Ghost Country (30 page)

She flushed, but her voice became even more remote. “Gian, what are you going to do tomorrow if a crowd of hyperthyroid women swarm to that wall wanting the Virgin’s blood?”

He hadn’t considered it and ranted for some time about how he’d have a cop on every square of concrete to bar access, he’d have squadrols ready to haul off the bodies, he’d have fire hoses, guns, dogs.

Harriet timed him for four minutes, which she added to his billing sheet. “You want to do all that on camera? That would be totally stupid if this turns into a big story…. My advice? First, you should post the area. Get signs out there ASAP saying ‘Danger: Wall Unstable, May Collapse.’ Rope off the sidewalk, so access to the garage isn’t affected if you do get a mob, and station some respectful young men in hotel uniforms down there to explain that it’s too dangerous to get close to the wall, but people can take pictures, or whatever they want. They can’t touch it because of the risk of injury. You might even bring down some chairs and a coffee cart, so that visitors see you are doing your utmost to be helpful.”

“Just the thing for gawking tourists, but not my clientele,” Palmetto grumbled. “They’re used to discretion, quiet and—”

“I’ve read the marketing brochures. How much quiet are they going to get if we have an armed confrontation at the garage?”

Palmetto was angry with Harriet: damned broad cost him three hundred dollars an hour. Between her and her stupid loser sister they’d gotten the hotel neck-deep in shit. He was fucked if he was going to jump again just because she was holding up a hoop.

“I’ll run it by our in-house people, see what they say.” He slammed the receiver in her ear.

Massaging her stiff shoulders, Harriet slowly collected the documents she would need for her morning hearing before the magistrate. She didn’t want a long discussion of Mara’s iniquities with
Grandfather—that clearly lay ahead—so she took her time, fussing with federal statutes, touching up her makeup, ambling to the elevators.

Damn Gian Palmetto anyway. He was more trouble than all her other clients put together. Let him get the advice of in-house counsel. Let the Olympus group handle the whole wretched mess. She’d be glad never to think about it again.

Long before Gian Palmetto could get his corporate review process under way, Harriet’s more dire predictions were realized. By midnight the wall was besieged.

A
LL THAT DAY
in the hospital Hector kept looking for Starr. On rounds he would glimpse her out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned he saw only a nurse with a medication cart, or no one at all. At one point he infuriated Hanaper by leaving a patient’s bed and running down the hall, so sure he was that Starr had passed the door, In the cafeteria he thought he saw her sitting at a far table. He shoved his way through the line, knocking the tray from the hands of one of the senior neurologists, bumping a little girl carrying a glass of milk so that it spilled down her dress, ignoring all the outraged cries behind him in his haste to get to the corner of the room. The woman sitting there, her black hair piled high on her head, scalloped around her ears, was a janitor. He felt so let down that he retreated to the residents bunkroom, emerging only when he heard himself paged to the outpatient clinic. He had forgotten it was Wednesday: his usual roster of therapy patients was waiting for their fifteen minutes of succor.

Hector was just finishing with his last patient when Dr. Stonds summoned him. Gretchen came to get him, disappointed that she didn’t have to interrupt a therapy session, but hoping the neurosurgeon
was going to tear into Tammuz for his unprofessional conduct in the emergency room Monday night.

The hospital gossip network had overheated from the load of stories about Hector and Starr. Gretchen and Charmaine believed the most lurid: Hector had tried to rape someone in the ER, and then beat up Millie Regier, the night charge nurse, when she tried to stop him. Millie was suing; he’d be lucky if he didn’t lose his license, Gretchen and Charmaine watched with anticipatory glee as he rushed from the clinic.

Hector thought Stonds was summoning him because they’d found Starr. He didn’t wonder why Stonds was bothering to let him know, but he was so afraid Hanaper might be there—Hanaper with his lascivious lips drooling with desire—that he ran all the way from the clinics to the surgery office wing.

“Yes, sir,” he gasped for breath. “Is she here?”

Dr. Stonds was too absorbed in his own concerns to find Hector’s eagerness odd. Indeed, the surgeon was accustomed to people treating his affairs as more important than their own.

“No, Tammuz. She’s down at that damned garage she seems to think is home these days. She’s a menace, to herself if not to others, and I want you to get her to come in for a thorough examination.”

“Yes, sir, of course. What has she done? She isn’t carrying a gun or a knife, is she?”

Stonds fiddled self-consciously with his desk set. “Not that I know of. But she’s physically very strong: she almost killed my housekeeper.”

Hector blinked at the thought of Starr in Stonds’s house. Why hadn’t he thought to look there on his quest last night? What had she made of the glacial granddaughter? And behind all the wonderings the secret gloating image: she was strong, she would fight, he would have to take her in his arms to subdue her.

He got up to go. “Does Dr. Hanaper know we’re bringing her in, sir? Will he approve the admission for me?”

“What the hell is going through your mind, young man? I
don’t need Hanaper’s approval to bring my own granddaughter into this hospital.”

“Your granddaughter?” Hector faltered.

“Dr. Tammuz, Dr. Hanaper has complained to me about you, and I have had reason to talk to you myself. If you cannot pay proper attention to the welfare of the people entrusted to your care, or to the instructions of senior staff, we will have to rethink your employment at this hospital. My granddaughter Mara, Who the hell else would I undertake so serious an errand for?”

“Starr,” Hector managed to say. “And Luisa, of course. The two missing patients you sent me out to find yesterday.”

“This isn’t County Hospital, Tammuz. I know you’ve been assigned to the homeless clinic the Lenore Foundation is running at the church, but you need to separate what you’re doing there from what you’re doing here. You’d better be on your way.”

Hector stumbled from the room, dizzy as he always seemed to be after talking to Stonds, as if slapped by converging waves. Through the half-formed thoughts: will they fire me … damned self-absorbed jagoff … what had Mara done to the housekeeper … lay the hope Starr would return to the wall. He walked the mile and a half to the hotel, on legs that wobbled with desire.

Starr wasn’t there. The only person in sight was Mara Stonds, slumped on the curb in front of the scaffolding. Her picket sign lay upside down in the street. A half-eaten apple dangled from her hand, Nicolo, the kindly garage attendant, had brought her the apple after Brian Cassidy was taken to the hospital: he not come back to bother you, very sick, cannot—pantomiming inhaling—yes, cannot brease.

Mara had trouble with the apple because of her broken tooth. Besides, she felt too apathetic to want food. Her anger had subsided. She was only very tired. She couldn’t go home now: Harriet would never forgive her. What had possessed her to accuse her sister in front of all those news people? She’d wanted to chase the revulsion from Harriet’s face, but now Harriet would be her implacable enemy for life.

As long as Brian Cassidy was yelling insults at her she was able to stay angry, but he hadn’t been back since the television crews chased him into the garage. Mara giggled at the time, his simian arms useless against a camera, but with his disappearance, and the end of the excitement of talking to the reporters, she fell into a lethargy so bleak that she couldn’t even summon the energy to stand.

Hector sat next to her on the curb. She looked at him listlessly when he softly said her name. She didn’t remember him from her brief glimpse at the hospital a week ago, but assumed he might be a hotel employee trying to talk her into leaving—there had been several such conversations this afternoon, including one with an old buddy from the convention office who used to drink with her.

“I’m Dr. Tammuz, Ms. Stonds: we spoke briefly at the hospital last week. Your grandfather says you’re not feeling well.”

“How does he know? He hasn’t seen me in over a week.”

Her misery made him temporarily forget his longing for Starr. “He says you got upset and hurt his housekeeper. Do you want to tell me about it?”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Are you here to put me in the locked wing on his orders, or because you want to know what went on with Mrs. Ephers?”

“No one has said anything about the locked wing, Ms. Stonds. Your grandfather just wants me to talk to you in the hospital, where we can see whether there’s some problem we might be able to help you with.”

“He wants to lock me up, don’t lie to me, I hate liars more than anything on this planet.”

“He says you tried to kill his housekeeper. Is that a lie, too?”

“She had a heart attack.” Mara was on her
feet
, shouting at him. “She had a heart attack because she was mad at me for finding some old papers. She’s like Grandfather’s familiar, she slips around the place guarding his secrets. Everyone on the planet but me bows down when he passes, so don’t you pretend you aren’t here on his orders. ‘Oh, we’ll just go to the hospital to talk,’ oh, sure, and then
when I’m stupid enough to believe you he’ll shoot me full of some shit and pat you on the back. Well, screw you,
Doctor.
I’m not that big a fool.”

She picked up her plastic bag of possessions and fled, before he could even ask her about Starr. He stayed on the curb, too tired to give chase. Not wanting to give chase, anyway. Despite her ugly outburst he felt sorry for her. Stonds was hard to work for, imagine what he’d be like to live with—Hector didn’t blame Mara for running away from home.

He couldn’t face Dr. Stonds again tonight, his seal-like bark: What is wrong with you, young man? I send you on a simple errand, any fool could go to Underground Wacker and force my granddaughter to come into the hospital, so you must be lower than a fool. Maybe Stonds would make Hanaper fire Hector for failing to retrieve Mara. The thought failed to frighten him. At least then he’d be able to sleep as much as he wanted.

P
ATSY WANACHS REALIZED
early in the evening that she would have her hands full this Wednesday. Most nights, Hagar’s House didn’t open until seven-thirty, to make sure all the youth activities had ended before any homeless women crossed the threshold. True, the women had a separate entrance, true, they were in the basement, not the main body of the church, but parents, with visions of homeless women or their pimps luring their children away to perform demonic rites, or giving them lice, insisted that their paths not cross.

On Wednesdays, because of Bible study, the shelter opened an hour earlier. Around six women began gathering on the sidewalk outside the shelter’s entrance, jostling for places in line before all the beds were handed out.

Tonight Jacqui and Nanette arrived first. As other women started showing up, the two began to pour out the tale of Madeleine’s death.

Some of the women had seen Mara on the news. Was it true that the garage man had threatened Maddy’s life? Nicole demanded. All true, Nanette said. Only because she was having herself a vision there. Poor Maddy and her voices, Jacqui added.

But was it really the Virgin’s blood? LaBelle wanted to know. Did it perform miracles?

No, no, that was all in poor Maddy’s head, Jacqui said—if the wall performed miracles, Maddy would be alive now, she’d be well now.

But had anyone ever actually tried asking for something, something direct, LaBelle persisted. Maybe Maddy never tested it. La-Belle thought they should go over and test the wall, no, not straightaway, she wasn’t giving up her place in line, thank you very much: she’d been walking all day. But in the morning.

And what would she ask for? Nicole asked derisively. A house, with a hundred beds and plenty of food? Oh, and a manicurist to fix up their feet, not to mention some clothes?

You don’t ask the Virgin for that kind of stuff, LaBelle said. She heals wounded souls, She doesn’t mess around with houses and clothes.

Oh, what do you know about that? Caroline snorted. You was never a virgin, which was almost true, technically, since the first time one of her uncles raped LaBelle she was six, and by the time she was thirteen her mother was trading her daughter’s body for drugs two or three times a week.

Before the two of them could start fighting in earnest, Patsy Wanachs came out to open the gate. LaBelle asked her if she’d seen the news, seen that girl talking about how the hotel killed Maddy.

Patsy snorted. “Mara Stonds was born a troublemaker and she’ll probably die one. I wouldn’t believe her if she told me this church was on Orleans Street.”

“But it is on Orleans Street,” LaBelle said, a worried crease between her eyes.

“That’s her point, but I don’t think little Mara is a troublemaker—she’s only troubled,” Jacqui said, maybe the only person who’d ever seen Mara as small, thinking of her as young, scared like all of them were. “Yes, she’s a troubled girl, but she was brave to stand out there today, stand up to that garage man. He’s a mean man and a big one.”

Patsy frowned at Jacqui as she swept the women up the side path to the basement entrance. “Mara’s grandfather, who’s been looking after her since she was born, has never had anything but heartache for his pains. He’s trying to get her medical help now, but she’s running around on the streets because she’s too sick to know it’s for her own good. If you run into her you should persuade her to check herself into the hospital.”

All the women fell silent at that. The idea of someone going out of their way to offer medical care—that sounded good on the surface, but below the surface of hot meals and hospital beds lay forcible injections and incarcerations, surrounded by the howling damned.