Bitter Medicine

by Sara Paretsky

  He brightened. “Oh, yeah. This was nothing. You shoulda seen me in ’fifty-eight. We were on strike then, nothing like anything you ever saw before. They tried sending some scabs in. I’m telling you, World War Two wasn’t nothing by comparison and I was on Guam. I was concussed, broke my leg and three ribs. Clara thought for sure she was going to collect on my life insurance that time.”

  His face clouded over. “How could a woman like Clara produce a kid like Ruthie? I ask you. She was the sweetest woman ever born and here’s this daughter of mine like a tub of pickles. She’s trying to make me go home with her. Says I’m not fit to live by myself and she’s going to get a court order or something, or that damned Joe Marcano she married is going to do it. Goddamn fruitcake is what he is, working in a women’s dress store. Course, he doesn’t have any balls, anyway. Letting himself be bossed around by a loudmouth like Ruthie, even if she is my daughter. Whatever you say, dear. Hah. If you’re an old man they treat you like you was a little kid.”

  I smiled at him. “Maybe Dr. Herschel and I can help you with that one. If the hospital says you need to have someone looking after you for a while you can come home with me. If you don’t mind a few dirty dishes.”

  “Oh, I can wash the dishes for you. I never did a lick of housework when Clara was alive, always thought it was women’s work, but tell you the truth, I kind of enjoy it. I like to cook. I’m a good cook, you know. Putting a recipe together is kind of like getting two plates to fit together just so.”

  The nurses arrived to put a stop to the flow. The fact that two of them came showed how popular he was—nurses like to hang out with the more agreeable patients, and who can blame them? They joked with him about how he needed to go to sleep, not for his own sake but so that the other patients on the floor could get some rest. I kissed him good-night, found Lotty outside the maternity ward, and bade her goodbye.

  I made my way cautiously up the back stairs to my kitchen door. If my apartment had been invaded to find Monkfish’s papers, then I wasn’t in any real danger, but it would be stupid to take any chances. I had my gun in my hand all the way up. No one interrupted my climb. When I got to the top, I found the little marker I’d put in the metal grill just where I’d left it.

  I went to bed and fell instantly to sleep, hoping that Lotty’s confidence would be justified by the appearance of some brilliant idea in my dreams. Whether inspiration shone in the night I had no way of telling. Before I could wake up in the slow way that helps you remember your dreams, my sleep was shattered by the telephone. I stretched out an arm and looked automatically at the clock readout: six-thirty. I was getting more sunrises this summer than I’d had in the last ten years put together.

  “Ms. Warshawski. Not waking you, am I?” It was Detective Rawlings.

  “You are, but I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather have do it than you, Detective.”

  “I’m at the corner. Since your front door doesn’t work I figured it was easier to phone than ring the bell. I want to see you.”

  “You been waiting up all night just for that?”

  “I’ve been up a lot of the night. You just weren’t at the top of my list.”

  I stumbled into the kitchen and put on water for coffee. While the water boiled I washed up and slipped on jeans and a T-shirt. Because it was the cops I put on a bra—better not to be too informal.

  Rawlings pounded on the kitchen door just as I was grinding the beans. I put them into the filter and went over to unlock the bolts. He didn’t need to tell me he’d been up most of the night; I’m a detective and I could tell. His black face was tinged slightly with the gray of fatigue and he’d clearly put on the shirt he’d worn the day before, badly wrinkled when he’d taken it off. Or maybe, like me, he threw his clothes on a chair where they tend to get a little more disheveled than they do in a closet.

  I raised my eyebrows. “You don’t look too swell, Detective. Coffee?”

  “Yeah, if you can promise me the cup’s been washed with soap.” He slumped down in a chair and said abruptly, “Where were you between eleven last night and one this morning?”

  “My favorite kind of question. Justify yourself for no particular reason.” I turned to the refrigerator and started hunting for food. It was a dismal prospect.

  “Warshawski, I know all about how you and Lieutenant Mallory interact. You clown and he gets red and starts blustering. I don’t have the patience for that. And I sure as hell don’t have the time for it.”

  I found a pint of blueberries that could have saved the world if we’d run out of penicillin, and took them over to the garbage.

  “If that’s what you think, you don’t know all about how we interact. You guys in the police get into habits. You get so used to having people shiver and answer whatever you choose to ask that you forget you don’t have a right to ask, or at least you don’t have a right to demand answers with no explanation. So when someone with a little more legal sophistication happens along, you get pissed because we stand more on our rights.

  “If you have some creditable reason for wanting to know where I was last night, I’ll be glad to tell you. But for all I know, my ex-husband is trying to slander me and you’re helping out. Or you have the hots for me and are jealous of anyone else I might be dating.”

  He shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead before taking another swallow of coffee. “Fabiano Hernandez was shot dead last night. The ME thinks it happened in that time window. I’m asking everyone who I know had a grudge against the little prick where they were. So where were you?”

  “Gang shooting?”

  He shrugged. “Could be, but I don’t think so. Doesn’t have the right signature. He was shot at close range, once, as he was leaving the bar he hung out at—El Gallo. Someone he knew. Might’ve been Sergio. We’re pulling him in. Might’ve been the dead Alvarado girl’s brothers. We’re talking to them. You and he weren’t too tight. I want to know if it was you.”

  “I confess. Enraged with him for suing my good pal Dr. Herschel I shot him dead in the hopes his family would not realize the suit was part of his estate and that they could continue the action on his behalf.”

  “Yeah, laugh, Warshawski. Someone should have a good time when there’s a dead punk and the police are up all night. It might as well be you. If I seriously believed you might’ve shot him, I’d be talking to you at the station, not drinking your coffee with no witnesses. Good coffee, by the way.”

  “Thanks, Viennese roast. I was here. Asleep. A rotten alibi, since I was asleep alone. No one called me.”

  “You are early-to-bed, early-to-shine? Doesn’t fit your character.”

  “Normally I am not,” I said formally. “But owing to the stresses of the last several days I’ve been short on sleep. I turned in at nine-thirty and slept until the phone rang.”

  “You carry a gun, don’t you? What make?”

  “Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter semiautomatic.”

  He looked at me quietly. “I need to see it.”

  “I won’t make you tell me why. I can guess. Fabiano was shot with a Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter semiautomatic.”

  His gaze held mine a fractional second longer, then he nodded reluctantly.

  I went to my bedroom and brought it out to him. “It hasn’t been fired in days, not since I took it down to the range to practice last week. But you’ll want to see that for yourself. May I have a receipt?”

  He wrote it out gravely and handed it to me. “I don’t have to tell you not to leave town, do I?”

  “No, Detective. Least, not as long as you mean the Chicagoland area, not just the city limits.”

  He turned a smile into a grimace. “Lieutenant Mallory doesn’t know the half of it. Thanks for the coffee, Warshawski.”

  25

  Medical Supplies

  I was pretty sick of the garbage in my kitchen. No breakfast there unless you were a rat or a cockroach and not too picky in your habits. I locked the back door and went over to the Belmont Diner.
So what if I’d had fried potatoes for supper last night? I ate blueberry pancakes, a double order of bacon, lots of butter and syrup, and coffee. After all, once you’re dead, you’ve got all eternity in front of you to diet in.

  Fabiano Hernandez shot. Like Stewart Alsop said, he should have died herebefore. It was too late now to do anyone any good. I read about it in the Herald-Star, but they didn’t give it much play—a little paragraph in “ChicagoBeat,” not even the front page of the section. At least one teenager gets killed every day in Chicago and Fabiano hadn’t been a basketball star or a prize scholar for whom tear-jerking copy could be written.

  Between the last of the pancakes and my third cup of coffee I figured out an approach for Friendship. It wasn’t exactly a work of genius, but I hoped it might do. I paid my bill and returned home. If the police were following me to breakfast and back, they were welcome. I didn’t care if they knew I wasn’t starving from guilt or grief.

  I changed into a pale olive summer suit with the gold silk shirt I’d had on the night before. Brown leather sling-backs, a leather portfolio, and I looked like the model for a middle-management training guide.

  I was not happy to be without my Smith & Wesson. If Fabiano had been killed by a single shot at close range, it could not be palmed off as random violence. Not like Malcolm’s death. Fabiano might have been involved in all kinds of scummy activity I knew nothing about. But he’d been connected with the Lions, he’d been suing Friendship, and both of those outfits knew me and didn’t seem susceptible to the love mixed with awe I usually inspire. I would have to be doubly cautious now. Perhaps check into a hotel for a few days. And certainly make sure Mr. Contreras stayed in the hospital. The last thing I needed was for him to run between me and a bullet.

  Climbing gingerly down the back stairs in nylons and heels, I was glad my normal business attire was jeans. In the summer heat, panty hose clings to the legs and crotch, cutting off air to the skin. I was feeling slightly baked by the time I got to my car.

  I didn’t think the police would bother to tail me— the law thinks of me as reasonably responsible and even though the same make of gun as mine had killed Fabiano, Rawlings didn’t seriously suspect me. Still, just in case, I drove over to the clinic and asked Lotty if we could trade cars for the day.

  She greeted me in a subdued, almost fearful way. “Vic, what is going on? Now Fabiano is dead. You don’t think Carol’s brothers would have killed him trying to protect me?”

  “God, I hope not. Besides, if they did, it wouldn’t really help you. The law regards a juicy lawsuit like this as an asset and his estate inherits it. Probably the only thing he had to leave besides that Eldorado. The Alvarado boys are too sensible—I don’t think they’d jeopardize their futures just for the fleeting satisfaction of knocking off Fabiano. And no, I didn’t kill him.”

  She blushed faintly under her olive skin. “No, no, Vic. I didn’t really think you might have. Of course you can take my car.”

  I followed her to her office to trade keys with her. “Can I borrow one of your lab coats, too? Or one of Carol’s—it’d be more my size. Also a pair of your nifty little plastic examining gloves.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I want to know why, but certainly.” She took a clean white jacket from her office closet and took me to an empty examining room where she pulled out a box of gloves and handed me two pairs.

  Her venerable Datsun was parked in the alley behind the clinic. She went with me, giving me a worried, most un-Lotty-like good-bye.

  “You must be careful, Vic. This summer has been very rough on me. I could not bear it for anything to happen to you.”

  We’re not usually so demonstrative, but I pulled her to me and kissed her before taking off. “Yeah, I’m a little nervous myself. I’ll try to talk to you tonight, but it’ll probably be late before I get back. If—well, if I’m stupid or careless, tell Murray where I’ve been, okay?”

  She nodded and returned to her patients. Her narrow shoulders were a little stooped, and she looked her age.

  Lotty fancies herself as Sterling Moss and drives her car fast and recklessly. Unfortunately her intrepidity isn’t matched by her skill and over the years she’s stripped the gears on the Datsun. Shifting up and down in the city traffic took patience and enough attention that I couldn’t be sure my back was clean until I got onto the Northwest Tollway. After going a couple of miles, I pulled onto the shoulder and watched the cars sweep past. Nobody slowed, and when after five minutes I reentered the swarm of traffic, I didn’t see anybody dropping back to tag me.

  The heat hung heavier in the northwest suburbs. Being away from the lake adds a good fifteen degrees to the air in the summer. Lotty’s no-frills approach to life didn’t include car air-conditioning. I shrugged out of my suit jacket, but the armpits of the silk shirt grew sodden as the morning progressed. When I exited onto Route 58 and headed south toward the hospital I looked as though I’d been heading across Death Valley on foot for three or four days.

  I parked in the visitors’ lot and came in through the hospital’s main entrance. Alan Humphries and the admissions clerk were the only people who’d met me when I’d been here before. That had been three weeks ago and I’d been in jeans. If they passed me this morning they’d assume I was a visitor and probably not spare me a second glance.

  I found a restroom where I washed my face and neck, combed most of the tollway dust from my hair, and tried to restore some semblance of professional demeanor. When I’d done the best I could, I returned to the information desk in the main lobby.

  A neat, white-haired woman wearing the pink coat of a volunteer smiled at me and asked me how she could help.

  “Can you direct me to the medical-records office?”

  “Straight down this hallway, then turn left, go up the first flight of stairs and you’ll find it easily at the top of the stairs.”

  “This is a little embarrassing—I have an eleven o’clock appointment with the director and forgot to put the name in my pocket diary.”

  She gave me an understanding smile—we all do these silly things from time to time. She flipped through her directory. “Ruth Ann Motley.”

  I thanked her and headed down the hallway. Instead of going up the stairs, I went on down to the emergency entrance where I’d brought Consuelo four weeks ago. I pulled Lotty’s white doctor coat out of my portfolio, slipped it on, and immediately became part of the hallway furniture.

  To one side of the entrance was the emergency-admissions office. Unlike in a city hospital’s emergency room, which is always packed with the people who use it in lieu of a family doctor, only one woman was sitting in the waiting area. She looked up at me as I walked briskly past, seemed about to speak, and sat back down.

  A beige internal phone was mounted on the wall near the outside doors. I used it to call the hospital operator, asking her to page Ruth Ann Motley down to the emergency-room office. After a short wait I heard Motley’s name echoing from the loudspeaker.

  I stood in the doorway, where I could view the hall and the entrance to the emergency room. After perhaps five minutes a tall, lanky woman appeared, moving at a fast trot. She looked to be in her mid-forties, with dark hair done in a disheveled perm. She wore a light-blue seersucker suit that showed too much of her bony wrists and fleshy thighs when she walked. After a few minutes she reappeared, frowning in annoyance, looked around, and trotted back down the hall.

  I followed her at a discreet distance. She took the stairs to the second floor. I watched her go into the records room and settled down with my portfolio in a chair about twenty yards up the hall.

  I seemed to be in an outpatient area; ten or so other people, mostly women, were scattered against the wall in the cheap vinyl chairs, waiting their turns to see the doctor. I took off the white coat, folded it, returned it to the little briefcase, and bent over a stack of papers I’d stuck into it at random.

  Around twelve-fifteen, when the cadre in the hall had turned over complete
ly, Ruth Ann Motley reemerged from the records room. She came up the hall toward me but apparently intended to go to the bathroom rather than accost me. When she came out, she headed back down the stairs. I gave her five more minutes and figured she was at lunch.

  I strolled down the hall to the records room, looking as official as I could. Inside was the busiest setting I’d yet seen in the hospital. A half-dozen desks stood piled high with files. On each desk sat a computer terminal. Beyond lay the records, row on row of shelves packed with color-coded folders.

  Only two people were at work, covering the place during the lunch hour. Both were women, one perhaps my age, the other a young girl handling her first post-high school job. I went to the older one, an overweight, uncertain-looking person in a salmon-colored shirtwaist dress.

  I gave the brief smile of someone in a great hurry. “I’m Elizabeth Phelps, State of Illinois. We’re doing some surprise inspections around the state to make sure medical records are secure.”

  The woman blinked watery blue eyes at me. Hay fever or a cold seemed to be attacking her. “You—uh—you’d have to talk to the director about that. Ruth Ann Motley.”

  “Great,” I said briskly. “Take me in to her.”

  “Oh. Oh, she’s at lunch right now. She’ll be back in forty-five minutes if you’d like to wait.”

  “I wish I could but I’ve got to be in Downers Grove at one o’clock. I don’t want to see any patient records, just see whether patient confidentiality is protected here. Why don’t you look up a patient record for me. I brought some names with me of people who’ve been admitted here.”

  I flipped through the portfolio. “Oh, yes. How about Consuelo Hernandez. You don’t think Ms. Motley will object to your just showing me the system is secure by looking up one patient, do you?”

  The two clerks looked at each other. Finally the older one said, “I guess it can’t do any harm. What we do is we access the system through a password. Each of us has her own password, and I can’t tell you mine because I’m not supposed to let anyone else know it.”