Ghost Country
Authors: Sara Paretsky
GHOST COUNTRY
“Paretsky’s books are beautifully paced and plotted, and the
dialogue is fresh and smart.”
—
Newsweek
“May be her best book yet; it shows amazing depth and emotion,
offers richly complex characters and a stunningly original plot, and
provides subtle but caustic commentary on today’s social problems.
…This book is rich, astonishing, and affecting, and Paretsky
deserves rave reviews for taking a huge risk and doing so with
amazing success. An outstanding novel and a great read.”
—
Booklist
“Paretsky, as always, is a superior storyteller and keeps her
strong plot line moving briskly.”
—
The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland)
“Paretsky is
still
the best … she doesn’t pull punches.”
—
The Washington Post Book World
“A thought-provoking, sensitive look at class struggles, a poignant
look at the plight of homeless women without being didactic.
Ghost
Country
constantly blends droplets of mysticism while
retaining a firm hold on realism,”
—Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Vivid characters …
Ghost Country
demonstrates [Paretsky’s] ability
to go in a different direction … A good read that also prods one’s
social conscience at least a little.”
—The
Denver Post
“Lyrical, witty … Highly recommended.”
—
Library Journal
TOTAL RECALL
HARD TIME
WINDY CITY BLUES
TUNNEL VISION
GUARDIAN ANGEL
BURN MARKS
BLOOD SHOT
BITTER MEDICINE
KILLING ORDERS
DEADLOCK
INDEMNITY ONLY
For Enheduanna, and
All Poets Misssing in Action
The Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, provided privacy and time to work on portions of this book.
Dr. Jeremy Black, Assyriologist at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Dr.
P
.
R
.
S
. Moorey, director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, shared their knowledge of ancient Sumer, including a private tour of the Ashmolean’s Sumerian artifacts.
Lorian Stein-Schwaber taught me fundamentals of vocal technique and allowed me to sit in on her own master class with diva Judith Hadden.
The Rev. Walter Green and his staff at Thresholds, who provide mobile assistance to the mentally ill homeless, took me to visit clients in parks, shelters, and encampments on the streets below Chicago’s Loop. The Rev. Gail Russell and her staff at Sarah’s Circle, a drop-in shelter for women, allowed me to spend time there as a volunteer. Cathy St. Clair, of the Community Emergency Shelter Organization, gave me information on Chicago’s homeless. Alice Cottingham made all those connections.
Isabel Thompson helped me understand current diagnoses and medications for psychotic disorders. Beth Blacksin explained how managed care is affecting the treatment of mental illness.
Cass Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, advised me on free speech issues.
Dr. Don Hogue provided essential help at a difficult point in the manuscript.
R
.
D
. Zimmerman made that connection.
Jo Anne Willis assisted with research on various topics.
An early version of this novel involved a composer who didn’t survive the final cut. For help with that version, Chicago composer Gerald Rizzer worked with me on music theory. Thea Musgrave, composer in residence at the Virginia Opera, allowed me to sit in on rehearsals of
Simon Bolívar
and to attend the opera’s world premiere. Ardis Kranik, whose passing I mourn, introduced me to Ms. Musgrave, and shared some of her own great experience of the opera world.
As is always the case, any errors of fact or fancy are due to my own shortcomings, not the words of the illustrious band who advised me.
Ann, Eve, Joanna, and especially SCW supported me on the difficult journey to the end of this novel.
For those worried about
V
.
I
. Warshawski, the detective has been on strike, but we are currently in mediation and should resume work together soon.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
12.
Are You Washed in the Blood?
17.
Thunder and Lightning from the Great White Chief
19.
The Ice Queen in the Underworld
26.
Deluge
27.
Starr
28.
Escape from the Booby Hatch
32.
Ulcers and Scurvy and the Itch
33.
The Great White Chief’s Errand Boy
34.
Once More unto the Breach, Dear Friends
35.
Wailing Wall
39.
Miracles
40.
Show Us Some Cleavage, Honey
44.
On the Run
51.
And the Wall Came Tumbling Down
57.
The Swan
The Diva Warms Up
S
OMEWHERE IN THE
distance a bass viol vibrated. She struggled to remember what it meant: an angry person coming who wanted to hurt her. She tried to get to her feet but the floor was so heavy it pulled her down. Or maybe someone had attached weights to her legs while she was kneeling in front of the Madonna. The bass sounded more loudly and she panicked. She wrestled with her nightdress, which bunched above her waist as she thrashed about. Then saw the man leaning over her, his face red-black with fury.
“No, don’t kill me! I didn’t do it, it was someone else, they put weights on my legs!” She could hear herself laughing as she exposed herself to him, her voice bouncing from ceiling and walls and echoing over and over. “Look: I’m not hiding anything!”
“You goddamned bitch!” he hissed. “I wish I
could
kill you!”
He grabbed a pillow and pushed it toward her face. Someone else wrapped her flailing arms and legs in sheets and tied them tight around her body. She was coughing, gagging, praying for air, and then she was awake.
She fingered her throat. The muscles were so tense that it hurt to touch them. She couldn’t remember the dream now, or even the
events of the previous night, but the shadow of the ominous hovered below the surface of her mind. She stretched an arm out for her robe and snatched at empty air. Fear choked her: she was in a twin bed, not her own canopied throne, and she’d gone to bed—been put to bed?—in her clothes. Her silk skirt had bunched up as she slept, making an uncomfortable knot against her lower back.
She flung the covers away and jumped up, much too fast: the room rocked around her and her pantyhose-clad feet slid on the floorboards. Her stomach heaved. She looked about and found a waste can just in time. She hadn’t eaten much recently; all that came up was a sour mouthful of green fluid.
Shuffling along on her knees, she scrounged on the bedside table for a Kleenex. A clock radio caught her eye. One o’clock. Could that be right? The blinds were pulled but sunshine seeped around their edges: it couldn’t be one in the morning, but what was she doing in a strange bed in the middle of the day? Unless the clock was wrong.
She had been going to
La Bohème.
It might be amusing to see what a community company could do with it, that was why she was wearing her black shantung skirt. She remembered dressing, and even, if she concentrated hard, having a drink with her escort before they set out. That had been around six. She had a vague recollection of the restaurant, of a waiter being rude to her, but none whatsoever of the performance. Maybe they’d skipped it. What had her escort’s name been? An admirer, there were too many to remember them all. This man had even opened his home to her for the last six weeks, but he often drank so much at dinner that he couldn’t stay awake through the theater.
Next to the clock radio was a family photo: Becca dressed as Queen Esther for a Sunday school pageant, dark curls springing in wiry corkscrews around her head, Harry gazing at her with mushy fondness. Becca was a ringer for Harry, the same round face, dimpled cheeks, but pretty—on Harry those features looked like a frog’s. She herself had always preferred Queen Vashti, the beauty
standing up to the king’s pointless commands, over the bleating, vapid Esther.
So she was in Harry and Karen’s guest room—silly of her not to recognize it straight away when she’d lived there after Harry forced her to leave Italy, yammering as he always did about her extravagance. If only she were home—her real home in New York, not the apartment where she’d been staying the last few weeks—she could send someone for tea and a masseuse.
At least she could take a shower. She pulled off her pantyhose and dropped them on the floor. The guest bathroom was at the other end of the hall, so she couldn’t undress in here, but she could take off her bra: it had slipped up on her in the night and was digging into her breasts. No wonder she felt as though she were being choked.
There was a large stain down the front of the blouse. Had that been there when she put it on? She hoped she hadn’t embarrassed herself by wearing dirty clothes to a restaurant.
She draped the blouse around her shoulders, the silk cool against her nipples. Maybe it was long enough to use as a dressing gown. As she measured the ends against her thighs Harry’s bellow sounded.
“Is she going to sleep all day? Where does she think she is? Goddam New York in the goddam Plaza Hotel?”
A female murmuring, too soft for her to tell if it was Karen or Becca, and then Harry’s bellow again. “Go in there and get her up. She’s been asleep since four, which God knows is longer than I have, and I want to talk to her royal highness.”
A diffident knock followed by Becca’s head poking around the door. “Oh! You’re awake. Daddy wants to talk to you.”
She pointed to her throat and shook her head.
