V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (25 page)

Action. What every detective needs. I got up and phoned Peter’s house. I thought he sounded a little nervous at my voice.

“You okay?”

“Sure. Sure I’m okay. Why do you ask?” I demanded aggressively.

“You sound edgy. Something happen with Dr. Herschel-her malpractice suit?”

“Nothing more on that. Can I come out to Barrington today, pick up a copy of that record for her? You know, Consuelo’s file from the hospital?”

“Vic. Please. I told you I’d look it up on Monday. Even if I could persuade the hospital to release it today, there’s nothing she could do with it this weekend.”

I tried to set up a date with him for the weekend, but he said that he wouldn’t have any free time until after his conference was over-he had taken Friday off and that was his last play day until next weekend.

“Well, don’t forget that record for Lotty. I know it’s not as important as your conference, or getting sued yourself, but it matters a lot to her.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Vic. I thought we’d thrashed all that out last night. I’ll get on to the damned records office first thing Monday morning.” He broke the connection with an angry snap.

I suddenly felt embarrassed at my suspicions and my rudeness and quelled an impulse to call Peter back with an apology. Since I wasn’t in the humor to clean and wasn’t able to sleep, maybe I’d stop by Beth Israel to check on Mr. Contreras.

I was dressing for a trip to the hospital when the phone rang; it was Dick, anticipating my thoughts. When we’d been in law school together a hundred years ago or so a call from him could make my heart flutter. Now it turned my stomach.

“Dick! What a surprise. Does Stephanie know you’re calling me?”

“Goddamn it, Vic, her name is Terri. I swear to God you call her Stephanie just to annoy me.”

“No, no, Dick. I would never do anything just to annoy you. There has to be some other good reason, too-it’s a little rule I made for myself when we were married. Do you want something? I’m not behind on my alimony payments, am I?”

He said stiffly, “My client’s office was broken into two nights ago.”

“Which client? Or do you only have one these days?”

“Dieter Monkfish.” He spat the name out. “The police say that the area winos broke into it. But the door wasn’t broken open-the lock was picked.”

“Maybe he forgot to lock it. People do, you know.”

He ignored my helpful suggestion. “He’s missing some items. A membership roster and his account ledgers. He tells me you were by earlier on Thursday looking at them, that he shooed you out. He thinks you have them.”

“And you think I might have picked his lock, and so on. Well, I don’t have anything that belongs to Dieter Monkfish. Not even his wandering wits, let alone his ledgers. I swear to you on my honor as an ex-Girl Scout that if you got a warrant and searched my home, my office, or the premises of any of my close or distant friends you would find neither hide nor hair of any papers belonging to Dieter Monkfish or his crazy pals. Okay?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said grudgingly, not sure whether to believe me or not.

“And now that you’ve called and virtually accused me of burglary, which is slanderous and actionable, let me ask you something: Which one of your clients is paying Monkfish’s bill?”

He hung up on me. Dick’s manners are always so testy, it’s hard for me to see how he was elected partner in a firm that counts so heavily on public image. I shook my head over it and went over to Beth Israel.

The police had not bothered with a guard. They figured that Mr. Contreras had surprised home invaders in the act and had been coshed as a side effect-no one was gunning for him personally. Or bludgeoning. I didn’t disagree, just thought it would be good to have someone with him if he recovered enough to identify the marauders.

At the hospital they told me that he was still unconscious, in intensive care, but with good vital signs. In the little waiting room for the intensive-care unit, the resident on call informed me that head injuries are tricky. He might wake up at any moment, or remain unconscious for some time. And no, I couldn’t see him, the only people allowed into intensive care were family members, one at a time, fifteen minutes every two hours.

I’ve argued with Lotty about these rules a thousand times or so. You most need a warm and soothing presence when your life is on the line. Perhaps technology can save your body, but not your spirit. If I couldn’t move Lotty, who is a maverick in most medical matters, I wasn’t going to budge the resident-he had all of Institutionalized Medicine to lean on. He ended the argument by going back through the doors separating me from Mr. Contreras.

I was about to leave when an over-made-up woman in her mid-forties came in. She carried about thirty extra pounds, which made her look like an inflated rubber doll. Two boys followed reluctantly in her wake, one around twelve, the other a few years older. They wore clean jeans and white shirts with worn-out sneakers-today’s uniform for a boy dragged to formal events by his parents.

“I’m Mrs. Marcano,” she announced in the harsh nasal voice of the South Side. “Where’s my dad?”

Of course. Mr. Contreras’s daughter, Ruthie. I’d heard her voice wafting up the stairwell numerous times but had never actually met the lady.

“He’s in through there.” I jerked a hand at the door leading to the ICU nursing station. “The receptionist can get the doctor for you.”

“Who are you?” she demanded. Mr. Contreras’s wide brown eyes had been transplanted into her face, but without the warmth.

“V. I. Warshawski. His upstairs neighbor. I found him this morning.”

“So you’re the lady that got him into so much trouble. I might’ve guessed. He got his head cut open for you two weeks ago, didn’t he? But that wasn’t enough, was it? You had to try to get him killed, too, didn’t you?”

“Ma, please.” The elder of the two boys was suffused with the embarrassment only a teenager can feel when his parents make public fools of themselves. “She didn’t try to kill Gramps. The detective said she saved his life. You know he did.”

“You’re going to believe a cop before you’ll listen to me?” She switched her attention back to me. “He’s an old man. He should be living with me. I got a good home. In a safe neighborhood, not like this Uptown or whatever, where he’s going to be attacked every time he sets foot outside his door.

“I’m his only daughter, aren’t I? But he has to go following you around like a sheep. Every time I go see him, it’s Miss Warshawski this, Miss Warshawski that, till I’m ready to throw up when I hear your name. You like her so much, you marry her, that’s what I said. The way you talk, you might as well not have a family, that’s what I told him. Joe and I suddenly aren’t as good as this college-educated lawyer, is that it? Ma wasn’t good enough for you? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

Her son kept bleating “Ma, please” to no avail. He and his brother shrank as far away from her as they could, looking around them with the doubtful expressions people often have in hospitals.

I was reeling under the flow of words. She’d certainly inherited her dad’s oratory style.

“They won’t let me go in to see him, but if you tell the receptionist you’re his daughter, she’ll get the resident in charge to take you in. Nice to meet you.”

I fled the hospital, half laughing, but unfortunately she’d put into words the guilt I’d been feeling. Why the hell hadn’t the old man minded his own business? Why had he gone barging up the stairs to get brained? He had been injured trying to look after me. Swell. That meant I damned well had to find out who had broken into my place. Which meant competing with the police on a task for which they had all the resources. The only thing I knew about that they didn’t was the missing IckPiff files. I had to find out who was paying Dick’s bill.

If I wasn’t so well known to the partners at Crawford, Meade I’d try getting hired as a secretary. As it was, I didn’t think I could suborn any of the office staff. Too many of them knew me by sight; if I started asking questions it would get right back to Dick.

I wandered out to the back of my building and climbed the stairs to the kitchen entrance. My apartment seemed unbearably dispiriting. It wasn’t just the wreck; without Mr. Contreras popping his head out the door the building felt empty, lifeless. I stood on the back porch, watching the Korean boys play ball. They were running through the tomatoes now that the guardian was away. I took the splintered wood that had been my door and carried it down to the little garden. As the solemn-eyed brothers watched, I built an impromptu fence around the plants.

“Now, your playground is outside the fence. Got it?”

They nodded without speaking. I climbed back upstairs, feeling better because I’d made something, put some order into life. I started thinking again.

Mr. Contreras recovered consciousness late on Sunday. Since they were keeping him in intensive care for another twenty-four hours, I couldn’t see him myself, but Lotty told me he was vague about the accident. He could remember making supper and going line by line through the racing results in the paper-his evening ritual-but he could not remember climbing the stairs to my apartment.

Neither she nor the neurologist she’d gotten to look at him could offer the police any hope that he would ever remember his assailants-that kind of traumatic episode was frequently blocked by the mind-. Detective Rawlings, whom I ran into at the hospital, was disappointed. I was just thankful the old man was going to make it.

Monday morning my pal from the Downers Grove box factory decided he was ready to pay my tariff; someone had smashed a forklift truck into the side of the building Saturday morning, doing about five grand in damage. The supposition was that the driver was toked out of his mind on crack. The owner balked when I told him it would be another week before I could be there personally, but he agreed in the end to start with the Streeter brothers. Two of them were available to go to Downers Grove the next day.

Fixed now with a paying customer, I turned my attention to my own problems. My suspicions of Peter embarrassed me, and when I thought of our last phone conversation I squirmed a bit. But my questions wouldn’t go away. I needed to demonstrate clearly to myself that he’d had nothing to do with lifting the IckPiff files from my living room.

Dick’s secretary. I lay on the living-room floor in the midst of the books and records and shut my eyes. She was in her forties. Married. Slender, polished, efficient, brown eyes. Regina? No. Regner. Harriet Regner.

At nine, I dialed Friendship’s number in Schaumburg and asked for Alan Humphries, the administrator. A woman’s voice answered, announcing that I had reached Mr. Humphries’s office.

“Good morning,” I said in what was supposed to be a pleasant, earnest, busy voice. “This is Harriet Regner, Mr. Yarborough’s secretary at Crawford, Meade.”

“Oh, hi, Harriet. This is Jackie. You have a good weekend? You sound a little under the weather.”

“Just hay fever, Jackie-that time of year.” I put a tissue to my nose to make my voice more snuffly. “Mr. Yarborough needs one small piece of information from Mr. Humphries… No, you don’t need to put him on-you can probably tell me yourself. We weren’t sure if the billing for Mr. Monkfish was to go onto the Friendship corporate account, or to be listed on a separate invoice and sent to Dr. Burgoyne directly.”