37
Checkup by Lotty, Ordered by Contreras
I slept around the clock that night, waking up around eleven with my abdomen so sore that I cried out when I tried to get out of bed. I gave up the effort and lay listening to the wind whip against the windows. It didn’t seem as though spring would ever come, or that I would ever care enough about anything—clients, baseball, food, sex—to want to get up again.
I wondered what Anton Kystarnik had said when his team reported in. Miserable losers, he’d cried in Ukrainian when they finally made their way back to his office. I will whip you all and send you to bed without supper. Or would his response have been vengeful? She has insulted me by embarrassing you. Bring me V. I. Warshawski’s head on a platter.
Staff Sergeant Jepson had dropped the two thugs at Thirty-first Street, a mile south of McCormick Place. If they couldn’t find a cab, it was only a mile or so to Printers Row, the Yuppie haven south of the Loop. Konstantin protested when Tim Radke yanked them from the backseat, but I told them I was doing them a favor.
“You’re getting soft because you only attack helpless targets. If any muggers are foolish enough to be out on such a bitter night, they’ll help you polish your street-fighting skills.”
When we were moving again, I asked Jepson to take me to my office so I could pick up my car. In his polite Marine voice, he told me I was in no condition to drive tonight, “ma’am.” He and Tim would take me home if I would give him the address.
After that, I dozed my way up to Racine and Belmont. When the vets woke me in front of my building, Tim said he’d get some work done on the Body Artist’s website on his lunch break the next day.
“You have the computer?” I was amazed that he’d remembered it in the middle of our street fight.
“I took it with me when Petra and I jumped ship. It’s under Jepson’s front seat.”
He and the staff sergeant helped me up the walk to my building. They made me feel old and frail, supporting my arms. I wasn’t a dried-up cougar, I was just dried up.
While I found my keys and unlocked the outer door, Tim asked, “This business tonight anything to do with Chad Vishneski?”
“It’s got something to do with it, I just don’t know what.” I remembered the mitt and sand in the trunk of my car. “I’ve got to get that out, too—I’ve got to keep it safe. If that’s what Rodney was looking for and he wakes up remembering that he didn’t get it, his master may think to look in my car.”
“We’ll take care of it, ma’am, if you give us your car keys,” Jepson said. “Tell me what you want me to do with it.”
“Drive it up to Cheviot labs in Northbrook. Take it to Sanford Rieff. I want the mitt and the contents and Chad’s duffel bag searched for—anything that may be in it. And I want a priority turnaround, which means paying a fifty percent premium. If you have time in the morning, I would be grateful if you took care of it.”
“Nothing but time, ma’am,” Jepson said. “I’m job hunting, these days.”
The dogs had been whining behind Mr. Contreras’s front door while we talked. The old man opened the door and the dogs ran to me, barking eager questions: Where had I been, What had I been doing, Was I all right, Could they trust these strangers, they seemed to ask. It was only as I extricated myself and the vets from their onslaught that I saw Petra had followed my neighbor into the hall. She’d needed petting, pulling together, and no one could do that better than her Uncle Sal.
When Petra saw me, she burst into tears. “I’ve been calling you and calling you,” she said. “When you didn’t answer, I thought you were dead.”
“Told you she had a hundred and nine lives,” my neighbor said, but he did come over to inspect me and my escort. “Why do you need to keep sticking your neck out, just so Peewee and I can break our hearts?”
I hugged him, feeling his unshaven chin against my face. “I’m as burned out as last year’s firecrackers. These are the heroes of the evening. A couple of Iraq vets, Tim Radke, Marty Jepson. Guys, Mr. Contreras fought at Anzio. Gave him a taste for grappa. Which I’m sure he’ll be glad to share with you.”
Before I left him and the young people with the dogs and the grappa, I asked Petra about her Pathfinder. As far as she knew, it was still in the middle of the street where I’d abandoned it.
“Tim, Marty, can you pull it to the curb if it’s still there when you go back to get Tim’s car? We’ll deal with towing and repairs when we have more time.”
Marty solemnly promised I could count on him, ma’am.
With that comforting thought, I staggered up the stairs to bed. I undressed only because I know that if you sleep in a bra you wake up uncomfortable. I didn’t even take time to pull on a nightshirt before falling deep into sleep.
The next day, when I’d finally forced myself out of bed, I called Terry Finchley at the Central District. He wasn’t available, so I told the receptionist that my business concerned Club Gouge. After a longish wait, Officer Milkova came to the phone.
When she said that Detective Finchley had warned her I might call about the Vishneski-Guaman case, I remembered her. She’d been one of the officers who’d responded the night Nadia Guaman was killed.
“Do you have any new information on the murder, ma’am?”
I was starting to feel embalmed, the way everyone under thirty was calling me ma’am.
“A lowlife named Rodney Treffer passed out on Lake Street last night, near the Ashland L stop. He’s been beating up people around Club Gouge. He and a team of creeps broke into the club two nights ago and attacked the owner. Last night, he attacked me. Can you find out if he’s in custody or in a hospital someplace?”
“I can’t give you confidential information about any citizen, whether they’re in our custody or not.” Milkova’s voice was severe.
“Ma’am,” I added.
“What?”
“You forgot your punctuation mark,” I explained. “Whether they’re in our custody or not, ma’am. So if my lawyer files an order of protection against Treffer, you can’t tell us whether he’s unconscious or anything?”
She was new to Finchley’s team; she didn’t know how to respond off the top of her head. “You said he passed out, then you said he attacked you. How could he do both?”
“He did them in the reverse order. First he attacked me, then he passed out. I want to know if he’s in a hospital or the morgue or even police custody.”
She thought this over. “I think I need to see you in person. Do you know where Detective Finchley’s office is?”
“I know where it is, but if you want to see me in person, you’ll have to come to me. Rodney hurt me badly enough last night that I’m not hiking down to Thirty-fifth and Michigan in this weather.”
“I’ll tell Detective Finchley you called.”
“He’ll be ecstatic at the news. Tell him I cracked the code on what secrets Kystarnik has been sending to his troops. Although maybe I should call the Secret Service—they’re the ones who’ve been playing cat and mouse with Kystarnik.”
“I think I’d better just ask Detective Finchley to call you,” Milkova said.
When she hung up, I made myself a large espresso and took it with me to drink while I soaked in a hot bath. My abdomen was a mass of purple-black. Jake Thibaut was leaving for Europe tomorrow night. If the blood in my hand had turned him green, what would the sight of my stomach do? Maybe if I wanted to preserve the relationship I should keep out of his way until he got home from his tour.
It was more important that I keep out of Kystarnik’s way. Just because I’d managed to wriggle out of his jaws last night didn’t mean I was home free—especially once he found out that my pals and I had shanghaied his crew. Although maybe Konstantin and Ludwig wouldn’t want Anton to know that a dried-up cougar had outwitted them.
But what papers did Anton think I had? And where had the Body Artist fled? And why had she been so angry when I tried to help her get away from Anton?
Those seemed to be enough questions to keep a fit and lively detective busy for a year or two. How could I handle them with just my cousin’s help—my young, inexperienced cousin who’d been badly shaken by last night’s assault?
When I was dry and warm, I wrapped my torso in an Ace bandage. By pulling it tight across my abdomen, I could move well enough to make my way downstairs to my neighbor.
His face lit up when he saw me. “I didn’t want to come up,” he said, “in case you were asleep. You looked like you was on your way to Grace-land last night, doll.”
By this, my neighbor meant a nearby cemetery where Chicago’s most famous citizens are buried, not Elvis’s Memphis home.
“Those were a couple of nice boys you brought around last night, real thoughtful,” he added. “They drove Peewee home, and the one boy, the Marine, came by a little bit ago. He brought your car keys and a note from that lab you use.”
Mr. Contreras pawed through the newspapers on his coffee table and came up with an envelope that had the Cheviot labs logo—two rams going head-to-head—on the corner. Inside were my car keys and a receipt from Sanford Rieff’s assistant, listing the duffel bag, the black armor mitt, and the sand, and summarizing the search I’d requested.
Mr. Contreras insisted on cooking for me, scrambled eggs, bacon, toast. When he saw how painful it was for me to sit down, he also insisted that I go see Lotty.
“We’ll take a cab, doll. You can’t take a chance. If you got a perforated kidney or something, you gotta get it looked at.”
“You know darned well how much I hate being in the medical maw,” I grumbled. “I can eat, I’m not bleeding when I go to the bathroom.”
“Even so, even so . . . I’m calling that service you used for the dogs when you was in Italy last summer; they’ll walk them until you’re fit again. And I’m going upstairs to get your coat while you finish your eggs.”
Lotty was in her clinic today, not at Beth Israel. When Mr. Contreras and I reached the storefront on Damen Avenue, we found a roomful of the usual clientele: streppy kids, overweight adults with diabetes, worried pregnant teens. Mrs. Coltrain, Lotty’s receptionist, has handled all of her patients for fifteen years, with the poise of Solti conducting the CSO. When I told her what had happened, she promised to fit me in as soon as she could.
While I waited, I used the clinic landline to call my cousin. Konstantin and Ludwig had told me last night that Anton was tracking me through my cell phone, so I just couldn’t take a chance on using it.
Petra was at her apartment, tired, nervous, not sure she was ready for detective work. “Marty Jepson is here, though,” she suddenly thought to say. “He came over to see how I was doing. And we’re watching some of the Body Artist’s DVDs together. So far, it looks like old stuff. Collages, things that she photographed and uploaded later.”
Jewel Kim, the advanced practice nurse who ran the clinic while Lotty was at the hospital, interrupted me then and took me into one of the exam rooms. “We can send you for an MRI if you want it, Vic, and I’ll have Lotty double-check you, but I don’t think you have any organ damage. I know it’s miserable outside, but you should put cold packs on your belly until the swelling goes down. Try arnica as well.”
Lotty came in a few minutes later. “Victoria, what on earth—no, never mind, I don’t have time, what with all these people worried that their colds are swine flu and the ones with swine flu who waited too late to come in. You weren’t reckless, no one could ever say you were reckless. Simply, you were minding your own business until someone kicked you. That’s good enough for me.”
“Thank you, Lotty, I knew you would understand.” I was bitter at her sarcasm. “In fact, I was minding my own business—at least, I was tending to my detective business. I do not go out of my way to get hurt. If a bully is running the street, do you want me to stay inside with the door locked and hope he hurts someone else?”
Lotty had been probing my abdomen with quick, skillful pressure, pinpointing the sorest spots, but she stopped, fingers over my right ovary. “I don’t suppose there’s a middle ground? Perhaps with a bully, there never is.”
She finished her probing. “So—do as Jewel suggests, a cold compress, arnica. I’ll give you prescriptions for a good anti-inflammatory, and an antibiotic, to be on the safe side. In a day or two, with your DNA, the worst will be past. You won’t run or let those dogs pull on you for a week.”
The last sentence was a command, not an observation, and I took it meekly with me to the waiting room.