Chapter Two

The question wasn't who would want to kill me -- hell, take a number. But who really would go through with it. Or did.

I sat at the gummy counter of a greasy spoon, an old dining car shoved between two commercial buildings not far from the warehouse.

No one but me and a couple of dockworkers in a booth and the cook, who I figured was a WWI veteran, limping back and forth on the cookline behind the counter. I was on my third cup of coffee but was more slowly swirling a slice of toast in my eggs that actually eating, even though I knew I was hungry. Do dead men eat?

One of the dockworkers told a crude joke about a colored and a hooker and the other slammed his hand on the table and they both guffawed. I looked over at them, and they both caught my eyes, and hushed and looked away. Maybe they thought I was a member of the Rotary Club; maybe I spooked them. But I didn't feel dead. Maybe it takes a while for some kind of mental rigor mortis to set in.

I really felt like calling Trish, but even with everything I put her through, ringing her as three in the morning, and dead, was stepping over the line, personally if not just professionally.

The murder happened too late to get in the morning papers. So maybe I had some time to do some investigation with that element of surprise on my side. The drive-time radio news would probably be reporting it though.

So I swirled my toast in the clingy yellow yolk, between sipping coffee and puffing cigarettes.

The bell on the diner door tinkled, a puff of humid but less greasy air hit the back of my neck. Heels clicked. I turned around, and it was a woman no longer young, her face as worn as her six-years-out-of-fashion clothes. Probably her only real dress.

"Now Violet--" the cook croaked with a sigh.

"I'm just hungry, Jake."

"No business. You know the rule."

"Yeah, yeah," she waved him off languidly, and sat down at the a few stools from me. As she settled in and placed her purse on counter, she gave me a smile. But I could tell it was automatic.

The cook looked at her, then at me, then at her again, and figured the same. He set her coffee down and took her order, and she told him, "Watch the purse, will ya?" and got back up and went into the washroom.

The thin pale cook limped over to me and said low, "If you're thinking of any transactions" -- he said the word slow and heavy, like a kid who was using The Word of the Day from the comics page in the Tribune -- "do it outside, okay?"

He then looked up at the dockworkers, who didn't seem to be paying her any attention.

"I doubt it..." I told him.

"She's a good girl, just-- went the wrong way."

I gave him a smirk, trying to lighten myself as much as anything. "You ever...?"

He flicked the cleaning cloth off his shoulder at me, but playful, missed by a couple feet. He couldn't hide an embarrassed smile.

She came back. Sipped her coffee, and talked to him while he cooked her order.

"You know, there were all these cops down by the Biddinger warehouse. Unmarked cars, detectives. Must have found someone." She sighed. "You never know, in this city."

She looked over at me, and her face hardened a little and she blinked. "You know anything about that?"

"No--" but I heard my voice croak, as my stomach pumped a shot of adrenaline. "Not a cop."

"But you were..." She was perceptive. You had to be in her line of 'work'.

"Different life," I nodded a bit. Before I caught the irony of my own words.

"Were you down there?" She cocked her head indicating the warehouse.

She must have seen something strange in my expression. She gave a tiny acknowledging grunt and turned back to sipping her coffee.

Above the sound of sizzling eggs and hamsteak, I heard the clock ticking. Wishing the morning would just start. As I thought about the day ahead, I had never though being dead would mean you'd have so many things to take care of.

And add to that, looking for your killer. Part of me didn't want to bother -- in one way, I was tired and it was all over anyway.

But inside I knew my bile was starting to stir, rage.