by Sean Black
“I’m having one of those days. Tell you what,” Sofia plucked her phone from her handbag, “I’ll see if he still has his turned on. Sorry to bother you.”
She backed away from the desk, and pretended to make the call. The receptionist looked at her, puzzled. Sofia darted down a corridor. She would have to find Brendan the old-fashioned way, using shoe leather. Now she was cursing the time she’d spent arguing with Aidan about who would try to track Brendan down.
At the end of the corridor, she was met by a bank of elevators with a sign next to them. She decided to start on the top floor and work her way down. She hit the call button, stepped into the first available elevator with a couple of white-coat-clad medical personnel, and hit the button to take her to the top floor.
In the elevator, it hit her what a lousy job they were making of what was a basic surveillance operation. Tails like this were usually a piece of cake, especially when all you needed to know was precisely where someone was headed. The only thing that could explain the mess they’d made was that it was more difficult to remain professional when the tail was someone close to you.
There was no sign of Brendan when she reached the top floor. She asked a couple of nurses but neither had seen a man matching Brendan’s description. There was only so long she could hang around asking people so she cut her losses and headed down a floor.
She had no luck there either. She stopped in the stairwell to check in with Aidan, but Brendan hadn’t returned to his car. Sofia kept going.
On the fifth floor, she walked out of the stairwell, and right there, at the end of the corridor, she caught the briefest glimpse of him. He turned the corner and disappeared from view.
Sofia felt a surge of adrenalin. Not only had she found him, but he hadn’t seen her. Okay, that was luck more than anything, but as the saying went, it was better to be lucky than good.
She punched the air. A passing hospital orderly pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair shot her a puzzled look. Sofia pretended to be reaching up to scratch a particularly bad itch at the back of her head.
Now that she had found Brendan without him seeing her, she really didn’t want to screw up. She approached the corner slowly. She ducked her head round and took a quick peek.
Brendan was nowhere to be seen. But he couldn’t have gone far. If he was on this particular floor of the building, there had to be a reason.
Taking her time, Sofia headed for a sign that directed people toward various clinics and departments.
In one direction was audiology and speech pathology, in the other the kidney transplant center, a head and neck consultation clinic, and another for diabetics. Brendan had headed in the second direction, toward the kidney transplant and diabetes clinics.
Suddenly it all made sense. Brendan had been drinking a lot of water lately. Like, gallons of the stuff. And he’d been a lot more careful about his diet, turning down ice cream and cookies, which he never used to do.
Since Sofia had met him, Brendan had packed a few extra pounds. And diabetes was pretty much an epidemic. She’d read some article recently that said one in four Americans would get Type 2 diabetes by the time they were sixty. Or something like that. Some crazy number.
But why hadn’t he told them? It wasn’t like diabetes carried any great stigma. Then again, Brendan had always been a very private man. He rarely discussed his personal life, never mind his feelings, or problems outside work. He was old school.
She followed the arrow down toward the Gonda Goldschmied Diabetes Center, to give the place its full name. She would make sure Brendan had checked in there, then head back to the car to break the news to Aidan. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the worst. Millions of people lived with diabetes. It could be managed and treated. It wasn’t fatal. Not if you had good care.
Pushing through a set of double doors, she came to a complete stop as she saw Brendan standing at a long wooden reception desk, his elbows on it. An attractive middle-aged blonde woman came up behind him. She put her arm round his shoulders. He turned and they hugged. She pecked him on the cheek.
Sofia ducked back behind the doors before Brendan could see her. She flattened herself against the wall, her heart pounding. She had no idea who the woman was. She had never seen her before. But she had read the sign behind the reception desk.
It wasn’t the diabetes center that Brendan was visiting. It was the Connie Frank Kidney Transplant Center.
CHAPTER 4
Sofia ducked into the ladies’ restroom. She took out her phone to call Aidan. Her finger hovered over the screen.
She couldn’t do it. Not just yet. If she told him what she’d seen, he’d start asking questions she didn’t have answers to. He’d start jumping to conclusions. Just like she was doing.
She turned on the cold tap and splashed her face with water. As she grabbed a paper towel, she caught her reflection in the mirror. She looked like she felt. Freaked out.
This whole thing had been a bad idea. They should have let Brendan tell them what was going on when he was ready, rather than spying on him. If he found out, he’d go absolutely ballistic, and that wouldn’t be good for his health.
The whole thing seemed completely surreal. Diabetes, she’d understood. Lots of people succumbed to it, and Brendan, who was a little overweight and under a lot of stress, would be pretty vulnerable. But a kidney transplant? That didn’t seem like something that came out of a clear blue sky. Not that she knew much about kidney problems. But a transplant didn’t seem like something you just woke up needing one day.
She heard Brendan’s voice in the corridor. She couldn’t make out the words, only that it was him, and that he sounded pretty somber. She moved closer to the door, trying to catch the words.
He was talking to another man. Pressing her ear to the door Sofia could hear the conversation.
Brendan: ‘So it’s bad, Doc?’
Man: ‘Good and bad aren’t really useful clinical terms, Mr. Maloney. But the prognosis is less than ideal. In the short term we should be able to keep things stable, but in the long, and even medium term we need to find a solution beyond dialysis. For quality-of-life reasons if nothing else.’
Brendan: ‘Well, thanks for your time, and everything you’re doing. I really appreciate it.’
Man: ‘You’re very welcome. If there’s anything else you need to ask me before our next appointment, just give me a call. Okay?’
Brendan: ‘I will. Thanks.’
Sofia almost leaped out of her skin as someone pushed open the door from the other side. She stumbled, losing her balance and tripping backward over her feet. She managed to gather herself as a glamorous blonde walked into the restroom and headed for one of the stalls. The woman looked like she’d been crying. Sofia was fairly sure she was the one she’d seen with Brendan a minute or two before.
She gave it a few more moments, then pushed open the door and peeked out. Brendan was walking down the corridor, his back to her. Shoulders rounded, and stooped, he was heading toward the elevators. He walked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
She couldn’t believe she was seeing him like that. Brendan was always so . . . so . . . She searched for the word. Vital? Stoic? Strong? He was all of those and more. If your car broke down in a bad neighborhood at three in the morning, Brendan would be the person you’d call. Not only would he come and get you, he’d know exactly what you should do while you waited for him to arrive, and what to say to keep you calm. A Yiddish word perfectly described the type of man he was. Mensch. Brendan was a mensch.
Her cell phone rang. She startled. It was Aidan. She hit the green answer button.
“He’s on his way out.”
“Okay.” Sofia didn’t know what else to say. She was still so busy processing what she had seen – and heard. And what it might mean.
“Did you see where he’d been? Which department?” Aidan asked.
“I’ll be right down,” Sofia told him, ending the call before he could ask her any
thing else.
This was something she had to tell Aidan face to face.
CHAPTER 5
A idan leaned over and opened the passenger door. Sofia took a deep breath before she got in. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d had since she’d overheard Brendan’s conversation showed no signs of disappearing. She felt more nauseous now than she had before, like she might throw up all over Aidan’s spotless interior.
“Well?” said Aidan.
If Sofia had worried about following Brendan, that went double now.
“Sofia? You okay? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think we should have done this.”
Aidan eye-rolled her. “Isn’t it a little late for that?”
Brendan’s Crown Vic had already left the parking lot. He’d be driving back to Malibu now, and wondering where the hell they both were when he got back to the office and found it empty. Aidan had a point. It was too late. She couldn’t forget what she’d seen and heard. What was done was done.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Sofia asked.
Aidan slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Okay, before we got here, I was worried. Now I’m freaking out. So, yes, I’d really like to know.”
Sofia told him exactly what she’d seen, where Brendan had been, and about the conversation she’d heard him having with the doctor. By the time she’d finished Aidan was staring straight ahead, eyes focused into the distance. He didn’t say anything. He swallowed hard. Sofia was pretty sure he wasn’t saying anything because if he did he’d start to cry, and he was a tough Irish-American male so, like his dad, he’d rather keep his feelings bottled up than share them publicly.
Partly to fill the silence, and partly because she actually believed it, Sofia said, “We can’t tell Brendan we know about this. If we do, he’ll ask how we know, and he’ll never forgive us for sneaking around behind his back.”
Aidan gave a little nod, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like crazy. He was holding himself together, but only just.
He cleared his throat. “Agreed.” His voice cracked as he said it, but he didn’t break down.
Sofia reached out and placed her hand on top of Aidan’s. He was gripping the steering wheel for dear life, his knuckles white. “I’m really sorry.”
“I can’t believe he hasn’t told me,” Aidan said, his voice falling away to a whisper. “He’s always told me everything. That was the promise he made to me after Mom died. That we wouldn’t have any secrets.”
Tears formed in Sofia’s eyes. She couldn’t help it. She had never seen Aidan like this before. He was usually cracking jokes, making sexist comments, or being just plain obnoxious. If it came to a game of word association, the one word she would not match with Aidan was ‘vulnerable’.
She hadn’t even thought about him having lost his mom when he was a kid, and how it would affect his reaction to discovering his dad was ill. Sofia’s father had split from her mom, and they hadn’t had any contact since, but that was different from him being dead. She’d always had her mom and her sister. Aidan was an only child who’d had just Brendan.
“Maybe he didn’t want to worry you,” she said. It sounded lame, but it was the best she could do right now.
Aidan gave another little nod. “Yeah,” he said, still sounding like someone had sandpapered his throat. “That’ll be it.” He started the engine, and put the car into drive. “We should get back to the office.”
“You sure?” Sofia asked. “You don’t want to go grab a coffee? Talk this over? It’s kind of a big shock.”
“What’s there to talk about?” said Aidan, pulling out of the space.
Sofia could think of quite a lot of things. There was now a giant elephant in the corner of the Maloney Investigations office, and it wasn’t about to go away any time soon. “You’re sure?”
Aidan shrugged his shoulders as they edged into a line of exiting vehicles waiting to go through the ticket barrier. “If he wants to tell me, he’ll tell me.”
One car ahead of them, a guy in a red Honda was putzing around at the ticket machine. He’d pressed the call button to speak to someone and was leaning out of his window, arguing loudly about the parking charge.
“I was only twenty minutes, but you want me to pay for an hour? What am I? Some kind of a moron?”
Sofia could see Aidan getting more and more irritated as the guy held up the cars behind him over a few dollars. Aidan leaned on the horn. The guy turned his head to locate the source of the sound.
This was going to end badly.
Thinking quickly, Sofia got out of their car. “Sir,” she called to Honda Man. “We’re kind of in a hurry. Maybe you could go through, then register your complaint.”
“Who the hell asked you, Princess?” Honda Man shouted back at her. “Why don’t you mind your own goddamn business?”
Before Sofia could stop him, Aidan put the rental into park, opened his door and marched toward the Honda. She called after him, but he had already reached the Honda, grabbed the driver by his shirt, and was in the process of pulling him out through the open window. The only problem being that the guy still had his seatbelt on, and it had now ridden up so it was around his neck. His face had already turned red, and even if he had wanted to apologize for holding everyone up he probably didn’t have the air supply to do it.
It didn’t take a genius to work out why Aidan had gone from zero to ballistic so fast, but Sofia doubted it would help his defense in court if it ever came to that. She walked across to the Honda and, using all the extra strength she’d picked up from her time at Jack’s boxing gym in Venice, managed to pull Aidan off the guy and propel him slowly back to their car.
“I’m really sorry,” she said to Honda Man. “He just had some bad news.”
Honda Man nodded as he wrenched the seatbelt from around his neck. It had left a nasty red mark. Sofia dug in her bag, pulled out her credit card and fed it into the slot. Taking care of Honda Man’s ticket was the least they could do under the circumstances. She retrieved her card as the barrier lifted.
“You’re all set,” Sofia told Honda Man, trying to sound extra chirpy and normal, as if the man hadn’t almost been strangled to death.
The Honda drove slowly through the barrier and took a left. Sofia walked back to the rental car.
“Sorry about that,” said Aidan. “Think I might have overreacted.”
CHAPTER 6
Brendan was at his desk, office door wide open, when Sofia and Aidan walked back into the Maloney Investigations office a little over an hour later.
“Where the hell have you two been?” Brendan asked, glancing up from some papers.
“Checking in on the Kaspersen case,” said Aidan.
“Talking to a witness in that new divorce case,” said Sofia, at exactly the same time.
Aidan and Sofia stopped and looked at each other. They had just made another rookie error. They should have got their alibi straight before they stepped back into the office rather than each making something up on the fly.
“We talked to Mr Kaspersen this morning, then interviewed the new witness in the Palisades on the way back,” said Sofia, drawing on her actor’s improvisation skills and hoping Brendan wouldn’t ask any more questions.
Brendan got up from his desk and paced through into the main office. “So?” he said, eyeing them both in turn. “Everything good?”
“Sure,” said Aidan.
“Great,” said Sofia. “How about you?”
Brendan looked at her like she was nuts. She had never asked Brendan how he was. He was her boss. She always assumed he was fine, unless informed otherwise.
The question went unanswered. He looked from her to Aidan. “You two are acting really weird.”
Aidan mumbled something Sofia didn’t quite catch. It sounded like “Takes one to know one.”
“What was that?” Brendan said. He had what Sofia had come to think of as his dad face on when he said it.
�
��Nothing,” said Aidan.
“Okay, then,” said Brendan. “So what are we all standing around here for? There’s work to do.” He walked back to his office and closed the door.
“You think we should have said something to him?” she asked Aidan.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tell him we know he’s sick and we’re worried.”
“He’d want to know how we know,” Aidan said.
“So we tell him.”
“Tell him we followed him to the UCLA Medical Center?” Aidan sounded incredulous at the idea.
“Yeah. I know I said before that we shouldn’t, but he’s right, this is really weird.”
“Are you nuts? He’d probably fire you and I shudder to think what he’d do to me.”
“You really think he’d fire me?” Sofia asked. She could imagine Brendan firing her for making boneheaded mistakes, but not for being worried about him.
“I dunno. Maybe. Look, can we not talk about this now?” There was a hint of pleading in the way Aidan said it.
“Sure,” said Sofia, filling a cup with water from the cooler and dropping the contents into the plant in the corner of the room. Its leaves were shedding onto the floor and it didn’t look to be in the best of health. She hoped it wasn’t some kind of omen.
CHAPTER 7
I t was almost five thirty before Brendan’s office door opened again. He’d spent the entire afternoon holed up in there, apart from one brief bathroom break. Sofia had asked him if he wanted to join her and Aidan for lunch at the Marmalade Café in Cross Creek (an invitation he rarely declined) but he had told her he had too much work to get through. He hadn’t even asked them to bring him something back.
He was definitely out of sorts. Not that the regular Brendan was cracking jokes every minute. He took his job, and their clients’ problems, way too seriously for that. But unless they were working on a big case, he wasn’t normally so short-tempered and brusque. It seemed like his mind was elsewhere, which, given what they’d discovered that morning, was hardly surprising.