Critical Mass (31 page)

I sat cross-legged on the floor with the book, checking only the pages where Martina was mentioned. I found a brief bio: she’d been born before World War I to a working-class family, won a scholarship at a new Technische Hochschule für Mädchen when she was twelve. (With the highest mathematics score in the city. I thought of Martin with his stratospheric test scores.) She taught at the same school from 1928 to 1938, did a Ph.D. in physics at Göttingen in 1929–1930.

In another section, detailing Martina’s career, I read:

Saginor’s unpublished work was nearly all destroyed in a purge of the Institute’s files during the Nazi era, probably at the command of her onetime student, the Nazi weapons expert Gertrud Memler, so we can rely only on a few surviving notebooks and the articles Saginor published between 1931 and 1938.

Saginor was like Fermi in believing in her strong intuitions about physical phenomena. The effort to downgrade her abilities stems partly from L. F. Bates’ troubling visit to the Radium Institute in 1934, and partly from Memler’s efforts to extinguish her former professor’s memory.

I put the book back on the shelf and leaned against the metal divider. Lotty said Kitty resented her mother’s absorption in physics; would knowing that someone rated Martina’s abilities highly have pleased Kitty? She was more likely to have been anguished: the bio made no mention of a child. It wasn’t because Martina had kept Kitty’s birth a secret—not only Lotty, but Dzornen’s two daughters had played with Kitty when they were little girls together. Whatever stigma might have attached to illegitimacy in 1930s Vienna, Martina hadn’t tried to hide the child. Any more than Lotty’s grandparents had hidden her.

The real interest in the story, at least for me, was Gertrud Memler. Kitty’s murder had made me forget the book I’d been looking at right before she called for help,
The Secret Diary of a Cold War Conscientious Objector
. Memler had figured in that, as well.

Memler had survived the war intact, coming to the States with Operation Paperclip after the war, working on nuclear weapons, and then she suddenly vanished, reappearing under cover to attack U.S. nuclear policy. Perhaps watching actual bombs explode in Nevada, doing actual damage to dogs and people, had given Memler a Saul-like conversion.

I’d been sitting too long; my brain was turning to glue. I got up and stretched, bending backward in the stacks, undoing the knots in my spine one at a time.

Outside, we were having one of those golden afternoons that Chicago sometimes gets in September. I walked several miles before going to a bus stop at the northeast end of the neighborhood, near the expressway and the lake. While I waited, I put my phone back together.

I had seven messages, one from Jake, wondering where I was; he’d missed talking to me the last few nights. Lotty had called to say that
Judy Binder was in a stable enough condition to be moved out of intensive care.

I phoned Jake while I stood on an overpass looking at Lake Michigan. Calm seas, lover’s voice, I felt happy. The bus came while we were talking. I hung up, not wanting to share my private words with a bus full of strangers.

Once we got downtown, I flagged a cab home. Enough carbon-saving virtue. I called Lotty from the taxi. The driver, speaking into his own phone in a language I didn’t recognize, certainly was paying no attention to me, and very little to the traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

“Can I see Judy?” I asked Lotty.

“You can if you want,” Lotty said, “but she’s apparently in a rather ugly frame of mind.”

I said I wanted to see if Judy could remember anything about the attack.

“Helen Langston, the surgeon who treated her at Glenbrook, says Judy doesn’t remember it. Helen doesn’t think it’s trauma-induced amnesia. She thinks it’s because Judy had so much oxycodone in her system that she couldn’t process anything going on around her.”

“If I ask her about her ‘duck and cover’ remark, maybe it will trigger something,” I suggested.

“I’ll go with you,” Lotty said. “I haven’t been able to bring myself to visit her alone; I’m angry with her, for the wreck she’s made of her own life, and, really, for putting Kitty in death’s path, and there is no point in going into her hospital room and upbraiding her. Are you at home or in your office?”

“Heading home.” I’d have to face my office, to see what Homeland Security had done to it in the name of protecting America, but that could wait until morning.

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

Lotty hung up before I could protest that I would drive. I’d had so many life-threatening adventures in the last week that I supposed
riding with Lotty might seem tame. Lotty had a kind of “stand your ground” approach to other drivers: if she didn’t intimidate them first, they might force her from the road. One thing about letting Lotty drive, she’d give anyone tailing me a workout.

I noticed that since Kitty’s death, Lotty had stopped calling her “Käthe.” It was a kind of indirect apology, I supposed, for the decades of contempt she’d confessed to me after Kitty’s death.

Lotty was driving a silver Audi these days, a little coupe that I coveted. It closed around me like an eggcup when I climbed inside. I didn’t know if that meant it would protect me or make me more vulnerable in a crash. As Lotty zoomed up the Edens, she tried to ask me about the state of the investigation. I answered in monosyllables, yelping each time we came within scraping distance of another vehicle.

When she turned into the Glenbrook Hospital exit in the face of an oncoming semi, I said, “Lotty, this is a beautiful car. Give it to me and drive my old Mustang if you want to wreck something.”

She pulled into a space reserved for physicians, put a placard on the dashboard, and got out of the car. “You fuss too much over trivial things, Victoria. The important thing is whether you have found a way to discover what happened to Martin.”

“Even if I had, it wouldn’t do me much good if I were in traction,” I grumbled, following her into the hospital.

28

DUCK AND COVER

J
UDY HAD LEFT
intensive care, but she was still in serious condition. The ward head warned Lotty and me that she was screaming a great deal, demanding morphine or oxycodone for her pain.

“It’s hard to know how to regulate her meds, because of her addiction. We’ve been weaning her from her morphine drip and switching to channel blockers, but it’s hard to tell if those are working since she keeps demanding more morphine. We’ve had to put her in restraints because she was scratching her arms open.”

“I was afraid of this.” Lotty frowned.

The ward head took us to Judy Binder’s room. She was attached to machines that monitored her fast-beating heart, administered fluids, checked her breathing. Her eyes were shut, but I didn’t think she was asleep. Her cloud of gray-streaked curls moved on the pillow as she twitched and groaned. Her face was red and puffy, her lips swollen.

“Is she allergic to something in her medications?” I asked.

Lotty and the ward head exchanged sour looks. “Opiate withdrawal,” the ward head said. “She’s got a very long rehabilitation in front of her. She isn’t going to make a good recovery from the bullet wound if she doesn’t take drug rehab seriously. Once we get her physically stable here, she’s got to go into a good residential program.”

Lotty went up to the bedside and put two fingers on Judy’s pulse. I could see the raw welts on Judy’s arms where she’d been clawing herself. Her eyes fluttered open at Lotty’s touch.

“Dr. Lotty! I knew I could count on you. I’m in terrible pain, I need morphine, or oxy. Vicodin will do if the dose is strong enough. I can’t sleep, my gut is on fire. Get me back my morphine pump.”

Lotty ignored her demand. “This is V. I. Warshawski, Judy. She saved your life.”

Judy barely looked at me. “Thanks, I guess, for saving me for this torture chamber. Dr. Lotty, I need my morphine, I need it now, you can’t come here and not help me.”

“I’m not your doctor here, Judy, I’m just a visitor. Ms. Warshawski needs to ask you—”

“That cunt, that bitch, she told you to say no, didn’t she?”

Judy’s voice rose. I was taken aback briefly, thinking she meant me, but then realized she was looking past us to the ward head.

“She’s one of those women from Belsen, isn’t she, pretending to be a nurse, but she’s really a Nazi and a torturer. You know, you’re a Holocaust survivor, don’t side with her. Get her fired, you’re a surgeon, they’ll do what you say. Fire her fucking mean ass and get me my pump.”

“Ms. Binder,” I said, “I’m sorry to intrude when you’re in pain and when you’re grieving.”

“Damn straight I’m in pain. And grief, too.”

“Because of your mother?” I asked.

“Anyone with a mother like that would grieve over it,” she snarled.

“You don’t remember seeing her get shot? I’m afraid she wasn’t as fortunate as you: she died of her wounds.”

“Batty Kitty has gone to God? I’m sure He’ll be thrilled. And her real father, he’ll be ecstatic when she shows up. Who the fuck are you and why can’t you mind your own business?”

I wanted to yank the IV lines out of her and throttle her, but I kept my voice even. “Duck and cover. The night you were shot, you said that duck and cover worked the best, even though she never believed in it. Was that your mother who never believed in it?”

“I’m in pain,” Judy screamed. “I’m in pain and you want to
interrogate me. You’re not a fucking cop. I don’t have to tell you fucking anything.” She thrashed in her restraints so violently that she knocked the oxygen tube from her nose.

“Of course you don’t,” I said. “You were very smart to get under your son’s bed like that. ‘Duck and cover’ saved your life. Who told you it was a bad idea?”

For a moment, Judy stopped tugging at her restraints. I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, the pupils were so dilated, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and dull.

“Did I really say that? Is that why you won’t give me my morphine?”

I tried to assure her that no one was punishing her, that I admired her creativity hiding from her attackers, but her restless twitching began again. She shied from the “duck and cover” topic, and couldn’t or wouldn’t say who had shot her and her mother.

“You were pretty amazing back in Palfry,” I said, “getting away from the guys who killed Ricky Schlafly. That took real guts.”

Judy focused on me for the first time, her dark eyes large circles in her emaciated face: the Palfry debacle was something real in her mind that momentarily made her forget her desperate need for narcotics. “Not guts, I was terrified,” she whispered. “They shot Bowser. I was asleep and suddenly Bowser started barking. Ricky yelled that he was tired of the damned dog barking at nothing, but I looked out the window and there was this black SUV. I yelled at Ricky to wake up, get his shotgun. These men got out of the SUV and shot out the camera. Then they cut a big hole in the security fence and broke down the back door.

“Bowser tried to jump them but they shot him, Ricky and I were sitting on the stairs watching, it was so terrible. Delilah, she was always a ’fraidy-cat, Ricky used to kick her for running away, or kick me for loving her, she took off when they shot Bowser.”

Delilah, that was the waif Mr. Contreras and I were supporting.

Judy started gasping for air. Lotty put the oxygen tube back in her nose. After a bit her breathing became less labored.

“Delilah is going to be okay,” I said. “I brought her back to Chicago; she’s in the hospital right now.”

Judy’s eyes opened, a startled expression that turned wary: Was I trustworthy, or was I using the dog to con her?

“How did you get away?” I asked.

“When Ricky saw them shoot Bowser he undid the locks in the front door and ran outside. They chased him into the cornfield and I got in their SUV and drove up to Chicago.”

“Very cool head,” I said. “So you drove up to Freddie Walker’s place in Austin. Where’d you leave the SUV?”

“I gave it to Freddie. It was a Lincoln, brand-new, but he said it was too hot to sell as a whole car, so he had his boys strip it for parts.”

That was why Freddie had let her crash, I guess, and why he let her get high on his product. A brand-new Navigator’s parts would bring a nice little chunk of change.

“The people who shot Bowser and Ricky, were there two of them?”

She nodded vigorously. “I didn’t know them; they weren’t any of the local meth heads who Ricky sometimes fought with. This is too hard, remembering all that, I’m in pain, I’m giving you shit for nothing. At least Freddie gave me oxy for the SUV.”

“Yeah, you’re in a hard place,” I said, putting as much sympathy as I could into my voice. “I went back to Palfry and found the old dresser that Ricky tossed into the meth pit. I found the bank account that Benjamin Dzornen set up for your mother.”

“Those Dzornen shitheads? Are you working for them? That goddamn bitch Herta stole my money. Her daddy wanted me to go to college but she took that money and gave it to her children. If you’re working for her you can fuck yourself and her in the bargain.”

“I’m not working for the Dzornens. The last time I tried to talk to Herta Dzornen, she threw me out because I called her out for disrespecting your mother’s family.”

I spoke loudly and slowly. Judy eyed me warily.

“How did Martin find out about the money?” I asked. “Did you tell him, or was it your mother?”

“Oh, no, you don’t. Meds, meds, meds, meds,” Judy chanted. “You don’t get something for nothing. Get me some oxy, get me morph, and I’ll get you answers.”

Lotty and I exchanged looks and head shakes, which Judy saw.

“Yeah, you two bitches, you think God left you in charge of the planet, but He didn’t.”

“Ms. Binder,” I tried one last time, “your son came to visit you down in Palfry a few weeks ago. You argued over some documents. I know you had the bank passbook, the photo of Martina in the lab with Dzornen and Gertrud Memler. Wasn’t there also some document about the work Martina was doing at Innsbruck? You took those when you came to Martin’s bar mitzvah seven years ago—”