Sara Paretsky - Killing Orders

After that I tried taking a nap, but I couldn’t sleep. Lotty, Uncle Stefan, Don Pasquale were churning around in the foreground of my brain. Along with Rosa and Albert and Agnes.

At noon I gave up on rest and tried calling Lotty. Carol Alvarado, the nurse at Lotty’s North Side clinic, answered the phone. She went to find the doctor, but came back with the message that she was too busy to talk to me right now.

I walked across the street to Water Tower and found a severely tailored crimson wool crepe dress on sale at Lord & Taylor. In front, it had a scalloped neck; in back the neckline dropped to a V closing just above my bra strap. I could wear my mother’s diamond drops with it and be the belle of the ball.

Back at the Hancock I tried Lotty again. She was still too busy to talk. I got the morning paper and looked through the classifieds for furnished apartments. After an hour of calling, I found a place on Racine and Montrose that offered two-month leases. I packed the suitcase again, mushing laundered clothes together with the smoke-stained ones, then left a long note to Roger, explaining where I was moving and what I was doing for dinner and could we please stay in touch, and tried Lotty one last time. Still too busy.

The Bellerophon had seen better days, but it was well cared for. For two fifty a month, I had possession of a sitting room with a Murphy bed, a comfortable armchair, a small TV, and a respectable table. The kitchen included a minuscule refrigerator and two gas burners, no oven, while the bathroom had a real tub in it. Good enough. The room had phone jacks. If the neighborhood vandals hadn’t walked off with my phones, I ought to be able to get service switched through. I gave Mrs. Climzak a check for the first month’s rent and left.

My old apartment looked forlorn in the winter sunlight- Manderley burned out-broken glass in the windows, the Takamokus’ print curtains sagging on their rods. I climbed past the debris on the stairs through the hole in the living-room wall. The piano was still there-too big to move-but the sofa and coffee table were gone. Charred copies of Forbes and The Wall Street Journal were scattered around the room. The living-room phone had been ripped out of the wall. In the dining room, someone had swiped all the liquor. Naturally. Most of the plates were gone. Thank God I’d never had enough money for Crown Derby.

My bedroom extension was still there, buried under a pile of loose plaster. I unplugged it from the wall and left. Stopped at the Lincoln Park Post Office to arrange forwarding for my mail and pick up what they’d held for me since the fire. Then, gritting my teeth, I drove north on Sheffield to Lotty’s storefront clinic.

The waiting room was full of women and small children. A din combined of Spanish, Korean, and Lebanese shrieks made the small space seem even tinier. Babies crawled on the floor with sturdy wooden blocks in their fists.

Lotty’s receptionist was a sixty-year-old woman who’d raised seven children of her own. Her chief skills were keeping order in the waiting room and making sure that people were seen in order either of appearance or emergency. She never lost her temper, but she knew her clientele like a good bartender and kept order the same way.

“Miss Warshawski. Nice to see you. We have a pretty full house today-lots of winters cold and flu. Is Dr. Herschel expecting you?”

Mrs. Coltrain would not call anyone by her first name. After years of coaxing, Lotty and I had given up. “No, Mrs. Coltrain. I stopped by to see how her uncle was doing, to find out if I can visit him.”

Mrs. Coltrain disappeared into the back of the clinic. She came back with Carol Alvarado a few minutes later. Carol told me Lotty was with a patient but would see me for a few minutes if I’d go into her office.

Lotty’s office, like the waiting room, was furnished to set worried mothers and frightened children at ease. She didn’t need a desk, she said-after all, Mrs. Coltrain kept all the files in file cabinets. Instead, a few comfortable chairs, pictures, a thick carpet, and the ever present building blocks made the room a cheerful place. Today I didn’t find it relaxing.

Lotty made me wait half an hour. I thumbed through the Journal of Surgical Obstetrics. I drummed my fingers on the table next to my chair, did leg lifts and a few other stretches.

At four, Lotty came in quietly. Above her white lab coat her face was set in uncompromising lines. “I am almost too angry to speak to you, Vic. Fortunately, my uncle has survived. And I know he owes his life to you. But he almost owes his death to you, too.”

I was too tired for another fight today. I ran my hands through my hair, trying to stimulate my brain. “Lotty, you don’t have to work to make me feel guilty: I do. I should never have involved him in such a crazy, dangerous business. All I can say is, I’ve taken my share of the knocks. If I’d known what was coming, I would have done my utmost to keep him from being attacked.” I laughed mirthlessly. “A few hours ago I had a blazing fight with Roger Ferrant-he wants to protect me from arsonists and suchlike. Now you’re fighting me because I didn’t protect your uncle.”

Lotty didn’t smile, “He wants to talk to you. I tried to forbid this-he doesn’t need any more excitement or strain. But it seems to be more stress to keep him from you than otherwise. The police want to question him and he’s refusing until he’s seen you.”

“Lotty, he’s an old man, but he’s a sane man. He makes his own choices. Don’t you think some of your anger comes from that? And from helping me involve him? I do my best with my clients, but I know I can’t help all of them, not a hundred percent.”

“Dr. Metzinger is in charge of his case. I’ll call and let him know you’ll be out-when?”

I gave up the argument and looked at my watch. I could just make it and dress for dinner if I went now. “In half an hour.”

She nodded and left.

BEN GURION HOSPITAL lay close to the Edens. Visible from the expressway, it was easy to get to. It was barely five o’clock when I got out of the car in the hospital parking lot, even after stopping to buy a pea jacket at an Amvets Store. It’s always struck me as the ultimate insult to pay to park at hospitals; they incarcerate your friends and relations in rooms that cost six or seven hundred dollars a day, then put a little sting in by charging a few extra bucks to visit them. I pocketed the lot ticket with ill humor and stomped into the lobby. A woman at the information desk called the evening nurse in Intensive Care, then told me I was expected, to go on up.

Five o’clock is a quiet time in a hospital. Surgery and therapies are over for the day; the evening visitors haven’t started arriving yet. I followed red arrows painted on deserted hallways up two flights of stairs to the intensive-care unit.

A policeman sat outside the door to the unit. He was there to protect Uncle Stefan, the night nurse explained. Would I mind showing identification and letting him pat me down. I thoroughly approved the caution. At the back of my mind was the fear that whoever had stabbed the old man might return to finish the job.

The policeman satisfied, medical hygiene had to be accommodated. I put on a sterile mask and disposable gown. In the changing-room mirror I looked like a stranger: gray eyes heavy with fatigue, hair wind-tangled, the mask disguising my personality. I hoped it wouldn’t terrify a weak old man.

When I came out, Dr. Metzinger was waiting for me. He was a balding man in his late forties. He wore Gucci loafers and had a heavy gold bracelet on his left wrist. Got to spend the money somehow, I guess.