I knew I was furious, but I was still so tired, and lethargic from the residue of morphine in my system, that I couldn’t feel the anger. “Conrad, I’m tired, I’m in pain, I held a burning woman in my arms a few nights ago and couldn’t save her life. Don’t make me play twenty questions. And don’t accuse me of things you know are simply beyond me. One more innuendo about this, about how I might be implicated in an attack on the people who live in my childhood home, and you will never speak to me again. Even if you want to buy me World Series tickets, you’ll funnel your invitation through my attorney.”
He sucked in a breath. “The lady says she saw you. She says she went around to the front of the house to wait for us and the fire department and saw you across the street watching it all.”
I made a face. “Oh, please. It was dark, right? And she’d seen me once through an inch-wide chain bolt. She saw someone else and is confused. Or she knows who really did it and is so frightened of that person that she wants to finger a stranger.”
Conrad stood up and looked down at me. “I believe in you, Vic. I really do. I’m the only person in the Fourth District who knows you grew up in that house, and I’m keeping it that way. For now. But I’d like to put you in a lineup for Se?ora Andarra . . . for my own peace of mind, if nothing else.”
29
ALL THOSE FRIENDLY GOVERNMENT AGENTS
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE A TIME OF FRUSTRATING INACTION while I let my eyes heal enough that I could get to work. Lotty took me home with her, and I continued to build up my strength, using the gym in her building’s basement, making phone calls during the day while she was at her clinic or the hospital.
My first day at Lotty’s, Mr. Contreras came over in the morning before Lotty left for work. He brought a small suitcase with clothes that Petra had packed; he would have been embarrassed to rummage in my underwear drawer himself. He also brought the dogs, which annoyed Lotty because her apartment is full of glass tables and museum-quality artwork, including a small statue of Andromache salvaged from the ruins of her grandparents’ art collection. Mitch’s exuberant energy made her so tense that she terminated the visit quickly, on grounds that I didn’t have the stamina for it.
“You mean you don’t,” I said. But I took the dogs out to the hall behind the kitchen, where we waited for the service elevator.
“Peewee wants to visit,” Mr. Contreras said. “I told her I was sure you’d want to see her.”
“Absolutely. The sooner, the better. Can you go up to my place and collect my phone charger so she can bring it with her?” I couldn’t tie up Lotty’s phone but I needed to start connecting myself to the land of the living. “And here are my car keys. Get her to drive you over to pick up my car on Kedzie before I get a hundred meter violations and twenty boots.”
I didn’t think I could stand to use my old handbag again. When I had stuck my hand in to fish out my keys, it came out covered in ash. Sister Carolyn had known I was a PI only because my license had been the plastic on top when she looked at my wallet. The credit cards underneath it had fused together with my driver’s license. I called my card companies for replacements, but I’d have to go in person to the Secretary of State’s Office for a new PI license.
After Mr. Contreras left, Lotty went to her clinic on Damen. I resisted the impulse to go back to bed and phoned Sister Carolyn instead. I wanted to know if she’d been able to find any more bottle fragments in Sister Frankie’s apartment.
“The police came almost as soon as you’d left. They wanted to know who broke the seal on Frankie’s door. I told them it must have been the intruder we chased down the stairs. They put a padlock on the door, so we can’t get in.”
“Bolt cutters,” I said absently, flexing my fingers inside their gauze wrappers, imagining working a pick into the padlock.
“We’ll think about that,” the nun said drily. “But I want to know who’s watching our building. When you were here, you said it was the federal government.”
“The feds came to see me in the hospital: someone from Homeland Security, someone from the FBI, and local guys from the Bomb and Arson squad. It was the day after the fire, so I don’t remember it clearly. They know who lives in your building, all the families. Come to think of it, they’re probably listening to this conversation, so forget the bolt cutters.”
“Eavesdropping!” Zabinska was almost speechless with fury.
I suggested she come see me at Lotty’s so we could talk about it privately. I wanted to speak to her anyway, now that I was more alert mentally, to learn anything Sister Frankie might have said to her about Steve Sawyer’s involvement in Harmony Newsome’s murder.