Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. The truth was, I was happy that Cerise had vanished. It was magic. I didn’t have to look after her anymore.

“Anyway, the mother’s last name is Ramsay.” Carol spelled it for me. “She’s in room four-twenty-two in the main hospital building. I told the head nurse you were a social worker, so there won’t be any problem you getting in to see her.”

I made a face as I thanked her. Social worker! It was an apt description of how I’d spent my time since Elena showed up at my door last week. Maybe it was time for me to turn Republican and copy Nancy Reagan. From now on when alcoholic or addicted pregnant strays showed up at my door, I would just say no.

Smoking Grandma

I climbed into the Chevy and slumped over the wheel. It was only noon, but I was as tired as though I’d been climbing Mount Everest for a week. A faint odor of vomit still hovered in the car, despite the twenty minutes I’d spent scrubbing the backseat. It slowly came to me that I was smelling my own clothes. My jeans were soiled where I’d been kneeling on the car seat-I’d just been too wound up with Elena to notice it earlier. Shuddering violently, I turned on the engine and drove south at a reckless pace, not even bothering to keep an eye out for the blue-and-whites. All I wanted to do was to get home, get my clothes off, get myself scrubbed as clean as I could manage.

I left the Chevy at a wild angle a yard or so from the curb and took the stairs up two at a time. Barely waiting to get inside to strip, I dumped jeans, T-shirt, and panties in a heap in the doorway and headed straight for the bathroom. I stood under the hot water for almost half an hour, washing my hair twice, scrubbing myself thoroughly. Finally I felt cleansed, that addicts and alcoholics were rinsed from my life.

I dressed slowly, taking time to put on makeup and to style my hair with a little gel. A gold cotton dress with big black buttons made me feel elegant and poised. I even burrowed through the hall closet for a black bag to go with my pumps.

On the way out I gathered my discarded clothes and took them to the basement. The sheets were ready for the dryer, but there are limits to my housekeeping fervor-I stuffed my jeans in with the sheets and started the cycle from the beginning.

It was a little after one by now. I wouldn’t be able to eat lunch if I wanted to see Zerlina before my meeting with Dominic Assuevo. And I guess I wanted to see her, although my enthusiasm for the Ramsay family was at low tide. I headed over to Lake Shore Drive and joined the flow southward.

Michael Reese Hospital dominates the lakefront for a mile or two at Twenty-seventh Street. I circled the complex a few times until I found someone pulling away from a meter-I was damned if I was going to pay lot fees for this visit. A guard was stationed behind a glass cage in the entryway. She didn’t care whether I was a social worker or an ax murderer, so I didn’t have to use Carol’s cover story to get a pass to the fourth floor.

The distinctive hospital smell-some combination of medication, antiseptic, and the sweat of people in pain- made me flinch involuntarily when I got off the elevator. I had spent too much time in hospitals with my parents when I was younger, and the smell always brings back the misery of those years. My mother died of cancer when I was fifteen, my father from emphysema some ten years later. He was a heavy smoker and there are days when I still get angry about it. Especially today, when I was feeling under siege.

Zerlina Ramsay was in a four-pack. Television perched high on facing walls were tuned to conflicting soap operas. Two women glanced indifferently at me when I came in but returned their attention immediately to the screen; the other two didn’t even look up. I stood dubiously in the doorway for a moment trying to decide which of the three black women might be Zerlina. None of them bore any overwhelming resemblance to Cerise. Finally I saw a sign attached to one of the beds warning me not to smoke if oxygen was in use. The woman lying there had gauze covering her left arm. Short, her massive build amply displayed by the skimpy hospital robe, she would have been my last choice, but Zerlina had been brought in suffering from smoke inhalation so I supposed she’d needed oxygen. She was attached to what looked like a heart monitor.

I went over to the bed. She turned her gaze toward me reluctantly, her eyes narrowed suspiciously in her jowly face.

“Mrs. Ramsay?” She didn’t respond, but she didn’t deny it either. “My name is V. I. Warshawski. I think you know my aunt Elena.”

Her dark eyes flickered in surprise; she cautiously inspected me. “You sure about that?” Her voice was husky from disuse and she cleared her throat discreetly.

“She told me you two hung out together at the Indiana Arms. Had a few beers together.”

“So?”

I gritted my teeth and plowed ahead. “So she was waiting on my doorstep last night with Cerise.”

“Cerise! What planet that girl come down from?”

I glanced around the room. As I’d expected, her companions were more interested in live theater than TV. They made no effort to mask their curiosity.

“Can you go out in the hall with that thing?” I gestured at the monitor. “This is kind of private.”

“Those two took money from you, I don’t want to hear about it. I can’t even afford me a new place to sleep, let alone pay back all that girl’s bills.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with money.”

She glowered at me belligerently, but heaved herself to a sitting position. Her substantial frame gave the impression not of fat but of a natural monument, maybe a redwood tree that had grown sideways but not too tall. She brushed away my hand when I tried to take her elbow. Grunting to herself, she slid out of bed, sticking her feet into paper hospital slippers lined up tidily under the edge. The heart monitor was on wheels. Rolling it in front of her, she made her way to the door and down the hall like a tidal wave-nurses and orderlies split to either side when they saw her coming.

She was panting a bit when we got to a small lounge stuck at one end of the hall. She took her time getting her breath before lowering herself onto one of the padded chairs. They were covered in cracked aqua oilcloth that had last been washed when Michael Reese himself was still alive. I perched gingerly on the edge of the chair at right angles to Zerlina.

“So Elena is your aunt, huh? Can’t say you look too much like her.”

“Glad to hear it. She’s thirty years and three thousand bottles ahead of me.” I ignored her crack of laughter to add, “I gotta say you don’t look too much like Cerise, either.”

“That’s those thirty years you spoke of,” Zerlina said. “I wasn’t so bad-looking at her age. And I sure look better than she’s going to when she gets to be as old as me, the rate she’s going. What kind of story she tell you? She and that aunt of yours.”

“Her baby,” I said baldly. “Katterina.”

Zerlina’s face creased in astonishment. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me Cerise didn’t have a baby.

“She’s picking a funny time to care about that baby, being as how she hasn’t paid much attention to it so far to date.”

“Katterina wasn’t with you Wednesday night when the Indiana Arms burned down?” I couldn’t think of a gentle way to ask the question.

“Hm-unh.” She shook her jowly head emphatically. “She left the baby with me on Wednesday, all right, but I couldn’t keep her with me, not in an SRO, you know. They can be mighty strict about who you got with you, which Cerise knew. But that girl!”