Read Chicago Stories: West of Western for Free Online Page B

sake, shape up or ship out, Pelligrini,” she muttered. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You've got a home, dammit, right here. Right now.” As if in answer to her thoughts, the heat came on, hot water thrumming through pipes, warm and life-giving as the blood through her arteries. The building alive around her, she knew what she had to do.
    Security first, installing video cameras over the garage and front doors. Up on the ladder when an old man walked past her in the alley, she called hello and he nodded but didn't speak as he passed. She could feel eyes watching while she worked, maybe from the apartments across the alley, she couldn't locate the watcher. Chilled by the cold north wind and by working under the gaze of hidden watchers, by the time she finished, her coffee craving had reached desperation level. Time to move inside.
    About the time the smell of fresh coffee filled the loft, the sun came out, sending bright bars of gold through the loft from west to east. After her second cup, the sunlight was noticeably warm and comforting and she noticed a faint scent of herbal shampoo and Neutrogena, grace notes to the prevalent espresso scent. She took a deep breath. Enough latte and a building of her own and she could cope with anything.
    Lots were long and narrow in this part of town, backyards were tiny, just twenty-five feet or so carved out between back porch and garage, and tended to feature abandoned cars and discarded toilets. Her kitchen windows overlooked backyards of buildings that faced Cortez, she wasn't expecting much when she wandered over to take a look. Down below, behind a boarded-up storefront, she discovered an exquisite Japanese garden, a tiny secret garden hidden from the street and alley by surrounding buildings. Even this late in the fall, shades of green glowed against brick walls and a tiny bridge arched over a stream that reflected flashes of sunlight. Surely there were goldfish. A tiny bit of Shangri-La. She wondered about the gardener.
    Still aimlessly wandering, she drifted through the loft, ending up at her bedroom window just as a red convertible sped down the alley and screeched to a halt behind a pair of six-flats. The black-haired and leather-jacketed driver beeped twice. A dark-haired boy of about eight or nine ran barefoot out to the car, grabbed an envelope, and ran back into the passageway between the buildings. She craned to see a license number, but the angle was wrong and she could only tell it was an Illinois plate. Less than a minute later, the boy returned and tossed the driver a baggie, the car accelerated down the alley and disappeared.
    Son of a bitch. All the good feelings engendered by the sight of the hidden garden vanished. No doubt about this, drug dealers using child runners were a cliché, and she had a front-row seat. Maybe this explained the threat on her garage door. She reached for her phone.
    “You called about a drug deal?” asked the older detective. His notebook ready in his thick fingers, his red-rimmed bleached-blue eyes watched her face as he shifted his ample butt and tried to get comfortable on the rickety director's chair. “So what did you see, when and where?”
    “I'll show you.” Seraphy beckoned him and his partner to follow her through the loft to her bedroom window. Their cop eyes were everywhere, wondering, assessing.
    “A red Mercedes stopped in the alley there.” She pointed to the six-flat. “The driver honked, a little kid ran out, took an envelope from him, ran back into the building, and brought back a baggie with dope. I saw the whole deal.”
    Markowicz, his name tag said. His off-white shirt was rumpled and the cheap blue suit pulled under his thick arms. He sighed, flipped his notebook closed, tucked it in his shirt pocket, scratched his ear with his pen.
    “Hear that, Terreno? I guess we should just mosey on over there and arrest the pack of them.” He tucked the pen in his shirt pocket and hooked his thumbs in his pants