V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (19 page)

He was muttering to himself about how he’d rather go to jail than have people think he was a chicken-shit when I cut him off.

“I’m going to drive you home,” I said. “But my ex-husband’s here in court. It’s just vulgar curiosity, but I want to find out why. Mind waiting a bit?”

As I’d hoped, the news instantly took his mind off his grievances.

“I didn’t know you was married! Should have guessed. Guy wasn’t good enough for you, huh? Come to me next time-don’t make the same mistake twice. Like this young fellow you brought in the other night-looks like kind of a lightweight to me.”

“Yes, well, he’s a doctor-doesn’t do too much barroom fighting. The first one’s a high-priced lawyer-if I’d stuck with him I’d have a mansion in Oak Brook and three children today.”

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t a liked it. Take my word for it, cookie-you’re better off.”

The bailiff was frowning at us, so I urged Mr. Contreras to an unwilling silence. We waited through a variety of other cases, including the man who’d flown into the Fort Dearborn executive suite, who was remanded to Cook County for psychiatric evaluation.

Then the bailiff announced Docket 81523-the People versus Dieter Monkfish. Dick got to his feet and approached the bench. My brain whirled around so fast that the room spun. Monkfish and IckPiff with one of the city’s priciest lawyers? I couldn’t hear what passed between Dick and the judge, or the judge, the policeman, and Monkfish, but the upshot was Monkfish was released on his own recognizance, given a court date in October, and enjoined from disturbing the peace. If he complied, all charges would be dropped. He mumbled agreement, his Adam’s apple working, and the play was over.

Mr. Contreras came with me to wait in the hall outside the lawyers’ conference room. Dick emerged after about fifteen minutes. I stopped him before he could head down the corridor.

“Hi, Dick. Can we talk for a minute?”

“Vic, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Gee, Dick, I’m glad to see you, too. How are you?”

He glared at me. He’s never really forgiven me for not appreciating him as much as he does himself.

“I’m trying to get home. What do you want?”

“Same as you, Dick-to make the wheels of justice turn more smoothly. This is Salvatore Contreras. One of your client’s buddies hit him over the head with a board this afternoon.”

Mr. Contreras stuck out a callused hand at Dick, who shook it reluctantly.

“You made a big mistake when you let cookie here go, young man,” he informed Dick. “She’s a great gal, tops in my book. If I was thirty years younger I’d marry her myself. Make it twenty, even.”

Dick’s face was congealing, a sure sign of anger.

“Thanks,” I said to Mr. Contreras, “but we’re both really better off the way we are. Could I ask you to step aside for a second? I want to ask him something he won’t feel like answering in front of an audience.”

Mr. Contreras obligingly moved down the hall. Dick looked at me sternly.

“Well? Now that you’ve gotten that old man to insult me, I’m not sure I want to answer any questions of yours.”

“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s sort of appointed himself my father-maybe he goes about it clumsily, but he doesn’t mean any harm… I was surprised to see you with Dieter Monkfish.”

“I know you don’t agree with his politics, Vic, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t entitled to counsel.”

“No, no,” I said hastily. I’m sure you’re right. And I respect you for being willing to represent him-he can’t be the most congenial of clients.“

He permitted himself a careful smile. “I certainly wouldn’t invite him to the Union League Club with me. But I don’t think it will come to that-he’s not mat type of client.”

“I guess I wondered what type of client he was. I mean, here you are, one of the top corporate lawyers in town. And there he is, a fanatic with a shoestring organization. How can they afford Crawford, Meade?”

Dick smiled patronizingly. “Not your business, Vic. Even fanatics have friends.” He shot a glance at the Rolex weighting down his left wrist and announced that he had to get going.

Mr. Contreras came back over to me as soon as Dick walked off.

“Excuse the language, cookie, but the guy really is a prick. He tell you what you want to know?”

“A whiff of it. And yes, he really is a prick.”

We arrived at my little Chevy in time to see Dick squeal by ostentatiously in a Mercedes sports car. Yeah, yeah, I thought, you made it big, man. I get the message: If I’d been a good girl I’d get to ride in those fancy wheels instead of my little beater.

I unlocked the doors and helped Mr. Contreras into me passenger seat. As he babbled happily along at my side, I wondered. So Monkfish wasn’t paying his own bill. Dick was right-it wasn’t my business. Nonetheless, I was consumed with curiosity.

The next week passed in a frenzy of work. I joined a team of medical professionals in restoring Lotty’s building. While they sorted records, reassembled files, and took a careful inventory of controlled drugs, Mrs. Coltrain and I did manual labor. We cleared glass, glued chairs together, and scrubbed all the examining tables with heavy disinfectant. On Friday the insurance company sent over a glazier to replace the window. We spent the weekend on a final cleanup.

Tessa came on Sunday to paint the place. A group of her friends tagged along, and the waiting room was transformed into an African veldt, with beautiful grasses and flowers and herds of animals sniffing alertly for lions. The examining rooms were turned into undersea grottos, with soft colors and fanciful, friendly fishes.

Lotty opened for business again on Tuesday, with several reporters hovering over her patients: Did they feel it was safe? Did they worry about their children coming to a place that had been attacked? A Mexican woman drew herself up to her full five feet.

“Without Dr. Herschel, I have no child,” she said in heavily accented English. “She save my life, my baby’s life, when no other doctor would treat me because I cannot pay. Always I come to her.”

My face healed during this time. Dr. Pirwitz took out the stitches the day we reopened Lotty’s clinic. My cheek was no longer sore when I laughed and I went back to running and swimming without worrying about damaging the skin.

I continued to see Peter Burgoyne, somewhat sporadically. Often a funny and knowledgeable companion, he also worried about details in a way that could make him hard to be around. Friendship was hosting a seminar on “Treating Amniotic Fluid Embolism-the Whole Team Approach.” It was his show, his chance to show off what he’d accomplished at Friendship, but I wearied of his fretting-about the paper he was presenting, or about logistics that a competent secretary should have been handling. He continued to worry about Lotty and Counsuelo to a degree I found unpalatable. While his concern for my health and Lotty’s progress in restoring the clinic was well meant, I saw him only once for every two or three times he called.

I continued a halfhearted inquiry into Malcolm’s death, but got nowhere with it. One afternoon I took his keys from Lotty and went into his apartment. No clues leaped at me from the appalling havoc. I played the answering machine, which had somehow survived the onslaught. It was true several people had called and hung up without leaving messages, but that happens every day. I left the building depressed but no wiser.

Detective Rawlings picked Sergio up late the following Saturday-deliberately, to keep him off the street until someone found his lawyer late in the day on Sunday. The bond had been set for fifty thousand on the aggravated battery charge, but Sergio easily made bail. We had a trial date of October 20-the first in a long series of motions and continuances by which Sergio would hope to get charges dropped if I failed to show up for one of them. Rawlings told me five Lions, including Tattoo, were prepared to testify that Sergio had been with them at a wedding party all through the night in question.

I wondered uneasily what form Sergio’s revenge might take and never left home without the Smith & Wesson tucked into my waistband or purse, but as the days passed without incident I thought he might be willing to wait it out in the courts.

I had a second interview with Fabiano on Wednesday of the week Lotty’s clinic reopened. Once again I tracked him down in the Rooster bar near Holy Sepulchre. The swelling in his face had healed; only a few discolored bruises remained. The men in the bar greeted me warmly.

“So, Fabiano, your poor aunt returns.”

“When he showed up with those bruises we knew he had insulted you once too often.”

“Come here, Auntie, let’s have a kiss-I appreciate you if this garbage doesn’t.”

After taking Fabiano outside with me, I went over to the baby-blue Eldorado, inspecting it ostentatiously.

“I hear you drive that car of yours too fast. Banged your face into it, huh? Car looks okay to me-must be harder than that head of yours, which is really astounding.”

He looked at me murderously. “You know damn well how my face got hurt, bitch. You don’t look so good yourself. You tell those Alvarados to leave me alone or they see your body in the river. Next time we don’t be so easy on you.”

“Look, Fabiano. If you want to fight me, fight. Don’t go sniveling to Sergio. It makes you look ridiculous. Come on- you want to kill me, do it now. Bare hands-no weapons.”

He looked at me sullenly, but said nothing.

“Okay, you don’t want to fight. Good. That makes two of us. All I want from you is information. Information about whether your pals in the Lions had anything to do with Malcolm Tregiere’s death.”

Alarm suffused his face. “Hey, man, you ain’t laying that on me. No way. I wasn’t there, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“But you know who did.”

“I don’t know nothing.”

We went round and round on it for five minutes. I was convinced-from his fright and his words-that he knew something about Tregiere’s death. But he wasn’t going to talk.

“Okay, boy. I guess I’m going to have to go to Detective Rawlings and tell him you were involved in the murder. He’ll pick you up as a material witness, and we’ll see if that makes you talk.”

Even that didn’t shake him. Whoever he was afraid of was a worse threat than the police. Not surprising-the police could hold him for a few days, but they wouldn’t break his legs or his skull.

He wasn’t brave physically; I grabbed his shirt front and slapped his face a few times to see if that got me anywhere, but he knew I couldn’t be berserk enough to really hurt him. I gave it up and sent him back to his beer. He left with half-tearful warnings of revenge, which I would have dismissed unthinkingly if not for his alliance with Sergio.

I stopped by the Sixth Area. Rawlings was in; I told him about my conversation with Fabiano.

“I’m convinced the jerk knows something about Malcolm’s death, but he’s too scared to talk. After two weeks that’s all I’ve been able to come up with. I don’t think there’s one damned thing else I can do on this case.”