Blood Shot

25

After Bobby left I lay back down. I tried to sleep, but the pain in my shoulders had moved to the foreground of my mind. Angry tears prickled under my eyes, I had almost gotten killed, and all he could do was insult me, I wasn’t worth the bother of looking after, just because I wasn’t a blabbermouth who would tell him everything I knew, I’d tried mentioning Gustav Humboldt’s name, and all I’d gotten for my pains was an incredulous shout.

I twitched uncomfortably. The knot in the hospital gown was digging into my sore neck-muscles. Of course I could have given him chapter and verse on all my activities for the last week. But Bobby just wouldn’t have believed that a big-shot like Gustav Humboldt could be involved in bonking young women on the head. Although maybe if I’d tried giving it to him straight… Was he right? Was I just hotdogging, hoping to thumb my nose at him one more time?

As I lay still, letting images flow through my mind, I realized that this time, at least, wanting to give the powers-that-be a Bronx cheer wasn’t what had kept me quiet. I was well and truly scared. Every time I tried sending my mind back to the three black-slickered men I shied away from the memory like a horse frightened by fire. There were a lot of parts of the assault I hadn’t told Bobby, not because I was trying to hold back on him but because I couldn’t bear to touch the memories. The hope that some forgotten phrase or cadence would give me a lead to who they worked for wasn’t enough to force the memory of that terrifying near-suffocation.

If I spilled everything I knew to Bobby, turning the whole tangled mess over to him, it was a way of saying it out loud. Hey, guys, whoever you are, you got me. You didn’t kill me but you got me so scared that I’m abdicating responsibility for my life.

Once I’d let that little piece of self-knowledge float to the top of my mind, a terrible rage began to seize hold of me. I would not be turned into a eunuch, be driven to living my life in the margins designed by someone else’s will. I didn’t know what was going on in South Chicago, but no one, be it Steve Dresberg, Gustav Humboldt, or even Caroline Djiak, was going to keep me from finding out.

When Murray Ryerson showed up a little after eleven, I was pacing the room in my bare feet, my hospital gown flapping around my legs. I’d vaguely seen my roommate stand uncertainly in the door and move away again, and I mistook Murray’s presence for her return until he spoke.

“They told me you were fifteen minutes from death, but I knew better than to believe that.”

I jumped. “Murray! Didn’t your mother teach you to knock before barging in on people?”

“I tried, but you weren’t anywhere near planet earth.” He straddled the chair next to my bed. “You look like that Siberian tiger in that great open area at Lincoln Park Zoo, V.I. You’re making me nervous. Sit down and let me have an exclusive on your brush with death. Who tried to do you in? Dr. Chigwell’s sister? The folks down at the Xerxes plant? Or your pal Caroline Djiak?”

That stopped me. I pulled up my roommate’s chair to face Murray. I had hoped to keep Louisa’s affairs out of the papers, but once Murray started digging he’d find out pretty much anything.

“What’d little Caroline tell you-that I’d come by my ill deserts honestly?”

“Caroline’s a bit confusing to talk to. She says you were looking into Nancy Cleghorn’s death for SCRAP, although no one else down there seems to know anything about it. She claims she knows nothing about Pankowski or Ferraro, although I’m not sure I believe her.”

Murray poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher the orderly had replaced. “The people at Xerxes keep referring us to counsel if we want to hear about those two. Or about their suicidal doctor. And it does always kind of make you wonder when people only talk to you through their lawyers. We’re working on the plant secretary, the gal who works for the accountant-cum-personnel administrator. And one of my assistants is hanging out at the bar where the shift goes after work, so we’ll get something. But you could sure make it easier, Miss Marple.”

I slid from the chair back to bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. Caroline was protecting Louisa. Of course. That was what lay behind her song and dance. A threat to her mother was the only thing that would scare her, the only explanation consistent with her fierce terrier personality. She didn’t care anything for her own safety-and certainly not enough for mine to grow hysterical over my failure to drop the investigation.

It was hard to imagine how they could menace a woman in Louisa’s condition. Maybe blasting the private affairs she so ardently desired to keep secret out into the open-perhaps her most important concern in the last months of her life. Although Louisa hadn’t seem worried when I saw her on Tuesday…

“Come on, Vic. Give.” Murray’s voice had an edge that brought me back to the room.

“Murray, it wasn’t two days ago you were looking haughtily down that elephant-child snout of yours telling me you didn’t need anything from me and wouldn’t do anything for me. So give me a reason why I should suddenly help you out.”

Murray waved his hand around the hospital room. “This, baby doll. Someone wants you dead awful bad. The more people who know what you know, the less likely they’ll be to try to take you out a second time.”

I smiled sweetly-at least that was the goal. “I talked to the police.”

“And told them everything you know.”

“That would take more time than Lieutenant Mallory has. I told him who I spoke with the day before the-the assault. That included you-you weren’t very pleasant, and he wanted to know about anyone who seemed hostile.”

Murray’s eyes narrowed above his red beard. “I came here prepared to be sympathetic, maybe even to rub ointment into the sore spots. You have a way of destroying people’s tender feelings, kiddo.”

I made a sour face. “Funny-Bobby Mallory said much the same thing.”

“Any reasonable man would… Okay. Let’s have the assault story. All I have is the sketch the hospital reported to the cops. You made all four TV news spots last night, if that makes you feel more important.”

It didn’t. It made me feel more exposed. Whoever had tried to dump me into the South Chicago swamp had plenty of access to the news that I’d managed to crawl away. There wasn’t any point to asking Murray to keep a lid on it: I gave him as much as I could bear to reveal about the experience.

“I take it back, V.I.,” he said when I finished. “That’s a harrowing story even with most of the details missing. You’re entitled to thrash your tail awhile.”

Even so, he tried wheedling more information from me, stopping only when the lunches were brought in, chicken and overcooked peas, followed nervously by the woman recovering from plastic surgery. I was chewed out rather sternly by the floor head for having visitors who frightened my roommate out of her own bed. Since Murray takes up about as much space as a full-grown grizzly, she devoted enough of her remarks to him that he fled in some embarrassment.

After lunch a petite Asian underling came to inform me that Dr. Herschel had ordered deep heat for me down in physical therapy. She found a hospital robe for me. Even though I was twice her size, she helped me solicitously into a wheelchair and pushed me down to the PT unit, deep in the bowels of the hospital. I spent a pleasant hour getting wet packs, deep heat, and a massage, finishing with ten minutes in the whirlpool.

By the time my attendant had brought me back to my room, I was drowsy and ready for sleep. It was not meant to be, however: I found Ron Kappelman sitting in the visitor’s chair. He put away a folder of papers when he saw me and offered me a pot of geraniums.

“You sure seem better today than I would’ve believed twenty-four hours ago,” he said soberly. “I’m most sorry I didn’t take your neighbor seriously-I just assumed something important had come up and you’d taken off. I still can’t figure out how he bullied me into driving him all the way down there.”

I slid back into bed and lay down. “Mr. Contreras is a little excitable, at least about my well-being, but I’m not exactly in the mood to fight it today. You find anything out about that insurance report? Or why Jurshak was appointed the fiduciary?”

“You look as though you should be convalescing, not worrying about a bunch of old files,” he said disapprovingly.

“Has their status changed? Tuesday you were pretty excited about them. What turned them into old files?” Lying down wasn’t a good idea-I kept drifting. I cranked the bed so I could sit up.

“The way you looked when that old man dragged you up to the fence. They didn’t seem worth that much trouble.”

I scanned his face for signs of menace or lies or something. All he showed was manly concern. What did that prove?

“Is that why I was dumped into the marsh? Because of the report to Mariners Rest?”

He looked startled. “I guess I assumed-because we’d talked about them and then you didn’t show up for our meeting.”

“You tell anyone about my having that letter, Kappelman?”

He leaned forward in his chair, his mouth set in a thin line. “I’m beginning to dislike the turn this conversation is taking, Warshawski. Are you trying to imply that I had anything to do with what happened to you yesterday?”

This made the third well-wisher whose mind I’d changed within minutes of entering the room. “I’m trying to make sure that you didn’t. Look, Ron, all I know about you is that you had a brief fling with an old friend of mine. That doesn’t tell me anything-I mean, I was once married to a guy I wouldn’t trust with a kid’s piggy bank. All it proves is that hormones are stronger than brains.

“I talked to you and to one other person about those documents. If they’re the reason I was dumped into that swamp yesterday-and that’s a big question mark-because I just don’t know-it had to be because of one of you guys.”

He made a sour face. “Okay. I guess I can buy that-just. I don’t know how to convince you I didn’t hire those thugs -other than on my honor as a Boy Scout. I was one once, thirty years ago or so. Will you take that as evidence of probity?”

“I’ll take it into account.” I lowered the bed again-I was too tired to try to push him any further. “They’re springing me tomorrow. Want to try again on these papers?”

He frowned. “You really are a cold-blooded bitch, aren’t you? Near death one day and hot on the trail the next. Sherlock Holmes didn’t have anything on you. I guess I still want to see those damned documents-I’ll stop by around six if they’ve let you go home.”

He got up and pointed at the geraniums. “Don’t eat those -they’re just for the spirit. Try to enjoy them.”

“Very funny,” I muttered to his back. Before he’d disappeared I was deep in sleep.

When I woke again around six Max was sitting in the visitor’s chair. He was reading a magazine with peaceful absorption, but when he realized I was awake he folded it neatly and stuck it into his attaché case.

“I would have been here much sooner, but my day was spent in meetings, I fear. Lotty tells me you are fine, that you need nothing but rest to be completely healed.”

I ran a hand through my hair. It felt matted and sticky, which made me feel at a disadvantage. I eyed Max warily.

“Victoria.” He took my left hand and held it between his two. “I hope you can forgive my cold words of a few days ago. When Lotty told me what had happened to you, I felt truly remorseful.”

“Don’t,” I said awkwardly. “You weren’t responsible for anything that happened to me.”

His soft brown eyes looked at me shrewdly. “Nothing is without connection in our lives. If I hadn’t goaded you about Dr. Chigwell, you might not have acted so fiercely as to get yourself into trouble.”

I started to answer him, then stopped. If he hadn’t goaded me, I might not have felt so reluctant to take my gun with me on my run yesterday. Maybe I even exposed myself unconsciously to danger to assuage my guilt.

“But I did have something to feel guilty about,” I said aloud. “You weren’t that far off the mark, you know-I only pressured Chigwell because he made me angry. So maybe I gave the final turn to his screw.”

“So maybe we can both learn a little from this, to look before we leap.” Max stood up to reveal a magnificent array of flowers in a Chinese porcelain bowl. “I know you leave tomorrow, but take these with you for some cheer while your poor muscles heal.”

Max was an expert on oriental porcelain. The pot looked as though it had come from his personal collection. I tried to let him know how much the gesture pleased me; he accepted my thanks with his usual cheerful courtesy and left.