If he’d done something like that—I couldn’t imagine trying to break the news to Bobby. I’d tried today without evidence. If proof came in—I shuddered. It just better not be me that lets Bobby know about it, that was all.
When Murray came out of Sal’s office I went in to call Lotty to let her know what I was doing. She’d heard the story of my bomb from her clinic nurse, who’d called after watching the six o’clock news and was well and truly alarmed. She wanted me to come stay with her, wait in seclusion until the police caught my assailant, but when she heard what response they were giving me she reluctantly agreed I was making the right decision.
“Only, Vic—be careful, all right? I couldn’t bear it if you got killed. Will you think of me before you stick your head in front of a gun?”
“Christ, Lotty, I’ll think of me before I do that. Don’t. Don’t think I’m that careless of my life. I’m more frightened now than I can remember being in a good long while. If Bobby Mallory were paying the least attention to me, I wouldn’t touch this business with a barge pole.”
We talked a little longer. By the time we hung up I was close to crying. I got up slowly from Sal’s desk and went back through the mahogany door to the bar. My palms were tingling with nervousness, but a warm afterglow from the whiskey kept my stomach in place.
The bar had cleared out. Sal was washing the empties as her cousin brought them in from the tables. She finished sticking a row of glasses in their slots above the bar and came over to me.
“You sure you want to take off now, girl?”
“Yup.” I stuck my hands deep in my pockets. My right fingers ran into metal. I pulled out the Cavalier keys—I’d forgotten putting them there. The sight of my Chevy logo stamped into their heads increased my nervousness.
Sal isn’t given to demonstrativeness but she came around the front of the bar to hug me tightly. “You be careful, Vic. I don’t like this at all.”
“It’s a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done,” I recited in attempted bravado.
“If you die you’re not going to land in a better place than you’ve ever been, so just watch yourself, you hear?”
“Do my best, Sal.”
Murray offered me a lift north, “Then maybe I’ll just cruise around the block every now and then to see whether you’re still alive.”
“Shut up, Ryerson,” Sal said roughly. “Gallows humor isn’t going down well tonight.”
We stood awkwardly silent for a few minutes. A late customer came in, breaking the spell. Murray and I left while Sal stirred a martini for him.
Murray and I have a style of banter together that somehow precludes true intimacy. Tonight I was too nervous to respond in kind to his jokes. Too nervous to respond at all. I kept rubbing my palms dry against my jean legs and trying not to imagine what MacDonald might do next.
44
An Old Friend Catches Up
Murray dropped me at the neighborhood car rental. He waited while I checked the engine—whether out of courtesy or because he was hoping for another dynamite story, since he’d missed the first, I didn’t ask. No one could have known I’d called Bad Wheels for a car; it was just my jangling nerves that made me look.
The Tempo’s engine ignited with a lurching rumble, but no flames shot out from under the hood. When Murray saw I wasn’t going up in smoke, he tore off in his battered Fiero, leaving me drumming my fingers on the wheel in indecision.
The sun had set. It would be light for another half hour or so, not really long enough for me to go hunting Elena with any confidence. If Michael had found and killed her, would it matter that her body lay waiting for me until morning? Of course she wouldn’t be alone, exactly—there were all those rats I’d seen last week.
It made my palms and feet tremble when I remembered the little ball of fur I’d encountered groping for my flashlight in the dark. I drove home, parking on Nelson west of Racine and going down the alley to the back of my building.
Peppy set up a terrific barking when I came in the back gate. Mr. Contreras appeared at the kitchen door, holding her on a short leash with his left hand and carrying a pipe wrench in his right.
“Oh, it’s you, doll. Gave me a start. I thought maybe someone was sneaking up on you.”
“Thank you,” I said meekly. “I was just creeping up on myself. I didn’t want to be ambushed in the stairwell.”
“No need to worry about that. Her highness and I are keeping a sharp eye out.”
He let go of the leash—the dog was whimpering in her eagerness to greet me. Her tail was whipping up a great circle—not the portrait of a fierce guard dog. I kissed her and fondled her ears. She danced with me back to the stairs and clattered up with me, convinced this was the prelude to a major run. Mr. Contreras trudged up behind us as fast as his stiff knees would allow.