Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (36 page)

The
light still hurt my eyes. I shut them and let sleep lap at me until a voice
spoke near my head.

“Ms.
Warshawski ... the nurse said you were awake. How are you feeling?”

I
knew the voice but couldn’t place the speaker. When I turned my head to look at
her a jagged arc of pain swept through me, a flash of lightning that discharged
and left me breathless. The copper hair that fit her head like a shield, the
stony mask of a face—but a mask that had slipped to show compassion—I knew who
she was, but I couldn’t summon her name.

“I
know you. You work with Terry Finchley.” Tears of frustration pricked my eyes.

“Don’t
try so hard,” the nurse said from my other side. “You’ll remember things better
if you let yourself relax.”

“I’m
Mary Louise Neely. Officer Calley is here to take notes.” She indicated a man
in uniform hovering between the opening in the curtains that led to the hall.
“Are you up to talking?”

“I
don’t remember what happened,” I said. “I thought they were falcons. Now I see
it was the hoods they were wearing. Their eyes were glittering behind their
hoods.”

Neely
frowned at the nurse. “Are you sure she’s all right? Should we get a doctor to
look at her?”

“They
were thugs. Hoods. Hoods in hoods.” I giggled at the thought and suddenly found
myself wrenched by sobs. “Hoods. They jumped me. I thought I was being so
careful and they were waiting on my own landing.”

I
fought back the gusher of tears; crying only made the pounding in my head more
severe. The nurse brought me some water. Swallowing set off a stab of pain in
my rib cage. Maybe I’d broken something when I fell down—was it stairs or was
it in the yard? I tried to assemble my splintered memory. I’d fallen twice today,
that was it: once at the construction site, and then down the stairs? No,
someone had landed on me: that was why my joints felt like they’d been through
a cement mixer.

“I
fired my gun,” I suddenly recalled. “Did Mr. Contreras—”

“He
came out with the dogs to see what was happening. One of the punks rammed a gun
at his head and told him to call off the dogs and go back into his own
apartment. That one kept your neighbor covered while the other two searched
your apartment. That was what they came for, not to kill you, but to put you
out so they could go through your place. When they finished they took off. Mr.

Contreras
called us and went to help you out, but you’d regained consciousness and were
sitting in your living room. The uniforms didn’t know what to make of it at
first, but fortunately the old man had summoned an ambulance.”

I
shook my head, a tiny gesture that made my stomach heave. I found the ice pack
and pushed it more securely against my swollen cantaloupe. I didn’t remember
the ambulance, or sitting in my living room. I couldn’t remember anything
except the moment I’d fired my gun.

“I
have an alarm. If they opened my door and didn’t turn it off the police should
have gotten a signal right away. Why didn’t your friends come sooner?”

Neely’s
face twisted in annoyance. “They get so many false alarms they don’t send a
detail out first thing when the buzzer goes off. Your thugs—falcons—had about
eight minutes and they made every one of them count. What did they want so
badly?”

“I
don’t know.” I couldn’t think, or didn’t want to think—it meant facing the idea
of my home in ruins.

“We
got the message down on State Street because of the Messenger children: every
station is looking for them, since he’s such a high-profile citizen. So the
Town Hall watch commander was alert enough to remember your name as part of the
bulletin. I know Mr. Messenger is irritated with you, but I don’t think this
has anything to do with him—unless you came on some evidence about his children
that we don’t know about?”

I moved
restlessly on the gurney. “No. Nothing.”

I
thought of Anton and Gary Charpentier, shooting at me from the Home Free
construction site. But they would have had to move faster than the speed of
light to beat me back to my apartment. Jasper Heccomb: I’d broken into his
office last night. He probably guessed it was me, because I’d been asking
unwelcome questions. But I hadn’t taken anything, not even out of his packed
cash drawer. Fabian’s image spun through my mind, but I couldn’t think why. Of
course, I thought he’d killed Deirdre, I could remember that, but what was the
connection to Heccomb?

“Does
Conrad know I’m here?”

“We’ve
been trying to reach him. He and Terry were playing ball in Grant Park, but
they’d left by the time we sent someone over there. They don’t seem to be
answering their beepers, but we’ve left messages around town for them. Can you
remember anything you might have that someone else wants?”

The
resident on call arrived, summoned by reports of my resurrection. A grave young
man with bloodshot eyes, he shooed Mary Louise and her attendant scribe from
the room while he checked my reflexes. They wanted to do a CAT scan to make
sure my brain waves were okay, but after that I could leave. The radiologist
would examine the CAT scan in the morning and call me if there were any
abnormalities they didn’t detect this afternoon.

“You
shouldn’t be alone tonight,” he warned me. “You mustn’t sleep too much—you need
to be with someone who can wake you up.”

Conrad,
if I could find him. Otherwise I’d have to impose on Mr. Contreras.

He’d
be delighted to cluck over me, but it was too much of a burden for an old man,
especially if some punks thought I had a dangerous secret.

When
the attendants wheeled me back from the X-ray department Lotty and Max were in
the cubicle. They were dressed up, Max in evening clothes, Lotty in severely
tailored black wool. Her frown matched the severity of the suit.

“The
Aeolus Quintet.” I remembered they were going to a concert and spoke the name
aloud.

Lotty’s
face relaxed. “Your memory is functioning. The resident told me, but you never
believe it until you see it yourself. I’m taking you home with me. You need to
be awakened every few hours and I want to make sure that happens.”

I
leaned back on the gurney and let well-being wash over me. Lotty wanted to look
after me, not to beat on me for running into trouble. She had finally forgiven
me for last year’s assault. At that memory I sat up again, so fast that the
pain thudded through me and spun the room around.

“No,
Lotty, I can’t. They may come after me again and I don’t want you to be with me
if that happens. Officer Neely is trying to find Conrad. And anyway, you have a
concert to attend.”

“We’ve
heard the Aeolus music before and we’ll no doubt have the opportunity to listen
to it again.” Lotty put a hand on my pulse. “I know what’s in your mind, Vic,
but this time I’m choosing to be with you in a time of danger, not letting you
thrust me willy-nilly into its path.”

“But
everyone knows we’re friends. If they know I’m staying with you they’ll assume
you’re holding whatever it is they’re looking for. Even Terry Finchley wanted
to search your home for Emily Messenger as well as my missing computer
software.”

We
argued the point for a minute or two, until Max interrupted. “Why don’t the two
of you come home with me. That way Lotty can keep an eye on you and both of you
will be out of the danger zone.”

“But
Conrad—” I started.

“Conrad
will be welcome to join you as soon as Officer Neely locates him.” He called
Neely back into the cubicle and gave her a business card with his home number
on it. “And we need to explain things to your Cerberus: he’s fretting in the
waiting room right now.”

At my
insistence the nurse brought in Mr. Contreras. He was voluble with relief and
explanations. I apologized for putting him through such a terrible ordeal.

“Don’t
worry about me, doll, I’ve been through worse. It ain’t like it was Anzio,
where they was firing real rounds at us, you know, but when I saw you lying on
the landing there, and then this thug pulls a gun on me—I should have let him
shoot me instead of being such a crybaby.”

I
took his hand and pulled him closer to the gurney. “You did exactly the right
thing. What if he’d shot you and I’d been badly hurt? Who would have looked
after the dogs?”

“Oh,
doll, don’t try to make a joke out of it. I know I let you down, not checking
who was coming into the building, and then letting them get the best of me.
They rang the Lees’ bell, see, and their English not being so hot—the kids
wasn’t in—the Lees just buzzed them on in. I should of gone out to look,
instead of planting myself in front of the tube watching the races. No wonder
you never tell me what you’re up to.”

I
finally got him to calm down. He didn’t like the news I was going off with
Lotty and Max instead of letting him look after me, but he agreed in the end
that Lotty could take better care of me than he could.

Before
we left, Officer Neely tried again to get me to remember what material someone
might have been hunting, but I couldn’t think past the thud in my head.

Jasper—but
I hadn’t taken anything from his office. If he wanted to kill me for looking at
his stash I’d be dead now.

Neely
wanted to come with me while I picked up a toothbrush, to see if the sight of
my place jogged a memory. Lotty objected vigorously.

“Dr.
Herschel, if we don’t know what they were looking for, we don’t know if Vic—Ms.
Warshawski—is still in danger. If they found something and took it away, we
don’t need to worry so much about trying to intercept someone before they find
her at Mr. Loewenthal’s.”

Put
like that, Lotty had to agree. With my arm around Mr. Contreras’s shoulders, I
walked slowly from the emergency ward. The scorching bursts of pain had
subsided; even the cantaloupe seemed smaller to my touch—perhaps it was only a
grapefruit now. The resident had taped my ribs—one had cracked, but not broken.
Really, I was in good shape for the punishment I’d taken.

Fortunately
Max had driven Lotty in his own car: I didn’t think my head would have survived
a trip with Lotty at the wheel. Mr. Contreras and I climbed into the backseat
of Max’s Buick. Officer Neely’s blue-and-white escorted us, with a nice display
of flashing lights.

Safe
House

I
slept on the drive up to Max’s house in Evanston. Seeing the shambles in my
apartment had been an ordeal I couldn’t handle with my battered body. The
disarray hadn’t jolted my memory—it only made me want to withdraw. Officer
Neely had summoned a forensic team in the hopes my hoodlums had been careless
enough in their haste to leave prints, but I left her to the supervision of Mr.

Contreras
and the dogs.

Before
leaving my place I tried Conrad’s number again. He still wasn’t home.

He
might have gone early to his mother’s, but I couldn’t remember her unlisted
number and I couldn’t find my address book: it was either buried in the heap of
books and papers in my living room, or the falcons had taken it. Neely agreed
to get Mrs. Rawlings’s number from Terry Finchley and to try to reach Conrad
there.

The
tidy elegance of Max’s home eased my spirits. Sipping fruit juice in the
kitchen while he made up a bed for me, I could feel the pain unknit itself from
my head. My arms and left side were sore; tomorrow they would be stiff. But
with the easing of my knotted brain I could return to some semblance of action
in the morning.

Lotty
examined my eyes and my reflexes. Finally satisfied that I was recovering well,
she asked me if I knew something about the assault I hadn’t wanted to tell the police.

“I’ve
been chugging around between Jasper Heccomb and Fabian Messenger trying to
figure out Deirdre’s death. And hoping for some ideas on Emily. Someone shot at
me this afternoon at a construction site, but I don’t think that guy could have
beaten me back to my apartment. What I don’t understand is why I’m still
alive.” I tried to speak casually but my hands betrayed me, shaking badly
enough to spill juice on the kitchen counter.

“Shot
at you?” Lotty shivered. “Have you told Conrad? Or that Officer—Neely, is
it?—who was at the hospital?”

I
shook my head—slowly, to keep my brain from splintering. “Being knocked out
made me forget it—it happened just before I came home. Who besides a contractor
has muscle to spare for that kind of ambush?”

Lotty
forced a smile. “I begin to understand your methods, Victoria: if you are
purely clinical about damage to your body it puts fear at a distance. I’ll try
to join in. Surely Home Free is not implicated in Deirdre’s murder: why would a
homeless rights advocate murder one of their own volunteers?”

I
hunched a shoulder. “Two days ago I would have agreed. But Jasper Heccomb keeps
a lot of money in cash in his office—my estimate is five million. Maybe Deirdre
saw it and threatened to report him to the IRS.”

“Five
million in cash?” Max had come back into the kitchen. “Perhaps he pays his work
force in cash to avoid payroll taxes. But maybe you should take a nap instead
of worrying about it right now.”