“The people who’ve been after me,” she screamed. “Just
“Okay, okay,” I said in the soothing voice one uses with infants. “Tell me where the building is and I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Just kitty-corner to the Indiana Arms.” She calmed down to a quavering sob.
“On Indiana or Cermak?” I tied my running shoes.
“In-Indiana. Are you coming?”
“I’m on my way. Just stay where you are by the phone. Call 911 if you think someone really is coming.”
I turned on the bedside lamp. Dialing Furey’s home number, I carried the phone over to my closet. It rang fifteen times before I gave up and tried the station. The night man said Michael wasn’t in. Neither were Bobby, Finchley, or McGonnigal.
I hesitated, undoing the safe in the back of my closet where I keep my Smith & Wesson. Finally I explained that Bobby wanted Elena found and that Michael had been assigned to look for her.
“She just called me from an abandoned building on Indiana. She says she’s in trouble-I don’t know if she is or not, but I’m on my way down there to get her. I’d like Furey and the lieutenant to know.”
He promised to put out a call on the radio to Michael for me with the address. I set the phone on the closet floor while I checked the clip. It was full and the ninth bullet was chambered. I carefully made sure the safety was on, put a shoulder holster over my sweatshirt, and left.
When I got to the bottom Peppy started barking anxiously behind Mr. Contreras’s door. She hadn’t seen me all day, she’d missed her run, and she was determined I wasn’t going to leave without her. Her barking followed me down the walk to the street.
As I was getting into the Chevy, Vinnie stuck his head out his front window. He yelled something, but I was already rolling and didn’t hear him.
I headed for Lake Shore Drive. The Dan Ryan would decant me closer to the site, but I wasn’t up to dealing with the construction and detours in the dark. For the same reason I left the Drive at Congress and went down Michigan Avenue instead of negotiating the spaghetti behind McCormick Place.
The moon was nearly full. Once I’d slid past the street-lamps onto south Michigan its cold light created black- and-white stills: objects highlighted with unnatural clarity, their shadows pitch black. I was feeling a little weak still, from being sick and from having eaten only once in the last twenty-four hours, but my mind was wonderfully clear. I could make out every drunk on the benches in Grant Park, and when I turned onto Cermak and up onto Prairie, I could even see the rats slithering through the vacant lots.
In the moonlight the Near South Side looked like postwar Berlin. The lifeless shells of warehouses and factories were surrounded by mountains of brick-filled rubble. When I got out at Twenty-first and Prairie, I was shivering from the desolation of the scene. I took a flashlight from the trunk and stuck it in my jacket pocket.
I took the Smith & Wesson from my shoulder holster and crept along the shadows on Twenty-first, holding it in my right hand. The cold metal brought me little comfort. I was wound up enough to take aim at a passing alley cat. It snarled at me, its eyes glinting in the moonlight as it passed.
Even as my heart pounded I wondered how much of Elena’s panic to believe in. I remembered all the times she’d gotten Tony out of bed with urgent alarms, only to have them dissolve-revealed as the phantasms of her drinking. This might easily turn into another such evening-maybe I shouldn’t even have roused Furey.
My lingering doubts didn’t make me careless. When I got to Indiana I stayed awhile in the shadow of an abandoned auto parts dealer, straining my eyes and ears for any kind of movement. I’d worried about finding Elena’s hideout from her vague directions, but there was only one hotel on the street besides the Indiana Arms. The moonlight picked out the dead neon lights of the Prairie Shores Hotel, halfway down the block on my side of the road.
I heard a rustling across the street and knelt, the gun cocked again, but it was large plastic bag dragged loose from the rest of the garbage by the ubiquitous rats. Against
Across from me loomed the burned-out hull of the Indiana Arms. The sharp night air carried the acrid scent of its charred beams to me and I fought back a sneeze. When I got to the corner I could see the pay phone but not my aunt. I prowled around the street for a few minutes, tempted to return to my bed. Finally I squared my shoulders and went over to the Prairie Shores Hotel.
Its front was boarded shut; I cautiously circled around to the back. The door there was heavily chained, but on the north side a broken window provided an easy entrance.
I shone my flashlight through the missing panes. I was looking at part of the pantry for the old kitchen. I trained the light around as much as I could see of the interior. No one was there, but a rustling and the sudden darkening of shadows along the top of the broken cabinets told me my yellow-toothed pals were.
I wished I’d worn a cap. I tried not to think of the red eyes watching me as I climbed carefully over the bent metal frame. A glass shard caught in the crotch of my jeans. I stopped to loosen the fabric and listened some more before moving again. Still no human sounds.
Once inside I picked my way carefully from the pantry to the kitchen. The old smells of grease still hung heavily there; no wonder the rats were so interested. I got lost in a maze of service rooms but came at length to a door that opened on a flight of steep stairs.
Before starting down I stopped to listen again. I shone the light on each step, not wanting to tumble through the rotten boards. Every few treads I called out softly to my aunt. I couldn’t hear her.
A hall led from the bottom of the stairs to another rabbit warren. I checked each of the rooms whose door opened but saw nothing except decayed furnishings. At the end of the hall another corridor led to the right. When I stuck my hand out to steady myself as I peered around the corner, I clawed at open air. I gulped and jumped back, but the light showed me nothing more menacing than a dumb waiter.
I called to Elena again but still got no reply. I turned out the light to make my ears work harder. I could hear nothing except the scrabbling and squealing of the rodents.
Tiptoeing, straining my ears, I moved down this side corridor. A series of rooms lined it. I tried each in turn, shining the light around, calling softly to my aunt. Some were empty, but most were stacked with rotting refuse from the old hotel-abandoned sofas with stuffing sticking out at all angles, mattresses, old iron springs. Every now and then I’d catch a movement, but when I stopped to look all I saw was red eyes glaring back.
Finally I reached the far end of the corridor, where a lifeless phone hung. It was an old black model with a dial face lined with letters, not numbers. When I replaced the receiver and lifted it again, no dial tone came. It was as dead as the building.
Anger gripped me. How
“Vic!”
It was a hoarse whisper, coming from a room on my left. I thought I’d looked in there but I couldn’t be sure. Flinging the door open, I shone the flash around the heap of old furniture. A large mass lay on a sofa wedged in the corner. I’d missed it on my first cursory scan of the room.
“Elena!” I called sharply. “Are you there?”
I knelt next to the couch. My aunt was lying on her side, wrapped in a filthy blanket. Her duffel bag leaned against the wall, the violet nightdress still poking from one side. Relief and anger swept through me in equal measures. How
I shook her roughly. “Elena! Wake up. We’ve got to go.”
She didn’t respond. Her head lolled lifelessly as I shook her. My stomach churning, I laid her gently down. She was still breathing in short shallow snorts. I felt her head. Along the back was a tender swollen mass. A blow-from a fall or from a person?
I heard someone move behind me. Panicking, I pulled the gun from my holster again. Before I could get to my feet the night around me broke into a thousand points of light and I fell into blackness.
