Fire Sale

The garbage trucks weren’t on me yet: the By-Smart semi was still blocking the track, lurching in a circle. I stopped jumping. Save your energy, Warshawski, save it for when you need it. The semi kept turning, not straightening out for the outbound road. The line of beetles had stopped and was honking at the semi. It seemed as though Grobian had forgotten how to drive. Or was William trying to prove he wasn’t a completely useless weasel by taking the wheel himself? The tractor made too wide a turn and brought the trailer over the side of the hill. The trailer teetered for a minute on its inside wheels and toppled over. The tractor fell back on its hind wheels, hung for a second, and then collapsed on its side.

46 Behold: The Purloined Pen

The night ended for me as far too many had already this month: in a hospital emergency room, with Conrad Rawlings staring down at me.

“Whatever you have for breakfast, Ms. W., I want to start eating it, too: you should be dead.”

I blinked at him hazily through the curtain of pain blockers shrouding my mind. “Conrad? How did you get here?”

“You made the ER nurse call me. Don’t you remember? You apparently had ten kinds of fits when they tried to put you under, that I had to get here before you’d let them treat you.”

I shook my head, trying to remember the shreds of the night behind me, but the movement hurt my head. I put a hand up to touch it and felt a sheet of adhesive.

“I don’t remember. And what’s wrong with me? What’s on my head?”

He gri

“Oh. In the warehouse, right before he knocked me out. Grobian shot me. I didn’t feel it, just the blood pouring down my face. Where is he? Where’s William Bysen?”

“We sort of have them, although the Bysen legal machine is moving into action, so I don’t know how long I’ll get to keep them. When I got here, they were trying a story out on the cop on duty in the emergency room, that you had hijacked one of the By-Smart semis and they’d fought you for it, which is how the truck got knocked over. The fire department crew that brought the three of you in objected that your hands and feet were tied, and Grobian said they’d done that to keep you from overpowering them. Want to comment?”

I shut my eyes; the glare from the overhead light hurt too much. “We live in a world where people seem willing to believe almost any lie they’re told, no matter how ludicrous, as long as someone with family values is telling it. The Bysens prattle so much about family values, I suppose they can get the state’s attorney and a judge to believe this one.”

“Hey, Ms. W., don’t be so cynical: you’ve got me on the case now. And the city garbagemen have some evidence that the Bysen story doesn’t exactly explain.”

I smiled at him in a muzzy, dopey way. “That’s nice, Conrad, thanks.”

The pain blockers kept carrying me off on their tide, but on my rides to the surface I told him about Billy and Josie, and as much as I could remember of my night at the warehouse, and he told me about my rescue.

Apparently, when the semi toppled over at the landfill, the city crews had sprung from their trucks and raced to the accident scene-as much voyeurs as Good Samaritans. It was then that one of them had caught sight of me, feebly flopping about the hillside. They’d called for help, and gotten a fire truck but no ambulance, so after the firemen freed Grobian and William from the tractor the three of us rode a hook and ladder together to the hospital.

I sort of remembered that; the pain from bouncing up Stony Island Avenue at top speed in a fire truck had woken me, and I had a dream-dazed memory of Grobian and William shouting at each other, blaming each other for the mess they were in. I guess it was only when they got to the hospital, and had to give a story to the police, that they’d decided to join forces and blame me for their mess.

I tried to stay awake enough to follow Conrad’s story, but behind the pain meds my shoulders throbbed from being pulled from their sockets. My kidneys ached, my whole body, from head to toe, was one pulsing sore; after a while, I just let go of it all and went to sleep.

When I woke again, Conrad had left, but Lotty was there, along with Morrell. The hospital wanted to discharge me, and Lotty was taking me home with her.

“It’s criminal to move you now, and I said so to the director, but their managed care owners decree how much care a battered body gets, and yours gets twelve hours.” Lotty’s black eyes flashed-I realized that she was only partly indignant on my behalf-she was furious that a hospital could pay more attention to their owners than to an important surgeon.

After his own recent injuries, Morrell knew what to bring for the battered body to wear home. He’d stopped at a fancy Oak Street boutique and bought me a warm-up suit made of a cashmere so soft it felt like kitten fur. He’d bought fleece-lined boots so I wouldn’t have to deal with shoes and socks. As I dressed in a wobbly, lethargic way, I saw that my skin looked like an eggplant harvest, more purple than olive. On our way out, the nurse gave me a bag with my slime-crusted clothes. I was even more grateful to Morrell for keeping me from having to look at them this morning.

Morrell helped me into a wheelchair, and laid his cane in my lap so he could push me down the hall. Lotty walked alongside like a terrier, her fur bristling when she had to speak to someone on the staff about my discharge.

Not even my injuries could keep Lotty from treating the city streets like the course of the Grand Prix, but I was too dopey to worry about her near miss with a truck at Seventy-first Street.

Morrell rode with us as far as her apartment: he would take a cab back to Evanston from there. In the elevator going up, he said that the British Foreign Office had finally located Marcena’s parents in India; they were flying into Chicago tonight, and would be staying with him.

“That’s nice,” I said, trying to summon the energy to be interested. “What about Don?”

“He’s moving to the living room couch, but he’ll go back to New York on Sunday.” He traced a finger along the line of my head bandage. “Can you stay out of the wars for a few days, Hippolyte? Marcena is having her first skin graft on Monday; it would be nice not to have to worry about you as well.”

“Victoria is not going anywhere,” Lotty pronounced. “I’m ordering the doorman to carry her back upstairs to bed if he sees her in the lobby.”

I laughed weakly, but I was fretting about Billy and Josie. Morrell asked if I would feel better if they went to stay with Mr. Contreras. “He’s aching to do something, and if he had them to fuss over, it would help him not mind so much that you’re staying here with Lotty.”

“I don’t know if he can keep them safe,” I worried.

“For this weekend, Grobian, at any rate, will still be in custody. By Monday, believe it or not, you’ll feel a lot stronger, and you’ll be able to figure out a better plan.”

I had to agree: I didn’t have the strength to do anything else right now. I even had to agree to let Morrell send Amy Blount down to Mary A

I slept the rest of the day away. When I woke in the evening, Lotty brought me a bowl of her homemade lentil soup. I lay in her guest room, luxuriating in the clean room, the clean clothes, the peace of her loving care.

It wasn’t until the next morning that she showed me Marcena’s red recording pen. “I took your foul clothes to the laundry, my dear, and found this inside. I assumed you want to keep it?”