She brooded in silence for a few minutes. “He sure had me fooled, that guy, claiming to be Mitch Kruger’s son. I should’ve known when he offered me so much money.…” She eyed me uncertainly, but relaxed when I didn’t shriek at her.

“It’s my one weakness,” she said with dignity. “We were too poor growing up. Used to carry lard sandwiches to school. The good days were when we had two slices of bread to put around it. But I’m good at sizing up men and I should’ve known he was too slick, that he had my number.”

She pondered some more, then abruptly began heaving herself from the chair. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

I got to my feet. My knees ached from kneeling on the linoleum so long. While she held a whispered colloquy in the hall with Sam, I sat on her footstool and did quad raises. I’d managed fifty with each leg before she came back.

“I took these out of Mitch’s room when his son or whoever he is came by. You might as well know the worst about me. I could see he was itching to get his fingers on his old man’s papers, and I thought maybe they were worth something. But I’ve been through them a million times and I don’t for the life of me see what was so important about them that he wanted to lug them all over the South Side with him. You can have ’em.” She thrust a packet wrapped in newspaper into my hands.

37

A Chicken for Mr. Contreras

It was close to eight-thirty when I turned off the Kennedy at Belmont. Mrs. Polter had wanted to share a beer or two before I left, to show there were no hard feelings over my dip in the canal. Although I’m not much of a beer-drinker I thought it politic to keep up the better feeling she had for me.

Sam had brought a six-pack and two glasses and hovered anxiously in the doorway to make sure I wasn’t going to attack her. By the time I extricated myself from her highly colored flood of reminiscence she was slapping me on the thigh and telling me I wasn’t nearly as stuck-up as I’d seemed at first.

I stopped at a pay phone near Ashland to call Mr. Contreras, partly to let him know I was still alive even though late. I also wanted some assurance that the building wasn’t under siege. He was voluble with relief at hearing from me; I cut him short with a promise to tell him all about it over dinner.