Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 07 (2 page)

“You
don’t have to tell me how to manage the dog,” the old man huffed. “I guess I
heard the vet as good as you; better, since I took her in for a checkup while
you was out doing God knows what.”

I
grinned at him. “Right. Got it. I don’t know what she makes of your pal’s buzz
saw, but it would put me off my feed.”

“She
ain’t eating,” he began, then his face cleared. “Oh, I get you. Yeah, I’ll move
him into the bedroom. But I don’t want you in here looking on while I do it.”

I
made a face. “Me, neither.” I didn’t think I could stomach the sight of what
might lie below the fringe of greasy chest hair.

Back
in my own place I suddenly felt too tired to cope with making coffee, let alone
assuaging Mr. Contreras’s expectant-father anxiety. I pulled the bloodied sheet
from the bed, kicked off my running shoes, and lay down.

It
was almost nine when I woke again. Except for the twittering of birds anxious
to join Peppy in maternity, the world was quiet beyond my walls, one of those
rare wells of urban silence that give the city dweller a sense of peace. I

basked
in it until a squeal of brakes and furious honking broke the spell. Angry
shouts—another collision on Racine.

I got
up and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

When
I moved here five years ago this was a quiet, blue-collar neighborhood—which
meant I could afford it. Now rehab mania had hit. While housing prices trebled
the traffic quadrupled as cute shops sprang up to feed the gentry’s delicate
appetites. I only hoped it was a BMW that had been hit, not my own beloved
Pontiac.

I
skipped my exercise program—I wouldn’t have time to run this morning, anyway. Conscientiously
donning a bra, I put my cutoffs and sweatshirt back on and returned to the
maternity ward.

Mr.
Contreras came to the door faster than I’d expected. His worried face made me
wonder if I should go back up for my car keys and license.

“She
ain’t done nothing, doll. I just don’t know—I called over to the vet, but the
doc don’t come in till ten on Saturdays and they told me it wasn’t an
emergency, they couldn’t give me his home number. You think you should call and
see if you can make ‘em?”

I
grinned to myself. A real concession, if the old man thought there was a
situation I could handle better than he. “Let me look at her first.”

When
we passed through the dining room to the hall I could hear Kruger’s snores
coming through the bedroom door.

“You
have any trouble moving him?” A major altercation could have gotten the dog too
agitated for easy delivery. “My first thought was for the princess, if that’s
what you mean. I don’t need any criticism from you; it don’t help me right
now.”

I
swallowed my tongue and followed him to the living room. The dog was lying much
as she had been when I went upstairs, but I could see a dark pool spreading
around her tail. I hoped that meant progress. Peppy saw me watching but made no
sign. Instead she tucked her head underneath her body and started washing
herself.

Was
she all right? It was all very well to say not to interfere with her, but what
if we let her hemorrhage because we didn’t realize she was in trouble?

“What
do you think?” Mr. Contreras asked anxiously, mirroring my own worries.

“I
think I don’t know anything about birthing puppies. It’s twenty of ten now.
Let’s wait till the guy comes in— I’ll go get my keys just in case.”

We
had just decided to make a pallet for her in the car so we could rush her to
the clinic when the first puppy slid out, smooth as silk. Peppy attacked it
urgently, washing away the afterbirth, using her jaws and her forepaws to
settle it next to her. It was eleven before the next one appeared, but then
they started coming every half hour or so. I was beginning to wonder if she
would fulfil the vet’s prophecy and have a dozen. But around three o’clock,
after the eighth little creature squirmed its way to a nipple, she decided to
stop.

I
stretched and headed to the kitchen to watch Mr. Contreras fix her a big bowl
of dry dog food mixed with scrambled eggs and vitamins. His absorption in the
process was so complete that he didn’t respond to any of my questions either about
his Las Vegas Night or Mitch Kruger.

I
figured I was an unneeded third at this point. Some friends were playing
Softball and making a picnic over by Montrose harbor and I’d told them I’d try
to join them. I undid the bolts to the back door.

“What’s
up, doll? You going someplace?” Mr. Contreras paused briefly in his stirring.
“You run along. You can be sure I’ll look after the princess a-okay. Eight”—he
beamed to himself—“Eight and she did it just like a champ. My, oh my.”

As I
closed the back door a horrible noise came from the old man. I was halfway up
to my apartment before it hit me: he was singing. I think the song was “Oh,
What a Beautiful Morning.”

“So
you’ve become an obstetrician?” Lotty Herschel mocked me. “I’ve always thought
you needed a backup profession, something with a more reliable cash flow. But I
wouldn’t recommend obstetrics these days: the insurance would overwhelm you.”

I
flicked a thumbnail at her. “You just don’t want me muscling in on your turf.
Woman reaches the top of her profession and can’t bear to see the younger ones
scrambling up behind her.”

Max
Loewenthal frowned at me across the table: that was about as unfair an
accusation as I could make. Lotty, one of the city’s leading perinatalogists,
always had a spare hand to stretch out to younger women. Men too.

“What
about the father?” Max’s son Michael quickly changed the subject. “Do you know
who it is? And are you making him pay child support?”

“A
good question,” Lotty said. “If your Peppy is like the teenaged mothers I see,
you won’t get many dog biscuits out of the father. But maybe his owner will
help out?”

“I
doubt it. The father’s a black Lab who lives up the street from us. But I can’t
imagine Mrs. Frizell helping care for eight puppies. She’s got five dogs of her
own and I don’t know where she gets the money to feed them.”

Mrs.
Frizell was one of the stubborn holdouts against the gentrification of my
stretch of Racine. In her eighties, she was the kind of old woman who terrified
me when I was small. Her wispy gray hair stuck out from her head in uncombed
elflocks. Summer and winter she wore the same array of faded gingham dresses
and shapeless sweaters.

Although
her house badly needed painting, it wasn’t falling down. The concrete front
steps and the roof had both been replaced the year I moved into my co-op. I’d
never seen any other signs of work on the place and vaguely assumed she had a
child somewhere who took care of the most pressing problems. Her yard
apparently didn’t come under that heading. No one ever cut the rank,
weed-filled grass in the summer and Mrs. Frizell didn’t seem to mind the cans
and cigarette packs that people tossed over the fence.

The
yard was a sore spot with the local block development committee, or whatever my
upwardly mobile neighbors called themselves. They didn’t much like the dogs
either. The Lab was the only purebred; the other four were mutts ranging in
size from a large, off-white Benji replica to something that looked like a
walking gray earmuff. The animals were nominally fenced in, except when Mrs.
Frizell walked them on a tangle of leashes twice a day, but the Lab in
particular came and went as he pleased. He’d jumped the four-foot fence to
mount Peppy, and presumably other dogs as well, but Mrs. Frizell wouldn’t
believe angry callers who told her so. “He’s been in the yard all day,” she
would snap. And somehow, with that telepathy that exists between some dogs and
their people, he would miraculously appear in the yard any time she opened the
door.

“Sounds
like a problem for the Department of Health,” Lotty said briskly. “An old woman
alone with five dogs? I can hardly bear to think about the smell.”

“Yes,”
I agreed, but not wholeheartedly.

Lotty
offered dessert to Michael and his companion, the Israeli composer Or‘
Nivitsky. Michael, who made his home in London, was in Chicago for a few days
to play a concert with the Chicago Symphony. Tonight he was giving a solo
recital at the Auditorium as a benefit for Chicago Settlement, the refugee
assistance group. It had been a favorite charity of Max’s wife, Theresz, before
she died nine years ago; Michael was dedicating tonight’s recital to her. Or’
was playing the oboe in a concerto for oboe and cello she’d written in Theresz
Loewenthal’s name.

Or‘
refused dessert. “Prepremiere butterflies. And anyway, I need to change.”
Michael was already superfine in tails, but Or’ had brought her concert gown
with her to Lotty’s—“That way I can pretend it’s just an ordinary evening as
long as possible and enjoy my dinner,” she’d explained in her clipped British
English.

While
Lotty bustled out to fasten the back of Or’s dress, Michael went down with his
cello to fetch the car. I cleared away the dinner plates and put water on for
coffee, my mind more on Mrs. Frizell than on Or’s premiere.

I’d
refused to sign the neighborhood petition demanding that she cut her grass and
chain the dogs. A lawyer who’d rehabbed the house across the street from her
wanted to take her to court and force the city to remove the dogs. He’d been
around, trying to drum up support. My building was pretty evenly
divided—Vinnie, the tight-assed banker who lived on the ground floor, had
eagerly signed on, as had the Koreans on the second floor; they had three
children and were worried about dog bites. But Mr. Contre-ras, Berit
Gabrielsen, and I firmly opposed the idea. Even though I wished Mrs. Frizell
would neuter the Labrador, the dogs weren’t really a menace. Just a minor
nuisance.

“The
puppies worrying you?” Max came up behind me as I stood lost in thought over
the kitchen sink.

“No,
not really. Anyway, they’re living with Mr. Con-treras, so they won’t be under
my feet. I hate to find myself cooing over them with his enthusiasm, because
getting them all back and forth for shots and everything else is going to be
nightmare enough. And then finding homes for them, training the ones we can’t
give away— but they are adorable.”

“I’ll
put a notice in the hospital newsletter if you like,” Max offered. He was the
executive director at Beth Israel, where Lotty sent her perinatal patients.

Or‘
swept into the kitchen as I was thanking him, resplendent in soft coal crepe
that clung to her body like soot. She kissed Max on the cheek and held out a
hand to me.

“Good
to meet you, Victoria. I hope we’ll see you after the concert.”

“Good
luck,” I said. “I’m eager to hear your new concerto.”

“I
know you’ll be impressed with it, Victoria,” Max said. “I’ve been listening to
the rehearsal all week.” Michael and Or‘ had been staying with him in Evanston.

“Yes,
you are an angel, Max, putting up with our swearing and screeching for six
days. Good-bye.”

It
was only six o’clock; the concert didn’t begin until eight. The three of us ate
poached pears with almond cream and lingered over coffee in Lotty’s bright,
spare h’ving room.

“I
hope Or‘ has done something palatable in Theresz’s honor,” Lotty said. “Vic and
I went to hear the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble play an octet and a trio of
hers and we both left with headaches.”

“I
haven’t heard the piece played through properly, but I think you’ll be pleased.
She’s done some very painful work on this—examined the past in a way that many
contemporary Israelis don’t want to.” Max looked at his watch. “I think I must
have prepremiere butterflies as well, but I’d like to get an early start.”

I was
driving. Max had lent his car to Michael and no sane person would let Lotty
chauffeur them. Max graciously took the small backseat. The Trans Am offered.
He leaned forward to talk to Lotty over the seatback, but once we were on Lake
Shore Drive I couldn’t hear them above the engine. When I turned off at Monroe
and stopped at the light between the Inner Drive and Congress, I could make out
snatches of the conversation. Lotty was upset about something to do with Carol
Alvarado, her nurse and right arm at the clinic. Max didn’t agree with her.

The
light changed before I could make out what the problem was. I turned down
Congress toward Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece. Lotty whipped her head away from
Max to admonish me sharply on the speed at which I’d taken the corner. I looked
at Max in the rearview mirror; his mouth was pinched into a line. I hoped the
two weren’t planning a major quarrel in honor of the evening. And anyway, what
possible disagreement could they have about Carol?

At
the half-circle connecting Congress with Michigan Avenue we ran into a jam.
Cars heading to the south underground garage were snarled with those trying to
stop at the theater entrance. A couple of cops were frantically directing
traffic, whistling people away as they tried pulling up to the curb in front of
the Auditorium.

I
pulled over to the side of the road. “I’ll let you two out here and go
park—we’ll never be on time if I try to get across here.”