I’d known Lotty for years. She was a doctor, about fifty, I thought, but with her vivid, clever face and trim, energetic body it was hard to tell. Sometime in her Viennese youth she had discovered the secret of perpetual motion. She held fierce opinions on a number of things, and put them to practice in medicine, often to the dismay of her colleagues. She’d been one of the physicians who performed abortions in connection with an underground referral service I’d belonged to at the University of Chicago in the days when abortion was illegal and a dirty word to most doctors. Now she ran a clinic in a shabby storefront down the street. She’d tried running it for nothing when she first opened it, but found the neighborhood people wouldn’t trust medical care they didn’t have to pay for. Still it was one of the cheapest clinics in the city, and I often wondered what she lived on.
Now she shut the door behind me and ushered me into her living room. Like Lotty herself, it was sparely furnished, but glowed with strong colors-curtains in a vivid red-and-orange print, and an abstract painting like fire on the wall. Lotty sat me on a daybed and brought me a cup of the strong Viennese coffee she lived on.
“So now, Victoria, what have you been doing that makes you hobble upstairs like an old woman and turns your face black-and-blue? I am sure not a car accident, that’s too tame for you-am I right?”
“Right as always, Lotty,” I answered, and gave her an abbreviated account of my adventures.
She pursed her lips at the tale of Smeissen but wasted no time arguing about whether I ought to go to the police or drop out of the case or spend the day in bed. She didn’t always agree with me, but Lotty respected my decisions. She went into her bedroom and returned with a large, businesslike black bag. She pulled my face muscles and looked at my eyes with an ophthalmoscope. “Nothing time won’t cure,” she pronounced, and checked the reflexes in my legs and the muscles. “Yes, I see, you are sore, and you will continue to be sore. But you are healthy, you take good care of yourself; it will pass off before too long.
“Yes, I suspected as much,” I agreed. “But I can’t take the time to wait for these leg muscles to heal. And they’re sore enough to slow me down quite a bit right now. I need something that will help me overlook the pain enough to do some errands and some thinking-not like codeine that knocks you out. Do you have anything?”
“Ah, yes, a miracle drug.” Lotty’s face was amused. “You shouldn’t put so much faith in doctors and drugs, Vic. However, I’ll give you a shot of phenylbutazone. That’s what they give racehorses to keep them from aching when they run, and it seems to me you’re galloping around like a horse.”
She disappeared for a few minutes, and I heard the refrigerator door open. She returned with a syringe and a small, rubber-stoppered bottle. “Now, lie down; we’ll do this in your behind so it goes quickly to the bloodstream. Pull your slacks down a bit, so; great stuff this, really, they call it ‘bute’ for short, in half an hour you will be ready for the Derby, my dear.” As she talked, Lotty worked rapidly. I felt a small sting and it was over. “Now, sit. I’ll tell you some stories about the clinic. I’m going to give you some nepenthe to take away with you. That’s very strong, a painkiller; don’t try to drive while you’re taking it, and don’t drink. I’ll pack up some bute in tablets for you.”
I leaned back against a big pillow and tried not to relax too much. The temptation to lie down and sleep was very strong. I forced myself to follow Lotty’s quick, clever talk, asking questions, but not debating her more outlandish statements. After a while I could feel the drug taking effect. My neck muscles eased considerably. I didn’t feel like unarmed combat, but I was reasonably certain I could handle my car.
Lotty didn’t try to stop my getting up. “you’ve rested for close to an hour-you should do for a while.” She packed the bute tablets in a plastic bottle and gave me a bottle of nepenthe.
I thanked her. “How much do I owe you?”
She shook her head. “No, these are all samples. When you come for your long-overdue checkup, then I’ll charge you what any good Michigan Avenue doctor would.”
She saw me to the door. “Seriously, Vic, if you get worried about this Smeissen character, you are always welcome in my spare room.” I thanked her-it was a good offer, and one that I might need.
Normally I would have walked back to my car; Lotty was only about eight blocks from me. But even with the shot I didn’t feel quite up to par, so I walked slowly down to Addison and caught a cab. I rode it down to my office, where I picked up Peter Thayer’s voter card with the Winnetka address on it, then flagged another cab back to my own car on the North Side. McGraw was going to have quite a bill for expenses-all these cabs, and then the navy suit had cost a hundred and sixty-seven dollars.
A lot of people were out enjoying the day, and the clean fresh air lifted my spirits too. By two I was on the Edens Expressway heading toward the North Shore. I started singing a snatch from Mozart’s “Ch’io mi scordi di te,” but my rib cage protested and I had to settle for a Bartok concerto on WFMT.
For some reason the Edens ceases to be a beautiful expressway as it nears the homes of the rich. Close to Chicago it’s lined with greensward and neat bungalows, but as you go farther out, shopping centers crop up and industrial parks and drive-ins take over. Once I turned right onto Willow Road, though, and headed toward the lake, the view became more impressive-large stately homes set well back on giant, carefully manicured lawns. I checked Thayer’s address and turned south onto Sheridan Road, squinting at numbers on mailboxes. His house was on the east side, the side where lots face Lake Michigan, giving the children private beaches and boat moorings when they were home from Groton or Andover.
My Chevy felt embarrassed turning through twin stone pillars, especially when it saw a small Mercedes, an Alfa, and an Audi Fox off to one side of the drive. The circular drive took me past some attractive flower gardens to the front door of a limestone mansion. Next to the door a small sign requested tradesmen to make deliveries in the rear. Was I a tradesman or -woman? I wasn’t sure I had anything to deliver, but perhaps my host did.
I took a card from my wallet and wrote a short message on it: “Let’s talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.” I rang the bell.
The expression on the face of the neatly uniformed woman who answered the door reminded me of my black eye: the bute had put it out of my mind for a while. I gave her the card. “I’d like to see Mr. Thayer,” I said coolly.
She looked at me dubiously, but took the card, shutting the door in my face. I could hear faint shouts from beaches farther up the road. As the minutes passed, I left the porch to make a more detailed study of a flower bed on the other side of the drive. When the door opened, I turned back. The maid frowned at me.
“I’m not stealing the flowers,” I assured hen “But since you don’t have magazines in the waiting area, I had to look at something.
She sucked in her breath but only said, “This way.” No “please,” no manners at all. Still, this was a house of mourning. I made allowances.
We moved at a fast clip through a large entry room graced by a dull-green statue, past a stairway, and down a hall leading to the back of the house. John Thayer met us, coming from the other direction. He was wearing a white knit shirt and checked gray slacks-suburban attire but muted. His whole air was subdued, as if he were consciously trying to act like a mourning father.
“Thanks, Lucy. We’ll go in here.” He took my arm and moved me into a room with comfortable armchairs and packed bookcases. The books were lined up neatly on the shelves. I wondered if he ever read any of them.