Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 08 (43 page)

“We’d
better try to get everyone out now,” I said. “The water’s rising faster and I
don’t think you have the stamina for two more trips.”

He
nodded, gulping down mouthfuls of fetid air. “It’s ... up ... to the fourth
stair ... on that bottom flight now. I took ... the little boy ... up to the
landing. He’ll be okay there. The rats ain’t coming so fast—I only saw two—and
I gave the kid a stick just in case.”

We
waited while he caught his breath. I tied one end of the rope to him and the
other to myself. After a minute he scooped up Jessie, whose whoops had subsided
to a shallow wheezing. Her eyes were rolling sightlessly.

I
fished the toddler out of my overalls and handed her to her mother—I couldn’t
walk and carry two children. Our little train started in motion down the middle
of the tracks, Mr. Contreras in the lead, followed by Tamar, then Emily holding
Nathan, with me bringing up the rear.

It was
a slow, difficult journey. Emily had only been underground a week but was
already weakened from malnutrition. Mrs. Hawkings, who’d been living down here
for months, was so feeble she had to struggle hard to make headway against the
water. She fell more than once. The third time she went down she dragged Emily
with her. Hampered by the children we were carrying, Mr. Contreras and I had a
hard time righting them. I was scared that we would lose Jessie and both
toddlers.

The
water was almost level now with the tops of my waders. If it rose any more I’d
have to take them off so as not to get bogged down by its weight inside the
boots.

“Stop
a minute,” I gasped to Mr. Contreras. “I want to tie the rope to one of these
brackets and haul Mrs. Hawkings along.”

As soon
as he understood what I intended he took her son from my arms. I untied
everyone from the rope. He held one end while I sloshed down the tunnel as far
as the rope would stretch. Standing on tiptoe I tied it to the bracket and
pulled hard. It held. Mr. Contreras rapidly tied Emily to the rope and I
started reeling her in, hand over hand. It was relatively easy work: as soon as
I started pulling she lost her footing, which meant the water was working for
me.

Ordering
her to stay put, I sloshed back to the old man with the end of the rope. We
tied up Tamar and I slogged my way back to Emily and the bracket and hauled in
Tamar. Mr. Contreras followed behind her.

We
had to repeat the operation three times. By the end I’d given up the fight with
my waders, yanking them off so that I could swim between the bracket and the
fugitives. By the time we got to the Pulteney stairwell Tamar seemed barely
conscious. I myself was in a state beyond exhaustion, where my throbbing head
and sore arms seemed as remote from me as the surface of the earth itself. Mr.

Contreras’s
deep, rasping breaths came from some distant spot, reminding me of life, of the
need to keep moving. Only Emily seemed to have some reserve of energy: when we
got to the stairwell she gave a little cry of “Josh” and stumbled up the stairs
to hug her brother.

I
don’t remember how we climbed the four flights up to the Pulteney basement—some
combination of carrying children, shoving children, hoisting children, bullying
Tamar and Emily—a routine that began to seem like the regimen of a lifetime. I
had forgotten sun and air—they were just dreams handed down from ancient
literature. It wasn’t the desire for light that impelled us upward, but the
stultifying routine of motion. So numb had I become that when the feeble
glimmer of my flashlight showed us the hole behind the Pulteney’s boiler I
stared at it a long, stupid moment, trying to understand what it was.

Once
inside the basement I sent Mr. Contreras to the surface for help. I moved our
little band past the boiler to the crates where I’d kept my electrical tools.
With my last bit of energy I pulled some of the crates into a semicircle and
leaned against one of them. I cradled the two youngest children against my
breast. Joshua, clinging to Emily, lay against my left side. Near me I could
hear Jessie’s labored breathing. The rats were swarming around us but I was too
exhausted to try to keep them at bay. I was asleep when Mr. Contreras returned
with a cop.

For
Mules, There Are No Rules

Jessie
didn’t make it through the night. The pediatric staff at Northwestern, where
we’d all been sent, worked heroically, but malnutrition and damp had done too
much damage to her lungs. Lotty brought me the news when she stopped to see me
before going off to make her own rounds at Beth Israel.

Despite
my incoherent protests the hospital had kept me overnight for observation. When
they called Lotty—whom I listed as my physician on the emergency-room form—she
infuriated me by telling them about my recent head injury and reinforcing their
decision.

“In
fact, give her a complete neurological workup while you’re at it,” she had told
them.

“What
about your belief that patients should take an active role in deciding on their
care?” I had demanded when I forced the attendant to give me the phone.

“That
doesn’t apply to mules, my dear, only to those with enough sense not to climb
Mt. Everest with a broken leg.”

I
knew as soon as she hung up that she was right. I was too exhausted to move,
let alone cope with protecting myself from anyone who might be gunning for me.
I pulled myself together long enough to leave another message for Conrad,
telling the precinct dispatcher to make sure he knew I was at Northwestern’s
hospital, before letting the staff load me onto a gurney.

I
came to periodically as people bathed me and took blood from me, but for most
of the evening I lay in a sleep so deep that neither the intermittent pages nor
the hospital routine of blood pressure and temperature taking could rouse me.
Conrad came by around seven in the evening—I found a note from him attached to
a bunch of daisies when I woke up—but I hadn’t stirred.

I
finally emerged from my stupor around four in the morning. After some initial
confusion about where I was the events of the last few weeks flooded my brain.
I thrashed uselessly in the bed, worrying about Mr. Contreras and the children,
Deirdre’s death, the immigrant workers, wondering what to do next, until Lotty
arrived a little after six.

“So
you were right.” I turned away from her when she told me about Jessie. “I
should never have left the Hawkingses in the basement that first night I found
them. If I’d called Conrad as you urged me the girl might still be alive.”

Lotty
sat down next to me on the bed, her dark eyes large in her vivid face.

“You
can’t know that, Vic. I spoke that evening in the heat of the moment, and I
shouldn’t have—after all, we didn’t do such a good job hanging on to them when
you got them to the hospital the next night. Also, I gathered from Conrad that
the passage between the tunnels and the basement was almost impossible to find
if you weren’t looking for it.”

When
he couldn’t wake me Conrad had called Lotty to make sure I was all right—since
we weren’t married, the hospital refused to give him any information. He told
Lotty that he and Finchley had stopped by the Pulteney to figure out why
Finchley’s search team had missed the entrance to the tunnels when they went
hunting Tamar the morning after Deirdre died. When they found the space behind
the boiler they were amazed that Mr. Contreras and I had been able to discover
it at all.

“We
lost one child, Vic,” Lotty went on, “but six other people are alive who would
be dead now if not for you and your cowboy neighbor. Who seems in fighting
fettle this morning, by the way. They want to start a course of rabies shots
because of the rat bites, so they’re checking his heart to make sure he’s got
the stamina to tolerate the series. I told them it would take a large truck to
stop him.”

I
nodded. “I wouldn’t have survived yesterday without him. How’s Tamar Hawkings
doing?”

Lotty
knit her brows. “She’s being given IV fluids—all of them are. But there’s some
concern about her mental state. And that of the girl, Emily Messenger. Mr.
Messenger came by yesterday afternoon as soon as he knew the children had been
found. Emily apparently screamed and made them take him away.

Now
no one can get a straight story out of her. They want a psych resident to talk
to her, but first she has to recover her physical strength—her emotional trauma
can easily be at least partly from delirium. The little boys, her brothers,
will recover soon, at least physically, and the staff are hopeful about the
other two Hawkings children.”

Leon
Hawkings had been around to demand custody of the children, she added.

He
had alternated between threatening the hospital with legal action over Jessie’s
death, demanding that his wife be returned to him, and threatening her with
jail for endangering the children’s lives. Lotty had called Marilyn Lieberman
at Arcadia House. She was sending Eva Kuhn over to see if there was anything
that could be done to help Tamar.

“The
city is also squawking about child neglect, so she’s got a lot to cope with
when she’s strong enough physically to face all these people,” Lotty added.

“The
police haven’t arrested Emily yet?” I asked.

Lotty
gave a sardonic smile. “For Deirdre’s death? Given Fabian’s standing they’re
moving very gingerly. Also, one of your police friends is proving an unexpected
ally—the red-haired woman who questioned you in ER on Saturday ... yes, Officer
Neely, that was her name. ... Vic, I’ve asked them to give you an NMR scan and
check your brain function before they let you out of here.”

“On
the grounds that anyone who went into those tunnels must be out of her mind?”

Lotty
got up from the bed. “On the grounds you’ve sustained your third serious head
injury in the past seven years and I want to make sure that thick Polish skull
of yours is holding up under the bludgeoning.”

I sat
up, flushing with anger. “I can’t afford that kind of exam. I don’t have
insurance, you know. And I’ve debts reaching from here to Skokie. They did a
CAT scan at Beth Israel on Saturday. Besides, I need to get moving. There’s too
much unsettled business around me, and finding Emily makes matters more urgent,
not less.”

She
put her fingers around my wrist, part caress, part checking my pulse.

“Our
equipment and our technicians at Beth Israel aren’t as good as the facility
here. The radiologist told me yesterday that your CAT scan was not of good
enough quality for him to rule out a subtle subdural insult. I’ll work
something out with Northwestern about the billing. You can’t afford to be
careless with head injuries.”

When
she left I got out of bed, determined to put on my clothes and leave. I
couldn’t hang around a hospital waiting on the medical establishment’s pleasure
just to have thousands of dollars’ worth of useless tests done.

My
muscles refused to respond with the immediate suppleness I demanded of them. I
moved stiffly to the clothes cupboard. Someone had put my things in a plastic
bag labeled WARSHAWSKI—402-B. I opened the bag and recoiled—the smell was
appalling. Oily water left in a sealed bag overnight should be bottled to use
as a self-defense spray. It would take more stomach than I had right now to
step into those things.

When
I shut the bag I realized some of the smell was clinging to me: they’d given me
a sponge bath yesterday, but my hair remained matted with sweat and dried
bilge. The room had a private shower. I stood under it for a glorious half
hour, feeling the heat soak into my sore muscles while the muck flowed away
from my head.

A
clean gown and hospital robe were hanging in the bathroom. I put them on and
went back to the bed to call Conrad.

“I
know Lotty said you were okay, but you had me worried there, girl. I don’t like
it when you’re sleeping too deep for a rub on the shoulder to get you even to
twitch.”

“When
I was seven a fortune-teller on Maxwell Street assured me I had nine lives. I
figure I’ve still got five or six left to me.”

“Way
you’ve been running through ’em lately I’m worried you’re on borrowed time now.
Can I come by to see you?”

“Please.”
I asked him to stop at my apartment for some clean clothes. “If you can find
any in the mess my attackers created on Saturday. I need everything—shoes,
socks—my Nikes are going to have to be fumigated before I can put them on my
feet again.”

Conrad
agreed, but said he wouldn’t arrive before noon. Lotty had already been on to
him, getting him to promise he wouldn’t help spring me before I’d had my brain
scan.

“And
anyway, Ms. W., it’s time you gave that ravaged body of yours a break.

Spend
the day with a book. Take the dogs over to the lake and hang out. You’ve earned
it. Hell, you need it.”

I
temporized, torn between pleasure at his concern and annoyance at his conniving
at hog-tying me. Fasting had cured my headache; underneath my worries and sore
muscles I felt a surge of euphoria. For the first time in three days I felt
clearheaded enough to think. If I couldn’t leave here until noon, at least I
could get my body loose enough to move easily when the time came.