by Joshua Corin
Upon concluding that chat, Konquist turned to Xana. “Looks like your friend is already on the job.”
“He’s someone I know from reputation. Funny thing, though. Based on his reputation, I pegged him as the kind of guy who would have called first to confirm payment, maybe even insist on half up front, but instead he first went to the clients to suss them out.”
“Maybe he’s not the mercenary you thought him to be.”
“That’s the funny thing. If his reputation is off about that, what if it’s off about his reliability?”
“Thanks. Now I have that special feeling.”
Since he still hadn’t started the engine, Konquist took the moment to check in with his partner, who suggested they all meet for lunch to talk over some of the more delicate developments. They settled on a barbecue place on Ponce and settled in a minute after one P.M.
“So,” said Konquist.
“So,” replied Chau, and he turned to Xana. “Your friends at the Bureau are a pack of assholes.”
“Ex-friends.”
“But not ex-assholes. They’ve got me digging for fire about that name Crystal McCormick magically conjured up—Jorge Samorrasa—and do you know how many Jorge Samorrasas there are in Georgia?”
Xana waited for the answer. Chau didn’t provide it.
“You want me to guess?” she asked.
“Go for it.”
The waiter came with their drinks and their complimentary hush puppies—one fried cornmeal ball for each of them—and assured them their meals would be out shortly.
“Five?” she asked.
Chau grimaced.
“She’s right, isn’t she?”
“The point is,” Chau continued, “I checked out each Jorge Samorrasa in Georgia. Sure, five is not a huge number, but it’s five more than zero, and that’s what this lead is. A big fat zero.”
“So you did what they had you do.”
“Oh, I’m not finished. I go up to Special Agent Dipshit and I share with him the results of my work and you know what he says?”
This time Xana didn’t wait for the answer, but instead plunged right in. “He told you to widen the search.”
Whereupon Chau pegged her in the face with his hush puppy. It fell in her lap. She picked it up and ate it.
Two hush puppies instead of one? Sweet.
“How have you not left her in a ditch?” Chau asked Konquist.
“Hard to find the right ditch,” Konquist retorted. “The lady’s awful tall.”
Xana downed her surplus hush puppy with half her cup of water. “What were they able to get on the Haitian priest?”
“That at least is relevant.” Chau took out his phone and scrolled to his notepad app. “Hercule Dacy. Age: forty-two. Occupation: Roman Catholic priest. Born in Port-au-Prince. Currently assigned to the Co-Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Miragoâne.”
“What the heck is a co-cathedral?”
“Roughly speaking,” Xana answered, “it means they share a bishop with another cathedral.”
“What she said. Anyway, I don’t know shit about Haiti, but Miragoâne sounded familiar so I looked it up. And don’t you dare open your mouth, Miss Marx, because I’m telling this story. Remember the earthquake back in 2010? Guess which was one of the major communities hit? Except don’t guess, because it’s annoying. You’re annoying. Turns out, Father Dacy was instrumental in coordinating the relief effort in his area. Specifically, he worked with all the companies and organizations who helped rebuild the houses in the poorer neighborhoods, which is every neighborhood in Miragoâne from what I can tell.”
“And that’s the connection to Phillip Wilkerson.”
Before Detective Chau could confirm or deny his partner’s conjecture, the waiter arrived with their barbecue. Ribs and fries for the two gentlemen, pulled pork and fries for the lady. The waiter also refilled their drinks, reminded them his name in case they needed anything, and left.
For a minute, all they did was eat. Mmm. Then Chau continued, “It doesn’t give us motive, but it points us in the direction of motive. I’m hoping our nervous friend from last night can take us the rest of the way. Got Berman’s work address already mapped and everything.”
“How about our friends at the Serendipity Group?” Xana wanted to know.
“The usual bullshit. We procured a warrant and they procured a lawyer, so now it’s up to the judge. How about you two? Any luck narrowing down your list of, what, eight thousand people who might want to do you in?”
Konquist brought his partner up to speed as to how their half of the day had gone so far.
“You know,” Chau retorted between bites, “there’s no guarantee the person or persons you’re after is even local. Father Dacy flew in from the Caribbean. You don’t think he brought that hacksaw with him on the plane, do you?”
“He probably checked it with his bags.”
“According to the airline, he didn’t have any bags.”
“You think he walked through security with a hacksaw?”
“I’ve never flown out of Port-au-Prince before. How’s their security?”
“If they’re letting hacksaws on airplanes, I’d say it’s pretty lax.”
“Gentlemen,” said Xana. “Isn’t it more likely he bought the hacksaw after he arrived?”
Konquist and Chau paused, shrugged, and recommenced gnawing on the wet remains of their ribs. The table had a full bowl of prepackaged moist towelettes. By the time their plates were empty, so was the bowl. Konquist belched, excused himself to go to the restroom, and Xana checked her phone for messages. Em had texted her twenty minutes ago with a sentence of emojis. Xana texted back a smiley face. She then texted Hayley to find out where in Piedmont Hospital she was, all the while wondering what she might have to say about the encounters with Yuri and Marcos.
Xana had kept her word. She had apologized.
Not that it mattered.
After the hospital, it was back on the trail of her would-be assailants. She wasn’t inclined to confront any of the Edmondses outside of their home, so they would have to wait. She held no such reservations, though, about Dom Onyx or Rahman Sombee, and she knew just where to find both gentlemen. Most federal prisons were in the middle of nowhere, but not in Georgia. Over two thousand male inmates were housed inside a menagerie of pristine stone buildings on McDonough Boulevard, across the street from a Chevron station. It would be a twenty-five-minute drive from the hospital.
Detective Konquist had already made the call to add their names to the afternoon visitors’ list.
Speaking of Detective Konquist, he returned from his post-lunch pit stop with his portion of their bill already counted out in singles. Chau ponied up his cash. Xana took out her bank card and added it to the pile. Thank God for her 401(k), because her pension had been, for all intents and purposes, vacated upon termination. She could fight it, but this was a rare instance where she lacked the righteous indignation to give a damn, and she wasn’t sure why, and Em didn’t pester her about it, and Hayley didn’t know about it, and the rest of her acquaintances didn’t mention it, and c’est la vie.
Chau went his way and then Konquist and Xana went theirs. Piedmont Hospital was just up the road, though not on Piedmont Road, of course, because that would have made sense. This was Peachtree Road, the north-south artery of Atlanta, though nary a peach tree grew anywhere on it, because that too would have made sense. Konquist found them a spot on the roof of the garage and he handed Xana the parking ticket as she opened her car door.
“You’re not coming?”
“Nah,” he said. “This is a private matter. I don’t want to intrude.”
“You hate hospitals, don’t you?”
“Now, why do you have to be a dick about it?”
“I gotta be me,” Xana replied, and she pocketed the ticket and strolled her long legs toward the elevator. She made a mental note to add Detective Konquist to her list of apologies. The man had been nothing but up-front and patient w
ith her. He obviously cared. Yes, he had some idiosyncrasies, but to rib him about his fear of hospitals while he was doing her the favor of bringing her here…
Wow. Em really was turning her into a softie.
So be it.
Hayley still hadn’t replied to her text, but that was a minor inconvenience. The receptionists at the main desk would provide the necessary information. In the three months they had known each other, Hayley had already been admitted here twice, although both stays had been little more than precautionary. Xana had seconded Hayley’s complaints about how her oncologist was a worrier, blah blah blah, all the while grateful that Hayley’s oncologist was a worrier and now she was a worrier too. Her oncologist—and therefore Hayley—used to be at a completely different hospital, but the practice moved to Piedmont and Hayley moved with it, even though Northside was much closer to where she lived and if there ever was an emergency, didn’t it make sense to go to the closest hospital?
“Hi, there,” she said to the bifocaled matron manning the main desk. “I’m looking for a patient. Last name, O’Leary. First name, Hayley.”
The woman typed. The woman read her screen. The woman spoke.
“Fifth floor. ICU. Room 1.”
Xana blinked. “ICU?”
Chapter 37
The visitors’ area on the fifth floor was roomy and well lit, with cushioned chairs and lots of open space on the flat brown carpet. All the better to counterbalance the anxiety of all unfortunate enough to need to be there. Hayley’s father was there, sitting in one of those cushioned chairs, staring vacantly at that flat brown carpet. He was hunched over. Atlas, with the planet on his shoulders, had nothing on a parent whose child was in the ICU.
Xana approached him slowly. She always got an odd vibe from Hayley’s parents. Not unfriendly…but skeptical. And why wouldn’t they be? Here she was, fifty-two years old, an alcoholic—a notorious alcoholic, and, oh yes, a lesbian…and she was hanging out with their nineteen-year-old dying daughter. Any reasonable parent would have reservations. But their daughter’s life had not been reasonable for many, many years, and if a friendship with this…woman made Hayley happy, who were they to begrudge her that?
John O’Leary taught theater at a prep school in Roswell and oftentimes acted as if he were perpetually onstage, booming his voice and gesticulating for all to see and full of wild energy. That John O’Leary was not here. This John O’Leary glanced up at Xana with feeble acknowledgment. His hands remained still. His elbows were between his knees. His necktie was loose. His white shirt was open at the collar and sweat stained along its sides. His left shoe was untied.
Xana sat beside him. “What happened?”
“She…they think it’s sepsis. She was cold and she was shaking and we came here and she was OK and they took her for a chest CT and that’s…she was OK…we were playing twenty questions and they came to take her for her chest CT and then she never came back…”
“Oh, John.”
“Finally, after an hour, I went to find out what was going on. I don’t know this hospital. I don’t know the people here. I know the people at Northside. I know the nurses. I finally tracked down someone I recognized from the last time we were here. I demanded to know what was going on. She told me she’d get a doctor, but I said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘They took Hayley for a test an hour ago.’ I said, ‘You tell me where she is.’ ”
“And she was here?”
“She…while she was on the table…they hadn’t even started the chest CT yet when she…God have mercy…my daughter had a heart attack.”
Xana said nothing. Xana felt nothing.
Several seconds later, she felt everything, all at once, and a sob exploded from her mouth, and she covered her mouth, and the whole world shimmered into a hot white haze.
“They said it was a troponin leak due to the…sepsis, and that’s what…they said it was a type-two myocardial infarction. They’re trying different thrombolytic drugs, but because of her cancer and the bacteria from the sepsis…do you know what thrombolytic means? I had to look it up. I thought…after all these years of treatment, I thought I’d learned enough to become a doctor myself, but it’s…it shrinks blood clots. It shrinks them. Like science fiction. Her mother is with her. We’re taking turns. It’s her mother’s turn.”
Xana took a deep, steadying breath. The haze around her solidified back to reality. Flat brown carpet, cushioned chairs, bright lights. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I…what? Oh.” He stared at her. An idea occurred to him. “Who is a female singer who’s dead but was from the United States and…oh, and she sang country music but it’s not Mindy McCready or Tammy Wynette or Janis Joplin—although Janis Joplin isn’t really a country singer, but she’s who Ruthie guessed. I guessed Tammy Wynette. We had six questions left.”
“Patsy Cline,” said Xana.
“Oh! Of course!”
And just like that, the limelight inside him clicked on and Theatrical John made an appearance. He jumped to his feet and shook his hands in the air.
“Patsy Cline! I can’t believe I didn’t think of Patsy Cline! I love Patsy Cline! Oh, but who doesn’t love Patsy Cline? I would have guessed it. I think I would have guessed it. We had six questions left. That’s plenty of…I…”
And just like that, the limelight faded away, and he sank back down, and he rested his elbows between his knees, and he stared vacantly at the flat brown carpet.
This, unfortunately, left Xana to her own thoughts, and those thoughts, unfortunately, led her to the quick and obvious conclusion that Hayley’s condition was, in part, her fault. This was not self-pity. This was deductive reasoning.
Her parents had forbidden her to attend the execution and then discouraged her from attending the execution and then allowed her to attend the execution only if someone accompanied her, and it was so obvious now that they had assumed no one would accompany their sick daughter in the middle of the night to watch the state of Georgia poison a man to death. Only truly special individuals could be that cluelessly callous. And wasn’t it especially thoughtful to then ask Hayley the very next day to bend federal law, thereby adding unnecessary stress, and then drive out in the rain…
Here Xana was, sober, and she was still causing collateral damage on those closest to her. And she couldn’t even make amends to Hayley because Hayley was unable to hear it! And what a perfect indictment of the power greater than oneself. There might be a greater power, but it is a total prick. Because cancer is not enough. No. Give her a heart attack too. Give a brave and brilliant girl a heart attack and let a guy like Yuri live to be one hundred years old. What a fair and benevolent greater power.
Two steps crossed off right there. What were the others? Humility was one of them, wasn’t it? Yes. Humbly asking for one’s shortcomings to be removed. But what if one’s major shortcoming was a lack of humility, huh? What if that’s what caused a person to continue to wreck havoc wherever she went?
What utter bullshit.
Certainly she’d come to this realization before, had even said as much to Em, but what to do about it? A spiteful person would fight back by…well, by drinking, naturally. What better way to show that the program was ineffective and meaningless? Xana had proposed the very thing to Em once—on their third date in fact. Unfortunately—or fortunately—Em was no fool herself and supplied a clever comeback of her own: Wasn’t denouncing your faith in the program by drinking akin to killing yourself to prove that God doesn’t exist? And didn’t that make you no better than an angst-y adolescent?
This world. This fucking world.
So no, Xana was not about to crawl back into a bottle. She would deprive herself comfort to deny everyone else the satisfaction. But she needed to do something, something different. This apology tour, while sound in principle, was as phony as any one of the program’s bromides. If someone was coming after her, she was going to face down her opponent not on anyone else’s terms but her own.
“Please,” she sa
id to Hayley’s father, snapping him briefly from his stupor, “call me when you know anything.”
And then she was off, back through the maze of hallways, those endless rows of bright tiles and busy-eyed nurses and everybody going about their duty, unrestrained, and now she would too. She fed the parking ticket to a machine and then fed it her bank card and then had both returned to her and all of it took far too long.
Someone wanted to come after her?
She was going to come after them.
And not in some half-assed, haphazard trial-and-error method. That wasn’t her style at all.
She preferred the direct approach.
When she returned to Konquist, he asked her how Hayley was doing, and she told him. But she didn’t really have time for his sympathy, not at the moment. She had a job to do, and she needed his help to do it.
“Ready to head out to the prison?” he asked.
“We’re not going to the prison.”
“I see.” He was driving them down the many canted levels of the parking garage. “Ready to meet up with Mr. or Mrs. Edmonds? I assume you know where they work.”
“We’re not going to meet the Edmondses.”
“I see.” He reached a line of cars at the exit. “Want to tell me where we are going?”
She told him.
“I see.” He turned right out of the garage. “Want to clue me in on what you hope to accomplish?”
“When we get there, you should probably stay in the car. Plausible deniability and all that.”
“I need you to promise me you’re not going to break the law or you can forget about this little errand and I’m driving you home.”
“I promise you that I will act within the spirit of the law.”
“I don’t know if that’s good enough.”
She turned to him. “You said you followed my career. You know I get results.”
“Yeah, and I can kill a deer with an AK-47. That doesn’t make it hunting.”
“So call it a leap of faith.”