“In your place I’d be angry too. You have a right to expect service for the premiums you pay. Unfortunately, there are just too many dishonest people out there and the good guys get stuck as a result.”
We went on like that for forty-five minutes. Finally Seligman made an angry gesture. He moved to a massive secretary in one corner and opened its rollaway top. A pile of papers cascaded to the floor. He ignored those and pawed through a drawer behind the remaining papers until he found a couple of photos.
“I suppose you’d stay here until dawn if I didn’t give you these. I want a receipt. Then go, leave me alone. Don’t come back unless you’re telling me you’ve cleared my name.”
The pictures were both group shots, taken at some kind of family party. His daughters stood in the middle, on either side of his wife, while Rita Donnelly and two other young women flanked them. Those two were presumably her daughters, but I didn’t much care at this point—I was having too much trouble seeing.
I pulled a small memo pad from my bag to write out the date and a description of the pictures for Seligman. The letters danced around the page as I wrote; I wasn’t sure my note made sense. Seligman stuck it in the secretary, rolled the top back down, and hustled me out the door.
I drove home more by luck than skill. By the time I got there I was shivering and sweating. I managed somehow to make it upstairs to my bathroom before being sick. I felt a little better after that, but crept off to bed, putting on a heavy sweatshirt and socks before crawling under the blankets. As I got warm my tense neck and arm muscles relaxed and I drifted into a deep, drugged sleep.
The ringing phone brought me slowly back to life. I was buried so far down in sleep that it took some time to connect the noise with something outside me. After a long spell of weaving the ringing in with my dreams, my mind finally swam lazily back to consciousness. I felt newly born, the way you do when an intense pain has been washed out of your system, but the insistent bell wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Finally I stuck out an arm and picked up the receiver.
“H’lo?” My voice was thick and slurred.
“Vicki? Vicki, is that you?”
It was Elena, crying extravagantly. I looked at the clock readout in resignation: one-ten. Only Elena would rouse me at this godawful time.
“Yes, Auntie, it’s me. Calm down, stop crying, and tell me what the trouble is.”
“I—oh, Vicki, I need you, you’ve got to come and help me.”
She was well and truly panicked. I sat up and started pulling on the jeans I’d left on the foot of the bed. “Tell me where you are and what kind of trouble you’ve got.”
“I—oh …” She started sobbing heavily, then her voice disappeared.
For a moment I thought I’d lost the connection, but then I realized she was covering up the mouthpiece. Or someone else had covered it. She’d been running away and her pursuers had caught up with her? I waited in an agony of indecision, thinking I should hang up and summon Furey, not wanting to hang up until I was sure I’d lost her. Since I had no idea where to send police resources I waited, and after a couple of heart-wrenching minutes she came back.
“I ran away,” she sniffed dolefully. “Poor little Elena got scared and ran.”
So she hadn’t been in mortal terror, just rehearsing her act. I kept my voice light with an effort. “I know you ran away, Auntie. But where did you run to?”
“I’ve been living in one of the old buildings near the Indiana Arms, it’s been abandoned for months but some of the rooms are still in real good shape, you can sleep here and no one will see you. But now they’ve found me. Vicki, they’ll kill me, you’ve got to come help me.”
“Are you in the building now?”
“There’s a phone at the corner,” she hiccoughed. “They’ll kill me if they see me. I couldn’t go outside in the daylight. You’ve got to come, Vicki—they can’t find me here.”
“Who will kill you, Elena?” I wished I could see her face instead of just hearing her—it was impossible to sort out how much truth she was spouting along with the rest of it.
“The people who’ve been after me,” she screamed. “Just come, Vicki, stop asking so many goddamn questions, you’re like a goddamn tax collector.”
“Okay, okay,” I said in the soothing voice one uses with infants. “Tell me where the building is and I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Just kitty-corner to the Indiana Arms.” She calmed down to a quavering sob.
“On Indiana or Cermak?” I tied my running shoes.
“In-Indiana. Are you coming?”
“I’m on my way. Just stay where you are by the phone. Call 911 if you think someone really is coming.”
I turned on the bedside lamp. Dialing Furey’s home number, I carried the phone over to my closet. It rang fifteen times before I gave up and tried the station. The night man said Michael wasn’t in. Neither were Bobby, Finchley, or McGonnigal.