I had to admit, though, that there was work going on. It was Saturday morning, and there seemed to have been some sort of gang “altercation” the night before. Bored-looking cops kept going past, bringing in handcuffed men—most of them young, all of them black—pulling or pushing them across the tile floor and disappearing down one hallway or another. Most of the prisoners had angry, sullen looks on their faces; a few screamed obscenities to which no one paid the slightest attention.
Lieutenant Theodosian wasn’t in. “Medical leave,” the desk man said. “Hasn’t been here for months.” He consulted first a list on a clipboard, and then a large calendar taped to the counter in front of him. “Doesn’t say when he’ll be back.”
“But—”
The phone rang and he picked it up, listened a moment, and told whoever it was that they’d have to come in and talk to a detective in person. He hung up and turned away.
“Hey!” I said.
He turned back. “You still here? I thought I—”
“You did. But I just talked to Theodosian, about a case. Yesterday morning, about seven o’clock.”
“Not yesterday morning. Not here.”
“No, not here. At Eleventh and State. You know, because of the remodeling. I thought it was a homicide, but turns out it was a battery.”
“Remodeling?” He leaned forward and peered at me. “What case? What’s the victim’s name?”
“I don’t know. I just—”
“You got any ID, pal?”
“Driver’s license.” I dug it out and gave it to him. Cooperation’s my middle name.
He took my license and studied it, then handed it back. “You oughta leave now, Mr. Foley,” he said, “unless you got helpful information about a case … or proof someone here asked you to come in.”
I was fresh out of both of those, too, so again I moved on.
* * *
ACCORDING TO THE ID TAG clipped to her shirt, the name of the receptionist who’d given me the choice of a Sun-Times or a Playgirl while I’d waited for Theodosian the previous morning had been Angelica Ruiz.
I drove back to Eleventh and State. The same fat cop with the same fat .357 Magnum was guarding the entrance. “Remember me, officer?” I asked. “Yesterday morning?”
He stared. “Yep.”
“I was in a bad mood,” I said. “Gave you a peace sign.”
“I remember.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Didn’t bother me. I don’t give a shit people wanna be assholes.” So it wasn’t clout that got him this soft assignment after all, it was tolerance and people skills.
“I was on my way up, yesterday, to see an investigator named Theodosian.”
“If you said that I don’t remember it. Anyway, what’s the deal? Who cares?”
“Just making talk,” I said. “Gotta go up again and see Ms. Ruiz. See if I left my … my keys up there.”
“Ruiz worked in Internal Affairs, but she ain’t up there. That floor’s empty as of today. They’ll be hauling out the furniture today and tomorrow. Ruiz coulda gone with IAD, or she coulda been transferred anywhere. One of the districts. Who knows? You’d be damn lucky to find her … or your keys.”
Luck was one more thing I was fresh out of, so I went home.
* * *
ABOUT NOON I CALLED Breaker Hanafan’s number, but got an answering machine. “Call me,” I said. “I want to visit the patient. Until then,” I added, “no deal. Period.”
I hung up and called Renata. It was Saturday, but she was in her office. I told her I was going ahead with the petition. “I want a hearing as soon as possible.”
“No way,” she said.
“Why not? All they have to do is complete my deposition. What else is there to do?”
“They’ve identified six or seven people they’re going to call as witnesses—mostly cops and relatives of the one who was killed that night. They want to show the effect of your continuing refusal to help identify the guilty parties.”
“So,” I said, “let them call their witnesses.”
“But we have to depose them first, see what they’re going to say.”
“We know what they’re going to say. They’ll say they’re still suffering and it’s my fault that they can’t get ‘closure.’ I don’t want deps, just a hearing.”
“I can’t even think about it right now. I have a huge drug conspiracy trial starting in a few days. I simply won’t be able to get to your case for at least a month. Maybe longer.”
“Fine. Then I’ll represent myself.”
“That would be consistent,” she said. “All along you’ve been acting like a fool.”
And Renata hadn’t even been in last night’s dream.
CHAPTER
20
I SPENT SATURDAY AFTERNOON trying to think up a plan of action, keeping busy while I thought, though, to make sure the day wasn’t a total loss.
So I worked out for a couple of hours, reminded by the shots I’d taken to the side of the head Wednesday night to pay special attention to my neck and shoulder muscles. After that I set out for a run along Sheridan Road. My route took me through the Northwestern campus, where students by the thousands had fled their dorms for the warm sunshine. The crowded sidewalks and jogging paths irritated me; or maybe all those chattering young persons in shorts and T-shirts made me feel a little lonely, or at loose ends or something. Whatever. I cut the run short.
Back at the coach house, I called the Lady to invite myself over for supper that evening, but she wasn’t in. So after a shower I settled down to work out the chords for some more Cole Parter tunes from a book the Lady had given me for Christmas. That carried me through until time to head back to the piano at Miz Becky’s. It was a busy night there, mostly the usual neighborhood crowd.
All in all, things went fairly well. No one showed up to ambush me or threaten me. But no plan showed up, either.
* * *
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when I got home. I wasn’t happy to see the gate unlocked and standing open, but then I spotted someone pacing the crushed stone drive. Layla. She had a cell phone in her hand, and I was certain she had a partner watching out the attic window, where the shade was still up. By the time I’d parked up by the coach house, Layla had closed and locked the gate and was headed for the Lady’s house. She was talking on the phone, and didn’t even look my way as she went by. The Lady was taking this security stuff pretty seriously—and I was glad she was.
“Excuse me,” I called. “Layla?”
She stopped and turned around. She wore a pants outfit like the coveralls the guys wear at Caesar Scallopino’s body shop, except hers was sort of shiny purple in the darkness—and she filled it out differently. “Yes?” she said.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” The first conversation I’d taken a stab at that day since Renata told me I wasn’t very bright.
“Uh-huh.” She slipped the phone into a little holster on her hip. “I guess so.”
“I mean, just feel that breeze off the lake,” I said.
She looked around as though the idea of feeling cool night breeze were new to her. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s cold.” The conversation was really picking up.
“Hear that?” I pointed off to the east, beyond the Lady’s house. “Those are waves on the lake, lapping up onto the shore.”
“Right,” she said. “I have to go now.” She turned and started up the drive.
“Hold on a minute,” I called. She stopped and faced me again. “Would you ask the Lady to call me? I mean, if she’s still up.”
“I’d ask her, but she ain’t … I mean, she isn’t home.”
“Oh?” Surprising. The Lady’s big on operas and concerts and the like, but was generally home by this time. “Well, whenever she gets home. I don’t care how late it is. Tell her it’s very important.”
“Um, sure,” she said. “Soon as I see her.” She smiled and walked away. Not much of a smile, but the best I’d seen in forty-eight hours
or so. Things were looking up.
* * *
THERE WAS ONE MESSAGE on my answering machine. “About visiting your friend,” Breaker said, “call me. And use your cell phone.”
I punched out his number and he answered right away. “I don’t have a cell phone,” I said. “I’m calling from my kitchen.”
“Shit. Don’t you know your line might be—”
“So might yours,” I said. “This one, at least, I’ve checked out as well as I can. Besides, I’m not doing anything illegal. Are you?”
“Fuck you. Maybe you don’t care who knows where your friend’s at.”
“You said he’d be in a protected place.” I paused. “All I need from you is assurance that I won’t have trouble getting past the protection.”
“That’s taken care of. But you don’t want me to tell you where he’s at,” he said, “not on the phone.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I already know.” I explained how, with the trauma unit clerk busy with a tearful mother, I’d swiveled the monitor and read where Yogi was going. “It’s right there in his chart. Anybody could get at it.”
“Some strings I can pull, but I ain’t no miracle worker. Fuckin’ chart’s confidential. Even the cops ain’t supposed to see it, not without a subpoena or some goddamn thing, and I’d be notified.” He paused, then exhaled loudly, as though blowing into the phone. He must have gone back to smoking as well as alcohol. “So you got to it,” he said. “Congratulations. That’s why I got you workin’ for me.”
“I’m not working for you.”
“Whatever,” he said. “Anyway, if they find him they ain’t gonna get to him.”
“But I will?”
“I said you’d be there tomorrow at … well, I guess it’s today. Sunday, anyway, at ten. You can make your own arrangements if you go again. Now I gotta—”
“Listen up, Breaker. I got something to say.”
“What?”
“Anything happens to Yogi—from you, I mean—and I’ll be coming after you. You know that.”
“Yeah? Well, I guess you forgot. I got worse than you coming.” He hung up.
CHAPTER
21
BY NINE O’CLOCK Sunday morning I’d eaten breakfast and was headed out to visit Yogi. First, though, I went over and twisted the old-fashioned key-turn doorbell in the center of the Lady’s front door. I waited several minutes and finally the door opened. It was Layla, in a baggy sweatshirt and faded jeans. She had her hair wrapped up in a towel. She looked great.
“Well?” I said.
“Well what?”
“Is she home? She didn’t call me.”
“I guess you mean the Lady,” she said.
“No, dammit, the Queen of—” I stopped, shaking my head at my own behavior. “I’m just … worried about her. She was to call me no matter how late it was. You said you’d tell her.”
“I said I’d tell her as soon as I see her. And I will.”
“What?”
“If you need her, she’ll be home this afternoon, some time around three.”
“I don’t need her, for God’s sake.” I sounded angry, and didn’t want to. “I just want to know she’s okay.”
“And now you know.” She waggled her fingers at me. “Bye-bye, now.” She closed the door.
I turned and went to the Cavalier, but before I got in I glanced up and saw movement at the attic window. One of Layla’s partners, with a phone to her ear, was looking down at me. I waggled my fingers and mouthed “Bye-bye, now,” then got into the car and slammed the door, hard.
Why the hell would she think I needed the Lady, for chrissake?
* * *
THE VILLAGE OF LAKE BLUFF was right where its name said it should be, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. At its north end it looked like a thousand other tired towns that have dug in and hung on for their lives to the flanks of military bases—in this case the Great Lakes Naval Training Center—but were now being weaned away, and gradually finding themselves the better for it.
Much of the rest of Lake Bluff, though, had the feel of Lake Forest, its woodsy and decidedly affluent neighbor to the south, and that’s where I found Inverness Lane. The sign said it was private and had no outlet. It was the road to Inverness Clinic, once the estate of some clan who centuries ago owned half of Scotland or something, and it wound its way through what seemed to be—but wasn’t, of course—a deep forest. I pulled over once and found tall chainlink fences, hidden from the road behind the trees and undergrowth, topped with barbed wire. There were paths behind them where guards, and maybe dogs, could patrol.
I drove on and pretty soon came to an ancient stone gatehouse. Twenty yards short of that the road split into two narrow lanes, one passing on each side of the little building. Low stone walls lined the pavement, to keep cars on the road. As I pulled up to the red-and-white-striped crossing gate in the right lane, two men in uniform stepped forward, one on either side of my car. They looked awfully official and not awfully friendly, although they’d obviously been trained to keep smiling. They were armed.
I lowered my window and looked up at the one staring down at me on my side of the car. The brass tag on his shirt said B. Mackey. He was young and cocky, and he irritated me without saying a word.
“Yo,” I said, seeking the contemporary touch. “Nice fort. Expecting an attack?”
“No, sir.” Still smiling, but a shift of mood in the eyes. “Identification?”
I held out my driver’s license and Mackey took it with him into the gatehouse. He returned almost immediately and handed me a small square envelope, sealed. He didn’t say anything, just waved me through with a sort of snappy, military-type gesture.
The gate went up as he did that, but I didn’t drive forward. I put the shift lever in Park and carefully slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and opened it. Inside was a note-card, gray, to match the envelope. The writing on the card was in the same male script as my name on the front of the envelope. It said, “The patient is in Room 207. Please show this card.” It was signed, “Robert Tyne, M.D.”
A car pulled up behind me and sat there while I studied the card on both sides, then returned it to the envelope and put it in my shirt pocket. Then I took it out again and—
“Excuse me,” Mackey said. “You goin’ in, or not?”
I looked up. “Not until I get my license back.”
His smile vanished. “You get that back on your way out.”
“Oh,” I said, “I don’t think so.”
By now there were two cars behind me. To get in, they’d have had to back up quite a distance and then use the exit lane, which had one of those spike things to puncture the tires of people who went the wrong way.
The other guard tapped on my passenger window, but I ignored him and he came around to my side. His tag said G. Costigan and his smile was still in place. “Except for our regular visitors, sir,” he said, “that’s the rule.”
“Why not call Dr. Tyne,” I said, “and verify that I’m the exception?” I hit the door lock button, raised the window, and switched off the ignition.
The driver behind me tapped a short, polite beep on his horn. Mackey walked back to talk to him. Costigan smiled and glared at me at the same time, a nifty trick, but finally turned away and spoke into his cell phone. Then, saying nothing further to me, he walked into the gatehouse and came back with my license.
I passed through, with the cars behind me following, and we made a little parade: past more trees, around a bend, and then a straight shot toward a brick drive that circled a fountain in front of Inverness Clinic.
It was a large, castle-like building of gray stone, in some places three stories and in others four, with turrets and ells and wings seemingly stuck on here and there at whim. A bit overdone, in my opinion, but surrounded by well-tended lawns with curving walks and flowerbeds, shrubbery and scattered oak and maple trees. There were stone benches and lawn chairs and little round tables with umbr
ellas that hadn’t yet been opened for the day.
It was the sort of place people with money, and a desire to shun publicity, could go to try to recuperate from … well … whatever. Booze, dope, women, men, depression, plastic surgery. Maybe all of the above. Maybe even old age, although that might be tough to recuperate from.
It was ten o’clock on a sunny, cool Sunday morning and there were no people in sight—other than the guy in a White Sox cap and a black windbreaker sitting at one of the round tables and turning the pages of a newspaper. Him I figured to be there on Breaker’s nickel.
The members of my little parade all parked in a lot off the circular drive and I let the people from the other two cars go up the wide concrete steps and inside ahead of me.
* * *
I DON’T KNOW WHY I expected Robert Tyne, M.D., to be a pain in the ass, but I did—and he wasn’t. He said he was glad he was there to meet me. He’d just completed his rounds and had been about to leave. Tall and thin, with wavy brown hair going gray, he was distinguished-looking rather than handsome, along the lines of Prince Charles.
We met in what looked like the living room of a large, comfortable home, complete with stone fireplace and stuffed furniture and large leaded windows letting in lots of morning light. I showed Tyne the card with his note, and he introduced himself as the medical director of Inverness Clinic. I wondered who owned the place, and what sort of connection the owners might have with someone like Breaker Hanafan.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“You mean Johnathan Doherty,” Tyne said. “That’s the name we’re using, since we don’t know his given name.”
“He can’t tell you his name?”
“I think he could, frankly, but he hasn’t. He came out of his coma late Friday night, before his transfer here, but hasn’t done much talking at all. He did say he loves the name Johnathan Doherty. Recognized it at once as ‘long for John Doe.’ He calls me ‘Doctor Bob.’”
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