“Listen, cookie.” A little desperation in his voice. I’m not as strong as I used to be. I can’t knock you out and carry you. You gotta get help. Come on, talk to me, doll. Or you want me just to call the cops? I should be doing that anyway—why am I asking you? I should just call them.”
That roused me a little. “No, wait. Don’t call. Not yet. I have a doctor. Call her. She’ll come.” I dialed Lotty’s number so often, I knew it better than my own. So why couldn’t I remember it? I frowned in effort, and my jaw twinged. Finally, helpless, I said, “You’ll have to look it up. She’s in the book. Lotty Herschel. Charlotte Herschel, I mean.”
I leaned back in the chair, carefully clutching the mug of milk. The heat felt good on my cold hands. Don’t drop this. It’s Daddy’s coffee. He likes to drink it while he’s shaving. Carry it carefully. He likes his little girl to bring it to him. His eyes crinkle up behind the white foam on his face. You know he’s smiling, smiling to see you.
Mother is telling Daddy to bring a lamp, shine it on her little girl’s face. Something happened. A fall. That’s right. She fell off her bicycle. Mother is worried. A concussion. Bad fall, iodine burns where the skin was scraped.
I struggled awake. Lotty was swabbing my face, frowning in absorption. “I’m giving you a tetanus shot, Vic. And we’re going up to Beth Israel. This is not a dangerous cut, but it’s deep. I want a plastic surgeon to see it. Get it put together properly so it doesn’t scar.”
She took a syringe from her bag. Wet swab on the arm, sting. I stood up with her arm supporting the small of my back. Mr. Contreras was hovering at one side, holding a blue suede jacket that looked familiar.
“I took your keys and went up to your apartment,” he explained, holding out both jacket and keys for me.
My arms still ached. It hurt to move them into the jacket sleeves and I accepted his help gratefully. He shepherded me tenderly out of the building into Lotty’s Datsun. He stood watching on the curb until Lotty put the car into gear and squealed up the street. Her frantic speed was not a sign that my condition was dangerous—she always drives wildly.
“What happened to you? The old man says you went up against some punks?”
I made a nasty face in the dark, and got a stab of pain in response. “Fabiano. Or one of his pals. You wanted me to look into Malcolm’s death. I looked into Malcolm’s death.”
“Alone? Going off alone and leaving a heroic message for Lieutenant Mallory? What possessed you?”
“Thanks for the sympathy, Lotty. I can really use it.” A torrent of images cascaded through my head—Sergio as a worm, me as the evil witch in The Silver Chair turning into a worm, my terror in that little back room, and a nagging fear that my face would be permanently scarred. An overwhelming fatigue made it hard for me to remember what I was talking about. I made myself speak. “I told you—police job.”
“So what were you trying to prove by going off alone instead of turning what you knew over to the police? Sometimes, Victoria, you are unbearable!” Lotty’s Viennese accent became noticeable, as always when she was upset.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” The soreness in my face merged with the throbbing in my shoulders into one giant white tom-tom of pain. It pounded harder when the car hit a bump and then eased off a little. Up and down. Like the old Ferris wheel at Riverview.
For a moment I thought I was riding the Ferris wheel, but that wasn’t true. I was on my way to the hospital. My mother was sick. She might be dying but Dad and I were being brave for her sake. After winning the state high-school basketball championship, the other girls on the team and I had sneaked off with several pints of whiskey. The ten of us drank it all and were vilely sick. Now I had to go see my mother. She needed me alert and cheerful, not aching and hungover.
“I guess I’m pretty stupid sometimes, too.” The sharp voice cut through the fog. Lotty. Not Gabriella. It was me cut up and sore.
“You’re in terrible shape. Whatever prompted you to go off on your own, you don’t need quarreling tonight. Come on, Liebchen. On your feet. That’s right. Lean on me.”
I stood up slowly, shivering unbearably in the warm air. Lotty called out a command. A wheelchair appeared. I sank down into it and was pushed inside.
I quit trying to stay awake. White lights blurred behind my drugged lids. Pricks in my face—they were stitching me back together. Something cold on my back. The muscles eased down.
“Will I live, Doc?” I mumbled.
“Live?” A man’s voice echoed me loudly. I woke up a bit more and looked at him, an older man with a lined face and gray hair. “You were never in danger of dying, Miss Warshawski.”
“That’s not what I meant to ask. What I really want to know—my face—how bad will I look?”
He shook his head. “It won’t be noticeable. Provided you stay out of direct sunlight for several months and keep on a healthy diet. Your boyfriend may see a faint line when he kisses you, but if he’s that close he probably won’t be looking.”
Sexist asshole, I said, but to myself. No point in biting the hand that sews you.
“I’m admitting you for what’s left of the night. Just so you get some rest instead of jolting around in a car anymore. The police want to talk to you, but I’ve asked them to wait until tomorrow.”
Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. I thanked him for patching me up. When I looked around for Lotty, he told me she had left after they decided to keep me overnight. I let myself be wheeled to an elevator, up several floors, and down a hallway to a patient room. A nurse undressed me, got a gown on me, and lifted me into bed as easily as if I were a baby, not a hundred-thirty-pound-plus detective.
“Just tell them not to wake me for morning blood pressure,” I mumbled, and fell down a hole into sleep.
9
Police at the Bar-B-Q
With the help of some good dope I slept until two Sunday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when I finally woke up: No one had roused me. The immutable hospital routine had let me be. It’s good to have friends in high places.
An intern came in at three to check on me. She moved my arms and legs and shone an ophthalmoscope into my eyes.
“Dr. Pirwitz left discharge orders saying you can go home this afternoon if you feel up to it.”
Dr. Pirwitz? I supposed he was the gray-haired surgeon. I’d never asked his name while he was putting me together.
“Good. I feel up to it.” My jaw ached horribly and my shoulders were stiff enough that I winced when I moved them. But they would heal faster in the comfort of my own home than in a hospital.
She scribbled on my chart. Even if the patient only says, yeah, I feel like leaving, you have to leave an indelible trail on the chart.
“Okay. You’re all set. Just take this paper with you to the nursing station and they’ll complete your discharge.” She gave a cheerful smile and left.
I staggered out of bed and moved zombielike to the bathroom. Dressing was a process that made me aware of the myriad muscles in my arms and legs. Who would have thought there were so many?
I was putting on my shoes when Mr. Contreras appeared, hesitant, in the doorway. He was clutching a sheaf of daisies. His face cleared when he saw I was dressed.
“I came at one, but they told me you were sleeping. Oh, my, doll, have you seen your face? You look like you been in a barroom brawl. Well, it’ll clear up. We’ll get you home, put some raw steak on it—worked wonders on my black eyes when I was young.”
I hadn’t looked at my face. In fact, I’d carefully avoided the mirror when I’d washed up in the little bathroom.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said grumpily. Now I couldn’t resist going to the mirror above a sink on the side wall. I had not seen Sergio’s handiwork last night. A dark line ran from about an inch below my left eye to my jawline. Transparent plastic clips pulled it together. In itself it didn’t appear particularly terrible. It was the radiating swelling in purples and yellows and my bloodshot left eye that made
me look like a wife-abuse casualty. I pulled the knit shirt away from my neck and saw a similiar line, with some discoloring, running down to my collarbone.
“Who wills the end wills the means,” I said grandly, not sure whether it was Sergio’s means or my own headlong dive into his territory I was talking about.
“Don’t worry, doll—it’ll heal. You’ll be good as new. You’ll see…. I brought you these in case you was gonna be laid up awhile.” He thrust the daisies at me.
I thanked him. “They’re letting me leave now, so I’ll take them home with me.”
He followed me down the hall with a steady commentary on fights he’d been in as a machinist, the time his nose got broken, how he’d lost his left canine—pulling back his mouth with a stubby forefinger to show me the cap—what his wife had to say the time he came home drunk at four A.M. with a black eye plus the man who’d given it to him in tow, happily singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
The checkout process went smoothly. Trying to attract paying customers in a run-down city neighborhood, Beth Israel maintained a high level of professionalism in all aspects of its operations. At least so Lotty always averred. The nurse who checked the doctor’s orders and the clerk who processed my discharge both treated me with a smiling courtesy far different from Mrs. Kirkland’s at Friendship. They gave me some special cleansers and salves, told me to come back in a week to get the stitches out, and sent me on my way.
The Cubs were playing a doubleheader against the hated Mets—Chicagoans can’t forgive New York the ’69 season. A year or so ago February some PR moron staged a reunion game between the ’69 Cubs and Mets down in Arizona. Ron Santo refused to play—the only real Cub in the bunch. This year, it was even worse, with Chicago playing bush-league ball and the Mets coasting through the season.
Mr. Contreras obligingly tuned to WGN so I could hear Dwight Gooden fan Moreland, get Trillo to ground out and Davis to pop up in the infield. I was just as happy to be in a car and not in the stands, although as we drove by Wrigley Field the sun and the faint strains of the organ seemed inviting.
Mr. Contreras insisted on coming up to the third floor with me to make sure I got settled in comfortably. In addition to the daisies, he had bought a large steak and a bottle of whiskey, Bell’s, which is too thin and sour for my taste. I was touched by the gesture and invited him to sit down and have a glass with me.
I sat on my little back porch with the whiskey and a radio tuned to the game while Mr. Contreras grilled a steak on our communal barbecue down in the yard. He was proud of his prowess as a chef, learned in the years since his wife had died. A couple of young Korean children belonging to one of the second-floor units cautiously played ball while he cooked: Mr. Contreras’s joviality vanished in a hurry at threats to his tomatoes. Or property in general. Or his neighbors.
I was chewing in small, painful bites, made tolerable by a thin haze of whiskey, when the police arrived. I got up lazily on hearing the downstairs buzzer and called down through the intercom. When Detective Rawlings announced himself I vaguely remembered Dr. Pirwitz’s saying the police wanted to see me. Hospitals report all assault cases routinely; the victim and the cops take it from there.
Detective Rawlings exuded a spurious geniality. He was in jeans and a T-shirt, which made the jacket he wore to hide his gun a bit incongruous. He had a uniformed man with him displaying the woodenness common to uniformed men when they fear their senior officers may embarrass them.
“Got yourself cut up a bit, huh, Ms. Warshawski?” Rawlings asked.
“Not so as anyone would notice. At least the surgeon didn’t seem to think so. I’ll have to tell him it didn’t fool you.”
“Guess I’ve seen too many knife wounds in my time. I don’t fool so easy—at least over them. Now over the difference between a private eye and a lawyer, that stumps me sometimes. Which are you Ms. W.—lawyer or detective?”
Mr. Contreras moved protectively to my side, but didn’t make any effort to intervene. I politely introduced him to Rawlings before answering.
“Both, Detective. I’m a member of the Illinois bar in good standing. And I’m a licensed private investigator. Also in good standing. At least with the State of Illinois.”
I returned to the armchair. Rawlings sat down on the couch at right angles to me. The uniformed man stood next to him, notebook at the ready. Mr. Contreras positioned himself behind my chair. Principals and seconds. When the handkerchief drops, both principals should be prepared to fire one shot.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a dick the other day, Warshawski?”
“The other day I wasn’t. I came with Dr. Herschel in my capacity as her attorney. She grew up with Storm Troopers hovering over her and has a permanent fear of men in uniform—unreasonable in Chicago, of course, but nevertheless…”
Rawlings narrowed his eyes at me. “You know, your name sounded so familiar the other day. After you left I asked the station sergeant. He remembered your dad, but that wasn’t who I was thinking of. So I was talking to a buddy of mine downtown yesterday afternoon and mentioned you—Terry Finchley—and he told me how you were a private eye and all. And how his lieutenant, Bobby Mallory, starts herniating when you get near a case. And I was a little pissed at you. Thought about calling you, reading you the riot act, ordering you off my turf.”
“What stopped you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Terry said you’re a pain in the ass but you get results. I thought I’d see if you’d find something for me. I can tell already he was right about the first. Now we’ll see about the second. Who gave you the beauty marks?”
I shut my eyes. “I was a public defender a hundred years or so ago. Finchley tell you that? I ran into one of my former clients last night. He wasn’t happy with my work. Can’t please everybody, I guess.”
“This has nothing to do with Malcolm Tregiere’s death?”
“I don’t think so. I could be wrong, but I think it was a private grudge.”
“Where’d this happen?”
“Near North Side.”
“How far—or near, maybe I should say.”
“North Avenue,” I said briefly. “Washtenaw.”
“Humboldt Park? Now what the hell were you doing down there, Warshawski?”
I opened my eyes to see Rawlings leaning forward on the couch in his intensity. He appeared angry, but I might have been mistaken. Mr. Contreras was muttering to himself. Maybe he didn’t like Rawlings calling me by my last name, or perhaps he thought the detective shouldn’t swear at me.
“Talking to a disgruntled former client, Detective.”
“The hell you were. The hell you say you were. That’s Lion country. Those bastards are thumbing their noses at me every day right here in my territory“—a jabbing finger accented the words—“and I am damned if you are going to join them.”
More clucking sounds from Mr. Contreras.
“It’s like this, Rawlings,” I said, putting all my on-my-honor-I-will-try sincerity into my voice. “Dr. Herschel has a nurse. The nurse had a kid sister. The sister became pregnant. A total write-off named Fabiano Hernandez was the father. Sister and infant died unfortunately last Tuesday out in Schaumburg—nothing sinister—complications of diabetes, pregnancy, and youth.
“Well, Hernandez has been seen cruising the streets in a car he certainly cannot afford, since he’s unemployed—a chronic condition. So the family wanted to know what he was up to. They are very proud. They didn’t want to be affiliated with a bum like Fabiano to begin with, and they don’t want him making hay out of their sister’s death. So they asked me to check it out. And he sort of hangs on Sergio Rodriguez’s coattails. He went whining to Rodriguez, who felt he owed me something for not getting him off the hook way back when. That’s all there is to it.”
Rawlings sucked in his cheeks. “And this had nothing—nothing—to do with Malcolm Tregiere’s death?”
“Not as far as I know, Detective.”
“Tregiere treat the dead gi
rl?”
Police work makes you suspicious of everyone. Either Rawlings was very shrewd or someone had been squealing up the pipeline.
I nodded. “Dr. Herschel was her physician. But she sent Dr. Tregiere out to Schaumburg—she couldn’t go herself.”
“So did the punk kill him because he let his wife die?”
“Because he thought Tregiere let his wife die? I don’t think so. He wanted out—he wanted to drop her when she refused to get an abortion. It was only because two of her brothers are substantial hulks that he was induced to stick with her. He’s not a fighter. He spits at people, but he’s pretty weak physically.”
“How about the brothers? Sounds as if they cared enough about the girl to protect her.”
I thought of Paul and his older brother, Herman. Either certainly could mangle a man Tregiere’s size single-handedly, and what Diego lacked in size he made up for in ferocity. But I shook my head.
“They’re all sane men. The one they might’ve killed was Fabiano. If they didn’t touch him when their sister got pregnant, they wouldn’t go after Dr. Tregiere—anyway, they liked him. They felt he’d done everything he could in a losing battle.”
Rawlings snorted. “Don’t be naïve, Warshawski. There are twenty-five bodies in the morgue right now put there by people who supposedly liked them.” He got up. “We’re going to pick up Mr. Rodriguez, Warshawski. You want to swear out a complaint?”
The thought made my stomach turn over slightly. “Not especially—I don’t want to add to his grudge count against me. Besides, you know he’ll be back on the street in twenty-four hours.”
“Look, Warshawski. He’ll be back on the street, sure. And maybe he’ll feel he owes you a bigger score. But I am sick of punks like him. The more times I hassle him, the more careful he may be.”
I touched my left jaw involuntarily. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. I know you’re right. Go ahead. Pick him up. I’ll come down and say my lines in the play.”
I walked to the door with him, the uniformed man trailing behind. Rawlings turned on the landing to look at me.
Bitter Medicine Page 7
