Lotty lifted her thick eyebrows as I came into the living room. “Ah,” she said, “success shows in your walk. The office was all right?”
“No, but I found what they were looking for.” I took out the draft and showed it to her. “Make anything of it?”
She put on a pair of glasses and looked at it intently, pursing her lips. “I see these from time to time, you understand, when I get paid for administering to industrial accident victims. It looks totally in order, as far as I can tell—of course, I don’t read them for their content, just glance at them and send them to the bank. And the name Gielczowski means nothing to me, except that it is Polish: should it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t mean anything to me either. I’d better make a copy of it and get it stowed away, though. Have you eaten?”
“I was waiting for you, my dear,” she answered.
“Then let me take you out to dinner. I need it—it took a lot of work finding this, physical I mean, although the mental process helped—nothing like a university education to teach you logic.”
Lotty agreed. I showered and changed into a respectable pair of slacks. A dressy shirt and a loose jacket completed the outfit, and the shoulder holster fitted neatly under my left arm. I put the claim draft in my jacket pocket.
Lotty scrutinized me when I came back into the living room. “You hide it well, Vic.” I looked puzzled and she laughed. “My dear, you left the empty box in the kitchen garbage, and I knew I had brought no Smith & Wesson into the house. Shall we go?”
I laughed but said nothing. Lotty drove us down to Belmont and Sheridan and we had a pleasant, simple dinner in the wine cellar at the Chesterton Hotel. An Austrian wine store, it had expanded to include a tiny restaurant. Lotty approved of their coffee and ate two of the rich Viennese pastries.
When we got home, I insisted on checking front and back entrances, but no one had been around. Inside, I called Larry Anderson, my cleaning friend, and arranged for him to right my apartment. Not tomorrow—he had a big job on, but he’d go over with his best crew personally on Tuesday. Not at all, he’d be delighted. I got hold of Ralph and agreed to meet him for dinner the next night at Ahab’s. “How’s your face?” he asked.
“Much better, thanks. I should look almost presentable for you tomorrow night.”
At eleven I bade Lotty a very sleepy good night and fell into bed. I was instantly asleep, falling down a black hole into total oblivion. Much later I began dreaming. The red Venetian glasses were lined up on my mother’s dining-room table. “Now you must hit high C, Vicki, and hold it,” my mother said. I made a tremendous effort and sustained the note. Under my horrified eyes, the row of glasses dissolved into a red pooh It way my mother’s blood. With a tremendous effort I pulled myself awake. The phone was ringing.
Lotty had answered it on her extension by the time I oriented myself in the strange bed. When I lifted the receiver, I could hear her crisp, soothing voice saying, “Yes, this is Dr. Herschel.” I hung up and squinted at the little illuminated face of the bedside clock: 5:13. Poor Lotty, I thought, what a life, and rolled back over to sleep.
The ringing phone dragged me back to life again several hours later. I dimly remembered the earlier call and, wondering if Lotty were back yet, reached for the phone. “Hello?” I said, and heard Lotty on the other extension. I was about to hang up again when a tremulous little voice said, “Is Miss Warshawski there?”
“Yes, speaking. What can I do for you?” I heard the click as Lotty hung up again.
“This is Jill Thayer,” the little voice quavered, trying to speak calmly. “Can you come out to my house, please?”
“You mean right now?” I asked.
“Yes,” she breathed.
“Sure thing, honey. Be right out. Can you tell me the trouble now?” I had shoved the receiver between my right shoulder and my ear and was pulling on some clothes. It was 7:30 and Lotty’s burlap curtains let in enough light to dress by without my having to fumble for the lamp switch.
“It’s—I can’t talk right now. My mother wants me. Just come, please.”
“Okay, Jill. Hold the fort. I’ll be there in forty minutes.” I hung up and hurriedly finished dressing in the clothes I’d worn last night, not omitting the gun under my left shoulder. I stopped in the kitchen where Lotty was eating toast and drinking the inevitable thick Viennese coffee.
“So,” she said, “the second emergency of the day? Mine was a silly hemorrhaging child who had a bad abortion because she was afraid to come to me in the first place.” She grimaced. “And the mother was not to know, of course. And you?”