Bad Medicine (18 page)

"I figure it's an existential statement," she went on, digging into her drawer for her stash of extra-strength Excedrin. "A comment on man's basic insecurity. Now, the guy we had the other night who had flames tattooed on his dick—quite a lovely picture, I can tell you—I figure he knew what he wanted. The question mark, though, I think that guy wasn't so sure. Comments? Suggestions? Opinions?"

There seemed to be none. Molly swallowed the aspirin dry and followed it with licorice to a veritable chorus of grimaces from her guests and certain signs of revolt from her stomach. That was just tough. She didn't need shit from Joseph Ryan, she didn't need it from Jones or Martin or the Bobbsey Twins.

Mary Margaret wasn't like us, huh? Then why is she dead and we aren't? Tell me that, Joseph Ryan.

"Agents Lopez and Hickman are here helping us out with the gambling situation," Jones said, squirming a bit in his seat as if imagining someone approaching his own pride with a tattooing gun.

"Gambling?" Molly looked around. "You think I'm running a game out of my house?"

"No. We think you might be in some trouble."

They should have made their revelation before Joseph Ryan's. Then they might at least have had her attention.

"Look, you guys," she protested, really tired now. "I've had a bad day already. I don't need this shit, too. You got a problem with me, you stop dancing around and let me know. I told you all I know about the suicide note. I can't tell you any more; I don't care what initials you have on your badge. I'm sorry, but that's the truth."

"It's not about the note," Martin said.

Across the room, the phone rang. Vic righted his chair and pulled out paperwork. Molly watched him, thought about other things. Answered Martin anyway.

"Then what's it about?"

The four of them looked at each other, consulting with eyebrows and ESP, evidently. Finally, it was Jones who delivered the news.

"The attempt on your life."

First Molly had to figure out what Jones was saying. Then she had to remember just what the hell he meant.

Mustaffa. Oh, yeah.

"That's awfully sweet," she said. "But that was just business at the big house."

"No," Martin disagreed. "I'm afraid it isn't. Wasn't."

At that point, he pulled out a crumpled piece of what looked like wrapping paper from a hamburger and passed it across Molly's desk.

Yes, she thought, picking it up. Definitely hamburger. Steak 'n Shake, if she was any judge. A faint whiff of onions and pickles wafted up, and no matter what her stomach was telling her, her saliva glands tuned right up for Pavlov's Song.

"Ah, Tuesday," she said, lifting the paper to her nose. "It was a very good vintage."

Her audience didn't seem amused.

"Read it," Martin said.

"Read it?" Molly responded, wondering what secrets you could discern in the word
Takahomasack.

"The other side."

The other side was, after all, another situation entirely. Molly could see that there was some scribbling along the edge. She flattened the paper between her hands so she could make it out better.

"Molly, I'm going," Vic said across the way, his chair scraping across the floor as he cradled the phone.

Molly hardly heard him. She'd just made out what the paper said. She looked up to Detectives Martin and/or Jones for an explanation.

"How did he know your name?" Jones asked instead.

"Who?" she asked. "What does this mean?"

"Molly? You listening? I've got a hot call on a cold number five."

Molly wasn't listening. Vic hovered just beyond her desk for a second anyway.

"We found it in Mustaffa's jeans when we got them to the lab," Jones said.

Molly looked back down at the white, grease-stained wrapping that blew the hell out of the theory that what had happened the other night at the hospital had just been one of those things. The man who had yelled, "Yo, bitch!" hadn't done it randomly. He'd walked into that ER with Molly's name in his pocket. Also her description and the shift she was supposed to work.

Molly was so surprised that she almost missed the fact that Vic was walking out the door on their fifth suicide.

Chapter 10

"What do you mean you have number five?" Molly yelled, leaping out of her chair and running out into the hallway.

Vic's footsteps were already echoing down the stairwell.

"Ms. Burke?" Jones asked, reaching ineffectually for the paper that fluttered in Molly's fingers as she tore by.

"Guy playing smashing pumpkins from the Wainright Building!" came Molly's answer, drifting up from below.

Molly leaned over the railing at the stairs, not even noticing that two of the four investigators had made a move to follow her into the hall. "Not Metropolitan Square?" she demanded.

Vic leaned his head back so she could see his smile. "Sorry. Wrong lawyer again."

And then he walked on out the front door.

Smashing pumpkins. A jumper. A jumper from high up. Well, as high as the Wainright went. The first skyscraper built west of the Mississippi, the Wainright had been an amazing feat of engineering when it was built in 1892. Now it was dwarfed in its nine stories by thirty-and forty-story neighbors. It was still, however, tall enough to ensure a good sidewalk splatter factor.

Another lawyer.

Molly felt a twinge of something other than annoyance.

"Ms. Burke, aren't you interested that somebody might be trying to kill you?" FBI agent Lopez demanded.

Molly turned, almost surprised to see them all still arrayed in the office like game show contestants. She was even more surprised to see that the Steak wrapper was still in her hand. She did notice, though, that whoever wrote the note had spelled her name wrong. Everybody did. Left off the E at the end of Burke. As if it were important. As if that would matter to a killer looking for a victim.
Remember now, Mustaffa. Make sure you have the right Molly Burk. The one without the E, all right?

"Ms. Burke?"

Martin was beginning to sound long-suffering. Molly headed back into the big investigator's room, wondering what exactly she was supposed to tell them. Wondering what it meant that they had another lawyer, and what it would do to their per capita suicide stats.

"We had another lawyer commit suicide just now," Molly said, settling back into her seat. "That's five."

She looked around for reactions. Problem was, she'd said the wrong word.

"You know why they use lawyers instead of laboratory rats now?" Jones asked Martin.

"No," Martin responded, just like the good straight man he was.

"Well," Jones said as Molly stared on. "There are more lawyers than rats—"

The other three suits nodded.

"People get attached to rats—"

Another chorus of nods. Molly couldn't believe it.

Jones grinned. "And there are just some things a rat won't do."

Laughter. Out of that bunch. Well, Molly figured, it was her fault. She could have said that five clowns had died in a freak human cannonball accident and she wouldn't have gotten quite the same reaction.

"Just thought you'd like to know," she said, although she wasn't sure why.

Belatedly, their attention returned.

"What do you think?" Jones asked.

"Don't quit your day job."

If he'd had a sense of humor, he might have smiled. As it was, he just scowled and inclined his head toward the wrapper. "About the fact that you were set up."

Molly took another look at the wrapper in her hand. She fought off another urge to eat. Steakburgers for lunch. Maybe chili mac, with extra sauce, so the grease just dripped off her chin. Steak fries, thin and chewy, with extra salt. She could sit there, all alone with a book and forget everything that waited for her outside.

"Ms. Burke."

Molly looked up. Blushed. Well, it was better than thinking about lawyers. About homeless vets.

"I thought hit men ate at places called Carmine's," was all she could come up with.

"Mustaffa'd do anything for anybody," Jones let her know. "As long as he got a rush out of it. He got a rush out of hurting women."

Suddenly Molly remembered Mustaffa's eyes. Clearly. She damn near blanched. "Thanks."

No one figured apologies were necessary.

"This isn't public information yet," one of the Feds said, "but we've been in Pearl Johnson's bank accounts. She received three substantial payments in the last six months amounting to almost a quarter million dollars."

It took Molly a minute to get over that kind of amount. "Who gets it?" she asked instinctively.

Jones shifted a bit uncomfortably. "Nobody. She spent it all."

"A quarter of a million dollars?"

"Her church needed a new roof, and there are some playgrounds in the area..."

Spent it on her city, just like always. Poor Pearl. Hoping the ends justified the means. Finding out differently.

"Were you able to trace where the funds came from?"

"We're looking now. We're also doing some investigating on some of the other aldermen who voted for the gaming bill."

"And you found that there were no unusual deposits in any of my accounts," Molly offered for him.

Again, she got no apologies. "Nothing except the money from your trust."

"From the house's trust," she corrected him. "I'm just the caretaker."

From their expressions, they already knew that. It was also pretty obvious that they'd yet to figure it out, but Molly didn't think she needed to enlighten them.

"Somebody seems to have wanted you dead," Jones said, neatly bringing the conversation back to the subject at hand.

Molly tried to believe that. It was one thing to think of Mustaffa just randomly spraying bullets into the ER wall. After all, it had happened before. It was quite another to think that the smile he'd delivered when he'd been about to empty a full clip into her chest had been personal.

"Any ideas?" she asked, her voice suddenly very small.

"You're sure about that note?"

Molly instinctively reached to open her drawer for her Excedrin. Then she remembered that she'd just had some. She slugged down some Maalox instead. "I can't tell you any more ways."

"You're quite sure it was Pearl Johnson's handwriting on the suicide note."

For the first time since she'd seen that note, suddenly Molly wasn't so sure. "I don't... I'm not sure I've seen Pearl's handwriting before."

Evidently, the Feds were as prepared as Boy Scouts. Either Lopez or Hickman opened the briefcase next to his chair and pulled something out. Slid it across the desk as if it were the last card in a game of draw poker. "Familiar?"

Molly picked up the plastic-encased sheet of paper and did her best to remember the note she'd only seen once for five minutes.

What she held in her hand was a list of things to do. Laundry and shopping and stopping off for the new choir robes for the church. Molly wondered if they'd been purchased with bribe money. She wondered what the poor minister would do with his gifts once he knew.

"I can't swear to a thing," she said. "But I think the handwriting's the same."

"You think."

It was her turn to scowl. "You want to dump on me for losing that note, you're going to have to stand in line. Now, you want my opinion or what?"

It was Jones who answered. "We're just trying to get a best-case scenario here. Trying to make sure the victim wasn't... compromised."

"She was in her house for twenty hours by herself," Molly retorted. "Who could compromise her, aliens?"

"The mother admits to having been out for an hour or two earlier that day."

Molly sighed. "And Jack Ruby would have had plenty of time to sneak up from his hiding place in Havana to stuff drugs down Pearl's throat."

"William Peterson has had four murder charges dropped because of lack of witnesses," Jones said. "And until she died, Pearl was a witness. Now, you are."