Bitter Medicine

by Sara Paretsky

  “New car, sobrino?” I asked, impressed.

  “I am not your nephew,” he screamed, spitting at me. A man of limited imagination.

  “Now that’s enough.” The bartender moved up. “Whether she is your aunt or not, you must not treat the lady this way, Fabiano. Not if you want to drink in my bar. And frankly, I believe she is your aunt—because no one would embarrass themselves by pretending to be related to you if they were not. So you go outside and talk to her. Your seat will be here when you get back and the rest of us can watch the game in peace for a while.”

  Fabiano followed me sullenly outside, pursued by cheers and catcalls from the rest of the bar. “Now you humiliate me in front of my friends. I won’t take it from you, Warshawski-bitch.”

  “What’re you going to do—have me beaten to death the way you did Malcolm Tregiere?” I asked nastily.

  His face changed from sullen to alarmed. “Hey! You ain’t hanging that on me. No way. I didn’t touch him. I swear I didn’t touch him.”

  A baby-blue late-model Eldorado stood a few feet from the bar entrance. It couldn’t have been more than two or three years old and the body was in great condition. Since the rest of the cars on the block were a step away from the junkyard, I deduced it had to be the one the men had been ribbing him about.

  “That your car, Fabiano? Pretty nice wheels for a guy who couldn’t even buy his wife a ring two months ago.”

  I saw another movement of his mouth, and smacked it hard before he could get any saliva out. “Enough of that. I don’t want to catch anything from you…. Tell me about the car.”

  “I don’t have to tell you nothing,” he muttered.

  “No, that’s right—you don’t. You can tell the police. I’m going to call them now and tell them you’ve got yourself a new car, easily worth five, ten thousand. And I’m going to suggest to them that you collected a chunk of change from the Lions for bludgeoning Dr. Tregiere. Then they’re going to talk to you. And while the cops are shaking you upside down, I’m going to talk to Sergio Rodriguez. And I’m going to tell him that you’re driving these beautiful wheels because you’re dealing dope for the Garbanzos. And then I’m going to start reading obit pages. Because you gonna be dead meat, Fabiano.”

  I turned on my heel and headed toward my car. Fabiano caught up with me as I unlocked the door. “You can’t do that to me!”

  I laughed a little. “Sure I can. What do I owe you, anyway? Tell you the truth, I’d love to read your obituary.”

  “But it’s a lie, man! It’s a lie! I got that car legal. I can prove it.”

  I shut the door and leaned against it. “So prove it.”

  He licked his lips. “They—that man at the hospital—he gave me five thousand dollars for Consuelo. To—to say how sorry they were that the baby died and that she died, too.”

  “Wait a minute while I find a Kleenex. This story is breaking my heart—five thousand? That’s a hell of a price tag for your lady and her baby. What’d they ask you to do in return?”

  He licked his lips again. “Nothing. I didn’t have to do nothing. Just sign a paper. Sign a paper about her and the baby.”

  I nodded. A release. Just as I’d suggested to Paul. They bought him off. “You must have told them a wonderful story. Impressed the shit out of them. No one here would figure you’d need more than five hundred to keep your mouth shut. What’d you do?—dangle threats of the Lions in front of their white suburban faces and scare ’em to death?”

  “You’re always on my case, man. You and that Jew-doctor and Paul. You can’t believe nothing good about me. I loved Consuelo. She was having our baby. My heart’s broken, man.”

  I felt as though I might throw up on the spot. “Save it for Schaumburg, honey. They con easier out there.”

  A nasty smile flickered across his lips. “That’s what you think, bitch.”

  My foot itched to reach up and kick him in his tiny testicles, but I restrained myself. “Back to Dr. Tregiere, Fabiano. You swore you didn’t touch him.”

  He glared at me. “I didn’t. You can’t lay that on me.”

  “But you watched someone else touch him.”

  “No way, man. No way did I have anything to do with the dude’s death. I got a dozen guys say they saw me when the dude was being killed.”

  “You know what time he was being killed? Or you got a dozen guys who say they saw you no matter what time he was being killed?”

  “I don’t have to take any more of this shit from you, Warshawski. You trying to lay a murder rap on me, you damn well not going to do it.”

  He turned on his heel and walked back into the bar. I stood by my car a moment, frowning at the painted rooster. I didn’t like it. I wished I had a stronger lever so I could pry the truth out of him. He was holding back on something, but whether it was Malcolm’s death or not I had no way of telling.

  I got back in the Chevy and headed northeast toward home. Should I turn him over to Rawlings or not? I fidgeted around with it off and on all afternoon, while watching the Cubs lose an aggravating game against New York and afterward swimming lazily around the buoys off Montrose Harbor. I couldn’t go to Lotty and wash my hands of it until I knew for certain.

  At nine-thirty I dressed in dark clothes that were easy to move in. Instead of running shoes, I put on the heavy rubber-soled oxfords I wear for industrial surveillance. I couldn’t run as fast in them, but if I had to kick someone at close quarters, I wanted it to count.

  On Saturday night, Humboldt Park was shaking. Cars cruised up and down North Avenue, honking horns, blaring radios at top volume. Girls in improbably high heels and lacy blouses teetered arm in arm in laughing groups. Young men and drunks surged around them, whistled, yelled, and moved on.

  I drove to Campbell, four blocks from the rendezvous. It was a quiet, decently maintained street, with a sign at either end spelling out the rules: no radios, no graffiti, no honking horns. The well-kept buildings testified to the willingness of neighbors to enforce the sign. I parked under a streetlight. If I got this far in a chase, someone might even call the cops.

  I headed west across lots. One block from Campbell, the neighborhood deteriorated again. I picked my way carefully over broken bottles, splintered boards, car tires, objects too strange to be identified in the dark. Most of the occupied structures were little bungalows, not apartment buildings. Many of these had dogs in the back who lunged angrily on their leashes or against the fences that restrained them, when they heard me. A couple of times heads appeared in windows, peering to see what hoodlum was prowling about.

  When I climbed the last fence between me and Washtenaw, my mouth was dry, my heart beating uncomfortably fast. I could feel the little hairs at the back of my neck standing up under the collar of my knit shirt. I hovered in the shadow of the derelict building across the street, trying to make out where the sentries were. Trying to control the weak feeling in the backs of my knees. C’mon, Warshawski, I muttered to myself, fish or cut bait. It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the size of the fight in the dog.

  Much cheered by these admonitions, I moved from my shelter out into the street, past the cars perched precariously on old juice crates, and came to the front of the heavily curtained store. No one shot at me. In the dark, though, I could sense the presence around me of many Lions.

  I rapped smartly on the glass door. It opened promptly, the width of a chain. A gun barrel appeared. Naturally. The heavy drama of the gangs, the alleviation of the relentless boredom of life on the streets.

  “It’s V. I. Warshawski, reporting as commanded, clean in thought, word, and deed.”

  I felt someone come up behind me and braced myself against an expected touch; I couldn’t afford to follow my reflexes and kick. Hands patted me down clumsily.

  “She’s clean, man,” the youth behind me twanged. “I didn’t see no one wit’ her.”

  The door shut while the chain was removed, then reopened. I walked into a dark room. The doorman
took my arm and guided me across bare floors that echoed our footsteps against empty walls. We went through some heavy drapery concealing a door. My escort tapped a complicated tattoo and more chains were scraped back.

  Sergio Rodriguez sat in splendor on the other side. Wearing a blue silk shirt opened to the fourth button and a quantity of gold chains around his neck, he leaned back in a large leather desk chair behind a slab of mahogany. The carpet was thick underfoot, the air, cooled by a window unit, redolent of reefer. A large box in one corner was tuned loudly to a Hispanic station. When I came in, someone turned down the volume.

  Three young men were with Sergio. One wore a T-shirt, revealing tattoos all the way up his arms. On the left forearm was a peacock, whose elaborate tail feathers probably covered track marks. The second had on a long-sleeved pink shirt that clung to his slender body like a leotard. He and Tattoo both ostentatiously carried guns. The third was Fabiano. As far as I could see he was unarmed.

  “Bet you didn’t expect to see me here, bitch.” He smirked importantly.

  “What’d you do—run straight to Daddy after talking to me?” I asked. “You really must be scared of Sergio asking too many questions about that Caddy.”

  Fabiano lunged toward me. “You bitch! You wait! I show you what fear is! I show you—”

  “Okay!” Sergio said in his husky voice. “You be quiet. I handle the talk tonight…. So, Warshawski. It’s been a long time. A long time since you worked for me, huh?”

  Fabiano retreated to the back of the room. Pink Shirt moved with him, guarding him a little. So the gang didn’t trust Fabiano, either.

  “You’ve done very well, Sergio—meetings with aldermen, meetings with the Office of Community Development—your mother is very proud of you.” I kept my voice level, expressing neither contempt nor admiration.

  “I’m doing okay. But you—you’re not any better off than when I saw you last, Warshawski. I hear you’re still driving a beater, still living by yourself. You should get married, Warshawski. Settle down.”

  “Sergio! I’m touched—after all these years. And I thought you didn’t care.”

  He smiled, the same breathtaking, angelic smile that had dazzled me ten years ago. It was how we’d gotten the sentence reduced.

  “Oh, I’m a married man now, Warshawski. Got me a nice wife, a little baby, good home, good cars. What you got?”

  “At least I don’t have Fabiano. He one of yours?”

  Sergio waved a negligent arm. “He runs a few errands from time to time. What’s your beef with him, anyway?”

  “I don’t have a beef with him. I’m overcome with admiration for his style, and empathy for his grief.” I turned to pick up a folding chair—only Sergio got to sit in comfort—and saw Fabiano make an angry gesture, while Pink Shirt laid a calming hand on him. I pulled the chair up next to the desk and sat.

  “I would like to know for sure that his grief didn’t take the regrettable form of beating Malcolm Tregiere’s brains out.”

  “Malcolm Tregiere? The name is vaguely familiar… .” Sergio rolled it around his tongue like a sommelier trying to recall an elusive vintage.

  “A doctor. Killed in Uptown a couple of days ago. He treated Fabiano’s girlfriend and her baby last Tuesday before they died.”

  “Doctor! Oh, yeah, now I remember. Black dude. Someone broke into his apartment, right?”

  “Right. You wouldn’t happen to know who that was, would you?”

  He shook his head. “Not me, Warshawski. I don’t know nothing about it. Black doctor, minding his own business, got nothing to do with my business.”

  That sounded final. I turned and looked at the other three. Tattoo was rubbing the tail feathers on his left arm. Pink Shirt was staring vacantly into space. Fabiano was smirking.

  I turned my chair sideways so I could see all four of them at once. “Fabiano doesn’t agree. He thinks you know a lot about it—isn’t that right, Fabiano?”

  He sprang away from the wall. “You fucking bitch! I didn’t say nothing to her, Sergio, nothing at all.”

  “Didn’t say nothing about what?” I asked.

  Sergio shrugged. “About nothing, Warshawski. You gotta learn to mind your own business. Ten years ago I had to spill my guts to you. I don’t need to do that no more. I got a real lawyer, one who don’t act like I was a worm or something when I need help, not a broad who gotta earn a living because she can’t get a husband.”

  He shook me momentarily—not about the husband, but about the worm. Had I treated my clients that way? Or just Sergio, who had badly beaten an old man and whined when I wanted to talk to him about it instead of flirting with him.

  I was mentally off-balance and saw Tattoo coming only a second before he hit me. I rolled low off the chair onto his legs, upending him in a crash against the desk. I kept rolling and bounced to my feet. Pink Shirt was on me, trying to pin my arms. I kicked hard against his shin. He grunted, dropped back, and tried to slug me this time. I took the blow on my forearm, came in close, and kneed him in the abdomen.

  Tattoo was behind me, grabbing my shoulders. I relaxed in his hands, turned sideways, and slammed my elbow into his rib cage. He loosened his hold enough that I could wriggle free, but Sergio had joined the fight. He yelled orders to Pink Shirt, who seized my left wrist. Sergio tackled me around the waist and I fell ungracefully, with him landing on top of me.

  Fabiano, who had done nothing during the brief struggle, kicked me in the head. It was merely a gesture; he couldn’t kick too hard without landing his foot on Sergio. Sergio tied my hands behind me and stood up.

  “Turn her over.”

  I got a close-up of the tattoos, then looked up into Sergio’s dazzling smile.

  “You thought you did me such a good deed, back in that courtroom, getting me off a ten-year stretch to two? Well, you were never inside, Warshawski. If you’d been inside, you would have worked a little harder for me. Now you can see what it’s like—what it feels like to be in pain, to have someone you hate telling you what to do.”

  My heart was beating so fast I thought I might suffocate. I shut my eyes for a count of ten and tried to speak calmly, keeping my voice steady with an effort. “You remember Bobby Mallory, Sergio? I left a letter for him with this address, and your name. So if my body shows up in the city dump tomorrow, not even your expensive mouthpiece will be able to buy you out of trouble.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Warshawski. I got no reason to kill you. I just want you to mind your own business, and leave mine to me…. Sit on her legs, Eddie.”

  Tattoo obliged.

  “I don’t want to ruin you in case you ever get a man, Warshawski, so I’m just going to leave a little reminder.”

  He took out a knife. Smiling angelically, he knelt down and held it close to my eyes. My mouth felt like paper and my body was shaking with cold. Shock, I thought clinically, it’s shock. I willed myself to breathe carefully, deep breath in, hold for five, breathe out. And I forced myself to keep my eyes open, to stare at Sergio.

  Through the haze of fear I saw he was looking petulant: I didn’t seem scared enough. The thought cheered me and helped keep my breathing steady. His hand moved away from my eyes, jerked below my line of vision. Then he stood again.

  I could feel a stinging on my left jaw and neck, but the pain in my arms, tied underneath me, was such that it overrode any other feeling.

  “Now, Warshawski. You stay out of my face.” Sergio was breathing heavily, sweating.

  Tattoo jerked me to my feet. We went through the elaborate ritual of getting the inner door unlocked. My hands still tied, I was led through the outer room and out the front door onto Washtenaw.

  8

  Needle Work

  It was well after midnight when I unlocked the lobby door in my building. The blood had clotted on my face and neck, which seemed reassuring. I knew I should get to a doctor, get the wounds treated properly so as not to scar, but a vast lethargy enveloped me. All I wanted to do was go to bed
and never get up again. Never try again to—to do anything.

  As I headed up the stairs, the ground-floor apartment door opened. Mr. Contreras came out.

  “Oh, it’s you, cookie. I been thinking twenty times I should call the cops.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think they could have done much for me.” I started climbing again.

  “You got hurt! I didn’t see at first—what did they do?”

  He hurried up the stairs behind me. I stopped and waited for him, my hand reflexively touching the dried blood on my jaw.

  “It’s nothing, really. They were pissed. It’s kind of complicated. The guy has been carrying a grudge against me all these years.” I gave a little laugh. “It’s Rashomon. Everyone sees it differently. I saw myself helping this goon get off a heavy sentence he deserved. I saw myself overcoming my hatred of his behavior and his attitude to help him. He saw me being contemptuous and forcing him to do time. That’s all.”

  Mr. Contreras ignored me. “We’re getting you to a doctor. You can’t go around looking like this. You come back down here with me. This is no time for you to be going off by yourself. Oh, I should never have waited. I should have called them right away when I got worried.”

  His strong, rough fingers pulled importunately on my arm. I followed him back downstairs into his apartment. His living room was crowded with old, sagging furniture. A large chest, draped in a blanket, stood in the middle of the floor. We walked around it to a mustard-colored overstuffed armchair. He sat me down, clucking softly to himself.

  “How you even got home like this, doll! Why didn’t you at least call me—I would have come for you.” He bustled away for a few minutes and returned with a blanket and a mug of hot milk. “I used to see a lot of accidents when I was a machinist. You gotta keep warm, and stay off booze…. Now, we gonna get you to a doctor. You want to go over to the hospital or you got someone to call?”

  I felt as though I were far away. I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think. Doctor or hospital? No choice. I didn’t want either. I held the mug of milk and sat silent.