Blood Shot

I dropped the curtain. “I was kind of expecting a burst of machine-gun fire. Don’t tell me my life is going to settle into monotony.”

Humboldt gave his rich little chuckle. “Nothing affects you, does it, Ms. Warshawski? You really are a most remarkable young woman.”

I sat in the armchair facing Humboldt; Peppy stood in front of me, looking from him to me with concern, her tail down. I patted her head and she went down on her haunches without relaxing.

“Your mystery guest hasn’t arrived yet?”

“My guest will keep.” He chuckled gently to himself. “I thought you and I could have a little chat first. It might not be necessary to produce my visitor. Whiskey?”

I shook my head. “Your rarefied cellars are giving me ideas above my income, I can’t afford to get used to them.”

“But you could, Ms. Warshawski. You could, you know, if you would stop going around with that outsize chip on your shoulder.”

I leaned back in the chair and crossed my legs. “Now that is really unworthy of you. I expected a much grander, or at least more subtle, approach.”

“Now, now, Ms. Warshawski. You’re too hasty to react much of the time. You could do worse than listen to me.”

“Yeah, I guess I could follow the Cubs on a road trip. But you might as well spit it out now so I’ll know if I have to dodge your minions’ bullets for the rest of my life.”

He refused to let himself get ruffled. “You’ve paid a great deal of attention to my affairs recently, Ms. Warshawski. So I’ve returned the compliment and paid much attention to yours.”

“I bet my researches were a lot more exciting than yours.” I kept my hand on Peppy’s head.

“Perhaps we have different ideas of what might prove exciting. For instance, I was most intrigued to learn that you owe a balance of fifty thousand dollars on your apartment and that your mortgage payments are not easy for you to meet.”

“Oh, God, Gustav. You aren’t going to pull the old I’ll-get-the-bank-to-cut-off-your-mortgage routine, are you? That’s getting pretty boring.”

He continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “Your parents are both dead, I understand. But you have a good friend who stands toward you as sort of a mother, I believe-this Dr. Charlotte Herschel. Yes?”

I tightened my fingers so strongly in Peppy’s hair that she gave a little yelp. “If anything happens to Dr. Herschel-anything-from a flat tire to a bloody nose-you will be dead within twenty-four hours. That’s a cast-iron prophecy.”

He gave his hearty chuckle. “You’re so active, Ms. Warshawski, that you imagine everyone must be as energetic as yourself No, I was more concerned about Dr. Herschel’s medical practice. Whether she would be able to keep her license.”

He waited for me to react again, but I’d managed to regain enough self-control to keep quiet. I picked up The New York Times from the little table that lay between us and flipped to the sports section. The Islanders were on a roll-how disappointing.

“You’re not curious, Ms. Warshawski?” he finally asked.

“Not especially.” I turned to a discussion of the Mets’ prospects going into training camp. “I mean, there’re so many creepy things you might do it’d be a waste of energy wondering which particular one you’ve lighted on this time.”

He put his whiskey glass down with a snap and leaned forward. Peppy growled a little in the back of her throat. I put what looked like a restraining hand on her-it’s hard to imagine a golden retriever attacking someone, but if you don’t like dogs, you might not know that.

He kept an eye on Peppy. “So you are prepared to sacrifice your home and Dr. Herschel’s career to your stubborn pride?”

“What do you want me to do?” I said irritably. “Lie on the floor and kick and scream? I’m prepared to believe you have much more in the way of power, money, whatever, than I do. You want to rub my nose in it, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to act real excited about it.”

“Don’t jump so quickly to conclusions, Ms. Warshawski,” he said plaintively. “You’re not without options. You just don’t want to hear what they are.”

“Okay.” I smiled brightly. “Tell me.”

“Get your dog to lie down first.”

I gave Peppy a hand signal and she obediently dropped to the floor, but she kept her back haunches tensed, ready to jump.

“I’m only offering possibilities. You mustn’t be so quick to react to the first one. It’s just one scenario, you see, your mortgage, Dr. Herschel’s license. There are others. You might be able to pay off that debt with enough money left to get yourself a car more suited to your personality than that old Chevy-you see, I have been doing my research. What would you drive if you had the opportunity?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, Mr. Humboldt. I haven’t thought a lot about it. Maybe I’d move up to a Buick.”

He sighed like a disappointed father. “You should listen to me seriously, young lady, or you will soon find yourself out of options.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’d like to drive a Ferrari, but Magnum’s already doing that. Maybe an Alfa… So you’ll give me my co-op and a sports car and Dr. Herschel’s license. What would you like from me as a show of gratitude for such generosity?”

He smiled: everyone can be pressured or bought. “Dr. Chigwell. A willing, hardworking man, but not, alas, of great ability. Unfortunately, to have a doctor at an industrial location does not give one access to physicians of Dr. Herschel’s caliber.”

I put the paper down and stopped petting the dog to prove I was all attention.

“He kept some notes over the years on our employees at Xerxes. Without my knowledge, of course-I can’t keep on top of all the details of an operation the size of Humboldt.”

“You and Ronald Reagan,” I murmured sympathetically.

He looked at me suspiciously, but I kept an expression of intent interest on my face.

“I only recently learned about these notes. The information in them is useless because it’s totally inaccurate. But in the wrong hands it might look most damaging to Xerxes. It could be difficult for me to prove that all the data he collected were wrong.”

“Especially over a twenty-year period,” I said. “But if you could get those notebooks, you would give me my mortgage? And withdraw any threat to Dr. Herschel?”

“There would also be a bonus for you because of the amount of trouble you’ve been subjected to by some of my overly zealous friends.”

He reached inside his jacket pocket and held out a piece of parchment for me to look at. After glancing at it casually I dropped it on the little table between us. My coolness took an effort-the document represented two thousand preferred shares of Humboldt Chemical. I picked up the Times again and looked at the stock summaries.

“Closed at 101 3/8 yesterday. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus with no brokerage fees. I’m impressed.” I leaned back in the chair and looked at him squarely. “Trouble is, I could double that just by shorting Humboldt. If money was that important to me. It just isn’t. And you’re shit out of luck on the notebooks, anyway-they’ve already gone both to an attorney and to a team of medical specialists. You’re dead. I don’t know what the value of the coming lawsuits is, but half a billion probably isn’t too far off the mark.”

“You’d rather put your friend, the woman who has stood as a mother to you, out of practice, for the sake of some people you never met and who aren’t worth your consideration anyway?”

“If you’ve been doing research on me, you know that Louisa Djiak isn’t a casual acquaintance,” I snapped. “And I defy you to think of any threat to Dr. Herschel that her reputation for probity wouldn’t be equal to.”

He gave a smile that made him look very like a shark. “Really, Ms. Warshawski. You must learn not to be so hasty. I would not make any threat I didn’t feel competent to execute.”

He rang a bell tucked into the mantel. Anton appeared so quickly, he must have been hovering in the hallway.