The Man Who Risked His Partner
Page 29
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t hang up,” I said.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.
Impressive, no?
The silence on the line sounded like snickering.
“How did you get my number?”
“Hospital information,” the voice I almost knew replied. “Anybody in Puerta del Sol can find out what room you’re in just by asking. You’re a dead man.”
Leaving me with that cheery thought, my caller put down the phone.
A couple of hours later, Ginny showed up. I told her about the call, but she didn’t seem particularly interested. Instead, she studied me as if I were exhibiting strange side effects to a new medication. “This has really got you going,” she commented. Observant as all hell.
“Think about it,” I snarled as well as I could. “How many people hate me enough to consider this kind of joke funny?”
But my vehemence didn’t ruffle her. “Think about it yourself, Brew,” she replied calmly. “How many people love you enough to give you this kind of warning?”
That stopped me. Who would know that el Senor actively wanted me dead? Only someone close to him. And who in that group would give a good goddamn what happened to me? Which one of his people would risk warning me?
No one fit that description.
I made an effort to look more relaxed. “I guess you’re right. It must be a practical joke. Some minor sociopath dialed the number and liked my reaction. Maybe he even dialed it at random.” I was trying to play along with her. Defuse anxiety. But the idea that I wasn’t worried was pure bullshit and moonshine, and I couldn’t keep it going. “It’s just a coincidence that I’ve actually got enemies.”
“No, you don’t,” she retorted, grinning. Maybe she found it funny when I sounded so pitiful. Or maybe she was just keeping her guard up. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you. El Senor is paralyzed. There isn’t anybody else.”
I liked her grin, no matter what it meant. But it didn’t cheer me up. Things like immobility and helplessness put too much pressure on my morale.
I was recovering too slowly. Where the hell were my recuperative powers when I needed them? Movement is life. I was running out of time.
I waited until Ginny left. Then I climbed vertical and practiced lugging the tight lump of fire I called my stomach around the room. Unfortunately that just aggravated my discouragement. About the time that pain and exhaustion got bad enough to make me sob, I decided to lie down and just let el Senor kill me.
Teach her a lesson, that would.
Self-pity may not be my most attractive quality, but I’m damn good at it.
So she took me completely by surprise when she came in early the next morning, before any phone calls, and asked, “Can you walk out of here?”
I stared at her.
“Well, can you?”
I stared at her some more.
She sighed. “If you can get out of bed,” she explained with elaborate patience, “put your clothes on, and walk out of here, we’re leaving. I’ve got a job for us.”
That early in the morning, I was still muzzy with sleeping pills. Nevertheless a few dopey synapses in my head went click. Before I could question them, I said, “You believe those phone calls.”
She nodded sharply.
“I can’t talk the cops into protective custody, but hospital security is watching your room most of the time. And the nurses here remember you.” She gestured with her left arm, and her claw gave me a flash of stainless steel. She’d lost her hand to a bomb in this hospital. “They’re doing what they can to keep an eye on you.”
She didn’t let me interrupt. “It isn’t enough. If you don’t get out of here today, I’m going to move in with you.”
I shook my head without realizing it. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you try to make me think you were laughing at me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” she snapped. “You’re supposed to be recuperating, not lying there in a muck sweat.”
“Aye, aye, Captain Fistoulari, ma’am, sir,” I muttered.
In a fine display of moral fortitude and physical courage, I closed my eyes.
“Brew.” Her patience slipped a notch. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” I said through a haze of drugs and fear. “Go away. This stinks.”
“What’s the matter? Those calls obviously bother you. Don’t you want to get away from them?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But not like this.” In fact, the whole idea made me cringe. I was tired of being protected. Not to mention being protected against. “If it’s a real job, the last thing you need is a half-ambulatory cripple on your hands. And if it’s a nursemaid exercise for my benefit, just to keep me out of trouble, I don’t want it.” For a few months now I’d believed in myself enough to stop drinking—but that, as they say, was tenuous at best. The last thing I needed was one less reason for self-respect. “You said you’re turning clients away. Pick a job you can do by yourself. Leave me alone.”
Unfortunately that shut her up. She didn’t say anything for so long that I finally had to open my eyes to see if she was still in the room.
She was.
She stood at the window with her back to me, hiding her face against the morning. Something about the line of her back, the way she held her shoulders, told me that I’d hurt her.
“Ginny—” I wanted to explain somehow, if I could just think of the words. But nothing came out of my mouth.
After a while she asked the glass. “Why is this so hard?”
“I don’t know.” My usual frightened contribution to our relationship. “Everything we do to each other matters too much.”
She turned.
With the sunlight behind her, I almost missed the fighting light in her eyes. Wearing the conservative suits she preferred, her respected-private-investigator clothes, her blond hair tidy around her fine face and her mouth under control, she looked like nothing so much as an up-and-coming businesswoman, lean and ready. Except for her broken nose, and that light in her eyes, and her claw. The punk who broke her nose was long dead. She’d shot him more than once, just in case he missed the point the first time.
“It’s a nursemaid job,” she said straight at me, “a piece of cake. You may remember the commission suspended my license.” Her tone dripped pure acid. “It’s temporary, but for the time being there are only certain kinds of jobs I’m allowed to take. And the fee is real. You know I can’t afford to ignore that. And it’s out of town. Up in the mountains, where el Senor isn’t likely to find you. It’ll give you a week where you don’t have to do anything worse than walk around.”
I did my best to shake my head in a way that would make her believe me. “I don’t care about that. I—”
She cut me off.
“Listen. Just once, listen to me. I suppose I could take what money I’ve got and borrow the rest and just buy you a plane ticket. You could disappear. Make it hard for el Senor to find you.
“But that won’t work. We’ve tried it before, and it never works. You end up drunk somewhere, and eventually I have to come get you.
“Or I could go with you. I could sit around watching you until we both went walleyed or my money ran out. That won’t work either. You know it won’t.
“The only thing that ever does you any good is a job. As far as I can tell, you only stay away from alcohol when you’ve got people depending on you.
“Well, this job isn’t exactly hard. We can’t take on anything difficult with you in this condition. But it’s still a job. It’ll give you something to do, people to take care of. I don’t have anything else to offer.
“I don’t care whether you want it or not. We’re going to accept that job if you can just stand.”
For a second there I felt so sick that I wanted to throw up. Absolutely puke my life away. I had an existential knife in my guts. She was protecting me again. Protecting against me again.
But then, all of a sudden, it o
ccurred to me that knives cut both ways. Whether she intended it or not, she was offering me a chance to take care of myself. A chance to get up on my feet and make some of my own decisions.
So I relented. I wasn’t exactly gracious about it. In fact, I was angry as hornets. But I said, “I don’t know why I bother arguing with you. I don’t like nursemaid operations. I don’t like being nursemaid. But I haven’t got any better ideas. In any case, you’re going to take care of me no matter what I do. I don’t have the strength or the willpower to stop you. This way I can at least try to return the favor.”
Ginny glared at me. The flash of her claw in the light reminded me that she had her own reasons to hate being taken care of. She’d been dependent on me for six months after she lost her hand—and she was only just now starting to get over it. Sounding bitter, she rasped, “Is it the sleeping pills, or are you always this perceptive?”
I ignored her irritation. The pain in my stomach lost its metaphysical significance. A job. Something to do. I wanted that, no question about it. As soon as I agreed to go back to work, I forgot that knives do only one thing, and it isn’t called healing.
Helping myself up with both hands, I got out of bed.
This is a work of ficiton. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE MAN WHO RISKED HIS PARTNER
Copyright © 1986, 2003 by Stephen R. Donladson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
eISBN 9781429973052
First eBook Edition : May 2011
EAN 978-0765-34126-6
First edition: November 2003
First mass market edition: December 2004