The other two laughed immoderately, dancing their bikes up and down the curb. Mrs. Polter, moving with the speed of a boxer, picked up a fire extinguisher and began spraying over the railing at them. They jumped back onto Archer, out-of range, and continued to laugh. Mrs. Polter put the extinguisher on the floor next to her chair. It was clearly a game all parties had played before.

“Too many places get vandalized along here because people don’t have the guts to stand up for their own property. Damned little spics. Neighborhood was a hell of a lot different before they moved in, bringing all their dirt and crime with them, breeding like flies.” The asphalt shingle behind us flapped in time to her speech.

“Yep. This neighborhood used to be the garden spot of the Midwest.… Mitch Kruger?”

“Oh, him.” She flicked washed-out blue eyes at me. “Old guy came by and paid his rent. That’s good enough for me.”

“When did you see him last?”

At this she turned the chair and the mass of her body to face me. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m a detective, Mrs. Polter. I’ve been asked to find Mr. Kruger. So far as I can tell you’re the last person who saw him.”

I had called Conrad Rawlings, a police sergeant in my own district, to find out whether Mitch had been picked up drunk and disorderly in the last few days. The police don’t have computer capability to check on something like that. Rawlings gave me the name of a sergeant in Area Four, who obligingly called all the stations that reported to him. None of them had picked Mitch up recently, although the guys at the Marquette Station knew who he was.

“What, he dead or something?” Her hoarse voice shredded words like a cheese grater.

“Just gone missing. What did he say to you when he left?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention—those damned spics were out riding around, just like they do every day when school’s out. I can’t keep my mind both places at once.”

“You saw him walk down the stairs, though,” I persisted. “And you knew he hadn’t paid you. So you must have wondered when he was coming back with his money.”

She smacked her forehead with a giant palm. “That’s right. You’re so right, honey. I hollered at his back as he was on his way down the stairs. ‘Don’t forget you owe me fifty bucks,’ something like that.” She smiled, pleased with herself, and rocked so that the metal chair creaked.

“And what did he do?” I prodded in response.

She twisted again in her chair and picked up her fire extinguisher, menacing it at the three laughing kids down below. When they had retreated to the street she said, “What was that, hon?”

I repeated my question.