We rowed north past the Glow-Rite landing, beyond steel and wire companies, plants that did printing, made tools or saw blades, glided by the heavy barges tied up next to a rebar mill. Finally Ms. Chigwell’s penetrating little flash picked up the double X’s and the giant crown gleaming black in the fog.
We banked the oars. I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes to cover the half mile or so. It had seemed much longer. I grabbed a steel rung as we slid by and carefully pulled the dinghy up next to it. Ms. Chigwell tied the painter with practiced hands. My heart was beating hard enough to suffocate me, but she seemed utterly calm.
We pulled dark caps down low on our foreheads. We clasped hands for a moment, her compulsive squeeze showing what her impassive face hid. I pointed at my watch in an exaggerated movement and she nodded calmly.
Pulling my gun out and releasing the safety, I scrambled up the ladder, my right hand bare so that I could feel the trigger of the Smith & Wesson. I slowed down at the top, cautiously raising my dark-hatted head so that just my eyes came above the bank. If I cried out, Ms. Chigwell would row as fast as she could back to the car and raise an alarm.
I was at the back of the plant, at the concrete platform where the barge had been tied the last time I’d visited the place. Tonight the steel doors surrounding the loading bay were rolled shut and padlocked. Two spotlights at the corners of the building cut the haze around me. As nearly as I could tell no one was anticipating a river approach.
I slid my gun hand over the top of the bank and kept the Smith & Wesson in front of me as I hoisted myself onto land. I rolled over and lay still for a count of sixty. That was Ms. Chigwell’s signal to start the climb herself I could just make out the change in the darkness as her head popped over the edge of the bank-anyone farther away wouldn’t be able to see her. She waited another count of twenty, then joined me on the loading platform.
The steel doors lay in a shadow cast by the projecting roof We moved close to them, trying not to touch them-the sound of arms or gun brushing on steel would vibrate like a reggae band in the still night.
In front of us the spotlights turned the fog into a heavy curtain. Using its draperies as a shield, we moved slowly around to the north end of the plant where the clay-banked lagoons lay. Ms. Chigwell moved with the practiced silence of a lifelong second-story woman.
As soon as we rounded the comer we moved into thicker fog and danker smells. No lights shone on the lagoons. We sensed their pungent presence to our right but didn’t dare use the flash. Ms. Chigwell stayed close to me, holding my muffler, feeling her way cat-footed behind me in the dark. After an eternity of careful steps, moving slowly through ruts, sidestepping metal scraps, we reached the front end of the plant.
The fog was thinner here. We crouched behind some steel drums and peered cautiously around them. A single light burned at the gate leading into the yard. After looking for a long moment I could make out a man standing near the entrance. A sentry or lookout. An ambulance was in the center of the drive. I wished I knew if Louisa was still in it.
“Is she going to show up or not?”
The unexpected voice near my left startled me so much, I almost knocked myself against the steel drum. I recovered, trembling, trying to control my breathing. Next to me, Ms. Chigwell remained as impassive as ever.
“It’s been a little over two hours. We’ll give her until one. Then we’ll have to decide what to do with the Djiak woman.” The second voice belonged to my anonymous phone caller.
“She’ll have to go into the lagoon. We can’t afford any more traces.”
Now that my heart had settled to a less tumultuous pace, I recognized the first speaker. Art Jurshak, showing a strong family feeling for his niece.
“You can’t.” The second man spoke with his usual uninterested coldness. “The woman’s going to die soon anyway. We’ll just get the doctor to give her a little shot and return her to her bed. Her daughter will find she died in the night.”
At the mention of the doctor it was Ms. Chigwell’s turn to tremble a little.
“You’re losing it,” Art said angrily. “How’re you going to get her back into the house without the daughter seeing you? Anyway, she’ll know her mother’s gone-she’s probably roused the neighborhood by now as it is. Better just dispose of Louisa here and set a trap for Warshawski someplace else. It’d be best if they were both gone.”
“I’ll do it for you,” the cold voice said flatly. “I’ll get rid of them both and the daughter, too, if you want. But I can’t if I don’t know why you’re so desperate to see them put away. It wouldn’t be ethical.” He used the last word without any hint of irony.
“Damn you, I’ll take care of things myself,” Art muttered furiously.
“Fine,” the voice said irritatingly. “Either way it’s fine. You tell me what they know and I’ll have that, or you kill them yourself and I’ll have that. It’s a matter of complete indifference to me.”
Jurshak was silent for a minute. “I’d better see how the doc is making out.”
His footsteps echoed and disappeared. He’d gone inside. So Louisa wasn’t in the ambulance. Presumably one of the flat-voiced man’s sidekicks was waiting in its interior instead of Louisa-they’d left it temptingly in the middle of the yard so I’d head straight to it.
How to get past the cold-voiced man standing at the entrance was a tougher question. If I sent Ms. Chigwell out as a diversion, she’d be a dead diversion. I was wondering if we could jimmy a door or a window around the side when the man solved the problem for us. He strolled out to the center of the yard, where he stopped to knock on the back of the ambulance. The rear door opened a crack. He stood talking through the opening.
I tapped Ms. Chigwell on the shoulder. She stood up with me and we sidled slowly to the shadow of the wall. While we watched, the ambulance door shut again and the cold-voiced man wandered on out to the gate. As soon as he was on the far side of the vehicle, I crouched low and sprinted around the comer to the plant entrance. Ms. Chigwell’s footsteps sounded softly behind me. The ambulance shielded us from the view of the gate sentry and we made it inside without hearing any outcry.
We were on a concrete apron outside the plant floor. The sliding steel curtain that separated the manufacturing area from the main entrance was shut, but a normal-sized door next to it stood ajar. We quickly darted through it, shutting it softly behind us, and found ourselves immediately in the plant.
We walked on tiptoe, although the noises around us would have drowned any sounds we made. The pipes let out their intermittent belches of steam and the cauldrons bubbled ominously under the dull green safety lights. Fritz Lang had invented this room. Presently we would come to the end and find only cameramen and laughing actors. A drop of liquid fell on me and I jumped, convinced I’d been poisoned with a toxic dose of Xerxine.
I glanced at Ms. Chigwell. She was looking straight ahead, ignoring the spitting from above as assiduously as she avoided the obscene graffiti scrawled on the huge “No Smoking” signs. Suddenly, though, she bit back a cry. I followed her eyes to the far comer of the room. Louisa lay there on a stretcher. Dr. Chigwell stood on one side of her, Art Jurshak on the other. The two of them stared at us, slack-jawed.
Dr. Chigwell found his voice first. “Clio! What are you doing here?”
She marched forward fiercely. I held her arm to keep her from getting within Jurshak’s grabbing range.
“I came to find you, Curtis.” Her voice was sharp and carried authoritatively over the hissing pipes. “You’ve gotten yourself involved with some very nasty people. I presume you’ve spent the last week or so with them. I don’t know what Mother would say if she were alive to see you, but I think it’s time you came back home again. Well help Miss Warshawski get this poor sick woman back into the ambulance and then you and I will return to Hinsdale.”