Free Dead Man by Joe Gores Page B

hadn’t been able to put it away.
    “You know, honey, maybe Randy’s right. Maybe you’re treating the Grimes thing a little too much like just a game
…”
    And he, pretentious asshole that he was, had said,
“You know that all investigations are just a game, sweetie
—
move, countermove, just like chess.”
    And she had died. And Albie had died.
    Sometime, maybe, someone else would die. Oh God, please let him find someone else he could make die…

9
    Next morning, Dain caught the Cicero bus three stops short of the First Chicago Bank of Commerce, stood right behind the driver
     talking to him under the sign that said DO NOT TALK WITH DRIVER WHEN THE BUS IS MOVING. Nothing. A bill changed hands and
     Dain got off at the stop beside the bank.
    Meg Crowley, in uniform and with her citation pad sticking out of a back pocket, turned from the counter with a coffee and
     turnover to cannon into a man just emerging from the rest room. Hot coffee cascaded down the front of his shirt.
    “No milk or sugar next time,” said Dain with a wry grin.
    Meg already had set her turnover and empty coffee cup on the corner of a table and was ineffectually dabbing with paper napkins,
     trying to blot up the stain; he was a hunk. They sat beside a window that needed washing. He told herabout the missing heir he was
that
close to finding, son of a woman dying in Bangor, Maine. He described Zimmer, with attache case…
    “I remember him!” exclaimed Meg suddenly, her face lighting up. She laughed. “I’ve got a Mick temper on me, and he jaywalked
     right in front of me as if I didn’t exist…”
    The postman looked like a ferret but was worthless. He had no fixed schedule for picking up the mail from the drop-box on
     the corner, couldn’t remember his pickup on that particular day, and only saw letters, not people on his route. A dead man
     walking.
    The next morning, twenty bucks bought Dain three blocks’ worth of conversation with the doughnut truck driver who delivered
     to Karl’s Koffee Kup Kafe just short of the midblock alley. He had seen nothing, or if he had, didn’t remember it.
    Chuck Gilette was a sandy-haired kid who delivered coffee and Danish from Karl’s to offices around the neighborhood. He wanted
     to go to college but his grades weren’t all that good so his salary and the tips he made went into the old college fund.
    For Chuck, also, the missing heir and his dying mum.
    “Sure I remember him, Mr. Dain. He sort of darted into the alley just as I came out of Karl’s, so I had to make a move…”
     He sprang backward in demonstration, like a batter getting brushed back by a close pitch. “The cap flew offa one of the cups,
     hot coffee all over my hand.” He grinned sheepishly. “I started to cuss him out, but he didn’t even know I was there.”
    A $50 contribution to Chuck’s go-to-college fund.
    Pablo Martinez, sneaking a cigarette behind the greasy spoon, got uneasy when Dain showed him a $20 bill.
    “Four day’ ago you come down the alley,” Pablo accused.
    “I’m not
la migra,”
said Dain quickly. He described Zimmer, his clothes, face, the attache case in his hand. “I want to know if he walked past
     you last week and where he went…”
    The man Pablo had bought his green card from had assured him it was so close to genuine it would pass any immigration scrutiny,
     but Pablo was not convinced. As a short-order cook illegally in the country, he had learned to be a pessimist.
    “I doan see nothin’, man.”
    Dain gave him the twenty anyway. Pablo’s reaction had confirmed he’d seen Zimmer passing by.
    The black teenager who washed down the haberdashery windows each morning was on break, so Dain went through the motions with
     his other possibles even though reasonably sure someone had been waiting for Zimmer in a car at the end of the alley.
    The five secretaries who went for coffee at 9:30 each morning were like the three monkeys: hear no, see no, speak no.
    The old woman who hung