Willoughby was too professional to get into a fight with another detective in front of a suspect. I would have been pissed in her place, too, but under the circumstances I didn’t have much empathy to spare for her.

“I really don’t need a hospital, Sergeant,” I said as we left the station. “I just want to get home and get to sleep.”

“Ms. W., I have seldom seen anyone who looked more in need of major surgery. Of course, it could just be your elegant wardrobe. But unless you want a high-speed chase along the South Side on foot, you don’t have any choice in the matter, on account of you don’t have a car and I’m driving.”

He took me to Mt. Sinai, but not even his muscle could get me to a doctor right away—there were eight gunshot wounds and three knife injuries ahead of me. The charge nurse had stood up to tougher pressure than Conrad could muster.

While we waited I asked Rawlings to phone Mr. Contreras, who would be pacing the floor by now—if not taking the law into his own hands. Around three, after I’d fallen asleep on the narrow vinyl chair, I was finally taken into one of the treatment cubicles. Conrad watched anxiously while the harried intern cleaned my abrasions, gave me a tetanus shot, and stitched together the deepest of the cuts in my abdomen. I also had a couple of burns on my back from the antifreeze. In my general misery I hadn’t noticed them.

“She going to be okay?” Conrad asked.

The intern looked up in surprise. “She’s fine—this is all superficial. If you want to arrest her, Sergeant, she can certainly handle jail with these wounds.”

“I don’t think we need to do that.” Rawlings shepherded me from the room with a packet of pain pills and a prescription for antibiotics. “Still, Ms. W., if you go off on another junket like tonight’s without letting me know—I’m not so sure. I might stick you into County for a month to sober you up.”

52

Tying Knots

I slept the clock around and woke to find Mr. Contreras in my living room. Even though Conrad had phoned him from Mt. Sinai last night, the old man had kept vigil in the lobby until we finally showed up. It was a little after four then. I went to bed at once, and had no notion of whether Rawlings stayed or not.

Mr. Contreras, who’d kept a set of keys, had let himself in a little after two. “Just wanted to see with my own eyes that you was okay, doll. You feel like telling me what went on last night? I thought you was just getting the Impala.”