by Kim Oh
“What kind of shape was he in? When he showed up in the emergency room?”
“Not that bad, actually.” Standing out on the hospital loading dock, Perry took another long drag off his cigarette. “All things considered. He must’ve had major protective gear built into that car he was driving. You know, like NASCAR stuff – steel roll cage, restraint straps, all that sort of thing.”
I had a pretty good idea what Perry was talking about. My brother Donnie was heavy into NASCAR, so I’d seen a lot of that equipment in action from watching the races on television. It was amazing what kind of crashes those drivers could get into, then walk away from once the flames were put out. Still –
“He must’ve gotten at least a little banged up. I saw him hit that truck pretty hard.”
“They put a neck brace on him,” said Perry. “Apparently – at least this is what one of the interns told me – they tried to strap up his left arm, but he wouldn’t let them. Because he’s checking himself out.”
“What?” I stared at Perry. “You mean now? Right now?”
“Yeah –” He nodded as he flicked the ash from his cigarette. “The doctors want to keep him around a while longer, run some more procedures on him – x-rays, that sort of thing. I heard one doc tell the guy that he might be bleeding internally – like maybe a ruptured spleen. You don’t even know you’re in trouble, until you fall over dead. But hey, that’s his worry, right? If he wants to leave against medical advice, long as he signs the right papers, the hospital’s off the hook.” Perry studied the glowing tip of his cigarette for a moment, then glanced over at me. “Tell you what – he’s kind of a scary individual. If you know what I mean.”
“I think I do.”
“Really jacked up. Used to see guys like that in the prison yard, powering through sets on the weight equipment. Big sets, shifting a lotta iron. Guys like that, they don’t just get bulked up – they get kind of a crazy look in their eyes.”
I knew what he was talking about. I’d already seen it up close, when I’d gotten my motorcycle near enough to the guy’s Challenger to wrest the backpack away from him. When I’d pulled out the .357 from my jacket and aimed it straight at his face, and he’d realized in that one cold instant that there was nothing to do but let go and let me get away with it – then I’d witnessed his eyes narrow down into little knife slits, with something so fierce and malice-filled behind that it could’ve taken my head right off my shoulders. Or it would have, if I hadn’t been ready for it.
“Difference being,” continued Perry beside me, “is that this guy isn’t some dumb con, working off his stretch, day at a time. Guys get thrown in the pen for being stupid – believe me, I’d know. The charge on the booking slip’s just an excuse. And this guy’s not stupid – not like that, at any rate. He’s smart.” Perry turned a nicotine-yellow smile at me. “Like you. That’s why you’re both still out on the streets, doing your thing.”
That was something else I already knew. That I’d seen in the Challenger guy’s eyes. Doing what I do, I’d already encountered plenty of guys with minimum brains – just smart enough to be really good at aiming a piece at whatever they’d been told to take care of, but not smart enough to worry about the consequences down the line. More of that type wound up doing this job than people like me and Cole, or my buddy Elton. Which was why they got hired a lot more often than my type. What the people who do the hiring figure is that brains make you dangerous – to them. So it had to be a special sort of job, one your ordinary clod with a gun couldn’t handle, before somebody like me would get a shot at it.
So whatever the deal was with this guy, the one I’d at least managed to send to the emergency room, I knew that Perry was right about him. In a flash, there on the freeway, I’d looked into the guy’s eyes, and I’d recognized how smart he was, that there was something else going on inside his head.
And yeah, that made him dangerous. Like me.
Which was why, I’d had to admit, the Plan B Mason had come up with was better than just getting back on the road and shooting for the delivery point in San Francisco. He’d correctly figured that after the Challenger had crashed into the truck, down on the surface street below the freeway, that its scary-eyed driver had been taken to the nearest emergency room – at which hospital his old prison associate Perry was mopping floors. A contact like that, and I had all the information I’d need to eliminate this weird sonuvabitch before he could have another crack at me.
Or at least that was what I’d thought, until I’d left Mason again and gotten over here to the hospital. If the Challenger guy – I was still calling him that inside my head – had been banged up enough to be lying in a bed, maybe doped up on serious painkillers, then it would’ve been easy enough for me to sneak in and find the room, using Perry’s back-door directions, and put the guy out of commission. And I mean permanently – that was why I was toting the .357 inside my jacket. At one time, when I’d first been starting out, I might’ve had some qualms about pumping a round into somebody’s head, but I guess I’ve toughened up since then. Comes with the territory.
But if the Challenger guy was in good enough shape to be checking himself out, with maybe nothing more than a couple ibuprofens rattling around in his gut – then it was going to be a tougher job. And I’d need to hurry.
“Okay,” I said aloud. “I need all the details. Where’s he at, and what’s the best way to get there – without anybody seeing me along the way. Also, who’s with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. He’s obviously not going to just walk out the front door. There must be somebody picking him up. Unless he’s taking a taxi or something.”
“You didn’t see it?” Perry flicked away the cigarette butt. “On the service road, other side of the parking lot.”
“I didn’t come that way.” I pointed to the street’s brighter lights. “After I talked to Mason, I came straight over here.”
“Huh.” Under the gray overalls, his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Thought maybe you’d scope out the scene a little bit. You know, see what was going on around here.”
“Good thing I didn’t. If I’d done major reconnaissance, this guy would’ve been gone already. So tell me, what is it you think I should’ve seen?”
“Guy’s got a whole crew.” Perry nodded toward the darkness past the other side of the hospital parking lot. “Least half a dozen.”
Crap. This Plan B was growing more complicated by the minute.
“Are they inside?” I pointed with my thumb to the hospital building behind us. “With him?”
“No –” Perry shook his head. “Not the last time I checked. He got himself moved into a private room –”
“Private?”
“Money talks.” This time, he gave an appreciative nod. “Guy’s got some major bucks. Enough to get whatever he wants. Let’s just say he’s not exactly a charity patient, if you get what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.” I looked up the side of the building, wondering if one of the lit windows was his. “So what’s he doing in this private room?”
“Making phone calls – least I think so.” Perry shrugged. “I only got a little peek in there. He’s got one of those . . . what d’ya call ’em . . . flat things . . .”
“Tablet?”
“Yeah – but not a big one. Little one – handheld.”
Must’ve been something he’d had on him, when he’d been brought into the emergency room. Maybe in some kind of high-impact protective case – if I’d had my phone in one of those, it might still be working, and I wouldn’t have to use the crappy little burner that Mason had laid on me.
“Okay.” In my head, I started sorting out my possible moves. “So he’s up there, by himself. But you said he’s got a team here? What’re they doing?’
“I told you – they’re over on the service. They’re unloading a car. You know those long trailers that race cars get moved around in? Like that.”
More stuff I was familia
r with, from my brother Donnie’s NASCAR fascination.
“What kind of car?”
“Muscle car. You know, something with a big displacement engine –”
“I know what a muscle car is, thank you.” I took a guess. “It wouldn’t have been a Dodge Challenger, would it? Like a new one?”
“You know . . . I think you’re right. In the can, there’s always a lot of car magazines floating around. Road & Track, that sort of thing. They’re like porn when you’re locked up. That must’ve been where I saw one before.”
Damn – this guy in the hospital, whoever he was, had a serious car predilection. Two Challengers? Just so he could have one as a backup? He wipes one out, and all he has to do is call his pit crew for them to bring the second one out. Kind of stylish, I suppose, in a testosterone-ridden way – but we’re also talking serious money here. Guys with that kind of bankroll didn’t usually go chasing down people themselves. At least, not in my experience. They hired people to do the dirty work. For this guy to get into the action himself – something deep and weird was going on.
There wasn’t time now to figure out what it was, though. Muscle cars, pit crews, money – whatever the deal was with this guy, Plan B still was to make sure that he wasn’t going to be coming after me.
“So the whole crew’s over there right now? On the service road?”
“Yeah.” Another nod from Perry. “I snuck over there and took a look at ’em, just before you showed up. They had the hood up on the car, and they were working on the engine.”
Great – if I didn’t take out this guy, he’d have a completely tuned and tweaked ride, to come racing after me. My guess was that meant he was serious.
I had Perry give me the key code for the hospital’s stairway doors. Taking that way, it’d be easier getting up to the fifth floor without being seen than if I used any of the elevators.
“Wait a minute –” A thought suddenly struck me. “What about the security cameras? Place like this must be full of them.” Last thing I wanted was for my face to be captured on some hard drive.
“You’re in luck,” said Perry. “They’re all dead.” He pointed to a spot beyond me.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a camera mounted to the wall, just inside the loading dock’s gate. The little red dot underneath the lens was dark.
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.” Perry nodded. “I looked inside the guard office. All the monitor screens are blank. Dead as a mackerel.”
That was convenient for me, but weirdly so. Maybe it had something to do with the Challenger guy – he might’ve paid to have all the gear switched off so there’d be less record of whatever he got up to while he was here at the hospital. Didn’t really matter, I supposed, as long as it worked in my favor.
“Anything else I need to know?” I wanted to get going and take care of this job, before the crew on the service road finished up and brought the second Challenger around to the front of the building.
“Don’t know how useful it is for ya –” Perry buttoned the flap over the pack of cigarettes in his coverall breast pocket. “But his name’s Stinson.”
“How do you know that?”
“Heard him say it. When I stuck my head in his room, and he was answering his phone. Or tablet, or whatever it is. He said, Yeah, this is Stinson.” Perry shrugged. “So it’s his name. That’s all.”
It didn’t ring any bells with me.
But something else did. All of a sudden, a lot of things became clear, that had been ticking away at the back of my mind.
“All right.” I dug into my jacket pocket and held up the burner phone. “You’ve got this number, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“I need you to sneak back out there to the service road and check on how those guys are coming along on that car.”
A frown. “Why?”
“I didn’t say I needed questions, did I?” The phone slid back into my pocket. “This is my job, and I’ll do it the way I want, okay? I’ll be heading upstairs, so as soon as you’ve got an idea about how long before they bring the car around to the front door, ring me. That’s all I’m asking you to do.”
“Whatever.” He shifted the wooden handle from his shoulder, leaving the mop sitting in the wheeled bucket. I watched as he jumped down from the edge of the loading dock, then headed out into the dark.
Soon as he was out of sight, I got to work. I still had the plastic bag, wadded up and tucked inside my jacket, in which Mason had brought the new helmet to me. I pulled it out and gave it a quick once-over – it’d be fine, for what I needed it to do . . .
Less than a minute later, with my preparations all in place, I was in the hospital stairwell, heading up to the fifth floor.
NINE
Hospitals are just like any other place where people come and go. There’s an invisibility principle at work – if you walk fast, don’t look around, and act like you’re supposed to be there, most of the time people don’t even see you. Okay, sure, if you strolled into an operating room while the surgeons were slicing somebody open, and if you didn’t have scrubs and a mask on, then they probably would notice you. But a regular open corridor, lined with private rooms with numbers on the door and those plastic bins where the nurses tuck the patients’ charts? No big deal. Plus, I’ve still got that anonymous Asian female thing going for me – it’s never really worn off, no matter how much grim stuff I’ve done. People look at me, if they see me at all, and they just naturally assume I’m harmless. Which is, of course, a mistake.
I slid right past the nurse station, near the elevators and the stairwell doorway farther down the corridor. The woman behind the counter didn’t even glance up from the computer screen in front of her. There were a couple white-coated men over on the other side, talking and laughing, and they ignored me as well.
This Stinson guy’s money had bought him a lot of privacy, or as much as you can get in a place like this. His room, the number that Perry had told me, was all the way down at the end. The half dozen or so rooms before it didn’t appear to have anyone in them – a couple of the doors were open, and I didn’t see anyone in the beds inside, and none of the doors had charts or any other kind of paperwork in their bins.
When I got to the one I was looking for, I looked back down to the nurse’s station. No one was watching me. Which suited me fine. I turned the handle, pushed the door open, and slid inside.
For a moment, it seemed like I’d gotten the wrong room. It was empty – with the lights switched off, there was no sign of anybody having been in it all, or at least not recently. The folding screen was pushed all the way back, the bed linens tucked and smoothed with the usual military-like precision. Still standing at the doorway, I leaned farther in and scanned around. The toilet door was open, so I could see that nobody was in there, either. No bag, no jacket, no tablet left on one of the chairs – nothing.
I wasn’t surprised at all. I’d pretty much been expecting this.
And I wasn’t surprised by what happened next, either.
“Glad you could make it –”
The voice spoke with a sneer that exactly suited the guy I’d come looking for. I turned my head and caught a forearm blow right across my face. Hard enough to send me flying across the room.
I raised myself on my elbows and looked up at Stinson. His chin rested on the top edge of the neck brace the doctors had clamped onto him. The left side of his face was bruised purple, and a row of black stitches ran across one eyebrow. A cold half-smile twisted one corner of his mouth as he closed the door behind him. Trapping me here like this, he seemed even crazier and scarier than when I’d seen him on the freeway behind the wheel of that souped-up Challenger.
He didn’t waste any time gloating, though. Squatting down beside me on the floor, he gave me a quick, thorough pat down. The metal edge of the finger splint on his hand slid over my ribs. He pulled open my jacket, reaching all the way around me to the small of my back, then down to my ankles, where I mi
ght have had a smaller piece strapped.
“You came up here without a gun?” His sneer turned to a puzzled frown. “What, you thought we were just going to have a little chat or something?”
“I . . .” It wasn’t hard me for me to act as though I were still stunned from the blow he’d laid on me. “I must’ve . . . lost it . . .”
“Kinda careless of you.” Stinson shook his head in disgust as he stood back up. He gave me a prodding kick in the ribs. “I thought I was dealing with a professional. That’s what I was told, at least.”
“Who . . .” I let my voice go small and weak. “Who told you that?”
“Dalby – who else?” Another shake of the head. “You know, you’re really not meeting my expectations. I don’t know why he hired you – this is too fuckin’ easy.”