Burn Marks (7 page)

9

The Lady Is Indisposed

I woke up early the next morning. My dreams had been of crying babies and fires; I’d jerked awake twice feeling suffocated by flames. When I got out of bed it was again with the feeling that someone had dumped a load of gravel in my head, this time without bothering to crush it too fine.

It was only six. Cerise and Elena were still asleep on the sofa bed, Cerise lying spread-eagled on her stomach, Elena on her back snoring. I felt like a captive in my own home, unable to get to my books or television, but if I woke them, it would be worse. I shut the door softly, put on my jeans, and went down the back stairs. It was too early to wake up Mr. Contreras to take the dog for a run. And even though exercise may be the best cure for a sandy head, running sounded like the last thing I was in the mood for.

I walked the half mile to the Belmont Diner, open twenty-four hours a day, and had the cholesterol special, pancakes with butter and a big order of bacon. I lingered as long as I could, following the saga of the search for the Bears new stadium through all three papers, even taking in every word on the latest zoning scandal to beset the mayor’s chief supporters. It’s boring to read about zoning scandals because their revelation never has any impact on election results, so I usually skip them.

Around eight I finally trudged back to my apartment. Life was stirring on Racine Avenue as people headed for work. When I got to my building the banker was leaving for the day, his thick brown hair lacquered to his head.

“Hi,” I said brightly as we passed. “Just getting off the night shift. Have a good day.”

He pretended not to hear me, crossing to the east side of the street as I spoke. Try to be neighborly and you only get stiffed for your pains.

Like LBJ or the Duke of Wellington, Elena could sleep anywhere, anytime. When I opened the kitchen door I could hear her snores oozing from the living room. I also caught my favorite smell, cigarette smoke. Cerise was at the dining-room table, staring moodily at nothing, chain-smoking.

“Good morning,” I said as politely as I could. “I know you’re really upset about your baby, but please don’t smoke in here.”

She shot me a hostile look but stubbed her cigarette out in the saucer she’d been using. I took it to the kitchen and tried to scrub the tobacco stains from it. After a few minutes she followed me in and slumped herself at the table. I offered her breakfast but she wanted only coffee. I put water on to boil and got the beans out of the freezer.

“What floor did your mother live on?”

She looked at me blankly and rubbed her bare arms.

“At the Indiana Arms. I’ll probably need that information if someone is going to search for Katterina.”

“Fifth floor,” she answered after another long pause. “Five twenty-two. It was hard on her on account of the elevator didn’t work, but she couldn’t get nothing lower down.”

“When did you leave the baby with your mother?”

Again she stared at me, but this time I thought there was an element of calculation in her gaze. “We did it Wednesday. Before we left town.” She rubbed her arms some more. “It’s too cold in here. I need to smoke.”

It felt warm to me, but I was dressed; she was still in the outsized T-shirt I’d lent her. I went into my bedroom and got a jacket. She put it on but continued to rub her arms.

I ground the beans and poured boiling water through them. “What time Wednesday?”

“You trying to say I saw the fire and shouldn’ta left my baby?” Her tone was sullen but her eyes were still watchful.

I poured more water into the beans and tried to muster some empathy. Her baby was almost certainly dead. She was with a stranger and a white woman at that. She was terrified of the institutions of law and society and I was conversant with them, so to her I was part of them. She wanted to smoke and I wouldn’t let her.

Thinking about all this didn’t make me feel like running over to embrace her, but it did help me stifle the more extreme expressions of impatience. “Someone set that fire,” I said carefully. “Someone hurt your mother and may have hurt your baby. If you were there Wednesday night, you might have seen the arsonist. Maybe he—or she—or they—were hanging around. If you saw someone, we could give the police a description, something to start an investigation with.”

She shook her head violently. “I didn’t see no one. We go there at three in the afternoon. We give Katterina to my mama. We leave for Wisconsin. Okay?”

“Okay.” I poured out coffee for her. “Why are these questions upsetting you so much?”

She was trembling. She took the mug with both hands to steady it. “You acting like I did something bad, like it be my fault my baby’s hurt.”

“No, Cerise, not at all. I’m really sorry if that’s how I sounded. I don’t mean that at all.” I tried to smile. “I’m a detective, you know. I ask questions for a living. It’s a hard habit to break.”

She buried her face in the mug and didn’t answer me. I gave it up and went into my bedroom. The bed was still unmade. My running clothes had fallen on the floor at the end when I’d kicked the covers off in the night. Untangling my sweats from the bedclothes, I stuffed them into the closet and pulled the covers back up onto the bed. The room wasn’t exactly ready for House Beautiful, but it was all the housekeeping I was in the humor for.

I lay on the bed and tried to remember the name of the insurance man I’d met at the Indiana Arms on Thursday. It was a bird; that had struck me particularly at the time because his bright-eyed curiosity had made him seem birdlike. I shut my eyes and let my mind drift. Robin. That was it. I couldn’t delve the last name from my memory hole, but Robin would get me to him.

I pulled the phone from the bedside table and put it on my stomach to dial. When the Ajax operator connected me with the arson and fraud division, I asked the cheery receptionist for Robin.

“He’s right here—I’ll put him on for you.”

The phone banged in my ear—she must have dropped the receiver—then I got a tenor. “Robin Bessinger here.”

Bessinger. Of course. “Robin, it’s V. I. Warshawski. I met you at the Indiana Arms last week when you were digging through the rubble there.”

“V.I. You the detective?”

“Uh-huh.” I sat up and put the phone back on the bedside table. “You said if anybody’s been killed, the police would have had a homicide investigation set up. So I assume everybody was rescued?”

“As far as I know.” I’d forgotten how cautious he was. A bird making sure the worm wasn’t really a rifle barrel. “You know anything to the contrary?”

“A baby was staying there Wednesday night. Staying with its grandmother on the fifth floor.” He started to interrupt and I said hastily, “I know, I know. Against the rules. The grandmother has disappeared—maybe one of the smoke victims—so I don’t know if they found the baby or not.”

“A baby in there. Sweet Jesus, no…. I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll call someone at the police and get back to you. Was it your friend? The one you said had been burned out?”

I’d forgotten referring to Elena as my friend. “No, not her. The grandmother was sort of a friend of hers, though, and the mother just got back into town and found her little girl and her own mama both missing. She’s pretty distraught.” Or hostile. Or fried.

“Okay.” He fumbled around for a moment. “I’m just real sorry. I’ll call you back in a couple of minutes.”

I gave him my phone number and hung up. I looked distastefully at my bedroom. Because I’m there only to sleep I don’t usually pay much attention to it. The queen-size bed takes up a good deal of the available space. Since the closet is large I keep the dresser in there to have enough room to walk around, but it still makes me feel hemmed in to spend much time there during the day. More than ever I resented Elena’s snoring presence down the hall, pinning me to one room in my own home.

I paced the short distance from the door to the head of the bed a few times but I kept banging my shin on the bedstead, I couldn’t possibly practice my singing in these quarters, especially not with Cerise in the kitchen. Finally I lay on the floor between the window and the bed and did leg lifts. After forty or so with each leg Robin called back. He sounded subdued.

“V. I. Warshawski?” He stumbled a bit on my last name. “I—uh, I’ve been talking with the police. They say the fire department didn’t bring out any children from that place last week. Are you sure the baby was in there?”

I hesitated. “Reasonably sure. I can’t swear to it, though, because I don’t know any of the people involved.”

“They’re going to send a team out to comb the rubble, to see if they can find any, well, any remains. They’d like you to be available to come downtown to meet with them, though.”

I promised to check in with my answering service every hour if I left my apartment. Slowly hanging up the phone, I wondered what to say to Cerise. As I walked to the door Elena pounded on the other side.

“Yoo-hoo! Vicki! Victoria, I mean. Poor little Cerise isn’t feeling too hot. Can you come out and help me settle her upset tummy?”

Poor little Cerise had vomited all over the kitchen table. Elena, at her brightest as she enjoyed the drama, wiped her face with a damp towel while I cleaned up the mess.

“It’s the shock, you know,” my aunt cooed. “She’s worried sick about her baby.”

I looked at the younger woman narrowly. She was sick, ail right, but I was beginning to think a little more than shock underlay her behavior.

“I think we’ll have a doctor take a look at her,” I said. “Help me get her dressed and down to my car.”

“No doctor,” Cerise said thickly. “I’m not seeing no doctor.”

“Yes, you are,” I snapped. “This isn’t a one-woman social agency. You just threw up all over my kitchen and I’m not spending the day nursing you.”

“No doctor, no doctor!” Cerise screamed.

“She really doesn’t want to go, Vicki,” Elena stage-whispered at me.

“I can see she doesn’t want to go,” I said brittlely. “Just put her clothes on while I hold her arms still. And please don’t call me Vicki. It’s not a name I care for much.”

“I know, I know, sweetie,” Elena promised hastily, “It keeps slipping my mind.”

Since Gabriella had driven home the point forcefully to Elena all through my childhood—“I didn’t name her for Victor Emmanuel to have people talk to her as though she were a silly ingenue”—I didn’t see how Elena could have forgotten, but this wasn’t the time to argue the point.

Dressing Cerise made me glad I hadn’t chosen nursing in a mental hospital as my career. She fought against my hold, screaming and thrashing around in the kitchen chair. I’m in good shape, but she strained my muscles to the utmost. At one point she raked open my left arm with a long fingernail. I somehow managed to hang on to her.

Elena worked with an ineffectuality that brought me close to the screaming point myself. She put Cerise’s underpants on backwards and only managed to slide her skirt on after a good fifteen minutes of work.

“Just do her shoes,” I panted. “She can wear the T-shirt on top. My keys are in the living room. I left them on the coffee table. Unlock the dead bolts.”

I tried to explain which key worked which lock, but gave it up as Elena grew more confused. By some miracle she managed to undo them in less than an hour. Cerise had stopped fighting me by then. She hunched limply over the kitchen table sobbing to herself and offered no resistance as I escorted her out the door. I took the keys from Elena.

“You’d best get your bag. I’m going to drop you off at your new place as soon as Cerise has seen the doctor.”

Elena tried to put up a fight of her own, but I was past any feelings of guilt. I kept Cerise propped up against the wall and repeated my demand. My aunt finally shuffled back into my apartment. After an absence long enough that I wondered if she was back at the Black Label, she came out again. She’d taken a shower; her graying hair hung around her head in damp ringlets, but her makeup was complete and, for once, on target. The violet nightgown still hung out the side of the duffel bag. She let it trail along the floor as she followed me down the stairs.

10

A Little Help from My Friends

Lotty Herschel’s storefront clinic is about three miles from my apartment, near the corner of Damen and Irving Park. During the short drive Cerise threw up again in the backseat, then started shivering uncontrollably. I thought I might kill Elena, who knelt on the front seat watching Cerise and giving me minute-by-minute updates on what she was doing.

I jerked the car to a stop next to a fireplug in front of the clinic and jogged inside. The small waiting room, painted to look like the African veldt, was packed with the usual assortment of wailing infants and squabbling children. Mrs. Coltrain was keeping order, handling the phone and typing records with her usual calm. I sometimes suggest to Lotty that she found Mrs. Coltrain in a catalog offering to supply offices with old-fashioned grandmothers—not only does she have nine grandchildren, but she wears her silvery hair in a bun.

“Miss Warshawski.” She beamed at me. “Good to see you. Do you need to talk to Dr. Herschel?”

“Rather urgently. I have a young woman in my car who’s been throwing up and seems now to be going into shock. Can you ask Lotty if she’d see her now if I brought her in, or if I should take her to the hospital?”

Mrs. Coltrain refused to call Lotty or me by our first names-we gave up urging them on her long ago. She relayed my message to Carol Alvarado, the clinic nurse, and after a couple of minutes Carol came out to help me bring Cerise in. Cerise’s skin was cold. It felt thick, like wet plastic, not at all like living tissue. She was conscious enough to walk if we supported her, but her breathing was shallow and her eyes were rolling.

A murmur of resentment swelled around us as we brought Cerise past the waiting room into the examining area—people who’ve been waiting an hour or more for the doctor don’t appreciate line jumpers. Carol got Cerise onto a table and wrapped her in a blanket. Lotty swept in a few minutes later.

“What are you bringing me now, Vic?” She didn’t wait for an answer but went straight to Cerise.

I told her what little I knew about the young woman. “Suddenly this morning she started complaining about feeling cold, then she started throwing up. I don’t know if it was pregnancy or drugs or some combination, but I didn’t feel like dealing with her on my own.”

Lotty grunted and pulled back Cerise’s eyelids. “She’s going to be here for a while. Why don’t you come back in a few hours?” She turned to Carol with a request for a medication.

In other words, it was up to me to find out what to do with her when Lotty finished treating her. Not that I’d expected Lotty to do it, but somehow I’d managed to avoid thinking about Cerise’s future.

My shoulders sagging, I walked on heavy feet back to the car. I’d forgotten Cerise’s eruption, but the smell was a pungent reminder. I returned to the clinic and got some wet rags and a bottle of disinfectant from Mrs. Coltrain. All the time I was cleaning the backseat Elena kept chirping questions about Cerise.

“I don’t know,” I said wearily as I finally turned the engine on. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her or what the doctor will do or if she has to go to the hospital. I’ll find all that out when I go back at noon and I’ll let you know.”

Elena put a tremulous hand on my arm. “It’s only because her mother and me are pals, Vicki—Victoria. It’d be the same if it was you in trouble and I took you to Zerlina. She’d feel responsible for you because of me, don’t you see.”

I took my right hand off the wheel to pat her thin, veined fingers. “Sure, Elena. I understand. Your good heart does you credit.”

We drove in silence for a while, then I thought of something. “What’s Zerlina’s last name?”

“Her last name, sweetie? Why do you care?”

“I want to find her. If she’s in the hospital, I can’t go to the reception desk at Michael Reese and ask for her by her first name. They don’t keep track of patients that way.”

“If she got hurt in the fire, sweetie, I don’t know if she’d be up to seeing you.”

“Not up to seeing me?” I tried to keep my tone conversational, but an overlay of a snarl came through anyway. “If you and Cerise want me to do anything more about the baby, she’d damned well better be up to seeing me. And you should do your best to help me find her.”

“Language, Victoria,” Elena said reprovingly. “Talking dirty isn’t going to solve your problems.”

“And dancing around the mulberry bush on this one isn’t going to solve yours,” I snapped. “Tell me her last name or kiss any help from me good-bye.”

“When you scrunch up your face like that you look just like your grandmother the last few months I was living with her.”

I turned north onto Kenmore and pulled up in front of the Windsor Arms. My poor grandmother. If she’d had a stronger personality, she would have booted Elena out on her rump long before her thirtieth birthday. Instead, except for brief forays, my aunt lived with her until she died.

“Your own family is always the last to appreciate you,” I said, turning off the engine. “Now why don’t you quit screwing around and tell me Zerlina’s last name?”

Elena looked at me craftily. “Is this the new hotel, sweetie? You’re an angel to go to so much trouble for me. No, no, don’t you go carrying that heavy bag, you’re young, you need to save your back.”

I took the duffel bag from her and escorted her into the lobby. She fluttered off to the lounge area to talk to some of the residents while I dug in my handbag for the room receipt. The concierge, coming from some basement recess when I tapped the desk bell, clearly remembered me but insisted on getting the receipt before she’d let Elena have the room. For a nerve-straining moment I was afraid I’d stuffed it in my skirt pocket on Friday, but finally found it stuck in the pages of my pocket diary.

I had intended to beard Elena in her room and force Zerlina’s surname from her, but was thwarted by the concierge-this was a single-resident hotel and visitors were not permitted in the guest rooms. Elena blew me a kiss with a promise to get back in touch with me.

“And you will let me know what happens to poor Cerise, won’t you, sweetheart?”

I forced a glittering smile to my face. “How am I to do that, Elena—by smoke signal?”

“You can leave a message for me at the desk, can’t she do that, honey?” she added to the concierge.

“I suppose,” the woman said grudgingly. “As long as you don’t make a habit of it.”

As they disappeared up the echoing stairwell I could hear Elena explaining that I was the smartest, sweetest niece a woman could ever hope to have. I ground my teeth and acknowledged defeat.

The pay phone for residents was in the lounge with the TV. I didn’t want to compete with The Price Is Right; I walked up Kenmore looking for another phone. After a two-block circuit I decided I’d be better off going back to my apartment.

The super had finally gotten around to putting up the banker’s nameplate. I stopped to look at it—Vincent Bottone. I felt vaguely affronted that an Italian could be treating me so rudely—didn’t he know that we were compatriots? I glanced at my own nameplate—since my last name was Warshawski, maybe he hadn’t been able to guess. I’d have to try speaking to him in Italian and see if that softened him. Or, I realized as I unlocked my apartment door, give me a chance to show him up.

Robin Bessinger was in a meeting, but he’d left word with the receptionist to get him if I called. I tucked the phone under my ear while I waited, and yanked the sheets from the sofa bed. I was just stuffing the mattress back into the sofa frame when Robin came on the line.

“Ms. Warshawski? Robin Bessinger.”

“It’s Vic,” I interrupted him.

“Oh. Vic. I’ve been wondering what those initials stood for. Look—the lab says there isn’t any trace of a baby’s body in the debris. On the other hand, if it got caught in the fiercest part of the blaze, it might have been incinerated. So they’ve taken samples of the ashes and will get them analyzed, which’ll take a few days. But Roland Montgomery—he’s with the Bomb and Arson Squad— would like to talk to you, find out firsthand why you think the child was in there.”

I wasn’t sure I did think Katterina had been in the Indiana Arms. At this point I wasn’t sure I believed Cerise had a baby, or even a mother. But I couldn’t express any of this to Robin.

“The baby’s mother told me,” I said. “Where does Montgomery want me to meet him?”

“Can you make it at three in his office? Central District at Eleventh Street.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’d like to sit in if you don’t mind. A death would affect our insured. Dominic Assuevo will be there from the Office of Fire Investigation.”

“Not at all,” I said politely. I didn’t know Montgomery, but I’d met Assuevo a couple of years ago when my old apartment had been torched. He was a pal of Bobby Mallory’s and was inclined to look on me suspiciously by extension.

Before we hung up I asked Robin if he knew Zerlina’s last name. He hadn’t been given a list of the smoke inhalation victims but promised me he’d get it from Dominic at our meeting this afternoon.

I finished tidying up the sofa bed, then took the sheets down to the washing machine in the basement. I’m not normally so obsessive about cleanliness, but I wanted to get all traces of Cerise—and Elena—out of my apartment. If I washed the sheets, it was a clear commitment to myself that I didn’t have to put the younger woman up here when I fetched her back from Lotty’s. Although I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with her.

It was possible that Cerise had given Lotty her surname. If she hadn’t, I thought Carol might call Michael Reese for me and get them to give her Zerlina’s last name. I didn’t want to meet with the police until I talked to Zerlina, assuming I could find her at Reese.

When I got to the clinic I learned that a chunk of ray schedule had dropped out—Cerise had disappeared. Carol was worried, Lotty angry. Lotty had given her a mild tranquilizer and something to control her nausea. Cerise had slept for about an hour in the examining room. The third time Carol went in to check on her she was gone. Mrs. Coltrain had seen her walk out of the clinic but had no reason to stop her—she’d assumed since Cerise came with me that I had arranged to pay Lotty for her treatment separately.

Of course. I’d forgotten the money. A hundred dollars to pay Cerise’s bill and help fund some of the clinic’s indigent patients. Lotty, furious with me for interrupting her day with such a case, was in no humor to discount her services. I pulled my checkbook from my handbag and wrote out the check.

“I guess I should have taken her to the hospital,” I said wearily, handing it to Mrs. Coltrain. “But she got sick so suddenly and so violently that I was afraid she might be dying on me. I didn’t know if she had some neurological disease or was coming down from heroin or what. If something like this happens again, which I hope it doesn’t, I won’t bother you.”

That pulled Lotty up short—she hates having her standard of care impugned. Her tone was a little less abrupt when she responded.

“It was a combination of heroin and pregnancy. If there’s to be any hope for that fetus, Cerise needs to get into a drug program today.”

“I wouldn’t bet the farm on her doing it,” I said. “I want to try to get in touch with Cerise’s mother.”

I explained that Zerlina might be in Michael Reese recovering from the fire but that I didn’t have her last name. Carol went off to phone the hospital for me—she felt irrationally responsible for Cerise roaming the streets pregnant and addicted. Getting Zerlina’s last name was something active she could do to help.

“Not your problem,” I tried to tell her when she returned a few minutes later. “If Cerise is bent on destructing, you can’t stop her. You should know that by now.”

“Yes, Vic,” Carol admitted. “I do know it. But I feel as though we let you down. That’s partly why Lotty’s so angry, you know. She tries to work at such a high level and then when she fails to save someone she takes it personally. And for it to be someone you brought in.”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. The truth was, I was happy that Cerise had vanished. It was magic. I didn’t have to look after her anymore.

“Anyway, the mother’s last name is Ramsay.” Carol spelled it for me. “She’s in room four-twenty-two in the main hospital building. I told the head nurse you were a social worker, so there won’t be any problem you getting in to see her.”

I made a face as I thanked her. Social worker! It was an apt description of how I’d spent my time since Elena showed up at my door last week. Maybe it was time for me to turn Republican and copy Nancy Reagan. From now on when alcoholic or addicted pregnant strays showed up at my door, I would just say no.