I looked wistfully at the phone. The trouble with the Age of Fear is that you don’t know who is listening in on your conversations. You don’t know if you can talk safely or not. Probably I could talk to Karen Lennon without anyone else catching the call, but the possibility that I’d jeopardize my safe house meant I couldn’t work on probabilities.
It was too late in the day to expect to find Karen at Lionsgate Manor. I drove down to Howard Street, the honky-tonk dividing line between Chicago’s Mexican-Pakistani-Russian north border and the very much more staid Evanston, and found a pay phone at the El stop there. Even more amazing, the phone’s cord and handset were both attached, and the phone asked me to deposit a dollar when I listened to it. I put my battery in my cellphone just long enough to look up Karen Lennon’s contact information, then called her cell from the pay phone.
“Vic, thank goodness! I’ve been trying to reach you since last night. I finally called Max this morning, and he told me you’re having to stay underground, so thank you for coming up for air and getting back to me. I’m sorry about your cousin, but Miss Claudia’s been asking for you. I’ve been afraid she’d pass while you were hiding.”
“If I go to Lionsgate Manor now, will I be able to see her?”
“If I’m with you, it should be okay. I’m home, but I can be there in twenty-five minutes. I’ll meet you at the main entrance, okay?”
“Not okay. I don’t know how long I can stay undercover, but I can’t have anyone know where I am. I’ll meet you outside Miss Claudia’s room.”
Karen wanted to know how I’d get into the building; you had to go past the guard station at night. I told her not to worry about that, just to give me the room number. She started to object, but I cut her off.
“Please, I don’t have enough time to do the things I have to do. Let’s not waste the last hours of Miss Claudia’s life arguing about this.”
I drove along Howard until I came to a shop that sold uniforms and business apparel. There are several ways to be invisible in a large institution. The best, in a nursing home, is to be a janitor. If you show up in a nurse’s uniform, all the other nurses think they know you and study your face too closely. A janitor, however, at the low end of the food chain, gets only a cursory look. I found a jumpsuit in gray, which I put on over my jeans, and a square-cut cap. I bought a big mop to complete the outfit. I stuck my gun into a side pocket-not the safest way to carry a firearm, but I wanted it close to hand.
When I reached Lionsgate, I parked on a side street so I could get away fast if I had to. Mop in hand, cap low on my forehead, I walked down the ramp at the manor’s parking garage and entered the building using one of those elevators. On the ground floor, I had to pass the guard station to get to the main elevators. The massive woman behind the counter, wearing a Lionsgate pale blue security blazer, was watching television. But she looked up as I passed and called out to me: Who was I? Where was my security ID?
My Polish is limited to a few stilted phrases garnered unwillingly as a child from Boom-Boom’s mother. Tonight, I didn’t stop walking but shouted over my shoulder in Polish instead that dinner was ready, it was getting cold, come to the table at once, something I’d heard Aunt Marie say four or five hundred times. The guard shook her head with the kind of annoyed incredulity accorded ignorant immigrants, but she returned to the small TV on the counter in front of her.
I rode up in an elevator with a real member of the cleaning crew. She was collecting dirty laundry and rolled her cart off at the eighth floor. When I reached Miss Claudia’s room, Miss Ella was sitting with her sister on the room’s one chair. Karen was on the lookout for me. She hurried over and greeted me in a low voice, taking my arm and escorting me to Miss Claudia’s bed.
Another woman lay in an adjacent bed, her breath coming in short, puffy bursts, a machine next to her beeping every now and then. I pulled a curtain between the two women to create the illusion of privacy.
My client frowned at me. “Our affairs haven’t been very important to you, have they? You took our money, but you didn’t find Lamont. And it seems you’ve stopped looking for him the last month.”
“I think your sister wants to see me,” I said as gently as I could. “How is she?”
“Maybe a little stronger,” Karen said. “She ate some ice cream, Miss Ella says.”
Miss Claudia was sleeping, too, her breath sounding much the same as her neighbor’s, shallow, ragged. I sat on the bed, ignoring the client’s outraged snort, and massaged Miss Claudia’s left hand, her good hand.
“It’s V. I. Warshawski, Miss Claudia,” I said in a deep, clear voice. “I’m the detective. I’m looking for Lamont. You told Pastor Karen you wanted to see me.”
She stirred but didn’t wake. I repeated the information several times, and, after a bit, her eyes fluttered open.
“ ’ Ti ve,” she asked.
“I found Steve,” I said.
“She’s asking, are you the detective,” Miss Ella corrected me.
“I’m the detective, Miss Claudia. I found Steve Sawyer. He’s very ill. He was in prison for forty years.”
“Sad. Hard. ’Mont?”
I clasped her hand more tightly. “Curtis… You remember Curtis Rivers? Curtis says Lamont is dead. But he doesn’t know where he’s resting. He says Johnny knows.”
Her fingers gave mine a weak response. Miss Ella said, “The Anacondas! I knew it was their doing.”
“I don’t think Johnny killed Lamont, but he knows what happened to him. I’ll try my best to get him to tell me.” I was speaking slowly to Miss Claudia, wondering how much sense she could make of my words.
Miss Ella huffed. “You’ll try and you’ll get the same results you’ve come up with all summer. Nothing.”
I didn’t try to answer or even look at her but kept my attention on her sister. Miss Claudia lay silent for a moment, taking conscious, deeper breaths, preparing herself for a major effort. “Bible.” She pronounced both consonants clearly. “Lamont Bible… You take.”
She turned her head on the pillow so I could see what she intended. The red leather Bible was on the nightstand by her head. “Find ’Mont. He dead, bury with him. He ’live, give him.” Another deep breath, another effort. “Promise?”
“I promise, Miss Claudia.”
“Lamont’s Bible?” Miss Ella was outraged. “That’s a family Bible, Claudia. You can’t-”
“Quiet yourself, Ellie.” But the effort in making clear speech was too hard for Miss Claudia, and she sank back into half-intelligible syllables: “ ’ Hite girl, ’hite ’tive, I want give.”
Miss Claudia watched me until she was sure I had the Bible, sure I was tucking it into the big side pocket of my overalls, not handing it to her sister. She closed her eyes and gasped for air. Miss Ella favored her sister and me both with bitter words. Especially her sister, who had always traded on her looks, never cared how much Ella worked and did, and spoiled Lamont when Ella told her time and again that she had ruined him by sparing the rod. If Miss Claudia heard, she didn’t respond. She had worn herself out speaking to me. I knew she wasn’t asleep because, as she lay there, her eyes fluttered open from time to time, looking from my face to my pocket where the end of the big red Bible was sticking out.
Holding her hand, I sang to her the song of the butterfly, the favorite of the lullabies of my childhood. “Gira qua e gira là, poi si resta supra un fiore; / Gira qua e gira là, poi si resta supra spalla di Papà” (Turning here, turning there, until she rests upon a flower; / Turning here, turning there, until she rests on Papà’s shoulder).
Miss Ella sniffed loudly, but I sang it through several times, calming myself along with Miss Claudia, until she was deeply asleep. When I got up to go, Miss Ella stayed in the chair, I suppose not wanting to dignify her sister’s bequest to me by acknowledging me, but Pastor Karen followed me into the hall.