The phone startled me from my somber reverie around nine. One of the house staff at Beth Israel wasn’t sure what to do with a patient of Lotty’s. She talked to him for a while, then decided she’d better handle the delivery herself and left.
I’d bought a bottle of whiskey yesterday along with the groceries. After Lotty had been gone half an hour or so, I poured myself a drink and tried to get interested in John Wayne’s televised antics. When the phone rang again around ten I turned off the set, thinking the caller might be one of Lotty’s patients.
“Dr. Herschel’s residence.”
“I’m looking for a woman named Warshawski.” It was a man’s voice, cold, uninterested. The last time I’d heard it it had told me that the person hadn’t been born who could swim in a swamp.
“If I see her, I’ll be glad to give her a message,” I said with what coolness I could muster.
“You can ask her if she knows Louisa Djiak,” the cold voice went on flatly.
“And if she does?” My voice wobbled despite every effort I put into controlling it.
“Louisa Djiak doesn’t have much longer to live. She could die at home in her bed. Or she could disappear in the lagoons behind the Xerxes plant. Your friend Warshawski can make the choice. Louisa is down at Xerxes now. She’s well sedated. All you have to do-all you have to tell your friend Warshawski to do is go down and take a look at her. If she does, the Djiak woman will wake up in her bed tomorrow without knowing she ever left it. But if any police come along with Warshawski, they’ll have to find some frogmen who like diving in Xerxine before they can give the Djiak woman a Christian burial.” The line went dead.
I wasted a few minutes on useless self-recrimination. I’d been so focused on myself, on my closeness to Lotty, I’d never imagined Louisa’s being in danger. Despite the fact that I’d told Jurshak I knew her secret. If she and I were gone, no one would remain to speak about it and he would be safe.
I forced myself to think calmly-cursing myself not only wasted time, it would cloud my judgment. The first thing to do was get moving-I could wait for the long drive south to develop some brilliant strategy. I loaded a second clip and stuck it in my jacket pocket, then scribbled a note for Lotty. I was amazed to see my handwriting flow in the same large dark strokes as always.
I was just locking Lotty’s door when I remembered the ruse that had gotten Mr. Contreras away from our building a few nights ago. I didn’t want to walk into a trap here. I went back inside to make sure that Louisa really was missing from the bungalow on Houston. No one answered the phone. After a few frantic calls-first to Mrs. Cleghorn to get the names and numbers of some other people at SCRAP -I learned Caroline had come back to the office around four. She was closeted now with some EPA lawyers downtown in what was likely to be an all-night session.
The woman I talked to had the number of the people living in my parents’ old house, a couple named Santiago. Caroline had given their home phone number to everyone she worked with in case of some emergency. When I called Mrs. Santiago she obligingly told me that Louisa had been taken away in an ambulance around eight-thirty. I thanked her mechanically and hung up.
It had been almost half an hour since I’d gotten the call. It was time to move. I wanted company for the trip but it would be wanton to bring Mr. Contreras along-for him and Louisa both. I thought of friends, of police, of Murray, but of no one whom I could ask to go with me into such extreme danger.
I looked carefully around the hallway when I left Lotty’s. Someone had known to phone me here-they might take the easy route and just shoot me as I walked down the stairs. I kept my back pressed against the stairwell wall, crouching low. Instead of going out the front door, I went on down to the basement. Carefully picked my way across the dark floor, fumbling cautiously with Lotty’s keys for the one that undid the double lock on the basement door. Made my way down the alley to Irving Park Road.
A bus pulled up just as I got to the main road. I dug in my pocket to find a token under the spare clip and finally pried one out without having to flash my ammunition to the world at large. I rode the eight blocks down Irving Park standing, seeing nothing either of passengers or the night. At Ashland I hopped down and found my car.
The bus’s grinding diesel had somehow provided the background I needed to relax my mind completely, for ideas to flow. If an ambulance had come for Louisa, if she was completely sedated, they must have found a doctor. And there could be only one guess as to what doctor would be involved in such an infamous scheme. So there was one person who shared my involvement whom it would not be criminal to ask to share my risk. For the second time today I headed out the Eisenhower to Hinsdale.
38
Veils of fog rose from the drainage ditches lining the tollway, covering the road in patches so that other cars appeared only as shrouded pricks of red. I kept the speedometer pointed at eighty, even when the thick mist drowned the road in front of us. The Chevy vibrated noisily, prohibiting conversation. Every now and then I rolled the window down and put up a hand to feel the ropes. They’d loosened a bit but the dinghy stayed on top.
We exited at 127th Street for the trek eastward. We were about eight miles west of the Xerxes plant, but no expressway connects the east and west sides of Chicago this far south.
It was getting close to midnight. Fear and impatience gripped me so strongly, I could scarcely breathe. All my will went into the car, maneuvering around other vehicles, squeaking through lights as they turned, keeping a weather eye cocked for passing patrol cars as I managed to do fifty in the thirty-five-mile zones. Fourteen minutes after leaving the tollway we were turning north on the little track that Stony Island becomes that far south.
We were on private industrial property now, but I couldn’t cut the headlights on the rutted, glass-filled track. I’d chosen a run-down-looking plant in the hopes that they wouldn’t run to a night watchman. Or dog. We pulled to a stop in front of a large cement barge. I looked at Ms. Chigwell. She nodded grimly.
We opened the car doors, trying to move quietly but more concerned with speed. Ms. Chigwell held a strong pencil flash for me while I cut the ropes. She folded a blanket across the hood so that I could slide the dinghy down as noiselessly as possible. We then laid the blanket on the ground to make a little cradle for the dinghy. I pulled it over to the cement barge while she followed, holding the flash and carrying the oars.
The barge was tied up next to a set of iron rungs built into the wall. We lowered the dinghy over the side, then I held its painter while Ms. Chigwell climbed briskly down the ladder. I followed her quickly.
We each took an oar. Despite her age, Ms. Chigwell had a strong, firm stroke. I matched mine to hers, forcing my mind from the incipient throb in my healing shoulders. She had to use both hands to row, so I held the pencil flash. We hugged the left bank; I periodically shone the light so we could avoid barges and keep track of the names on the slips as we rowed past. The bank had long since been cemented over; company names were painted in large letters next to the steel ladders that led to their loading bays.
The night was silent except for the soft clop of our oars breaking water. But the thick mist carrying the river’s miasmas was a pungent reminder of the industrial maze we were floating through. Every now and then a spotlight broke the fog, pinpointing a giant steel tube, a barge, a girder. We were the only humans on the river, Eve and her mother in a grotesque mockery of Eden.