I didn’t have time to waste on anger or arguments. I went back past the lotus petals, only venting my feelings by pinging a penny against the Buddha at the top of the waterfall.
I next drove down to the South Side, to Colby Sommers’s mother, to try to gather any information about Isaiah’s cousin’s last evening on the planet. Various relations were comforting her, including Gertrude Sommers, who talked with me softly in one corner. Colby had been a weak boy and a weak man; he had liked to feel important by hanging out with dangerous people, and now, sadly, he’d paid the price. But Isaiah, Isaiah was a different story: she wanted to make sure I knew that I could not let Isaiah share Colby’s fate.
I nodded bleakly and turned to Colby’s mother. She hadn’t seen her son for a week or two, she didn’t know what he’d been up to. She did give me the names of some of Colby’s friends.
When I tracked them to a local pool hall, they put their cues aside, watching me with a glittering hostility. Even when I broke through the haze of reefer and bitterness that enveloped them, they didn’t tell me much. Yes, Colby had hung with some brothers who did sometimes run errands for Durham’s EYE team. Yes, he’d been flashing a roll for a few days, Colby was like that. When he was in the money, everyone got a share. When he was flat, everyone else was expected to ante up. Last night he’d said he was going to be doing something with the EYE brothers, but names? No, they knew no names. Neither bribes nor threats could shake them.
I left, frustrated. Terry didn’t want to suspect Alderman Durham, and the guys on the South Side were too intimidated by the EYE team to rat them out. I could go see Durham again myself, but that would be wasted energy when I didn’t have a viable lever. And anyway, right now my worries about Lotty, and Ulrich’s journals, made it more important that I try to figure out a way to get to the Rossys.
I was wondering if there was some way I could start checking their alibis for last night without showing myself too obviously when my cell phone rang. I was northbound on the Ryan, in that stretch where sixteen lanes cross each other again and again in something like a maypole dance—not the place to distract myself. I pulled off at the nearest exit to answer.
I’d hoped for Ralph, but it was my answering service. Mrs. Coltrain had called me from Lotty’s clinic. It was urgent, I should get back to her at once.
“She’s at the clinic?” I looked at the dashboard clock—Lotty’s Saturday hours were nine-thirty to one; it was past two now.
I don’t know the weekend operators at my service; this man read me the number Mrs. Coltrain had given him and hung up. It was the clinic, all right—perhaps she’d stayed on to do some paperwork.
Mrs. Coltrain is usually calm, even majestic—in all the years she’s managed the flow of people at Lotty’s storefront, I’ve only seen her flustered once, and that was when the clinic was invaded by an angry mob. When I called back today, she sounded as agitated as she had that day six years ago.
“Oh, Ms. Warshawski, thank you for calling. I—something strange has come up—I didn’t know what to do—I hope you—it would be good if you—I don’t want to impose. Are you busy?”
“What’s wrong, Mrs. Coltrain? Has someone broken in?”
“It’s—it’s something from Dr. Herschel. She—she—uh—sent a packet of dictation.”
“From where?” I demanded sharply.
“It doesn’t say on the packet. It came Federal Express. I’ve been—trying to listen to it. Something strange has happened. But I don’t want to bother you.”
“I’ll be there as fast as I can. Half an hour at the outside.” I made a U on Pershing and accelerated back on-to the Ryan, calculating route, calculating time. I was ten miles south of the clinic here, but the expressway curved sharply west before it reached the Irving Park Road exit. Better to get off on Damen and drive straight north. Eight miles to Damen, eight minutes unless the traffic glued. Then three miles on city streets to Irving, another fifteen minutes.
My knuckles were white on the steering wheel, I was clutching it so hard. What was wrong? What was in the tape? Lotty was dead? Lotty was a hostage somewhere and Mrs. Coltrain couldn’t bear to tell me on the phone?
The light at Damen was interminable. Steady, Old Paint, I admonished myself. No need to shoot out the tires on the Beemer that crowded around me to prove I had a right to the intersection. When I finally got to the clinic, I parked at a reckless angle and jumped out.
Mrs. Coltrain’s silver Eldorado was the only car in the tiny parking strip Lotty had installed on the clinic’s north edge. The whole street had a Saturday afternoon sleepiness to it: a woman with three small children and a large trolley of laundry was the only person I saw.