“You ever think of computerizing all this?” Driscoll said as the clerk dropped another set of patient files on the table of the tiny room where they were working, combing last winter’s admissions logs hour by hour, day by day.
The clerk, a thin, pale man in his thirties with a tattoo of footprints on the web of his thumb, gave Driscoll a look, waved a hand at the paint-peeling walls around them. The musty records had given the room a hopeless, claustrophobic character. Deal wondered what it would be like, coming to work there most of the days of your life.
“Sure, we’ve thought of it,” the clerk said. “But the hospital’s still a little short on bed space and bedpans. The records room is going to have to wait awhile.”
Driscoll nodded, turned to a new ledger dourly. They’d already checked a dozen gunshot-to-the-head victims, discounted each one. Half had died or were of the wrong race, a few were in jail, the rest were citizens who could be accounted for.
“I can’t believe so many people get shot,” Driscoll said. “And I’m a cop!”
Deal resisted the urge to correct Driscoll. He still had not been able to shake the notion that real policemen were about to burst into the room, drag them off to a cell somewhere.
“It’s a rare day we don’t get at least a couple,” the clerk said. “Gives you a new perspective on life, doesn’t it?”
“Take a look at this one,” Driscoll said, handing a patient folder across the table to Deal.
“Anthony Everett,” Deal read, flipping the file open. “White male, five eleven, one sixty-five. Admitted November 11, possible gunshot wound.”
Driscoll took the file back, flipped on through, looking for something. Finally, he glanced up at the clerk. “How come there’s no compliance report on this guy?”
The clerk took the file from Driscoll, scanned through it. “The incident was never confirmed.” He shrugged.
“What do you mean, never confirmed?” Deal said.
“You have to have an attending physician perform an examination,” the clerk said. “Apparently the examination on this guy was never completed. He walked.”
Driscoll stared at the clerk in disbelief. “He came in here with a gunshot wound to the head and walks out under his own steam before a doctor ever sees him? Is that what you’re telling me?”
The clerk glanced at the file again, then shrugged. “Dr. Hassan
saw
him, he just didn’t finish up with him before he disappeared.” The clerk looked over at Deal. “People wander out of here all the time, right in the middle of treatment. They calm down, realize they’re not going to die, maybe they start to worry they’re going to get in trouble.”
The clerk turned to Driscoll. “November 11 was a Saturday. You ever been down to the emergency ward on a Saturday night? That’d be the least surprising thing could happen, if you ask me.”
Driscoll sighed, covering his face with his massive hands. “This Dr. Hassan,” he said finally, giving the clerk a patient look. “How might we get in touch with him?”
***
Deal and Driscoll were waiting in the interns’ quarters, a battered place with a worn carpet and a musty smell that reminded Deal of his high school locker room, when Dr. Hassan arrived for his shift. This time when Driscoll displayed his phony shield, Deal didn’t even flinch.
Hospital records had already told them that Hassan was an Iranian immigrant who’d studied in London, gone to med school in Madrid, was completing an internship in the States. He turned out to be a slightly built man in his mid-thirties, his face framed by owlish horn-rimmed glasses.
He removed the glasses a couple of times as he studied the Xeroxed file Driscoll had handed him. Another intern lingered near the locker area until Driscoll fixed his glare on him and the man eased on out of the room. Hassan looked up from the file as the door closed behind his colleague.
“Yes, I remember this man,” he said finally. “He is the one who vanished.” His doleful eyes reflected wonder as he thought back. “Those men from the raft brought him in and left and then he disappeared as well.”
“Men from the raft?” Deal asked.
“Yes,” Hassan said, unruffled. “Unusual men. Quite an outlandish story, really.”
“Try us,” Driscoll said.
Hassan glanced at him. “I’m still not sure it was true, of course. And my Spanish was a bit rusty—”
“Doc…” Driscoll interrupted. “We’re kind of in a hurry.”
“Of course,” Hassan said, giving him an agreeable nod. “The two men who brought this one in told me that they had floated here on a raft from Cuba. They said to me they’d plucked this man out of the water the night they left. They’d heard shooting, and at first assumed it was meant for them. But then they realized it was something else altogether. They said the sky was filled with planes, the beach behind them full of explosions…” He broke off, shrugging.
“And then sometime after the firing had stopped, they came upon him, floating in the water, with his arm clutched to a piece of wreckage. They’d argued about what to do, the two of them, but they finally came to the conclusion that since he was an American and they were on their way to America, it was an omen of sorts. They were sure he’d never make it, but he had, in fact. He was still alive when they washed up on shore. By that time they were certain their fate was entwined with his and so they brought the man here.”
Deal shook his head. “Why didn’t you report all this?”
The intern gave him a puzzled glance. “To what end? The story was quite incredible. The patient had vanished, as had the men who brought him here.”
“But still…”
“You must understand, I might treat fifty persons on a weekend shift.” His eyes grew large behind his glasses. “And in this hospital, one encounters many strange stories.”
Deal turned to Driscoll, shaking his head in amazement. “It couldn’t be Tommy, Vernon. It just couldn’t be…”
“There’s one easy way to find out,” Driscoll said. He stood and placed a hand on the intern’s shoulder. “One hell of an easy way.”
***
“Again?” Hassan’s voice was a whisper. He glanced back at them as he bent over Tommy’s inert form. “He has been shot again? How could it be?”
“That’s him, Doc?” Driscoll gestured for him to take a closer look. “You’re sure?”
Hassan’s hands moved carefully to Tommy’s head, pushed a shock of his hair aside, inspected something. He stood back, held his hands out like a film director framing Tommy’s face. Finally he turned, shaking his head in disbelief.
“It has been some time,” he said, pointing back at Tommy. “But you see the scar there, just above the ear. That was the location of the wound I saw…”
Driscoll nodded.
“Are you certain?” Deal said, impatient.
Hassan shrugged again. “Yes. In my best estimation. I would have to say yes.”
“Well, thanks a million, Doc,” Driscoll said, propelling him toward the door.
Hassan held back, as if he’d be glad to put off his rounds to stay and chat. “It is quite some story, no?”
“You bet your boots,” Driscoll said. “We appreciate all your trouble.”
“There is something else I can do?”
“Just tell the ladies down at the nurses’ station to give us a couple more minutes. We won’t bother him,” Driscoll said, guiding Hassan on out into the hallway. He gave the intern a reassuring nod, then closed the door and hurried to the phone without a word to Deal.
“Yes,” he said, dialing an operator. “This is Dr. Hassan. Can you get me a Broward County number, please?”
Driscoll waved away Deal’s inquiring look as he waited for a connection. After a minute his face lit up. “Yeah, Osvaldo, it’s me, Driscoll.” He paused, waiting for a moment, then took out his little pad and made a couple of notes.
“That’s great, Osvaldo. But there’s just one more thing…”
He held the phone away from his ear, letting Deal hear a stream of high-pitched curses. When Osvaldo’s voice had calmed, Driscoll took up again.
“I appreciate it, Osvaldo. All you have to do is check out a guy named Anthony Everett. I’ve got a Social Security number and a Maryland driver’s license with an address.” Driscoll repeated the information they’d taken from the hospital’s admissions form, listened while Osvaldo repeated it. “Yeah, just verify that stuff, run him for outstanding warrants, call up a credit report, anything that’s easy.” He held the phone away from his ear again at Osvaldo’s reply, then thanked him and hung up.
Driscoll studied the notes he’d made for a moment, then looked up at Deal. “Seems our buddy Torreno’s been busy,” he said.
“Doing what?” Deal asked.
Driscoll tapped his little pad in his hand. “Osvaldo says he’s dumped about thirty-five million dollars into real estate over the past six months, and that’s just what the computer was able to pick up on the quick.”
“So?”
“So, all of these transactions are recorded in Torreno’s name, or companies controlled by him. Five’ll get you ten most of the money for those deals came out of the Patriots’ Foundation coffers.”
“What did he buy with it?”
“Some of it’s parcels of land over in Collier County. That’s where they busted a couple of paramilitary training camps tied to the foundation last year.”
“Maybe he’s just buying the land in his name to keep things quiet.”
“Maybe,” Driscoll said, tapping his notebook. “But that only accounts for a small portion of it. What do you think the Patriots’ Foundation cares about American Amalgamated Industries,” he said, pausing for emphasis, “for which Torreno forked over twenty-seven point one million dollars.”
Deal stared. “Twenty-seven million? What is American Amalgamated Industries?”
“American Sugar,” Driscoll said. “
Big
sugar, up by Lake Okeechobee. It’s the biggest single processor in the U.S. It used to be controlled by a family named Carbonell. The old man died recently, his kids finally got to sell.”
“Osvaldo told you all this?” Deal’s eyes were on Tommy, his waxy skin, his slack mouth, the tubes and lines that held him to the world.
Driscoll shook his head. “Naw. I met Carbonell a couple years back. He was a real independent old cuss, a guy who came over here long before Castro. His family had been in the business down there for a hundred years. He read the handwriting on the wall, came to the U.S., built his sugar empire, never looked back. He hated Torreno and his activities. Somebody put me on to him, thought he might be able to give me some leads on some of the things we were looking into.”
Deal glanced up from Tommy with a sigh. “And did he?”
Driscoll shook his head again. “He didn’t know shit, really. Torreno had come to him for money to support the foundation early on, Carbonell threw him out on his ass. Old guy talked my ear off about making your own way, America the land of opportunity, all that. What he knew about was growing sugarcane.”
“How did he die?” Deal said. He was tired. Funny how that worked. Get beaten down to the bone, things made more sense than when you were rested, your mind firing on all cylinders.
“He drowned,” Driscoll said, giving him a look. “Slipped into one of the canals on his farm. Couple of his sons found him, that’s the story, anyway.”
“A guy that only cared about one thing dies in an accident, now Torreno owns his pride and joy,” Deal said.
Driscoll nodded. “I thought I was the conspiracy theorist around here.”
“Maybe it’s rubbing off,” Deal said. He was trying to comprehend it, all the things a man might be willing to do if enough money was involved. Or maybe he was looking at it from the wrong end, picking all the nits. To Torreno, a killing here, a firebombing there, those were tiny details in an operation that was so big it dwarfed old-fashioned notions like morality.
“Still,” Driscoll said. “I don’t know why he’d do it. I mean, you hear all those stories,” he continued, “a guy gets bad service, he buys the restaurant and fires everybody. But twenty-seven million dollars. That’s a lot of revenge.”
“Maybe that’s what Torreno wants to do next, become a sugar baron.”
Driscoll shook his head. “He’s got to be smarter than that. Carbonell himself told me he was losing money. The land’s eroding, they got all kinds of labor problems, the price of domestic sugar is propped up by price controls that everybody in Congress is pissed off about…” He trailed off. “The entire industry’s on the edge. It’d be like buying a steel mill in Pittsburgh because you liked the football team.”
They stood quietly for a time then, Deal running it all over in his mind, fighting the feeling that threatened to overwhelm him altogether. If it was true, if Tommy was the target of Torreno, then he was simply an afterthought; he and his family were mere nuisances caught up in the backwash of a high roller’s rush to the money trough. Driscoll, Tommy, Janice, Isabel, all of them like fleas to a man who, apparently, could do anything without fear of reprisal.
He stared down at the inert form before him. Tubes ran from both nostrils, both arms, a battery of equipment stacked near the bed. What had he done? What threat could
this
man have posed to Torreno?
“Anthony Everett,” he said, shaking his head. “Whoever the hell
he
is.”
He was about to turn to Driscoll when he felt the brush of something at his pantleg. He glanced down, surprised to see Tommy’s fingers clutching feebly at the bedclothes. Tommy’s lips moved then and a sound came. At first he thought it was a moan or Tommy babbling nonsense in his sleep…then Tommy’s eyes flickered open and his hand reached toward Deal.
“Suh…” Tommy said, “suh…suh…,” his mouth twisting as if each syllable racked him with pain. One of the monitors at his bedside had begun to beep urgently.
“A nurse,” Deal said to Driscoll. “Get a nurse.”
He grasped Tommy’s hand as the ex-cop bolted for the door.
“Easy now,” Deal said. He felt a spasm run through Tommy’s body. “Take it easy.”
“Suh-gah,” Tommy said, his voice almost a wail. Deal leaned close, hearing shouted orders, footsteps approaching in the hall. Tommy’s gaze was locked desperately on Deal, his mouth still twisting painfully. “Gave…him…suh-gah.
We
did…”
He squeezed Deal’s hand once more. His eyes began to roll, and he fell back on his pillows. “…gave him the
suh-gar
!” He fought to stay awake, reaching out to Deal with a panicked expression, like a man about to go backward off a cliff. “We…gave…him…the…sugar…” he said, his voice halting but clear. And then, as if the effort to articulate the words had taken everything, he collapsed. The machine was beeping furiously now.