going down Racine to Diversey, or maybe they realized I’d spotted the Honda and had changed cars. At Ashland the second car let a few people turn onto the street in front of him, but it was still with me four blocks later when I started south on Damen.
Mr. Contreras was rambling on about some of his drunken adventures at Diamond Head, which were meant to prove you wouldn’t fall in the soup even if you were stewed. I debated whether to tell him about the tail; it would take his mind off his worries and get him prepared for battle, if it came to that. Although my friends were following carelessly enough to invite confrontation, I didn’t want to push it. Giving in to my angry impulses over the last four days had brought me nothing but misery. I wasn’t going to compound my problems by confronting thugs when I wasn’t at my best physically or mentally. I let Mr. Contreras ramble on, checking periodically to make sure they weren’t going to ram us or start shooting.
The morgue was uncomfortably close to Cook County Hospital, just on the other side of Damen from it. An easy progression from surgery to autopsy. As I pulled into the lot outside the concrete cube housing the dead I glanced up the street, wondering what Mrs. Frizell was doing. Was she still lying like a corpse on her bed? Or was she trying to get well enough to go home to Bruce?
I turned off the ignition, but didn’t get out until the car that had been tailing us continued east on Harrison. In the dark it was impossible to tell what model it was: anything relatively small and modern, from a Toyota to a Dodge.
An ambulance had pulled up outside the big metal doors marked deliveries. Really, it was just like the loading bays at Diamond Head and the neighboring plants I’d seen on Friday. Here it was bodies instead of motors, but the attendants handled their load with the same casual familiarity.
I waited with Mr. Contreras for someone to buzz us in through the main door. The place was kept locked even during the day. I don’t know if the pathologists needed protection from the demented bereaved, or if the county was afraid someone would run off with evidence in a murder case. Finally one of the guards deigned to listen to the doorbell and release the lock.
We went to the high counter immediately inside the entrance. Despite having watched us through the reinforced glass for five minutes, the attendant on duty continued his conversation with two women in lab smocks lounging in a nearby doorway.
I cleared my throat loudly. “I’m here to try to identify a body.”
The attendant finally looked up at us. “Name?”
“I’m V.I. Warshawski. This is Salvatore Contreras.”
“Not yours,” the man said impatiently. “The person you’ve come to ID.”
Mr. Contreras started to say “Mitch Kruger,” but I cut him off.
“The man who was pulled out of the Sanitary Canal this morning. We may know who he is.”
The attendant eyed me suspiciously. Finally he picked up the phone in front of him and carried on a low-key conversation, his palm cupping the mouthpiece.