Read Bitter Medicine for Free Online Page B

inherently no value, it doesn’t matter that the average patient wait is over an hour.”
    “You should consult me,” Lotty said testily. “I don’t keep people waiting. Unlike these cretins.”
    At last a young uniformed officer came for us. “Detective Rawlings is sorry you had to wait so long, but he had to interrogate another suspect.”
    “Another suspect? Are we suspects, then?” I asked as we followed him up a scuffed flight of stairs.
    “I have no idea why the detective wants to talk to you, ma’am,” the officer said stiffly.
    Detective Rawlings greeted us in the doorway of a small interrogation room. He was a solidly built black man about my age. The building wasn’t air-conditioned, and he had loosened his tie and taken off his jacket. As early as it was in the day, his collar and armpits were soaked with sweat. He held out a hand somewhere in between Lotty and me.
    “Dr. Herschel? Sorry to keep you waiting—my seven-thirty appointment went on longer than I expected.” He had a soft voice, rather husky, which triedto say—don’t be afraid of me. Just answer my harmless questions.
    Lotty shook his hand. “This is Miss Warshawski. She’s my attorney—you don’t mind that she sits in with us.” It was less a question than a statement, a little vent of temperament.
    “Not at all, not at all. Warshawski?” He narrowed his eyes. “The name is familiar—”
    “You’re probably thinking of the auto-parts dealer,” I said briskly. The papers have given some of my cases a lot of attention; since many police officers do not like PIs horning in on their territory, I didn’t want to close the door by referring to them. “No connection between the two of us—they spell their name with a
y.
“
    “Maybe so. But I thought it was something else.” His brow furrowed for a moment; then he shook his head and ushered us into the interrogation room.
    “This isn’t as friendly a setting as I’d like, Doctor, but we’re short on space—I don’t have an office, so I use what’s available.”
    He took her through the motions on Malcolm Tregiere—enemies, friends, lovers, daily routine, valuables.
    “He had little of value to steal,” she said. “He came from a family with no money, put himself through medical school—you don’t see doctors like that anymore. He was one of a kind.
    “The only person who might rob him would be a collector who knew the value of his Haitian and Africanmasks. But I understand that those were smashed indiscriminately.”
    “Some were. Would you know how many pieces he had—so we could do a count and see if we need to circulate descriptions of ones that are missing?”
    Lotty gave me a questioning look. I shook my head. “I don’t know, Detective—he invited me to his apartment a few times when he was having a group of people over. He might have had twenty artifacts just in the living room. I don’t know about the bedroom—I never saw it. But you might expect thirty or forty items altogether.”
    He scribbled industriously. Thirty to forty was the official number now.
    “You’re sure he had no enemies? What about angry patients?”
    “Rude or arrogant doctors have angry patients. Dr. Tregiere was neither,” Lotty said haughtily, giving a good imitation of arrogance herself. “And his skill was extremely good—the best I have seen in many years. Already the equal of men with many more years’ experience.”
    “The newspeople thought it might be street-gang violence,” I said.
    Rawlings shrugged. “Most of the crime in that area is probably done by gang members. Not necessarily as part of gang activity, but because all the teenagers belong to one.”
    He got up and pointed at a large city map pinned to one wall. “The Garbanzos’ main turf has traditionallybeen here.” He stabbed at the area southeast of Wrigley Field. “The White Overlords run eastern Uptown. Now the last year, the Garbanzos have been moving into the Hispanic part of Uptown.” His