The nurse’s aide didn’t care about my grief one way or another, but she did agree I couldn’t go out in public without any clothes. She went to the charge nurse, who scrounged an old sweatshirt for me from someplace. By the time we’d done all that, and found an orderly to wheel me to the lobby, it was almost nine.
Conrad had used police privilege to park right in front of the entrance. He was asleep when the orderly wheeled me out, but he came to when I opened the passenger door.
“Woof. Long night, Ms. W., long night.” He knuckled sleep from his eyes and put the car into gear. “You still in the old crib up by Wrigley? I heard you mention a boyfriend to the doc.”
“Yes.” To my annoyance, my mouth was dry and the word came out as a squawk.
“Not that Ryerson guy, I trust.”
“Not the Ryerson guy. Morrell. A writer. He got shot to pieces last summer covering the Afghanistan war.”
Conrad grunted in a way that managed to heap contempt on mere writers who get shot to pieces: he himself had been hit by machine-gun fire in Vietnam.
“Anyway, your sister tells me you haven’t taken monastic vows, either.” Conrad’s sister Camilla sits on the board of the same women’s shelter I do.
“You always did have a way with a phrase, Ms. W. Monastic vows. Nope, none of them.”
Neither of us spoke again. Conrad turned his police-issue Buick into Jackson Park. We joined a heavy stream of cars, the tag end of the morning rush, filing through the Jackson Park construction zone onto Lake Shore Drive. A feeble autumn sun was trying to break through the cloud cover, and the air had a sickly light that hurt my eyes.
“You called it a crime scene,” I finally said, just to break the silence. “Was it arson? Was that Frank Zamar the firemen carried out?”
He grunted again. “No way of knowing till we hear from the medical examiner, but we’re assuming it was—talked to the foreman, who said Zamar was the only person left in the building when the shift ended. As far as arson goes—can’t tell that, either, not until the arson squad goes through there, but I don’t think the guy died from neglect.”
Conrad switched the conversation, asking me about my old friend Lotty Herschel—he’d been surprised not to see her down at the hospital with me, her being a doctor and my big protector and all.
I explained I hadn’t had time to make any calls. I kept wondering about Morrell, but I wasn’t going to share that with Conrad. Probably the hospital hadn’t bothered to call him—otherwise, surely, he would’ve phoned me, even if he couldn’t make the drive. I tried not to think of Marcena Love, sleeping in Morrell’s guest room. Anyway, she was frying other fish these days. These nights. I abruptly asked Conrad how he liked being so far from the center of action.
“South Chicago is the center of action, if you’re a cop,” he said. “Homicide, gangs, drugs—we got it all. And arson, plenty of that, lots of old factories and what-do being sold to the insurance companies.”
He pulled up in front of my building. “The old guy, Contreras, he still living on the ground floor? We going to have to spend an hour with him before we go upstairs?”
“Probably. And there’s no ‘we’ about it, Conrad: I can manage the stairs on my own.”
“I know you got the strength, Ms. W., but you don’t think it was nostalgia for your beautiful gray eyes that brought me to the hospital this morning, do you? We’re going to talk, you and I. You’re going to tell me the whole story of what you were doing down at Fly the Flag last night. How did you know the place was going to blow up?”
“I didn’t,” I snapped. I was tired, my wound was aching, the anesthesia was dragging me down.
“Yeah, and I’m the Ayatollah of Detroit. Wherever you are, people get shot, maimed, killed, so either you knew it was going to happen or you made it happen. What got you so interested in that factory?”
There was bitterness in his voice, but the accusation stung me to an anger that roused me from my torpor. “You got shot four years ago because you wouldn’t listen to me when I knew something. Now you won’t listen to me when I don’t know anything. I am exhausted from you not listening to me.”
He gave a nasty police smile, the pale sunlight glinting on his gold front tooth. “Then your wish is granted. I am going to listen to every word you say. Once we finish running the gauntlet.”