I drove past the plant at Grand and Trumbull. A light was shining through one of the rear windows on the second floor. In case Lemour had set a trap, I didn’t slow down but turned south at the next intersection. I parked three blocks away.
Saturday nights on the fringes of Humboldt Park are not quiet. The streets in this industrial section were empty, but sirens and dogs keened a few blocks away. I even heard roosters crowing. Someone was running a cockfight nearby. A freight train squeaked and hooted in the distance. As it drew near, its rackety clank–clank drowned out other sounds.
When I got to Frenada’s building I scouted it as closely as I could in the dark. I paused outside an old delivery van, listening intently at the rear doors to see if it was a stakeout vehicle, although it was hard to hear anything above the thundering of the freight train.
I stood across the street from the entrance for ten minutes, waiting for some sign of life. Or was I waiting for my courage to build enough for me to enter a rickety building alone in the dark? The longer I stood, the more inclined I would be to go home without looking inside. And what if that really had been Frenada on the phone? And what if he really was in trouble, bleeding, dead? Then what? I took a deep breath and crossed the street.
The front door was unlocked. It’s a trap, Vic, the sensible voice whispered, but I slid sideways through the opening, gun in hand, palm clammy against the stock.
Inside the entrance, the dark wrapped around me like a living cloak. I could feel it grabbing at my neck, and the soreness, which I’d forgotten, came back. I moved cautiously to the stairwell, fighting the impulse to turn tail and run.
I climbed the slippery concrete stairs, pausing on each riser to strain for noises inside. Outside, the freight thumped and squeaked into the distance. In the sudden stillness I could hear the sirens and car horns again, making it hard to focus on the building. I hugged the stairwell wall, trying to make no sound myself, hoping the hammering of my heart was audible only to me.
At the top landing I could see a bar of light under Special–T’s door. I moved faster, as if light itself meant safety. At the door I knelt down to look through the keyhole but saw only the legs of the long worktable. I lay flat, trying not to think of the filth of decades against my face (how many men had spat on this floor when walking out at the end of the day?), my eye pressed against the thin slit of light. All I saw were bolts of fabric and some wadded–up paper. I waited a long time, watching for feet, or for a shadow to move. When nothing happened I stood up and tried the handle. Like the outer door, the one to the shop floor was open.
A clothes shop is probably always chaotic, but Special–T looked as though someone had tossed the place through a wind tunnel. Whoever had rampaged through my office had been here as well. The long tables in the middle where the cutting took place had been cleared; fabric, shears, and pattern stencils lay in a heap around them. Along the wall, the sewing machines stood with their covers unscrewed. A single light over one of the machines was the one that I’d seen from the street.
I moved fearfully toward a small room at the back, expecting at any second to come on Frenada’s body. Instead, I found more signs of upheaval. The vandals had taken the room apart with a ruthless hand. The intruders had been looking for something: drawers stood open, their contents dangling over the side to spill on the floor. A piece of loose tile had been pulled up and tossed to one side. Invoices, dressmaking patterns, and fabric samples made a gaudy stew on the floor. The bulbs had been removed from the desk lamp.
I was certain that there must be bags of powder on the premises, but it wasn’t a search I wanted to make alone and in the dark. I looked in Frenada’s office for the Mad Virgin shirt I’d seen on Tuesday. When a quick inspection of the tangled heap of cloth and paper didn’t reveal it, I moved to the hall. I’d see if Frenada was in the john or at the back by the freight elevator; if he wasn’t on the premises I was out of Dodge.
The toilet was in the hall that ran outside Special–T’s door. A supply closet was next to it; the freight elevator was at the end farthest from the stairs. I had looked inside the closet and found nothing more disgusting than a mop that needed a good bath in disinfectant, when I heard the scuffling sound of a door opening, of many feet trying to sneak silently up concrete stairs. A second later a train began to wheeze and crank its way up the track: if they’d waited only a heartbeat longer I’d never have heard them.
23 A Run to O’Hare