I turned my back on it, glanced at Alathea’s neighbor. An old woman, as shriveled as a mummy, asleep and snoring. It surprised me to find that I had pity left to spare for her. She looked like she’d outlived herself long ago.
I wiped my face with my hands and went back to Alathea’s half of the room.
Lona wasn’t crying anymore. She sat in a chair beside the bed and held Alathea’s hand as if both their lives depended on it. Ginny remained with her, standing behind her and gripping her shoulders with both hands—trying to squeeze some kind of strength into her exhausted body. I watched them for a minute or two, hunting for a way to tell them I was leaving.
I didn’t get a chance. The door swung open.
Looking like a campaign poster, Stretto strode into the room.
“I came as soon as I heard.” Maybe my ears were tricking me. I could’ve sworn his voice echoed in the room. Somehow he got past Ginny without actually pushing her aside. “Mrs. Axbrewder, I’m terribly sorry. All of us at the board are just heartsick.”
He took her hands away from Alathea, held both of them himself. From where I stood, he looked like he was asking her to vote for him.
“In a way, I feel responsible. If Ms. Fistoulari hadn’t alerted us, we would never have known this could happen. We should have realized it ourselves months ago and taken steps to prevent it. I promise you, Mrs. Axbrewder, I will use every resource at my command as chairman to make sure this kind of thing stops.”
God save me from politicians. I wanted to slug him. But Ginny was in better control of the situation. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Stretto.” The lash of her voice cut all his blather to pieces. “Now I’d like to hear how you knew she was here.”
Which was a very good question.
But he was innocent the way only a politician can be. “The police called me. Since you and I spoke yesterday, I’ve been doing my best to prod them into action. I even spoke to the commissioner.” He was still campaigning. “In no uncertain terms, I told him my opinion of the way this case has been handled. Now it appears that he made my feelings clear to the officer in charge, a Detective Acton. This Acton called me earlier, no doubt trying to compensate for his former inadequacy by keeping me informed.”
Acton, huh? That name cropped up too often. I wondered just how many people he’d told about Alathea.
First things first. “Mr. Stretto,” I said, “how many people did you tell that Alathea is here?”
He started to answer, but a knock at the door interrupted him.
I went over to it, yanked it open.
Ted Hangst stood outside.
I started to say, What the hell is this? Open house? But he caught my arm, jerked me out of the room. Or tried to anyway. People as short as he is can’t actually move me around by brute force. I let him get me into the hall. After I’d closed the door behind me, I took a good look at him.
If he’d had any sleep—not to mention food—since I last saw him, it didn’t show. There was fever in his eyes, and his hand on my arm trembled no matter how hard he held on to me.
“Ted,” I asked, “what the hell’s wrong?”
“Her answering service told me where you were. I’ve been looking for you all afternoon.”
“Looking for us? Why?”
“Why the fuck do you think?” He was more than just feverish. He was hostile and excited. “Because you hotshots have been wrong about this thing from the beginning. That’s why I gave up on you. Instead I’ve been talking to people.”
“So have I. I didn’t get anywhere.”
“Hotshot!” he spat. He was also desperate. “You were talking to the wrong people. You and Fistoulari never figured out why Mittie was kidnapped.”
I was in no mood to play games with him, but I didn’t let it show. He was stretched to the breaking point, and I didn’t want to tighten him any more. He had something to tell me, something he was going to say as soon as he found a way. I gritted my teeth and didn’t touch him. “That’s true.”
“You’ve got drugs on the brain. You’re so hung up on heroin you can’t see what’s going on.”
“Tell me, Ted.” Softly, softly. “What’s going on?”
“Prostitution!” The word made him so mad that he turned purple. “She wasn’t kidnapped by a pusher. She was kidnapped by a pimp! He just uses drugs to control girls, make them do what he wants. What his customers want. They’re all sick!”
He fell into a fit of coughing—or maybe it was sobbing—and for a long minute he couldn’t go on. It wracked him pretty hard. When he got his breath back, a lot of the hostility was gone.
“It’s killing me, Brew.” He sounded faint. “There are actually men in this city who want to screw thirteen-year-old girls. They want to screw my daughter. Or worse.”
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I caught hold of the front of his coat, yanked him off the ground until his face was level with mine. Through my teeth, I hissed, “What did you find out?”
I didn’t scare him. He was past being scared. And he didn’t get mad, either. He was too tired. “I’m sorry, Brew. I keep forgetting about your niece. I didn’t get much. Just a description of the pimp. Or his front man. The guy who lines up the customers. He’s the one you talk to if you want—want to—”
I put him down, straightened his coat. “Tell me what he looks like, Ted.”
Dully he said, “Tall guy. Red hair, curly. Freckles. His name’s supposed to be Sven Last.”
I didn’t listen to the name. Instead I concentrated on the description.
For a second it paralyzed me. I stood frozen while images of a man with red hair and freckles played inside my head.
He went into Alathea’s room. Dr. Stevens—
Then I saw him come out of the room, walk away down the hall. There was something wrong with that picture, something I should’ve noticed before.
His hands—
They were in his pockets. Both of them.
Then I moved. Snatched open the door, charged into Alathea’s room.
“Ginny!” I barked, “he left his bag!”
Lona and Stretto stared at me as if I were a lunatic. I ignored them, focused on Ginny. “That doctor was a fake. Stevens. He left his bag in here.”
It took one more second to reach her. Then she whirled, started hunting.
In an instant, she dived under Alathea’s bed and came up with a black medical bag in both hands. Carefully she put it on the edge of the bed, snapped it open.
We all watched her—me, Ted, Stretto, Lona. We all saw what was in the bag.
Three sticks of dynamite and some kind of detonating mechanism. The mechanism was ticking.
Lona fainted. Stretto caught hold of the bars at the end of the bed as if he were about to join her. I ignored them both, concentrated on Ginny. The detonator didn’t look familiar. In any case, I didn’t know much about detonators. Neither did she.
The one thing I did know is that you don’t try to disarm a bomb if you have no idea what you’re doing.
The whole scene didn’t seem real to me. I couldn’t believe it. Things like this don’t happen right in the middle of the afternoon.
“Ginny,” I said. Even to myself, I sounded like I was strangling. “Tell me what to do.”
She stood up straight, closed the bag, snapped it shut. Carrying it by the handle, she walked out into the middle of the room.
“Ted,” she ordered evenly, “go to the nurses’ station. Tell them we’ve got a bomb in here. They have to call the cops. I’ll keep in this room. Tell them to get everybody out. Start next door on either side and work away from here. I don’t know how much damage this thing can do.
“Go!”
He went.
“Stretto!” She had his number now. Her voice cut into him and brought out the decisive man who’d let us see the files. “Take Lona. As far away as you can, the opposite side of the building.”
He didn’t hesitate. He scooped Lona up in his arms, started for the door. By th
e time he reached the hall, he was running.
“Brew, get the window open.”
The window. Great idea. Toss the bomb outside where it couldn’t get Alathea. I practically threw myself at the glass.
It was built into a heavy frame, opened and closed with a crank. But the crank wasn’t there.
The window was open a crack at the top. I reached up and hooked my fingers over the edge of the frame. Next I braced my feet against the sill.
Then I ripped the damn thing out of the wall.
After that I remembered the sun roof.
I turned to Ginny, panted, “You can’t. There are people down there.”
She didn’t flinch. “I don’t know when this thing is going off.”
I whirled back to the opening, leaned out, and yelled loud enough to tear my lungs, “Get away! Go inside! Get off the roof!”
A couple of people looked up at me. The rest didn’t seem to hear a thing.
“Brew!” Ginny snapped. “Get Alathea out of here. Then this woman. Tell the nurses to clear out those people.”
I jumped at Alathea’s bed, tried to move it. It had wheels, but they were locked. I spent precious seconds kicking off the latches. Then the bed rolled. The IV stands were built into the frame, and the bottles clinked against the poles, but the needles in her arms were safe. Heaving my weight against the bed, I guided it through the doorway and out into the hall.
A moment later Ted and Stretto came toward me. “Take her!” I shouted at them. “Tell the nurses to clear that goddamned sun roof!”
They caught the bed by its corners, and I turned and rushed back into the room.
Ginny knelt at the window, bent over below the level of the sill. Her right arm was hooked over the sill. Using the wall to protect herself, she held the bag out the window.
“You’ll kill yourself!” I shouted.
“What do you want me to do?” Her voice was flat and fatal. “Drop it? I’ll kill everybody down there.”
I didn’t argue. I went to the old woman’s bed, snapped off the latches.
By the time I got her out the door, a nurse appeared beside me. She was pale with fear, but she didn’t let that stop her. “I’ll take her,” she said, voice shaking. “She’s an old woman. If she wakes up with all this going on and doesn’t see a familiar face, she’ll be terrified.”
I gave the bed a shove for momentum and let the nurse have it. Scrambling on all fours to keep my head below the sill, I went back to Ginny. ,
When I reached her, I said, “Let me do it. You’re too important to waste.”
She fixed her eyes straight at me. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to lose you like this.”
For a moment I didn’t obey. I couldn’t—couldn’t leave her like that. But I didn’t have any choice. If we both got killed, who would nail the bastard who caused all this?
“For God’s sake, Ginny,” I said. “Use your other hand.”
I watched while she carefully shifted positions, moved the bag into her left hand. Then I started to crawl away.
I was halfway across the room when the dynamite went off.
The concussion knocked me flat. I thought my eardrums had ruptured—I couldn’t hear a thing. All of a sudden the air was full of dust and sunshine and silence. Hunks of plaster dropped from the ceiling. Cracks marked the wall above and below the window. More cracks ran along the ceiling. Nevertheless everything held. I couldn’t tell whether any brick had been blasted off the wall outside onto the sun roof, but I didn’t hear any screaming.
Ginny lay beside me. White plaster dust covered her like a shroud. At first her eyes were open. Her lips said, “Brew,” without making any sound. Then her head rolled to the side.
Her left hand was gone. Nothing remained of her forearm except mangled meat. But her heart went on beating. Blood pumped out of her stump onto the floor. It looked like all the blood in the world.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I clamped my hand around her arm just below the elbow and squeezed with all my strength until the bleeding stopped.
I Hung onto her like that until help arrived.
PART FOUR
Friday Night/Saturday Morning
15
While the doctors took Ginny to surgery, I stayed where I was, sitting on the floor in the gutted room with my back against one wall, staring through the dusty air at nothing. The doctors had wanted to take me down to Emergency, examine me for possible concussion, shock, hearing loss, whatever. I’d refused. I was in some kind of shock, no question about it. But they couldn’t do anything to help me. I didn’t even want them to touch me. I sat with my back against the wall, staring at nothing. Like a drunk.
Before long the door opened and Ted came into the room. He stood close to me, but I didn’t have the strength to raise my head, so all I saw of him was his old jacket and his stale shirt and his ratty tie. For a couple of minutes he just stood there. His awkward hands twitched once or twice, but he didn’t say anything. Then he managed to force out a few words.
“Stretto left.”
I didn’t answer. If there were an answer anywhere in the room, I didn’t have it.
“Before he left”—Ted sounded like someone had gone over his vocal cords with a rasp—“he gave me a message for you. He said he wants you and Ginny to vote for him. The next time he runs for something.”
Vote for him. Dear God in Heaven.
“Brew.” Ted was pleading with me, but I had no response to give him. “Brew, get up. We’ve got to find Mittie.” He didn’t seem real enough to move me. The only thing I could see in the dust and the late afternoon sunlight was the blood pumping out of Ginny’s forearm.
But then I saw something else too. Thin silver streaks that fell and splashed on the floor. They made me look up.
Tears oozed from Ted’s face like booze-sweat.
He had the power to move me after all.
They all had power—Stretto, Acton, Ginny, even Ted. They could all make other people feel fear or grief or respect. The bastard who did this to Alathea sure as hell had power. I was the only exception. I didn’t have any of my own, so I lived off other people’s. And when I couldn’t get that, I accepted the most convenient substitute. Convenient and forgiving. Alcohol. Being drunk.
I didn’t seem to have any choice about it. I was on my feet.
“Brew,” Ted said, “you look terrible.” He tried to smile.
That finished the job. Despite myself, I started to function again. “I look terrible? How long has it been since you had anything to eat?”
He shrugged. Food was irrelevant. “We’ve got to find Mittie.”
“We’re going to. As soon as I know Ginny’s all right. But while I’m waiting I’m going to take you down to the cafeteria and put food in you if I have to shove it down your throat.”
He attempted another smile. “Sure, hotshot. But before you do anything you might regret, you ought to take a look at yourself.”
The mirror in the bathroom had survived the blast. When I looked in it, I saw what Ted was getting at. Plaster powder caked me so thickly that I looked like a spook. White dust made the rims of my eyes and my gums look red as fever.
I slapped at my clothes a couple of times, and spent a minute coughing. Then I ran water in the sink, washed my face and hands, dried them on some paper towels. I still looked like I’d just climbed out of a ruin, but at least I was clean enough to get by.
With Ted behind me, I left the room.
A second later I remembered something and went back. After hunting around the room for a minute, I found Ginny’s purse. I fished out the keys to the Olds and took the purse with me.
After all the confusion, things in the hospital were starting to get back to normal. Cops poured in, but at the nurses’ station some people had already resumed doing paperwork. I told them where I was going, and asked them to get word to me as soon as Ginny came out of surgery. Then I took Ted down to the cafeteria and bought us both supper.
>
Not because either of us was hungry. I had as much trouble as he did choking down whatever it was the hospital called food. But we had a long night ahead of us, and we couldn’t afford to collapse. A long night—and the only part of it I was sure of was the part where I intended to knock heads with Detective-Lieutenant Acton. So I chewed away at some kind of cardboard-and-sawdust sandwich until it disintegrated in my mouth, and whenever Ted pushed his plate away I pushed it back in front of him. And all the time I couldn’t help thinking that the two of us together made a pretty poor replacement for Ginny Fistoulari.
If we had any alternatives, I couldn’t figure them out.
I was in the middle of repeating my threat to force-feed Ted when a man the size of a small tank appeared in the doorway, and in a voice like a bulldozer with the cutout open said, “Axbrewder.”
Acton. When he saw me looking at him, he beckoned for me with two middle fingers of his right hand. “I want you.”
Ted glanced back and forth between Acton and me with something like nausea in his face, but I didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions. “Stick with me,” I whispered. Then I got up and left the cafeteria.
Acton was waiting in the hall. As I came through the doors, he started to say something, but when he saw Ted following me, he changed it. “This is private, Axbrewder.”
I stopped in front of him, looked at the dull glare in his eyes, at the way his jaws were clamped together. “No way,” I said. “I need a witness who can tell the judge you hit me first.”
His fists came out like pistons, caught hold of my jacket, rammed me against the wall. “Listen, Mick,” he growled, “I’m the law, remember? I can have you locked up so fast it’ll make you piss yourself. I said this is private.”
I didn’t struggle. I didn’t even want to. I just stared him straight in the face. When he started to feel hesitant because I wasn’t resisting, I said, “My partner got her hand blown off. My niece is in a coma. Do you really expect me to just walk away from it?”
He held me for another ten seconds. Then he took a deep breath through his teeth and backed up.
The Man Who Killed His Brother Page 17