Sara Paretsky - Blacklist

Instead, Mr. Contreras and the dogs came bustling down the walk to greet me, the old man voluble in relief that I hadn’t been locked up. I lay on his living room floor with my arms around Peppy, running through the highlights, or maybe lowlights, of the evening. When he learned the FBI had also searched my office, and might well be tapping my phone, Mr. Contreras spoke his views on the law colorfully and at length. He might think any and all measures the government had taken in the name of protecting America were justified, no matter whose rights they violated-but when it came down to me, the Feds had crossed an inviolable line. I’d always miss my mother when times were hard, but having my neighbor as a partisan was a pretty good second.

“But going out the window of that mansion, doll, that musta shook you up bad. I see how you been favoring your shoulder.”

“It wasn’t the window, it was diving into the pond and then climbing up

that wretched wall. I saw”-I stopped just before blurting out Father Lou’s name-“a sports trainer on my way home this afternoon. He gave me some salve and told me to tape up the shoulder. I just haven’t had time to stop at a drugstore for firm enough tape-I’ve been using an Ace bandage, which doesn’t hold the muscle quite in place.”

“Go see the doc tomorrow. Don’t rely on no sports trainer’s half-baked notions.”

That was a good idea: Lotty dispensed more than medical comforts from her storefront clinic. I lay on the dog’s shoulder, thinking I should get up and go to bed before I fell asleep on the floor, when my cell phone rang. To Peppy’s indignation, I stopped petting her and got up to retrieve the phone from my handbag.

It was Harriet Whitby, apologizing for calling so late, but she and Amy were at the hotel waiting for me; did I still want to see them?

I was about to moan that I was too tired to move, but then I remembered that the DuPage state’s attorney was going to ask the Whitbys to return Marcus’s body. I needed to talk to Harriet tonight, so she didn’t learn about it from some functionary. In case the Feds were really monitoring my calls, I didn’t want them to learn that I had already organized a full autopsy. I told Harriet I’d be at the hotel in half an hour.

When Mr. Contreras realized I was going out again, he tried to argue me out of it: it was late, I was beat, I shouldn’t be driving. I agreed with all of those things, but said I would take a cab. It’s one of the few benefits of living in Chicago’s most congested neighborhood, that taxis cruise the streets at all hours. Mr. Contreras and the dogs walked down to the corner with me and waited until a cab pulled up in front of a new hot spot at Belmont and Sheffield. He ushered me in with the assurance that he would wait up for me.

The usual Saturday-night eaters and drinkers filled Belmont. Cars honked, crowds spilled across sidewalks into the streets. As we crawled east, I kept looking out the back, wondering if the law was following me, but the SUV immediately behind us made it hard to see anything else. I finally decided it didn’t really matter if the FBI knew I was going downtown and dozed off again until we reached the hotel.

The Drake’s lobby is at the top of the kind of staircase Audrey Hepburn

was always climbing in Roman Holiday or How to Steal a Million. A princess could negotiate those stairs in high heels with ease, but a tired detective had trouble lifting one leg after the other. “I could have slept all night,” I sang to myself, “and still have begged for more.”

Harriet and Amy were on a couch in the small lobby at the top of the stairs. When she spotted me, Harriet sprang up to greet me, clasping both my hands in her own, then exclaiming remorsefully when she saw the purple hollows under my eyes.

“This is the second time I’ve called you late after you’d been wearing yourself out on my family’s account; I’m so sorry-this could have waited until morning.”

I smiled in reassurance. “Something came up tonight that you should know about, anyway. Where can we talk quietly? Your room?”

“Mother keeps coming into my room if I’m there. She and Daddy are thinking of flying home Monday, regardless of what Dr. Vishnikov discovers, and she’s fretting about the travel arrangements.”

We found a corner table in the Palm Court, which was kept dark in the tradition of the old bars of the fifties. We sank into velvet plush and tried to see each other by the light of little tabletop fixtures. When a waitress materialized out of the gloom and Harriet ordered herbal tea, I started to follow suit, then realized I wanted whisky. Black Label might put me to sleep before we finished talking, but I wanted that glow of warmth to soften the knots between my shoulder blades.

We talked idly while we waited for our drinks. Amy had spent the afternoon hiking in the dunes southeast of the city; Harriet and her parents had met Aretha Cummings, Marc’s research assistant. Aretha had brought them some of Marc’s private things from the office. A nice young woman, clearly grief-stricken, Mother had wondered if Marc and she had been dating.

“And me, I spent the day dodging shots from three law enforcement agencies.” The drinks arrived and I took a welcome swallow. “If you heard the news, you may know an Egyptian kid was hiding in the house on the estate where Marcus died. The police and the Feds now are imagining that the kid, his name is Benjamin, killed Marcus. And since that’s the track their minds are running on, they will be looking for a connection between

the two. They’ll wonder if Marcus was writing about would-be terrorists in Chicago; they’ll wonder if Marcus had a political involvement with a terrorist group.”

Harriet let out a muffled cry. “Marc with terrorists? No and no and no. If you think that for even one minute-“

“I don’t think that. But you need to be prepared for that kind of question from the police tomorrow, or whenever they try to talk to you. And another thing: now that the law has decided to take an interest in your brother’s death, they want to reopen the autopsy. They agree they did a superficial job the first time round.”

“But-you know Dr. Vishnikov is already doing that. Didn’t you speak to him this afternoon?” Harriet said.

“Oh, yes. And maybe he’s already done what he needs to do-barring results from the tox screens. But if he hasn’t, it’s up to you, whether you want to give your brother’s body back to the DuPage County ME. If you don’t, keep them away until Vishnikov is done: he’s such an eminent pathologist, even the FBI will accept his findings. Also, since you’re paying Vishnikov, he’ll have to tell you what he discovers. If you send your brother back to DuPage, they’ll do the work for free-free for you, I mean-but they may not share their results with you.”

Couched in those terms, the decision to keep Vishnikov on the job seemed the only sensible way to go. Of course, I had an agenda, too: I wanted the autopsy results, and no one in DuPage was likely to tell me whether they’d drunk coffee for breakfast, let alone what Marcus Whitby had inside him. Harriet didn’t think she would be verytgood at holding off the DuPage County sheriff’s office; I told her she could refer them to me as her legal representative. “I’m used to them being annoyed with me. It won’t bother me to have them add one more count to their list.”

“I’ll stay with you tomorrow, Harry,” Amy promised. “Unless there’s something Vic needs me to do?”

I slumped back against the thick upholstery, my eyes shut. It was hard for me to imagine the next day, but I guessed I’d be starting it at the hospital where Catherine Bayard was recovering from her surgery. With an effort, I remembered what Amy had been working on-was it only yesterday?