Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (31 page)

On
the other hand, I believed what he’d said about U.S. Met. He was the wrong
person to ask about marketing plans. The way he phrased it made me think it was
his brother Peter I should be talking to: I’m not clever enough, ask anyone.
Even though his tone wasn’t especially bitter, it was the expression of someone
who was used to being told about his own stupidity. Peter, after all, was the
one who’d been trusted with the family business. Jason had never been invited
to participate.

I
should have done a search on Peter at the same time that I looked up Jason. I
didn’t know much about him, but I was willing to bet he was on the U.S. Met
board.

I got
off the Stevenson at Damen and drove up to County Hospital. My bones were
aching with exhaustion. I negotiated the distance from my car to the building,
and then down its endless corridors, by sheer willpower. Although it was past
seven, Nelle McDowell was still at the nursing station.

“When
do you go off duty, anyway?” I demanded.

She
made a wry face. “We’re so shorthanded here I could work a
hundred-and-sixty-hour week and it wouldn’t make a dent. You here to see the
old lady? It’s good some of you neighborhood folks care enough to keep in
touch. I see she’s got a son out in California and he hasn’t even bothered to
send her a card.”

“Is
she talking yet?”

McDowell
shook her head regretfully. “She keeps calling for that dog, Bruce, I guess. I
don’t know how much she understands of what anyone says to her, but we’ve given
strict orders to all the shifts not to say anything about it.”

“Has
either Todd or Chrissie Pichea been by? They’re the couple who got themselves
named her guardians.” I was afraid their native cruelty might lead them to tell
Mrs. Frizell the bad news in the hopes it would hasten her death.

“Hotshot
young couple? They came by last night, kind of late, maybe ten. I was gone by
then, but the night charge nurse, Sandra Milo, told me about it. Seems they
were desperate for her financial papers. Title to her house or something. I
guess they figured they needed it to put up as security for her medical bills
or something, but they were much too rough for her in the state she’s
in—shaking her shoulder, trying to make her sit up and talk to them. Sandra
threw them out in pretty short order. Other than that no one’s been by but one
of the neighbor ladies. I couldn’t tell you her name.”

“Hellstrom,”
I supplied mechanically. “Marjorie Hell-strom.”

So
Todd and Chrissie didn’t have her critical papers. I’d just assumed they were
down in the Jurassic layer of the old secretary, but the Picheas could have
searched the house at their leisure. If they hadn’t found the title, where was
it?

“How
long are you going to keep Mrs. Frizell here?” I finally asked.

“She’s
not fit to be moved right now. The hip isn’t healing very fast. Ultimately she
has to go to a nursing home, you know, if the guardians can find one she can
afford, but that’s a ways in the future.”

She
sent me down the hall to Mrs. Frizell’s cramped cubicle. The death mask of the
old woman’s face was more pronounced than before, the hollows under her cheeks
sunk so deep that her face looked like gray putty lightly patted over a skull.
A thin stream of drool ran along the right side of her mouth. She snorted
heavily as she breathed and kept tossing restlessly on the bed.

My
stomach gave a convulsive twist. I was glad I hadn’t eaten since my toasted
cheese sandwich six hours ago. I forced myself to kneel next to her and take
her hand. Her fingers felt like a collection of brittle twigs.

“Mrs.
Frizell!” I called loudly. “It’s Vic. Your neighbor, Vic. I have a dog,
remember?”

Her
agitated movements seemed to slow a bit. I thought she might be trying to focus
on my voice. I repeated my message, placing special emphasis on “dog.” At that
her eyelids did flutter slightly and she muttered, “Bruce?”

“Yes,
Bruce is a wonderful dog, Mrs. Frizell. I know Bruce.”

Her
parched lips curved infinitesimally upward. “Bruce,” she repeated.

I
massaged her frail fingers gently between my own. It seemed a hopeless
prospect, to move her from Bruce to banking, but I tried anyway. Hating myself
for lying, I suggested that Bruce needed to eat, and that for that he would
need money. But she couldn’t respond enough to talk about something as
complicated as her decision to change banks last spring.

She
did finally say, “Feed Bruce.” That was hopeful in terms of her mental state—it
showed she was connecting what I was saying to the right synapses—but it didn’t
help me investigate her finances. I patted her fingers one last time and stood
up. To my surprise Carol Alvarado was standing behind me.

We
exclaimed at each other in unison. I asked what she was doing on the orthopedic
floor.

She
grinned a little. “Probably the same thing you are, Vic. Since I helped find
her I feel responsible for her. I come over every now and then to check on
her.”

“But
in uniform?” I asked. “Did you come straight from Lotty’s?”

“Actually,
I took a job in the night trauma unit.” She laughed self-consciously. “I was
spending all this time over on the AIDS ward with Guillermo, and of course
exchanging shop talk with the nurses on duty. They’re always shorthanded here
and it just sounded like a great opportunity. When Guillermo goes home I can
still look after him during the day.”

“And
when do you sleep?” I demanded. “Isn’t this going from the frying pan to the
fire?”

“Oh,
I suppose, in a way. I’m only spending afternoons at Lotty’s for a few days
until her new nurse feels up to taking over full-time. But… I don’t know. You
can do real nursing here. It’s not like most hospitals, where all you do is
fill out forms and act like a grunt for the doctors. Here you’re working with
patients, and I see so many different kinds of cases. At Lotty’s it’s mostly
babies and old women—except when you come in with your body rearranged. Anyway,
it’s only been two nights now but I’m loving it.”

She
checked Mrs. Frizell’s bedding. “It’s good that you got her to say something
else, another word. You should come more often: it might help her recovery.”

I
rubbed the back of my neck. That sounded like one of those good deeds that make
the angels in heaven cheer but prove a burden to the doer.

“Yeah,
I could try to get over more.”

I
explained the information I was after and why. “I don’t suppose you could think
of a way to get her to talk about her bank.”

Carol
looked cautiously down the hall to make sure no one was in earshot. “I might,
Vic. Don’t get your hopes up, but I might come up with something. Now I’ve got
to get back to the trauma unit. Walk you to the stairs?”

Once
again the elevators were out of service. It was too much like my own office for
me to complain. On the way downstairs I asked Carol whether she had a concrete
plan in mind. “I’d like to find out about her money while she still has some.”

“What—you
think those neighbors of yours are defrauding her? You got proof of it? Or you
just don’t like them?” Carol’s tone was derisive.

I
forgot that Carol had seen me showing my hackles at Todd Pichea and Vinnie. I
flushed and stammered a bit as I tried to explain myself. “Maybe I am mounting
a vendetta.

It’s
because of the dogs—it seemed to me the Picheas raced around to get
guardianship rights just to put the dogs to sleep so that they could safeguard
their property values. Maybe they were being altruistic. But I still don’t
understand why they had to muscle in like that, kill the dogs before she’d even
been away from home a week.“

My
voice trailed away uncertainly. I should be spending my energies on Jason Felitti
and Diamond Head; it looked as though I might have stumbled onto something hot
there. I should stop being a pest in the neighborhood and just let Todd and
Chrissie work things out however they chose. After all, Mrs. Frizell wasn’t the
most wonderful specimen to be spending time on. But all my hectoring myself on
the subject could not stop the nagging in my brain that I should have done
something more to protect the old woman and that I should be looking after her
now.

Carol
squeezed my arm. “You’re too intense, Vic. You take everything too hard. The
world won’t stop spinning its way around the sun if you don’t rescue every
wounded animal in your path.”

I
grinned at her. “You’re a fine one to lecture me, Carol, after leaving the
intensity of Lotty for the laid-back leisure of the Cook County trauma unit.”

She
laughed, her teeth gleaming white in the dim stairwell. “And on those words I’d
better get back there. It was quiet when I left, but now the sun is setting the
bodies will start streaming in.”

We
hugged each other and went our separate directions. I’d parked the Impala on
the street, a few blocks west of the hospital. One thing about driving an old
car with a rusty body, you don’t worry so much about strangers helping
themselves to it. As I started the engine I could hear sirens in the distance.
Ambulances bringing in their first loads of the night.

It
was dinnertime and naptime, but I didn’t want to go home just now. I figured I
could get one more free pass into the building through the alley before the
guys in the Subaru realized how I was coming and going. I didn’t want to waste
it on supper.

I
parked the car on a side street near Belmont and Sheridan and climbed into the
backseat for a brief rest. My late-night visit to Jonas Carver’s Loop office had
left me tired and gritty all day. And onto that I’d added treks to the north
and west suburbs. Not to mention fleeing flat out from some ugly muscle.

Another
good thing about the Impala, I thought as I squirmed around to find a
comfortable position—my Trans Am would never accommodate my five-eight frame
across its minute backseat.

I
actually slept for an hour. Bright lights shone in my eyes and woke me with
heart-jolting speed. I reached for my gun and sat up, fearing my pursuers had
found me. It turned out just to be a car trying to parallel park across the
narrow street from me; it had managed to get turned at right angles to the
roadway. Its headlights pointed directly into the backseat.

Feeling
rather foolish, I put the gun back inside my armpit. I dug in my bag for a comb
and did the best I could to style my hair in the dark. The people across from
me were still having trouble maneuvering their car when I climbed from the
Impala. Proving that Carol was wrong, that I could overlook someone in trouble,
I left them to it.

The
Dortmunder Restaurant, one of Lotty’s and my favorite hangouts, was only a few
blocks away. In the basement of the Chesterton Hotel, it serves sandwiches and
hearty dinners surrounded by a fabulous wine cellar. Normally I like to get a
bottle of something rich, a Saint-Emilion or the like, but this was strictly a
refueling stop before getting back to work.

I
stopped in the hotel lobby’s rest room to wash up. I was wearing jeans and a
cotton knit top, not elegant dining apparel, but also not ruined by sleeping in
a car. They were smelling a little ripe.

The
staff at the Dortmunder greeted me enthusiastically, wanting to know if the
doctor was joining me. When I explained that the doctor had been injured in a
car accident the other day, they were appropriately concerned: How had it
happened? How was she? My conscience rubbed me as I explained the bare outlines
of the situation.

Lisa
Vetec, granddaughter of the owner, ushered me to a table in a corner and took
my order. While they made me a sandwich from their famed Hungarian salami I
called Mr. Contreras. He was relieved to hear from me.

“Someone
came around looking for you an hour or so ago. I told him you wasn’t in, but I
didn’t like his looks.”

I
asked Mr. Contreras what the visitor looked like. His description was sketchy,
but I thought it might have been the man who followed me into the Belmont Diner
this morning. If he wanted to see me urgently, our confrontation was only a
matter of time. But if possible I’d be the one to choose both the time and the
place.

I
tapped my front teeth with a knuckle while I considered the situation. “I think
I’m going to move out for a day or two. I’ll be over in about an hour to pick
up a few things. I want to come in through the alley. I’ll call right before I
get there—if you let me in maybe they won’t know I’ve come.

“But
where can you go, doll? I know you usually hang out with the doc, but…” He
broke off with unusual delicacy.

“Yeah,
I can’t involve Lotty in this anymore, even if she’d let me. It just dawned on
me that I might be able to get a room down where Jake Sokolowski lives.”

He
didn’t like it, not for any special reason, just because he didn’t like me
moving so far from his orbit. It’s not so much that he wants to control me,
I’ve realized recently, but because he needs the reassurance of being able to
touch me. He finally agreed to my program, on the grounds that I call
him—“Regularly, doll, not just once a week when the spirit moves you”—and only
hung up when I promised.