After “Mr. Pederson” was re-introduced to the kids, and I’d served the sandwiches and the last of the soup, Pederson looked up and said innocently, “Things are kind of slow at the station. How would you like to tour it, and see the jail and the lab?”
They had their coats on before he had even pushed back from the table.
When Roy and I were alone I said, “Now that’s above and beyond the call of duty. What gives?”
Roy looked much happier with life. “Jon didn’t feel the police investigation would turn anything up very fast, so he offered to baby-sit for a couple of hours while we check out some possibilities.”
“Great. Do we have any?”
“Possibilities? Not many. We can’t question Petlovich till someone finds out where he is. His parole officer hasn’t seen him in a while.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds dubious. How long till we can get ahold of him?”
“Maybe this afternoon. We’ll be seeing Gillis’s woman.”
“Long-standing?”
“Same one as when he helped us send up Petlovich. Her name’s Mary Jordan. Two shoplifting convictions and a bad-check charge, dropped later. Otherwise, she’s clean-not hard to be cleaner than the men she hangs around with. She might know where Petlovich is.”
“Fat chance.” I said, pulling on my stocking cap. Cartley looked at me oddly.
“You’re not going to shave?”
I shrugged. “We need to look tough. I always cut myself.”
He shrugged back. Out we went.
Gillis’s apartment was on the east side of 35W, not too far south of downtown. Farther down, in the plusher residential areas, along Minnehaha Creek, there were sound fences on either side of the highway, painted a tasteful, unobtrusive green. Up here, they wouldn’t have put a fence up, and someone would have stolen the paint.
Roy and I climbed up two flights of bowing, scarred stairs to a splintered door. The hallway had visible piles of dirt in the corners and along the baseboards. It looked like any other walk-up, only grimier. The baseboards had shrunk away from the linoleum, and I didn’t blame them.
Roy pounded on the door. We both had enough sense to stand aside. Inside there was a scuffling, and the volume on TV chortled appreciation.
Roy said with no patience, “Miss Jordan, we’re investigators, Cartley and Phillips. We worked with Gam a couple of years back-”
The laughter was cut off and a couple of seconds later the door was jerked open. A black-rooted redhead with booze breath and smeared mascara looked at us. “Come on in. I’d make you some eggs, but I only got fresh ones.”
Roy walked in, first looking through the crack between door and wall to see if anyone was waiting. I glanced out the window at the fire escape. Roy said, “I didn’t expect you to love us, but I didn’t expect you to be drunk in front of the TV today, either.” He was red-faced.
As I came in, she walked over to the encrusted sink-and-stove in the room’s corner, picked up a half-empty flat pint bottle, and stared at it argumentatively.
“Did you hear what he said?” she demanded of it, swaying. “He thinks I shouldn’t drink you.” Then she tipped it up and took a long pull. She giggled as she set it down. She had to be her own laugh-track now.
Cartley looked irritated. He opened his mouth, but I winked at him and he shut up as I said, “Don’t listen to him, lady-drink up. Gillis wasn’t worth staying dry for-why waste an afternoon crying for a down-and-out stoolie with just enough brains to get killed?”
I ducked, but shouldn’t have bothered. The glass went over me by three feet.
“Wait a-” Roy said and stopped as another glass flew by me, low and to the right. Two more tries, and there was nothing within her reach but the bottle. She hefted it, glared at me frustratedly, then took another drink.
Roy sounded like sweet reason itself. “Young Nate, here, came along with his own ideas, ma’am. I came to see if I could track down who killed Gillis.”
She looked at him, startled, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Petlovich.” If she had any doubts, they weren’t in her voice. “Nobody else would have killed him. Who would have wanted to?”
“I would,” I offered, keeping in character. “You would have, too, if he hadn’t been your meal ticket.”
She nearly did throw the bottle. “He ain’t given me a dime, you lying bastard. I paid for this place and our food and-hell, he ain’t even taken me out for dinner in two or three months.” She stopped, probably realizing that he wouldn’t, ever again.
Roy said quickly, “All I want is Petlovich’s address, Mary. Nothing else. You want him to go up for it, don’t you?”
She knotted her hands into spindly, white-knuckled fists. “You bet I do.” She pointed at me suddenly. “And I’d send him up, too, if I could!” She ran into the apartment’s tiny bathroom and slammed the door. It was loose in the frame; we could hear her weeping.
Roy said quietly, “Maybe it’d be better from here if you waited outside, Nate. Thanks for priming her.”
“You’re less than welcome.” I meant it. “I’m tired of playing the bad guy.”
On my way out I stopped and looked at a pair of polyester trousers with pulled threads poking out of them, draped over a chair. I glanced toward the bathroom door, then checked the trousers pockets.
No wallet-that had been on the body-but the right front pocket held his checkbook. I flipped idly but quickly through the stubs. For a man that lived off his woman, this guy had been living pretty high lately.
He had written three checks to good restaurants, one to a department store and one for a couple of hundred, marked simply “cash”-all dated within the last three months. He had the deposits recorded in the back. They had been made, one for each check, barely in time and barely enough to cover the amount.
I put the checkbook back. As I did, the bathroom doorknob turned. I gave a quick nod to Roy and edged out to the hall.
Through the door, I could hear him mutter and her snuffle and spit. I shuffled from one foot to the other, idly trying to guess what color the walls had been twenty years ago. I felt like taking a bath.
When Roy came out, he gave me an address in Saint Paul, and away we went. I told him about the checkbook.
“Oho!” he said. “So she was lying about the money.”
“Or else she didn’t know about it.”
Roy looked dubious. “How much were those restaurant checks again?” I told him. “It’s an odd amount, so you can bet he wasn’t cashing a check. Could you eat your way through forty-five dollars and thirty-eight cents’ worth of food at any of those places? Never mind-you probably could.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t-not alone. Or with a friend, either, unless I was in the money or thought I was going to be.”
“I know.” He grabbed the armrest as I took a right turn. “She found that address pretty fast, too. Well, we’re headed to see Petlovich, aren’t we?” Roy was cheerful again. On the way to Saint Paul, he made three rotten jokes and yelled at my driving at every other turn. It wasn’t fair. I had signaled at most of those turns, or meant to.
Saint Paul was a bust, a waste of time. We came up the stairs, we knocked from beside the door, we heard a scrambling in the room, we stood back. A slug ripped through the door; Roy let go of the knob, and we both flattened against the wall. After a minute of silence, Cartley threw the door open and we charged in, heads down and guns up.
There was nothing much in the room-a battered suitcase, a sack of groceries, a newspaper and some mail. The window was open, and the shade, jerked down, roller and all, hung half in the window and half out. I looked out. Ten feet below the window were the deep tracks where he had hit, and the footprints of a man sprinting away.