Black River

by G. M. Ford

  “Take a look at this shit,” he whispered to Redhead. “It’s filthy.”

  Corso felt his despair turn livid. He crossed the room in four long strides, grabbed Redhead by the collar, and jerked him off his feet, sending him sliding backward across the room on his butt. Another step, and Corso grabbed a double handful of the other guy’s kinky black hair and lifted him to the tips of his toes.

  The guy screeched like an owl as Corso slid him across the linoleum and slammed him face first into the back of the door. By the time Corso dragged him back and pulled open the door, the guy’s knees had gone slack and the screeching had turned into little more than a wet gurgle. With his left hand still in the guy’s hair, Corso grabbed him by the belt and lofted him out into the hall on a fly. When the door swung shut, a red stain decorated the inside.

  Corso pointed at Redhead and the candy striper. “This is no freak show,” he said. “I see anything like that going on again, and it’s you motherfuckers who’re gonna need intensive care. You hear me?”

  Between gulps, Redhead managed a tentative nod. Candy Striper was now sobbing and gnawing on her entire fist.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Corso said.

  They kept their eyes locked on Corso and their backs against the wall as they sidestepped their way out the door.

  Corso walked to Dougherty’s side. Her eyes were still beneath the lids. The way the bandage clung to her head told him they’d shaved off her hair. Yellow fluid had leaked from her skull, staining the top of the bandage. He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers and then tried to settle the hospital gown around her body. Dissatisfied, he lifted a blue cotton blanket from the foot of the bed, shook it out full-sized, and covered her with it.

  As he stared down at her, the door burst open: big black security guard waving a can of pepper spray, followed by a nurse. She swam her way around the guard and stood with her hands on her hips. She wore a forest-green cardigan over her crisp white uniform. Her plastic name tag read RACHEL TAYLOR, DIRECTOR OF NURSING SERVICES.

  She was about forty. Trim, with a round face and a big pair of liquid brown eyes. Probably a runner, Corso thought. Her face was flushed, her anger a pair of red patches on her cheeks.

  “Leave this room immediately,” she said. “This woman is in critical condition. Your presence here is endangering her life.”

  “Not until I get some assurances.”

  “You assaulted one of my people,” she said. “The police are on the way.”

  “But it’s all right with you that your people debased and humiliated this woman. That works for you, does it, honey?”

  “Which of my people would that be?”

  “Those two morons and the candy striper.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  Corso told her. It didn’t take long, but by the time he’d finished, Nurse Rachel Taylor’s face had lost the ruddy glow of anger and taken on an ashen cast.

  She opened her mouth and then closed it. Something in his manner told her it was true. She turned and spoke out into the hall. “Morgan, ask Dr. Hayes to fix Robert’s face, pronto. Then I want to see the three of you in my office. You wait until I get there. You hear me?”

  She turned back to the room and looked up at the security guard. “It’s okay, Quincy. You can go. See if you can’t call off the posse.”

  Quincy wasn’t happy. He fixed Corso with what he imagined to be his most baleful stare. Something in Corso’s eyes made him nervous. “You sure?” he asked, without moving his hooded eyes from Corso. She said she was sure, and, with a great show of reluctance, Quincy left the room, one halfhearted step at a time.

  “I’m afraid I owe you an apology,” she said. “That sort of unprofessional behavior has never been tolerated by this institution. I can assure you that those involved will no longer be affiliated with this hospital.”

  Corso nodded and walked over to Dougherty’s side. “She’d hate being dressed this way,” he said. He looked back over his shoulder at the nurse. “You have anything we could cover her up with?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like something with legs and sleeves.”

  She thought it over. “Scrubs,” she said, after a minute. “There’s long-sleeved scrubs.”

  “That’d be great.”

  “I’ll call down for some.”

  “She’d really appreciate it,” Corso said.

  “I’ll take care of it,” the woman said. Something in her tone told Corso she didn’t think modesty was going to make any difference.

  They stood in silence, the question floating in the air between them.

  “How bad is it?” Corso finally asked.

  “Hard to tell.”

  Again, silence settled over the room.

  “Prognosis?”

  She folded her hands. “The protocol for an injury such as this is to offer neither hope nor despair. There’s simply no way of telling.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Anything could happen. She could sit up tomorrow afternoon and ask for ice cream, or she could never sit up again. There’s just no way of telling.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “You religious?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She shrugged. “Then I guess you’re doing everything you can.”

  She stood and watched as Corso stared out the window, out over Pioneer Square and the mouth of the Duwamish River toward the lights of West Seattle in the distance.

  “The brain itself shows no visible signs of damage, but there is quite a bit of swelling.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means if the swelling continues, they’ll have to relieve the pressure by cutting a hole in her skull.”

  When he looked out the window again, she asked, “Did you know her well?”

  “Yeah…for a while.”

  “Did she have the tattoos then?”

  “Yeah.”

  He knew what she was going to ask before she worked up the courage. “Why would anyone…?” she began.

  “She didn’t volunteer,” Corso said. “Somebody did it to her.”

  He heard her breath catch. “Oh,” she said. “She’s the one who—that guy—he doped her up and…”

  Corso nodded. “Yeah. She’s the one.”

  A few years back, Meg Dougherty had been a successful young photo artist. Already had a couple of hot local shows and was beginning to attract a national following, she was dating a trendy Seattle tattoo artist; guy who kinda looked like Billy Idol. They were the trendy couple. You’d see them all the time in the alternative press: big loopy smiles and sunglasses at night, that kind of thing.

  Unfortunately, while she’d been developing photos, he’d been developing a cocaine habit. When she told him she wanted to break it off, he seemed to take it well. They agreed to have a farewell dinner together. She drank half a glass of wine and—bam—the lights went out. She woke up thirty-six hours later in Providence Hospital: in shock, nearly without vital signs, and tattooed from head to toe with an array of images, designs, and slogans designed to render her body permanently obscene.

  She spent a month in the hospital and, over the past couple of years, had endured endless sessions of laser surgery and dermabrasion to remove the Maori swirl designs from her face and the graphic red lettering from the palms of her hands. The rest of the artwork she was pretty much resigned to living with.

  Corso turned from the window and faced her. “You’ll see to it they leave her alone. That her privacy will be respected.”

  “You have my word, Mr.—”

  “And get her those scrubs.”

  “Consider it done.”

  He reached inside his overcoat and came out with a business card. His name and cell phone number. “If there’s any problem, any change in her condition…”

  “I’ll personally let you know.” She glanced down at the card and furrowed her brow. She stared at the card for a long moment and then figured
it out. “You’re the writer,” she said.

  When she looked up, Corso was gone.

  Tuesday, October 17

  11:22 p.m.

  Mikhail Ivanov had once read in the San Francisco Chronicle that he had killed over forty men with his own hands. He knew this to be an exaggeration. Although he had never kept count, he felt sure the actual figure would be no more than half that number.

  Numbers aside, Mikhail Ivanov harbored few regrets. In his mind, he’d merely done what he did best. He had no head for business. Nico took care of that. Even as a child, Nico had had an extraordinary eye for profit. Where others saw a trickle of coins, Nico saw a torrent of cash. It was as if he had been born with an eye for advantage. As Ivanov saw it, taking care of the details had merely been his part of the business arrangement.

  Of the many tasks he had performed over the years, only one left him feeling cold in the bowels. Perhaps, as Nico often suggested, he was a prude at heart. Little more than a foolish American Bible Belter. Or perhaps, as he had begun to think in recent years, some things were fundamentally against the laws of nature and, as such, had an uncanny way of connecting violators to the universal darkness of the soul.

  Either way, dealing with flesh peddlers made his skin crawl. Tonight’s specimen had come not with recommendation but with a warning. They said he carried a knife and was prepared to use it at the slightest provocation. Faced with the angry withdrawal of their normal source, Ivanov had no choice.

  Standing side by side in the hotel corridor, they looked like father and son. The man was past forty, with the thin face of a penitent and a pair of narrow eyes that never stopped moving. “You the Russian?” he asked.

  Ivanov said he was and pulled the door open, allowing them to enter. The boy wore a red raincoat and matching boots. He was probably twelve or thirteen but small for his age. He had been shaved and scraped to make him look ten, but Nico would be neither fooled nor pleased. Ivanov sighed. “Okay,” he said.

  The man took the boy by the elbows and set him in the chair closest to the door. He took off the boots and then stood him on the carpet. Starting at the bottom, he unfastened the six black clasps holding the coat closed. He folded the coat and laid it on the seat of the chair and put the boots on top.

  The boy now wore nothing but a rhinestone dog collar and a pair of black vinyl underpants. Ivanov inclined his head toward the adjoining door in the far wall and then walked soundlessly across the room and knocked. After a guttural sound from within, he opened the door and ushered the boy inside and closed the door.

  The man stood with his hands in his pockets until Ivanov pulled out a roll of bills and began to count. “Anything he breaks, he pays for,” the man said.

  Ivanov kept counting.

  “I heard some ugly shit,” the guy said.

  Ivanov continued to count.

  10

  Wednesday, October 18

  8:34 a.m.

  Mikhail Ivanov stood in the doorway and watched the flesh peddler. He’d pushed the elevator button three times now, and still it hadn’t arrived. He kept glancing from Ivanov to the boy and back. He whispered something to the boy but got no response.

  From inside the suite, the sound of the shower hissed in Mikhail Ivanov’s ears. He wondered how many showers it would take before he himself felt clean again. Before the stench of perversity managed to work its way out his pores, so he could wash it down the drain once and for all. He sighed.

  A muted ding announced that, at last, the elevator car arrived. The flesh peddler stepped inside. The boy hesitated, looked back down the hall at Ivanov. His small face was knotted like a fist. A hand reached out and pulled him out of sight.

  Ivanov turned away. He closed the door and walked back into the suite. His stomach churned. Standing in the middle of the room, he breathed deeply and thought of his house in Nice. Of the bright blue Mediterranean visible from every window. Of the smells of sand and sea. And of how, before long, he would be free of all this.

  Wednesday, October 18

  1:24 p.m.

  Warren Klein started with an artist’s rendering of Fairmont Hospital, one of those idyllic air-brushed liknesses that appear prior to construction and make the viewer feel as if, illness notwithstanding, he’d like to move right in.

  “This is what the public was promised,” Klein intoned. “A modern state-of-the-art facility of which the community could be proud. A facility whose pediatric surgical expertise could be expected to be a model for future facilities nationwide.”

  Elkins began to rise. Judge Howell waved him back into his seat.

  Klein used an old-fashioned pointer to indicate a section of text at the bottom of the page. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I call your attention to this section of promotional copy at the bottom of the picture.” He turned toward the black glass jury box. “You have been provided with a copy marked PEOPLE’S EXHIBIT ELEVEN.”

  The sounds of the jury shifting in their seats and the rustling of paper filled the air in the nearly silent courtroom. Klein waited for a moment and then began to read. “The design of Fairmont Hospital will include next-generation construction criteria virtually guaranteed to prevent collapse or serious damage in the event of seismic activity.”

  Klein let the tip of the pointer fall to the floor with a click. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the state will show that Fairmont Hospital, which sat less than ten miles from the San Andreas Fault, was in fact constructed without the slightest regard for either seismic activity or human safety.”

  Elkins was on his feet now. “Your Honor, please….”

  Klein raised his voice. “In one of the most seismically volatile areas in the world, this man”—he aimed the pointer at the defense table—“this man, Nicholas Balagula, in order to line his own pockets, falsified both construction and inspection records, putting the lives of nearly four hundred people at constant risk—”

  The judge banged the gavel. “Mr. Klein.”

  “—and eventually leading to the untimely deaths of sixty-three people, forty-one of whom were children.” Klein stood stiff and still, the pointer aimed at the defense table, allowing the gravity of his words to sink into the invisible jurors.

  Satisfied that he’d made his point, Klein reached toward the easel.

  Elkins looked wounded. “If the court please.”

  “Yes, Mr. Elkins,” the judge said.

  “I wish to renew my objection to any further inflammatory images. As you know, I have—”

  The judge cut him off. “As you know, Mr. Elkins, I have already ruled on the matter of the photographs.”

  “Yes, Your Honor, but I’m afraid I must take exception to—”

  “Your exception is noted, Mr. Elkins.” The judge turned his attention to Klein. “Proceed.”

  Once again, Klein addressed the jury directly. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before I proceed, I feel an obligation to prepare you for what is to follow. The images you are about to see are, to say the least”—he pretended to search for a word—“harrowing,” he said finally. “I apologize for their graphic nature and for any undue discomfort which they may cause you.” He was pacing now, working his way from one end of the jury box to the other. “But I can assure you that any pain or discomfort you may experience will pale in comparison to the suffering of the loved ones of those who perished and is virtually insignificant when compared with the final moments of the sixty-three unfortunate souls who died in the collapse of Fairmont Hospital.”

  He walked over to the prosecution table and handed the pointer to Raymond Butler. As he made his way back toward the easel, the room crackled with tension. He gestured toward the idyllic rendering of the hospital. “This is what the good people of Alameda County, California, were promised.” In a single motion he pulled the picture from the easel and leaned it, face in, against the jury box. “This is what they got,” he said, in a loud voice.

  A ground-angle shot, three feet by four feet, in living color, the cru
mbled rear wall of the hospital slightly out of focus in the background. A sea of broken concrete, ribbons of twisted electrical wire, and a single strip of filthy gauze all pulled the eye toward the bottom of the picture, where—poking up from beneath the rubble—was a leg and tiny foot, soft and pink and fat, the ankle encircled by a blue-and-white beaded anklet that read MICHAEL.

  From inside the jury box came a hiccup, quickly followed by a sob. Someone moaned. Rogers and Butler looked away. The judge’s face was ashen. The bailiff at the far end leaned into the jury box and then walked over and whispered in Judge Howell’s ear.

  The judge’s lips were pressed tight as he banged the gavel. “The jury has requested a recess. Court will reconvene at two-thirty this afternoon.”

  Warren Klein beamed as he sauntered over to the prosecution table.

  “For Christ’s sake, Warren, cover that picture up,” Renee Rogers whispered.

  His smile was replaced by astonishment. “Why would I want to do that?” he asked. “I want them to—”

  “You’ve made your point, Warren. Leaving it uncovered is overkill.”

  “She’s right,” Butler added. “There’s a thin line between getting the jury’s attention and offending them.”

  “What a pair of shrinking violets,” Klein scoffed. “No wonder you couldn’t put him away.” He looked over at the Balagula contingent. “With an animal like that, you’ve got to fight fire with fire.”

  Renee Rogers opened her mouth to argue, changed her mind, and instead pushed past Klein, walked over to the easel, and covered the picture. Klein followed her, his neck getting progressively redder as he crossed the room.

  His whisper could be heard all over the courtroom. “Are you forgetting who’s in charge here?” he demanded.

  “With you reminding everyone, Warren, one could hardly forget.”

  She stood her ground. Klein stepped in, nose to nose. “I’m going to put that little foot right up Balagula’s ass,” he said. “You just watch me.” He curled his lips into a sneer, turned, and walked back to the table, where he gathered his notes into his briefcase. “Lunch?” he inquired.