“I listened to you and Art out front,” I called. “The two of you agreed she’s as good as dead already. But you’d better get me first, because if you shoot at her, you’re dead meat.”
He swung so fast, I didn’t have time to drop before he fired. The bullet went wide as the shot boomed in the cavernous room. Ms. Chigwell crouched, white but stern, on the floor next to me. Unbidden, she took her keys from her sweater pocket. While she moved to one side of our protective vat, I slid to the other. When I nodded she darted around the end of the vat and hurled her keys at Dresberg’s face.
He fired at the movement. From the corner of my eye I saw Ms. Chigwell drop. I couldn’t go to her now. I got behind Dresberg and fired at him. The first shot went by him, but as he turned to face me I got him twice in the chest. Even then he fired two more rounds before collapsing.
I ran to him and jumped on his gun arm with all my force. His fingers loosened on the revolver. Jurshak was moving up on me, hoping to wrestle Dresberg’s gun away before I could get to it. Fury was riding me, though, choking the breath from me, covering my eyes with a hazy film. I shot Jurshak in the chest. He gave an enraged cry and fell in front of me.
Chigwell had stood next to Louisa’s stretcher throughout the fracas, his hands flaccidly at his side, his head hunched into his coat. I went over to him and slapped his face. I meant at first just to rouse him from his stupor, but my rage was consuming me so that I found myself pounding him over and over, screaming at him that he was a traitor to his oath, a miserable worm of a man, on and on, over and over. I might have kept at him until his body joined Jurshak and Dresberg on the floor, but through the haze I felt a tug on my arm.
Ms. Chigwell had staggered over, trailing blood on the dirty concrete. “He’s all of that, Miss Warshawski. All that and more. But let him be. He’s an old man and not likely to change at this time of life.”
I shook my head, exhausted and sick. Sick of the stench in the plant, of the foulness of the three men, of my own destructive rage. My gorge rose; I skipped behind a vat to throw up. Wiping my face with a Kleenex, I returned to Ms. Chigwell. The bullet had grazed her upper arm, leaving a bloody furrow of singed flesh but no deep wound. I felt a small measure of relief
“We’ve got to get into an office, someplace we can secure, and call the police. There’re at least three more men outside and you and I are not taking on any more thugs tonight. We’ve got to move fast before they start worrying about Dresberg and come looking for him. Can you hold out awhile longer?”
She nodded gamely and helped me bully her brother into showing us the way to his old office. I pushed Louisa’s stretcher behind them. She was still alive, her breath coming in short shallow gasps.
When we were inside with the door locked I moved Louisa into the tiny examining room to one side of the office. With the remaining shreds of my strength, I pushed the heavy metal desk athwart the door. I sank to the floor and pulled the phone down next to me.
“Bobby? It’s me. Sorry to wake you, but I need your help. Lots of help and fast.” I explained what had happened as clearly as I could. It took a few tries to get him to understand me and even then he was skeptical.
“Bobby!” My voice cracked. “You’ve got to come. I have an old woman with a bullet wound and Louisa Djiak with some awful drug in her and three thugs prowling outside. I need you.” The anguish got through to him. He took directions to the plant and hung up before I could say anything else.
I sat for a moment with my head in my hands, wanting nothing more than to lie down on the floor and cry. Instead I forced myself to stand up, to release the half-empty clip and slip in a full one.
Chigwell had taken his sister into the little examining room to patch up her arm. I wandered in to look at Louisa. While I stood there her eyelids fluttered open.
“Gabriella?” she said scratchily. “Gabriella, I might’ve known you wouldn’t forget me in my troubles.”
39
Plant Clean-Up
Louisa went back to sleep while I held her hand. When her weak grasp had relaxed I turned to Chigwell and demanded fiercely what he had given her.
“Just—just a sedative,” he said, licking his lips nervously. “Just morphine. She’ll sleep a lot for the next day, that’s all.”
From her seat at the desk Ms. Chigwell gave him a look of scalding contempt, but seemed too exhausted to put her feelings into words. I fixed a pallet for her in the examining room, but she came from a generation too modest to lie down in public. Instead she sat upright in the old office chair, her eyelids drooping in her white face.