I started to shake my head, but the pain stopped me. “No. It sounds lovely, but I’ve got some work to do.”
“Come on, Vic,” Ralph protested. “Let the police handle this. You’re in rotten shape—you need to take the day off.”
“You could be right,” I said, trying to keep down my anger. “But I thought we went through all that last-night. At any rate, I’m not taking the day off.”
“Well, how about some company. Need someone to drive you?”
I studied Ralph’s face, but all I saw was friendly concern. Was he just having an attack of male protectiveness, or did he have some special reason for wanting me to stay off the job? As a companion he’d be able to keep tabs on my errands. And report them to Earl Smeissen?
“I’m going to Winnetka to talk to Peter Thayer’s father. Since he’s a neighbor of your boss, I’m not sure it would look too good for you to come along.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Why do you have to see him?”
“It’s like the man said about Annapurna, Ralph: because he’s there.” There were a couple of other things I needed to do, too, things I’d just as soon be alone for.
“How about dinner tonight?” he suggested.
“Ralph, for heaven’s sake, you’re beginning to act like a Seeing Eye dog. No. No dinner tonight. You’re sweet, I appreciate it, but I want some time to myself.”
“Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “Just trying to be friendly.”
I stood up and walked painfully over to the couch where he was sitting. “ I know.” I put an arm around him and gave him a kiss. “I’m just trying to be unfriendly.” He pulled me onto his lap. The dissatisfaction smoothed out of his face and he kissed me.
After a few minutes I pulled myself gently away and hobbled back to the bedroom to get dressed. The navy silk was lying over a chair, with a couple of rents in it and a fair amount of blood and dirt. My cleaner could probably fix it up, but I didn’t think I’d ever care to wear it again. I threw it out and put on my green linen slacks with a pale-lemon shirt and a jacket. Perfect for suburbia. I decided not to worry about my face. It would look even more garish with makeup in sunlight than as it was.
I fixed myself Cream of Wheat while Ralph ate toast and jam. “Well,” I said, “time to head for suburbia.”
Ralph walked downstairs with me, trying to hold out a supporting hand. “No, thanks,” I said. “I’d better get used to doing this by myself.” At the bottom he won points by not lingering over his good-byes. We kissed briefly; he sketched a cheerful wave and crossed the street to his car. I watched him out of sight, then hailed a passing cab.
The driver dropped me on Sheffield north of Addison, a neighborhood more decayed than mine, largely Puerto Rican. I rang Lotty Herschel’s bell and was relieved when she answered it. “Who’s there?” she squawked through the intercom. “It’s me. Vic,” I said, and pushed the front door while the buzzer sounded.
Lotty lived on the second floor. She was waiting for me in the doorway when I made it to the top of the stairs. “My dear Vic—what on earth is wrong with you?” she greeted me, her thick black eyebrows soaring to punctuate her astonishment.
I’d known Lotty for years. She was a doctor, about fifty, I thought, but with her vivid, clever face and trim, energetic body it was hard to tell. Sometime in her Viennese youth she had discovered the secret of perpetual motion. She held fierce opinions on a number of things, and put them to practice in medicine, often to the dismay of her colleagues. She’d been one of the physicians who performed abortions in connection with an underground referral service I’d belonged to at the University of Chicago in the days when abortion was illegal and a dirty word to most doctors. Now she ran a clinic in a shabby storefront down the street. She’d tried running it for nothing when she first opened it, but found the neighborhood people wouldn’t trust medical care they didn’t have to pay for. Still it was one of the cheapest clinics in the city, and I often wondered what she lived on.
Now she shut the door behind me and ushered me into her living room. Like Lotty herself, it was sparely furnished, but glowed with strong colors—curtains in a vivid red-and-orange print, and an abstract painting like fire on the wall. Lotty sat me on a daybed and brought me a cup of the strong Viennese coffee she lived on.
“So now, Victoria, what have you been doing that makes you hobble upstairs like an old woman and turns your face black-and-blue? I am sure not a car accident, that’s too tame for you—am I right?”