I leaned back against the headrest, holding the ice pack the cops had given me against my face. Lotty had been brusque on the phone, but she agreed to get me priority seating at the hospital. You’re safe? The child is safe? I’ll try to be thankful for that.
“Who’ll take over the agency when Scanlon retires?” I asked Bagby.
“Can’t imagine Scanlon quitting,” Bagby said. “As to who will take over the business, hard to know. I think he keeps hoping one of the kids he’s grooming in Say, Yes! will have the right combination of skills.”
“And your daughter Delphina will take over Bagby Haulage?”
“She’s got to stop thinking about boys and start thinking about business. Or maybe she’ll think about a boy who wants to go into trucking. How about you? You have a kid to take over your agency when you retire?”
“Nope. But maybe young Bernie will when she gets tired of hockey—she’s tough enough.”
“You have a husband who’s going to be shocked by your broken nose?”
“Are you asking whether I’m married, or whether my husband is shockable?” I said.
Vince laughed again. “Married?”
“No longer.”
Bernie handed me back the phone. She’d finished her conversation with her mother, but Arlette wanted to talk to me.
“Bernadine wants to stay in Chicago. Me, I say no. Pierre will fly to Chicago as soon as possible: he is scouting in Florida right now. But please, please do not let her go near these gang neighborhoods. I know she is imagining that she is—oh, what is the word, I don’t speak enough English anymore—where you imagine someone else’s spirit is living in you—”
“Channeling?” I suggested.
“Yes, yes. She thinks she is channeling Boom-Boom, but I cannot have her living the life you and Boom-Boom did. Comprends?”
“Yes, I agree, which is why I don’t want her to stay on.”
Bernie announced loudly from the backseat that she was fine, she had ras-le-bol with the discussion. Arlette and I finally bade each other an uneasy good-bye, neither of us happy with me or the situation.
We’d reached the Montrose exit. Beth Israel is on Wilson, a bit farther north and four miles to the east. Bagby reached the hospital without asking me for directions or consulting a GPS. When I complimented him, he gave his easy grin and said he’d been driving the city since he was sixteen.
“I’m better than a London taxi driver, Warshawski. Bet you can’t name a road in the six counties that I can’t find.”
He pulled into the emergency room entrance at Beth Israel and helped us out of the Patriot. Mr. Contreras was on the lookout and surged forward, exclaiming and scolding at the same time.
“The doc called over, doll, they got an advanced practice nurse standing by and everything else, give them your insurance card and you’ll get to the head of the line, where you belong, anyway. What’d those SOBs do to your eye?”
“Right hook, I think,” I said. “Thank God they didn’t have knucks or razors.”
“And you, peanut?” Mr. Contreras held Bernie at arm’s length. “Scrapes on your face, nothing broken.”
“Vic saved me, Uncle Sal, I don’t know what she did, this huge guy was on top of me but she got him off and—and—” She burst into tears, all the fear and helplessness of the last few hours pouring out in body-shaking sobs.
Jake had been waiting on the sideline for Mr. Contreras to get over his first burst of relief. While the old man comforted Bernie, he pulled me close to him. The pressure of his shoulder against my face made my swollen eye throb, but I clung to him.
“The first time I met you, you had me hustle you out of the building in my bass case. I thought that was the end of your adventures, not chapter 237 in the 1001 Close Shaves of Warshawskazade,” he murmured into my hair.
He led me to the counter, keeping an arm around me while I handed in my insurance cards, reminded the intake clerk that I was supposed to see someone ASAP. Lotty had paved the way smoothly: Bernie and I were taken into the examining area, shunted off for X-rays, given eye exams, salves for the raw skin, tetanus shots, a little cocaine up the nose for me to stop the bleeding.
Bernie had some deep bruising from where the Insane Dragon had been pounding on her, but he hadn’t been on top of her long enough for other more horrible damage. We’d both been exceptionally lucky.
Bernie was finished before me. I stayed to go over my police report with the cop on duty at Beth Israel, but Mr. Contreras took Bernie home.
I didn’t want her spending the night on my living room couch. I have good security, steel-plated doors and infrared motion detectors, but if I had become a target, I didn’t want Bernie near me.
As the old man got ready to leave with Bernie, I asked if he could put her up in the room his grandsons use when they visit. He brightened measurably. When Jake and I reached home about an hour later, Mr. Contreras was heating up a pot of soup, pulling out clean sheets and giving Mitch the command to patrol.
“You don’t really think some gang member is going to trek all the way up here to finish off the two of you, do you?” Jake asked. “I thought they liked to stay on their home ground.”
“I have the jitters right now. Besides, I’m responsible for her safety. I shouldn’t have taken her with me to the South Side today at all—I was annoyed that she quit her job for no reason other than she didn’t like getting up early. I was punishing her by not letting her roam the city shopping or something, and now I feel like a creep.”
“Oh, Victoria Iphigenia, you don’t control the Universe. You don’t know what might have happened to Bernadine if she’d been roaming the city on her own. Perhaps you saved her from a worse disaster by being present to protect her in the one that befell you.”
He stroked my swollen eye. “I agree with the cop down there—it’s a pity you didn’t kill the guy whose head you jumped on. Bernie was resourceful, too. She didn’t panic, she flagged a squad car. The fact that she acted, that will help keep her from lasting trauma, at least that’s what the self-help articles I read in airline magazines tell me.”
I tried to respond in kind, tried to get out of my self-recriminatory mode, but I wasn’t doing well these days, as a detective, or a guardian.
CHIN MUSIC
In the morning, I called a towing service to haul the Mustang up to my mechanic. Given the neighborhood where I’d left the car, and the distance, the cost was going to be significant. A further depressant.
Jake offered to drive me to Lotty’s clinic so she could inspect me in person. We checked on Bernie on our way out. She was still deeply asleep, with Mitch and Mr. Contreras both keeping an anxious eye on her.
When Jake dropped me at Lotty’s, he fretted about leaving me on my own, but he had students waiting for him at Northeastern. I assured him I could get around with public transportation and taxis and that I wouldn’t be going far—I don’t bounce back from street fights the way I used to.
I dozed in the waiting room until Lotty had time to see me. She studied the reports from the Beth Israel ER on her computer screen, studied my face, agreeing the swelling had gone down, that there was no damage to the cornea or retina, took the cocaine-laced padding out of my nose, assured me that I would live to be scarred another day.
She advised me not to drive for a day or two, or at least to stay off the expressways. “And—I know caution is foreign to your nature, but Victoria—please!”
She didn’t say anything else, not the words of anger or fear she sometimes gives after an injury. Somehow that made the encounter more painful.
I walked to Western Avenue from her clinic to pick up a southbound bus. All my muscles felt stiff and sore; the half-mile walk helped pinpoint every blow I’d absorbed last night. When the bus finally lumbered to the stop nearest my office, all I wanted was to lie down and sleep, but I went into the coffee bar across the street for an espresso. Maybe caffeine could compensate for painkillers and pain.