When he’d finished he gestured to some vinyl chairs chained together against the wall. “Have a seat. Someone will be with you in a minute.”
The minute stretched into twenty while Mr. Contreras fretted at my side. “What’s going on, doll? How come we can’t just go and look? This waiting is getting on my nerves. Reminds me of when Clara was in the hospital having Ruthie, they kept me waiting in a place that looked like a morgue”—he gave a bark of self-conscious laughter—“matter of fact, it did. Looked just like this place here. Waiting to see if it’s good news or bad. You got her pregnant and she doesn’t make it through, you carry that load around the rest of your life.”
He rambled on nervously until the attendant unlocked the door again and a couple of sheriff’s deputies came in. My stomach knotted. Chicago’s finest can be a pain to deal with, but for the most part they’re professional police. Too much of the county law enforcement payroll is double-dipping for the mob to make them easy companions in the search for truth and justice.
The attendant jerked his head at us and the deputies came over. They were both white, young, and had the squared-off, mean faces you get when you have too much unrestrained power. I read their badges: Hendricks and Jaworski. I’d never remember which was which.
“So you two think you know something.” It was the one labeled “Hendricks.” His ugly tone set the scene.
“We don’t know if we know anything or not,” Mr. Contreras said, exasperated. “All we want is a chance to look at a body, ‘stead of sitting around here all night waiting for someone to be good enough to pay attention to us. My old pal, Mitch Kruger, he’s been missing for a week and my neighbor here’s been trying to find him for me. When she heard the story on the radio she thought maybe it was him.”
It was a whole lot more story than I would have given under the circumstances, but I didn’t stop him: the last thing I wanted was to make it look like Mr. Contreras and I had something to hide. I kept my face solemn and earnest: just a good-hearted neighbor helping out the elderly when they misplaced their pals.
The deputies stared at us unblinkingly. “You file a missing persons report on him?”
“We notified the nineteenth district,” I said, before Mr. Contreras could blurt out that we hadn’t.
“When was the last time you saw your friend?” Jaworski asked.
“I just finished telling you, it’s been a week. What do we have to go through to see this body you got here?”
Both deputies’ faces tightened into the same ugly expression. “Don’t try to make trouble for us, old man. We ask the questions. You answer them. If you’re a good enough boy we’ll let you look at the body. That’ll be a real treat for you.”
The morgue attendants were leaning against the walls, waiting to see which way the fight developed. “Mr. Contreras is seventy-seven,” I said. “He’s old, he’s tired, and the guy who’s missing is his last friend from his neighborhood. He doesn’t want trouble, and he’s not trying to make it; he just wants to put his mind at rest. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to see your fathers or grandfathers in this situation.”
“What’s your interest in this, babe?”
Hendricks again. As long as they kept their badges facing us I’d know who was talking. I resisted an impulse to crack his shinbone against my right toe.
“Just helping out my neighbor, sugar. Shall I call Dr. Vishnikov and get his permission to view the body?” Vishnikov was one of the assistant MEs, whom I knew from my PD days.
“Keep your pants on. We’ll get into the morgue as soon as you answer our questions.”
The outer door opened again. I looked past Jaworski’s left shoulder and relaxed fractionally. It was Terry Finchley, a violent crimes detective from Area One.
“Terry,” I called.
He’d gone to the counter to check something with the intake man, but he turned at my voice. “Vic!”
He came over. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to ID a body. These deputies apparently pulled an old man out of the canal near Stickney today. My friend and I want to make sure it’s not someone we know. Deputies Jaworski and Hendricks, this is Detective Finchley with the Chicago police.”
They didn’t like it, not one bit, me being on first-names with a Chicago cop and a black one to boot. They exchanged glares and jutted their chins out some more.
“We need to ask the girl and the old man a few questions, Detective, so why don’t you just butt out.” The two had turned to look at Finchley, so I couldn’t make out which was speaking.