Lifeblood (9 page)

“I expect they do, dear girl. Celebrities get sick just like you and me, you know. Yes, I’ve heard of limousines pulling up there. Saw one or two myself. Neil Diamond, it was once. And another time Sean Penn. They always dress like plumbers, movie stars do.”

“Plumbers?”

“Yes, indeed. All in gray. Gray shirt, gray pants, gray jacket. Black shoes, though.”

The phone rang. Rachel punched the talk button and said, “Chavez Garage” into the mouth piece.

Irene turned to push her cart back to the sidewalk. “You let me know if you need me, you hear? I gave you my cell number, didn’t I?”

Rachel shook her head.

Irene reached into a pocket, drew out a business card and handed it to Rachel.

Irene. Fortunes And More.

Rachel wondered what the “more” was and decided it might be wiser not to know.

“Your credit is plenty good with me,” Irene said. “You remember that.”

“I will.” Rachel waved as the woman went back to her supermarket basket, then said into the phone, “Sorry. Can I help you?”

“Rachel, honey?” It was Marty.

“Hi, Pop. How’s it going?” Had he already lost all his winnings and needed some money? It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Okay. Real well, in fact. I want to bring you something. When’s a good time?”

“Bring me what?”

“A surprise.”

“Pop, I don’t like surprises.” Rachel peered through the glass of the cubicle at what looked like the shadow of someone leaning against the garage wall a few yards away.

“Well, you’ll like this one. When’s a good time?”

She sighed. She knew the routine. When her dad won big, he liked to shower friends and family with gifts and cash. Eventually he would lose big and want back whatever cash was left, along with any pawnable gifts. She sometimes wondered if he deliberately gave the kinds of gifts that pawnshops liked.

“I suppose it’ll have to be something like noon,” she said. The previous day’s poker games tended to wind up by noon and there was a lull in the afternoon, at least at the club where Marty played.

“Noon is good. Tomorrow? We can go for lunch.”

Rachel was idly watching the shadow on the wall. It probably was not a person at all. “If it doesn’t matter to you,” she said into the phone, “I’d rather stick around here. A lot of people take their cars at noon and you never know when somebody will need something.”

“Sure. Okay. I’ll bring lunch. How about Chinese?”

“Okay. But look, Pop, I’d love to see you tomorrow. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I really don’t need anything.” The shadow moved, lengthened, grew shoulders. Rachel glanced at her watch. Mid afternoon. Still, the local lowlife didn’t keep special hours. There were always enough around to cause problems.

She pulled the three-year-old book of yellow pages from a shelf and opened it. Inside, her old thirty-eight rested where the center pages had been carved out to hold it. Marty had given it to her years ago for her birthday.

“Come on, Rachel,” Marty was saying. “I’ll give my little girl a present if I want to. Noon tomorrow. Your place. Lunch.”

She gave up. “Okay.” Then, “I gotta go.” She pressed the off button.

With the gun pointed at the floor, Rachel stepped out of the booth. Not for the first time she was glad that back on the farm, Marty had taught her how to shoot.

She stepped quickly and quietly toward the shadow.

Chapter Sixteen

“What are you doing here?” The words exploded from her in relief.

“Waiting for you to stop gabbing long enough to say hello.” Hank swept her into his hug.

“Why didn’t you call?” she sputtered.

He took the wrist of the hand that held the thirty-eight. “What the hell is that?”

“I saw your shadow. How was I supposed to know it was you? Why didn’t you call?” she asked again.

“I’m only here for a couple hours. Keith was coming down in the Water and Power plane and at the last minute, offered me a ride…. Put that thing away. It reminds me of how we met.”

At that, she had to laugh. They had met in the garage when, during a power outage, they bumped into each other in the dark and Rachel, thinking him a thief or mugger, had floored him with her knee.

“Well, do tell. It’s the Water Man.” Irene waddled toward them, her smile almost as broad as she was. “How have you been, sir?” She offered him her hand. Somewhere she had come into possession of a beanie, which somehow gave her a look of youthful surprise.

“Couldn’t be better.” He brought the woman’s hand to his lips in an Antonio Banderas imitation that made Irene fairly squeal with delight. “Now, can you take care of the shop while I whisk my dearly beloved away for a soda or snack or whatever she wants?”

“Of course dear boy. I was just a few minutes ago complaining that she doesn’t make use of me enough.” She turned to Rachel. “All work and no play, dear girl. You don’t want to become dull.”

Rachel nodded, wondering if she was part of this tête-à-tête or just the audience. Hank could at least have asked her instead of Irene. Don’t be so irritable. He flew all the way down here just to see you.

How do I know it was just to see me?

“I do think I should have your spare set of keys. You know. In case you want to take off the whole night,” Irene said with her most ingenuous deadpan.

999

The Pig ’n Whistle was almost deserted. The bartender, whose name tag read Randall, wordlessly laid out napkins and cardboard coasters imprinted with a chubby pink pig in a Scottish kilt, and gave them a raised eyebrow.

Hank ordered a Guinness, Rachel asked for her usual club soda with lemon. She felt oddly safer these days at the Pig since Randall had come to work there. He was a member of her AA group.

“Haven’t seen you lately,” he said as he delivered the soda.

Rachel hung her head, knowing he meant at meetings. “I’ve been sorta busy.”

A frosted mug and a dark brown bottle arrived in front of Hank. He tilted the bottle and poured into the glass but got mostly foam.

“What does he mean he hasn’t seen you lately?” he asked Rachel.

Rachel lifted one shoulder. One does not “out” a fellow AA member. She took a sip of the fizzy soda water.

“I hear you were here a couple days ago,” Hank said. He was still having trouble getting any beer into the glass without the foam overflowing.

“Obviously, you don’t drink a lot of beer,” Rachel said.

“Not a lot,” Hank agreed. “Even less if I don’t count the ones I drink from the can or the bottle. Must be a trick to using a glass.”

“You have to tilt it and pour down the side.”

Hank frowned at her.

“Trust me. Among all the odd jobs I’ve done, I was once a bartender.” She took the glass, squeezed a little of the lemon from her own drink into the mug, and the foam wilted. Tilting the glass, she poured in half the bottle of beer.

“Now it’ll taste like Mexican beer,” Hank said.

“Maybe. So?”

“It’s Irish beer.”

She gave him a wide-eyed look. “Really?”

“Were you in here a few days ago?”

Rachel felt her face flush. About what? A silly glass of club soda with Gabe? She looked away from Hank toward the clock. “What if I was?”

“I’m just asking.”

“I guess I’m asking why you’re asking. Like who told you, and what’s it to you if I was?”

“Oh-oh. Sounds like a storm warning.”

Rachel sighed. “I’m sorry. But I am curious.”

“Curtis Jacoby in Water Quality mentioned he saw you in here with a couple of guys he’d never seen before.”

“I don’t even know Curtis Jacoby.”

“He thinks he knows you. I guess he’s seen us together. He parks at the garage. Whatever. He and I don’t always agree on things, so he probably could hardly wait to tell me.”

“Is that why you suddenly came back? Without calling first? You trying to catch me in an assignation or something?”

“Assignation?”

“With my pants down.”

“Good God, Rachel.”

“You having people watch me?”

“Of course not. I told you—”

“You think I’m running around on you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, I’m not.” Her voice skidded to a halt as she thought about that, then plowed on. “If I ever do I’ll tell you. Me. I’ll tell you. Not somebody else. Count on it.”

“Rachel, I’m not trying to check up on you.”

“Why does it smell like that, then?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry if it does.”

They both fell silent.

Rachel rubbed her palm across her forehead, mussing her hair. “Why is this happening? I don’t want it to be like this.”

Hank looked like he was trying to rein in words that had gotten away. “Actually, you’re right. I have no right to make these noises.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Maybe I’m just…I don’t know, scuffing up sand. So you don’t look at me too closely.”

“What does that mean?”

“Okay. Maybe I’m the one who should ’fess up.”

“What does that mean?” she said again.

“I took a woman out for dinner in Sacramento.”

“Oh?” Rachel’s face went expressionless. She smoothed her mussed hair and looked at him, weighing his words.

“Just an engineer at the State Water Project. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself.”

She gave a slow nod. “Maybe you should go on doing that.”

“What?”

“Feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, Hank.”

Without tilting the mug, he poured in the remaining beer. Undeterred by the rising foam, he drank down the contents, then plunked the glass on the counter and wiped away the bubbles that coated his upper lip. “You go out with some guys here, and somehow, it’s my fault.”

“Not really.” She was wondering how they got from square one-A to square two-hundred-Z.

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just having a bad-hair day. I seem to be having a whole string of them.”

Hank looked at his watch. “I gotta be back at Burbank in an hour.”

Rachel turned and put a hand on his sleeve. “Hank, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Didn’t date anyone else.”

“Okay.”

“But you’re telling me you did?”

“Rachel, it was dinner. Just dinner.”

She turned her back on him and motioned to Randall to bring her another club soda. “Okay. You’d better go. I’ll walk back.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rachel didn’t sleep well that night. She dreamed of carrying a small package that was light as a slip of paper in the beginning. But she was on a road than seemed to grow longer with every step. The little package remained the same size, but grew heavier and heavier until she was exhausted.

She woke drenched in perspiration, with teeth so tightly clenched her jaw ached. She got up, went to the kitchen, poured a cup of milk and heated it in the microwave. After that and a chocolate chip cookie, she took a National Geographic magazine from the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that lined one wall of the living room and went back to bed. Clancy climbed in next to her and purred so loudly she couldn’t concentrate on an article about ancient Peru.

Finally she finally fell asleep, but woke feeling as though she’d spent the night running, whether away from something or trying to catch something, she wasn’t sure.

Coffee helped, but not enough. Wishing she could go back to bed, she instead went down to open the garage. There were days when having an ordinary job would be nice. Then one could call in sick.

When the morning rush had filled the garage, and slamming car doors and rapid footsteps had given way to silence, Rachel sat, still tired and rooted to the stool in the cubicle, looking out at the street but not noticing what was there. The phone toodled. She pressed talk. “Chavez Garage. Can I help you?”

“Probably not. But you can bet your sweet biffy you’re going to find this interesting.” Goldie.

Rachel sat up straighter. “What did you find out?”

“I kept asking around until I got the name of Jarvis Barry. He heads up the sanitary engineers—which is to say the mop-and-flop people—at that medical center. Turns out Mr. Barry is the brother-in-law of one of my kids. Anyway, I find out his hours and go talk to him about his maybe taking on one of my crew who’s about ready to graduate to bigger and better things than we can offer.”

“You’re so good to those kids.”

“Damn straight about that,” Goldie agreed. “So while I’m talking to him, I say I’ve heard about a closed-off ward on some floor in the east wing and that maybe the hospital plans to open it, so I thought he might be needing some extra help.”

Rachel grinned. “What a clever liar you are.”

“I’ve had some good teachers. Present company included.”

“So what did he say?”

“He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind and says, ‘Where’d you get that idea? There’s no empty ward of any wing on any floor of this hospital. The whole place is just about full up all the time.’ And I say, ‘I don’t remember, but I thought someone mentioned a wing that they sometimes used for celebrities, or overflow, or some such thing.’

“He says, ‘We do get celebrities sometimes, but they get suites on the top floor of the main building.’ He said suites, can you believe it? In a hospital. Must be nice. Anyway, I say, ‘Well, I guess I got the wrong information. I heard something about the fourth floor. East wing, I think it was.’

“‘Oh that,’ he says. ‘Twelve rooms, mostly triples, and it’s full all the time. Sometimes they even bring in extra beds, have a couple in the hall. But it sure isn’t movie stars or anything close. Those people are packed tight.’ That’s what he said, ‘packed tight.’”

Rachel rubbed her chin and stared thoughtfully at her reflection in the cubicle glass. “Why would it have a closed sign then?”

“We’ve already been over that. If I had an answer I’d spit it out. But I couldn’t really ask this Jarvis a lot more without letting on I knew more than I was saying.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, I killed two birds. He is looking for more cleaning crew. That staff of his is huge. He said he’s always looking. Maybe I’ll be able to place more of my kids there as they come along. Anyway, he gave me an application form for Clarence to fill out.”

“That ward is full but not with celebrities. That’s what he said?”