Blood Shot (29 page)

Bobby’s gray eyes measured me steadily. “You know Jurshak did a few favors for him when he signed on as SCRAP’S counsel?”

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. “Like what?”

“Oh, cleared the way for him to do all the renovation work on his house. That kind of thing.”

“And in exchange?”

“Information. Nothing unethical. He wouldn’t jeopardize his clients’ standing. Just let the alderman’s office know what moves they might make. Or what moves a smart PI like you might be making.”

“I see.” It was an effort to get words out, let alone keep my voice steady. I braced myself against the door. “How do you know all this?”

“Jurshak talked a lot this morning. Nothing like the fear of death to get someone babbling. Of course the courts will throw it all out, information obtained under duress. But watch who you talk to, Vicki. You’re a smart girl—smart young lady. I’ll even agree you’ve done some good work. But you’re one person alone. You just can’t do the job the cops are paid to do.”

I was too tired and soul-sick to argue. I felt too bad even to think he was wrong. My shoulders slumped, I slogged my way down the long corridors to the parking lot and headed back to Lotty.

41

A Wise Child

When I got to Lotty’s, Max was already there. I felt so down after my talk with Mallory that I would have preferred canceling my meeting with Manheim: What could one person do alone, anyway? As it was I only had time to explain to Lotty who Frederick Manheim was and why I’d invited him when he showed up. His round solemn face was flushed with excitement, but he shook hands politely with Max and Lotty and offered Lotty a bottle of wine. It was a ’78 Gruaud-Larose. Max raised his brows appreciately, so I assumed it was a good bottle.

As we talked in the kitchen my drooping self-confidence began to revive. After all, I had been worried about Kappelman’s role all along. It wasn’t a failure on my part. Bobby just was trying to skewer me because I’d stopped Steve Dresberg when he and his thousands of backups hadn’t been able to touch him.

I whipped up omelets while Max opened the wine, reverentially letting it breathe. While we ate at Lotty’s kitchen table we talked about general topics—the wine was too splendid to pollute with Xerxine.

Afterward, though, we moved into Lotty’s sitting room. I spelled out the story for Max and Manheim. Lounging on the daybed, I explained what I’d learned from Chigwell—that they’d done the tests because they could see their high rates of illness as early as 1955.

“You should see if you can talk to Ajax. They were handling Xerxes’s life and health insurance at the time. I know they went to Mariners Rest in 1963 with evidence of how good and pure they were, but if you find out why Ajax dropped them back in the fifties you may get some inside dope on why they decided to look at blood instead of—I don’t know, some other choice.”

Manheim, propped on his elbows on the floor, was naturally most interested in what lay in Chigwell’s notebooks. Lotty sketched the data for him, but warned him he would have to get an array of specialists.

“I am only a perinatologist, you know. So what I’m telling you is only what I’ve learned from Dr. Christophersen. You will need many people—blood specialists, a good renal pathologist. And above all, you will need a team in occupational health.”

Manheim nodded soberly at all their advice. His rosy cherub’s cheeks glowed deeper red as he filled legal pads with notes. Every now and then he asked me a question about the plant and the employees.

Lotty finally put a halt to the discussion—she had to get up early, I was her patient and wasn’t fit for another all-night session, and so on. Manheim stood up reluctantly.

“I’m not going to do anything in a hurry,” he warned me. “I want to double-check the data, find the lab that did the blood work for them, all that kind of stuff. And I’m going to have to consult with a specialist in environmental law.”

I held up my hands. “It’s your baby now. You do what you want with it. You just need to keep in mind that Gustav Humboldt isn’t going to lie down with his legs up in the air while you’re gathering facts—for all I know he’s already figured out a way to put the clamps on the lab. You want one last chance to back out?”

He thought for a short minute, then grinned reluctantly. “I’ve spent enough time on my tush in Beverly—I can’t turn down this one. As long as you agree to provide moral support every now and then.”

“Yeah, sure, why not,” I agreed as positively as I could—I didn’t want tentacles from South Chicago to keep reaching out to strangle me.

When Manheim had gone I headed off to bed, leaving Max in the sitting room with a bottle of Lotty’s cognac. Lotty came in for a minute after I’d brushed my teeth to tell me Caroline had phoned while I was with the police.

“She wants you to call her. But as she was angry and became rather rude, I thought it wouldn’t hurt her to wait.”

I grinned. “That’s my Caroline. She say anything about Louisa?”

“I gather since she slept through her ordeal she’s none the worse for it. Sleep well, my dear.”

She was gone when I got up in the morning. I puttered aimlessly around the kitchen, drinking coffee. I started to make toast, then remembered my promise to eat breakfast with Mr. Contreras. I slowly packed my overnight bag. The longer I stayed at Lotty’s the less interested I seemed to be in looking after myself It was time to go before I slipped into unconquerable lassitude.

In deference to Lotty’s tidy spirit, I took the sheets from the guest bed and bundled them up with the towels I’d used. I wrote a note telling her I’d taken them home with me to launder. I straightened up the other signs of my presence as best I could and headed over to Racine.

Mr. Contreras’s delight at seeing me was equaled only by the dog’s. Peppy jumped up to lick my face, her golden tail thumping the door hard enough to swing it shut. My neighbor took the laundry from me.

“These Dr. Lotty’s things? I’ll wash ’em for you, doll. After breakfast you’ll want to unwind, look at your mail, do whatever. So the case is over? Everything locked up with those two villains in the hospital? I mighta known you’d take care of those guys, doll. I shouldn’t of worried so much about you. No wonder you got teed off.”

I put an arm around him. “Yeah, it all looks swell now that the battle’s nearly over. But shooting someone in that kind of situation is just luck—you can’t aim. I could be in intensive care instead of Dresberg if the luck had gone the other way.”

“Nearly over?” His faded brown eyes showed concern. “You mean those guys still have someone gunning for you?”

“Other way around. There’s a big old white shark thrashing around in the water. Dresberg and Jurshak were his allies. Who knows what else he’s got stashed in his cove.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Anyway, I came back here for French toast. Got any?”

“Sure, doll, sure. Everything’s ready—just waiting for you before I turn on the griddle.” He rubbed his hands together and bustled me inside.

Somewhere from the recesses of his life he’d dug up a white linen tablecloth. He’d cleared the dining-room table of the magazines and bric-a-brac that usually cluttered it and covered it with the cloth. A vase in the middle held red carnations. I was touched.

He swelled with pride at my compliments. “These were Clara’s things. They never meant so much to me but I couldn’t bring myself to give them to Ruthie when she died; Clara kind of treasured them and I just couldn’t quite see Ruthie prizing them like she should.”

He hurried off to the kitchen and came back with a glass of fresh orange juice. “Now, you sit here, doll, and I’ll have breakfast out to you in two shakes.”

He fried up tall mounds of bacon and gargantuan stacks of French toast. I ate what I could and repaid him by telling the tale of my midnight trip up the Calumet. He was caught between awe at the exploit and jealousy that I hadn’t picked him to go with me, pipe wrench and all.

I gallantly suppressed a shudder at the idea. “I didn’t think it would be fair to Peppy,” I explained. “If we both got killed or laid up, who would look after her?”

He accepted that grudgingly—and a bit suspiciously—and asked me to tell him again how I’d shot Dresberg. Finally, around noon, I felt I’d stayed long enough and made my escape upstairs. The old man had stacked my mail neatly inside my apartment door, letters in one pile, newspapers in another. I flipped through the letters quickly—nothing personal. Not one thing. Just bills and solicitations. In irritation I tossed the lot, including my home phone bill. The papers would keep—I’d go through them later and see how they’d covered Xerxes.

My rooms had that strange appearance of a place you haven’t visited for a while—they seemed somehow unfamiliar, as though I’d heard them described but hadn’t ever actually seen them. I moved around restlessly, trying to reestablish myself in my own existence. And trying not to wonder what Humboldt might next attempt. I wasn’t entirely successful. At two when the doorbell rang I jumped a little. This has got to stop, Victoria, I admonished myself I walked purposefully to the intercom and pressed it.

Caroline’s voice came tinnily through. If anything were needed to restore my self-confidence, it would be a little roughhousing with her. I prepared myself for battle and buzzed her in.

I could hear her moving up the stairs with a slow, heavy tread most unlike her usual canter. When she made the last turning and came into view, I could see that she looked somber. My heart contracted. Louisa. Tuesday night’s escapade had been too much for her weak system and she’d died.

“Hello, Caroline. Come on in.”

She stood in the doorway. “Do you hate me, Vic?”

My eyebrows went up in surprise. “Why on earth do you ask that? I thought you’d shown up to chew me out for exposing Louisa to so much abuse two nights ago.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. If I’d told you what was going on … You almost got killed because of me. Twice. But all I could do was scream at you like the spoiled little brat you kept telling me I was.”

I put an arm around her and dragged her into the apartment—the last thing I wanted was for Mr. Contreras to hear us and come bounding up. Caroline leaned against me and let me take her over to the couch.

“How’s Louisa?”

“She’s back home.” Caroline hunched her shoulders. “She actually seems a little better today. She doesn’t remember anything that happened, and whatever they shot her full of gave her a better sleep than she usually gets.”

She picked up a copy of Fortune and started twisting it around. “The police came by right after I’d gotten home and found her missing. I’d been at a marathon meeting downtown, you know, going over the recycling stuff with some of the local EPA attorneys. I thought Ma’d had a bad turn, that the neighbors or Aunt Connie had taken her to the hospital. Then when the cops came for me I went a little crazy.”

I nodded. “Lotty told me you’d called yesterday with an angry message. I just didn’t have the strength to get back to you.”

She looked at me directly for the first time since she’d arrived. “I don’t blame you—I was mad enough to spit blood and then some. I was screaming my head off at you while I drove to Help of Christians. But when I got there all I could think of was you and your mother looking after Ma and me all those years. And then I thought of what you’d been through for the two of us just these last three weeks. And I felt terribly ashamed. It never would have happened if I hadn’t pushed you into looking for my father when you didn’t want to do it.”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ve been plenty mad at you—probably cursed you worse than you did me. And I’m not exactly wearing a halo—if I’d bugged out when you asked me to I’d never have been left for dead in the swamp and Louisa wouldn’t have been kidnapped.”

“But I don’t think the police would ever have found out the truth,” she objected. “They never would have found Nancy’s killer, and Jurshak and Dresberg would still be ruling South Chicago. I shouldn’t have been such a chicken—I should have told you about the threats to Louisa to begin with, so you wouldn’t get blindsided.”

I knew I needed to tell her about discovering who had gotten Louisa pregnant, but I couldn’t seem to find the words. Or maybe it was just the courage. While I was fishing around for it Caroline said abruptly:

“I bought Ma some cigarettes. I remembered what you said that first night you came by, how they wouldn’t make her any worse and they might cheer her up. And I could see all I was trying to do was have power over her, keeping her from having one thing that might bring her a little pleasure.”

Her last words brought back Lotty’s advice most strongly. I took a breath and said, “Caroline, I have to tell you—I did find out who your father was.”

Her blue eyes turned very dark. “Not Joey Pankowski, right?”

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not. There isn’t any easy way to say this, or to hear it, but it would be really wrong for me not to tell you—a most noxious way of controlling your life.”

She looked at me solemnly. “Go ahead, Vic. I—I think I’m more grown up than I used to be. I can take it.”

I took both her hands and said gently, “It was Art Jurshak. He was your—”

“Art Jurshak!” she burst out. “I don’t believe you. Ma never would have come across him in a million years! You’re making this up, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “I wish I were. Art—he—uh—your Grandmother Djiak is his sister. He used to spend a lot of time with Connie and Louisa when they were little, and the Djiaks chose not to notice that he was abusing them. Your grandparents are both terrified of sex, and your grandfather especially is frightened of women, so they made up a vile fairy tale for themselves that it was your mother’s fault when she got pregnant. Although they did stop seeing Art, it was Louisa they punished. They’re a pretty loathsome couple, Ed and Martha Djiak.”

Her freckles stood out like polka dots against the pallor of her face. “Art Jurshak. He’s my father? I’m related to him?”

“He gave you some chromosomes, babe, but you’re not related to him, not by any manner of means. You’re your own person, you know, not his. Not the Djiaks’, either. You’ve got guts, you’ve got integrity, and, above all, you have valor. None of that has any relationship to Art Jurshak.”

“I—Art Jurshak—” She gave a little bark of hysterical laughter. “All these years I thought your father had got Ma pregnant. I thought that was why your mother did so much for us. I thought I was really your sister. Now I see I don’t have anyone at all.”

She got up and ran for the door. I ran after her and caught her arm, but she wrenched herself free and jerked the door open.

“Caroline!” I tore down the stairs after her. “This doesn’t change that. You will always be my sister, Caroline!”

I stood on the sidewalk in my shirt sleeves, watching helplessly as she drove recklessly down the street toward Belmont.