“What are you bringing me now, Vic?” She didn’t wait for an answer but went straight to Cerise.
I told her what little I knew about the young woman. “Suddenly this morning she started complaining about feeling cold, then she started throwing up. I don’t know if it was pregnancy or drugs or some combination, but I didn’t feel like dealing with her on my own.”
Lotty grunted and pulled back Cerise’s eyelids. “She’s going to be here for a while. Why don’t you come back in a few hours?” She turned to Carol with a request for a medication.
In other words, it was up to me to find out what to do with her when Lotty finished treating her. Not that I’d expected Lotty to do it, but somehow I’d managed to avoid thinking about Cerise’s future.
My shoulders sagging, I walked on heavy feet back to the car. I’d forgotten Cerise’s eruption, but the smell was a pungent reminder. I returned to the clinic and got some wet rags and a bottle of disinfectant from Mrs. Coltrain. All the time I was cleaning the backseat Elena kept chirping questions about Cerise.
“I don’t know,” I said wearily as I finally turned the engine on. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her or what the doctor will do or if she has to go to the hospital. I’ll find all that out when I go back at noon and I’ll let you know.”
Elena put a tremulous hand on my arm. “It’s only because her mother and me are pals, Vicki-Victoria. It’d be the same if it was you in trouble and I took you to Zerlina. She’d feel responsible for you because of me, don’t you see.”
I took my right hand off the wheel to pat her thin, veined fingers. “Sure, Elena. I understand. Your good heart does you credit.”
We drove in silence for a while, then I thought of something. “What’s Zerlina’s last name?”
“Her last name, sweetie? Why do you care?”
“I want to find her. If she’s in the hospital, I can’t go to the reception desk at Michael Reese and ask for her by her first name. They don’t keep track of patients that way.”
“If she got hurt in the fire, sweetie, I don’t know if she’d be up to seeing you.”
“Not up to seeing me?” I tried to keep my tone conversational, but an overlay of a snarl came through anyway. “If you and Cerise want me to do anything more about the baby, she’d damned well better be up to seeing me. And you should do your best to help me find her.”
“Language, Victoria,” Elena said reprovingly. “Talking dirty isn’t going to solve your problems.”
“And dancing around the mulberry bush on this one isn’t going to solve yours,” I snapped. “Tell me her last name or kiss any help from me good-bye.”
“When you scrunch up your face like that you look just like your grandmother the last few months I was living with her.”
I turned north onto Kenmore and pulled up in front of the Windsor Arms. My poor grandmother. If she’d had a stronger personality, she would have booted Elena out on her rump long before her thirtieth birthday. Instead, except for brief forays, my aunt lived with her until she died.
“Your own family is always the last to appreciate you,” I said, turning off the engine. “Now why don’t you quit screwing around and tell me Zerlina’s last name?”
Elena looked at me craftily. “Is this the new hotel, sweetie? You’re an angel to go to so much trouble for me. No, no, don’t you go carrying that heavy bag, you’re young, you need to save your back.”
I took the duffel bag from her and escorted her into the lobby. She fluttered off to the lounge area to talk to some of the residents while I dug in my handbag for the room receipt. The concierge, coming from some basement recess when I tapped the desk bell, clearly remembered me but insisted on getting the receipt before she’d let Elena have the room. For a nerve-straining moment I was afraid I’d stuffed it in my skirt pocket on Friday, but finally found it stuck in the pages of my pocket diary.
I had intended to beard Elena in her room and force Zerlina’s surname from her, but was thwarted by the concierge-this was a single-resident hotel and visitors were not permitted in the guest rooms. Elena blew me a kiss with a promise to get back in touch with me.
“And you will let me know what happens to poor Cerise, won’t you, sweetheart?”
I forced a glittering smile to my face. “How am I to do that, Elena-by smoke signal?”
“You can leave a message for me at the desk, can’t she do that, honey?” she added to the concierge.
“I suppose,” the woman said grudgingly. “As long as you don’t make a habit of it.”
As they disappeared up the echoing stairwell I could hear Elena explaining that I was the smartest, sweetest niece a woman could ever hope to have. I ground my teeth and acknowledged defeat.
The pay phone for residents was in the lounge with the TV. I didn’t want to compete with The Price Is Right; I walked up Kenmore looking for another phone. After a two-block circuit I decided I’d be better off going back to my apartment.
The super had finally gotten around to putting up the banker’s nameplate. I stopped to look at it-Vincent Bottone. I felt vaguely affronted that an Italian could be treating me so rudely-didn’t he know that we were compatriots? I glanced at my own nameplate-since my last name was Warshawski, maybe he hadn’t been able to guess. I’d have to try speaking to him in Italian and see if that softened him. Or, I realized as I unlocked my apartment door, give me a chance to show him up.
Robin Bessinger was in a meeting, but he’d left word with the receptionist to get him if I called. I tucked the phone under my ear while I waited, and yanked the sheets from the sofa bed. I was just stuffing the mattress back into the sofa frame when Robin came on the line.
“Ms. Warshawski? Robin Bessinger.”
“It’s Vic,” I interrupted him.
“Oh. Vic. I’ve been wondering what those initials stood for. Look-the lab says there isn’t any trace of a baby’s body in the debris. On the other hand, if it got caught in the fiercest part of the blaze, it might have been incinerated. So they’ve taken samples of the ashes and will get them analyzed, which’ll take a few days. But Roland Montgomery-he’s with the Bomb and Arson Squad- would like to talk to you, find out firsthand why you think the child was in there.”
I wasn’t sure I did think Katterina had been in the Indiana Arms. At this point I wasn’t sure I believed Cerise had a baby, or even a mother. But I couldn’t express any of this to Robin.
“The baby’s mother told me,” I said. “Where does Montgomery want me to meet him?”
“Can you make it at three in his office? Central District at Eleventh Street.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’d like to sit in if you don’t mind. A death would affect our insured. Dominic Assuevo will be there from the Office of Fire Investigation.”
“Not at all,” I said politely. I didn’t know Montgomery, but I’d met Assuevo a couple of years ago when my old apartment had been torched. He was a pal of Bobby Mallory’s and was inclined to look on me suspiciously by extension.
Before we hung up I asked Robin if he knew Zerlina’s last name. He hadn’t been given a list of the smoke inhalation victims but promised me he’d get it from Dominic at our meeting this afternoon.
I finished tidying up the sofa bed, then took the sheets down to the washing machine in the basement. I’m not normally so obsessive about cleanliness, but I wanted to get all traces of Cerise-and Elena-out of my apartment. If I washed the sheets, it was a clear commitment to myself that I didn’t have to put the younger woman up here when I fetched her back from Lotty’s. Although I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with her.
It was possible that Cerise had given Lotty her surname. If she hadn’t, I thought Carol might call Michael Reese for me and get them to give her Zerlina’s last name. I didn’t want to meet with the police until I talked to Zerlina, assuming I could find her at Reese.
When I got to the clinic I learned that a chunk of ray schedule had dropped out-Cerise had disappeared. Carol was worried, Lotty angry. L
otty had given her a mild tranquilizer and something to control her nausea. Cerise had slept for about an hour in the examining room. The third time Carol went in to check on her she was gone. Mrs. Coltrain had seen her walk out of the clinic but had no reason to stop her-she’d assumed since Cerise came with me that I had arranged to pay Lotty for her treatment separately.
Of course. I’d forgotten the money. A hundred dollars to pay Cerise’s bill and help fund some of the clinic’s indigent patients. Lotty, furious with me for interrupting her day with such a case, was in no humor to discount her services. I pulled my checkbook from my handbag and wrote out the check.
“I guess I should have taken her to the hospital,” I said wearily, handing it to Mrs. Coltrain. “But she got sick so suddenly and so violently that I was afraid she might be dying on me. I didn’t know if she had some neurological disease or was coming down from heroin or what. If something like this happens again, which I hope it doesn’t, I won’t bother you.”
That pulled Lotty up short-she hates having her standard of care impugned. Her tone was a little less abrupt when she responded.
“It was a combination of heroin and pregnancy. If there’s to be any hope for that fetus, Cerise needs to get into a drug program today.”
“I wouldn’t bet the farm on her doing it,” I said. “I want to try to get in touch with Cerise’s mother.”
I explained that Zerlina might be in Michael Reese recovering from the fire but that I didn’t have her last name. Carol went off to phone the hospital for me-she felt irrationally responsible for Cerise roaming the streets pregnant and addicted. Getting Zerlina’s last name was something active she could do to help.
“Not your problem,” I tried to tell her when she returned a few minutes later. “If Cerise is bent on destructing, you can’t stop her. You should know that by now.”
“Yes, Vic,” Carol admitted. “I do know it. But I feel as though we let you down. That’s partly why Lotty’s so angry, you know. She tries to work at such a high level and then when she fails to save someone she takes it personally. And for it to be someone you brought in.”
“Maybe,” I said dubiously. The truth was, I was happy that Cerise had vanished. It was magic. I didn’t have to look after her anymore.
“Anyway, the mother’s last name is Ramsay.” Carol spelled it for me. “She’s in room four-twenty-two in the main hospital building. I told the head nurse you were a social worker, so there won’t be any problem you getting in to see her.”
I made a face as I thanked her. Social worker! It was an apt description of how I’d spent my time since Elena showed up at my door last week. Maybe it was time for me to turn Republican and copy Nancy Reagan. From now on when alcoholic or addicted pregnant strays showed up at my door, I would just say no.
11
Smoking Grandma
I climbed into the Chevy and slumped over the wheel. It was only noon, but I was as tired as though I’d been climbing Mount Everest for a week. A faint odor of vomit still hovered in the car, despite the twenty minutes I’d spent scrubbing the backseat. It slowly came to me that I was smelling my own clothes. My jeans were soiled where I’d been kneeling on the car seat-I’d just been too wound up with Elena to notice it earlier. Shuddering violently, I turned on the engine and drove south at a reckless pace, not even bothering to keep an eye out for the blue-and-whites. All I wanted to do was to get home, get my clothes off, get myself scrubbed as clean as I could manage.
I left the Chevy at a wild angle a yard or so from the curb and took the stairs up two at a time. Barely waiting to get inside to strip, I dumped jeans, T-shirt, and panties in a heap in the doorway and headed straight for the bathroom. I stood under the hot water for almost half an hour, washing my hair twice, scrubbing myself thoroughly. Finally I felt cleansed, that addicts and alcoholics were rinsed from my life.
I dressed slowly, taking time to put on makeup and to style my hair with a little gel. A gold cotton dress with big black buttons made me feel elegant and poised. I even burrowed through the hall closet for a black bag to go with my pumps.
On the way out I gathered my discarded clothes and took them to the basement. The sheets were ready for the dryer, but there are limits to my housekeeping fervor-I stuffed my jeans in with the sheets and started the cycle from the beginning.
It was a little after one by now. I wouldn’t be able to eat lunch if I wanted to see Zerlina before my meeting with Dominic Assuevo. And I guess I wanted to see her, although my enthusiasm for the Ramsay family was at low tide. I headed over to Lake Shore Drive and joined the flow southward.
Michael Reese Hospital dominates the lakefront for a mile or two at Twenty-seventh Street. I circled the complex a few times until I found someone pulling away from a meter-I was damned if I was going to pay lot fees for this visit. A guard was stationed behind a glass cage in the entryway. She didn’t care whether I was a social worker or an ax murderer, so I didn’t have to use Carol’s cover story to get a pass to the fourth floor.
The distinctive hospital smell-some combination of medication, antiseptic, and the sweat of people in pain- made me flinch involuntarily when I got off the elevator. I had spent too much time in hospitals with my parents when I was younger, and the smell always brings back the misery of those years. My mother died of cancer when I was fifteen, my father from emphysema some ten years later. He was a heavy smoker and there are days when I still get angry about it. Especially today, when I was feeling under siege.
Zerlina Ramsay was in a four-pack. Television perched high on facing walls were tuned to conflicting soap operas. Two women glanced indifferently at me when I came in but returned their attention immediately to the screen; the other two didn’t even look up. I stood dubiously in the doorway for a moment trying to decide which of the three black women might be Zerlina. None of them bore any overwhelming resemblance to Cerise. Finally I saw a sign attached to one of the beds warning me not to smoke if oxygen was in use. The woman lying there had gauze covering her left arm. Short, her massive build amply displayed by the skimpy hospital robe, she would have been my last choice, but Zerlina had been brought in suffering from smoke inhalation so I supposed she’d needed oxygen. She was attached to what looked like a heart monitor.
I went over to the bed. She turned her gaze toward me reluctantly, her eyes narrowed suspiciously in her jowly face.
“Mrs. Ramsay?” She didn’t respond, but she didn’t deny it either. “My name is V. I. Warshawski. I think you know my aunt Elena.”
Her dark eyes flickered in surprise; she cautiously inspected me. “You sure about that?” Her voice was husky from disuse and she cleared her throat discreetly.
“She told me you two hung out together at the Indiana Arms. Had a few beers together.”
“So?”
I gritted my teeth and plowed ahead. “So she was waiting on my doorstep last night with Cerise.”
“Cerise! What planet that girl come down from?”
I glanced around the room. As I’d expected, her companions were more interested in live theater than TV. They made no effort to mask their curiosity.
“Can you go out in the hall with that thing?” I gestured at the monitor. “This is kind of private.”
“Those two took money from you, I don’t want to hear about it. I can’t even afford me a new place to sleep, let alone pay back all that girl’s bills.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with money.”
She glowered at me belligerently, but heaved herself to a sitting position. Her substantial frame gave the impression not of fat but of a natural monument, maybe a redwood tree that had grown sideways but not too tall. She brushed away my hand when I tried to take her elbow. Grunting to herself, she slid out of bed, sticking her feet into paper hospital slippers lined up tidily under the edge. The heart monitor was on wheels. Rolling it in front of her, she made her way to the door and down the hall like a tidal wave-nurses and orderlies split to either side when they saw her coming.<
br />
She was panting a bit when we got to a small lounge stuck at one end of the hall. She took her time getting her breath before lowering herself onto one of the padded chairs. They were covered in cracked aqua oilcloth that had last been washed when Michael Reese himself was still alive. I perched gingerly on the edge of the chair at right angles to Zerlina.
“So Elena is your aunt, huh? Can’t say you look too much like her.”
“Glad to hear it. She’s thirty years and three thousand bottles ahead of me.” I ignored her crack of laughter to add, “I gotta say you don’t look too much like Cerise, either.”
“That’s those thirty years you spoke of,” Zerlina said. “I wasn’t so bad-looking at her age. And I sure look better than she’s going to when she gets to be as old as me, the rate she’s going. What kind of story she tell you? She and that aunt of yours.”
“Her baby,” I said baldly. “Katterina.”
Zerlina’s face creased in astonishment. For a moment I thought she was going to tell me Cerise didn’t have a baby.
“She’s picking a funny time to care about that baby, being as how she hasn’t paid much attention to it so far to date.”
“Katterina wasn’t with you Wednesday night when the Indiana Arms burned down?” I couldn’t think of a gentle way to ask the question.
“Hm-unh.” She shook her jowly head emphatically. “She left the baby with me on Wednesday, all right, but I couldn’t keep her with me, not in an SRO, you know. They can be mighty strict about who you got with you, which Cerise knew. But that girl!”
She sat with her hands on her knees, looking broodingly at nothing for a moment. The heart monitor beeped insistently, as though in rhythm with her thoughts. She faced me squarely.
“I might as well tell you the whole story. I don’t know why I should. Don’t know I can especially trust you. But you don’t look like Elena. You don’t look like an alkie who’ll do the best she can to make money out of your sad news to buy her another bottle.”
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