In his room, Steve stared into the paper cup Betty-who-talks-too much had just placed on the bedside table. Tegretol, Coumadin, Hep arin, Amitriptyline. “That Amitriptyline’s the antidepressant,” said Betty. “It’ll turn up the corners of your little old mouth even more than it usually is, Mr. Babe. It surely will. I’d stay and talk more, but I’ve got to run.”
After taking his lunchtime medication he rolled out into the hall, took the elevator back down to the second floor and headed for the cafeteria. In the hallway on the way to the cafeteria, Linda and Frank, the two right-brainers who talked incessantly, were arguing. Frank kept referring to rehab as childish, saying they treated them like “god damn little shit kids.” Linda answered by saying it felt good to be ba bied sometimes. Of course what they really said wasn’t that simple. There were all matter of adjectives and adverbs tossed in at random in their strange conversational brew, and he’d heard this argument be fore, so he moved on.
A little farther down the hall he saw the new nurses’ aide. He couldn’t think of her name, but she had red hair and was in her early twenties and cute as hell. For a moment he recalled the redheaded aide down on the first floor Marjorie claimed was fired for being rough on residents. Marjorie had said the aide was a bull dyke. Well, this new one was certainly not a bull dyke. He elbowed Phil, his across-the-hall neighbor, as he rolled to a stop outside the cafeteria, pointing to the new redhead and saying, “Cute kid.”
Phil nodded appreciatively and whispered, “Jesus fuck.”
The floor-to-ceiling windows in the cafeteria were streaked with rain. Instead of letting in sunshine, the windows brought in the gloom and cold. Thick rain clouds made it dark enough to force drivers to switch on their headlights. He could see the line of headlights in the distance on the main road through the naked trees bordering the entrance road.
As Steve ate he looked forward to hearing Jan’s voice. They’d be practicing using the phone again in occupational therapy today and he’d take a moment to call his own number so he could hear Jan’s cheery voice on their voice mail. Since finding out he called their voice mail during therapy, Jan had changed her greeting quite often, keep ing it general, yet between the lines he was able to sense the cheeriness in the message was not for the person from the long-distance company or credit card company, but just for him. One thing he had never told Jan was that he sometimes called their voice mail service number and keyed in the access code to bring up the maintenance program that would allow him to change the personal greeting. Of course he never changed Jan’s greeting. All he wanted to do was listen to it. And, in the middle of the night, if he called their number, he would have awakened Jan. So, instead, he sometimes called the voice mail service number for a shot in the arm in the middle of the night.
During the free time after lunch, he took the elevator back to the third floor. In his room he freshened up in the bathroom, then went to his phone. He called home, and when there was no answer after four rings, Jan came on. “Hi, you’ve reached the Babe residence. All of us Babes and our security guards must be cleaning our weapons or on the phone right now. Leave a message and one of us will call you back. B-ye.”
The “B-ye” was for him. He could hear it in the way Jan had start ed the word on a high pitch and ended it on a low pitch. After hearing her voice, he considered calling Jan’s cell number, but she usually left the phone in the car instead of carrying it with her. Besides, he didn’t know whether they’d taken Jan’s or Lydia’s car to Wisconsin.
He hung up and called the voice mail service number and keyed the access code to get to the mailbox. There were four messages: One hang up, another from a woman at the billing department here at Hell
in the Woods, the third from Phil Hogan.
“Jan, this is Phil. Give me a call. I might have something.”
Have something? Phil Hogan? He pictured Phil. Always in the same lousy suit, a wrinkled shirt, his tie askew, his face red from too much booze.
What the hell was going on? If a cop was checking into something for Jan, it had to be about Marjorie’s death. But why would Jan ask a loser like Phil for help? And why now when she’s not even around? Damn it Jan! I told you not to mess with this!
The fourth message was from Lydia Jacobson.
“Hi, Jan, having a great time. Guess who I met up with? Remem ber that girl in the Black Power group who changed her name to Gwen Africa? Well, she kept the name all these years and we’ve been hanging around together and she’s a riot. She teaches here and has this bitch of an apartment. Anyway, I’ll get off before my time runs out. Gwen says she remembers you and wants to visit us down there. Sorry you couldn’t come. Say hi to Steve. See ya.”
“Sorry you couldn’t come?” he said aloud. “Jesus fuck, Jan!”
He called Jan’s cell and got a busy signal, which meant she was using the phone. When he called back thirty seconds later, he got the canned message saying the cell phone customer was unavailable or had traveled beyond the service area. He’d told Jan to leave the phone on when she wasn’t with him. He’d also told her to sign up for all the other services like messaging and call waiting. When was that? Not too long ago. Wait, a new cell phone. She’d gotten a new cell phone and said she hadn’t bothered setting everything up on it. But he’d gotten a busy signal earlier which meant she’d just been on the phone, and if she was just on the phone …
Maybe if he kept calling back. But when he called back less than
a minute later, he still got the unavailable message, and kept getting it again and again each time he called. He must have tried calling Jan twenty or thirty times. While he punched the numbers and lis tened to the message again and again, he felt as if he’d just recently had the stroke and was going through a strange repetitive therapeu tic exercise. He knew he probably wouldn’t get through, but he kept calling anyhow.
As had happened in the past during stressful times in rehab, he recalled how Jan had, from the beginning, immersed herself into the bizarre mystery of who he was, or who he had been. And now he wondered if, because of his arrogance—thinking he’s still a damn detective and knows something’s fishy about Marjorie’s death when he probably doesn’t know shit—he had gotten Jan into trouble. He’d made her do it. He’d been a selfish bastard, wanting even more atten tion than he was already getting. He cursed himself out loud. “Bas tard! Selfish bastard!”
While he continued cursing himself, he looked around his room for something that might help the situation. His computer was on the small desk near the window. He knew that inside the single desk drawer was the plug-in modem and the telephone cord. He wheeled to the desk, opened the drawer and began frantically unraveling the cord while at the same time backing the wheelchair toward the baseboard plug where the phone on the bedside table was plugged in. He’d plug into the world, get on the Internet and …
And what? Send an e-mail to the state police to look for Jan’s Audi? Sure, they’d do that. They probably dropped everything when ever they got an e-mail from an idiot on the Internet.
“Crazy bastard,” he said, as he sat with the tangled telephone cord in his lap.
There must be someone he could e-mail. Get his message down ex actly the way he wants it so the situation is crystal clear. But that would take time, and if Jan were in trouble, which she probably wasn’t …
No. Not e-mail. No other choice. No other choice but to open his mouth and let some words come out and hope for the best. There was only one person who would listen and, perhaps, do something. Only one person outside this place, besides Jan, who wouldn’t hang up on the creep on the other end of the line who sounded drunk or de mented because he couldn’t get his words right.
He put the tangle of wire aside, sat back in his wheelchair and took several deep breaths with his eyes closed. When he felt he was calm enough, under control enough to use everything he’d learned in rehab, he opened the bedside table drawer and took out the sheet of phone numbers he kept there. Then he picked up the phone and cal
led Central Division Homicide, Chicago Police Headquarters.
“Homicide.”
Breathe in, concentrate, talk. “Detective Harris.”
“Which Harris? Sergeant Bob or Lieutenant T?”
“Lieutenant T.”
“You can dial direct to 6466, but I’ll put you through.”
A pause, then, “Lieutenant Harris.”
Her voice was so smooth it threw him for a moment. He pictured her face, her skin dark and smooth like her voice.
“Hello?”
Breathe in, concentrate, talk. “Tamara. Steve.”
“Hey, Steve. How you doin’? Jan called the other day and said you had a seizure. Everything okay there?”
He could hear the concern in her voice. Breathe in, concentrate …
“Take your time, Steve. Didn’t mean to sound rushed. I’ll bite my lip and shut up so you can talk.” She paused for a while, then said, “I’ll only interrupt once in a while, like I just did. I’ll try to keep my mouth shut like when I visit. You want to say ‘repeat’ or something
like that to cue me like we did last time I visited?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m here with my lips zipped.”
Thank God for Tamara. But don’t bother thanking her. Concen trate on what’s got to come out.
“I love you, Tam. Shit. Okay, take it easy.”
Breathe in, concentrate, speak slowly. “It’s Jan. Something fucked up. I mean, maybe gone, maybe trouble, I don’t know. Should be with Lydia, university reunion. Not there.” He paused a moment, then said, “Repeat?”
“Okay, Steve. I’ve written it down. I’ll talk it back to you slow so you can think about it. I guess what you’re saying is Jan’s missing. Or at least you don’t know where she is. She was supposed to be with Lydia at a reunion. I assume that’s Jan’s friend Lydia Jacobson?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Steve, but just because she’s supposed to be with Lydia but isn’t, you can’t know she’s in trouble.”
Silence, his turn to speak. But what to say? “I … I do.”
“How do you know?”
“Fuck! I do!”
“Okay, all right. Just had to make sure … you know, with drug side effects and all. You don’t need to comment on that last comment. I’m just being straight with you. I know that’s what you want. So if you need to try this out on me, let’s get back to what you know, and what I know. I’m aware that Jan and Lydia met a long time ago when they were at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The reunion Jan’s supposed to be at must be there. It that right?”
“Right. More. Gwen Africa.”
“Was that a name? Did you say Gwen Africa?”
“Right. Teacher. Call. Talk to Lydia. Where the hell’s Jan?” He was about to say more, but lost his train of thought and said, “Repeat?” instead.
“Okay, take it easy, it’s no big deal. You want me to call a teacher at the University of Wisconsin named Gwen Africa. You figure she’ll know how to get in touch with Lydia. Then when I talk to Lydia, if I can find her, I’ll ask if she has any idea where Jan could be. Is that about right?”
“Hooray. I mean, right. Also …”
The word also made him stumble as if the four letters of the word were two feet tall and he was walking down a path in the dark and there they were banging against his shins. But he concentrated, forc ing the two-foot-tall letters back down the side path in his brain from which they’d emerged, and tried to go on.
“Jan spoke Phil Hogan,” he said. “Not sure what. You see? Repeat that?” “Uh, okay. You also want me to talk to Phil Hogan over at the Eighth District because Jan spoke with him about something?”
“Right. Checking for Jan. Don’t know what.”
“Okay, Steve, I guess I can try to do this.” Tamara hesitated, then said, “You know it’s probably nothing and we’ll laugh about it tomor row. I guess the bottom line is you think Phil was checking into some thing for Jan and you want me to feel him out in a way that might help figure out where she is and what’s going on. Is that it?”
“Absolutely.”
“And of course you can’t tell me exactly what this is about, is that right?” “Right.” “Huh, just like old times.” Steve waited in his room for Tamara to call back. While he waited,
he called Jan’s cell number several more times but kept getting the un available message. Finally, he fired up his computer, accessed the notepad and typed some.
When Nadine, an elderly volunteer aide from the rehab center, came in to see why he hadn’t returned for the afternoon session, he turned the computer to her so she could read it.
Nadine read the note aloud. “Tell Georgiana I can’t come rest of day, doing rehab here. Important phone business.”
Nadine turned the computer back toward him. “All right, Mr. Babe. I’m no truant officer, but don’t blame me if they send me back. Have a nice day.”
When Nadine left, Steve wheeled himself to his window. He placed the computer on the windowsill, handy in case he thought of something he should note. He reached out with his good left hand and touched the window glass. It was cold and the glass fogged where he touched it. His window faced the woods where he could see the flash of headlights as cars and trucks rushed to and fro on the wet roads out side the fence beyond the woods. Although it was only one-thirty in the afternoon, the overcast sky made it as dark as evening. He much preferred the view from the television lounge that overlooked the en trance and parking lot to this view of the woods. But maybe that was only because there he would often watch for Jan’s red Audi in the eve nings when she was due to visit.
Although it seemed like an eternity, Tamara called back an hour and a half later at three.
“You were right about Lydia being with Gwen Africa, Steve. She said Jan left a message begging off going with her for the long weekend on Thursday night. She said Jan didn’t say anything special was going on, but she felt Jan had not wanted to leave you alone the entire week end. It’s probably nothing. Maybe she went shopping and she’ll be there any minute with a surprise or something and then you’ll have to explain to her why you’re so strung out.”
“No. I know something. I really do. Tell me, Phil Hogan.”
“All right, all right. So long as you promise you’ll take it easy and not jump to conclusions. Agreed?”
“Fine.”
“Lord, I don’t know why I’m telling you anything. You’re sup posed to be there to get better, not on the phone stirring up trouble where there probably isn’t any trouble.”
“Tam!”
“Okay, but don’t try to make connections where there aren’t any. I spoke with Phil, and also with a contact of mine who works at the Eighth District. Phil acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, which isn’t unusual for him. He kept asking why I’d call him about Jan and I said I was calling everyone I could think of. He sounded phony the way he usually does, like something’s up and he’s under pressure. My contact says everyone’s been watching Phil lately. Says Phil’s been out of the office a lot, but not on business. Says Phil’s pattern has changed. Instead of disappearing from the office for a few hours and coming back tipsy, Phil puts in a full day on the street, then comes back sober and worried and apparently has his booze hidden there because he stays in the office late and gets drunk before he heads home. Of course it doesn’t sound good. Between you and me, sounds like someone’s pressuring him. But that’s between you and me, Steve. And it probably doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Jan.”
“Thanks, Tam.”
“You aren’t thinking of doing anything, are you?”
“Yeah.”
“Like what?”
“Not sure.”
“Well, look. If for some reason you don’t hear from Jan pretty soon, which I’m sure you will, you know what’s next. I know you wouldn’t want me to do it yet, but if too much time goes by and I don’t hear otherwise from you, you know I’ll want to put out a missing per son
on Jan. And then maybe I’ll just come on down there and we can have a face-to-face.”
He waited, knowing Tamara wanted him to be careful, and also knowing some time would have to go by before she could take any of ficial action to find Jan.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“Stay by your phone and I’ll transfer mine to follow me if I go anywhere. I’ll try to do some more checking on Phil. Sound like a plan?”
It took a while longer, but he got through to Tamara that Jan’s cell phone indicated it was unavailable. He asked if she could try it every so often. Tamara agreed and they hung up.
Although he had an urge to go out to the television lounge, he stayed in his room, trying Jan’s cell number. Not that he wanted to watch television, but he did feel a need to simply look out into the parking lot. Somehow, he felt that if he looked out into the parking lot he’d see the red Audi driving in, the fog lights on because of the weath er. Jan would get out, pop up her red umbrella that matched the color of the Audi, and head for the building. But he knew this was only a dream and the risk of leaving his phone wouldn’t be worth it.
Because he couldn’t help thinking any minute Jan would arrive to tell him what she’d been up to, he wheeled into the hall just outside his room where he’d still be able to hear the phone. From this vantage point he could look down the hall toward the elevators each time he heard the bell. As he sat there he realized he was twisting to one side because of a pain in his right side. Not good to have pain this time of day, especially after Percy had worked him over in rehab this morning. Probably stress. And as he twisted to one side while staring down the hall toward the elevators, the pain was, in a way, reassuring.
Final Stroke Page 22