V.I. Warshawski 04 - Bitter Medicine (36 page)

As I was falling asleep between Lorry’s lavender-scented sheets I remembered the phone number I’d found in Alan Humphries’s papers. I struggled awake and dialed it again. It rang five times; I was going to hang up when a sleepy-voiced woman answered.

“I’m calling from Alan Humphries,” I said.

“Who?” She asked. “I don’t know who you mean.” She spoke with a Spanish accent; in the background a baby began to cry.

“I want the man who’s been helping Alan Humphries.”

There was momentary pause. From the muffling of the receiver, I thought she might be conferring with someone. When she spoke again, she sounded worried, or helpless. “He-he’s not here right now. You must try later.”

The baby’s cries sounded louder. Suddenly, in the total relaxation fatigue induces, a fragment of an old conversation swam up in my memory. “Oh, I’m a married man now, Warshawski. Got me a nice wife, a little baby…”

No wonder she felt worried or helpless. Sergio’s angelic beauty might have swept her off her feet. But now she had a small baby and a husband who was gone much of the time, who had frequent conversations with the police, who brought home large amounts of money whose source she wasn’t supposed to ask about

“Can I reach him here tomorrow, Mrs. Rodriguez?”

“I don’t know. I-I suppose so. Who did you say is calling?‘’

“Alan Humphries,” I repeated.

I barely remembered to hang up the phone before falling down the well of sleep. When I woke up, the August sun was streaming around the edges of Lotty’s oatmeal-colored curtains. As I came to, a reeling of dismay gripped the pit of my stomach. Oh, yes. Peter Burgoyne. A goodly apple rotten to the core. But it was Humphries, not Peter, who’d been calling Sergio. Getting him to break into Malcolm’s apartment and hunt for the dictating machine. Maybe bludgeoning Malcolm to death had been Sergio’s added touch, not included in the original price of admission.

I picked my watch up from the bedside table. Seven-thirty. Too early to reach Rawlings. I got up and went to the kitchen where Lotty already sat with her first cup of coffee and The New York Times. Lotty never exercises. She maintains her trim figure through sheer willpower-no muscle would dare go flabby under that stem gaze. She does have rigorous ideas on diet, however-fresh-squeezed orange juice, no matter what the season, and a bowl of muesli constituted her invariable breakfast. She had already eaten; the empty bowl and glass were rinsed and neatly placed on the draining board.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and joined her at the table. She put her paper down and cocked her head at me.

“You’re doing all right?”

I smiled at her. “Oh, yeah, I’m okay. Just a little bruised in the ego. I don’t like having affairs with people who are using me. I thought I had better judgment than to let it happen.”

She patted my hand. “So you’re human, Victoria. Is that such a bad thing? Now what do you do today?”

I grimaced. “Just wait. See if Rawlings will come to Friendship’s conference. Oh-one thing you could do if you would. Can you see that they don’t discharge Mr. Contreras until after this weekend? His daughter is hot for him to go home with her, away from the dangerous city. He doesn’t want that at all, and he’s nervous the doctors will insist on it. I said I’d bring him home with me if they want someone looking out for him, but I don’t want to have to spend half my time worrying that he’s fending off” Sergio Rodriguez while I’m away.“

She promised to take care of it during her morning rounds. Looking at her watch, she gave a little exclamation and took off-Lotty goes to Beth Israel to see patients before starting her day at the clinic.

I wandered moodily around Lotty’s apartment for a while. Human, huh? Maybe she was right, maybe not such a bad thing. Maybe if I learned to accept my own fallibility I’d be easier on other people. It sounded good-a page out of Leo Buscaglia. But I didn’t believe it.

I walked from her apartment to the clinic to pick up my car, then headed to my own place to change clothes. At ten o’clock Max’s secretary called me there to say everything was set for me to go to the Friendship conference on Friday. “He registered you as Viola da Gamba.” She spelled it dubiously. “Could that be right?”

“Yes,” I said grimly. “We’ll hope that they’re as stupid as he thinks they are. Who’s Lotty going as?”

She sounded more doubtful than ever. “Domenica Scarlatti?”

I decided my nerves couldn’t take very many collaborations with Max, told the secretary to thank him but remind him that the sharpest people often cut themselves.

“Til give him the message,” she said politely. “The conference will be held in the Stanhope Auditorium on the second floor of the main wing out at Friendship Hospital. Do you need directions?”

I told her I could find it and hung up.

Rawlings was in when I tried him. “What do you want, Ms. W.?”

“You free Friday morning?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could. “Want to go on a field trip?”

“What are you up to, Warshawski?”

“There’s a medical conference out in Schaumburg on Friday. I think they may cover some interesting morbidity and mortality statistics.”

“Morbidity and mortality? You’re trying to snowball me, but I know you’re talking about death. You know something about Fabiano Hernandez’s death. You have evidence and you’re concealing it, that’s a felony, Warshawski, and you damned well know it”

“I’m not concealing anything about Fabiano.” I’d forgotten him. I paused a minute, trying to work him into my equation, and couldn’t. Maybe Sergio had shot him, thinking he was being double-crossed. “Malcolm Tregiere. And I don’t know anything-I’m just guessing. They’re going to present a paper that may or may not reveal the truth about what happened to him.”

Rawlings breathed heavily into my ear. “May or may not? And what might that be? Or not?”

“Well, that’s why I thought you’d like to go to Schaumburg. Just on the chance, I had you registered for the conference. It starts at nine, coffee and rolls at eight-thirty.”

“Damn your ass, Warshawski. For two cents I’d run you in as a material witness.”

“But then you’d miss the conference, Detective, and you’d go to your grave wondering if you’d ever really have found out about Malcolm Tregiere.”

“No wonder Bobby Mallory turns red when he hears your name. His trouble is, he’s too much of a gentleman to try police brutality——-Nine o’clock in Schaumburg, huh?

I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.“

I’m going to be out there already. Why don’t you arrange to go with Dr. Herschel? She can help you find the place.“

“Mighty white of you, Ms. W.,” he grumbled.

“Always happy to do my citizen’s duty of helping the police uphold the law, Detective,” I said politely. He slammed the receiver in my ear.

After that, there was nothing else I could do but wait. The cleaning service I’d called sent over a crew around noon. I told them to pick everything up and put it away someplace and scour and wax every surface. Why not have it completely clean once a year? I called the friend who’d made my extra-thick front door for me originally and commissioned another one. He apologized profusely when he heard it hadn’t held up to an ax and offered to line the new one with steel, for an additional five hundred dollars.

I covered my face with extra-strength sunscreen and jogged over to the lake, where I spent most of the afternoon. Labor Day was around the corner, and usually about that time we have a big storm that turns the lake water over, making it too cold for swimming for the rest of the year. Time to make the most of it. I floated on my back, enjoying the sense of being rocked in the cradle of the deep, secure in the arms of Mother Nature.

Max’s secretary called me at noon Thursday to tell me the slides were ready. I drove over to Beth Israel for them. Max was in a meeting, but he had left a neatly labeled packet for me.

Thursday night. Back in my business clothes with Lotty’s white coat for disguise. This time I’d packed an overnight case and reserved a room at the Marriott. Lotty and Rawlings would meet me there at eight-thirty in the morning. Max and Murray were driving together and would join us at the hospital entrance.

At midnight I reached the hospital grounds. I made a circuit of the staff parking lot before going in, to make sure that Peter’s Maxima wasn’t there. Then, white-jacketed and, I hoped, professional, I went in through the main entrance and up the stairs to the second floor.

The Stanhope Auditorium took up the far end of the corridor overlooking the parking lot. The double doors were locked, but again they had used a standard model that turned back easily. I closed them behind me and shone a flashlight around.

I was in a small theater, ideal for this kind of meeting. Twenty-five or so rows of plush-covered, swivel seats were stair-stepped down to a stage. Just now its curtains were drawn. In front of them stood a large white movie screen, with a podium and microphone to one side.

The audiovisual equipment was in a projection room at the rear of the theater. I unlocked the door, my hands shaking a bit with nerves, and started examining the carousels full of slides.

Max and Murray were waiting for us in the visitors’ parking lot In contrast to Lotty, whose dark face was pinched with worry, and Rawlings, who affected a heavy-policeman attitude, Max was ebullient. He wore a tan summer suit with an orange-striped shirt and a tie of darker umber. When he saw us, he bounded over radiating goodwill-kissing Lotty and me, shaking hands enthusiastically with the detective.

“You look very sharp, Vic, very professional,” Max told me. I was wearing a trouser suit in wheat-colored linen with a dark-green cotton shirt. The jacket was loose, covering my gun, and I had on low-heeled shoes. I wanted to be able to move quickly if I had to.

Murray, whose shirt was already slightly rumpled from the hot drive, merely said grumpily that “this had better work.” He joined spiritual forces with Rawlings, who cheered up slightly when he realized none of the party knew exactly what to expect-he had thought I might have brought him out to embarrass the police.

At eight-fifty-five we went into the hospital where we joined a large group going up the stairs to the auditorium. My heart was beating uncomfortably and I felt my hands turn cold and slightly damp. Lotty was lost in her own thoughts, but Max took my hand and gave it a friendly squeeze.

Max took charge at the auditorium door, where two cheerful young women were handing out name badges. Through the press of people I could make out Peter and Alan Humphries in the front of the room. They were talking with a small group of men. Peter’s dark hair was combed sleekly back, showing his face white and strained. He stood tautly, not joining in the laughter of the small group.

Lotty and I hung back while Max got our name badges and programs. The five of us moved furtively into seats at the rear of the small auditorium. I devoutly hoped that the theater-style lights would block Peter’s view if he looked up at the audience. The well-designed room gave everyone good sight lines to and from the stage.

Rawlings stirred nervously at my left. His tan polyester-blend sport jacket stood out in the crowd of six-hundred-dollar suit coats. “Amniotic Fluid Embolism: The Whole Team Approach‘?” he muttered incredulously. “What the hell have you got me into, Warshawski?”