Джо Горес - Gone, No Forwarding

“Aw, crap!” exclaimed Heslip in disgust, “I don’t seem to be able to do nothing right on this case.”

“You can start by telling me just who the hell you are.”

He stared at her for a long moment. If she knew, she’d either tell or she wouldn’t. Dues-paying time for little detective fellers. “Bart Heslip. Private investigator from San Francisco. I work for the firm Verna worked for as a file clerk before she starting whoring. We need her testimony to keep the State from taking our license.”

“Show me.”

He showed her his I.D. She handed it back to him. “Who’s the manager of your Oakland office?”

“When Verna worked there it was Kathy Onoda. She’s dead now, that’s why we need Verna’s testimony.”

She stood up and started across the room. “How do you take your coffee, Bart?”

“Black. And thanks, Doctor.”

“Rosalind is fine.” She came back with the coffees. She took a lot of cream and sugars in hers, Heslip noted. She sat. “Let me tell you a story.”

She told him a story.

Verna Rounds had wandered into the Boston Lying-In Hospital at 2:30 A.M. on a hot morning in late July. She was having labor pains only a minute apart and her water already had burst. “You know the significance of that?”

Heslip knew and told her so.

“Verna was also suffering from extreme malnutrition. She told me afterwards that she’d been scrounging garbage pails and stealing once she’d gotten big enough with the baby that damned few johns except the freaky ones were interested in her. What money she got went to feed her habit, not her. She’d been afraid to see a doctor about her pregnancy because she knew a doctor would see she was an addict and commit her. She’d heard about methadone but didn’t believe it existed. Sometimes the appalling ignorance...”

Rosalind Parton fell silent, her brown eyes sad as they saw beyond the walls of the room. Around them was the hospital silence of a creature asleep but with its instincts to preserve life still operating, so it could wake in an instant if life was threatened.

“Verna had her baby on a gurney in the corridor. I got there in time to snip the cord, not very much more. Maybe that’s when I started feeling responsible for her.”

“She was still on heroin then?”

“Suffering the beginnings of withdrawal. She had so much wrong with her that she made the sort of clinically interesting case you would like to read about in a CPC. Gave birth four weeks prematurely. Suffering from heroin addiction, withdrawal and malnutrition. Had two separate venereal diseases and a yeast infection.”

“I saw her hospital records,” said Heslip. “The child...”

“You must be a pretty damned good detective and no, don’t tell me how you did it.” She sighed. “The child. What can I tell you? He wasn’t malformed, which was a surprise, but he was so weak he didn’t really have a chance. Four weeks preemie, weighed — I can’t remember — but not over a couple of pounds. A few hours after birth he was suffering classic withdrawal symptoms. Tremors, crying incessantly, hyperreactions to all the physical sensations — light, sound, the touch of blankets or swaddling clothes to the skin, anything at all was agony to him. Watery stools, of course...”

She’d tried them all, maybe even a few not in the book: paregoric, chlorpromazine, even phenobarbital. None of them helped much. “And we know so damned little. I was sure there’d been in utero damage, I’m sure there always is for the child of a heroin-addicted mother — but how bad was it? And what did the damage consist of? So, two days after birth, he died.”

“Of what specifically?”

“I guess you could say extreme malnutrition, but take your pick. A respiratory infection had developed that would have progressed into pneumonia. But when Verna learned her baby was dead, she knew the cause of death.”

“What?”

“Not what. Who. Verna Rounds. God had given her a life to care for, and she’d murdered it.”

“That’s her mammy talking.”

“God love that fat old woman. Verna talked about her a lot during withdrawal.”

Heslip was stunned. “You mean she’s kicked the habit?”

“The coldest turkey you ever saw. From the moment I told her that her child was dead, she was off the stuff. And never at the worst moments during withdrawal was there any talk of suicide. That would be a second murder before God. And God! did that girl want to live. To atone, to make up for that murder. It had to start with getting clean.”

The first week of withdrawal had been at the hospital, the next two weeks at Rosalind Parton’s apartment. She took her vacation so she could be with Verna around the clock. Take someone through a heroin withdrawal, and one got scared to take an aspirin or administer any drugs to patients who needed them.

“I almost lost my job over the whole thing — the vacation, Verna at my place...” She smiled thinly. “It was lucky I was black. I just yelled discrimination! everytime anyone tried to open his mouth about anything, anything at all.”

“She’s still clean?”

“Fabulously clean. Oh God, Bart, you wouldn’t believe how clean she is. What a... person she’s become.”

She fell silent and yawned and rubbed her eyes. Heslip said softly, “End of story?”

“I know where she is,” said Rosalind Parton. “You want her. You tell me, Bart — should I give you her address?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He told her. Everything, every single thing that had gone down since Kathy Onoda had died of a blood clot two weeks before.

“Okay, now I’ll tell you where she is.” Her dark eyes were clear and untroubled. “There isn’t anything in this world that is going to flatten Verna Rounds after what she’s been through. And I don’t think there are very many thugs in this world would be able to get through you to get at her.” Heslip was speechless. She added, without pause, “Have you ever heard of Harris House?”

He hadn’t so she told him about it. It was in Harlem, as far as she knew the only place like it in the world. It took care of about fifty children at a time who had been born to heroin-addicted mothers, keeping them there until the mothers were off drugs, rehabilitated, and had a job with which to support the kid and a home to take it to.

“You got Verna a job there,” said Heslip.

“Didn’t get her a job. Just sent her up there to talk with Mommy — her name is Clare Harris, but everyone just calls her Mommy. She and Loretta, her daughter — who’s got a Ph.D. from New York University and who handles the business end of things — took one look at Verna and hired her on the spot...”

The bleeper in the pocket of her white smock started to beep. Rosalind Parton got to her feet and stuck out her hand. “I’ve got to call in, Bart.” She gave him the address of Harris House. “I’ll call Mommy in the morning, and tell her you’re coming and why. After that, it’s up to her and Verna.”

Heslip agreed. He would let Verna call the shots, and he would play it her way. And his own, and to hell with what Dan Kearny might think. Playing it his own way was the way he did it best, anyway.

Which included, many hours later in New York, after five troubled hours of sleep on the express bus, finding a florist who was open on a Sunday morning and telegraphing fifty dollars-worth of red roses to Rosalind Parton, M.D., at Boston Lying-In Hospital, from a friend. It was the least he could do.

Benny Nicoletti’s Sunday brunch was held in the Chief’s deserted conference room at the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street because the Chief didn’t work on Sundays but his secretary did, and he owed Nicoletti a couple of favors. No record was kept of the meeting, and there was no way anyone could have bugged it beforehand. Kearny came in the front entrance of the Hall fluttering a traffic citation, then left the elevator at the wrong floor. Nicoletti came in from Harriet Alley through the police garage. Tranquillini used the rear entrance off Harrison Street by the Coroner’s office.