Sleeping Dogs

by Ed Gorman

  “I don’t suppose the person who called gave you a name.”

  “Uh, Frank something, as I recall. I didn’t see any reason to write it down. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

  Her phone bleated. “Oh, Lord, it’ll be another reporter.”

  I stood up and smiled. “I wish I could help you. And thanks.”

  Near the back door a couple of undergrads, girl and boy, clipboards in hand, worked along two racks of costumes from the theater department. Apparently they were cataloging what they had. I watched them as I approached. Before they wrote anything on the clipboards, they examined the particular garment extensively. Whoever had ordered the catalog wanted a lot of information about each entry. There must have been thirty costumes each on the long racks. They were both about halfway done.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I wondered if you saw our makeup lady leave here a while ago.” I told them who I was and said that she’d left some of her things in the dressing room and I wanted to get them to her before she left. I described her to them.

  The boy, wearing a crew cut that would have marked him a BMOC back in ’58, hadn’t seen her, but the girl, an attractive but awfully thin twenty-something, said, “I saw her. She had some trouble getting her car started. She parked right behind the door out here, which, technically, she wasn’t supposed to do.”

  “Fast getaway,” the boy said, not knowing how right he was.

  “Did you happen to look out the door and actually see her car?”

  “Oh, sure. Rob here went to get us a snack. So while he was gone I went out on the steps and asked her if I could help her. She looked like a nice woman, actually. Very pretty. Probably just a few years older than I am.”

  “Did you notice anything special about her car?”

  “Well, it was an old clunker,” the girl said. “Really pitted out. The car was brown but the door on the driver’s side didn’t match. It was gray.”

  “Would you happen to mean primer?”

  “I guess I don’t know what that is,” she said.

  I explained primer to her.

  “Oh, I see. Sure, it could’ve been that. Like it was ready to be painted. Though I sure wouldn’t waste any money on a clunker like that.”

  “You notice anything else about her or the car?”

  “Hey,” the boy said. I’d pushed too hard and suddenly all three of us realized it.

  “Why’re you asking so many questions?” the girl said.

  “I’d like to see some ID,” the boy said.

  I obliged him. “In case I’m a Russian spy?”

  He scanned my license and then showed it to the girl. “How do we know you’re really with Senator Nichols?”

  “Pauline Doyle is just down the hall. You can go ask her.”

  Both of them lost their confidence now. I must have offered the right name.

  Girl looked at boy, boy looked at girl. Girl said, “Well, she had a big sack in the front seat from a store named the Daily Double Discount. It’s this kind of tacky little store over by Riverdale.”

  She surprised me. The makeup girl was very white, very middle-class. Riverdale was a grim place for someone like her. “I worked with an outreach program our class did last summer with poor black kids. The store was nearby.”

  This was about all I was going to get. I thanked them and started off to the lot where I’d parked my car.

  Just as I opened the door and stepped outside into the whipping snow, my cell beeped.

  Kate said, “They’ve got Warren in an examination room now. This place is a zoo with reporters. But one of the doctors in the ER told me that they were checking for a heart attack or stroke. But he also said they run tests looking for every possibility.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Kate hadn’t been exaggerating about the press. I had to push, shove, even kidney punch my way through the pack to get to the ER registration desk, where a surly nurse said, after I’d introduced myself, “You better be who you say you are. Two of them—” Her eyes took in the phalanx of reporters, videocams, recorders, and still cameras that I’d just escaped. The only thing that stopped them from overrunning and sacking the ER was the lone and nervous-looking uniformed security guard. “Two of them tried to pass themselves off as interns. They were so stupid they couldn’t answer the first question I asked them.”

  Now I understood why she was so surly. The press can be a juggernaut that can unhinge the strongest of people. They’d descended on this poor woman and undone her. Her face gleamed with sweat and her gaze was jittery and bitter.

  Billy rescued me. He’d wandered here from somewhere down the hall. When he saw me he came over. The nurse looked relieved. “So he is who he says he is?”

  “Yes. He sure is.” Billy looked at the press mob now calling his name. They knew who he was. I guess they thought he was going to say, Aw, let them come back and hang with the senator awhile. Instead, he said to the nurse, “You’ll have nightmares for six months about this.”

  She managed a smile. “This isn’t quite as bad as when that alderman got shot. But close.”

  As we walked down the corridor to the room where Warren was, the hospital smells began to bring out my Irish fatalism. Irishmen (I wonder about Irishwomen) have two obsessions, sex and death, and not necessarily in that order. Maybe it’s because we spring from the loins of certifiable maniacs, the Celts, those merry fellows who painted themselves with blood before charging naked into battle. Their war cries, this being documented by historical accounts, were said to be so terrifying that the Celts could take villages without lifting a sword. Their screams alone sent villagers running into the forest.

  The hospital smells didn’t create images of the Celts, but they did create images of what lay behind all those ER curtains. And the sounds augmented the aromas. The little girl whose temperature had soared to a dangerous number, crying out now in sweaty delirium, and her tormented parents standing next to her gurney, imploring the young ER doc to save her. The old man lifting spidery fingers to receive the hand of his middle-aged daughter, who knew he would never leave the hospital alive. The teenage boy sobbing through the fog of drugs and drink, not knowing yet that his reckless driving had killed his best friend.

  Sharp stench of meds. Muffled words of nurses. The stray cry, piercing as a bullet. The quick ratcheting clamor of curtains being ripped back along metal rods.

  Two security guards stood outside Warren’s door. They’d already dealt with Billy, so all they did was nod as we went into the room.

  Warren lay, eyes closed, pale and damp on a gurney. He was hooked up to two different monitors that beeped quietly and frequently. His wife, Teresa, leaned over the bed, gently touching the back of her hand to his cheek. On the other side stood Kate and Laura. Kate’s lips moved in silent prayer. Gabe sat alone in a corner, his eyes downcast.

  When Teresa saw me, she offered me her free hand. I took it and moved closer to her. “So far the tests they’ve given him don’t indicate a heart attack or a stroke. They’re doing more tests. But one of the older doctors stopped in and asked if he’d been throwing up. Which Warren did twice in the ambulance.”

  A young doc came into the room just then. Indian, almost delicate, pretty. She walked toward Teresa. I stood aside. She introduced herself as Dr. Ajeet.

  “I consulted with two other doctors, Mrs. Nichols. They wanted to know what he’s had to eat in the last eight hours. We’ve already got the blood we need for a test. It’s in the lab now.”

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, Doctor. Kate might know.”

  Kate raised her head as if scanning the ceiling. “Let’s see—we had lunch brought in to campaign headquarters from a deli down the block. He either had corned beef or ham on rye.”

  “He had one of those energy drinks around four o’clock,” Billy said. “I was alone with him going over a speech for tomorrow.”

  “He guns Diet
Pepsi all day,” Laura said. “It’s pretty much a joke with the staff that when the senator dies, he wants heaven to be one big vending machine with Diet Pepsi in every slot.” She was smiling until she realized the implications of what she’d said. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Teresa.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Laura, I know you didn’t mean anything by that,” she said, looking down fondly at the face of her husband. Teresa was one of those trophy wives who’d surprised everybody by being a woman of intelligence and compassion. And a valuable political asset. The men of Washington wanted to jump her and their wives wanted to count her as a friend.

  “I’m wondering about the Pepsi that tasted funny,” I said. “Right before the debate.”

  “So am I,” Kate said.

  We told Dr. Ajeet about the incident that Warren had put down to melted ice.

  “That’s very interesting,” the doctor said. “We’re already working on the possibility that he ingested something harmful in his food or drink. But we’re considering many possibilities. From what we can see so far, Senator Nichols is in a deep sleep. His vitals are all normal.”

  “He’s asleep?” Laura said.

  “Yes. The same kind of sleep you’d get if you took too many sleeping pills. Not enough to kill you or do any permanent damage—hopefully not anyway—but enough to put you to sleep for a long time and then to wake up with a pretty bad hangover.” She turned to Teresa. “Remember, when we first examined him, Mrs. Nichols, we were able to get him to open his eyes and talk a little. That’s certainly something we can do with cardiac patients, too. But it’s also symptomatic in some cases of drug overdoses.”

  “Then he’ll be all right?” Teresa said, hope making her voice sound much younger, stronger.

  “Well, we’re more confident now that that’s what we’re dealing with, anyway,” the doctor said. “We still want to run some more cardiac tests on him, but at this point I think we’re going to be able to eliminate cardio pretty soon now.”

  Billy said, “He’s snoring!”

  And so he was.

  We all fixed our eyes on Warren’s face. The waxen look was receding. The eyelids fluttered, though they remained closed. And through his lips came a wet nasal blast that was almost violent. He was a master snorer, no doubt about it.

  “Oh, thank God,” Teresa said, clutching my hand again.

  At this point I assumed that Warren was going to be all right, so my mind shifted back to the mysterious makeup woman. And to a man named R. D. Greaves, the dirty-tricks man Jim Lake had employed in all three of his congressional elections. And had most likely employed for this one, too. Tampering with the drink sounded like something Greaves would do. Lake was, after all, running behind with only three weeks to go.

  “Are you leaving, Dev?” Teresa said. She seemed frightened by the possibility.

  “I’m afraid I have to, Teresa. There’s a lot to handle now.”

  “Me, too,” Laura said. “I need to go out there and face down that pack of jackals. Kate had her turn, now it’s mine.”

  “You want me to write something for you?” Billy said.

  “Thanks, Billy. But I’m going to give them so little information we won’t need to write it down.” A sly smile as she said this.

  “I’ll stay with Teresa,” Kate said. The two women had always been friendly, something you don’t always see in political relationships. The wife threatened by the beautiful staffer. The staffer gloating over the long hours she got to spend with the candidate alone. But these two women actually hung out together, with Teresa, who could not have children, even frequently babysitting Kate’s daughter.

  “So you won’t need me?” Kate said.

  “No. But maybe R. D. Greaves will.”

  She knew what I meant by that. Billy and Laura were already walking through the door and hadn’t heard me. Gabe stood up, silent as usual.

  “Oh, yes,” Kate said. “I hope you can find him and pay him a visit.”

  Teresa wasn’t paying us any attention. She was too busy touching Warren’s face with her hand.

  “I’ll call you later,” I said to Kate and then went looking for Greaves, though I didn’t get far. In my search for a side exit door, not wanting the press to see me leave, I was approached by a long, lean black man in a tan Burberry and a brown snap-brim fedora. He approached me with his ID in hand and a large public smile in place.

  “Detective Richard Sayers. And I believe you’re Dev Conrad.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I just missed you over at the auditorium. I talked to the campaign manager, Kate. Very nice, bright lady. But I wanted to talk to you, too. See if you had any ideas.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.” But I did know what he meant. He wanted my opinion. He obviously knew there was a possibility that Warren had been drugged.

  “I’m looking to see if there’s any criminal angle here. Maybe the senator had a heart attack or a stroke or an aneurysm. But then there’s the possibility that a bad guy slipped something into his drink. That would make this a criminal act. A lot of people thought he was drunk. I imagine that’s just what the bad guy wanted them to think. If there was a bad guy.”

  “I can’t disagree with you there.”

  He studied me with dark eyes that held no compassion for anybody unfortunate enough to belong to the human species. “You’re a little rattled right now. And I don’t blame you. But we need to have a sit-down and very soon. You know everybody who was in that makeup room tonight.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that. You mean that bad guy is one of the staffers?”

  “I’m not saying that. Not yet, anyway. But that’s as good a place to start as any.” He smiled with those big white perfect teeth. “I’ll be seeing you around. You probably need to relax a little right now.”

  He nodded and walked past me, toward the front of the hospital.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Freshen that up for you, friend?” the bartender asked.

  “Please,” I said.

  As he mixed me another scotch and soda, he said, “Hope you don’t have far to go tonight. That damned snow doesn’t want to quit. I told the wife I might wind up staying here. We’ve got a cot in the back. Of course she thinks I’m hitting on the two waitresses.” He was sixtyish, balding, and saddled with the kind of smile that would remind younger women of uncles and granddads. I doubted his wife had too much to worry about.

  The Parrot Cage lounge sat across the street from a new three-story hotel, a hotel that offered suites pretty much like small apartments for travelers who planned to be in the city awhile. I was here because two of the newspapermen I’d called said that, so far as they knew, Greaves was staying at the hotel and doing a lot of his drinking at the Parrot Cage. I knew he had an apartment somewhere in the city but was told that when he wanted to celebrate something, he took a hotel room for a week or two. I’d checked the hotel. Not there. I was hoping he would end up here for a couple of quick ones before he went across the street to get into his jammies for the night.

  “Well, I’m going to stick around for a little while longer, anyway. Hoping to run into an old friend of mine. Man name of Greaves.”

  The bartender’s face cracked wide open with a grandpop smile. “R.D.? He’s some character, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, you know him?”

  “Well, not know him, know him. But he’s been coming in here the last three weeks. He likes it when the gal comes in to play the piano onstage. Always giving her money to play songs he can sing along with. He’s got a hell of a good voice, you know that?”

  “No. I guess I didn’t.”

  The stage was not much bigger than a walk-in closet, and even that space was halved by the shiny new electric piano. The bar was on the west wall, small tables on the left. There were only three other customers, a black man in a gray suit five stools away from me and a thirtyish couple who laughed a lot. It was a middle-class bar for salespeople who traveled and imbibed. I couldn’t find a single phy
sical reference to parrots. Maybe the urinals were shaped like them.

  “Plus he’ll buy two, three rounds a night for people. Usually scores with the ladies, too. Of course, they’re not the little chickadees we’d all like to score with. He gets the middle-aged ones. But nice middle-aged if you know what I mean.”

  The black gentleman raised his empty glass. The bartender went to fill it.

  A good singing voice, rounds for everybody, a better class of women in his lonely bed. This was unfortunate information to have because it gave R.D., the prick, a humanity I didn’t think he deserved.

  Where did you start with R.D.? There were some who insisted that he didn’t exist. The reasoning went that nobody that corrupt and mercenary could possibly avoid prison as long as R.D. had. Then there were those who half-believed that R.D. was some kind of supernatural force. Nobody human could be as devious, as ruthless, as merciless as R.D. Just wasn’t possible, the human genome being what it was. He had to be some kind of satanic being.

  Item: Two election cycles back, Greaves paid sixty elderly black people to help pass out flyers that claimed that the sitting candidate had once been arrested for beating a black man so severely the man had been in the hospital for three weeks. Greaves had one of his techies Photoshop an arrest warrant that detailed the charge. He repeated this in four different cities and towns in the congressional district. This, along with equally dishonest direct mail pieces and truly inflammatory radio spots, helped suppress the black vote and contributed significantly to the incumbent’s loss.

  Item: The somewhat mannish wife of a sitting governor became the focal point of flyers that claimed that, as a NOW member, she saw nothing wrong with lesbians being gym teachers and touching girls and even watching them shower. The wife was Photoshopped holding hands with another unidentified woman. This was another candidate who lost his seat partly due to Greaves’s cunning. His wife, heterosexual from all accounts, was said to still be suffering from acute depression, blaming herself for her husband’s loss.