Sick Like That

by Norman Green

  “If any of those guys are still around,” she told him, “send them up.”

  “I’ll have a nurse do it,” he said. “They go nuts down there whenever they see me. You’ve made me a celebrity. If this keeps up I’m going to hire a nutritionist, some bodyguards, and someone to hold a parasol over my head.” He pulled her covers back. She realized that all she was wearing was a thin hospital gown. And it seemed forever since she’d had a shower.

  The nurse’s eyebrows went high on her forehead and she murmured something to the doctor. “Yes,” he said. “Healing nicely.” He covered her up again.

  “Will I have a scar?”

  He nodded. “About two and a half inches. When it’s fully healed, you won’t notice it. Friend of mine happened to be in the ER the other night. Plastic surgeon. Teeny, teeny, teeny stitches.”

  “How long are you guys gonna keep me here?”

  “Why are you in such a hurry to leave us? Is it so terrible here?”

  She thought of her room over the bar on Atlantic Avenue, the medical bills she was surely racking up, and the thin finances down at Houston Investigations. Suddenly she understood why Marty Stiles was in no hurry to complete his rehab. “No,” she said. “It’s not terrible at all.”

  He smiled. “Anyhow, we won’t keep you any longer than we have to. Administration would love for that circus downstairs to leave.”

  “Circus?”

  “Media,” he said. “Police. A couple of guys from the assault team that brought you here. Various and sundry.” He pointed at the television. “Turn on CNN. You’ll see.”

  She found the remote, thumbed the power button. On the screen, two women and one man stood in the kitchen of an empty house. One of the women looked around the room, her distaste plain on her face. “I want granite,” she said. The man looked sick. The other woman, presumably the real estate agent, pasted on a smile.

  “We’ll keep looking,” she said.

  Alessandra hit the channel button, surfed until she caught one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. A young black man wearing a suit and tie stood in front of a police barricade on Arthur Kill Road. “Speculation continues to surround this blighted neighborhood on Staten Island,” he said. “The initial statements coming out of the NYPD stated that this was an incident of home-grown terrorism, but these statements were contradicted by a reporter for the SoCal Insider, which is normally an entertainment source in Los Angeles. The reporter, Rod Benson, claims to have information that there was a foreign terrorist cell operating here in New York City.”

  The picture on the tube switched to a sober-looking news anchor. “Brian,” the man said, “isn’t it a fact that the SoCal Insider is not exactly an ideal model of journalistic integrity? Can we place any credence in the news we’re hearing from that source?”

  The black guy nodded. “David, while it is true that the Insider might not be ranked very high as a traditional news outlet, their reporter, Rod Benson, is a solid professional with a decent reputation. Plus, included in his reports are these pictures.” The television cut to a paste-up of the pictures Al had taken of the men at Palermo Imports. “These two men are still unidentified, but this one is apparently a man known as Hassan El-Hamidi, a Syrian national who was cashiered out of the Egyptian military eighteen years ago. He has been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa. While we do not know if Mr. El-Hamidi has actually been sighted, here’s what we do know: Air Force One was due to touch down at Newark’s Liberty Airport when it was suddenly rerouted to Philadelphia. No explanation has yet been given for this. All takeoffs and landings at Newark Liberty, LaGuardia, and JFK airports were held up for three hours, snarling air traffic up and down the East Coast. And, U.S. Air Force fighters made a series of extremely low passes just over Arthur Kill, the body of water behind us which separates Staten Island from New Jersey. The residents here are alarmed, to say the least, and some windows were broken . . .”

  She muted the set, reached for the phone next to the bed, and called Sarah Waters’s cell. “Hey. Sorry I missed the trip to Long Island.”

  “Never mind that,” Sarah said, her voice hushed. “You’re a hero! Were they really going to blow up the president’s plane? Are you okay? What the hell happened? First they were saying that Frank was a terrorist, then they were saying he died trying to stop it, and now they won’t say anything about him at all. Pending investigation. Are you all right?”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because I’m just downstairs from you. Reporters and camera guys are crawling all over this place like a bunch of goddam roaches. Hey! Buddy! Do you mind? This is the ladies’ room! What is wrong with you? Get the fuck outa here! Hang on, Al, I gotta find a safer place to talk. Call me back in one minute.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Al waited, called back. “Better?”

  “Yeah. I’m in the stairwell, one of the security guys is a sweetheart, he unlocked it for me. Are you okay? What happened?”

  “I got stabbed. I think I’m gonna be all right. Probably stuck here for a few days. Listen, I need you to do me a favor. Tell your kid not to believe a thing he hears about his dad. When I get out of here, we’re gonna sit down and I’m gonna tell him the real story about the kind of guy his old man was. And I know you two were on the outs, but, you know, I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. And for Frankie Junior, too.”

  “How’d you make out with Mrs. West?”

  “She’s in jail.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. When Jake and I went to see her, her driver wired up my mom’s car while we were talking.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. Anyway, I kinda figured he would, him and Agatha were in it together. That’s how the two of them did Jake’s father and his brother Izzy. Her driver got away in a boat, but they arrested him on the Connecticut side when he tried to land. Now he’s in jail in Bridgeport and he’s rolling over on Agatha almost as fast as she’s rolling over on him. They found Bats, by the way. And would you believe it? West doesn’t have cancer at all, it was all an act.”

  “She lied to us? I’m shocked. And I am never letting you out of the office again, ever.”

  “Too late for that, kiddo.”

  “Jesus. So where was Tipton?”

  “In her wine cellar, wrapped up in a sheet. They kept it so dry in there, they said he was like, mummified. You know, like a dead fly on your windowsill. They’re reopening the old case.”

  “I would hope so. Did we get paid?”

  “You know, that’s exactly what Marty said. But, um, no, we didn’t.”

  “How broke are we?”

  “Broke on our ass broke. But I charged a laptop on Marty’s credit card and I took it down there to him and I put his fat ass to work. We got a lot of face time in the papers behind Agatha West and we’ve been getting a lot of missing person calls. Marty can do a lot of that stuff on-line right from where he is. And we got the Hyatt account.”

  “Wow. So we’re broke, but we won’t starve.”

  “Not this month.”

  “Okay. I’ll be out of this place in a day or so, Sarah, so we’ll—”

  “Don’t you dare. You just lay your sweet little boo-tay right back on them sheets, baby. You get some rest. You deserve it.”

  “You know what, Sarah, I take back all those mean things I wrote about you on the men’s room wall.”

  “Was that you? No wonder I’m so popular lately.”

  Three cops showed up just as one of the hospital staff was clearing away the wreckage of her lunch. As usual, despite the lack of taste in the food, there was nothing edible left over, no scraps, no little cellophane packages of crackers, nothing, and she was still hungry. The two younger cops were decked out in standard NYPD blue, they looked new, fresh, just graduated, they both looked at Alessandra like rookie zookeepers venturing into the tiger cage for the first time. The third guy was Al’s fat sergeant, Bobby Fallon, the guy who was attached to the commissioner�
�s office, the guy who knew How It All Really Worked. They stood in the doorway waiting for the orderly to finish up and leave. Behind Fallon’s back, one of the younger cops caught Al’s eye, raised his fingertips to the corner of his eyebrow, and saluted her. Al nodded back, just a millimeter or so, but Fallon caught it and turned to stare at the younger man.

  “Pardon me, gents.” The orderly pushed his rack of empty trays out into the hall, paused, and looked back. “You gents be polite to Supernatural in there, you hear? She ain’t ’posed to get all excited. We don’t want no trouble.”

  “Okay, Doctor,” one of the uniforms told him, sarcastic. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You two meatballs wait out there in the hall,” Fallon said. “We don’t want to be disturbed.” The two younger cops stepped back and Fallon closed the door with a bang. There was a patient chair down by the foot of Al’s bed and he flopped down in it.

  “S’up, dog?” Al said.

  The television over Fallon’s head replayed footage of the National Guard helicopter on the hospital roof, rotors turning lazily. Figures in green uniforms and white uniforms rushed Alessandra onto a gurney and into the hospital. The picture zoomed in close, but the images were too blurry to identify her. A CNN reporter doing voiceover talked about the conflicting reports coming out of the NYPD. Al picked up the remote and thumbed the mute button.

  “Thank you,” Fallon said, and he sighed. “You really fucked us up, all that stuff you fed to Rod Benson. That goddam reporter.”

  “Yeah, the truth is a bitch, ain’t it? You were all ready to stick this whole thing in Frank Waters’s back pocket, just like Torrente wanted you to. And you’d have let me and Sarah go down with him.”

  He shrugged. “Be that as it may. Looks bad, bunch of foreign guys taking a run at the president. Gets people all stirred up. Not that it matters, but just between you and me, did you do the one out in front of Costello’s, too?”

  “No,” Al said. “One of his own caught him with a round by accident so they finished him so he couldn’t answer any questions.”

  “Nice,” he said, irritated. “How do you know that?”

  “Got it from the valet parking guy.”

  “How the hell did you find him?”

  “Followed him back to his rooming house.”

  Fallon glared at her. “The guy was gone when we went looking for him.”

  Al shrugged. “Guess you got there too late.”

  The muscles worked in the side of Fallon’s jaw. “How much trouble am I gonna have with you?” he said.

  “Figured it was gonna come down to this,” Al said.

  “Yeah?” She heard the challenge and the frustration in his voice. “Why?”

  “Because they’re all dead,” she told him. “I mean, good or bad, I don’t know how you wanna look at it, bottom line is they ain’t talking to anybody. But someone sent them here. Someone paid for all this. And the way it stands right now, the guy’s gotta figure he wasted his money because the best police force in the world, which would look like youse guys, got wise to the operation and blew it up. Killed everybody. Took the missiles. Am I right?”

  He just stared at her.

  “You can’t afford to let ’em know how close they came,” Al said. “You can’t let anybody know that two chicks from the hood pulled your onions out of the fire. You’re here to tell me that me and Sarah have to keep our fucking mouths shut.”

  “Some would call it your patriotic duty,” he said.

  “Call it whatever you like.”

  “So what do you want? What’s it gonna take?”

  “What do you got?” she asked him.

  “We can’t let you back into the academy,” he said. “Not after this. That what you’re asking? You really wanna put on the blues, ride around in a patrol car chasing radio calls?” He leaned forward, enunciated carefully. “Taking orders? Following procedure? Doing what you’re told?” He leaned back in the chair. “Ain’t gonna happen. That ain’t what you want anyhow. Can’t be.”

  “What are you gonna do about Rod Benson?”

  He glanced up at the television. “Nothing. He’s gonna write a book, and every conspiracy theorist fruit basket between here and Mumbai will buy it, but nobody with any sense will believe him. He’ll get rich, he can retire to spend his money, quit chasing Britney Spears and UFOs. Everybody wins.”

  “What about The Harkonnen Group? What about Homeland Security?”

  Fallon looked like he wanted to spit. “Fuck them,” he said, with some heat. “They came in here like John Wayne on his fucking horse, they get what they deserve, which is nothing. You let me handle them. I ain’t letting them get near you.” He stared at her for maybe ten seconds. “You with me on this, Martillo?”

  “Yeah. Because it’s my patriotic duty.”

  He stood up, obviously not sure if she was messing with him. “The department,” he said, “is picking up your tab in this joint.”

  “Wow. Thanks. I think.” She waited for it: there is a price tag on everything.

  “The debriefing is gonna be brutal.”

  “I been wondering when that would start,” she said.

  He just gave her a look.

  “Come on, Fallon, spit it out. I’m not in the mood for games.”

  He walked over to the window, stood there with his back to her. “This is your turf, Martillo,” he said, and he pointed out at the streets of Brooklyn with his chin. “You were born here. You couldn’t function anywhere else. Any other city in the world, you couldn’t be what you are.”

  She hadn’t been anywhere else long enough to know the truth of that, but it sounded like he might have a point.

  Fallon turned and stared at her. “We’re gonna have to live with you. And you’re gonna have to live with us.”

  “I’m not gonna lie for you guys, Fallon. I’m not telling anybody I was working for you.”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. But you have long-standing ties to the department. Long-standing, ongoing. And the department is gonna be right by your side throughout this whole ordeal.”

  “The debriefing, you mean.”

  He nodded once.

  “I am beginning to worry,” she said, staring at the silent television, “what this is really gonna cost me.”

  “Come on, Martillo, what do you care? Ain’t neither one of us gonna get our picture in the paper over this. Do it our way, everybody walks away from this clean. No inquests, no repercussions . . . no dirt. And the undying admiration of the few of us who know what really happened.”

  “Undying.”

  “Yes. For whatever it’s worth.”

  “How do we work this?”

  “Your lawyer will be with you the whole time.”

  “My lawyer?”

  “Well,” he said. “Our lawyer. Yours and ours. Don’t worry, you’ll like her.”

  She sighed.

  “Come on, Martillo. You with us on this?”

  “You’re too slick for me, Fallon. But send your lawyer up. We’ll talk.”

  “Fine.” He headed for the door, paused long enough to toss a manila envelope on the foot of the bed without looking at her.

  “Hey,” she said, “if that’s about those parking tickets, I already told you guys it wasn’t my car.”

  “It’s an investigator’s ticket,” he said.

  “What? A license?” she said, disbelieving.

  “So you can work.” He glanced at the television. “Listen. Between you and me, we really ought to tell everyone who you are. What you did. But we can’t, and so you’re getting screwed. I’m sorry, but the PI license was the best I could do.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

  He nodded to her and walked out.

  Spin management, she thought. The truth stays buried. To everyone except the conspiracy theorists, the NYPD looks like they were on it.

  And I get to keep my job.

  The white-haired doctor came to see her about a week lat
er. “Hey,” he said. “Supernatural. How are you?”

  “Bored,” she said. “Tired of talking. Ready to go home. Why do they keep calling me that?”

  “Supernatural? Because we are impressed. Very few people heal as fast as you do. Professional athletes, other freaks of nature, such as yourself. Listen, Homeland Security says they’re not done with you yet, but the NYPD says we need to get you out of here. We’re going to blame it on hospital administration, those people could screw up a free lunch any day and twice on Sunday. We’re gonna take you down the freight elevator and sneak you out past the loading dock.”

  “Wow, Doc, you really know how to sweet-talk a girl, you know that?”

  “I got an A+ in bedside manner. But there’s someone here you ought to talk to first.”

  Had Conrad come to see her? For a moment she hoped. “One more lawyer, cop, or politician, Doc, I swear to God I can’t be held responsible for what happens . . .”

  A tall chubby white guy stepped into the room. “Alessandra Martillo?”

  “Who are you?”

  She flinched when she saw him reach into the bag he carried, but he only came out with a thick sheaf of papers. “I,” he said, sucking in his stomach, “am a duly appointed representative of the Irish-American Mudders and Fadders Association, and as such—”

  “What? The Irish what?” Then she remembered the beer she’d agreed to have for Daniel “Mickey” Caughlan, the one he couldn’t drink on account of being locked up. “Oh, right,” she said. “I stood you up a while back. Sorry.”

  “Well, we’re all here now,” he told her. “Look, they give me two hundred bucks to deliver these papers, doll, and I swear to God it’s the hardest two hundred I ever turned. I been chasin’ you all over Brooklyn. So do me a favor and sign wherever you see them yellow stickies and here’s the bloody keys. The good doctor already signed for the witness, and he give me the dollar besides, so it’s all legal. You owe him a buck.”