“People call me RT,” he said.
Shipman ignored him.
“The man who was shot—” she said.
“Are you guys just about done? I gotta business to run here.”
“Oh, are we in your way?”
“Whaddya think?”
“I think maybe I should start checking the IDs of some of your customers, what do you think, Dick?”
The bartender crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
“The man who was shot,” Shipman said. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing?”
“I hardly noticed him, like I told the other guy, Gifford.”
“Gafford.”
“My point,” RT said, “man comes in for a drink, pays for the drink, drinks the drink, leaves. Why should I pay any attention to him ’less he does somethin’ to, you know, attract my attention?”
“Like getting shot?”
“That happened outside. I didn’t even know it happened until someone told me and by then you people were here.”
“You people?”
“Police blockin’ my entrance and shit. I had to let people in and out through the back door in the alley.”
“Video cameras?”
RT shook his head.
“You don’t have any security cameras in your place?” Shipman asked.
“My customers don’t like being spied on by…”
“By you people?”
RT shrugged.
“Yeah, I can imagine,” Shipman said.
By then the FSU had packed up its equipment and departed. As far as she knew, Shipman was the only police officer left at RT’s Basement. She didn’t let it bother her, though. She asked more questions of the bartender yet learned nothing. She asked questions of his customers and got more of the same. Finally, she stepped out of the club onto the sidewalk and inhaled deeply the fresh May air, or at least as fresh as it got on Rice Street. The night sky was bright enough that she could make out some of the stars floating overhead despite the light pollution.
Most people would say that fall was the best time to be in Minnesota, yet Shipman had always preferred spring. Fifty degrees in early May always felt warmer to her than fifty degrees in late October. She wasn’t thinking about her comfort, though. She was thinking about how little information she had and just how pissed off Commander Dunston was going to be.
* * *
Bobby and Shelby were still sitting in their uncomfortable chairs when Nina arrived at the hospital. Normally, there would have been plenty of hugging and gushing, especially between Nina and Shelby. Instead, Nina moved directly to where they were sitting and asked, “How is he?”
Bobby and Shelby both stood.
“We don’t know. The woman…” He gestured at the admin in the white linen coat sitting behind her desk. “She told us a few minutes ago that McKenzie is still in surgery. There was a lot of bleeding from the bullet that lodged in his chest. It’s going to take time.”
“How much time?”
“It’s been over two hours now,” Shelby said.
She reached to take Nina’s arm, but Nina pulled it away, spun around, and marched to the desk where the woman dressed in the white coat was seated. Bobby and Shelby followed.
“I’m Rushmore McKenzie’s wife and I want to know my husband’s condition,” she announced.
“Mrs. McKenzie, there are forms—”
“My name is Nina Truhler and you’re not answering my question.”
“Ms. Truhler, if you care to take a seat—”
“Listen. You know how some people go right off the rails and start screaming and carrying on until you either end up calling security or giving them what they want?” Nina tapped her chest. “I’m exactly that person.”
“Just a moment, please.”
The woman escaped through the doorway behind her.
“I was counting,” Nina told me later. “I was counting slowly to one hundred. The admin returned when I reached eighty-eight.”
“What would you have done if you had reached one hundred?”
“Something I’d probably regret later,” was all she told me.
The woman in the white coat was followed by Dr. Lillian Linder, who was still wearing her blue surgical gown, the gown stained with blood. Not a lot of blood. Just enough for Shelby to say, “Oh, Jesus.”
Lilly smiled and said, “Hi, Nina.” Nina wasn’t fooled by the smile, however.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“Serious but stable.”
“What does that mean?”
Lilly said it meant that the bullet had been removed; that all the ruptured blood vessels had been repaired, that there had been no damage to the heart, and my vital signs had stabilized. However …
“However?” Nina asked.
My blood pressure was higher than it should be, although not so high as to cause Lilly to be overly concerned—so she said—and my pulse rate was hovering around one hundred, which wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm, either—so she said. It was her intention to keep me in an induced coma until my vitals returned to normal.
“Coma?”
That’s when Lilly explained that I had suffered sudden cardiac arrest twice during surgery. The first time, she zapped me once with a defibrillator. The second time she had to hit my heart three times. There would not have been a fourth attempt. Lilly didn’t tell Nina that but she did tell me a couple of days later when she thought I was ready to accept the news without freaking out.
“We induced the coma for a couple of reasons,” she said. “The first is so that the body doesn’t use any energy in physical movement. This reduces the stress on the heart as much as possible, giving it the best chance of recovery. Right now McKenzie’s heart is doing the absolute minimum amount of work, circulating his blood and very little else. That greatly reduces the chance of another SCA.”
“What’s the prognosis?” Bobby asked, getting to the point.
Lilly ignored the question.
“Another reason for the induced coma,” she said, “is that shutting down function gives the brain time to heal itself; time to repair any damaged areas without reducing blood flow to the other parts of the body that are also injured. The brain gets top priority for blood. If it thinks it needs more to fix itself, it’ll take more even if that means shutting down the supply to other organs.”
“What do you mean, give the brain time to heal itself?” Nina asked.
Dr. Linder told Nina that for four minutes and ten seconds there was a loss of blood to my brain. That my EKG had flatlined. Lilly took a deep breath before adding, “In some cases, when the loss of circulation to the brain is extended, the patient can suffer varying degrees of damage.”
“Damage to the brain?” Nina asked.
“Yes.”
“When the loss of circulation is extended?”
“Yes.”
“Define extended.”
“Brain cells can begin to die after five minutes of oxygen loss.”
“McKenzie was out for four minutes and ten seconds.”
“Yes.”
“Fifty seconds shy of five minutes.”
“Yes, except there was a slight amount of swelling that occurred when oxygenated blood failed to reach his brain cells.”
“But he’s going to be all right?”
Lilly answered by smiling confidently—I think she perfected that smile in med school—and wrapping her arms around Nina. Nina spoke into Lilly’s shoulder.
“Please,” she said. “Tell me he’s going to be all right. Lilly? Promise me.”
“I think he’s going to be fine. I just thought you should know what happened during surgery. You should be aware that there’s—that there’s a worst-case scenario. I’m your friend. I’m also a doctor. I won’t lie to you.”
“A lie doesn’t sound all that bad right now. How long will you keep McKenzie in the coma?”
“We might
bring him out as early as tomorrow. Two, three days at the most. I’ll have a better answer for you in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“Nina, we need to stop meeting like this.”
It’s what Lilly always said when the two women came together over one of my medical emergencies. Usually, the remark would make them both smile but Nina’s inner voice was screaming. She didn’t promise. If she’s so sure McKenzie will be fine, why won’t she promise?
I have no idea what Lilly was thinking.
* * *
Herzog opened the door to RT’s Basement and Chopper wheeled himself inside. Herzog never pushed Chopper’s wheelchair. He tried it once when he first came to work for him. Chopper didn’t like it and told him so in no uncertain terms.
A kind of hush settled over the club as they made their way to the bar. This was not unusual. The sight of happy-go-lucky Chopper in his chair and large and dangerous-seeming Herzog hovering near him often made people stop and go, “Hmm.”
The bartender stood waiting for them. He didn’t say “Welcome to RT’s” or “What’ll you have?” or anything friendly like that. He just waited.
“You RT?” Chopper asked, using the nickname Richard Thomas preferred, knowing that was more likely to garner cooperation than insulting the man.
The bartender nodded.
“My friends call me Chopper. This here is Herzog. What are you drinking, Herzy?”
“Got any Booker’s?”
“Herzog.” RT said the name in a low tone of voice as if he had heard it before and was impressed.
“Huh?” Herzog said.
“Booker’s is a little high-end for us,” RT said.
“Michter’s? Barrell? Maker’s Mark? Knob Creek?”
The bartender kept shaking his head.
“Jim Beam?”
RT answered by taking a bottle off the shelf behind him and pouring a couple of fingers into a squat glass. He didn’t quote a price.
Herzog sipped the bourbon.
“What can I get you?” RT asked.
“I hear you’ve had some excitement t’night,” Chopper said in reply.
“What of it?”
“Man who was shot named McKenzie.”
RT waited for Chopper to finish his thought.
“Man is a friend of ours.”
RT glanced at Herzog as if he couldn’t believe it. Herzog kept sipping his drink.
“I already talked to the police,” RT said.
“I ain’t the fuckin’ po-lice,” Chopper said.
RT looked at Herzog some more.
“Me neither,” Herzog said.
“What can you tell us?” Chopper asked.
“Whaddya want to know?” RT asked.
“What was he doing here?”
“Fuck should I know? White man walks into my place wearing an expensive sports jacket, I’m supposed t’ ask him questions?”
“You remember him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. Cuz of the jacket. I have my share of white customers, ’cept they don’t usually dress as nice. Well, sometimes when I get an act that has crossover appeal. ’Cept it’s Tuesday and we don’t have music on Tuesdays.”
Chopper took a moment to glance around at the tables and booths and at the few customers drinking at the bar with them. There were more white customers than they expected in an African-American joint and a lot of them looked as if they had driven in from the suburbs, men and women both dressed in polo shirts and khakis.
“When did he arrive?” Chopper asked.
“Who?”
“What we talking about, the white man, McKenzie.”
“Eight,” the bartender said. “Couple minutes before.”
“What he do?”
“It’s a bar. He ordered a drink. Whaddya think?”
Herzog dropped his empty glass. The sound of it bouncing off the bar was loud enough to make the bartender flinch. After he recovered, he asked if Herzog wanted a refill. Herzog said he did. RT gathered up Herzog’s glass, put it away, and pulled out a fresh one. While he poured more Jim Beam, he said “Your friend asked for a Summit Extra Pale Ale.”
“Bet you don’t pour that, either,” Herzog said.
“He settled for a Budweiser.”
“Then what?” Chopper asked.
“Then he drank his beer.”
“And?”
“I think he was waiting for someone.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How do you know he was waiting for someone?”
“He kept checking his watch. And his phone. Kept glancing at the door.”
“But he didn’t say who he was waiting for?”
“We’re not brothers from another mother, ’kay? It’s not like we were having a conversation.”
“He went outside,” Chopper said.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“I dunno. Eight fifteen? Eight twenty?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’d he leave?”
“T’ see if his friend was waitin’ outside instead of inside? Fuck should I know?”
“Did he settle his tab first?” Chopper asked.
“He paid when I served him. A ten. Told me t’ keep the change.”
“So he wasn’t planning on hanging around when his friend arrived.”
“I don’t know what he was planning.”
“Did you watch him head for the door?”
“No, why would I?” RT asked.
“Did you see who shot him?”
“I didn’t see nothin’ like I told them cops, first the guy and then the skirt.”
“Skirt?” Herzog asked.
“Woman cop,” RT said.
“You call women ‘skirts’?”
“Gotta be careful what you say these days. Them hashtag MeToo bitches eat you alive.”
“Yeah, I can see how callin’ ’em skirts be much better.”
“What did you see?” Chopper asked.
“Nothin’,” RT said. “Ain’t no lie. Didn’t even know what happened till a customer told me like I said to them cops.”
“What can you tell us that you didn’t tell them cops?”
The bartender watched Herzog as he swirled what was left of the bourbon in his glass.
“Fuck,” he said.
* * *
Dr. Linder allowed Nina, Bobby, and Shelby to visit me, if you call standing in a corridor and looking through the sliding glass walls into the recovery room visiting. I was propped at a forty-five-degree angle on a bed. There was a tube in my nose to draw out stomach contents and another in my mouth to help me breathe and a line that was feeding me intravenously and a catheter going to my bladder and cables attached to a monitor where wavy red, green, and blue lines and ever-changing numbers kept track of my vital signs.
“He’s looked better,” Bobby said.
“The week after I first met him,” Nina said, “God, only five days after he tailed that suspect into Rickie’s, he ended up in the hospital, this very hospital, with an epidural hematoma. They had to drill two holes in his skull to drain the blood and alleviate the pressure or he would have…”
“I remember,” Shelby said. “It was after he saved that young woman’s life.”
“I should’ve run for the hills then, only I didn’t. Now I’m stuck with him.”
“It was a lovely ceremony, getting married in the Winter Carnival Ice Palace like that. I still don’t know how you managed it.”
“McKenzie knew a guy who owed him a favor. McKenzie’s preferred form of legal tender, favors. We waited until after the holidays because we didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s Christmas.”
“You wouldn’t have intruded.”
“You didn’t mind the cold, early February in Minnesota? That the ceremony took place at night after the Palace was closed to the public?”
Shelby took hold of Nina’s arm and hugged it.
�
�I didn’t mind. No one minded. The Ice Palace. Wow. Bobby and I were married in a church.”
“McKenzie and I had been together for over seven years; we lived together for two of them,” Nina said. “I thought after we were married everything would stay pretty much the same. Only it didn’t. We became even more … I would look at him sometimes and I’d feel a surge of electricity that I hadn’t felt before. McKenzie told me that the world seemed brighter to him now. The sun, the moon, stars, colors—they all seemed brighter. Do you believe that?”
Shelby glanced at Bobby who continued to stare at me through the glass wall.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“Nina,” Bobby said. “We need to talk.”
“Not now,” Shelby said.
“I’m sorry but yes, now.”
* * *
It was difficult maneuvering Chopper’s wheelchair behind RT’s desk, the entire office being about the size of a closet, and Herzog wondered why they didn’t just turn the computer screen around.
RT tapped a couple of keys, moved his mouse, and tapped a few more.
“This is my primary camera,” he said.
The screen displayed an overhead shot of his cash register.
“It ain’t about my customers,” he said. “It ain’t about recordin’ no fights an’ shit, people doin’ business. It ain’t about keepin’ ’em from doin’ what they call dining and dashing, either. Ain’t really had much of a problem with any of that. Set up the camera t’ keep my employees from rippin’ me off, you know? Make sure the cash goes in the till and not someone’s pocket. Had problems with that. I had these security cameras installed secret like. I’s the only one what knows about ’em.”
“You didn’t tell the cops?” Chopper asked.
“I ain’t no agent of the po-lice. Now this here…” RT changed the screen. Apparently, the camera had been mounted on the shelf behind the actual wooden bar. It gave them a wide-angle view of the cash register on one end, the waitress station on the other, and the patrons sitting between them. Over the shoulders of the patrons they could see the club’s tables and booths and stage and, in the deep background, the door and the windows with a view of the street.
What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel Page 3