A Little Help from a Friend
When I woke up, the room was full of the soft light of late morning, diffused through my heavy bedroom curtains. I was alone in the bed and lay still to collect my thoughts. Gradually the memory of yesterday’s events returned, and I moved my head cautiously to look at the bedside clock. My neck was very stiff, and I had to turn my whole body to see the time-11:30. I sat up. My stomach muscles were all right, but my thighs and calves were sore, and it was painful to stand upright. I did a slow shuffle to the bathroom, the kind you do the day after you run five miles when you haven’t been out for a couple of months, and turned the hot water in the tub on full blast.
Ralph called to me from the living room. “Good morning,” I called back. “If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to come here-I’m not walking any farther.” Ralph came into the bathroom, fully dressed, and joined me while I gloomily studied my face in the mirror over the sink. My incipient black eye had turned a deep blackish-purple, streaked with yellow and green. My uninjured left eye was bloodshot. My jaw had turned gray. The whole effect was unappealing.
Ralph seemed to share my feeling. I was watching his face in the mirror; he seemed a little disgusted. My bet was that Dorothy had never come home with a black eye-suburban life is so dull.
“Do you do this kind of thing often?” Ralph asked.
“You mean scrutinize my body, or what?” I asked.
He moved his hands vaguely. “The fighting,” he said.
“Not as much as I did as a child. I grew up on the South Side. Ninetieth and Commercial, if you know the area-lots of Polish steelworkers who didn’t welcome racial and ethnic newcomers-and the feeling was mutual. The law of the jungle ruled in my high school-if you couldn’t swing a mean toe or fist, you might as well forget it.”
I turned from the mirror. Ralph was shaking his head, but he was trying to understand, trying not to back away. “It’s a different world,” he said slowly. “I grew up in Libertyville, and I don’t think I was ever in a real fight. And if my sister had come home with a black eye, my mother would have been hysterical for a month. Didn’t your folks mind?”
“Oh, my mother hated it, but she died when I was fifteen, and my dad was thankful that I could take care of myself.” That was true-Gabriella had hated violence. But she was a fighter, and I got my scrappiness from her, not from my big, even-tempered father.
“Did all the girls in your school fight?” Ralph wanted to know.
I climbed into the hot water while I considered this. “No, some of them just got scared off. And some got themselves boyfriends to protect them. The rest of us learned to protect ourselves. One girl I went to school with still loves to fight-she’s a gorgeous redhead, and she loves going to bars and punching out guys who try to pick her up. Truly amazing.”
I sank back in the water and covered my face and neck with hot wet cloths. Ralph was quiet for a minute, then said, “I’ll make some coffee if you’ll tell me the secret-I couldn’t find any. And I didn’t know whether you were saving those dishes for Christmas, so I washed them.”
I uncovered my mouth but kept the cloth over my eyes. I’d forgotten the goddamn dishes yesterday when I left the house. “Thanks.” What else could I say? “Coffee’s in the freezer-whole beans. Use a tablespoon per cup. The grinder’s by the stove-electric gadget. Filters are in the cupboard right over it, and the pot is still in the sink-unless you washed it.”
He leaned over to kiss me, then went out. I reheated the washcloth and flexed my legs in the steamy water. After a while they moved easily, so I was confident they would be fine in a few days. Before Ralph returned with the coffee, I had soaked much of the stiffness out of my joints. I climbed out of the tub and enveloped myself in a large blue bath towel and walked-with much less difficulty-to the living room.
Ralph came in with the coffee. He admired my robe, but couldn’t quite look me in the face. “The weather’s broken,” he remarked. “I went out to get a paper and it’s a beautiful day-clear and cool. Want to drive out to the Indiana Dunes?”
I started to shake my head, but the pain stopped me. “No. It sounds lovely, but I’ve got some work to do.”
“Come on, Vic,” Ralph protested. “Let the police handle this. You’re in rotten shape-you need to take the day off.”
“You could be right,” I said, trying to keep down my anger. “But I thought we went through all that last-night. At any rate, I’m not taking the day off.”
“Well, how about some company. Need someone to drive you?”
I studied Ralph’s face, but all I saw was friendly concern. Was he just having an attack of male protectiveness, or did he have some special reason for wanting me to stay off the job? As a companion he’d be able to keep tabs on my errands. And report them to Earl Smeissen?
“I’m going to Winnetka to talk to Peter Thayer’s father. Since he’s a neighbor of your boss, I’m not sure it would look too good for you to come along.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Why do you have to see him?”
“It’s like the man said about Annapurna, Ralph: because he’s there.” There were a couple of other things I needed to do, too, things I’d just as soon be alone for.
“How about dinner tonight?” he suggested.
“Ralph, for heaven’s sake, you’re beginning to act like a Seeing Eye dog. No. No dinner tonight. You’re sweet, I appreciate it, but I want some time to myself.”
“Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “Just trying to be friendly.”
I stood up and walked painfully over to the couch where he was sitting. “ I know.” I put an arm around him and gave him a kiss. “I’m just trying to be unfriendly.” He pulled me onto his lap. The dissatisfaction smoothed out of his face and he kissed me.
After a few minutes I pulled myself gently away and hobbled back to the bedroom to get dressed. The navy silk was lying over a chair, with a couple of rents in it and a fair amount of blood and dirt. My cleaner could probably fix it up, but I didn’t think I’d ever care to wear it again. I threw it out and put on my green linen slacks with a pale-lemon shirt and a jacket. Perfect for suburbia. I decided not to worry about my face. It would look even more garish with makeup in sunlight than as it was.
I fixed myself Cream of Wheat while Ralph ate toast and jam. “Well,” I said, “time to head for suburbia.”
Ralph walked downstairs with me, trying to hold out a supporting hand. “No, thanks,” I said. “I’d better get used to doing this by myself.” At the bottom he won points by not lingering over his good-byes. We kissed briefly; he sketched a cheerful wave and crossed the street to his car. I watched him out of sight, then hailed a passing cab.
The driver dropped me on Sheffield north of Addison, a neighborhood more decayed than mine, largely Puerto Rican. I rang Lotty Herschel’s bell and was relieved when she answered it. “Who’s there?” she squawked through the intercom. “It’s me. Vic,” I said, and pushed the front door while the buzzer sounded.
Lotty lived on the second floor. She was waiting for me in the doorway when I made it to the top of the stairs. “My dear Vic-what on earth is wrong with you?” she greeted me, her thick black eyebrows soaring to punctuate her astonishment.
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.
Thayer held out my card. “What’s this about, Warshawski?”
“Just what it says. I want to talk about your relations with the Knifegrinders.”
He gave a humorless smile. “They are as minimal as possible. Now that Peter is-gone, I expect them to be nonexistent.”
“ I wonder if Mr. McGraw would agree with that.”
He clenched his fist, crushing the card. “Now we get to it. McGraw hired you to blackmail me, didn’t he?”
“Then there is a connection between you and the Knifegrinders.”
“No!”
“Then how can Mr. McGraw possibly blackmail you?”
“A man like that stops at nothing. I warned you yesterday to be careful around him.”
“Look, Mr. Thayer. Yesterday you got terribly upset at learning that McGraw had brought your name into this. Today you’re afraid he’s blackmailing you. That’s awfully suggestive.”
His face was set in harsh, strained lines. “Of what?”
“Something was going on between you two that you don’t want known. Your son found it out and you two had him killed to keep him quiet.”
“That’s a lie, Warshawski, a goddamned lie,” he roared.
“Prove it.”
“The police arrested Peter’s killer this morning.”
My head swam and I sat down suddenly in one of the leather chairs. “What?” My voice squeaked.
“One of the commissioners called me. They found a drug addict who tried to rob the place. They say Peter caught him at it and was shot.”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean, no? They arrested the guy.”
“No. Maybe they arrested him, but that wasn’t the scene. No one robbed that place. Your son didn’t catch anyone in the act. I tell you, Thayer, the boy was sitting at the kitchen table and someone shot him. That is not the work of a drug addict caught in a felony. Besides, nothing was taken.”
“What are you after, Warshawski? Maybe nothing was taken. Maybe he got scared and fled. I’d believe that before I’d believe your story-that I shot my own son.” His face was working with a strong emotion. Grief? Anger? Maybe horror?
“Mr. Thayer, I’m sure you’ve noticed what a mess my face is. A couple of punks roughed me up last night to warn me off the investigation into your son’s death. A drug addict doesn’t have those kinds of resources. I saw several people who might have engineered that-and you and Andy McGraw were two of them.”
“People don’t like busybodies, Warshawski. If someone beat you up, I’d take the hint.”
I was too tired to get angry. “In other words, you are involved but you figure you’ve got your ass covered. So that means I’ll have to figure out a way to saw the barrel off your tail. It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Warshawski, I’m telling you for your own good: drop it.” He went over to his desk. “I can see you’re a conscientious girl-but McGraw is wasting your time. There’s nothing to find.” He wrote a check and handed it to me. “Here. You can give McGraw back whatever he’s paid you and feel like you’ve done your duty.”
The check was for $5,000. “You bastard. You accuse me of blackmail and then you try to buy me off?” A spurt of raw anger pushed my fatigue to one side. I ripped up the check and let the pieces fall to the floor.
Thayer turned white. Money was his raw nerve. “The police made an arrest, Warshawski. I don’t need to buy you off. But if you want to act stupid about it, there’s nothing more to say. You’d better leave.”
The door opened and a girl came in. “Oh, Dad, Mother wants you to-” She broke off. “Sorry, didn’t know you had company.” She was an attractive teenager. Her brown straight hair was well brushed and hung down her back, framing a small oval face. She was wearing jeans and a striped man’s shirt several sizes too big for her. Maybe her brother’s. Normally she probably had the confident, healthy air that money can provide. Right now she drooped a bit.
“Miss Warshawski was just leaving, Jill. In fact, why don’t you show her out and I’ll go see what your mother wants.”
He got up and walked to the door, waiting until I followed him to say good-bye. I didn’t offer to shake hands. Jill led me back the way I’d come earlier; her father walked briskly in the opposite direction.
“I’m very sorry about your brother,” I said as we got to the greenish statue.
“So am I,” she said, pulling her lips together. When we got to the front of the house, she followed me outside and stood staring up in my face, frowning a little. “Did you know Peter?” she finally asked.
“No, I never met him,” I answered. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m afraid I’m the person who found him the other morning.”
“They wouldn’t let me look at him,” she said.
“His face was fine. Don’t have nightmares about him-his face wasn’t damaged.” She wanted more information. If he’d been shot in the head, how could his face look all right? I explained it to her in a toned-down, clinical way.
“Peter told me you could decide whether to trust people by their faces,” she said after a minute. “But yours is pretty banged up so I can’t tell. But you told me the truth about Peter and you’re not talking to me as if I was a baby or something.” She paused. I waited. Finally she asked, “Did Dad ask you to come out here?” When I replied, she asked, “Why was he angry?”
“Well, he thinks the police have arrested your brother’s murderer, but I think they’ve got the wrong person. And that made him angry.”
“Why?” she asked. “I mean, not why is he mad, but why do you think they got the wrong person?”
“The reasons are pretty complicated. It’s not because I know who did it, but because I saw your brother, and the apartment, and some other people who’ve been involved, and they’ve reacted to my seeing them. I’ve been in this business for a while, and I have a feel for when I’m hearing the truth. A drug addict wandering in off the streets just doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen and heard.”
She stood on one foot, and her face was screwed up as if she were afraid she might start crying. I put an arm around her and pulled her to a sitting position on the shallow porch step.
“I’m okay,” she muttered. “It’s just-everything is so weird around here. You know, it’s so terrible, Pete dying and everything. He-he-well-” She hiccuped back a sob. “Never mind. It’s Dad who’s crazy. Probably he always was but I never noticed it before. He’s been raving on and on about how Anita and her father shot Pete for his money and dumb stuff like that, and then he’ll start saying how it served Pete right, like he’s glad he’s dead or something.” She gulped and ran her hand across her nose. “Dad was always in such a stew about Peter disgracing the family name, you know, but he wouldn’t have-even if he’d become a union organizer he would have been a successful one. He liked figuring things out, he was that kind of person, figuring things out and trying to do them the best way.” She hiccuped again. “And I like Anita. Now I suppose I’ll never see her again. I wasn’t supposed to meet her, but she and Pete took me out to dinner sometimes, when Mom and Dad were out of town.”
“She’s disappeared, you know,” I told her. “You wouldn’t know where she’s gone, would you?”
She looked up at me with troubled eyes. “Do you think something’s happened to her?”
“No,” I said with a reassurance I didn’t feel. “I think she got scared and ran away.”
“Anita’s really wonderful,” she said earnestly. “But Dad and Mother just refused even to meet her. That was when Dad first started acting weird, when Pete and Anita began going together. Even today, when the police came, he wouldn’t believe they’d arrested this man. He kept saying it was Mr. McGraw. It was really awful.” She grimaced unconsciously. “Oh, it’s been just horrible here. Nobody cares about Pete. Mother just cares about the neighbors. Dad is freaked out. I’m the only one who cares he’s dead.” Tears were steaming down her face now and she stopped trying to fight them. “Sometimes I even get the crazy idea that Dad just freaked out totally, like he does, and killed Peter.”
This was the big fear. Once she’d said it, she started sobbing convulsively and shivering. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. I held her close for a few minutes and let her sob.
The door opened behind us. Lucy stood there, scowling. “Your father wants to know where you’ve gone to-and he doesn’t want you standing around gossiping with the detective.”
I stood up. “Why don’t you take her inside and wrap her up in a blanket and get her something hot to drink: she’s pretty upset with everything that’s going on, and she needs some attention.”
Jill was still shivering, but she’d stopped sobbing. She gave me a watery little smile and handed me my jacket. “I’m okay,” she whispered.
I dug a card out of my purse and handed it to her. “Call me if you need me, Jill,” I said. “Day or night.” Lucy hustled her inside at top speed and shut the door. I was really toning down the neighborhood-good thing they couldn’t see me through the trees.
My shoulders and legs were beginning to hurt again and I walked slowly back to my car. The Chevy had a crease in the front right fender where someone had sideswiped it in last winter’s heavy snow. The Alfa, the Fox, and the Mercedes were all in mint condition. My car and I looked alike, whereas the Thayers seemed more like the sleek, scratchless Mercedes. There was a lesson in there someplace. Maybe too much urban living was bad for cars and people. Real profound, Vic.
I wanted to get back to Chicago and call Bobby and get the lowdown on this drug addict they’d arrested, but I needed to do something else while Lotty’s painkiller was still holding me up. I drove back over to the Edens and went south to the Dempster exit. This road led through the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, and I stopped at the Bagel Works delicatessen and bagel bakery there. I ordered a jumbo corned beef on rye and a Fresca, and sat in the car, eating while I tried to decide where to get a gun. I knew how to use them-my dad had seen too many shooting accidents in homes with guns. He’s decided the way to avoid one in our house was for my mother and me to learn how to use them. My mother had always refused: they gave her unhappy memories of the war and she would always say she’d use the time to pray for a world without weapons. But I used to go down to the police range with my dad on Saturday afternoons and practice target shooting. At one time I could clean and load and fire a.45 police revolver in two minutes, but since my father had died ten years ago, I hadn’t been out shooting. I’d given his gun to Bobby as a memento when he’d died, and I’d never needed one since then. I had killed a man once, but that had been an accident. Joe Correl had jumped me outside a warehouse when I was looking into some inventory losses for a company. I had broken his hold and smashed his jaw in, and when he fell, he’d hit his head on the edge of a forklift. I’d broken his jaw, but it was his skull against the forklift that killed him.
But Smeissen had a lot of hired muscle, and if he was really pissed off, he could hire some more. A gun wouldn’t completely protect me, but I thought it might narrow the odds.
The corned beef sandwich was delicious. I hadn’t had one for a long time, and decide to forget my weight-maintenance program for one afternoon and have another. There was a phone booth in the deli, and I let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages. The phone book showed four columns of gun dealers. There was one not too far from where I was in the suburb of Lincolnwood. When I called and described what I wanted, they didn’t have it. After $1.20 worth of calls, I finally located a repeating, mediumweight Smith & Wesson on the far South Side of the city. My injuries were really throbbing by this time and I didn’t feel like a forty-mile drive to the other end of the city. On the other hand, those injuries were why I needed the gun. I paid for the corned beef sandwich and with my second Fresca swallowed four of the tablets Lotty had given me.
The drive south should have taken only an hour, but I was feeling light-headed, my head and body not connected too strongly. The last thing I wanted was for one of Chicago’s finest to pull me over. I took it slowly, swallowed a couple more tablets of bute, and put all my effort into holding my concentration.
It was close to five when I exited from I-57 to the south suburbs. By the time I got to Riley’s, they were ready to close. I insisted on coming in to make my purchase.
“I know what I want,” I said. “I called a couple of hours ago-a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight.”
The clerk looked suspiciously at my face and took in the black eye. “Why don’t you come back on Monday, and if you still feel you want a gun, we can talk about a model more suited to a lady than a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight.”
“Despite what you may think I am not a wife-beating victim. I am not planning on buying a gun to go home and kill my husband. I’m a single woman living alone and I was attacked last night. I know how to use a gun, and I’ve decided I need one, and this is the kind I want.”
“Just a minute,” the clerk said. He hurried to the back of the store and began a whispered consultation with two men standing there. I went to the case and started inspecting guns and ammunition. The store was new, clean, and beautifully laid out. Their ad in the Yellow Pages proclaimed Riley’s as Smith & Wesson specialists, but they had enough variety to please any kind of taste in shooting. One wall was devoted to rifles.
My clerk came over with one of the others, a pleasant-faced, middle-aged man. “Ron Jaffrey,” he said. “I’m the manager. What can we do for you?”
“I called up a couple of hours ago asking about a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight. I’d like to get one,” I repeated.
“Have you ever used one before?” the manager asked.
“No, I’m more used to the Colt forty-five,” I answered. “But the S &W is lighter and better suited to my needs.”
The manager walked to one of the cases and unlocked it. My clerk went to the door to stop another last-minute customer from entering. I took the gun from the manager, balanced it in my hand, and tried the classic police firing stance: body turned to create as narrow a target as possible. The gun felt good. “I’d like to try it before I buy it,” I told the manager. “Do you have a target range?”
Jaffrey took a box of ammunition from the case. “I have to say you look as though you know how to handle it. We have a range in the back-if you decide against the gun, we ask you to pay for the ammo. If you take the gun, we throw in a box free.”
“Fine,” I said. I followed him through a door in the back, which led to a small range,
“We give lessons back here on Sunday afternoons, and let people come in to practice on their own during the week. Need any help loading?”
“I may,” I told him. “Time was when I could load and fire in thirty seconds, but it’s been a while.” My hands were starting to shake a bit from fatigue and pain and it took me several minutes to insert eight rounds of cartridges. The manager showed me the safety and the action. I nodded, turned to the target, lifted the gun, and fired. The action came as naturally as if ten days, not ten years, had passed, but my aim was way off. I emptied the gun but didn’t get a bull’s-eye, and only two in the inner ring. The gun was good, though, steady action and no noticeable distortion. “Let me try another lot.”
I emptied the chambers and Jaffrey handed me some more cartridges. He gave me a couple of pointers. “You obviously know what you’re doing, but you’re out of practice and you’ve picked up some bad habits. Your stance is good, but you’re hunching your shoulder-keep it down and only raise the arm.”
I loaded and fired again, trying to keep my shoulder down. It was good advice-all but two shots got into the red and one grazed the bull’s-eye. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take it. Give me a couple of boxes of ammo, and a complete cleaning kit.” I thought a minute. “And a shoulder holster.”
We went back into the store. “Larry!” Jaffrey called. My clerk came over. “Clean and wrap this gun for the lady while I write up the bill.” Larry took the gun, and I went with Jaffrey to the cash register. A mirror was mounted behind it, and I saw myself in it without recognition for a few seconds. The left side of my face was now completely purple and badly swollen while my right eye stared with the dark anguish of a Paul Klee drawing. I almost turned to see who this battered woman was before realizing I was looking at myself. No wonder Larry hadn’t wanted to let me in the store.
Jaffrey showed me the bill. “Four hundred twenty-two dollars,” he said. “Three-ten for the gun, ten for the second box of cartridges, fifty-four for the holster and belt, and twenty-eight for the cleaning kit. The rest is tax.” I wrote a check out, slowly and laboriously. “I need a driver’s license and two major credit cards or an interbank card,” he said, “and I have to ask you to sign the register.” He looked at my driver’s license. “Monday you should go down to City Hall and register the gun. I send a list of all major purchases to the local police department, and they’ll probably forward your name to the Chicago police.”
I nodded and quietly put my identification back in my billfold. The gun took a big chunk out of the thousand dollars I’d had from McGraw, and I didn’t think I could legitimately charge it to him as an expense. Larry brought me the gun in a beautiful velvet case. I looked at it and asked them to put it in a bag for me. Ron Jaffrey ushered me urbanely to my car, magnificently ignoring my face. “You live quite a ways from here, but if you want to come down and use the target, just bring your bill with you-you get six months’ free practice with the purchase.” He opened my car door for me. I thanked him, and he went back to the store.
The bute was still keeping the pain from crashing in on me completely, but I was absolutely exhausted. My last bit of energy had gone to buying the gun and using the target. I couldn’t drive the thirty miles back to my apartment. I started the car and went slowly down the street, looking for a motel. I found a Best Western that had rooms backing onto a side street, away from the busy road I was on. The clerk looked curiously at my face but made no comment, I paid cash and took the key.
The room was decent and quiet, the bed firm. I uncorked the bottle of nepenthe Lotty had given me and took a healthy swallow. I peeled off my clothes, wound my watch and put it on the bedside table, and crawled under the covers. I debated calling my answering service but decided I was too tired to handle anything even if it had come up. The air conditioner, set on high, drowned out any street noises and made the room cold enough to enjoy snuggling under the blankets. I lay down and was starting to think about John Thayer when I fell asleep.