Deadly Diversion: A Medical Thriller (23 page)

She seemed to gather her strength and gave me a small smile. “It was one night after he’d been drinking. Actually,” she added with a slightly guilty look, “so had I. Anyway, he tells me about what he saw way back right after he got home from the war. He hadn’t met me yet.” Her chin went up in a proud gesture.

“He did a few things he shouldn’t have back then. He couldn’t get real work, what with his arm gone and all. So one day he’s out at the airport, in the parking garage, and he spots a guy he knows—not a very nice guy—if you know what I mean. And Huey don’t know him, just seen him around. Anyways, this guy’s fooling around this black Caddy, and Huey’s thinking the guy’s getting ready to boost it. But he doesn’t. A few minutes later the guy just walks off and gets in another car and drives away.” She hesitated. “The next day Huey hears that a mobster was blown up in the airport parking garage. The bomb was in a black Cadillac, although there wasn’t much left of it. Or him.”

“My God.”

“Uh-uh. Huey’s been scared ever since. He couldn’t go to the police. And he couldn’t tell anyone—he hated that he had told me—because word might get back to the mob. He’s kept quiet all these years and now he wants—wanted—to do the right thing.”

“Who was it?”

Mavis shook her head. “He passed out that night before he told me, or maybe I did. Maybe he told me but I don’t remember. It don’t matter ’cause he never would say. The less I knew, the better, he said.” She pulled the tissue out again and wiped her nose. “I can’t see how it could have anything to do with his death, though. That was a long time ago.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

“That’s all I know.” She jumped up. “Wanna see him?”

“Huh?”

She crossed the room to a small table where photos were clustered in frames around a large, painted jar. A small American flag stood in a wood base next to the jar. She showed me a photo of Huey in olive-green army fatigues, his arms—both of them—were draped around two guys dressed the same. He was squinting into the sun and smiling the wide grin I’d come to know the past few weeks.

“He’s a handsome devil, ain’t he?” she asked, staring at the picture. She put it down and grabbed the jar. “You want to see him now?” she asked, taking off the lid and tipping the jar toward me. Ashes and a bit of white-gray pieces tumbled over inside.

“That’s okay,” I said, stepping back. “I’d rather remember him alive.”

She reached into the jar and pulled out several laminated cards. She blew Huey dust off them and showed them to me.

They were driver’s licenses, all with different names, all with the same photo of Huey.

“Got them from some guy he used to run with when he was in the rackets. The numbers’ rackets.” She sighed and chucked the cards back in the jar.

“What guy?”

“Some guy with a long face. Hangs around down at the boats.”

Dog.

She returned the jar to its place on the table and gave the top one last pat.

“Thanks for talking to me,” I told her, heading toward the door.

“That’s okay. It’s good to talk about him.”

“I liked him,” I said, and I meant it.

“I know you guys took good care of my Huey. He liked the nurses, that’s for sure.”

“Are you sure you don’t remember a name? The person Huey saw.”

“I’m sorry. He said he didn’t want me to get hurt. He loved me, he really did.”

“I KNOW MORE THAN I DID yesterday at this time,” I told BJ when she joined me at Hauptmann’s later. Don was working till midnight, she’d told me.

“Oh, yeah.” She motioned to the bartender for a beer. “What about?”

BJ had changed into jeans and an oversize T promoting DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program sponsored by police departments across the country. Uncle Sam declared, “DARE NEEDS YOU!” on the front.

“Our little guy witnessed a murder.”

The beer bottle stopped on its way to her mouth. “Who? What guy?”

“The one they think our nurse Laura killed.”

“I heard they let her go. Don told me McNeil wanted to exhume the body.”

“Ha!”

“What?”

“They couldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“He’s been cremated.”

“You sure?”

“Saw the ashes myself.”

“Yuk. How’d that happen?”

I told her about going to see Mavis.

“You really liked the guy, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“He’d been arrested a few times,” she said. “Nothing too serious. And they never made anything stick.”

“Like what?”

“He tried extortion.”

“He did? Who? What happened?”

“Tried to blackmail a city alderman. Some guy lived in Soulard. Told the guy he knew what he did.”

“Did he?”

“1 doubt it, but the guy blinked. He had a girlfriend in Collinsville.”

“That’s nothing new, a politician with a girlfriend.”

“He had a son with her.”

“Uh-oh”

“Yep. So the pol paid up.” BJ laughed. “Probably would have again but an investigative reporter got wind of it and by the time the story broke, Castle’s leverage was gone.”

“How’d he know about the girlfriend?”

“Probably didn’t. These guys try this all the time. Just tell a politician you know everything and they cave. They’ve all got something to hide.”

“I’ll tell you what he did see, though.”

She took a swallow of beer and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“Years ago he saw someone plant a bomb in a car that killed a guy.”

“What?” Her beer came down hard on the soiled coaster in front of her.

“That’s what the wife told me. And Father Rudolf said about the same thing.”

“So it wasn’t a confession?”

“But confidential, Father said. I went to see the wife and she told me the rest of the story.”

“Who was it?”

“She didn’t know. He’d only let it slip once while he was drunk. But it scared him, she said. Wouldn’t talk about it ever again.”

“But before he died, he wanted to tell.”

“Seems like it.”

“When was this? What he saw.”

“I don’t know. Twenty years ago, she said. In the airport parking garage.”

She sat up straighter. “I remember that. I was in the academy and everyone was talking about it. A high-level mobster was killed. I don’t think they ever caught the guy.”

“So Huey’s testimony would have helped.”

“I guess they could get a deposition, but he couldn’t have testified in court, could he? Didn’t you say he wasn’t going to leave the hospital?”

“No, but wouldn’t it have helped the police to know who Huey saw?”

“Sure. And dying words count for a lot. People tend to tell the truth when they’re about to meet their maker.”

“BJ, what about the Guardino family? Could it have been any of them?”

“I suppose. But wasn’t your patient about to die? Why bother?”

“Revenge maybe. Isn’t the mob big on revenge?” I asked her. “As a lesson to others?”

“But they’re not stupid. Why risk getting caught for killing a guy that’d be dead soon anyway? They are vindictive, though,” she added, answering her own question.

“But if they had known that Huey had witnessed the bombing twenty years ago they had lots of time to kill him before last week. The Guardino father was in there at the same time as Huey. The family might have seen Huey.”

“But how would they know Huey knew about the bombing?”

“I guess they wouldn’t unless he’d told someone else.”

She toyed with some peanuts in the bowl in front of us. “Just because they’re in the hospital at the same time doesn’t mean they’re connected.”

I giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Connected. The mob—connected. Get it?” I added, giving her a punch to the arm.

“Funny,” she said, deadpan. “Maybe someone got into ICU. I know how easy that was a few months ago.”

“Things have changed since then. That hallway around the rooms is locked up now and everyone has to wear their ID badge at all times. We’re checking every person we see in ICU. We caught some guy the other day wandering around, dragging an oxygen tank.”

I nibbled on some peanuts BJ had dumped onto a napkin for us to share.

“Someone who works there then. Could they have killed him some other way? A pillow over his head? Shut off his oxygen?”

“Huey was conscious. He could breathe without the oxygen, just not very well. And he would have raised hell if anyone had tried to attack him. He was a fighter, I’ll give him that.”

“Okay,” she began, holding her hand up. “One, who wanted him dead?” She folded her index finger down. “Two, how’d they do it?” The next finger came down. “And, three, why? He’d be dead anyway soon.” She sat back, a satisfied look on her face.

“He had a girlfriend.”

“I thought you said he was married.”

I gave her a knowing look.

She slapped her forehead. “Where’s my brain? Bad guys don’t take their marriage vows seriously, do they?” she asked rhetorically.

I told her about Noni and Mavis and how they’d narrowly missed running into each other on several occasions.

“You think either one of them killed him?”

“The girlfriend said she’d been a surgical tech, and we let her into ICU anytime as long as Mavis wasn’t there. But why would she want to kill him?”

“Money? He have any?”

I explained how he’d cashed in his life insurance policy but had failed to tell his wife.

“So the wife might have found out and killed him out of spite. Or maybe she just killed him to get the cash she thought she’d get from the policy.”

“I can’t see her doing anything to hasten his death. She knew he was dying and just wanted him to be comfortable. She was really crazy about the guy, foibles and all.”

“Just because someone was killed in your place before doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with this death, regardless of the ME’s pronouncement. It’s been over a week and the police haven’t found a thing.”

“What about what Dog told the cops, about Huey being afraid someone might hurt him? And Father Rudolf said Huey told him the same thing. I just think that it’s too much of a coincidence that a mobster dies in the same hospital, the same ICU, at the same time as a guy who might know something about another mobster.”

“Cops don’t like coincidences,” she admitted.

“And,” I said, “right before he was to talk to the police about a crime.”

“You don’t know that what Huey knew had anything to do with Guardino. Maybe it worked the other way. Maybe Huey killed Guardino.”

“Huey could hardly sit up and breathe at the same time. No way he could have made it to Guardino’s room.”

“You learn any more about Guardino? Weren’t they running tests on him, too?”

“Everything checked out. No opiates in his blood. He’d been comatose and not in pain, so he hadn’t needed any.”

“I’d guess not if he was unconscious.”

“People can be unconscious but still experience pain.”

“Really? So how would you know? They send you a mental message?” she said, chuckling.

I looked up at her reflection in the mirror opposite us. “You can tell. Their pressure goes up, they’re restless, signs like that.”

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve got an idea. I know a guy who used to work undercover, assigned to the mob. He’s retired now, but I could get you his number if you want to call him. That way you could talk about it and put it behind you.”

“Would he talk to me?”

“Probably. Those retired guys love to talk about the old days. Why don’t you ask him? It’s worth a shot anyway.” When I nodded, she pulled her cell phone off her belt, turned away as she talked, and jotted a number on her palm. She read it back to me. “Tear that up when you’re done,” she said, nodding toward the scrap of napkin I’d written the number on. “His number’s unlisted, but I have a friend in records,” she explained. She spit on her hand and rubbed it on her jeans, obliterating the private number.

BLACK BEAUTY SPUTTERED a few times when I started her up until the engine caught. I gunned it to keep the engine from dying when I stopped at the first light. A ’69 Cadillac DeVille, black, she’d been my dad’s and I tried to keep her in top shape just as he had. But she needed a tune-up and that, like most of my other chores, had been ignored recently. Maybe BJ was right; I should just forget about Huey’s death and Guardino’s, for that matter, and take care of my own business.

Still, my brain kept churning.

Even though the police had released Laura, she was still a suspect, Tim’s brother had told me. They just didn’t have enough evidence yet to keep her. I couldn’t imagine that Laura, or any other nurse, would actually harm a patient. Her chart notes indicated that she hadn’t done anything for him except give him morphine and hang his IV bag, which had come up from the pharmacy designated specifically for him. What was it about the bag, though? Something niggled at my brain. I thought back. I’d used one of the ports on his IV line for his drugs after he’d coded, and a morphine syringe had been locked inside the PCA port.

A car behind me honked, and I jerked forward just as the green light turned yellow.

Why was Serena so concerned about her application for a nursing license? What had she done that she thought might make her ineligible to practice nursing? She’d said she found Huey creepy but maybe she wanted to avoid him because he knew something about her past and had threatened to reveal it. That seemed pretty far-fetched.

If anyone, Lisa seemed the most likely possibility. Lisa had worked on the unit last week and then our drugs had gone missing. And she’d tested positive for narcotics. She could have taken the morphine and substituted something in its place. But that would be extremely difficult to do. No one had reported a package that looked as if it had been tampered with and that was something we’d notice immediately. And, besides, what would have motivated her to kill Huey?

I could only think that someone must have gotten in, like they had before, in spite of our stepped-up security.

I swung past my street and turned onto the drive encircling the park. I found a parking place only a few doors from the Gunther’s house. Sophie sent me out back to the gazebo. “Where Max goes to smoke his smelly cigars,” she said.