Hardball (20 page)

I sat up in bed and looked at my arms. “Somehow, I don’t seem to have a shirt on.”

“Before we talk? Do you know what it took to get in here? I had to find the name of a patient and pretend to be visiting her. And then I had to skulk around until I could get at a computer and hack in to find your room number. They won’t let me back in. I’m not leaving until you talk.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d welsh on your end of the deal, but don’t worry your perfectly groomed head. Mr. Contreras will be glad to bring me some clothes. He loves me most when I’m on the DL.” I closed my eyes behind my dark lenses and leaned back against the pillows.

“Oh, damn you, you manipulative bitch, Warshawski!”

“I’m going to call the nurse in ten seconds, Ryerson. I’m not the bottom-feeder who hacked into a hospital computer system.”

“You’re the bottom-feeder who got a nun fried.”

I sat up and pulled off my shades. “You put that out anywhere—in print, on a blog, in a text message—and you will spend the rest of your life defending a libel action, do you hear me?”

There was an uneasy silence between us, before Murray said, “You were there when she was attacked.”

I ignored him. “And to speak in such language about Sister Frances’s death . . . She worked her whole life for social justice and civil liberties, and you think you can talk about her death like a Chris Matthews gag line! Do you know what it’s like to hold someone whose head is on fire, burning on top her body like the wick on a candle? Get out of here!”

“I’m sorry, V.I., okay? We all spend too much time trying to think of the next clever, cynical thing to say. That was tasteless and thoughtless. I apologize.” He pulled out his cellphone, in contravention of all the posted signs, and called someone to buy me clothes. He even gave his gofer a credit-card number and told her to deliver them to the hospital.

I put my shades back on. The dim light in the room was making my eyes hurt. And, besides, I’d started crying, which I didn’t want Murray to see.

“What are your sources saying?” I asked after a moment. “Do they think she was attacked because of her immigrant work?”

“We’re not getting anything off the street about that,” Murray admitted. “The nun in charge of the Freedom Center, a Sister Carolyn Zabinska, says they got death threats back when the Iraq war started—the nuns were opposed to it and started these weekly vigils against it—but no one’s ever threatened them because of their prison or immigrant-aid work.”

He paused. “People are wondering why she was attacked the very night you visited her.”

I lay very still in the bed, eyes closed. “What people? Besides you, of course.”

“Just what I hear around,” Murray said.

“Ever since Global bought the
Star,
you’ve been more on the entertainment side than the crime beat,” I said, still angry, wanting to prick him as he had me. “So who you hear from doesn’t carry the punch it used to.”

“When have I
ever
skimped on a story, Warshawski?” Murray was furious now, too. “You on your pedestal, it’s easy to work solo as an investigator, but I have to work for a company if I want to write for a newspaper. And my sources trust me.”

I looked at my wrapped hands and wished I worked for a big company where someone would pick up the slack when I was on the disabled list. “So what are your sources telling you about the perps? Lawrence Avenue was hopping when I rang Sister Frankie’s bell. They all suffer from witness-phobic amnesia?”

I couldn’t see his face through my lenses in the darkened room, but Murray was still breathing hard. He didn’t speak for a long moment, but, despite my nasty accusation, he was a reporter through and through. He wanted my story and knew he had to answer some questions if I was going to talk.

“There are a ton of witnesses to the perps. A Ford Expedition drove up at high speed, honking. Everyone jumped out of the way, and the Expedition pulled up onto the sidewalk. A guy—or maybe a gal, but they’re pretty sure a guy—with a stocking pulled over his head got out, threw the bottles, jumped back in, and the Expedition took off before anyone really realized what was happening.”

“License plate?”

“No one bothered. Or they know and aren’t telling. I’ve heard both stories,” Murray said. “One of my sources says the boys in the alley recognized the SUV and are afraid to admit it for fear of being targeted next. Someone who will fire bomb a nun will pretty much do anything.”

I was quiet for a moment, digesting that. “The FBI and OEM had a stakeout going. Any news out of them?”

“Yeah, the news that the First Amendment is DOA. We have to clear anything we print through them. Turds! And so’s my editor. Bitch just nodded and blinked, and said the rules have changed and we need to follow them if we’re going to bring people the news.”

His words brought my own police interrogation back to me. That was the question nagging at me, the woman from Emergency Management wanting to know what Sister Frances had told me about Harmony Newsome. I lay back against the mattress, feeling sick again. OEM already knew about Harmony Newsome when they talked to me.

In halting words, I explained why I’d been at the Freedom Center: the old murder, the search for Lamont. And the fact that OEM already knew about my interest in Harmony Newsome before their investigator talked to me.

“Is that because they were monitoring Sister Frankie’s calls?” I finished. “Or mine? Or both? Murray, if she died because I was there—”

“Hey, hey, Wonder Woman, don’t get all weepy now,” Murray protested.

I couldn’t help it. The doubts that had nagged me all summer about my personality, why I couldn’t keep a relationship alive. Did I bring destruction to everyone around me?

27

IN THE FIRED HOUSE

LOTTY SAILED INTO MY ROOM JUST THEN, FOLLOWED BY two of the residents and a medical student. Lotty sent Murray out of the room with a comment that stung like the snap of a whip.

I fumbled for tissues on the cart next to me. Lotty found the box but warned me not to rub my eyes.

“How did Ryerson get in here at all?” she demanded. “What is going on in this hospital, that I give a specific order only to have it overridden? I have expressly forbidden any visitors in your room to make sure neither reporters nor police harass you. You didn’t invite Murray in, did you?”

She had two fingers on the pulse in my neck. “This is why you can’t have visitors. You’re vulnerable. You shouldn’t be crying like this. And they tell me you disappeared this afternoon while I was in surgery. Was that to organize this rendezvous?”

“I went down to the coffee shop for an espresso, and the trip did me in. I fell asleep in a chair and didn’t know people were paging me.”

I didn’t like lying to Lotty, but it was sort of the truth. I wondered if she was right, though. I wondered if I’d wanted to see Murray. I could have reported him to hospital security when I spotted him in the lobby, but I didn’t. Maybe my unconscious brain was hoping he’d track me down.

Lotty grunted, and asked the residents to update her on my progress. While the medical student stood respectfully to one side, the two residents reviewed the damage to my corneas and optic nerves. I felt a stab of frustration, followed by a bigger stab of guilt. I was alive, I would recover. Maybe while I was on the DL, I could train myself to sleep days and work nights.

“I’m thinking of bringing you home with me when they discharge you tomorrow.” Lotty sounded like she was adopting a dog that had been returned to the pound too many times by people it bit. “I’m worried about your health. And I’m worried about your safety.”

“My safety? Murray was saying that some sources think the bombers were after me, not Sister Frances. Have you heard the same thing?”

Lotty dismissed the residents and the student, and sat on the edge of the bed, frowning. “I was thinking more about your recklessness. Does he have any proof?”

“I don’t know. You booted him out before I could get him to come clean. I wouldn’t even be worrying about it if the woman from Homeland Security hadn’t pressed me on what Sister Frances told me about the Newsome inquiry.” I looked at Lotty’s dim outline. “Lotty, I can’t go home with you if I’m a target of fire bombers. I can’t risk you being hurt.”

“You’d be safer at my place than in your own home. We have a doorman, we have security. You’re completely exposed in your building. And if someone threw another fire bomb, those children on the second floor would be hurt.”

“I’m so helpless!” I burst out. “To save my eyes and skin I have to sit in the dark. I need to be out talking to people, I need to be at my computer looking up data. What am I going to do?”

Lotty put an arm around me. “Does everything have to happen today? In a few days, you’ll be able to get around, as long as you’re careful about the sun. You know how it is when you’re in the hospital: you feel more helpless there than after you get out.”

She stayed until a supper tray arrived at six and insisted on my eating something that might once have been a chicken. When she left, I tried to sleep, since I couldn’t read or watch TV. Instead, I kept thrashing around in the narrow bed, worrying about my role in Sister Frankie’s death.

A little before eight, a volunteer came in with a shopping bag that had been left at the front desk for me. Murray’s gofer had come through with my clothes. The bra was a plain white that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself, but it didn’t matter. With my bandaged hands, I couldn’t fasten it, anyway. I managed the buttons on the shirt and pulled on the jeans. The gofer had dutifully brought me a size 31. After two days of living on IVs, I could have gotten away with a 30.

Just being dressed made me feel better. I pulled on my soft brown boots again and looked in the bathroom mirror. Something would have to be done about that hair: I looked like a freak show.

The by-product of hospitalization is plastic. The room was full of bags and trays and specimen cups and banana-shaped things for throwing up in. I filled a bag with cups, made a hump in the bed that might look like a sleeping V.I., turned out the lights, and looked into the hall.

Eight o’clock. Visitors were leaving, nurses were handing out meds. A crowd to mingle with. Auspicious.

You know the old movie where Humphrey Bogart has been sandbagged and pumped full of drugs and, even though his head is spinning, he gets up and goes after serious bad guys? I’ve always thought it was really stupid and unrealistic.

I was right. I tried to stride confidently, despite my freaky hair and the big plastic glasses, but, like Bogie in
The Long Goodbye,
I saw the hall spin around me. I had to clutch the wall to keep from falling over. Not so auspicious.

When I reached the front lobby, I was sweating and light-headed. The hospital was a bit over two miles from the building where Sister Frankie had lived. Normally, I could have walked it, but I was nowhere near normal. I still had eight dollars. Not enough for a taxi, but it would get me there and back on the bus.

I wobbled my way two blocks north to a Lawrence Avenue bus stop. Murray had unsettled me. I kept stopping, not just because I was unsteady but to see if I had company, whether cops or robbers. If I really had been the fire bombers’ target, I was hoping they were monitoring me so closely that they knew I was still in the hospital. Tonight might be my one chance to go back to the Freedom Center apartments without anyone knowing.

One thing about the Uptown neighborhood: women with weird hair who have trouble staying upright are a dime a dozen. Two women just like me, stooping to scoop up cigarette butts in the midst of a ferocious shouting match, passed while I waited for the bus. No one gave any of us a second glance.

A bus lumbered up to the stop. I fed two of my crumpled bills into the money maw, awkwardly because of my gauzy mitts, and slumped back onto one of the seats set aside for the disabled and elderly. I felt disconnected from the world around me, and when we got to the Kedzie stop I had to coach myself on how to walk down the steps.

My car was parked on Kedzie, but my keys had been in the handbag I’d dropped in Sister Frankie’s apartment. I walked up Kedzie to see if I could get into my Mustang—I have picklocks in the glove compartment—but of course I’d locked all the doors. However, the city hadn’t forgotten me: three tickets for meter violations were stuffed under the wipers. I ground my teeth but left the tickets. I couldn’t do anything about them tonight.

It was easy to spot Sister Frankie’s apartment from the street: the windows were boarded over and the brick and concrete around the frames were charred black. Lights showed through open windows on some of the upper floors, though, meaning the fire had been contained quickly enough for the building’s wiring and plumbing to be usable. That was one mercy, that others hadn’t been injured in or made homeless by the blast. It also meant the federal morons watching the building hadn’t stopped the fire department from doing their job.

The street was full, as it had been three nights ago, with kids and shoppers and lovers and drunks. People stared at me: the building was a stage and I was a new actor on it, but I couldn’t help that.

I took off my plastic dark glasses. The sun had set, the streetlamps were on, and the city was bathed in the haze of midsummer twilight. Surely that wouldn’t hurt my eyes. I pushed the gauze back on my right hand, exposing my thumb and my forefinger, and used the edge of the glasses to push in the tongue on the front door. As I’d thought the other night, it was a simple lock to undo. I hoped if OEM was watching, they wouldn’t come after me.

The stairwell smelled like a lab sink, a musty, sour chemical stench mingled with charred wood and damp. I wished for a flashlight, the only light coming from a single bulb two stories up. I worried about missing steps or tripping on debris, but my flashlight was also in my glove compartment. The things you can do so easily with money: walk to the nearest drugstore, buy a flashlight. Hop a cab, buy a new outfit. No wonder women who look like me walk down the street shouting their heads off.

I stopped at the landing in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was barely visible in the dim light. I stroked her rough-carved wooden cheeks. It would be so wonderful to think she could protect me, to believe Sister Frances was even now clasped to her bosom. I crept on up to the second floor and turned right toward Sister Frances’s apartment.

The hall was even darker here because the windows facing the street were boarded over. Each step was a gamble, like walking on a rocky beach in the dark. I couldn’t tell what I was stumbling across: wallboard, wires, parts of light fixtures. I ran my fingertips along the wall to steady myself but lost my footing when the wall disappeared. I grabbed at open air and found myself on my knees in the rubble.

Even to my damaged eyes, the yellow crime scene tape across Sister Frances’s door gleamed dully in the dark. I found the knob and turned it. Unlocked. The door was sealed, but it gave way to a firm shoulder push.

Inside the apartment, the air was so acrid that my eyes started to tear. I put my plastic glasses on to protect my eyes, then took them off. The thick lenses meant I couldn’t see anything at all.

I stepped backward, catlike, from the heart of the damage. Sister Frances had brought tea in from the kitchen, and I was hoping I might find a flashlight in there. In the dark, there is no sense of distance or space. I kept banging into furniture until I found a wall that I could follow step by cautious step.

I finally found the swinging door that opened into the kitchen. It seemed like the gate between normalcy and hell. On one side were the charred, sodden remains of Sister Frankie’s life, on the other was an
Ozzie and Harriet
set, everything clean and tidy. The windows weren’t boarded over, and, in the lights from the back stairs and the alley streetlamps, I could make out the shapes of stove, refrigerator, cabinets. The nun’s breakfast cup and bowl were on the counter with a box of cornflakes, set out for the morning meal she wouldn’t be eating. I tried the lights, but the power had been turned off to this part of the building.

I couldn’t find a flashlight, but I took a spatula and a ladle from a jar by the stove. I saw matches and a candle, but as my hand hovered over them my whole body shuddered at the idea of more fire.

Moving cautiously back to the front room, I could see enough in the ghostly light sifting in from the kitchen doorway to start picking through the debris. I wanted to find my handbag. But what I really wanted was glass from the Molotov cocktail bottles.

I’d been in a chair near the door when the barrage had started. I’d put my bag on the floor next to me. I squatted on my haunches and shuffled forward. My fingers pressed against a damp, matted mess. It felt like a clump of rotting lettuce, but when I forced myself to delve more deeply I realized it was a book. The floor was thick with dead books, and I shuffled past them on legs that shook with grief as much as fatigue.

I found a damp, revolting mass of Styrofoam that might have been the chair cushions, and bits of the frame of the chair, but I didn’t come across my bag. However, in the middle of the room one of my clumsy hands closed on a piece of glass. It took several tries with the spatula to lift the shard from the floor and into the ladle and then into one of the plastic cups in my bag. Feeling around the area, I found bigger pieces: the neck of a bottle and a chunk that might have been part of the base. I collected these in my makeshift containers as well.

I had no way of photographing the spot where I’d found this evidence or labeling the evidence bags, which, anyway, weren’t certifiable as free from contamination. And while this evidence could never be used in court, it might tell me something helpful about the assailants.

I pushed myself to my feet. I was spasming up and down my body with fatigue. I longed to lie down where I was, on the pile of soggy books, and give way to exhaustion. I groped for a wall to steady myself. My mother’s face came to me, the day she came home from the doctor to tell me there was no hope, no treatment, no help, her dark eyes large against skin turned transparent and luminous with mortality.

“Victoria, my darling one. Grief and loss and death, they’re part of life on this planet. We all mourn, but it is selfish to turn mourning into a religion. You must promise me that you will embrace life, never turn your back on the world because of your private sorrow.”

My grief had come in the loud sobs of adolescence, and then in shouting matches with my dazed, helpless father.

“Your papà is not as strong as you and me,
carissima
. He needs your help, not your anger. Don’t turn against him now.”

The words had brought no comfort then and brought no comfort now. They were a burden, a load I had to carry, that of needing to be stronger than the strongest person near me. Sister Frances had died. I had to be strong enough to look after her in death since I’d been unable to look after her in life.

I picked my way backward, slogging through books and boards and cushions like an Arctic explorer who’d never reach the Pole. I was nearly at the door when I saw a light dance underneath it and dance away. I held my breath. A phantasm of fatigue? It came again, a flashlight poking along the jamb. OEM? FBI? Punks? I had nothing to defend myself with except a kitchen spatula and no strength to use it.

The door opened. A tall figure stood there hesitantly, playing the flashlight around the room, and then turned to look over the shoulder. The movement swept the light upward so that it played on the figure, revealing spiky hair.

“Petra Warshawski!” I said. “What are you doing here?”