Hardball by Sara Paretsky Page A

neighbor emerged. The unit had stood empty for several months. Mr. Contreras told me a man who played in a band had bought it while I was away, and that the medical resident on the ground floor had worried about whether he would keep everyone up all night with loud music.
    He was dressed in the quintessential artist’s costume: faded black T-shirt and jeans. He went to the railing to look at the little gardens. The Korean family on the second floor and Mr. Contreras both grew a few vegetables; the rest of us didn’t have the time or patience for yard work.
    Peppy went over to greet him, and I got up to haul her away. Not everyone is as eager to see her as she is to see them.
    “It’s okay.” He scratched her ears. “I’m Jake Thibaut. I don’t think you were here when I moved in.”
    “V. I. Warshawski. I was in Europe, and can’t seem to adjust to the time change. I’m not usually up this early.”
    “I’m definitely not up this early. I just got in from Portland on the red-eye.”
    I asked if his band had been playing out there, and he made an odd face. “It’s a chamber music group, but I guess you could call it a band. We were touring the West Coast.”
    I laughed and told him what I’d heard from Mr. Contreras.
    “Poor Dr. Dankin. She worries so much about the noise I make that I’m tempted sometimes to park my bass outside her front door and serenade her. Of course, your dogs and your criminal associates worry her most.”
    “My most criminal associate is this gal’s son,” I said, petting Peppy. Close up, I could see he was older than I’d first thought, perhaps in his forties.
    I offered him an espresso, but he shook his head. “I have students in five hours. I need to try to sleep.”
    I let myself into Mr. Contreras’s kitchen to collect Mitch and ran over to the lake with him and Peppy. Mr. Contreras was puttering around his kitchen when we got back, but I turned down breakfast. I wanted to get a head start on Lamont Gadsden. I had a full calendar this afternoon, including a job for my most important client, the one whose fees would pay for those Lario boots and a few other expensive unnecessities.
    A forty-year-old trail is a cold one, and Miss Ella hadn’t given me much in the way of bread crumbs to follow. In my office, I ran through the databases that make the modern detective’s life so easy these days. Lamont Gadsden hadn’t changed his name, at least not since those records were automated. As Lamont Gadsden, he didn’t own a car in any of the fifty states. He wasn’t being sued for child support or alimony. No department of corrections housed him.
    I turned to other work and was in the middle of a report for another client when Karen Lennon called. She had visited Miss Ella this morning.
    “We talked for a bit, and she finally was able to remember the names of some of the people who knew her son.”
    It was a meager list, but it was better than nothing. Miss Ella had provided the names of Lamont’s high school physics teacher and a Pastor Hebert from her church. Karen Lennon had somehow persuaded Miss Ella to divulge the names of three of her son’s adolescent friends. Interrogation is all about knowing how to ask your question so the subject will answer. Karen Lennon clearly had a touch with Miss Ella that I lacked.
    “What about my talking to Miss Claudia?”
    The pastor hesitated. “I think it would be a good idea, if she starts feeling a little stronger. She’s been pretty frail the last few weeks, and strangers would be hard on her. And Miss Ella holds Miss Claudia’s power of attorney, so that may be an obstacle as well.”
    When we’d hung up, I did a search on the list of people who’d known Lamont. Four of the five men were still alive, which wasn’t as big a help as the optimistic detective needs. One of the friends from Lamont’s youth had died of pancreatic cancer when he was thirty-seven. A second friend had disappeared as thoroughly as Lamont himself. The