Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  When Sandstrom’s unctuous pronouncements were replaced by a trio of children singing in a wheat field, Becca ran down to the kitchen. Karen was frying chicken in the hopes of tempting her daughter out of bed.

  “It was awful, Mom. They didn’t say whether Aunt Luisa got hurt in the riot. Why were they doing it? Because they thought Mara put wine in their grape juice?”

  She looked and sounded young and scared. Not the tragedy queen of the last few weeks, but the child she still partly was.

  Karen pulled her close. “I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t know what makes people act like that. It’s very scary, isn’t it?”

  Becca clung to her mother. “Was Aunt Luisa—they didn’t show her, didn’t say …”

  “She’s in the hospital. Someone called from there—she listed you as her next of kin. The doctors want to check her head and neck, to make sure she doesn’t have any fractures from her fall in that church.” Karen hesitated. “After dinner we’ll go down and visit her. But that doesn’t mean she’s coming home with us, right?”

  Becca hesitated, then nodded agreement into her mother’s breast. She had tried to look after Luisa and look what happened. The lawyer from First Freedoms, that nice Ms. Ohana, got beaten up by the cops. Then the mob in that church, Luisa hurled to the ground, Starr killed—at the moment the adult world seemed too frightening to take on. In the future, oh, in the future she would be strong, a valiant fighter, living up to the promise of her combat boots. But for now she was content to subside into childhood again, and let Karen soothe her with murmured phrases and fried chicken.

  Upstairs Don Sandstrom spoke to Becca’s empty bedroom. “In a related story, the wall outside the garage of the Hotel Pleiades on Lower Wacker Drive collapsed this afternoon. Structural engineers believe that the weight of the steel scaffolding, which the hotel put up to try to keep the wall from crumbling, actually hastened its destruction.

  “This wall has been the focus of much of the activity surrounding the dead woman Starr. Miracle seekers from as far away as the Philippines flocked here looking for cures. It was here that police rounded people up last night in a sometimes violent confrontation. Despite the excessive zeal displayed in moving visitors away, police action undoubtedly saved many lives, as large chunks of concrete fell in the area where miracle seekers had congregated. Pleiades Hotel president Gian Palmetto, who was inspecting the garage at the time, was struck on the head by a pipe from the scaffolding; he is in Midwest Hospital with serious injuries.”

  The screen showed footage of the entrance to the garage. The facing had broken away from the wall; tile and masonry lay in jagged hills along the sidewalk and spilled into the street. Work lights, set up so that crews could begin clearing the rubble, cast grotesque shadows: the spikes from the scaffolding poked out like writhing limbs, so that anxious viewers thought hundreds of bodies were buried in the debris. Calls came into the station all night long from distressed relatives in Perth and Peoria, Perth Amboy and Pretoria, wanting to make sure their own mothers or friends hadn’t been injured in the wall’s collapse.

  Don Sandstrom had never been happier: every overseas call meant so many more viewers he could point to in his résumé. His agent assured him that NBC was days away from an offer in their New York bureau. He briefly dipped his head to thank whatever providence had brought Starr to Chicago: she’d made his career.

  52

  Bravest of All the Trojans

  Troy had fallen, in flames and anguish, while the body of Hector, breaker of horses, bravest of the Trojans, lay on a funeral pyre ready to be consumed by the fire that was eating the city.

  His mother had given him a child’s version of the Iliad for his eighth birthday; he read for himself how the bravest of all the Trojans was killed, his body dragged around the city. We named you for him, Hector, his mother said, so that he grew up expecting to meet a bloody end. The dream recurred at any failure, whether small—a loss at a cross-country meet, failure to get into Johns Hopkins—or great, as when Madeleine Carter killed herself.

  His mother loomed over his bier, an enormous figure, so huge that he and the dying city might be toy figures and she alone human-sized. Before she could mock him, Starr appeared next to her. Starr’s hair was restored to its magnificent horns and curls. She picked Lily up and held her in the palm of her bronze hand until the mocking mother was small, smaller than Hector on his bier, and unable to laugh at him, or even see him. Starr leaned over him, her black eyes gleaming with compassion. “You are the bravest of all the Trojans, Hector; I am well pleased in you. The scar along your cheekbone will be your permanent reminder of your courage.”

  The bonds that tied him to the bier dissolved and he sat up. He stretched his arms out toward Starr, but she vanished.

  He woke sobbing, his face throbbing. He tried to wipe his eyes but found a cocoon of bandages encasing his left cheek and eye. Oh, yes, he was in his familiar place, the hospital, but in an unfamiliar posture, patient instead of doctor. He’d undergone surgery to repair his shattered cheekbone and now was lying in bed, the resident’s dream come true, bed for several days, rest for some weeks after, at a point in his life when he didn’t care if he lived or died or ever slept again.

  His pain was so intense that he found it difficult to concentrate his ideas. Bandages and anesthesia made it hard to see the pages of his journal: his writing looped around like a drunkard—like Luisa—stumbling in circles on the beach. He was attached to a morphine pump but he refused to use it, cherishing the pain as a last connection to Starr.

  A passing nurse scolded him: he mustn’t cry, not following surgery on the face, or his scars would seize. Against his wishes she pushed on the morphine pump and sent him down the well of sleep once more.

  The morphine made him doze and wake without any sense of time. He would blink up at a nurse or a surgical resident and then drift off again. At one point he woke to Dr. Hanaper’s fingers on his wrist. He thought Dr. Stonds stood behind Hanaper, barking out orders about Luisa Montcrief. She’s not my patient, Hector said, his lips swollen from surgery not shaping the words clearly. Another time he thought he saw a priest, which frightened him: I’m dying, and they think I’m a Catholic. No last rites, he whispered, I’m a Jew, and then he tumbled back into sleep, hoping he would find Starr there once more.

  He was on a high-speed train that was moving away from Starr. If he could only get off, get on a train going back, back to Saturday morning, to Starr, everything would be all right. He kept trying to stop it, the way they did in movies, pulling on a magic cord, but the train whizzed past stations. Dr. Boten, dressed as a conductor, told him it was not possible. The trains on this track went in one direction only.

  Sunday morning the pain had subsided. He knew where he was again: in a room at Midwest Hospital, with Starr many stations behind him on the journey.

  53

  Hospital Sideshow

  HARRIET LEARNED ABOUT the garage wall’s collapse when Leigh Wilton phoned on Sunday afternoon. The senior partner interrupted Grandfather in the middle of a tirade against Mara.

  Grandfather hadn’t realized his younger granddaughter was in the apartment until he was getting ready to leave for the hospital Sunday morning. When he returned from seeing Mephers the day before, the sisters were asleep in Harriet’s bed. He looked at Harriet’s shut door, thought about checking to see if she’d come home, but was too angry with her: let her make the first gesture.

  When he went into the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, Dr. Stonds was stunned to find Mara perched at the counter with a cup of coffee. Shock and disgust chased through his mind. How dare she come back here, how dare Harriet let her! Typical of Mara, absolutely typical, after mocking him in church yesterday to flaunt herself at him in his own kitchen. And uglier than ever. Forgetting all the times he’d criticized her weight, he looked in distaste at her gaunt frame, the flesh leached away during her six weeks on the streets.

  At her tentative “Good morning, Grandfather,
” his cheeks turned an alarming shade of magenta.

  Don’t “Grandfather” me, he bellowed. He wanted nothing more to do with her: yesterday’s performance in church topped anything she’d come up with to date. Not even Beatrix or Selena displayed such wantonness. To create a vile public display with that drunken slut Luisa just so that everyone in Chicago could make fun of him, say that Dr. Stonds had lost his grip, and then to saunter back to Graham Street as bold as a streetwalker—he was on his way to the hospital to collect Mrs. Ephers; Mara had better be gone by the time they got back or she’d suffer the consequences.

  He stormed out without waiting for her response. But the hospital, his private preserve and refuge, provided no solace. From excited gossip at the nurses’ station he learned that television crews were in the hospital to shoot Luisa Montcrief. He didn’t even know the miserable drunk had been admitted. In fury he called the neurology department and learned that the woman had received—at hospital expense—a CAT scan, an NMR scan, and a bed. Thanks to that officious young resident of Hanaper’s. Who was also in a hospital bed, whining about an injury to his cheek. In Stonds’s day residents accepted a few aches and pains as part of their training, didn’t bellyache about a black eye.

  And not enough that Tammuz was saddling the hospital with a good fifteen thousand dollars in unfunded care for the wretched woman—the resident was preening in front of the television cameras when Stonds went down to the ward to order Luisa’s release. The neurosurgeon couldn’t see into Luisa’s room because of the crowd of reporters and cameras that spilled from her bedside into the hall, but he could hear Hector’s stammering remarks.

  Actually, the barrage of cameras had taken Hector by surprise. When he woke on Sunday, he wished he could be with Jacqui or Mara, who would share his grief and therefore magnify it. He had never liked Luisa: her elaborate postures, her pretense to herself that she was not a drunk but a great singer in temporary exile, had grated on him from their first meeting in Hanaper’s office. Only his obsession with Starr enabled him to tolerate the diva’s cackling jokes and theatrical woundedness during the weeks she and Starr wandered the streets together. But Luisa was in the hospital; she might be able to speak with him of Starr and grief.

  The diva was sitting up in bed. Bathed and in a clean robe—emerald silk, chosen by her niece—she looked more organized than Hector had ever seen her. Of course, she hadn’t had a drink for two days—this might be the first time he’d seen her sober.

  “Luisa? It’s Hector Tammuz.”

  She was concentrating on her breathing, one hand on her diaphragm, the other in front of her mouth, and she refused to acknowledge him until she felt air flowing out to her satisfaction. Pain flooded through Hector’s face as he ground his teeth—was the diva putting on a show for him or for herself? He walked to the window so she would realize she didn’t have an audience.

  Behind him she panted like a child imitating a steam engine, then said, her voice richer than he’d heard it before, “How kind of you to stop in, dear boy. But your face! What on earth happened to you?”

  “I got beaten on by some of the thugs in church yesterday when I was trying to—to help Starr.” He pulled a chair up next to Luisa’s bed. “How are you feeling?”

  She gave a throaty trill of laughter. “Never better, thank you. So well that I’m eager to get back to work. But I know I have to move slowly to keep from damaging my instrument.”

  “You know that Starr is dead, don’t you? Doesn’t that bother you?”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “Of course I know she’s dead. Are you going to preach at me for not weeping all my nights and days? She gave me back my voice. If I don’t go back to work—that will be a real tragedy. I’ve already spoken with Dr. Glosov in Philadelphia. He’s a rehabilitation specialist who works exclusively with the voice, and he’ll meet with me first thing Tuesday.”

  It was at that point that the camera crews swarmed in—not just Don Sandstrom, but the four networks, Julia Nordstrom from Channel 8, print reporters, all crammed into the tiny hospital room and overflowing into the hall.

  Madame Montcrief, what did you feel when your head hit the altar? Madame Montcrief, what was your relationship with the dead woman Starr? What did she do to you up on that altar? Did she bring you back to life, raise you from the dead?

  Luisa never shrank from publicity, but she fumbled these questions. She couldn’t say what Starr had done, because her memory of it was so confused. She’d been in some cold and lonely place. She had an image, like a dream fragment, of an old woman pushing her head into a vat of clay. Starr had appeared and somehow hauled her out of the cauldron, maybe there’d even been a fight with the old woman, Luisa didn’t know, all she remembered was Starr’s strong fingers digging mud out of her throat. When her lungs opened and she could breathe, she felt a joy that nothing could equal, not the applause that had never sated her, nor the roles, the honors, certainly not the liquor.

  For the first time in twenty years she didn’t want a drink. The liberation from that thirst was so exhilarating that nothing could overset it, not even the loss of Starr. But she couldn’t tell that to the reporters: it was one thing to acknowledge privately that she had been killing herself with alcohol, quite another to confirm on tape the ugly slanders of the opera world. Cesarini and Donatelli would split their costumes laughing at her.

  “This young man can tell you,” she finally said, pointing at Hector. “He’s a doctor, and he was with me in the church.”

  The buzzards swarmed over Hector. What had happened to his face? In the eflfort to save Starr’s life? He was the psychiatrist who’d attended the women at the wall, wasn’t he? What had happened in the church yesterday morning?

  “I only examined Luisa—Ms.—Madame—Montcrief—very briefly. I—I thought her neck was broken, and I couldn’t detect a pulse, but she clearly is healthy today. Maybe—” He broke off. Maybe what? If she had died, then Starr had raised her from the dead, a thought so unnerving he shied from it.

  Behind one of the cameramen blocking the doorway Hector heard Dr. Stonds bray: “The woman obviously wasn’t dead, because she’s here in the hospital, taking up a bed that someone who’s really sick could use. She’s a drunk. She probably passed out and then came to, and the gullible want to believe they witnessed a miracle.”

  No one paid the least attention to the world’s greatest neurosurgeon when he tried to shove his way into the room. “Will you get out of my way, you oaf,” he demanded of the Channel 5 cameraman who was blocking the door. “This is a hospital, not some rock star’s dressing room.”

  “Wait a minute, buddy, we’re just about finished.” The cameraman wanted a tight shot of Luisa’s face in bed.

  The reporters turned away from Hector and back to the diva: And Starr, who was Starr, anyway, was it true that Madame Montcrief had been able to understand her? What language did Starr speak? What nationality was she? She looked Arabic or Jewish, maybe, with that copper skin and those huge black eyes.

  She never spoke of her past, Luisa said. Oh, spoke, she didn’t use a verbal language that a linguist could dissect, she just made it clear what she thought, what she wanted, and she always understood exactly what was on the minds of people around her. It’s not important how she communicated, is it? Just that she did.

  Luisa was impatient with the quest for detail, and then angry when Julia Nordstrom from Channel 8 suggested she was making it all up.

  Others burst in wanting to know if Starr had really performed miracles: didn’t she feed a crowd of homeless people on the beach? Heal the sick? Was she a saint, a demon, a psychopath? What did Hector think?

  “That she was more alive than anyone I ever met,” he said. “I will never recover from her death.”

  “I’m Dr. Stonds,” the surgeon announced, beside himself with rage at being ignored in his own hospital. “I insist that you let me into this room at once, or—”

  “Dr. Stonds?” Julia Nordstrom whipped around, mi
crophone in hand. “Dr. Stonds, you were present at the Orleans Street Church yesterday. Dr. Tammuz, who was also there, says that he was convinced Luisa Montcrief was dead after she hit the altar. Was that your impression also?”

  “Dr. Tammuz is the most undertrained, irresponsible physician we have ever taken on at Midwest. He has no judgment, no judgment whatsoever, and no business discussing a patient’s condition with the media. And now, if you don’t leave, I’m going to call hospital security and have you forcibly removed. Dr. Tammuz, you may consider yesterday your last day of employment at this hospital.”

  Stonds stormed off to his office to dictate a letter to Hanaper, ordering Hector’s dismissal. When he finished that he dictated a letter to his attorney to disinherit Mara. Neither letter stilled the rage that burned within him. Indeed, it only burned more fiercely. He went to the surgery wards and upbraided nurses and residents for mistakes real or perceived before storming off to the cardiology floor to check on Mrs. Ephers.

  Her cardiologist told Stonds that Hilda was fine, no irregularities in rhythm or expulsion rate; she was a remarkably strong specimen. She could go home today.

  In the cab home, Stonds warned his housekeeper that he had found Mara in the apartment that morning.

  “I ordered her to leave, but she’s grown so brazen she may still be there. Just so you know, my dear Hilda: I don’t want you subjected to the kind of shock I felt when I encountered her this morning, stuffing her face at my expense with not so much as a by-your-leave.”

  Sure enough, when they got to Graham Street, Mara was in the living room. She was using his phone to make funeral arrangements for that wretched nymphomaniac. Dr. Stonds snatched the receiver from her hand and slammed it into the cradle. Instead of weeping or yelling back at him, Mara looked at him with what seemed to be pity. Pity! It was the last straw.