For a moment, Judy stopped tugging at her restraints. I couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, the pupils were so dilated, but when she spoke, her voice was soft and dull.
“Did I really say that? Is that why you won’t give me my morphine?”
I tried to assure her that no one was punishing her, that I admired her creativity hiding from her attackers, but her restless twitching began again. She shied from the “duck and cover” topic, and couldn’t or wouldn’t say who had shot her and her mother.
“You were pretty amazing back in Palfry,” I said, “getting away from the guys who killed Ricky Schlafly. That took real guts.”
Judy focused on me for the first time, her dark eyes large circles in her emaciated face: the Palfry debacle was something real in her mind that momentarily made her forget her desperate need for narcotics. “Not guts, I was terrified,” she whispered. “They shot Bowser. I was asleep and suddenly Bowser started barking. Ricky yelled that he was tired of the damned dog barking at nothing, but I looked out the window and there was this black SUV. I yelled at Ricky to wake up, get his shotgun. These men got out of the SUV and shot out the camera. Then they cut a big hole in the security fence and broke down the back door.
“Bowser tried to jump them but they shot him, Ricky and I were sitting on the stairs watching, it was so terrible. Delilah, she was always a ’fraidy-cat, Ricky used to kick her for running away, or kick me for loving her, she took off when they shot Bowser.”
Delilah, that was the waif Mr. Contreras and I were supporting.
Judy started gasping for air. Lotty put the oxygen tube back in her nose. After a bit her breathing became less labored.
“Delilah is going to be okay,” I said. “I brought her back to Chicago; she’s in the hospital right now.”
Judy’s eyes opened, a startled expression that turned wary: Was I trustworthy, or was I using the dog to con her?
“How did you get away?” I asked.
“When Ricky saw them shoot Bowser he undid the locks in the front door and ran outside. They chased him into the cornfield and I got in their SUV and drove up to Chicago.”
“Very cool head,” I said. “So you drove up to Freddie Walker’s place in Austin. Where’d you leave the SUV?”
“I gave it to Freddie. It was a Lincoln, brand-new, but he said it was too hot to sell as a whole car, so he had his boys strip it for parts.”
That was why Freddie had let her crash, I guess, and why he let her get high on his product. A brand-new Navigator’s parts would bring a nice little chunk of change.
“The people who shot Bowser and Ricky, were there two of them?”
She nodded vigorously. “I didn’t know them; they weren’t any of the local meth heads who Ricky sometimes fought with. This is too hard, remembering all that, I’m in pain, I’m giving you shit for nothing. At least Freddie gave me oxy for the SUV.”
“Yeah, you’re in a hard place,” I said, putting as much sympathy as I could into my voice. “I went back to Palfry and found the old dresser that Ricky tossed into the meth pit. I found the bank account that Benjamin Dzornen set up for your mother.”
“Those Dzornen shitheads? Are you working for them? That goddamn bitch Herta stole my money. Her daddy wanted me to go to college but she took that money and gave it to her children. If you’re working for her you can fuck yourself and her in the bargain.”
“I’m not working for the Dzornens. The last time I tried to talk to Herta Dzornen, she threw me out because I called her out for disrespecting your mother’s family.”
I spoke loudly and slowly. Judy eyed me warily.
“How did Martin find out about the money?” I asked. “Did you tell him, or was it your mother?”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Meds, meds, meds, meds,” Judy chanted. “You don’t get something for nothing. Get me some oxy, get me morph, and I’ll get you answers.”
Lotty and I exchanged looks and head shakes, which Judy saw.
“Yeah, you two bitches, you think God left you in charge of the planet, but He didn’t.”
“Ms. Binder,” I tried one last time, “your son came to visit you down in Palfry a few weeks ago. You argued over some documents. I know you had the bank passbook, the photo of Martina in the lab with Dzornen and Gertrud Memler. Wasn’t there also some document about the work Martina was doing at Innsbruck? You took those when you came to Martin’s bar mitzvah seven years ago—”
“It was my heritage,” Judy yelled. “Kitty hated Martina, she hated her science, I was the person who kept her name alive. I named my child after her to keep her memory green. Taking those papers was not stealing; it was preserving!”
Judy “preserved,” Homeland Security “confiscated.” All these pretty names for theft. You hear more euphemisms for lying, cheating, even pedophilia, on the news in a week than you hear truth in a year.
I changed the subject. “Martin used to visit you without Kitty’s knowing back when he was in high school.”