“I’ll do my best, sweetheart.”
After we’d hung up, I wondered, though. Leo wasn’t a fighter, but he was a data analyst. If Simon Lensky had been fudging data, Leo could have pressed him in a way that made Simon defensive, angry. I tried to imagine Simon luring Leo into the Wildlife Corridor and hitting him on the head to stop him questioning Simon’s authority.
I couldn’t picture it. The SLICK triumvirate didn’t seem organized or capable enough to commit murder—as I’d told Coop earlier, they could barely run a meeting. Of course, angry incompetent people can still commit murder. I probably should check on what the SLICK trio knew of Leo’s movements after the meeting.
All the SLICK officers were volunteers, so they must have paying jobs doing something else. Simon Lensky worked in the billing department at one of the big downtown hospitals. It wouldn’t be easy or even sensible to confront him at work. Curtis Murchison, the angry gaveller, was a security guard at a West Side branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Mona Borsa was retired, after thirty-seven years teaching first grade, and so might be the easiest to confront in the middle of the day. I would never have guessed she’d been a primary school teacher. I imagined her in a classroom, striding back and forth, whacking her palm with a pointer every time an unfortunate child stumbled over a new word.
I called, said I was looking into Leo Prinz’s death and wanted to talk to her about background. Mona surprised me by being genial and happy to meet. She was helping plant trees in one of the South Side parks, but she said if I wanted to bring a sandwich she’d talk to me during her lunch break.
I didn’t have time to stop for food, just headed straight for Rainbow Beach Park at Seventy-seventh Street. Mona was sitting with a small group at a picnic table on the grassy sward west of the beach. They had finished eating; Mona was collecting everyone’s trash in a paper bag.
When I came to the table, her surprising geniality continued, as if our confrontation before the SLICK meeting hadn’t happened. She introduced me to the other volunteers and told me I could talk to her while she worked. The volunteers separated, each pulling a wagon that held a sapling and digging tools.
“What did you say you want to talk about?” Mona asked when we got to her spot.
“Leo Prinz,” I said. “You know I’m an investigator, right? And I’m looking into his murder.”
“The police are handling that,” she said, her voice sharper.
“I have an interest: my goddaughter was dating Leo. She and her parents have asked me to get involved.”
Borsa eyed me narrowly, the way she must have looked at her first-graders to see who really had stolen the other kids’ lunch money. She grunted something that might have been an invitation to go ahead.
“Leo Prinz was studying urban planning. Is that why you hired him?”
“We didn’t need an urban planner. We needed someone who could put our presentations together for the Park District and for community meetings. He knew how to do that kind of design, and he was asking less money than more experienced designers.”
She took a plastic bag from her wagon and handed it to me. “You can start cleaning up the area while I get the hole dug.”
I squatted, but my hamstrings were still stressed from yesterday’s hard slog. I sat cross-legged and reached in a circle around me for the wretched refuse of Chicago’s park users.
“At one point in Leo’s presentation, he got flustered and knocked a bunch of Simon’s papers off the table. When he picked them up, one of the documents took him by surprise and he wanted to know why it wasn’t in the presentation.”
“So?” Mona paused in her digging to wipe her face with the kerchief she’d tied around her throat.
“So—what was in the document that it got Leo’s attention?”
“What difference does it make? It doesn’t have anything to do with his death. You’ve missed a bunch of cigarette butts.”
“So I have,” I agreed. “It’s possible that someone asked Leo to meet him—or her—or them—in the Wildlife Corridor. I’d like to make sure it wasn’t Simon, or you, for that matter, worried by what Leo had seen in that document.”
Mona dropped her shovel. “You’re crazy. You think one of us—”
“I don’t think anything. I’m trying to get information. What was it that took Leo so much by surprise that he couldn’t make it through the rest of his presentation?”
Mona snorted. “Nothing. Simon keeps every document that ever passes through his hands. Then he gets confused about which are current and which are old. Leo saw one of the old ones, but that wasn’t what made him leave—that was because of Coop, who’s completely out of control. Coop started for the stage and Leo headed for the exit. Coop had already jumped him once. I thought a homeless man in the park must have killed Leo, but now I’m betting it was Coop.”
“Tell me about Coop, then.” I picked up three empty chip bags and a Seagram’s pint.
“He’s got a terrible temper.”
“What’s his last name? Where’s he from?”
She’d picked up her shovel and was digging a hole at high speed. “No one knows. A couple of the local stores took him on part-time, but he couldn’t keep his temper when customers said something against his code, and they had to fire him. He acts like he’s the only person who cares about the environment, so he started disrupting SLICK meetings, as if God had put him in charge of the park.”
“But no one knows his name?” I was incredulous. “To get hired, he’d have to give a name, a Social Security number.”
She looked at me sideways. “Small businesses use cash a lot of times.”
I nodded. Of course they did.
“I tried to find out.” Mona stopped digging to glare at me. “That homeless woman, Lydia, she was a public nuisance, but when I went to court to get her admitted, Coop had already got himself appointed her legal guardian. Leo dug up a copy of the guardianship agreement for us. It gave Coop’s name as Coop with his legal address in Humboldt Park. Simon and Curtis and I drove over one night, and the address was a vacant lot!”
She thrust her shovel into the ground with such force that she couldn’t get it out. I had to help her pull it out of the ground. She didn’t thank me. When I said I needed to be going, she had another spurt of her own anger.
“There’s a lot of trash you haven’t gotten to.” She pointed at a well-used Pamper. “And you still haven’t picked up those butts.”
“There’s a lot of trash everywhere, Ms. Borsa,” I said sadly. “I can’t keep up with it.”
22
Missing in Action
I sat on a ledge overlooking the lake, eating a black-eyed pea taco I’d found at a vegan restaurant near the beach. Sailboats were out on the water, runners and bikers were passing on the path below my ledge. Was I the only person in Chicago who had to work in the summer?
Coop had a short fuse, but then, so did Mona, and so did the third member of the SLICK troika, Curtis the gaveller. Mona’s pointer that she waved around didn’t seem substantial enough to do the damage Leo’s skull had received. Curtis’s gavel, though—if Leo had roused his wrath, that would pack a nice wallop.