Deep Pockets

by Linda Barnes

  A round clock over the door, a schoolroom clock, read 10:35. Night or morning?

  “How— What—” I’m not sure what I started to ask. Sam put his right hand over my left, squeezed.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You dislocated your left shoulder, but it’s back in the socket now. I understand putting it back hurts like hell. The medics admire your vocabulary. You also have what they’re calling a mild concussion. They put a number on it, but I can’t remember.”

  “But why—”

  “Why me? You were talking to a cop when you went off the road. Remember?”

  Danny Burkett. I tried a nod. Not a great idea. The room floated for a moment, then resettled with a lurch I felt deep in my gut.

  “He did his best to give the local cops an estimate of where you were. Did a decent job. Then he rang Roz let her know what was going on. He got Paolina.”

  “She was at a party.”

  “She had a fight with somebody and went back to your place to cool off. Roz wasn’t home. She didn’t know what else to do, so she called me.”

  Paolina could have called Roz. Roz has a cell, and even if she forgets to turn it on, she can almost always be found through her boyfriend, Lemon. Paolina could have called Leon. She knows Leon’s last name, and my Rolodex is centered on my desk. She could have called Gloria. But she’d called Sam.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I’m not.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t have to—”

  “I know. Paolina was pretty worried. I’ve been calling her.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No. I mean I’ve kept in touch with her. I don’t know whether she told you or not.”

  “Not.”

  “It wasn’t a secret. She could have told you.”

  “She didn’t.” I tried to sit, then, remembering the ways of hospital beds, pressed a button on a controller that hung from the side panel of the mechanical bed. It was shaped like the remote control on a TV. “Is there any water around?”

  “Hang on.” There was a metal pitcher, a plastic glass. “Do you need a straw?”

  “I can manage.” The water was warm, but it took the copper taste away, made swallowing easier. The silence in the room grew. If the schoolroom clock had made an audible tick, I’d have heard it. “Sam, that’s nice of you—to call her, I mean. She’s fond of you. And coming here—I don’t know what to say.”

  He smiled. “Hey, took me an hour to knock the dents out of the armor.”

  “Still fits, though. On you, it looks good.”

  “You, I’ve seen look a helluva lot better.”

  “No fair.”

  “It’s mainly the shiner.”

  I winced.

  “Color’s not so bad yet,” he went on, “but you know how those things get.”

  “You’re enjoying this.” I’d spent time at his hospital bedside after he’d been blown up by a bomb at Gloria’s cab company. I’d always thought his injury spelled the beginning of the end for us. I’d felt guilty for not preventing the bombing, not realizing the danger, and guilt eats at you. He’d almost lost the use of a leg. He still limped, but you had to study his gait to notice.

  “At least you didn’t break your nose,” he said.

  I’ve broken it three times, what with police work, cab driving, and volleyball.

  “And your hair’s back to red. I missed that the last time we—last time I saw you. I’m supposed to holler when you wake up.” He made no move to press the button attached to the low railing of the bed. Instead, he edged over, sat next to me, lifted his hand to my face, and gently touched the area under my right eye. “How’s that feel?”

  “Okay.”

  He lowered his face and kissed me gently. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours. I think it’s some sort of Sleeping Beauty compulsion. I kept sitting there thinking that if I kissed you, you’d wake up.”

  “You shoulda tried it.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.”

  “Now you are?”

  “The Gianelli men have healthy egos.”

  I didn’t need any reminder that he was his father’s son. What had driven us apart was his allegiance, not just to the old man but to his father’s way of life. Gianelli means mob in the North End. Other Catholic kids grow up, become doctors, lawyers, priests. Gianellis go into the family business. For a while, both Sam and I thought he’d be different, but when his brother died and his dad needed help, Sam answered the call, and we said good-bye.

  Now we indulged in some fairly passionate kisses, considering my condition and the restrictions of the unromantic bed, and I thought maybe it would be okay if the nurses and doctors didn’t look in on us too soon.

  “You’re not married?” I asked him when we parted for air.

  “Nah. You?”

  More kisses stifled my reply. The more urgently his lips brushed mine, the more awake I felt, the more aware I became that there was some compelling reason I needed to get out of this hospital bed.

  “Where am I, Sam?”

  “Aha,” he said. “I knew you’d get around to it. Exeter Hospital, Exeter, New Hampshire. What happened? You’re too good a driver to miss a turn and fly off the road, even if you were speeding. The cop told Paolina—”

  “I was shoved off the road.” The anger came back, so hot that I could feel it, and with it the helplessness and rising panic: riding the brakes to the bottom of the hill, almost the bottom, certainly the bottom. The jarring, creaking stop, the echoing silence, the hiss of the engine. Fire. I’d been so afraid of fire after seeing what it had done to Denali Brinkman’s body, after those terrible photos.

  “Road rage?”

  I swallowed. “I don’t think so, Sam.”

  “You should file a police report.”

  Sure, I thought. “I’ve got nothing. I couldn’t get the plate. I can’t even give the cops a make or a model. It was dark.”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “Why not road rage?”

  Because it’s too damn convenient, I thought. “Because I’m working a case. Because I came up with a lead.”

  “You think somebody didn’t want you to follow it up?”

  “Yes.” I bit my lip. “So I need to find out why.”

  Once, he would have tried to talk me out of it, to humor me, tell me it was the concussion talking, that I needed to sleep.

  “Who’s Phil?” he asked.

  “Phil?”

  “You were talking about Phil when they brought you in. The medics wrote it down, and I wondered—”

  Phil Gagnon. “Not a boyfriend, Sam. The lead.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business,” he said.

  We shared a glance.

  “Not that I wouldn’t want it to be my business. More water?” he asked.

  “Please. I ought to ring for a doctor.”

  “Feeling bad?”

  “No.” I closed my eyes. “I’m lying. Yes, I feel bad, but I’ve felt worse. I’ve got to get out of here, get discharged. I need to leave. As soon as possible. Now. I have to— Sam, what about my car? Where’s my car?”

  “Towed. It’s not repairable.”

  “Shit.” I stared down at my blue cotton hospital johnny. “I’ll need a loaner. Did my backpack make it out of the car? I have my insurance company’s number in my wallet. Damn, I’ll probably need a copy of the police report.”

  “Everything’s here, but I’m willing to provide chauffeur service.”

  “I can’t go home yet, Sam. I appreciate it. You’re wonderful. But I need to find this man.”

  “Hey,” he said, “isn’t that always how it goes?”

  “Sam, he’s a witness, a source—I don’t know what he is. It could be a woman. I was going to talk to whichever one showed up. Or both.”

  “Do they live near here?”

  “Pretty close. I was on my way to an addr
ess in Epping.”

  “If the docs will let you go, I’ll drive you. Don’t look a gift Porsche in the mouth.”

  “Sam, I can’t tell how long it might take. If these people aren’t in their office, I’ll have to wait for them. I might have to follow this lead somewhere else.”

  “If it’s too much, I’ll drop you at a rental-car company. You’ll call your insurance office, get a car. I’m not signing on for a month here, Carlotta. Just a day.”

  “It’s morning?”

  He nodded. “I tried to make them move you to a room with a window, but they were booked.”

  I was in a spacious single, and now I knew why. I was surprised they hadn’t bowed to Sam’s wishes, commandeered a room with a view. Maybe in New Hampshire, the Gianelli name didn’t inspire the same kind of fear it did in Boston.

  “Sam, is there a closet in here? Clothes?”

  He gave me the eye.

  “Sam.”

  “Okay, okay. There’s one of these ominous hospital bags. You want me to look?”

  “Hand it over.”

  My jeans were intact. Ditto my black jacket, which I’d placed on the seat beside me while I drove. My cell phone was there. Underwear. My white shirt was blood-spattered and ripped, sliced completely through sleeves and sides, as though they’d had to cut it off.

  “Need help?”

  “They probably sell some kind of T-shirt in the gift shop. A tank top, anything that’ll go under the jacket. Nothing cute. If everything in the gift shop makes you shudder, don’t bother. I’ll keep the jacket buttoned.”

  “You want me to go now?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But?”

  “Be sure you come back.”

  “Fifteen minutes. I’ll send in a doc if I find one.”

  “I’ll start doing the release routine. Sam—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I—” I wanted to say how touched I was that he’d come, how cared for he made me feel just by his presence, but I was afraid I’d start crying. I smoothed the beige wool blanket, fingered a flaw in the weave. Whatever painkiller they’d given me when they fixed my shoulder—or maybe it was the concussion—my emotions felt uncomfortably close to the surface.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to say. It’s good to see you.”

  As soon as the door closed, I dragged myself to a sitting position. My stomach rolled, but nothing came up, and I thought I might simply be hungry. I started to press the button on the bed rail, but my bladder advised me to delay till I’d visited the bathroom. Once there, I discovered a shower stall as well as a toilet and a sink. The lure of the shower proved stronger than my desire for immediate escape. I managed to untie the johnny, with my right hand doing most of the behind-the-back work.

  I examined myself as best I could in the small square of mirror over the low sink. Sam was right: I’d looked better. The area under my eye was starting to turn purple. My shoulder didn’t look half as bad as it felt. I’m a quick healer, always have been. There were welts along my right leg, the familiar scar on the other. My left side under my arm and farther down my hip had a couple of abrasions.

  A well-constructed car, that Toyota. I felt a stab of keen regret, as if I’d survived a fall from a favorite horse, only to be told that the now-lame animal had to be put down. I stood under the stinging shower and let the water restore me.

  Underwear, jeans. I couldn’t bring myself to refasten the johnny. I slid my bra and jacket on, favoring my left shoulder, fastened the buttons. The neckline was too low for business attire, no doubt about that. I hoped Sam could find me something to fit underneath. I touched the swelling under my eye, traced the pattern of Sam’s fingertips, wondered for a moment if I’d imagined his bedside presence, conjured him from dreams.

  I made my way back into the small room, found my muddy shoes. I must have managed to get out of the car under my own steam. Yes, I remembered the struggle to find the keys, turn off the ignition, the terror of fire. I sank onto the bed, my legs suddenly weak.

  If Paolina had called Leon instead of Sam, would Leon have forgotten our disagreements and come to fetch me? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I felt guilty about Leon, guilty about leading him on, shutting him down. I felt as though I’d never given him a chance. Maybe we’d never had a chance, pretending from the moment we met, both working undercover, each deceiving the other. I’d been a pseudosecretary; he’d been a pseudocarpenter, each of us supposedly working a construction site. Maybe I’d always wondered why he’d fallen for that mousy-haired secretary. Maybe he’d always wondered why I’d been attracted to the carpentry foreman.

  Had I known who Sam was when I’d fallen for him? He’d been my boss at Green and White Cab, Gloria’s unlikely pal, co-owner of the firm. I’d been young enough to think that sleeping with the boss had nothing to do with power or politics. Just chemistry, I thought. Just the way we feel together between the sheets. I didn’t ask what Sam’s prospects were; he didn’t say. He didn’t ask whether I’d make a good Italian Catholic wife and mother. I was a future cop and a cop’s daughter, and he was a born mobster, and I didn’t know it. Where’s the honesty in that? The lack of pretense? And what did it matter? Which was better, pretense, or the bitter knowledge, the certainty, that the person you want is a person you can’t have?

  The door swung open and a stern-featured woman with a stethoscope hanging around her neck like a dogtag asked me to remove my jacket so she could check my vital signs previous to discharge. I took it that Sam had muttered a few magic words in passing.

  We were out in less than half an hour, me wearing a man’s white ribbed undershirt, which Sam rightly thought I’d prefer to a pink T-shirt embellished with flowers and the hospital’s logo.

  “You’re sure you’re up to this?” he asked as he closed the car door.

  I adjusted the leather seat via push button till it conformed to my body. The Porsche smelled like he’d just whisked it out of the showroom. Leather and wood, deep pile carpet. Sam had always had fancy cars, even when I first knew him. How had I imagined he afforded them, the co-owner of a small-time cab company?

  “We’ll need a New Hampshire map,” I said.

  “Bought one in the gift shop. Plus some chocolate bars.”

  “I love you, Sam.”

  He was who he was and I was who I was, but what was the use pretending I didn’t love him? It didn’t mean we were going to spend the rest of our lives together, playing Cinderella and the Prince, but what was the point in denying it?

  I was surprised our combined breath didn’t smoke the windshield. I know I’d have liked to find the way to the nearest hotel. Instead, I opened the map on my lap and plotted the quickest route to Epping.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sam drove, big hands easy on the wheel, and I found myself telling him about Chaney, the blackmail, Benjy Dowling and his hit-and-run death, grateful to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t FBI or a friend of Chaney’s, someone who didn’t have advice to offer or an ax to grind. When I got to Denali’s suicide and my reasons for believing I might be investigating two murders, rather than a murder and a suicide, his lips tightened.

  “I trust you’re carrying some self-defense in your backpack?” When I didn’t reply, his eyes narrowed. “You were run off the road.”

  I hadn’t been able to use my hands to grab a cell phone, much less aim a pistol. It wouldn’t have helped one damn bit if I’d been carrying a rocket launcher. I was about to expound on this, when Sam mentioned that the car was equipped. It took me a minute.

  Guns.

  “Just thought you should know.” He glanced at the rearview mirror.

  I could probably be arrested for sitting in the passenger seat of Gianelli’s Porsche. I sighed and told myself no, whatever weapons he had, they’d be legal and registered. Or illegal and untraceable. I didn’t want to ask. Sam and I used to disagree about the usefulness of firearms.
I used to be more opposed to carrying firearms than I am now. I should have been carrying, a case like this, I admit it. What good was my S&W .40 doing locked in my desk? When a case comes down to murder, a professional ought to carry.

  We drove through one of those perfect New Hampshire towns, with Victorian houses and a white-steepled church, a velvety town green. We must have looked like wealthy tourists passing through in our shiny car, but there was a Beretta in the dash compartment, something with more heft in the trunk. Made me wonder what lurked behind the proper Victorian facades. I felt disoriented by the sun-dappled lanes, the luxurious car, the familiar yet unfamiliar man, as though I’d jumped backward or forward in time. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoped the queasiness was simply another aftereffect of whatever medication they’d used when they’d shoved my shoulder back into the socket.

  I asked myself why whoever’d rammed me off the road hadn’t come back with a gun of his own and finished the job. I’d been helpless, barely conscious down in the ravine, a sitting duck till the ambulance arrived. Had the driver figured he’d done enough? Had he thought I’d die in the crash, be seriously injured, forget about my job? Was the whole run-’em-off-the-road business unrelated to the case? Was I a raving paranoid?

  Roz has a T-shirt with a tongue-in-cheek warning: just ’cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

  Sam’s voice slipped in and interrupted my thoughts. “This guy you’re supposed to meet in Epping, could he be the one who ran you off the road? I mean, who else knew you were coming?”

  “I think I was tailed.” I hadn’t noticed the truck, but would I have noticed, with the traffic, in the twilight, in the dark?

  “You want to stop for real food, or just make do with the chocolate?”

  The sense of urgency was with me again, the dread, the uneasiness. “If we pass a coffee shop, I could do with about a gallon of takeout.”