“Freddie towed it to Cheviot for you, but he took a look at the damage when he unloaded it. You bent the front axle and stove in the radiator for starters. And when Freddie got there he found the neighborhood helping themselves to the battery, the radio, and a couple of tires, so I’ll have to repair the dash. And before you squawk, let me tell you that a big shop would charge at least a thousand more.”
I slumped in the hard chair. “I wasn’t squawking. That gurgling noise was the last of my pathetic assets being sucked into the Gulf of Mexico. Does this estimate include the kind of professional courtesy I gave you when I drove those creeps away from your yard?”
“You didn’t do anything for me I couldn’t do myself, Warshawski, but I know you don’t know what it takes to fix this car.”
I bit back an acid rejoinder. “What about your forensic buddies? What are they saying about inspecting the front end?”
“The earliest they can get to it is tomorrow afternoon. And I have a note here from Rieff at Cheviot. He says they need the autopsy report on the hit–and–run victim. And they ideally need the clothes she had on when she died. Their analysis is going to run you another grand, easy, probably more. Of course I won’t start repairs until after they’ve finished. And until you give me the go–ahead. But tell you what, Warshawski, being as you helped me out with those kids, I won’t charge you for the tow.”
“Luke, you’re a prince.”
Irony was wasted on him. “One good turn deserves another.”
I pressed the END key before I let my temper get the better of me. I’d spent three nights in his alley, nabbed a group of teenagers, put the fear of God into them sufficiently to make sure they didn’t return, and then stupidly gave Luke a courtesy discount in the belief he would reciprocate on future repair bills.
Twenty–nine hundred in repairs plus another grand for a forensic inspection. And yet another thousand or two for a replacement? Maybe I’d be better off renting by the week. Of course, I could let the Trans Am go for scrap and buy a used car with more oomph than the ones Mr. Contreras was investigating, but I loved my little sports car.
I smacked the tabletop in frustration. Why can’t I ever get ahead of the game financially? I work hard, I pay serious attention to my clients, and here I am, past forty and still scrambling at month’s end. I looked with distaste at the melted remains in the cup. Soggy waffle and lumps of berry floated in beige sludge. It looked like an artist’s depiction of my life. I stuffed the cup into an overflowing garbage can by the door and went out to catch the Blue Line to my office.
Since it was rush hour a train came almost as soon as I climbed onto the platform. Not only that, it was one of the new ones, air–conditioned and moving fast. It didn’t make up for everything that had gone wrong today, but it helped. In ten minutes I was at Damen and back in the wet heat.
A new coffee bar had opened, I noticed, making three, one for each of the three streets that came together at that corner. I stopped for an espresso and to buy a Streetwise from a guy named Elton who worked that intersection. Over the months I’d been renting nearby we’d struck up a relationship of the “Hi, how’s it going” kind.
When I moved my operation to Bucktown two years ago, the only liquid you could get by the glass was a shot and a beer. Now the bars and palm–readers of Humboldt Park are giving way to coffee bars and workout clubs as Generation X–ers move in. I could hardly criticize them: I’d helped start that gentrifying wave.
The Loop building where I’d rented since opening my practice had fallen to the wrecker’s ball more than a year ago, taking with it not just inlaid mosaic flooring and embossed brass elevator doors, but the malfunctioning toilets and frayed wiring that had kept the rent affordable. After the Pulteney’s demise I couldn’t find anything even close to my price range downtown. A sculpting friend convinced me to rent space with her in a converted warehouse near North and Damen, on Leavitt. I signed before the area started to be trendy and had been savvy enough—for once—to get a seven–year lease.
I miss being downtown, where the bulk of my business lies, but I’m only ten minutes away by L or car. The warehouse has a parking lot, which I couldn’t offer clients before. And a lot of the queries I used to have to do on foot—trudging from the Department of Motor Vehicles to Social Security to the Recorder of Deeds—I can handle right in my office by dialing up the Web. The one thing I don’t automate is my answering service: people in distress like a real person on the line, not a voice menu.