by Stuart Woods
“Nothing. One each, under the hair.”
“Call me when all the work is done.” He hung up.
“Driver, let’s go to Bellevue Hospital.”
“Anything wrong?”
“My wife called. Her ulcer is acting up.”
* * *
—
Three quarters of an hour later, Rawls got of the cab at the nearest corner, walked to the emergency entrance, and strolled past. There were three TV trucks outside. A half dozen cops were patrolling the sidewalk, more inside.
He got another cab from an arriving driver. “Seventy-fifth and Madison,” he said, sitting back in the seat. He should have shot them both twice in the head, he knew, but he had been afraid that somebody, like a civilian, might have tried to jump him before he could get all the rounds off.
Shit!
The cab made its way up Madison, and Rawls was eventually back at the Carlyle. He hung up his coat and hat to dry, made a cradle of pillows on the bed, and turned on a local news channel, famous for covering events that had just happened. They even had a copy of Izak’s head X-ray, which showed a nick in the occipital skull, made by his bullet, which appeared not to have entered the brain, just ricocheted off the bone. It would have bled a lot and the shock would probably have rendered him unconscious, causing him to collapse like a mortally wounded man.
Amateur hour, he thought. He must really be getting old. He didn’t want to wait for Izak to get discharged from Bellevue, but neither did he relish the idea of prowling the halls, looking for an opportunity to kill the man, without getting shot by the cops or Pentkovsky’s security.
It was clear that he had to revisit the hospital, but not until tomorrow, when things had calmed down and someone might get careless.
* * *
—
The following morning Stone finished the first section of the Times and tossed it to Rocky when she came out of the shower. “Now we know what Ed Rawls was doing at Caravaggio,” he said, “and where he was at lunchtime yesterday. He must be kicking himself.”
Rocky read all of the piece, which featured Izak’s X-ray. “How old is Rawls? I mean, he missed one at what, twelve feet?”
“A little too old, apparently, but he’s also relentless, and he won’t let this go until he’s finished the job. Whoever hired him must be withholding payment until both brothers are dead.”
Stone’s cell phone rang. “Yes, Lance?”
“Now we know what Rawls was doing at Caravaggio, eh?”
“Funny you should mention that.”
“Yes, I know, you thought of it first.”
“As soon as I saw the Times,” Stone said.
“Ed is not going to stop, you know.”
“I know. At least he’s not after me.”
“There’s something to be said for that,” Lance said. “You should stay out of anyplace Rawls might go.”
“How the hell would I know where he might go?”
“Well, anyplace you’ve taken him in the past.”
“There are probably a dozen such places. What do I have to do? Stay home until the Russians find Ed and deal with him?”
“Well, don’t try to help him. That’s a quick way to stop a bullet.”
“I’ve no intention of helping him,” Stone said.
“I know very well that you have a soft spot for Ed,” Lance said. “You’ve helped each other before.”
“I don’t think he’ll ask,” Stone said.
“You go right on believing that,” Lance replied.
“Bye, Lance.” Stone hung up.
“I take it that was Lance,” Rocky said.
“Good guess.”
“Does he think you’re helping Rawls?”
“He’s afraid I might try to,” Stone said. His secure cell phone rang again. “What now, Lance?” he asked.
“It’s not Lance,” Rawls said.
19
Stone recovered enough to say, “How are you?”
“Come have a seat in your garden, and I’ll explain it to you.”
Stone recalled that Ed had stayed with him a couple of times in the past, and that he had given him a key. “Ten minutes,” he said and hung up.
“‘Ten minutes’?” Rocky asked. “Was that intended for me or your caller?”
“My caller,” Stone said, pulling on his pants and a Polo shirt. “I’ve got to go speak with him.”
“It’s Rawls, isn’t it?”
“This is a bad time to be as smart as you’re supposed to be,” Stone said. “I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, slithering under the covers.
Stone went downstairs, through the kitchen, and out into the garden, where Ed Rawls was sitting at a table under an umbrella, sipping from a glass of lemonade. Helene, the cook, had always liked him.
Stone sat down, and immediately Helene brought him a glass of lemonade. He took a big swallow. “Well,” he said. “I thought you might be dead by now.”
“Same here,” Rawls drawled.
“You or me?”
“Either or both.”
“In that case, nice of you to lead them here.”
“I didn’t lead anybody. I haven’t used the garden entrance for more than a year, and I don’t allow myself to be followed from crime scenes.”
“You’re slipping, Ed,” Stone said. “If the New York Times got the scene right.”
“The guy dipped his head to sip his tea as I was squeezing off the second round,” Rawls said. “Could have happened to anybody, and I didn’t have time for two apiece.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t visited him in Bellevue yet.”
“Oh, I have, at least as close as it was possible to get. There are two complete sets of men with guns watching over him.”
“How many of them are looking for you?”
“None. I have no connection with the crime scene.”
“You have a connection with Izak at Caravaggio, remember? He would have seen you go into the men’s room after me.”
“I left immediately after that; he never set eyes on me again.”
“Or if he did, his memory might be affected by the bullet to the back of the head.”
“He never made me.”
“So why are you still here? I should think you’d be back in Dark Harbor by now.”
“So would I, but I don’t get the hidden location of my fee until the work is completed.”
“I hope you aren’t here to ask me to help,” Stone said.
“Of course not. I’m here to tell you that whoever is replacing the younger Pentkovsky will be looking for you.”
“Why would I interest him?”
“Because they don’t know about me, so instead of looking for a needle in a haystack, they’ll be using a scythe to clear the field of candidates for Anton’s murder. You are the most recent guy the Pentkovskys wanted dead.”
It annoyed Stone that he hadn’t thought of that himself. “Do you have a suggestion, Ed?”
“I have two: One, don’t get dead. Two, don’t get me dead.”
“Are our fates somehow entwined?”
“I should have thought that was obvious.”
“Not to me.”
“Well, the GRU’s files are very likely just as good as the Agency’s. And anybody reading either of ours will find out a lot about the other, most of which will be interesting to them.”
That was a disquieting thought. “How can I help, Ed?”
“I need shelter.”
“Now?”
“Almost. Right after I clear out of my room at the Carlyle.”
“All right. Use the key you’ve got to enter my basement through a door on Third Avenue, marked ‘Private.’ A tunnel will take you to my garage, then walk up one flight, take a
left and enter the house next door to mine. There’s a ground-floor bedroom, overlooking the garden. Dig in there. Helene will see you don’t starve or thirst. If you need to contact me, use your Agency cell, but call me on my civilian iPhone. I don’t want Lance or anybody else there to see a record of conversations between us on those phones.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“Follow me.” Stone led him into the house and into the garage, then to the room next door. “One other thing,” Stone said. “I know you’re not going to stop, but I don’t want to know where, when, or how you collect your money.”
“That goes without saying,” Rawls replied.
“Where were the Pentkovskys staying?”
“At the Carlyle, one floor below me.”
“I suggest you don’t go back for your clothes; their people will be all over the hotel. Call the front desk and tell them you’ve had to take an emergency flight out, so they should pack your bags and leave them in their garage. I’ll send my man, who is very careful, to fetch them and bring them here.”
“That’s very good, Stone. You’d have made a good field agent.”
“Tell me that when I’ve lived another week,” Stone replied. Then he left Rawls to his privacy.
* * *
—
Stone went back to his room and found Rocky just where he had left her. He began stripping down.
“You’ve seen Ed Rawls, haven’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t want to hear about Rawls anymore,” he replied. “I have other things on my mind that are more important. For one, I am now genuinely concerned for my safety and yours.” He got into bed and reached for her.
“Nobody will ever find us here,” Rocky said, “unless they hear your pitiful cries.”
* * *
—
Later, Stone explained Fred’s mission to him. “The bags are brown alligator and have tags that say crew.”
“Question,” Fred said. “Do they know he’s leaving the hotel?”
“As far as I know, they don’t know he’s staying there.”
“Mr. Barrington,” Fred said, “do you mind if I change the license plates on the Bentley?”
“You have other license plates?” Stone asked.
“Some that I bought at a roadside shop in Florida last year.”
“Good idea,” Stone said. “But don’t get stopped by the police, and if you do, call me at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fred changed the New York plates for Florida ones, made of plastic, but credible.
He drove uptown to the Carlyle, pulled into the garage, and immediately spotted Rawls’s luggage, piled near a soft drink machine.
“May I help you, sir?” a uniformed attendant said.
“I’m here for those,” Fred replied, pointing and simultaneously pressing the switch that opened the trunk. The attendant loaded them into the car and closed the trunk door. Fred gave him a fifty. “If anybody asks, the cases were never here,” he said, then backed out and drove away.
20
Ed Rawls went next door and looked for Stone’s secretary, Joan Robertson.
“Hi, Ed, I hear you’re with us next door for a bit,” Joan said.
“I am, Joan. Tell me, I’d like to make myself an ID badge, and I need a computer with photoshopping software, a color printer, some photographic-finish paper, and a laminating machine.”
“Come with me,” she said, leading him through Stone’s office and into a supply room with a small desk. “Here you are,” she said, “the paper’s on the shelf, there, the software is on the computer, and the laminating machine is over there,” she said, “next to the paper cutter.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ed said. “I owe you two dozen roses.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Joan said. “Anything else? Stone told me to shop for you. He doesn’t want you coming and going.”
“Do you know where to find a medical supply store—you know, where you buy crutches and wheelchairs and bedpans and the sort?”
“I do.”
“Could you pick me up a surgical cap, a lab coat, some latex gloves, a packet of surgical masks, a stethoscope, and one of those little medical valises?”
“Sure. If you need somebody to operate on, I’ll volunteer.”
“I wouldn’t impose,” Ed said. “Oh, and get me one of those lanyard things with a clip at the bottom to hold a badge.” She left, and Rawls sat down at the computer and googled Bellevue Hospital. He scrolled through various pages until he found a page of photographs of medical staff. He found one of a man who slightly resembled him, but with more hair, wearing scrubs. He took a photo of himself standing before a white wall, then enlarged the man’s ID badge and photoshopped his face onto it, then he changed the man’s name to Gregory Mffisiane, M.D., shrank the card to ID size, and printed a half dozen of them. He selected one, trimmed it, and ran it through the laminating process, then trimmed the corners. “Good morning, Dr. Mffisiane,” he said to the badge. “I’ll bet people have trouble remembering your name.” He also invented a prescription form with his new name on it and printed a few of those, then taped the edges to make a pad.
An hour or so later, Joan returned with the things he’d asked for, and he reimbursed her, over her protests.
* * *
—
Rawls waited until later that afternoon so he could arrive at the hospital during a shift change, then he found the doctors’ locker room and an empty locker. He left his coat inside and put on the lab coat and the cap, to cover his thinning hairline. He hung the stethoscope and the ID around his neck, and walked out into the hallway. He strode purposefully down the hallway until he found an unmanned nurse’s station, checked the patients’ list, and found Pentkovsky, I., a few doors down the hall. He looked that way, and saw a uniformed cop sitting on a folding chair outside the room, reading the New York Post. Rawls walked past the room until he saw a sign for the pharmacy and went inside.
A nurse was giving instructions to her shift replacement, a very young nurse, and Rawls waited patiently until the older woman had left. “Good afternoon,” he said to the other nurse.
“Good afternoon,” she replied. “What can I do for you, Doctor?”
Rawls whipped out the prescription pad he had made and wrote something on it. “I need 50 cc’s of morphine and a large syringe. I’m recharging a patient’s automated doser. This will do him until this time tomorrow.”
The nurse glanced at the prescription, then took a bunch of keys from her pocket and unlocked a drawer. She set the vial on the counter, then got a syringe from another drawer. “There you are,” she said.
Rawls thanked her, then put the items in his lab coat pocket and left the pharmacy. He walked back to where the cop sat and held up his ID. “I’m checking the patient’s vital signs,” he said.
“A nurse did that a few minutes ago,” the cop replied.
“Then I’m checking up on the nurse,” Rawls replied with a grin.
The cop leaned over and examined Rawls’s badge. “Okay, Dr. Mimm . . .” He didn’t make it through the name.
“Just call me Dr. Greg. Everybody does.”
“Go on in.”
Rawls entered the room and found Pentkovsky, mouth open, staring at the ceiling. They had him on painkillers, Rawls thought, and that was fine with him. He broke the cap on the morphine bottle, filled the syringe, and injected the clear fluid into the man’s IV fluids bag, then repeated until the bottle was empty. That would take a while to drip in and do its work. He returned the empty bottle and syringe to his pocket and left the room.
He went back to the doctors’ locker room, packed his things into the small valise, put on his coat, and walked down the hallway to the exit at the opposite end of the corridor. Moments later, he was in a cab. “Bloomingdale’s,” he said to the driver.
Outside the department store he tossed the valise into a dumpster at a construction site across the street, along with the morphine bottle and the empty syringe. He walked across Third Avenue and through the store to Lexington and found another taxi there. He got out a block short and walked the rest of the way, crossing the street, doubling back and checking for tails. Finally, he let himself through the door marked PRIVATE, and made his way to his room.
* * *
—
That evening, an alarm went off at a nurse’s station at Bellevue: a cardiac arrest down the hall. She picked up a phone. “Code Blue in 127. Repeat, Code Blue in 127,” then she ran down the hall.
* * *
—
The following morning, Rawls checked the hourly news and saw the report of Pentkovsky’s death, of cardiac arrest at Bellevue. The tox screen would take a few days, he knew.
He picked up his second cell phone and called the number.
“This is Jim.”
“This is the other guy who has this number. The project is completed.”
“Yeah, I heard it on the news. What means?”
“Overdose of morphine, but they won’t know that for a few days. It’s pretty busy around there.”
“Okay, I’ll e-mail you instructions and photos of the area. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”
“If I don’t find it, Jim, I’ll find you,” Rawls said. “And if I so much as see another man anywhere near the site, I’ll kill him.”
“No problem,” Jim said. “It’s all there, in two small suitcases, about three feet underground. Take a shovel.”
“Right.”
“You want the chopper back to the island?”
Rawls thought about that. “No, I’ll make my own way,” he said. Nobody was going to kick him out of a helicopter into Penobscot Bay.