The man-I looked and looked away. Not Morrell, how could it be? The black spots in front of my eyes grew and danced, blotting out the gray sky and the mangled bodies. My gorge rose and my empty stomach heaved. I turned away and vomited up a trickle of bile.
28 It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No, It’s…
I pulled myself together by force of will. I desperately needed water; my legs were trembling as much from dehydration as from shock and exhaustion. I was tempted again by the bourbon in my pocket, but if I drank whiskey now, on my empty, dried-out stomach, I’d just get sick.
I crouched next to the bodies. The man was taller and broader than my lover, or than Billy.
Think, Warshawski, save the melodrama for the daytime soaps. Romeo, I supposed. Romeo Czernin. He looked very dead to me, but I tried to find a pulse in the purply pulp that had been his neck. I couldn’t feel any movement, but my own fingers were so numb I might be missing it. His skin was still warm; if he was dead, it hadn’t been for long.
Mitch was anxiously licking Marcena’s face. When I dragged him aside to put a hand against her neck, I did feel a faint, erratic beat. I pulled out my cell phone, but using it as a flashlight must have drained the battery-it was completely dead.
I struggled to my feet. The garbage trucks might be a half mile away, a long trek across this terrain, but I didn’t know anyplace closer to go for help-I certainly couldn’t make it back the way we’d come in the hopes Mr. Contreras was still there with the car.
“Will you stay with her, old boy?” I said to Mitch. “Maybe if you lie against her, keep her warm, she’ll live.”
I gave him a hand signal, the command to lie down and then to stay. He whimpered and looked at me uncertainly, but settled down again next to Marcena. I was starting to hoist myself up the side of the pit when I heard a phone ring. It was so unexpected that I thought I was hallucinating again, phones in the middle of nowhere, fried eggs might fall at my feet in a second or two.
“Marcena’s cell phone!” I laughed a little hysterically and turned back to her.
The ringing was coming from Romeo’s body, not Marcena’s. It stopped, message going to voice mail, I guess. I stuck a squeamish hand into his coat pockets and came up with a bunch of keys, a pack of cigarettes, and a fistful of lottery tickets. The phone started ringing again. His jeans pockets. His jeans were torn and plastered to his body by his drying blood. I could hardly bear to touch them, but I held my breath and stuck a hand into the left front pocket to extract the phone.
“Billy?” A sharp male voice spoke.
“No. Who are you? We need help, we need an ambulance.”
“Who is this?” The voice was even sharper.
“V. I. Warshawski,” I croaked. “Who are you? I need you to call for help.”
I tried to describe where I was: close to the CID landfill, close to water, probably Lake Calumet, but the man hung up on me. I called 911 and gave the dispatcher my name and the same vague description of my location. She said she’d do her best to get someone to me, but she didn’t know how long it would take.
“The man is dead, I think, but the woman is still breathing. Please hurry.” My voice was such a hoarse thread by now that I couldn’t sound urgent or pathetic; it was all I could do to get the words out.
When I’d hung up, I took off my coat and laid it across Marcena’s head. I didn’t want to move her, or even try CPR. I didn’t know how bad her internal injuries might be, and I could kill her by pushing broken ribs into her lungs, or something equally horrible. But I felt a stubborn conviction that her head should be warm; we lose most of our body heat through our heads. My own head was cold. I pulled my sweatshirt up over my ears and sat rocking myself.
I had forgotten about Mr. Contreras. I’d abandoned him back on 100th Street two hours ago. He could be resourceful; maybe he’d find me, find us. And Morrell-I should have thought of him sooner.
When he answered the phone, I astonished myself by starting to cry. “I’m out in the middle of nowhere with Marcena, she’s almost dead,” I choked out.
“Vic, is that you? I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Where are you? What’s going on?”
“Marcena. Mitch found her, he dragged me through the swamp, I can’t explain it right now. She’s almost dead, and Romeo is lying next to her, he is dead, and if someone doesn’t get here soon she will be, and maybe I will be, too. I’m so thirsty and cold I can hardly stand it. You’ve got to find me, Morrell.”
“What happened? How did you end up with Marcena? Were you attacked? Are you all right?”
“I can’t explain it, it’s too complicated. She’s not going to make it if we don’t get an ambulance.” I repeated what little information I could give on our location.
“I’ll climb up to the top of this pit thing where they’re lying so someone can spot me, but I don’t think there’s a road very close to here.”
“I’ll do my best for you, darling. Hang on, I’ll figure out something.”
“Oh-I forgot. Mr. Contreras. He dropped us off, and now he’s probably half crazy with worry.”
I tried to remember my plate number, but I couldn’t. Morrell repeated that he’d do his best for me, and hung up.
Mitch was lying next to Marcena, his own eyes glazed with exhaustion. He had stopped licking her, was just lying with his head on her chest. When I started up the side of the pit again, he lifted his head to look at me but didn’t try to get up.
“I don’t blame you, boy. You stay put. Keep her warm.”
It was only an eight-foot climb to the top. I dug my fingers in the cold clay and pushed myself up the side. In my normal state, I could have run up, but now it seemed just about insurmountable. This isn’t Everest, I thought grimly, you don’t have to be Junko Tabei. Or maybe I did: I’d be the first woman to climb not Everest, but a pit near Lake Calumet. The National Geographic Society would wine and dine me. I got my hands over the lip of the pit and pulled myself onto the springy turf. When I looked back down, Mitch had stood up, and was walking nervously between Marcena and the side I’d just climbed.
I gave him another hand gesture to lie down. He didn’t obey me, but when he saw I wasn’t moving out of his range of vision he returned to Marcena and curled up next to her.
I stood with my hands in my jeans pockets for a bit, watching the army of blue trucks crawling around the landfill. It was funny that I could hear the engines: the trucks looked so far away. Maybe I was close enough to walk to them, really. Maybe I only thought they were far off because I’d lost my sense of time and space. When people fast for a long time, they start seeing visions. They think angels are coming down from the heavens to them, just like I did now, I could see it dropping from the clouds, a giant shape that was coming toward me, with a horrible racket that blocked out every thought I’d ever had.
I put my hands over my ears. I was losing my mind-this wasn’t an angel, it was a helicopter. Someone had taken my SOS seriously. I stumbled toward the machine as a stranger in a leather bomber jacket jumped down, ducking to get clear of the blades.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded when he’d run across the turf to me.
“They’re down there.” I pointed into the pit. “Get your stretcher crew out; I don’t know what kind of injuries the woman has.”
“I can’t hear you,” the man said irritably. “Where the hell is Billy?”