Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  “Sorry,” the man said gently, “but flowers aren’t allowed in Intensive Care.”

  “They said I’m supposed to deliver them tonight.” Fatimah’s voice held a mixture of confusion and fear that felt real. “My boss—”

  “Take them back downstairs,” the woman said. “They’ll be kept in storage until Mrs. Simpkins is assigned to a regular room.”

  “But I’m supposed to put them right by her bed so she’ll see them in the morning.”

  “We don’t allow flowers in here because they may aggravate a patient’s condition,” the man said, his patience flagging. “Look, I don’t want to call security.”

  “I think there’s still family in the waiting room,” the woman said. “Her husband and her nephew.” Her oversized red plastic eyeglass frames turned toward the doorway where I stood. “Sir,” she said in a stage whisper, “maybe you can help this woman with these flowers for your aunt. Sign whatever she needs and get them back downstairs.”

  Fatimah turned around and looked at me, eyes widening and mouth falling open in surprise. Then she looked past me.

  I spun around just in time to see the corridor door closing behind a slender, salt-and-pepper-haired woman in short-sleeved blue scrubs and a long-sleeved black tee shirt. A metal clipboard was in her hand and a name tag was clipped to the v-neck of her top. But both her smooth face and her reaction at the sight of me belied the wig she wore. Pivoting on one foot, Keisha Simpkins dropped the clipboard, threw a shoulder against the door, and pushed her way back out.

  I bolted after her to the slowly closing door and slammed through. Around the corner, I glimpsed her ducking into a wide entryway. I followed and reached the bank of elevators reserved for hospital staff. It was empty but I’d heard no bell, so I went through and rounded another corner to the elevators reserved for visitors. She had pushed the call button but was already backpedaling away when I got there. I stopped and held up my hands. But she continued to back up until her shoulders were against the nearest door to the stairs. Her left arm snaked behind her so she could grasp the knob. Her right hand produced a butterfly knife from the pocket of her scrubs, and she flicked it open like a pro.

  “Dr. Simpkins!” I said. “I’m not here to hurt you. Your parents hired me to find you.”

  Chest heaving and wig askew, she glared at me and made small circles with the knife. “Come near me and I’ll cut you, you lying motherfucker!”

  “Didn’t Fatimah tell you who—”

  “She didn’t believe you either. Said you looked like a stone-cold killer.” She held the knife toward me, ready for an upward thrust under the rib cage—which meant she knew what she was doing. “Come any closer and you’ll bleed out before you hit the ground!”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said, lowering my hands. “You’re holding that knife like a real killer, but only because you’ve studied gross anatomy. You’re shaking too much to have killed before.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t put you down!”

  “No, but I was Army CID and I’ve done homicide investigations. Wet work is a lot harder in real life than in the movies.” I heard footsteps drawing near behind me. Without looking over my shoulder, I reached back and held up a hand to stop whoever was there. I didn’t want Keisha to attack or charge into the stairwell in such a state she might fall and hurt herself, even if she didn’t land on her own knife. “My name is Gideon Rimes, with Driftglass Investigations. Your parents—”

  “Keisha?”

  The voice behind me belonged to Winslow Simpkins. I turned just enough to see who else was with him: Fatimah and both ICU nurses. The woman told the man, “Call security.”

  “Yes, call security,” I said. “Get someone to guard Mrs. Simpkins round the clock, even after she’s out of the ICU. I believe bad people are coming for her, but the police don’t so they won’t post a guard. I can’t watch her all by myself.”

  Neither nurse moved.

  “Baby Girl,” Winslow continued, “we went to Mr. Rimes for help. He didn’t shoot your mama. It was a drive-by.”

  “They wanted to flush you out, and they did.” I held out my hand. “Even now they may be watching the hospital. Let me help you. Please.”

  Keisha’s eyes welled. “I’m sorry, Dad. So sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it.” Tears began to slide down her cheeks and she made no effort to wipe them away—or lower the knife. But her left hand released the doorknob.

  The older nurse moved closer and stood beside me. She made her voice as comforting as she could. “You look familiar. Have you ever been on staff here? I know I’ve seen you before.” She smiled. “Your mother must be so proud of you. She’s going to be just fine, but I need to get back to her and monitor her. You can come with me if you want to see for yourself.” She held out her hand. “But give me the knife first.”

  Having ditched the flowers somewhere, Fatimah detached herself from the others, which now included a few more people in scrubs of varying colors. She went to Keisha, placed her fingers on her friend’s forearm, and eased her knife hand down. “He’s right, Kee. That little bulge under his sweater is a gun. Coulda shot us all and been long gone by now.”

  The nurse took a step away from me and swallowed audibly. I heard someone behind me take a step back.

  “Your father says Rimes is legit, fine,” Fatimah said. “But we been here too long. Just a peek to check on your folks. Remember? They’re okay. It’s not safe to stay longer.”

  Keisha let Fatimah take the knife from her. “Dad, kiss Mom for me and tell her I love her. Both of you.” She wiped her eyes. “I can’t be near you right now, for your sake.”

  “No, Keisha!” I could hear in his voice that Winslow was struggling not to cry. “Just come on home.” The scrape of a shoe suggested he’d taken a step forward.

  Shaking her head slowly, Keisha held up a hand to stop him. “I’ll be home when this is over.” Her voice cracked. “I’ll explain all of it then. Promise.”

  “Let me go downstairs with you,” I said. “Cover you till you get to your van.”

  Fatimah looked at me and said nothing for a moment, perhaps wondering how I knew they had come in the van. Then she closed the knife and slid it into her back pocket. “We’re covered. Tonight.” Eyes never leaving us, she opened the door and nudged Keisha into the stairwell. “But I got your card, Mr. PI. We’ll call.” She stepped into the stairwell herself, her right shoulder holding the door. “Don’t try to follow us down. Stay here and look after Keisha’s folks. That’s all we want you to do right now.”

  The door closed behind them, and they were gone.

  Her nametag flipped around so I couldn’t see it, the older nurse let out a sigh as she looked at me and pushed up her red-framed glasses. “So you’re not the nephew and you carry a gun. Great. Anything else I should know?”

  “I’m a retired army cop, licensed to carry.” I took a breath. “You’re a lot braver than most people.”

  She snorted. “The ICU is not for the faint of heart.”

  “Understood. But at least for tonight, it will also have a paladin.” I turned and put an arm around Winslow’s shaking shoulders. “Ma’am, I can’t stop Death from making his rounds, but I can keep his earthly disciples from padding the passenger list.”

  24

  At six-thirty the next morning, after Oscar had returned with fresh clothes for Winslow and taken my seat in the waiting room, I found myself waiting for an elevator beside MaryAnn Maclin, the ICU nurse who had tried to talk Keisha down. To my surprise, she had declined to call security the night before. Now, an unzipped, down-filled lavender coat revealing her name tag, she looked at me with a weariness I couldn’t help feeling mirrored my own.

  “Long shift?” I asked. She’d been on duty when I got there over nine hours ago.

  “Twelve hours and change,” she said. “Three days a week, staggered. I won’t be back here till the day after tomorrow. Thank God.”

  “Which means I’ll have to expl
ain myself to whoever works your station tonight.” I let out a long breath. “Unless you’d care to put in a good word for me.”

  “One of the other nurses remembered you were in here yourself not long ago. She was glad to see you’d recovered.” The elevator doors opened. She stepped in first. “Mrs. Simpkins is doing well. She’ll probably be in a regular room by this afternoon. I’m sure staff won’t mind wheeling in a recliner for her favorite nephew.” Then, briefly, she smiled.

  I went home, fell into bed, and sank into blissful nothingness. My phone alarm pulled me from a dreamless sleep just before noon. I called Flowers by Fatimah and got a recorded message that the shop was closed because of an out-of-town death in the family. I wondered if Fatimah had locked everything down as a precaution. Or had something happened? The news feeds on my phone were up to date and said nothing of the shop, the Kelly family, or Keisha. I decided I would swing by for a look before returning to Buffalo General.

  After a shave and a shower, I went upstairs to my godfather’s apartment for lunch.

  White cheek stubble, old jeans, and a sweater with threadbare elbows told me Bobby had planned a stay-at-home Monday. While he spent much of his retirement giving guest lectures, mentoring young scholars, and attending non-profit board meetings, a day of rest after a trip was hardly unusual. Sitting at the ceramic-topped dining counter in his stainless steel kitchen, I couldn’t help thinking of poor Kayla. Though her weekend must have been just as tiring as his, she was likely in court or working in her chambers. It was probably just as well they kept separate residences.

  Glasses slipping down his nose as usual, Bobby put lunch on the counter—chunky tomato soup, tuna melts on multigrain bread, two Coronas—and sat across from me. As we ate, he told me about the three shows they had seen, two of them Tony Award winners, and a museum exhibit that had taken nearly a full day to see. In addition to shopping, they also had ridden elevators to two of the most popular observation decks: the Top of the Rock at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the One World Observatory at the new World Trade Center. He had promised Kayla they would return to the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, which they had visited a few years earlier, on their next trip. He finished his summary of their getaway with the Sunday brunch they’d had in the impressive Harlem brownstone of a former Buff State colleague who now taught at NYU.

  “His wife is one of the top architects in New York,” Bobby said, swigging the last of his Corona. He described their home in minute detail, from the woodwork and bay windows to the French doors between rooms and the restored tile floors in the bathrooms. “Their unit alone—two bedrooms—costs more than this whole building.”

  “What did the judge think of it?” Kayla’s condo was on the ninth floor of a ten-year-old high-rise near the marina, with a panoramic living room window that offered a stunning view of Lake Erie and amenities that included a balcony, an in-unit laundry nook, and a community exercise room with a sauna. But I suspected she had found the filigreed ceilings and wainscoting of a Nineteenth-Century brownstone irresistible.

  “She loved it, even after she found out how much it cost.” He got up and went to the fridge for more Corona. “Want another?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m working this afternoon, and tonight.”

  Bobby sat down again and popped the top. “Phoenix told us you were on a case but didn’t say much about it.”

  While I had no trouble keeping a client’s confidences, I valued my godfather’s grasp of details and his insights into human behavior. Sometimes, as certain of his discretion as I was of nightfall and sunrise, I shared case details without naming those involved. On more than one occasion, his take had put me on the path toward a resolution. Now, as I put away the last of my soup and sandwich, I summarized the Keisha Simpkins affair. He listened without reacting—until I got to the woman’s appearance in the hospital last night. Then his eyes widened and he held the Corona without sipping for a long time. I concluded with a recap of where things stood. Finally, he took a swallow.

  “So this girl saw something or knows something that put a target on her back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Also, the absence of some kind of attack on the place she was staying tells you the people after her don’t know about it yet.”

  “I’m going to stop there before I go back to the hospital. To make sure.”

  “Which means her parents are still targets to draw her out.”

  “Yes.”

  “The friend with them now, you’re sure of his ability to protect them?”

  “I am,” I said. “He’s a close friend of theirs and no stranger to security matters.”

  “The same man who brought the father to you? A guard at the women’s shelter?”

  “He’s career military and a retired prison chaplain.”

  “So he’s older, like the father.” Bobby thought for a moment. “You’re going to need more help, especially when she’s out of the ICU. You haven’t tried going to the police?”

  “I don’t have enough proof yet.”

  “Then you’ll have to find help elsewhere.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Me, for one. The dead boy’s father for another.” He took a pull of Corona. “You said he was in Nam.”

  I was quiet for a time. Carl Williamson was a possibility worth considering, for his anger if for no other reason. If these were the same people who had murdered his son, he’d want a piece of them. Maybe he deserved one. But I was reluctant to involve Bobby, to expose him to danger. He was an English professor who had never served in the military, much less been in combat. Even as I had the thought, I knew my desire to protect him was irrational.

  He smiled as if he had read my mind. “Nice of you to worry about me but you seem to have forgotten who got you your first heavy bag and taught you how to punch it without breaking your wrists. I wasn’t always an absent-minded professor. I learned how to handle myself early.”

  “You’ve never been an absent-minded professor, Bobby.”

  “Twice I disarmed students who threatened me or somebody in my class.”

  I had heard both stories. “All that was a long time ago, and the kids had knives. These are bad people with guns.”

  “But not that smart, according to you. Sure, they did a drive-by. The question is, are they dumb enough to shoot up a hospital in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “Probably not,” I conceded after a moment. “They’re looking for my clients’ daughter because they want to stay off the radar. A shootout would put them on and make them a high priority.”

  “You’ve always been smart enough to look for help when you needed it.” He took a long breath to let that sink in. “So let me help you this afternoon when the hospital is full of people with cell phones who can all dial nine-one-one. I’ll follow you in my car. I can sit in the lady’s room or outside the door, wherever they prefer. Let your chaplain friend handle the mornings. See if the boy’s father can do tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll do the next day. Save the overnights for yourself and sleep till one or even two.” He leaned toward me the way he always did when he wanted to drive home his point. “I know, three old men. Maybe we will seem like the Over-the-Hill Gang, but if we take the day watch while this lady gets better, you can do something useful with your afternoons.”

  “Like checking on the flower shop,” I said.

  “And finding her daughter before the other guys get lucky.”

  25

  Carl Williamson agreed to sit with Mona the next day, Tuesday, but only if I went with him first to see Winslow so they could apologize to each other. Outside Mona’s private room, after I introduced Bobby to them, I described my phone conversation with Carl to Winslow and Oscar. When I finished, Winslow sucked his teeth.

  Oscar put a large hand on his friend’s shoulder and lowered his face a bit to look him in the eyes. “Win, sounds to me like he knows Keisha didn’t give his boy drugs, and after all this you gotta know his boy didn’t
give ‘em to her.” He let Winslow consider that a moment. “Think how much better you’ll both feel when Rimes gets the bastards who did this to your kids.”

  Despite what I had let Carl believe during our meeting in his kitchen, I had been hired to find a missing woman, not the thugs who might have hurt her. Having brought Winslow to me, Oscar knew this better than anyone. But without my having said anything, he understood the parameters of my mission had changed. Not only had Keisha, through Fatimah, charged me with protecting her parents, now I was expected to get the bastards too. Winslow gazed at me, eyes red and eyelids so weary his blinking looked slow and deliberate. Having covered his wounded wife with his coat and seen his daughter flee in fear, he too knew things were different. It took him a moment to find the words to reaffirm his priority was still Keisha.

  “Mona’s awake,” he said, his voice thin. “I didn’t say nothing about Keisha being here last night and people looking for her ‘cause I don’t want her to get all upset. But if you’ve got folks here to watch over her, that’s so you can find Keisha and bring her home. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Then he nodded, and despite the two-visitor limit, we all went into Mona’s room.

  She looked much better than when last I had seen her. Still tubed and wired, she was sitting up and talking. Color had come back into her cheeks. Winslow kissed her forehead and said he was heading back to Oscar’s because he needed to rest. Then he introduced Bobby as my stepfather. He said Dr. Chance had come to visit because Mr. Rimes had told him so much about the two of them. Instead of shaking her hand, which had a needle taped in place on its back, Bobby nodded toward her in what looked like the beginning of a bow. It was his pleasure to meet her, he said. He hoped she wouldn’t mind if he sat with her while her husband and Oscar took a break and Gideon continued doing the job she had hired him to do.