“Honest mistake,” Kate said, smiling now, color coming into her cheeks. She glanced past him into the hall. “Would you…? I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.”
“Steve. Seger. Steve Seger.”
“Steve. Would you mind getting me a nurse? I’d like to find out how my father’s doing.”
“I, uh, took the liberty of talking to your doctor,” Steve said. “I hope you don’t mind. You’ve got a broken wrist and a mild concussion…but you probably already figured that out. He said he’d be discharging you later today, all things being equal. It looks like Big Bird saved you some skin. Your dad’s in ICU. He was in surgery half the night, fractures mostly. Pelvis, femur, a few fingers. The rest was pretty much just cuts and scrapes. The doctor said you can see him when you’re feeling up to it.”
Kate said, “I’m feeling up to it,” and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She got her feet to the floor, pushed off too quickly and her knees gave out. Steve was up in a flash, taking her weight, helping her back into bed.
“Let’s give it a minute,” he said, sitting down again.
There was an awkward silence then, Steve staring at his shoes, Kate lying with her forearm across her eyes, waiting for the room to stop spinning. Somewhere down the hall a woman moaned, the sound low and mournful, and from the street the first wave of morning traffic could be heard, revving engines and impatient horns.
It was Kate who broke the silence, saying, “I don’t think I could bear to lose him,” and Steve looked up to meet her gaze. “My mother died when I was six and my dad never remarried. He’s a romantic. I’ve tried to get him past just dating, but he always says, ‘Your mom’s the only gal for me.’ She spilled a cherry coke on him at a church social and they were married a month later. I’ve always wanted to ask her if she did that on purpose.” Kate smiled, thinking,
Why am I telling him all this
? “Anyways, we’re great pals. A couple of movie nuts.”
“Really? I love movies.”
“That’s practically all we do. Watch movies, talk movies. We’ve even thought about putting together a board game and trying to market it. You know, a sort of cinematic trivial pursuit? My dad’s a champ. He worked as a projectionist for almost forty years in a great old theater back home called the Grande. He’s seen ’em all. I’ve been trying to stump him for years—it’s like a personal vendetta by now—but I can’t. Ask him anything. Quotes, directors, stars. He’s amazing… God, I’m rambling.”
“Sounds like a great guy.”
“The best,” Kate said. She plucked a tissue from the bedside dispenser and gave her nose a brisk honk. Then she sat up. “Would you mind tracking down a nurse for me, Steve? I’d like to go see him now.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Steve said, hopping to his feet. “Hang on a sec.” He ducked out of the room, returning a few seconds later with a wheelchair. He smiled—a winning smile, Kate thought—and said, “All just part of the service, ma’am.”
She let him help her into the wheelchair, feeling the muscled hardness of him through his sweatshirt. He flipped the foot rests into place for her, then wheeled her through the open door, bearing left toward ICU.
They’d made it as far as the unit’s automatic doors when Kate said, “Steve, wait,” and Steve stopped the wheelchair, turning it to face him. Kate’s eyes were round with shock, the eyes of a woman who has just realized her child has gone missing in a crowded department store.
Steve said, “What’s wrong?”
“Last night,” Kate said, “we were on our way to the city to cash in a lottery ticket. Ten million dollars.”
“Jesus…”
“Yeah.” She looked into his eyes. “But somebody stole it. Somebody stopped and stole all our stuff. We had a ton of Christmas gifts for our family. Until just this minute, I thought I’d dreamt it. I watched him take my father’s wallet.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Not really,” Kate said, a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach. “It was dark and I was in and out… This is going to break my father’s heart.”
Steve took a notepad and pen from his hip pocket, flipping the pad open. “Before we go inside, can you give me a list of the items you had in the car?”
“I think so.” She’d almost forgotten he was a cop.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
She rhymed off what she could remember of the whirlwind of purchases they’d made the day before, Steve recording each item. When they were done he said, “I have to go to Metro headquarters today anyway. Let me see if I can get this out on the computer. My mother works there—she’s a detective—maybe she’ll have some ideas.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, scarcely aware she’d said it, a lifetime of dreams, seeming so easily within reach only hours ago, crashing down around her now. How was she going to tell her dad?
Steve pocketed the notepad and wheeled her into ICU. A nurse met them at the main desk and Kate forgot about the money, her senses suddenly bombarded: the rank odors of disease thinly masked by disinfectant; the backbeat of monitors and alarms; glimpses of bodies in high-railed beds, still as statues; wires and tubes and drains. Her mother died in a place like this.
The nurse escorted them to a corner cubicle, giving a running commentary as she walked. “Don’t expect too much right now,” she said. “He was on a ventilator overnight so he’s still heavily sedated. I’ll have to ask you to keep it short.”
Kate pushed herself out of the wheelchair, her legs steady beneath her now. She started into the cubicle, but hesitated in the doorway. She looked at Steve with dread in her eyes.
He said, “Would you like me to go in with you?”
Kate said, “No. Thanks, I’ll be fine.” Then she paused, adding, “I hate to just dump you like this.”
“I’ve got a full day anyway. Errands to run. Groceries, Christmas shopping, stuff like that.”
Kate felt herself blushing. “Will I see you again?”
“Why don’t I drop by tomorrow, see how you’re doing.”
“Okay.” She glanced into the cubicle, then touched his arm. “Thanks again, Steve. For everything.”
“Glad to do it,” he said, starting away. “’Bye, Kate.”
“’Bye,” Kate said.
She watched him leave, then took a deep breath and went inside.
* * *
Internal Affairs detectives Rodney Hicks and Bryan Mayer sat in the office of their immediate superior, Stan Howson, waiting for him to finish scanning a report. Hicks, a lanky man of thirty-nine with a heavily pock-marked face, was on edge this morning, more so than usual. Mayer, his partner of four years, sat in a chair next to him, doing a sloppy job of eating a meatball sandwich over a collapsing paper plate. His ever present coffee sat on the edge of Howson’s desk. Mayer was thirty pounds overweight, but a genius at surveillance.
Now Howson looked up at them and said, “So what can I do for you guys?”
Hicks popped out of his chair, leaning over Howson’s desk on fisted hands. “It’s about the Flexner murder—”
Howson said, “That’s Buzz Caldwell’s case, am I right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Rodney, do me a favor and sit down. You make me nervous.”
Hicks complied, but on the edge of his seat, still managing to lean over Howson’s desk. “It’s Caldwell’s case, yeah, but he’s way off track, don’t you think?”
Howson rolled his eyes at Mayer, who currently resembled Dizzie Gillespie, his ample cheeks stuffed with hoagie. “Al Raybould again, am I right?”
“Hear me out, okay?”
Howson checked his watch. “All right, but make it snappy. I’ve got a meeting.”
Hicks got up and started pacing, his voice twice as loud as it needed to be. “Okay, on the surface it all looks tidy and neat. A fag junkie tries to roll a suit for dope money, but things don’t go as planned. The suit resists and the queer goes ballistic. There’s a struggle, and when the dust settles the suit looks like a dissected frog but still manages to pump three rounds into his killer. Okay, mystery number one: Where’d the gun come from? Thin air? Frankly, I don’t see Flexner as the type to pack a weapon with the serial number filed off. And if it was the queer’s gun, why’d he try to roll Flexner with a knife? Why not use the gun? And how’d Flexner end up with the damn thing? The queer’s prints weren’t even on it.”
Howson stared at him noncommittally.
Hicks said, “See, Stan, I remember Swain from my tour in Morality. He’s a pillow biter, pure and simple. No way he could rip a man open like that. He doesn’t have the instinct or the brute strength.”
Howson said, “Look, Rodney. I don’t like to bring this up, but you’ve got some personal issues with Raybould—”
“And I’ll be the first to admit it,” Hicks said, “but this has got nothing to do with that.” He leaned over the desk again, playing his trump card. “I saw the fucker get out of the widow’s car last night, all right? Right here in the underground lot. What was that about?”
“Maybe he’s a friend of the family. Maybe—”
But Hicks didn’t want to hear it. “And what about the half-dozen other murders I’ve brought to your attention over the past four years? All prominent men on one or the other side of the law, all with people in their lives’d be happy to see them dead. Would
profit
from their deaths. And every one of them airtight. Almost artful, if you keep an open mind and honestly consider the possibility. Raybould always just…lurking on the sidelines. And what about the nice little chalet he’s got in Switzerland?”
“The what?”
“You ought to see the place. He owns it, too, lock, stock and barrel.”
“I’ve never heard him mention anything about that,” Howson said, glancing at Mayer. “How would you know about it?”
Hicks’ lips stretched into a guilty grin. “I followed him.”
“Come again?”
“Last summer, when he went on holidays. Right after the key witness in the Corsino case turned up dead. I cashed in some bonds and followed him.”
“To
Switzerland
? And you’re trying to tell me this isn’t personal?”
“Okay,” Hicks said. “All right. Nobody’d be happier than me to see him go down. But I was his partner for three years, Stan. I
know
the guy. He’s smart, cunning. Fucking ruthless. You know his methods. And he was always griping about the crooks getting rich while he had to live in a crummy third floor apartment. He said if he could play it both ways and get away with it, he would.”
“He still lives in a third floor apartment, Rodney.”
“I said he was smart.” He sat in his chair, fixing Howson’s gaze with absolute earnestness. He and Howson had been on the street together back in Division, Hicks the man’s senior by a couple of years, training him. Stan turned out to be a fast-tracker, every move geared toward promotion, status; but underneath all that he was a good shit, and it was that part Hicks was appealing to now. He said, “Stan, we go back a ways, you and I. You know me. I’m a good detective. All I’m asking for is a couple weeks.”
After a long silence Howson said to Mayer, “You with him on this?”
“Hell, yes.”
Howson stood, checking his watch again, then looked firmly at Hicks. “One week, Rodney. Seven days to show me something concrete.”
Hicks nodded. “Thanks, Stan. Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t get overheated. You’re gonna carry your usual case load, both of you.” Both men nodded. “It’s not a holiday. Now get out of here. And Bryan, take that dog’s breakfast with you.”
Mayer folded his paper plate into a wet ball and followed Hicks out of the office.
* * *
Kate gasped when she saw her dad, mummified in surgical gauze, what little skin she could see already beginning to bruise. There were huge casts on his legs and what looked like a kid’s erector set sprouting from his pelvis. Three of the fingers on his left hand had been splinted and a line of raw looking sutures peeked out from beneath the turban-like dressing on his head. IV tubing snaked out of both arms, the one on the left a deep maroon color from the blood they were dripping into him. The bank of monitors and equipment that surrounded him looked sufficient to service an entire ward.
But what shook Kate most was the sight of his face. It was utterly still. Were it not for the steady green blip on the heart monitor she would have thought him dead.
She hovered in the doorway, breathless, uncertain, fighting the urge to shout his name, run to his bedside and try to shake him awake…
Instead, she curled her hands into fists and breathed, the throb in her head taking on a new intensity. And when at last she spoke, though the words were tremulous and barely audible, she deliberately deepened her voice to a male timbre.
“I ask you to note that, uh, I did not call you callous-assed strumpets, or low-borne gutter sluts…”
Though Keith did not open his eyes, the ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. Kate smiled too, tears overspilling her eyelids. She approached the bed and continued.
“But I did call you whores, no escapin’ that…”
“And for that slip of the tongue,” Keith whispered hoarsely, “I apologize.”
Kate touched his hand and Keith opened his eyes.
“Paul Newman,” he said, and God love him he tried to invest his words with the same playful cockiness he always did when he was showing Kate who was boss. “
The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean
, nineteen-seventy-two. Piece of cake.”
Kate bent over the bedrail and rested her head on his chest, relieved tears pouring from her eyes. Wincing a little with the motion, Keith brought his good hand up and patted her head. “It’s okay, sweetie,” he whispered. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
* * *
Detective Raybould double-parked in front of a Queen Street cigar store and went inside for a deck of smokes. His beeper sounded while he was paying the clerk, the display showing a familiar number, the sight of it inducing a vertical groove of concentration between his eyebrows. When he finished with the clerk he went outside to a phone booth at the end of the block and called the number on his beeper. While it rang he peeled the cellophane off the cigarette package and got himself a smoke. He set it between his teeth but didn’t bother to light it.
One of Corsino’s monkeys answered, an obnoxious little prick named Paulie. “Yeah, what.”
Raybould said, “Paulie. You beeped.”