“He went with Reggie and Blixen,” she said, “getting you your drugs.”
“No. No more drugs.”
“Take it easy now,” said Elisha, pushing the wet towel into his chest and forcing him back down on the bed. “You’re cut off from the good stuff. I gave you a taste to stop the pain, but I’ve never been good at sharing. They went to fill a scrip. What was it, Squirrel?”
“Keflex,” said the hunched little man, stepping forward nervously. “We could use Cipro, or Bactrim if forced, fine antibiotics both, but with gunshot wounds Keflex is generally indicated.”
“I thought you weren’t a doctor,” said Scrbacek.
“Squirrel went to medical school,” said Elisha.
“And I told them I needed peroxide,” said Squirrel. “It can be a very effective cleanser.”
“And that’s great,” said the blonde, “because I can always use whatever you have left over.”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“Sure,” said Elisha, pulling a crumpled pack out of her jeans.
“I would recommend against it,” said Squirrel.
“And if you were maybe a doctor,” said Scrbacek, “I would maybe listen.”
“It’s your funeral,” said the little man with a toothy smile.
Elisha extracted a cigarette from the pack, lit it, took a drag herself, and then handed it to Scrbacek, who stared at it longingly for a moment before placing it in his lips, dragging deep.
He twisted on the bed and coughed the smoke out in brutal spasms. His lungs burned as if he had spent the night swallowing flaming shots of tequila. As he coughed, his throat closed in on him, tightening, until he could barely breathe. He threw away the cigarette. Squirrel hopped around, stamping on the still-lit butt as Scrbacek grabbed at his neck, coughed, fought for breath, and coughed some more. Slowly the spasms stopped, and his airway eased open.
“I guess he’s not used to menthols,” said Elisha.
“He burned the crap out of his lungs,” said Squirrel. “From the smell of him and the burns on his coat and the way he was hacking all night, it was obvious. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind a peek inside that chest. His lungs would be quite interesting specimens.”
“Keep your stinking hands off me,” Scrbacek coughed out.
“It’s only a matter of time, I suppose.”
“No more cigs for you,” said Elisha. “At least for a while.”
“Forever, I would suggest,” said Squirrel. “But what do I know?”
“Other than my lungs,” said Scrbacek, “how am I?”
“You should be dead. But the tourniquet, however crude, saved much blood, and there’s no pulsatile bleeding. The bullet missed the bone and a major artery. You might just survive.”
“Squirrel is disappointed,” said Elisha.
“You were lucky,” spit out the little man with much bitterness.
“That’s just how I feel,” said Scrbacek. “Lucky, lucky, lucky. Call me Mr. Lucky.”
“Still,” said Squirrel, “we may need to amputate.”
“What?” Scrbacek bolted upright, suddenly hyperalert. The pain shot through his shoulder and into his back, but he hardly noticed. Something moved atop the bureau, and he pulled back. It was the dark object he had seen before, but now it had a shape. It looked like a gargoyle holding a pike. He put his hands over his eyes to get a better look. It was a girl, in fatigue pants and a green tank top, holding in her muscled arms some sort of assault rifle.
“Who’s that?” said Scrbacek.
“The Nightingale,” said Elisha. “Consider her your guardian angel. And don’t worry about the amputation. Squirrel’s only kidding.”
“No, I’m not,” said the man. “Not kidding at all.”
“You’re not going to lose your arm,” said Elisha.
“It won’t be lost,” said Squirrel.
“Don’t mind him,” said Elisha. “He’s just a silly little man with a dream and a hacksaw. I brought you some broth.”
“No, my stomach—”
“Shut up and drink,” she said as she brought a mug to his lips. It was warm and rich and it made him gag, but she forced him to finish it, and when he did he felt nauseated again.
“Better?” she said.
“No,” said Scrbacek. “Where’s Donnie?”
“I told you, Donnie’s out getting help,” she said. “You need some, don’t you think? I cleaned your clothes, got as much of the blood off them as I could. The raincoat said dry-clean only, but I washed it anyway, got most of the blacking out, though there are still burn spots. The shirt was too stained to save, so Donnie’s getting you a new one, same size, and some T-shirts from the mission thrift shop. And a toothbrush, which you could use.”
Scrbacek rubbed his tongue along his upper teeth.
“Definitely,” she said.
Scrbacek stared at her. “Do I know you? I have this feeling I’ve seen you before.”
She smiled dimly for a moment, the smile of a movie star when someone comes up to her in a bathroom and says, I recognize you. You’re somebody. She waited a moment and then shrugged. “Some say I’m unforgettable. But I know you. You’re the lawyer who was representing Caleb Breest and now has gone seriously missing.”
The whole thing flooded back into Scrbacek’s consciousness, and he remembered the courthouse and Ethan Brummel and the fire in his building and the shot that tore through his arm and the someone out there who was trying to kill him. His breathing suddenly constricted again as if his lungs were filling with fear.
“I have to get out of here,” he gasped. “I have to get out, now. I have to get help.”
“You need to get your arm fixed first,” said Squirrel.
“No time,” said Scrbacek. “I have to go.”
“Where to?” said Elisha calmly. “Where are you going to go?”
He thought for a moment as the panic flowed through him. There was no home anymore, no office, no Ford Explorer to take him away from all of this. He needed Stephanie Dyer. He needed Caleb Breest. He needed his mother. His mother. In Florida. He could go to Florida. Yeah, Florida. But how would he get there? And what would he do? Hide out in The Villages, play mah-jongg, save coupons, eat dinner at four, sit by the pool in his Speedo, chatting with seventy-five-year-old women on the make, waiting for someone to kill him?
“Right now you’re safer here than anyplace else,” said Elisha. “So stop being a baby and let him look at your arm.”
Squirrel stepped hesitantly to the mattress as Scrbacek, buoyed by Elisha’s high-wattage smile, offered the little man his left arm. Squirrel unraveled the cloth around the wounds, took a magnifying glass out of his bag, and began his examination.
“Interesting,” said Squirrel as he studied the still-seeping holes in Scrbacek’s arm and the grotesquely swollen biceps, streaked yellow and purple from the blood that had drained through the muscle. Almost gleefully, he added, “The infection is spreading.”
“You’re not taking it off,” said Scrbacek.
“We shall see what we shall see,” said Squirrel as he leaned in to get a closer look at the wounds. “I only do what I must.”
“Don’t grow too attached to it, you little rodent,” came a raucous voice, crisply twanged.
Scrbacek turned to see, blocking the whole of the doorway, a concrete slab of a woman, with reddish dreads thick as snakes and large yellow teeth. She stood wide as a barn and haughty as a queen and brandished as her mace of state an automatic the size of a salami. Squirrel sucked in a wet breath when he saw her.
“I’m only looking, Reggie,” he said. “No harm is there in looking?”
“He’s not taking off my arm,” said Scrbacek.
“Don’t worry about your arm there, Stifferdeck,” said the woman, sliding back the barrel of the huge gun before pointing it at Scrbacek’s chest. “You got bigger things to be sweating over now.”
12
REGINA
The woman known as Reggie, with the dreads and the automatic, sq
uinted at Scrbacek as she kept her gun pointed at his chest. She wore black buckled boots and faded jeans and a leather motorcycle vest over a stained T-shirt, and her arms were like tattooed girders of iron. Behind her an old woman wearing the ragged, layered clothing of the chronically homeless clutched a paper bag as she hobbled to Reggie’s side. The old woman, stooped and aged, barely came up to Reggie’s hip.
“Is Donnie back?” said the woman with the gun.
“I thought he was with you,” said Elisha.
“He skipped off before we could fill the scrip, said he had an important errand. Has Stifferdeck explained what he’s doing here?”
“We haven’t gotten there yet.”
“He ask you any suspicious questions?”
“Not even my sign. He’s mostly been sleeping.”
“Then it’s about time he woke up.” Reggie swaggered toward Scrbacek and pressed the gun into his cheek. It was cold and hard and had the slick dark scent of oil. “We got some questions that need answering, Stifferdeck. Like, what the hell you doing in this part of town?”
“Hiding,” said Scrbacek, keeping his head as still as possible.
“But why here?”
“Where else?” said Scrbacek. “Someone tried to kill me. I ran into Crapstown and remembered Donnie’s address.”
“How damn convenient for you,” said Reggie, raising the gun into the air and turning around as if giving a speech to the multitudes. “Just happened to remember Donnie’s address. Just happened. No one just stumbles into Crapstown. No one just happens to show up on Ansonia Road. Especially not no high-flying briefcase who defended the monster that killed Malloy and who’s now supposedly on the run.”
“Supposedly?”
She slapped the gun into his jaw; it cracked painfully against the bone. “Oh, they looking for you all right, Stifferdeck, but I still got questions. What’s your game?”
“Staying alive.”
“When Malloy appointed me Sentinel, he said a fool would come dancing our way, and that this fool would wreak havoc and change everything. And then, lo and behold, here you come, prancing on in. Something’s going on, and I’m going to smoke it out, all right.” She leaned forward, pressed the gun into Scrbacek’s neck, opened her eyes wide.
The old woman in rags took a step forward as Reggie backed off to lean against the wall. “You’re the beagle,” the old woman said in a rapid, cragged voice. Gray tufts of hair curled out of her chin. Her breath smelled of rotgut whiskey and rot. “The one that was mouthing for Caleb Breest. The one that’s gone missing. The one they think is dead.”
“I suppose that’s me,” said Scrbacek.
“Blixen has one question for you, beagle. Do you play chess? Do you?”
“I used to,” said Scrbacek.
“Then I’ll get the board.”
“Not until I take care of his arm,” said Squirrel.
Scrbacek quickly said to him, “Forget it.”
“Don’t worry,” said the old woman. “Squirrel’s not taking it off. Blixen won’t let him. He’d probably kill you doing it, and then we’d never have our game. But Squirrel’s about the best healer you can find in this part of the city. He was top of his class at medical school until—”
“Quiet, you old fool,” squealed Squirrel.
“Until he was expelled—”
“Must we go into this every time?”
“For collecting.”
Scrbacek looked at Squirrel for a moment and then yanked his arm away from the little man.
“It’s just a hobby,” said Squirrel. “A man needs a hobby.”
“I told you to take up golf,” said Elisha.
“You listen to Baltimore,” said the old woman, “before someone starts collecting parts off of you. Those ears of yours must be worth something.”
“Elisha Baltimore?” said Scrbacek, taking in anew the woman’s all-American face and well-filled T-shirt. “The Lady Baltimore?” Of course he knew her. He simply hadn’t recognized her with her clothes on. The Lady Baltimore was one of the headlining strippers at Dirty Dirk’s. He had seen her during his strategy meetings with Joey Torresdale, had seen her strut to the stage in a short mink jacket and wrap her long legs around the pole as the satin-lined fur slid languorously down her pale, firm skin. He remembered the way she faced away from the crowd and bent at the waist to reach through her legs for the ten-dollar bills thrust at her by trembling, eager hands. He remembered the way her breasts had kept their remarkable shape even as she hiked herself upside down on the pole.
“You are unforgettable,” said Scrbacek.
“So they say,” she said, standing. “You thirsty?”
“Yes, actually, I am.”
“You know, Stifferdeck,” said Reggie, still leaning against the wall, “even if we don’t ax you, you’re not going to last long anyhow, the way things are. Everyone and his whore is out looking for you. We just don’t want to end up laid out on the street alongside your worthless body. Like the Freak. I don’t think it’s no coincidence that a day after they burn down your building, they burn down the Freak’s place with him still inside. And word has been passed that the scavenger who finds you is in line to collect for himself a fat fee.”
Squirrel turned his head and his eyes opened with curiosity. “How fat?”
“You remember my Sheila?” said Reggie.
“That’s fat,” said Squirrel, toothy smile growing. “That’s positively obese.”
“Don’t even think it, you perverse piece of gristle,” said the old woman. “Not a word to anyone, or Blixen will twist your head off like a chicken and toss it into the bay for crab bait. Blixen and the beagle, we’re going to play. He promised. As soon as he is able. And we won’t let the likes of you spoil it.” She hobbled over to the bed and tossed the paper bag to Squirrel. “Now heal.”
As Squirrel rummaged through the bag, Reggie turned and spoke to the girl sitting on the bureau with the gun. “You keep your eye on him. One false move, and ffft.” She pushed herself off the wall and slid a finger across her own throat. “What the hell kind of name is Stifferdeck, anyway?”
“My father’s from Scandinavia,” said Scrbacek.
“Figures. Damn Scandinoovians . . .-navinians . . . Just don’t be getting too comfortable. I want you gone. One way or the other.” And then she swaggered out of the room.
“I don’t think she likes me,” said Scrbacek.
“Don’t mind Regina,” said the old woman, pulling out a flask from the rags wrapped around her body. “Underneath she’s just a lonely country girl.”
“And underneath that,” said Elisha, coming back in the room with a glass of murky water, “she’s a murderous bitch.”
“Just what the doctor ordered,” said Squirrel as he searched through the contents out of the bag. “Keflex, Tylenol No. 3, saline, gauze, peroxide.” He took an empty coffee can and mixed the peroxide with the saline. “We’ll see now if the limb can be saved, though I have my doubts. Take this.”
Squirrel took two of the spiked Tylenols out of the bottle, and Scrbacek chased the pills with the foul glass of water.
“Better give him two more,” said Elisha. “He doesn’t take well to pain.” Squirrel did as she said, and Scrbacek gratefully downed those also.
“Now if one of you will gently restrain my patient’s arm, I can begin.”
“Just a cleaning, right?” said Scrbacek.
“Don’t you worry, beagle,” said the old woman before taking a snatch from her flask and then hobbling over to the bed. She took hold of Scrbacek’s left wrist and clamped her filthy, gnarled hands around it with shocking strength. “I’ll be here the whole time, keeping my eyes on the little thief. And right after he’s through, we’ll play our little game. That’s the deal. Our little game. Now hold on to your socks.”
“I’m not wearing any socks.”
“That’s a shame,” she said.
Squirrel dabbed a piece of gauze in the peroxide solution. It boiled and s
izzled as Squirrel slowly brought it to the wounds in Scrbacek’s biceps.
The scream fell upon Ansonia Road like the mating call of a mammal long extinct.
13
BLIXEN
After the ordeal of the treatment, Scrbacek lay back, closed his eyes, listened to the drone of the immortal television, and waited for the codeine in the Tylenol to ease both his pain and his urge to cough. Squirrel had flushed Scrbacek’s wounds with the peroxide and saline solution, applied a pressure dressing, and given him strict orders to take the Tylenol as needed and the Keflex four times daily for ten full days. Before the ersatz doctor left, he took one more look at Scrbacek’s arm and shook his head sadly. Scrbacek couldn’t tell if the sadness came because Squirrel thought the wounds wouldn’t heal or because he thought they would.
Now, his eyes still closed and the drugs just starting to take effect, Scrbacek plotted out his next move. He needed to find out who was trying to kill him, that much was certain. And he needed to find someplace safer to hide than this ruined house with its deranged ex-medical student, its peroxided stripper, its homeless old woman, its gargoyle with a gun, and its dreadlocked sentinel who wanted him gone, one way or the other. But most of all he needed help, was desperate for help, for it was not within the realm of his imaginings that he, J.D. Scrbacek, on his own, might save himself.
As far as he could determine, there were only two people to whom he might turn. Special Agent Dyer could put Scrbacek in a safe house, send her fellow agents out to discover who was after him, solve the whole problem through the finely tuned mechanisms of the law. But who knew better than Scrbacek the flaws in that machinery? And the state bureaucracy was incapable of keeping a secret; as soon as Dyer knew where he was hiding, everyone would know where he was hiding, including his would-be killer. Caleb Breest had the strength to protect Scrbacek, the sources to discover who was behind the attempts on his life, the brute power to annihilate the assassin and those behind him. But Breest could just as easily turn that brutality against Scrbacek if it served his purposes. There had been something in the way Breest had stared at him during their meeting in the courthouse lockup that had left him deeply unsettled.
The Four-Night Run Page 7