XXXII Client in the Slammer

My face in the elevator mirror looked wild and haggard, as though I’d spent years in a forest away from human contact. I ran a comb through my thick hair, hoping that my hollow eyes were merely a trick of the light.

I took a ten from my wallet and folded it into the palm of my hand. In the lobby I gave the doorman what was supposed to be a charming smile, with a comment on the weather.

“Mild for this time of year,” he agreed. “Do you need a taxi, miss?”

I said I didn’t have far to go. “I hope it isn’t hard getting taxis later-the rest of the Rossys’ company seemed to be prepared to stick it out all night.”

“Oh, yes. Very cosmopolitan, their parties. People often stay until two or three in the morning.”

“Mrs. Rossy is such a devoted mother, it must be hard for her to get up with her children in the morning,” I said, thinking of the way she had held and stroked them at bedtime.

“The nanny takes them to school, but if you ask me, they’d be happier if she was less devoted. At least the little guy, he’s always trying to get her to let go of him in public. I guess he’s seen in American schools little boys don’t let their mothers hold them and fuss with their clothes so much.”

“She’s such a soft-speaking lady, but she seems to run the show upstairs.”

He opened the door for an older woman with a small dog, commenting on the nice night they had for their walk. The little dog bared its teeth under its mop of white hair.

“You going to work there?” he asked when the pair were outside.

“No. Oh, no-I’m a business associate of the husband.”

“I was going to say-I wouldn’t take a job up there on a bet. She has very European views on the place of the help, including me: I’m a piece of furniture who gets her cabs. It’s her money, what I hear, that runs the show. Mister married the boss’s daughter, still asks ‘how high’ when the family says ‘jump.’ That’s what I hear, anyway.”

I fanned the flame gently. “I’m sure she must be good to work for, or Irina wouldn’t have come from Italy with her.”

“ Italy?” he held the door for a couple of teenage boys but didn’t stop to chat with them. “Irina’s from Poland. Probably illegal. Sends all her money to the family back home like all the other immigrants. Nah, the missus brought a girl from Italy with her to look after the kids so they won’t forget their Italian living here. Stuck-up girl who doesn’t give you the time of day,” he added resentfully: gossip about the bosses keeps a dull job interesting.

“So both women live here? At least Irina can sleep in after a late night like tonight.”

“Are you kidding? I’m telling you, for Mrs. Rossy, servants are servants. The mister, no matter how late the guests stay, he’s up at eight ready for work, and you’d better believe it isn’t the missus who gets up first thing to make sure that morning coffee is ready the way he likes it.”

“I know they entertain a lot. I kind of expected to see Alderman Durham at dinner, since he’d been over here earlier. Or Joseph Posner.” I casually left the ten on the marble console where he had television screens showing him the elevators and the street.

“Posner? Oh, you mean the Jewish guy.” The doorman gracefully pocketed the ten without pausing for air. “Not likely the missus would let either of them at the dinner table. Around six-thirty she comes sailing in, talking on her cell phone. I figure it’s to the mister, since it’s in Italian, but she hangs up and turns to me, she never shouts, but she still gets the message across that she is PO’d big time: ‘my husband has invited some business associate to do business here tonight. It will be a black man arriving, who is to wait in the lobby until my husband gets here. I am not able to entertain a strange man while I try to get ready for my guests.’ By which she means her makeup and so forth.”

“So Mr. Rossy was expecting Alderman Durham. Did he invite Posner, too?”

The doorman shook his head. “Posner showed up unexpected and got into quite a shouting match with me when I wouldn’t let him go sailing up on his own. Mr. Rossy agreed to see him as soon as the alderman had left, but Posner only stayed up there fifteen minutes or so.”

“So Posner must have been pretty angry at getting such a short audience, huh?”

“Oh, Mr. Rossy’s a good guy, not like the missus-he’s always good for a joke or a tip, at least when she isn’t looking-you’d think if you had a bundle you could spare a buck now and then when a guy runs all the way down to Belmont for a cab-anyway, Mr. Rossy managed to calm the Jewish guy down in fifteen minutes. I don’t get the funny dress, though, do you? We have a lot of Jews in this building and they’re just as normal as you or me. What’s the point of the hat and the scarf and all that?”

A taxi pulling up in front saved me from having to think of a response. The doorman sprang into action as the taxi decanted a woman with several large suitcases. I figured I’d learned what I could, although it wasn’t as much as I wanted to know; I went out with him and crossed the street to my car.

I drove home across Addison, trying to make sense of the situation. Rossy had invited Durham to see him. Before the demonstration? After he got back from Springfield? And somehow Posner knew about it, so he’d followed Durham up here. Where Rossy calmed his angry suspicions.

I didn’t know anything specific about Alderman Durham’s cupidity-although those expensive suits wouldn’t leave much left over for groceries if he bought them on his alderman’s pay-but most Chicago pols have a price, and it usually isn’t very high. Presumably Rossy had invited Durham to his home to buy him off. But what could Rossy offer Posner that would get that fanatic off his back?

It was close to midnight when I finally found a parking space on one of the side streets near my home. I lived three miles west of the Rossys. When I moved into my little co-op, the neighborhood was a peaceful, mostly blue-collar place, but it’s become so crowded now with trendy restaurants and boutiques that even this late at night the traffic made the drive tedious. An SUV swerving around me in front of Wrigley Field reminded me to stop thinking and concentrate on traffic.

Late as it was, my neighbor and the dogs were still awake. Mr. Contreras must have been sitting next to his front door waiting for me, because I was barely inside when he came out with Mitch and Peppy. The dogs dashed around the tiny foyer snapping at me, showing they were miffed at my long absence.

Mr. Contreras was feeling lonely and neglected, as was I. Even though I was exhausted, after giving the dogs a short run around the block, I joined the old man in his cluttered kitchen. He was drinking grappa; I opted for chamomile tea with a shot of brandy. The enamel on the kitchen table was chipped, the only picture was a calendar from the Humane Society showing a bundle of puppies, the brandy was young and raw, but I felt more at ease here than in the Rossys’ ornate drawing room.

“Morrell take off today?” the old man asked. “I could kind of tell you was feeling blue. Everything okay?”

I grunted noncommittally, then found myself telling him in detail about coming on Fepple’s body, about the Sommers family, the missing money, the missing documents, and tonight’s dinner party. He was annoyed that I hadn’t told him sooner about Fepple-“after all, doll, you was in the kitchen with me when his murder come on the news”-but he let me get on with my tale after only a perfunctory grumble.

“I’m tired. I’m not thinking clearly. But it seemed to me tonight’s dinner was a carefully orchestrated event,” I said. “At the time I got swept along on the conversational tide, but now I feel as though they were herding me, corralling me into talking about something very specific, but whether it was finding Fepple’s body or what I’d seen in the Sommers file I don’t know.”