Who Has Wilma Lathrop? (7 page)

“They look a lot alike.”

“Can’t she talk?”

“Just that mewing sound.”

Conscious they were discussing her, the girl on the bed writhed and attempted to free herself. “Please. Be a good girl,” Vladimir begged her.

Lathrop transferred his attention to Wilma’s brother. In the glare of the unshaded light, the youth looked older than his years. The skin on his face was taut. There were deep shadows under his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Lathrop repeated.

Vladimir forced a grin. “You think you have troubles. How would you like to live with and support a drunken old man and a simple-minded sister? How would you, huh?” He led the way from the room and closed and locked the door. “I got my troubles, too.”

Lathrop felt somehow unclean as he walked back down the hall beside Vladimir. “Yes. So I see. Why don’t you have her put away?”

Vladimir shrugged. “I’ve thought of it, off and on. But, after all, she’s my sister.” He stopped in front of the open living-room door. A full glass of prune whisky in his hand, the elder Stanislawow was slumped in one of the raddled chairs, his lips still moving as he watched the soundless television screen. “Why don’t you quit while you’re winners, Lathrop?” the blond youth suggested. “The old man’s forgotten you were even here.” He offered to shake hands. “Well, a little late, but nice to have met you.”

Lathrop’s sensation of moving through a nightmare persisted as he shook the proffered hand. “Nice to have met you,” he said automatically. “And do me a favour, will you?”

“Anything but lend you money.”

“If you should hear from Wilma, phone me.”

“After the deal she gave you?”

“After the deal she gave me.”

It seemed to Lathrop that the blond youth hesitated a few seconds longer than necessary before replying. “O.K. I’ll do that,” he said.

Vladimir closed the front door gently but firmly and Lathrop heard a key turn in the lock. The cold night air felt good on his flushed face. He looked up and across the street as a snorting freight hog without a pay load rumbled by. Still deeper in the yards, hidden from sight by the ranks of motionless, snow-covered, freight cars, an outbound passenger train whistled for a clear track. It was an eerie, almost human sound — like a woman with a broken heart crying aloud in the cold clear stillness of the night.

IT WAS
after one o’clock when Lathrop returned to Palmer Square. A late-model yellow Buick had usurped his usual parking space in front of the three-flat building and he had to park his car a quarter of a block away and walk back through the cold.

It would seem every man had his cross. Wilma’s brother didn’t seem to be a bad fellow. He might wear his hair cut in a duck tail, but at least he took care of his own and, apparently, the blond youth had plenty with which to contend.

It was warmer than it had been. Part of the walk was cleaned, part of it ankle deep in half-frozen slush that crunched under his weight. It was odd the things a man remembered. Wilma had forgotten to get flour. She’d had to run over to the small delicatessen on Kedzie and she’d slipped and skinned both of her knees and soaked her dress. “Right through to my panties,” she told him.

It had been a graphic description, Lathrop thought at the time. That thought and the thought of what had followed supper made him think of Wilma’s simple-minded sister and the Stanislawow family. No wonder Wilma had never talked about them. No wonder she had never suggested that he meet her folks. Wilma was an enigma. She had a police record, but on the surface at least she was a lady, more sinned against than sinning. Most girls would do anything to get away from such a family. He wondered what Raoul Contini had been like and was suddenly jealous of a man he’d never seen. He wished he’d met Wilma first. Things could have been so different.

Before unlocking the inner door, Lathrop stood a moment with his cheek pressed to the cold tile of the vestibule. The hell of it was, despite what he’d learned about her, even after meeting her family, he still loved Wilma. And it could be he’d never get a chance to tell her. If she was in flight, he might never see her again. When her past had caught up with her she had taken off with five thousand dollars in cash and two hundred thousand in jewels. As Vladimir had put it:

“This is a tough world to get by in, Mister. Or hasn’t anyone told you?”

Lathrop could see mail through the small glass panel in the box. He opened the mail box with his key and wished that he hadn’t bothered. There was nothing but the gas bill and a letter from a small loan company assuring him that as far as they were concerned they would roll out the red plush carpet any time he wanted to borrow up to three hundred dollars.

He jammed the envelope in his coat pocket and walked up the carpeted inner stairs. City employees, school teachers in particular, were a good risk. They paid their bills. They didn’t dare impair their credit for fear of being called before the Superintendent of Education. And that was another complication he would have to face in a matter of a few hours. School teachers weren’t supposed to become involved in messy scandals. Their lives and wives were supposed to be above suspicion. Once this thing broke in the paper, once the full story was printed, he probably wouldn’t even have a job.

The flat was bitter cold. Lathrop was glad that Jenny had cleared the dining-room table and washed the dishes. A sink full of soiled dishes would be one more straw than he could take.

He hung his overcoat in the guest closet beside the grey squirrel coat he’d insisted on buying Wilma. How she must have laughed inwardly at that. Two total strangers in a parking lot had given him five thousand dollars to give to her as if the bills in the brown Manila envelope were so many street car transfers. And he had attempted to please her, to strengthen the bond between them, by buying her a four-hundred-dollar fur coat.

Lathrop picked the coat from its plastic hanger. The fur felt like flesh in his hands, as soft and warm as Wilma.

“Thank you.” She’d thanked him when they went to bed.

And in the morning she’d been gone. He hung the coat on another hanger and walked through the flat, touching an object here and there, admiring Wilma’s taste. She’d done a lot with so little. She’d seemed so happy. She’d been so real, so alive, so vital. Now all of it was gone.

“I wish you’d told me, honey,” he said. “We could have worked out something. What the hell, teaching school isn’t the only job in the world.”

Fatigue and the whisky he’d drunk had made him lightheaded. He could hear music with no one playing. As he unknotted his tie and took off his shirt, Lathrop wondered if a cup of coffee would make him feel better or worse. Either way, he doubted if he would sleep. He was untying the laces of his shoes when he remembered the fire.

After rebuilding the fire and getting it well started, he’d forgotten all about it. He’d meant to go down and throw more coal on it but Jenny’s appearance in the flat and the subsequent developments had erased it from his mind. There was no telling when the new janitor would show up on the job. He had his choice of rebuilding the fire to-night or in the morning. There would be no living with the Metz’s or the Kleins if they awakened to cold flats. Both couples would probably move. And middle-aged couples without children who were willing to pay one hundred and twenty dollars a month rent for a five-room flat in a twenty-five-year-old building were difficult to find.

Lathrop retied his shoes and got his flannel robe from the closet. The closet was fragrant with Wilma’s perfume. It gave him physical pain to touch her clothes. They’d had so much. They’d been so close. “I wish you’d told me, honey,” he repeated.

The wind-swept back stairs were cold. The light flannel robe gave little or no protection. When he reached the boiler room the fire was in the same condition it had been when he’d come home earlier in the evening. He had the whole thing to do over again. To keep from awakening Mr. and Mrs. Metz, he worked as quietly as he could. He made a pile of crumpled newspapers, then went in search of kindling. The pile he’d used earlier in the evening was almost exhausted but there were several packing crates in the front of the basement.

Lathrop switched on another bulb and studied the crates. Both of them were old and dry. The wood would burn well if he could smash it small enough to get the pieces inside the fire box. He tugged tentatively at one of the crates. It was heavier than it looked. Grunting from the effort he could barely manage to move it. He was facing the closed side. He walked around the crate to see what was weighting it and stared in shocked silence at its contents.

Nielsen hadn’t fallen down on the job. The janitor hadn’t stopped for one drink too many. He was incapable of so doing. He was dead and had been dead for some time, sitting with his hands on his knees, his chin resting on his hands, his sightless eyes focused on nothing, the back of his head crushed in, as with repeated blows of a blackjack.

The basement seemed even colder than it had. Lathrop had seen a lot of dead men during his tour of Army duty. He was a good judge of the time of death. And the dead janitor stuffed into the packing crate had been dead for approximately twenty-four hours. He had been killed sometime during the night just past, the night that Wilma had disappeared.

The police cars came like so many hungry cats, their revolving red eyes circling the Square. Some came from the east. Some came from the west. Some drove north on Kedzie, wailing their way out the semi-deserted boulevards from the Central Bureau garage. But all of them had one focal point. All of them stopped in front of the grey-stone three-flat, their strident wailing fading to a faint mewing that reminded Lathrop of Wilma’s sister, Vilna. Only none of the police cars or their occupants were amorous.

No longer tired, his hands clasped behind him, still wearing his flannel robe, Lathrop watched the arriving cars from his front window. He saw Lieutenant Jezierna and Sergeant Meyers get out of a car. A few minutes later Captain Kelly arrived accompanied by a crew of officers carrying technical equipment. None of the men came upstairs. All of them walked down the now brightly lighted areaway between his building and the one next door and disappeared into the basement. Braving the cold, their overcoats pulled on over their pyjamas, the residents of the adjoining flats and apartment buildings began to gather on the walk.

Lathrop spoke without turning. “A mess, eh?”

Radio-car officer Morton, one of the first two officers to arrive in response to Lathrop’s phone call, shifted his uniform cap from one hand to the other. “Yeah,” he agreed. “But then, murder is always a mess. And it always happens at the damnedest times. How come you were starting a fire at two o’clock in the morning?”

Lathrop said, “It was either now or get up at five o’clock. I started to go to bed. Then I remembered I hadn’t looked at the fire since I rebuilt it when I got home from Central Bureau.”

“What time was that?”

“About seven o’clock last night.”

“The building had been cold all day?”

“So the first-floor tenants told me.”

“I see,” Morton said. He took a small leather book from his cap. “Well, all I know about it is when I went on tour at midnight, the Sergeant told us a Mrs. Olaf Nielsen had reported her husband as missing.” He found the page he wanted. “Here it is right here. Olaf Nielsen. Fifty years old. Weight one hundred and fifty. Five feet nine. Clean shaven. Light complexion. Wearing work clothes. Speaks with a slight Scandinavian accent.” Mercer returned the book to his cap. “Only we didn’t figure the guy as dead. We were told to give the bars a quick once-over. The way I get it he lifted one too many now and then and his wife figured he was off on a toot and might lose some of his buildings.”

“How long had it been since she’d seen him?”

“Since yesterday afternoon sometime. At least so she told the sergeant.”

Lathrop got up from the window sill as the back door of the flat opened and a number of men clomped down the hall. There were five men in the party, among them Lieutenant Jezierna and Sergeant Meyers.

Jezierna said, “More trouble, eh, Mr. Lathrop?”

“So it would seem,” Lathrop said. “I damn near died of shock when I walked around that crate and saw Nielsen sitting in it.”

“I can imagine.”

Lieutenant Jezierna introduced the officers with him. “Detectives Madigan, Harris and Jethro. All of downtown Homicide.”

The detectives grouped themselves around the room. The slim, dark man whom Jezierna had introduced as Harris seemed to be in charge of the party. He sat on the arm of the sofa, facing Lathrop. “Lieutenant Jezierna tells me that you are the husband of that woman who disappeared last night.”

“That’s right,” Lathrop said.

“You figure there’s any connection?”

“Between what?”

“Your wife disappearing and Nielsen being killed.”

Lathrop shook his head. “That I wouldn’t know. All I know is, I found him.”

Harris repeated the question the radio-car officer had asked. “How come you were building a fire at two o’clock in the morning?”

Lathrop told him what he’d told Morton. “I had my choice between building it now or in the morning.”

“You’d just gotten home?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you mind telling us where you’d been?”

“Not at all. I’d been trying to find my wife.” Lathrop looked at Lieutenant Jezierna. “And it will interest you, Lieutenant, to learn I did locate her family. She has a father, a brother, and a feeble-minded sister, living at 6019 Mercer Street. That’s right across from the Galewood freightyards.”

“How did you find them?” Sergeant Meyers asked.

“I went down to the
Dziennik Chicagoski
and paid a linotype operator twenty dollars to look in the files and see if they had any subscribers named Stanislawow. It turned out they had three and it was the second address I tried.”

“That was smart,” Meyers said. “We should have thought of that.”

Lieutenant Jezierna wrote the address in his notebook. “We’ll drop out to see your wife’s family or have them brought in as soon as we finish here. I presume they hadn’t seen Mrs. Lathrop.”

“They claim not.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. But it was a relief to find out that it was her brother whom my first-floor tenant, Mrs. Metz, had seen calling on Wilma. She said he dropped around once or twice a week. Always when I wasn’t home.”

“Yeah. So she told us.”

“To get back to the janitor,” Harris said. “When did you last see Nielsen, Mr. Lathrop?”

Lathrop thought a moment. “I can’t remember. Janitors are like a part of the building. You don’t notice them until they turn up missing. It was several days ago, I believe.

“You can’t do better than that?”

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

Harris took a card from his pocket and consulted it. “According to Mrs. Nielsen she hasn’t seen her husband since he came home for supper the night before last. He wasn’t in the habit of sleeping in the basement, was he?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You didn’t have any trouble with him the day of the night that your wife disappeared? I mean there was a fire when you came home?”

“At least the flat was warm and Wilma didn’t complain.” Lathrop remembered a detail. “No. He was on the job Tuesday. I know. As you may remember it snowed Tuesday morning and I distinctly remember noticing that Nielsen had shovelled the walk. And there was a fire, a good one. I remember I looked in the firebox and checked the gauges before I came upstairs.”

“Why should you do that?”

“From force of habit, I suppose.”

“Then you know how to handle the boiler?”

Lathrop wondered where the questioning was leading. “I do.”

“How come. Were you ever a janitor?”

Lathrop explained. “No. But when I was a boy going to school back during the depression when flats were hard to rent and every dollar counted, I used to fire the boiler and vacuum the halls and carry down the garbage to save paying a janitor.”

“I see,” Harris said. He nodded to one of the men with him. “Take a walk downstairs, will you, Ed, and find out if the coroner has anything for us yet. I’m particularly interested in the time of death.”

“Sure thing,” the detective said.

When the detective had left the room, Harris looked back at Lathrop. “One more thing, Mr. Lathrop.”

“Yes?”

“I notice, as boiler rooms go, that your fire room is very clean.”