‘Foggy.’ He said nothing more.
‘Lou,’ I told him, ‘you have a pistol in your hand. Everyone wants to point a gun at me tonight. Before midnight it must have been several years since I even saw a gun. Now, tonight, I’ve already seen two.’
‘Well,’ Lou responded, ‘it’s that time of year. You know, Valentimes.’
That’s how he pronounced the word.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘this is a particularly depressing season. Still. Do you really need the gun?’
He didn’t move from his place. ‘Depends,’ he said.
‘On what?’ I wanted to know.
‘What is it that wakes me up out of a sound drunk at this time of night?’ He shifted his weight. ‘You said it’s life or death, but whose life? Or, more importantly, what death?’
‘You know about Lynette Baker.’
‘She’s not dead,’ he said right back. ‘She had a baby. She’s in the hospital.’
‘Alas, she is not. I’ve just been in the hospital.’ I shoved my hand into my coat pocket, partly to appear nonchalant, partly to feel the somewhat larger pistol I had there, just in case.
‘That’s what I thought.’ He sighed. ‘That damned Maggie.’
‘Look, Lynette took her baby away from the hospital, and the baby needs medicine, like, now. That’s the death I mentioned.’
‘Oh.’ Lou looked confused.
‘So I’m in kind of a hurry.’
‘Sometimes I forget that you’re legit.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I mean, I’ve known a few shady characters, and you seem more like a crook than a cop.’
‘Currently,’ I explained, ‘I’m not either one. I’m just looking for Lynette Baker.’
‘And her baby.’
‘And, more importantly, her baby,’ I concurred.
Lou sighed very heavily. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but his little silver pistol was on my mind. I saw in his face a couple of hundred nights just like this one; he was drunk, someone was pestering him, he was trying to figure what to do. A junkie only wanted dope at that time of night. A drunk usually wanted trouble. To prove that point, Lou raised his little silver pistol and aimed it right at my head.
‘The problem is,’ he told me, in a worried kind of voice, ‘that you have no idea what you’re getting into.’
‘I don’t?’ I moved my hand very slowly in my pocket, but all the while I was thinking, Is my gun loaded? Did I switch on the safety? Does it have a problem of any sort, such as a pull to the left or right, which could be very irritating?
‘No, Foggy,’ he assured me in a very sober-sounding manner, ‘you don’t.’
‘Well then,’ I said reasonably, ‘I won’t get into anything. All I want is the kid. And I don’t even really want that. I just want to see that the kid gets medicine and doesn’t die. If the kid dies, Lynette is in for a bad time and I’m in for loads of paperwork, which I hate. Whatever else it is that I might have stumbled into, I don’t care. You’re a murderer, you’re a slaver, you’re Satan, I don’t care. Mazel tov, seriously. Here’s the deal: kid plus medicine equals me disappearing, right? So come on.’
He hesitated. That was good.
‘No,’ he said very slowly, ‘I’ll get into a world of crap.’
‘I see.’ He was obviously on the horns of a dilemma. ‘So how about this, I’ll just tell you what I know, anything that comes into my head, and then maybe you’ll want to tell me something. How would that be?’
‘I–I don’t know what you’re saying.’ But he lowered the pistol. ‘I don’t see how that will help.’
‘Well,’ I allowed, ‘maybe it won’t. But sometimes I get lucky. So here I go. Lynette went to the hospital a few days ago after she had a baby. They gave her morphine for the pain, which was fine by her. Sadly, the baby’s sick, so they had to keep everyone in the hospital for a while. Lynette began to ask for the morphine but since she was out of the woods in the baby-having department, they nixed the dope. So she grabbed the kid, skated away from the hospital, and went straight to Jody. My feeling is that you know Jody. Lynette bought stuff from Jody and shot up, which then made her want a donut. How am I doing so far?’
Lou’s shoulders slumped. I took this as a sign that my nimble guesswork had been at least partially accurate. And there it was again: the luck.
‘But the baby was wailing. Lynette, by this time, was in a very calm state, but she could still tell there was something wrong with her newborn tyke.’
Lou’s eyes darted for a split second into his apartment, and I realized that I was something of an idiot.
‘Wait,’ I said, ‘I think I might have gotten my order of things wrong. She left the hospital, came to you, to the alley behind the donut shop, and asked you to keep the kid while she went to score because the kid was making such a racket. And now you have the baby, it’s asleep or unconscious, and Lynette is solid gone.’
Lou looked up, and I was very surprised to see tears in his eyes.
‘I can’t wake the little thing up,’ he said, and I could tell that he was about to blubber like Baby Huey.
‘Let’s have a look.’ I moved so quickly that he was startled, which was bad. He twitched and his gun went off.
The gunshot from such a little piece was more like a firecracker than a firearm, but I was still momentarily taken aback. I checked for a second to see if I had any holes in my suit. I did not.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and he blushed. ‘You want some coffee? You look tired.’
The gun had been pointed at the floor, and the floor had a nice hole in it.
‘I could use a cup,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been up since dawn so I’m nearing the twenty-four-hour mark. I take a spoon of sugar.’
Lou turned and stumbled into his pad. I followed.
Of all the wrecks I had seen that particular evening, his place was the worst. It looked like someone was using his living room as a landfill. I could find no discernable furniture under the garbage, there was nothing on the walls, and he only had a single, crummy lamp for light. The lamp was made from an old bottle of Chianti, the kind with straw around the bottle.
Lou ambled toward the kitchen area; I stood my ground in the living area.
‘Where’s the kid, Lou?’ I asked, sighing.
He shuffled my way and handed me the cup. I took it and drank half in one gulp. It burned my mouth a little, and it had way too much sugar, but I didn’t care.
‘Where’s the kid?’ I asked again.
He pointed with his pistol, like it was stuck to his hand.
‘She’s back there,’ he said softly, and headed for what I could only imagine would be the bedroom.
I followed, and the bedroom was no better than the other room, except that I could see a bed. All around it there was a sea of papers and pizza boxes and items of clothing. The television was on with the sound way down low, and by the blue light of the screen I could see that Lou had cleared away a kind of halo in the middle of the bed around a very still baby.
I zipped over to the nipper and put my hand on its chest. There was a little tiny cricket of a heart still beating there, and I instantly figured the kid for a trouper. I looked up at Lou, and the tears were streaming down his face.
‘Lynette said she’d be back in half an hour, but that was I don’t know how long ago,’ he managed to tell me between sobs.
‘At the moment, I couldn’t care less where she is,’ I explained to Lou, scooping up the kid. ‘She could drop dead, but I have to take this little thing back to the hospital.’
‘I–I don’t know,’ Lou said. ‘I promised Lynette I would keep it here.’
‘Do you want it to die, Lou?’ I said sharply. ‘Is this what you want?’
‘No, but you don’t know what’s what.’
‘As I have already explained,’ I shot right back, ‘I don’t care what’s what. Out of my way.’
‘No,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think I can do that.’
Suddenly the little silver pisto
l was right in my face, and me with an arm full of baby.
‘Put it down, Foggy.’
‘It’s going to die, Lou,’ I told him, in no uncertain terms.
‘Put it down, and go get its medicine. That’s what to do. You put it down, and I’ll stay right here, and you nip over to the hospital, get a can of the medicine or whatever, and zip back here. That’s what to do.’
He was shaking a little. Maybe he was cold, or maybe it was the DTs.
‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘Good idea. That’s just what I’ll do.’
I set the baby back down in its halo. It didn’t move a whisker. I straightened up, shook my head, and turned around.
‘Lou,’ I said, looking straight into his eyes, ‘I like you. You make a nice donut, you’re apparently something of a good guy, and I know you’re trying to do the right thing.’
He nodded. ‘I am.’
‘So I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry about what?’ he asked me.
I took a deep breath. With the back of my hand I slapped the pistol out of his fist. It clattered against the wall and went off again. I produced my gun, the gun I got off the kid in the pool hall, and, sure enough, the safety was never on in the first place. I put the gun next to Lou’s kneecap and squeezed the trigger. The gun made a very loud noise and, a split second later, so did Lou.
There was blood and gunpowder on my pants, and a pretty uncomfortable mess all over Lou’s leg. Before he could stop screaming, I hit him in the side of the head with the butt of my gun. I bopped him pretty hard, but it only startled him. He stopped screaming and looked right at me. He had a kind of Why did you do that? question in his eyes. I popped him again harder, and those eyes rolled back. He dropped to the floor of his bedroom on top of a mountain of dirty clothes.
I put the gun back in my pocket and grabbed up a sweater from right where Lou was lying. I wrapped it around his bad knee real tight. Then I rummaged a bit to find a pair of pants, and used those to do the same thing over the sweater. This was not my first time performing such an act, so it only took twenty or thirty seconds.
I hopped right up, turned around, scooped up the kid again, and spied a phone by the bed.
In a flash I dialed the direct number for Maggie Redhawk at her nurse’s desk. It took a minute, but she answered.
‘Maggie—’ she began.
‘I got the kid,’ I interrupted her. ‘I’m coming right now. It’s not moving, but it’s still got a heartbeat. And send an ambulance right away to the apartments on Baker, top floor. I’ll leave the door open. Lou Yahola’s bleeding bad.’
‘Foggy?’ she said, a little slow on the uptake.
‘I’m coming right now,’ I said again. ‘Have the medicine ready, OK?’
I hung up before she could answer.
SEVEN
I ran like a football player over the wet streets, only I was carrying a comatose baby in my arms instead of a pigskin. I felt like I was in a dream. The lights were vague, the moon had gone behind clouds, the air was cold and damp as a crypt.
After a couple of blocks I could hear a rattle in my throat, and I was wheezing like a broken concertina. I couldn’t figure why I was so winded, or why the street seemed like an appealing bed.
Another turn and I could see the lights of the hospital. I was completely done in, and I couldn’t see straight. I squeezed my eyes shut to try and clear the cotton balls out of my head. I thought maybe I could manage to yell before I went down, and someone from the emergency dock might hear me. Maybe.
Somehow, I kept running. I could hear the clop of my Florsheims on the pavement. In the distance, the noise of the hospital was beginning to get clearer. Then, like a lighthouse keeper or a sea captain’s widow, there was Nurse Maggie Redhawk. She was standing at the double doors of the emergency entrance, and she was barking out orders. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, but for some reason that gave me the extra juice to kick into the last few yards and, before I knew it, I was handing over the little package of baby to a gaggle of medical personnel.
Maggie and I managed a bit of eye contact, just before I sank into the Dead Sea.
By the time I swam back to the surface, it was day. I was lying on a gurney near the nurses’ station and the light was killing me. I was covered up with a sheet, but it wasn’t over my face so I figured I wasn’t dead.
I sat up. I couldn’t understand why I had passed out, or stayed out for so long. And the worst of it was that I felt like I had a hangover, only without the benefit of having had a nice evening before.
I threw my legs over the side of the gurney and noticed, with no small bit of pique, that I had torn the right knee of my pants. As I was running my index finger over it, I heard a familiar, if unusually agitated, voice.
‘Who do you think you are?’
I turned my head in the direction of the question and realized that my neck was stiff as a statue.
‘This is a question?’ I asked her back.
Maggie Redhawk appeared at my side with a hypodermic in one hand and a little white paper cup filled with pills in the other.
‘No, I mean,’ she said, clearly angry, ‘who do you think you are?’
‘Should I check my wallet?’
‘You can’t run around all hours, get in a fight, shoot a guy, and run five blocks in the cold and damp,’ she growled. ‘Not at your age!’
‘My age?’ I looked around, imploring strangers. ‘Why is everyone talking about my age? I’m not even forty!’
‘But you’re supposed to be an adult,’ Maggie said.
‘And anyway, how would you know I got into a fight?’
‘It’s a very small town, Igmo, and I’m a very large girl.’ This was her explanation, given to me whilst she was shoving the sleeves of my suit coat and shirt up, and sticking me with the needle.
‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘What are you shooting me with?’
‘It’s a B-12,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel better. I already gave you an antibiotic and a pain shot.’
‘That’s why I slept?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You slept because somebody gave you enough tranquilizer to knock out Secretariat. I think it was Seconal.’
So Lou gave me more than sugar in my coffee.
‘Seconal? You gave me a blood test?’
‘You’re not really the type to faint like a girl,’ she said, without the slightest hint of humor. ‘And I smelled red cedar on your breath. You eat a closet last night?’
‘Seconal smells like cedar?’
She finally looked me in the eye. ‘I got lucky. It was a guess.’
‘Well, sometimes a person can get lucky,’ I agreed. ‘So what time is it?’
‘After noon, just barely.’
‘What’re these pills?’ I took the little paper cup from her fingertips.
‘You have to know everything?’
She wiped off the place where she gave me the shot, and my sleeves fell back into place.
‘I just don’t want to feel out of it all day,’ I told her. ‘I have a hair appointment.’
She glanced at my pate. ‘Seriously? That hair? Take the damn pills.’
‘All right,’ I acquiesced, ‘but I have stuff to do today.’
I popped back the pills without water and swallowed.
‘Such as?’ she wanted to know.
‘Such as where is Lynette Baker?’ I ran my hand through my hair in an attempt to make it look less like a bird’s nest.
‘Why do you care?’ Maggie said in a much softer voice than she had been using. ‘You saved the baby. That was your job. Go home. Christ.’
‘The baby’s OK?’
Maggie shrugged. ‘The baby’s alive. Which she wouldn’t be if you hadn’t got her here. The fact is, things don’t look that great for the long term. The kid was unconscious for a while, probably has some brain damage – I mean, on top of whatever other problems she’s got thanks to having been born with heroin in her blood.’
‘Well.’ I hoppe
d down off the gurney and straightened my clothes. ‘This is why I want to find Lynette Baker. I’d like to pop her in the head first, and then I’d like to see can I help her out of the hole she’s in.’
‘I see.’ Maggie sounded highly suspicious. ‘You’re a Samaritan.’
‘In fact,’ I retorted, ‘I am more Sephardic, but that has very little to do with my quest. I have paperwork, and I have a boss, and I wish to get both off my back as soon as possible.’
‘You should go home and sleep.’ Now she sounded weird not mad anymore – something else.
‘I just slept, Maggie,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘What’s up?
‘What do you mean?’ She wouldn’t look me in the eye.
‘I mean, why don’t you want me to find Lynette Baker? Last night—’
‘Last night,’ she whispered, ‘I wanted you to find the baby. I’m the nurse in charge. You think you’re the only one with a boss and paperwork? That’s all there is to it. You found the baby. Job well done. The rest of it …’
I looked around. I took a breath. This is what some people will tell you when you’re about to do something stupid: count to ten or take a deep breath. You’ll keep yourself from saying something you could regret. So I changed my tack.
‘How’s our friend Lou Yahola?’ I asked her calmly.
‘How do I know?’ She was really straining to avoid eye contact at this point. ‘He’s gone.’
‘He’s not here? He got shot. He really ought to be, you know, in the hospital.’
‘He was here,’ she said, so soft I could hardly hear. ‘He was treated in emergency and then he left.’
‘He left?’ I asked her. ‘I shot his knee. He couldn’t walk.’
‘Someone came to get him.’ She started to leave.
I took her arm. ‘Who came to get him, Maggie?’
‘Tribal Council,’ she said, squirming out of my grasp. ‘He’s in the swamp somewhere – holed up. He’s gone, Foggy. They have Lynette too. I shouldn’t have told you anything. Forget it. That’s your best bet. Go home, and I mean it.’
She moved very quickly back to the nurses’ station and busied herself with something or other right away. I could tell by looking at her that I wouldn’t get anything more on the subject. Maybe not ever.
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