Blood Shot (6 page)

“I’m a lawyer,” I said quickly. “I’m looking for Joey Pankowski.”

“Some lawyer,” she said contemptuously. “You’d better ask in Queen of Angels Cemetery—that’s where he’s spent the last two years. At least, that’s his story. Knowing that bastard, he probably pretended to die so he could go off with his latest little chickadee.”

I blinked a little under her fire. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pankowski. It’s an old case that’s been settled rather slowly. A matter of some twenty-five hundred dollars, not really worth bothering you about.”

Her blue eyes almost disappeared into her cheeks. “Not so fast, lady. You got twenty-five hundred, I deserve that money. I suffered enough with that bastard, God knows. And then when he died there wasn’t even any insurance.”

“I don’t know,” I said fussily. “His oldest child—”

“Little Joey,” she said promptly. “Born August 1963. In the Army now. I could hold it for him till he gets home next January.”

“I was told there was another child. A girl born in 1962. Know anything about her?”

“That bastard!” she screamed. “That lying, cheating bastard. He screwed me when he was alive and now he’s dead he’s screwing me still!”

“So you know about the girl?” I asked, startled at the thought that my search might be over so easily.

She shook her head. “I know Joey, though. He could of had a dozen kids before he got me pregnant with little Joey. If this girl thinks she’s the first, all I can say is you better run an ad in the Little Calumet Times.”

I took a twenty from my purse and held it casually. “We could probably advance something from the settlement. Do you know anyone who could tell me for certain if he had any children before little Joey? A brother, maybe? Or his priest?”

“Priest?” she cackled. “I had to pay extra just to get his bones into Queen of Angels.”

She was thinking hard, though, trying not to look directly at the money. At last she said, “You know who might know? Doc at the plant. He talked to them every spring, took their blood, their histories. Knew more about them than God, Joey once said.”

She couldn’t tell me his name; if Joey ever mentioned it, she couldn’t be expected to remember it after all this time, could she? But she took the money with dignity and told me to come back if I was in the neighborhood.

“I don’t expect to see any more of it,” she added with unexpected cheerfulness. “Not from what I know of that bastard. If my old man hadn’t made him, he wouldn’t of married me. And between you and me, I’d of been better off.”

8

The Good Doctor

Louisa and Caroline were returning from the dialysis center when I stopped by. I helped Caroline maneuver Louisa into a wheelchair for the short ride up the front walk. Getting her up the five steep steps took ten minutes of patient labor while she leaned heavily on my shoulder to hoist herself up each rise, then rested until she had enough wind for the next one.

By the time we had her settled in her bed, her breathing had turned to shallow, stertorous gasps. I panicked a little at the sound and at the purplish tinge beneath her waxy green skin, but Caroline treated her with cheerful efficiency, giving her oxygen and massaging her bony shoulders until she could breathe on her own again. However much Caroline might irritate me, I could only admire her unflagging goodwill in looking after her mother.

She left me alone with Louisa while she went off to make herself a snack. Louisa was drifting into sleep, but she remembered the Xerxes doctor with a hoarse little chuckle: Chigwell. They called him Chigwell the Chigger because he was always sucking their blood. I waited until she was sleeping soundly before releasing my hand from the grasp of her bony fingers.

Caroline was hovering in the dining room, her little body vibrating with anxiety. “I’ve wanted to call you every day, but I’ve forced myself not to. Especially last week when Ma told me you’d been by and she’d ordered you not to look for him.” She was eating a peanut-butter sandwich and the words came through thickly. “Have you found out anything?”

I shook my head. “I tracked down the two guys she remembers best, but they’re both dead. It’s possible one of them might have been your father, but I don’t have any real way of knowing. My only hope is the company doctor. He apparently used to compile copious records on the employees, and people tell their doctor things they might not say to anyone else. There’s also a clerk who worked at the corner grocery twenty-five years ago, but Connie couldn’t remember his name.”

She caught my doubtful tone. “You don’t think any of these guys might have been the one?”

I pursed my lips, trying to put my doubts into words. Steve Ferraro had wanted to marry Louisa, baby and all. That sounded as though he knew her after Caroline’s birth, not before. Joey Pankowski did seem like the kind of person who could have gotten Louisa pregnant and gone off unconcerned. Which would fit. That repressive household, Connie’s and her total ignorance of sex—she might well have turned to some happy-go-lucky type. But in that case why be so upset about it now? Unless she’d absorbed so much of the Djiak’s fundamental fear of sex that the very memory of it terrified her. But that didn’t fit my memories of Louisa as a young woman.

“I don’t know,” I finally said helplessly. “It just has the wrong kind of feel to it.”

I debated with myself a minute, then added, “I think you need to prepare yourself for failure. My failure, I mean. If I can’t learn anything from the doctor or track down this clerk, I’m going to have to throw it in.”

She scowled fiercely. “I’m counting on you, Vic.”

“Let’s not play that record again right now, Caroline. I’m beat. I’ll call you in a day or two and we’ll take it from there.”

It was almost four, time for the evening rush hour to congeal the traffic. It was close to five-thirty before I’d oozed the twenty-some miles home. When I got there Mr. Contreras stopped me to ask about the burrs I’d allowed the sacred dog to collect in her golden tail. The dog herself came out and expressed herself ready for a run. I listened to both with such patience as I could muster, but after five minutes of his nonstop flow I left abruptly in mid-sentence and headed for my place on the third floor.

I took off my suit and left it on the entryway floor where I’d be sure to remember it for the cleaners in the morning. I didn’t know what to do about the shoe, so I left it with the suit—maybe the cleaners would know a place that could resurrect it.

While I ran a bath I pulled my stack of city and suburban directories from the floor under the piano. No Chigwell was listed in the metropolitan area. Naturally. He’d probably died himself Or retired to Majorca.

I poured an inch of whiskey and stomped into the bathroom. While lying half submerged in the old-fashioned tub, it occurred to me that he might be in the medical directories. I hoisted myself out of the tub and went into the bedroom to call Lotty Herschel. She was just getting ready to leave the clinic she runs near the corner of Irving Park and Damen.

“Can’t it wait until the morning, Victoria?”

“Yeah, it can wait. I just want to get this monster out of my life as fast as possible.” I sketched Caroline and Louisa’s story as quickly as I could. “If I can run this Chigwell down, I only have one other lead I need to look into and then I can get back to the real world.”

“Wherever that is,” she said dryly. “You don’t know this man’s first name or his speciality, do you? Of course not. Industrial medicine probably, hmm?”

I could hear her rustling through the pages of a book. “Chan, Chessick, Childress. No Chigwell. I don’t have a complete directory, though. Max probably does—why don’t you give him a call? And why do you let this Caroline run you through hoops? You are manipulated by people only when you allow yourself to be, my dear.”

On that cheering note she hung up. I tried Max Loewenthal, who was executive director of Beth Israel Hospital, but he had gone home for the day. As any rational person would have. Only Lotty stayed at her clinic until six, and of course a detective’s work is never done. Even if you’re only willingly responding to the manipulations of an old neighbor.

I poured the rest of the whiskey down the sink and changed into my sweats. When I’m in a febrile mood the best thing to do is exercise. I picked up Peppy from Mr. Contreras—neither he nor the dog was capable of harboring a grievance. By the time Peppy and I returned home, panting, I’d run the discontent out of my system. The old man fried some pork chops for me and we sat drinking his foul grappa and talking until eleven.

I reached Max easily in the morning. He listened with his usual courteous urbanity to my saga, put me on hold for five minutes, and came back with the news that Chigwell was retired but living in suburban Hinsdale. Max even had his address and his first name, which was Curtis.

“He’s seventy-nine, V.I. If he doesn’t talk willingly, go easy on him,” he finished, only half joking.

“Thanks a whole bunch, Max. I’ll try to restrain my more animal impulses, but old men and children generally bring out the worst in me.”

He laughed and hung up.

Hinsdale is an old town about twenty miles west of the Loop whose tall oaks and gracious homes were gradually being accreted by urban sprawl. It’s not Chicagoland’s trendiest address, but there’s an aura of established self-assurance about the place. Hoping to fit into its genteel atmosphere, I put on a black dress with a full skirt and gold buttons. A leather portfolio completed the ensemble. I looked at my navy suit on the entryway floor as I left, but decided it would keep another day.

When you go from the city to the north or west suburbs, the first thing you notice is the quiet cleanness. After a day in South Chicago I felt I’d stepped into paradise. Even though the trees were barren of leaves and the grass matted and brown, everything was raked and tidied for spring. I had total faith that the brown mats would turn to green, but couldn’t imagine what it would take to create life in the sludge around the Xerxes plant.

Chigwell lived on an older street near the center of town. The house was a two-story neo-Georgian structure whose wood siding gleamed white in the dull day. Its well-kept yellow shutters and a sprinkling of old trees and bushes created an air of stately harmony. A screened porch faced the street. I followed flagstones through the shrubs around the side to the entrance and rang the bell.

After a few minutes the door opened. That’s the second thing you notice in the burbs—when you ring the bell people open the doors, they don’t peer through peepholes and undo bolts.

An old woman in a severe navy dress stood frowning in the doorway. The scowl seemed to be a habitual expression, not aimed at me personally. I gave a brisk, no-nonsense smile.

“Mrs. Chigwell?”

“Miss Chigwell. Do I know you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a professional investigator and I’d like to speak with Dr. Chigwell.”

“He didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone.”

“Well, ma’am, we like to make our inquiries unannounced. If people have too much time to think about them, their answers often seem forced.”

I took a card from my bag and handed it to her, moving forward a few steps. “V. I. Warshawski. Financial investigative services. Just tell the doctor I’m here. I won’t keep him more than half an hour.”

She didn’t invite me in, but grudgingly took the card and moved off into the interior of the house. I looked around at the blank-windowed houses next door and across the street. The third thing you notice in the suburbs is, you might as well be on the moon. In a city or small-town neighborhood, curtains would flutter as the neighbors tried to see what strange woman was visiting the Chigwells. Then telephone calls or exchanges in the Laundromat. Yes, their niece. You know, the one whose mother moved to Arizona all those years ago. Here, not a curtain stirred. No shrill voices betokened preschoolers recreating war and peace. I had an uneasy feeling that with all its noise and grime, I preferred city life.

Miss Chigwell rematerialized in the doorway. “Dr. Chigwell has gone out.”

“That’s very sudden, isn’t it? When do you expect him back?”

“I—he didn’t say. It will be a long while.”

“Then I’ll wait a long while,” I said peaceably. “Would you like to invite me inside, or would you prefer me to wait in my car?”

“You should leave,” she said, her frown deepening. “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“How can you know that, ma’am? If he’s away, you haven’t spoken to him about me.”

“I know who my brother does and does not wish to see. And he would have told me if he wanted to see you.” She shut the door as forcefully as she could, given both their ages and the thick carpeting underneath.

I returned to my car and moved it to where it was clearly visible from the front door. WNIV was playing a cycle of Hugo Wolf songs. I leaned back in the seat, my eyes half closed, listening to Kathleen Battle’s golden voice, wondering what there was about talking to an investigator that would fluster Curtis Chigwell.

In the half hour I waited I saw one person go down the street. I began feeling as though I were on a movie set, not part of a human community at all, when Miss Chigwell appeared on the flagstone walk. She moved determinedly to the car, her thin body as rigid as an umbrella frame, and as bony. I courteously got out.

“I must ask you to leave, young woman.”

I shook my head. “Public property, ma’am. There’s no law against my being here. I’m not playing loud music or selling dope or doing anything else that the law might construe as a nuisance.”

“If you don’t drive away now, I’m going to call the police as soon as I’m back inside.”

I admired her courage: to be seventy-something and confront a young stranger takes a lot of guts. I could see the fear mingling with the determination in her pale eyes.

“I’m an officer of the court, ma’am. I would be happy to explain to the police why I want to speak to your—brother, is it?”

That was only partially true. Any licensed attorney is an officer of the court, but I much prefer never talking to the police, especially suburban cops, who hate urban detectives on principle. Fortunately, Miss Chigwell, impressed (I hoped) by my professional demeanor, didn’t demand a badge or a certificate. She compressed her lips until they almost disappeared into her angular face and went back to the house.

I had barely settled back in my car when she returned to the walk and beckoned me vigorously. When I joined her at the side of the house she said abruptly:

“He’ll see you. He was here all along, of course. I don’t like telling his lies for him, but after all these years it’s hard to start saying no. He’s my brother. My twin, so I got into too many bad habits too long ago. But you don’t want to hear all that.”

My admiration for her increased, but I didn’t know how to express it without sounding patronizing. I followed her silently into the house. We went through a passageway that looked onto the garage. A dinghy was leaned neatly on its side next to the open door. Beyond it was a tidy array of gardening tools.

Ms. Chigwell whisked me along to the living room. It was not large, but gracefully proportioned, with chintz furniture facing a rose-marble fireplace. While she went for her brother I prowled around a bit.

A handsome old clock stood in the center of the mantel, the kind that has an enamel face and brass pendulum. On either side of it were porcelain figures, shepherd girls, lute players. A few old family photos stood in the recessed shelves in the comer, one showing a little girl in a starched sailor dress standing proudly with her father in front of a sailboat.

When Ms. Chigwell returned with her brother, it was obvious they’d been arguing. His cheeks, softer than her angular face, were flushed and his lips were compressed. She started to introduce me, but he cut her off sharply.

“I don’t need you to oversee my affairs, Clio. I’m perfectly able to look after myself.”

“I’d like to see you do so, then,” she said bitterly. “If you’re in some kind of trouble with the law, I want to hear what it is now, not next month or whenever you feel brave enough to tell me about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I seem to have caused a problem, most inadvertently. There’s no trouble with the law that I know of, Miss Chigwell. Merely, I need some information on some people who used to work at the Xerxes plant in South Chicago.”

I turned to her brother. “My name is V. I. Warshawski, Dr. Chigwell. I’m a lawyer and a private investigator. And I’ve been retained as the result of a lawsuit whose settlement leaves some money to the estate of Joey Pankowski.”

When he ignored my outstretched hand I looked around and chose a comfortable armchair to sit in. Dr. Chigwell remained standing. In his ramrod posture he resembled his sister.