Dr. Peterka’s office manager was a woman named Sybil who never remembered Daniela’s name, even though she’d been working at the medical practice, two houses down from the Koses, since it had opened in 1930.
“Will you take them around to the back, Donna?” Sybil said, waving a hand at her from behind the counter where she sat. Dani didn’t correct her but exited the small waiting area; she pulled her wagon around to the back door and let herself into the lounge where the doctors donned their white coats, drank their coffee, and read the newspaper between patients.
She left the mending in the tote it’d been delivered in and trudged back toward her house, certain that Ness had called the moment she left. Her head was aching from loss of sleep, and the sun was bright in her face. She shielded her eyes with one hand as she pulled her wagon with the other and noticed a man—a boy on further study—had stopped in front of her house.
He had come from the opposite direction, his too big overcoat and black fedora making him look like a child in a school production.
He pulled a bit of paper from his pocket before studying the place once more. She didn’t think he’d come to buy a Kos original.
“Can I help you?” she called, continuing toward him.
He glanced at her, uncomfortable, and tugged at the lapels of his coat, pulling it more firmly onto his narrow shoulders.
“I’m looking for Mike,” he said cautiously, when she stopped beside him.
“Mike?”
“Yeah. Uh. Dark eyes. Kinda dark skin too, I guess. Looks tough but not mean.”
“Are you Steve?” she asked. The hat gave him away. She suspected he would look far better in the checkered cap he’d traded Malone, though that hat wasn’t his either.
“You know who I am?” he gasped.
“You’re wearing . . . Mike’s . . . hat. He mentioned you. He isn’t here right now, but you’ve got the right place. Can I relay a message for you when he returns?” If he returned. Her stomach twisted with three-day-old worry.
“Are you his old lady?” Steve asked. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and he had noticed her eyes. He avoided her gaze as if he didn’t trust himself not to stare.
“No. No. But I . . . I live here too.”
“Will you give him a message for me?”
“Of course. Would you like to come inside, maybe write something down?”
“I’m not much of a writer,” he said. “Maybe I could just tell you?”
“All right.”
“Tell him . . . Steve Jeziorski came by, just like he said I should do. And tell him I have some information he might want. He told me he’d pay me for information.”
She dug into her coat pocket and pulled out a dime. “I don’t know what he pays, but this is all I’ve got. You’ll have to wait and tell him yourself if it’s not enough.”
He chewed on his lip, taking her measure. Whatever his qualms were, he took the coin and began to talk.
“You hear about Pete Kostura?”
The name was familiar, but she shook her head. “I’m not sure who he is.”
“He and James Wagner found that first victim by Jackass Hill.”
Ah. That was it. The poor boys had been front page news for weeks. “I remember now.”
“Well . . . Pete got killed.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Yeah. Just a few months ago. December. A big black car hit him. Fancy, like the kind the mayor would be driven around in. Whoever it was hit him and just drove away. They brought Pete to St. Alexis, but he died.”
“And no one knows who did it?” Dani asked, sickened.
“No. His sister saw the car, but not the driver. And the police haven’t done much to find him that I can see.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Pete didn’t like to talk about finding those bodies. It scared him. And after the first couple of weeks, when the police had to ask him questions, he just stopped saying anything at all.”
“I can imagine.”
“Talking can get you killed.”
“You said he was hit by a car,” she said.
“Yeah . . . but I don’t think it was an accident.”
“Why?”
“Pete was talking about it again. He was talking to the safety director himself. Ness is working on reforming the boy gangs. Putting them on patrol, giving them incentives to stay out of trouble. That stuff.”
“Eliot Ness?” Dani whispered.
“That’s right.”