Easy Death (19 page)

“Well for snakes’ sakes.” His voice was soft and wheezy and kind of like the way a woman sings, but there was a soft chuckle somewhere in there as he looked down at Walter. “A black man wheeled into our sacrosanct white temple of healing. No doubt this must be a harbinger of the imminent collapse of civilization as we know it. And to think we are here to witness…”

He hunkered down, carefully flicking the ash off his cigarette onto the floor, pushing his belly up against Walter’s knees, and squinted at him over the tops of his dirty glasses. “What’s your story, sir?”

“Whububna mum,” Walter said.

“Whububna mum,” the doctor repeated. “Seems to be a lot of that going around.” He looked close at the purple knot on Walter’s forehead, kind of felt at it around the edges, then moved a finger side-to-side in front of his eyes. Looked up at me. “Perhaps you may shed some light?”

“All I know is he come in with some woman who got shot and he may know something on that armored-car robbery. We need to talk to him soon as we can, and that means taking care of him. Here. Now.”

“By all means.” Robbins struggled to his feet and held onto the arm of the wheelchair a second, like getting up got him dizzy. Took another puff on his cigarette. “Room C, I think.”

He led us off, waddling in front on shoes run over at the heel, me pushing Walter behind in the chair and that orderly just almost dancing with how upset it made him. “…Doc Woodrum finds out,” he was saying, “he finds out about this and I don’t want no part of it. He asks me, I’ll tell him I told you and I told
him
too.” His voice covered me and Walter both like a bad smell.

Robbins stopped in his tracks and swiveled his belly around at him, and I saw the buttons on his white coat strain from the work. “Doctor Woodrum will learn of this when you run off and tell him, Alfred,” he said, “which I expect will happen very shortly. And I shall face his disapproval as I have faced yours. For now, however, I think your services can be readily dispensed with here, and Godspeed to you.”

He turned back and started leading us wherever we were going, except Alfred wasn’t in the parade anymore.

“I’m afraid Alfred was correct,” Robbins said back to me over his shoulder, “Doctor Woodrum holds some, ah, narrow views on whom we should treat in this facility, and I’m afraid he may become a bit difficult on the situation once he’s apprised of it. So perhaps we should hurry.”

We hadn’t gone far when we got to a room that said “C” on the door and he showed us in like he owned the place.

“Ignore the examining table,” he said, looking down at Walter again, “I believe you’ll be more comfortable if you just stay there in the wheelchair.” He locked the brakes on the chair. “Mister… uh…”

“Johnson,” I said, “The ID in his wallet says he’s Sam Johnson.”

“And perfectly suited to this occasion.” There was a stool on wheels and Robbins flicked it over with the toe of his shoe and parked his butt on it while it was still moving.

“I’m Officer Drapp,” I said, “Willisburg Police.” I figured to change things up a little, maybe slow folks here down some did they ever get around to comparing stories about this.

“I’ve heard of you, sir.” Robbins rolled himself over to a white cabinet and opened a drawer. “I’ve heard good things spoken of you. The murder of Gonzago….”

He slipped a small bottle out of the drawer, uncorked it and took a short drink. Corked it back up and replaced it carefully, pulling some sterile white bandages over it before he shut the drawer again, “Yes sir, you have a reputation as a rather smart customer, Officer Drapp.”

“Well, I don’t want to get you in trouble, Doctor, but we may need to move this guy. And soon. You got something will kill the pain but won’t knock him out?”

“The very thing.” He sailed across the room on his stool to another cabinet and looked at it like he was scanning a shelf at the library. “There’s Fentanyl, of course, but that can cause lethargy and confusion. Then there’s….here.”

He pulled himself off the stool and grabbed a bottle, then plunked back down and launched himself back to Walter.

“Acetaminophen.” He shook four white tablets out of the bottle onto his fleshy pink palm. “The latest thing. Could you fetch this gentleman some water, Officer Drapp?”

I filled a paper cup from the sink and fetched it over. Robbins pushed the pills into Walter’s mouth, then held the cup so he could grab it and wash them down. Some of the water dribbled down his chin but he got them in.

“What is that stuff?” I asked.

“A new high-potency pain reliever with approximately the same side-effects as aspirin,” he held up the bottle, “and modestly effective as a hangover-preventative, though somewhat hard on the stomach.”

“Mind do I try one?” I was starting to feel the effects of coming off that tower, where I’d used my back to break the fall. And the stiffness you get from a couple hours driving. And the places on my ribs and stomach where Scranton had shined the hard tip of his steel-toed boots, they didn’t feel real good either.

“By all means.” He shook out a couple pills for me. “Now just let me have another look here…”

I gulped the pills down with water while he swiveled over to Walter and gently started touching the swollen knot on his forehead where it hit the steering wheel, then his hands and cheeks. Just touched, didn’t rub. Then asked, “Can you feel that, sir?”

Walter shot me a look over the doctor’s shoulder, just to let me know he wasn’t as knocked out as he sounded.

“Burns,” he mumbled, “hands burn.”

I turned and started looking close through the glass doors of that medicine cabinet.

“Head injury, that’s obvious,” Robbins said, “and frostbite as well, but only second-degree I think. It will be painful of course, with blistering of the skin, but I don’t look for permanent damage…no signs of concussion…” He turned and tilted his head up at me just as I turned back from the medicine cabinet. “Is this man going to prison, Officer Drapp?”

“I got no way to know yet.” That was true.

“See that he continues to get this for the pain.” He passed the bottle of pills to me. “Prison is quite bad enough without it. Now have you time for me to soak his hands and feet in water?”

“Probably a good idea,” I said, “but keep his shoes and socks close by. We may need to move him fast.” Real fast, I was thinking, but I tried not to let on.

Robbins bent over—I could see the effort it cost him—and undid Walter’s shoelaces. Eased his shoes and socks off real gentle.

“You going to get in trouble for this?” I turned back around to check that medicine cabinet again and this time I thought I saw what I was after. “For treating him here, I mean?”

He was already filling a couple metal bedpans with lukewarm water and sliding them under the footrests on that wheelchair. “Well, Doctor Woodrum will probably insist on burning whatever we’ve touched,” he smiled at the notion, “but I rather think my personnel file will stand the strain of yet another entry. Should circumstances dictate, I will simply join the circus and hide my tears behind the mask of a clown.”

I wondered was he was already doing it. “Okay to leave him here a while?” I asked. “I don’t figure him to be going anyplace with his feet like that, but I don’t want anyone else getting to him yet either. Not till he wakes up more anyway. And I got to go start tagging evidence. Might be gone a while.”

“He should be fine right here.” Robbins pinched his fleshy lower lip between his thumb and finger for a minute, figuring it over I guess. “Perhaps you should close the door, though. As a precaution.”

“Fine.”

Robbins was still bent over arranging the water pans, and I looked over his shoulder at Walter.

He shot me a wink.

About then I got to feeling the painkiller kick in, loosening up my arms, easing the hurt in my back and sides.

Time to get back to work, I guess. “You got a doctors’ room here?” I asked. “A place to wash up or something?”

“By every means,” Robbins said, “just outside and down the hall: right-left, then left-right. Hmm, perhaps I should escort you…”

“Thanks a lot.”

“And before we go, may I get you something else from our supplies there?” He didn’t miss much, that Doc Robbins.

“I just saw… How about a couple Benzedrine tablets? Been kind of a long day.”

“Benzedrine?” He didn’t exactly make a face, but I could see he was thinking it. “Nasty stuff.”

“They gave it to us back in the Army plenty enough,” I said. “Kept us awake and moving when we had to be awake and moving.”

“We did indeed.” He looked like he was thinking back on something and didn’t exactly like it. “Well, if you feel you know best, help yourself.”

I knew what he meant. That stuff gets your heart going like there was something inside your chest trying to kick its way out. And I knew some guys in the Army got so they couldn’t get along without it. But that never stopped them handing it out to us when we couldn’t get food or sleep, and right now I needed anything I could get. I took two tablets and washed them down with water.

“Thanks.” I wiped water off my chin. “Now where’s that Doctor’s room”?

December 20, 1951

6:00 PM

Helen and Mort

In the alley behind Lola’s Helen Mortimer looked down at the curled up, beer-soaked-and-bloody thing she called her husband. He looked like he was sobbing, and she wanted to bend down and take him in her arms, but she decided to be angry with him first.

“Christ-Jesus, Mort! Drunk again? You went out and got drunk, this is what you did?”

“Helen?” He looked up at her and clenched his teeth to try to hold the loosened ones in. He was long past shivering from the cold, long past even feeling it. “What you doing here?”

The pitiful sound of his voice broke her resolve and she bent down to hold him, shocked at first by the cold that seemed to radiate from his body, then angry again at the smell of beer all over his clothes.

“Jeez, Mort,” she tried to make her voice hard, “Did you have to go out and get drunk again?”

“Didn’t get drunk.” There was something funny in his voice that she couldn’t remember ever hearing there before. Something kind of scary.

“Bastard robbed me.”

Helen gave up on being angry and tried to sound motherly.

“I told you not to get into any deal with Brother Sweetie.”

“Wasn’t Brother—” Mort gulped something salty from his nose and he couldn’t tell if it was mucous or blood. “That bastard Healey.”

“You were in there with Boxer Healey?” She didn’t have any trouble now being angry. “Mort, you gone stupid? Gambling with Boxer Healey? That man plays cards for his living; no wonder he beat you!”

“Didn’t beat me.” It was slowly rising up inside Mort now. He could feel it there in his gut, building and burning hotter, like something bitter and foul-tasting. He looked at his wife, trying to make her understand it. “Helen, I won!” He saw how crazy that sounded coming out his bloody mouth in the snow in a dark alley. “I won from him, Helen. I did, I beat him….” He had to make her see it. “Helen, it was four hundred dollars and I won it off him and—” He blinked suddenly. “How’d you find me? Where the hell am I anyhow?”

“You’re back of Lola’s.”
Had he really won four hundred bucks? Off Boxer Healey?
“I been looking for you all day. Finally I got Howard at the barbershop to say he might’ve seen you by Lola’s. My god, Mort, did you really win all that?”

“Where—where’s the kids?”

“The Gomez girl across the hall, she’s watching them.” It was sweet of him, she thought, to worry about the kids. Just like him, too, to think about them when he was lying here beat to a pulp. She hugged him, strong and soft at the same time, and tried to will some heat from her body into his. “Can you get up?”

“Got to—” He struggled. Got one cold, unfeeling leg under him and made it push. Helen steadied him and he got the other one where he wanted it. She pulled and steadied him some more till he was something like standing up.

“—got to kill that bastard Healey,” he finished.

“Don’t talk crazy,” Helen said, “you’re going to the hospital.”

“Can’t afford no hospital,” he said. “Got to kill him.”

“We’ll go to the clinic on Fourth.” She was motherly again. “We want to get you well. For Christmas. For the kids.”

“Ain’t going to Christmas.” His voice was flat and cold now, almost as cold as his hands. “Just don’t plan on going that far. And I ain’t going to no clinic. Gonna get me a gun and kill him.”

“I said you’re going to the clinic.” Helen held him closer, partly to keep him from falling and partly just to hold him closer. “Can you walk to the corner?”

“Helen.” He felt his teeth loosen as he tried to talk, and clenched them together again. Tried to talk without opening his mouth, tried to make her see it. “Helen he took four hundred dollars from me. Just took it like I was nothing. Like I wasn’t a man or—or
nothing
! Like he was supposed to have it and like I—like I wasn’t supposed to have
nothing
!”

“We’ll talk about it later. We’ll think what to do. Now lean up against me, we’ll walk you to the street and catch a streetcar. Can you get that far?”

He walked. Because he had to.
Nothing else to do
, he told himself,
got to walk. But I got to make Helen see it, see how it is…

“Helen,” he managed the words, pushed them out from between his bleeding lips some way. “Helen he just took the money from me like he was
supposed
to do it!”

“I know, hon; you said it already. And look, we’re to the street now. Jeez, ain’t there no streetcars running in this snow? Walk with me, hon….”

“Helen, he didn’t even use his fists. Just slapped me open-hand, like I wasn’t even good enough to use his fists on!”

“Just keep walking, hon. We’ll get you home and you can rest and we’ll talk.”

She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t see why I have to kill him.
He tried not to put so much weight on her, tried to do more walking on his own, but he just hurt too much for it. And he tried to think.
Can’t take him with my fists, that’s sure.