After a time I knew I was very sick. I couldn’t breathe. Pneumonia. I’d waited outside in the rain for my daddy. He promised to pick me up during a break on his shift and the break didn’t come-he never thought I’d wait that long. Lie under this tent, breathe slowly, watch for Mama, she says everything will be all right and you know she never lies. I tried opening my eyes. The movement stabbed great fingers of pain into my brain, forcing me back into darkness.
I woke again, rocking helplessly back and forth, my arms tied, a boulder pushing into my side. I was wrapped in something heavy, something that pushed into my mouth. If I threw up, I’d suffocate myself Lie as still as possible. Not the time to struggle.
I knew who I was this time. V. I. Warshawski. Girl detective. Idiot extraordinaire. The heavy stuff was a blanket. I couldn’t see, but I imagined it-green, standard Sears issue. I was wedged against the backseat of a car. Not a boulder, but the drive shaft. When I got out of here I’d get City Council to make front-wheel drive mandatory for all Chicago criminals. Get stopped with a drive shaft in your car and you’d do time, like the IRS getting Al Capone. When I got out of here.
My slickered friends were talking but I couldn’t make out their words through the buzzing in my ears and the thickness of the blanket. I thought at first the buzzing was left over from my cold-water bath, but by and by my tired brain sorted it into the sound of wheels on the road coming through the floorboard. The rocking and the warmth of my cocoon sent me back to sleep.
I woke up to feel cold air on my head. My arms were numb where they’d been tied behind me, my tongue thick with suppressed nausea.
“Is she still out?”
I didn’t know the voice. Cold, indifferent. The voice of the man who’d called in the threat? Only two days ago? Was that all? I couldn’t tell, either of time or the voice.
“She isn’t moving. Want me to open her up and check?” A black man’s thicker tones.
“Leave her as she is.” The cold voice again. “An old carpet we’re dumping. You never know who may see you, even down here. Who might remember seeing a face.”
I kept myself as limp as possible. I didn’t need another blow to the skull. I was pulled roughly from the car, banging my poor head, my aching arms, my sore back, on the door, clenching my numb fingers to keep from crying out. Someone slung me over his back like an old roll of carpet, as though a hundred and forty pounds was nothing to him, as though I was nothing more than a light and careless load. I could hear twigs snapping underfoot, the swishing of the dead grasses. What I hadn’t noticed on my previous trip here was the smell. The rank stench of putrifying grasses, mixed with the chemicals that drained into the marsh. I tried not to choke, tried not to think of the fish with their rotting fins, tried to suppress the well of nausea that grew with the pounding in my head as it bounced against my bearer’s back.
“Okay, Troy. X marks the spot.”
Troy grunted, slid me from his shoulder, and dropped me. “Far enough in?”
“She isn’t going anyplace. Let’s split.”
The rank grasses and soft mud broke my fall. I lay against the chill earth. The cool mud soaking through the blanket brought a moment’s relief to my sick head, but as I lay there my body’s weight caused water to ooze up through the mud. I felt the dampness in my ears and panicked, thrashing uselessly. Alone in this dark cocoon, I was going to drown, black swamp water in my lungs, my heart, my brain. The blood roared in my head and I cried tears of utter helplessness.
24
I had passed out again. When I slowly came to I was wet all through. Water had oozed into my hair and was tickling my ears. My shoulders felt as though someone had stuck iron bars into them to separate them from my breastbone. Somehow, though, the sleep and the cold muddy water had healed my head a little. I didn’t want to think-it was too scary. But minute by minute I could still make it if I used a little sense.
I rolled to one side, the blanket heavy with mud. Using every ounce of strength, I pushed myself to a sitting position. My ankles were bound together and my hands were tied behind me at the wrist-there was no way I could work them to the front of my body. But by pushing them down at my tailbone I could brace myself enough to inch forward with my legs.
I had to assume they’d taken me down the same track where they’d dumped Nancy-it was the farthest from the road, anyway. After some time of trial and error, which left me gasping for breath inside my muddy cocoon, I reckoned that the water lay to my right. I carefully made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn so that my inching motion would take me back toward the road. I tried not to think of the distance, tried not to compute my probable speed. Forced thoughts of food, baths, bed, away and imagined myself on a sunny beach. Maybe Hawaii. Maybe Magnum would appear suddenly and cut me out of my prison.
My legs and arms were shaking. Too much exertion, too little glucose. I had to stop every few pushes and rest. The second time I stopped I fell asleep again, waking only as I fell over into the grasses. After that I forced myself to a counting pattern. Five shoves, count fifteen, five shoves, count fifteen, five shoves, count fifteen. Legs wobbling, brain turning, fifteen. My fifteenth birthday. Gabriella had died two days before. The last breath in Tony’s arms while I was at the beach. Maybe there really was a heaven, Gabriella with her pure voice in the angelic choir waiting for me with wings outstretched, her arms opened in boundless love, waiting for my contralto to blend with her soprano.
A dog’s bark brought me back to myself The red-eyed hound. This time I couldn’t help it: I was sick, a little trickle of bile down my front. I could hear the dog coming closer, breath heaving, short, sharp barks, then a nose pushing into the side of the blanket, knocking me over. I lay on my side in a helpless tangle of mud and blanket, kicking uselessly in the air, and felt paws press heavily into my arm.
I kicked helplessly at the blanket, trying to force the hound away. Little tears of fear slid into my nose. All the while on the other side fangs pulled at my head, my arms. When it had bit through the blanket, how would I protect my throat? My arms were behind me. It wasn’t minding my feeble thrashing.
Panic roared in my ears, turned my useless legs to water. Over the roaring I heard a voice. With the tiny energy left in me, I tried to cry out,
“You got her? You found her? Is that you, doll? Are you in there? Can you hear me?”
Not the hound of hell after all, but Peppy. With Mr. Contreras. My euphoria was so great that my sore muscles felt momentarily healed. I grunted feebly. The old man wrestled feverishly with the knots, talking to himself all the while.
“I mighta known to bring a knife instead of this wrench. Should have guessed that, you stupid old man, why do you want to go carrying pipe wrenches when a knife is what you need? Steady in there, doll, we almost got it, don’t give up the ship now, not when we’re this close.”
He finally managed to rip the blanket away from my head. “Oh my, this is bad. Let’s get you out of here.”
He worked frantically, clumsily, on the knots behind my back. The dog looked at me anxiously, then started to lick my face-I was her long-lost puppy found in the nick of time. All the while that Mr. Contreras freed my hands, rubbing some semblance of circulation back into my arms, she kept washing my face.
He was shocked to see me in my underwear, afraid I’d been raped, could hardly take in my assurances that it was just drowning my assailants had been after. Leaning heavily on his shoulder, I let him guide me, half carrying me, back to the road.