“How does she know it was him?” he said.
“You know, Gina. It’s something about her that I don’t understand,” she said. “She zeros in on what’s wrong and that’s that. There’s no stopping her.”
“Gina always sees the darkness in people,” Vinnie said. “It gets her into all kinds of trouble.”
Helen hesitated a beat, then said, “She even talked me into following Russell after work. See where he goes, what he does.”
He raised up on one elbow, his eyes opened wide with alarm. “That’s just crazy, Helen. The two of you could get into real trouble ... get hurt ... get killed.”
“Would you rather she went by herself?”
“I’d rather you both let the police take care of that kind of thing.” He pulled and tugged at the covers, then kicked them off. “Why do you have to interfere? That’s just asking for it.”
“Inspector Mulzini is involved. He’s doing all he can, but they have nothing to go on.”
He hoisted himself to a sitting position, but the sudden action wasted him. He sat at the edge of the bed. “Gina can’t be alone now, especially with Harry gone.” He fell back.
“Maybe I’ll stay with her for awhile ... just so she won’t be by herself.”
“I wish I could go, too. But I’m not good for anything, yet.” He took her hand. “I think that’s a good idea. Would you mind?”
“Silly boy, she may be your sister, but she’s also my closest friend.”
* * *
“I’m sorry, Gina,” Mulzini said. “I wish I had better news. We still don’t know who killed Jenni Webb. Whoever did it was very careful ... didn’t leave behind any clues. Even the security cameras didn’t pick up anything. There’s simply not much to go on.”
Gina was disappointed that the lab coat might not provide the police lab with any evidence. It was frustrating. She knew it was Russell, no matter what anyone else said. Why would he go to some out-of-the-way place like a morgue to get rid of his soiled lab coat if he didn’t think it would be incriminating?
He was hiding something.
“There is a small piece of good news, though: you can pick up your car. I arranged to have it washed and thoroughly cleaned inside. You really wouldn’t have wanted it back the way it was.”
It all sounded so final. Yeah, Jenni was murdered next to my car, but everything is now fine again. We can all get on with our lives as though nothing ever happened.
“Listen, Gina, I’ve been digging into Jenni’s past to see if we could dig up something to help us.”
“Did you find anything?”
The Inspector seemed hesitant, not at all like his normal outspoken self. “Yeah, well, I also spoke to her landlord. Seems Jenni’s had a lot of roommates ... there’s been a lot of men in her life, too. And one of them was Brad Rizzo.” He paused, looked at her, and added, “Weren’t you going out with him?”
Gina was floored. “Are you sure she dated Brad Rizzo? She never said anything to me. Not one word. Not even during the time I was going out with him. And she was staying with me then.”
“Maybe she didn’t want you to know.”
Gina’s temper was starting to kick in. “So what? This isn’t a we-blame-the-victim kind of thing, is it? I mean, who cares if she had a million men in her life. That was her business.”
“Maybe. But there’s always the chance she might have pushed somebody other than Russell’s button. Enough to want to kill her. I’m looking in every corner to find the creep who slashed her throat.”
“The only buttons I saw her push was that lab rat’s.”
“All right, already. I get it. I just want the creep who took her life caged ... forever. Jenni deserves that justice.”
Chapter 45
Had that fuckin’ nurse right in my sights. All I had to do was stay with it and shoot his ass off. Can’t believe I fell asleep at the wheel.
Loser.
Those damn drugs kick in and I nod off like a fool. That damn Mex José has gotta be right. That’s the end of it. I’m off the drugs.
But the fuckin’ pain? What about the pain? How am I gonna work?
Shit!
He forced himself to smile at the old lady whose garden he was digging in. She lived in one of those big old adobe-style houses with another woman; just the two of them.
From the size of the place, Dominick guessed it had to have at least four bedrooms. He’d never had that much space in his life, but right now he’d give anything to be back in the Bronx, stuffed into a small pad with his mother and father yelling at him.
The thought brought tears to his eyes.
It had taken him long enough, but he almost had a hole deep enough to plant another damn, thorny cactus. He hefted the pickax to get through the caliche. Every time the ax bit into the ground he had to clench his teeth against the jolts of white-hot pain. Just two more hits and he’d have it done. He could do that.
He started fantasizing.
Gina’s man with another woman? Bet she doesn’t know about that other chick. Man, I’d love to tell her. Wouldn’t that get her goat?
Dominick had been so intent on digging he hadn’t noticed an unmarked police car that had coasted up and parked at the curb. One cop got out and started talking to José, asking for his papers.
Dominick’s heart started racing.
Oh, shit, man. Good thing I left the gun in José’s pickup or I’d be busted for sure.
He didn’t know whether to bolt and run, or just keep working as though he had nothing to worry about. He wanted to run in the worst way.
Wet with sweat, he started dripping even more, he could feel it running like a river down his back.
He forced himself to pick up the cactus, close to its roots so he wouldn’t get stabbed by the plant’s long needles. They could go all the way to the bone.
When he looked up, the cop had his hand out waiting for the papers from the Mexican-American working next to him.
Dominick’s heart was crawling up his throat. The only thing that kept him planted in one spot was the steadying look José gave him.
He tapped down the sandy mixture of dirt around the roots of the cactus. The cop walked up to him, looked him over from head to toe, and held out his hand. Never said a word.
Dominick pulled out his wallet and opened it to his driver’s license. The cop just stood there waiting.
José signed for him to pull out the paperwork. Dominick’s hands were wet and dirty, but he pulled out his counterfeit driver’s license and handed it over.
He lowered his head like he’d watched the other Mexicans do around policemen and tightened his sphincter. It felt like he was going to pee his pants.
The cop turned the license over, fingered the paper, and looked at it carefully. Without a word, he gave it back to Dominick and moved onto the next worker in the crew.
José gave him a smile and went back to digging in the garden.
The old lady stood there as though cops coming onto her property and asking for papers was not only okay, but an everyday occurrence.
* * *
“You should have seen your face, hombre,” José said at the end of the day and they were back in his truck
“Yeah, well, I don’t like cops.”
“Who does, man? But the worst they can do is toss you back over the border.”
Dominick reached into the glove box for his pistol and shoved it into the wet waistband of his jeans. Fact was, every part of him was soaked with sweat.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I ain’t no friggin’ wetback.”
José was about to turn the key in the ignition, but he pulled back, leaned into the seat, and looked at Dominick for a long moment.
“Well, now, that’s no big surprise, amigo. Never did buy into your being Mexicano. Hell, you can barely understand Spanish, let alone speak it.” He smiled when Dominick gave him a noncommittal shrug. “I always say, live and let live, man. Only maybe now you’ll tell me your real story, and not
some made up bullshit. Comprende?”
“I don’t need to tell you squat.”
José stared for several seconds without moving so much as an eyelid. Dominick began to feel trapped in his seat.
“Now you listen, man. And you listen hard.” José turned the key in the ignition and the truck’s engine came to life. “Fact is, no one likes you, Dominick. No one.”
Dominick squirmed.
“I’m the only amigo you have,” José said. “Reason I’m still here with you? Don’t like to kick a dog when he’s down. But you’ll tell me the truth right here and now, mi amigo, or you’re gonna hoof it home all by your lonesome.” He waited a beat. “Comprende, gringo?”
“¡Si, si! Yo comprendo, José. Now let’s go get some cervezas, do some talkin’, and look for some pussy.”
* * *
The bar stank from all the men who had come straight in from work; it made Dominick’s stomach feel queasy. They found an empty booth and plopped down.
“I’ll get the first round,” José said, getting up from the table.
“Good ... sounds bueno. Maybe some tequila, too. Need to get out of this crummy mood I’m in.”
José returned to the booth, set the brews on the table, went back for the shots of tequila. By the time he returned the second time, Dominick had tossed a few crumpled bills onto the greasy table.
“Put your money away, Dominick. Long as you’re talkin’, I’m buyin’”
They held their mugs up in a toast and Dominick gulped down half the beer before tossing down the shot.
“I broke parole.”
“Uh, huh. Here, in Arizona?”
“No. New York.”
José nodded. “I figured it was something like that,” he said. “What happened?”
“Got drunk and I beat up my wife ... bad ... real bad. She almost died.”
“Why’d you go and do that, amigo?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that, José.” He slugged down the rest of his beer. “I don’t know why for sure. My head was fucked up, I guess. But it was her fault that they sent me away for three years in the slammer. Three long, stinkin’ years.”
“Pretty stupid to break parole, man. Hell, you were out. You were free.”
Dominick tapped his fingers on the table to the rhythm of an old swing-era tune blasting from the jukebox. He picked up his mug again, tried to coax a few drops from the bottom of it.
“You know, I was almost a New York Yankee.”
“The ball team? You gotta be kidding me, man.”
“No shit, man,” Dominick said. “I was pretty fucking fantastic, ya know?”
“What happened?”
Dominick looked away. He felt the bile rising in his throat. “It was my wife’s fault I lost out.”
“What’d she do?”
“You know women,” Dominick said. “She kept after me to do this, do that. About drove me crazy.”
“Like what?” José asked.
“She said I was drinking too much, that it was making me gamble our money away.” Dominick gave up on the empty mug and shoved it aside. “Couldn’t sleep nights ... my ball playing got worse ... they finally threw me out.”
Dominick lay his head down on the table and tears spilled onto his cheeks.
José reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Hey, man, that’s rough. I’m really sorry.”
Dominick sat up. “Me, too. She’s gonna pay for what she did, ya know?”
“Where is she?”
“In Frisco. Soon as I get a good cushion of cash I’m goin’ back there and set things straight.” He slammed his shot glass down on the table top.
The bar was crowding up. The stench was worse, there was a thickening haze of cigarette smoke despite the No Smoking signs tacked up here and there, and the noise level made it almost impossible to carry on a conversation.
A couple of women breezed into the bar, stood in the doorway, and looked around. Dominick and José recognized the pair—waitresses from a diner where they ate dinner now and then. The women, one a dyed redhead and other a bleached blonde, spotted them and walked over to the booth.
“Hi, guys. How ‘bout buying us a beer ... or two,” the redhead said. “Might make up for those cheap tips you dish out.”
“Cheap tips my ass,” Dominick said, catching the bartender’s eye. He held up two fingers.
Both men scooted over so the women could sit. The blonde, the prettier of the two, sat down next to José.
After a few rounds of beer, with some tequila thrown in, the four of them were laughing and in a good space when a guy with the build of a pro linebacker sidled up to the table. He was drunk and cruising for a fight.
He put his arm around the blonde’s shoulders, bent down close to one ear, and said in a loud, fake whisper, “Hey, gal, what you doin’ with this loser?”
“Get lost,” José said.
Dominick had his hand buried in the redhead’s crotch and wasn’t paying too much attention until the big guy said, “Get your ass out of here before I reach over and break that stupid Mex neck of yours.”
The blonde and redhead scooted. The drunken slob dragged José out of the booth by the neck and held him up in the air, ready to take a big swing and mess him up.
Dominick whipped out his gun, fired into the drunk’s chest. A bright red burst of blood spread, soaking the man’s shirt.
The big guy dropped José and staggered toward the bar, where the bartender fired off a double-barrel shotgun in their general direction, and José’s shoulder turned into a pulpy mess.
Dominick raised his pistol again, but couldn’t pull the trigger ... he was falling head over heels into a deep, black hole.
Chapter 46
Idiot!
Harry had allowed Abby to pull him into a relationship that he knew wasn’t going to be good for him. He knew that right from the start. He tried to discourage her, but not whole- heartedly—he was lonely and sad, needed someone to talk to. He allowed himself to succumb to that old-misery-loves-company crap.
Harry had always thought he was a better person than that.
Travel nursing had taught him that being alone wasn’t necessarily the same thing as being lonely. But now, he was lonely, and conflicted, and so down in the dumps about Gina that he couldn’t think straight most of the time.
So, yes, he’d been a selfish fool to give Abby any hope that their dating was going to turn into a long-term relationship. It just wasn’t going to happen.
He pulled out his cell and punched in Vinnie’s cell number.
“Hello.”
“Vinnie?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Harry.”
“You still sound pretty sick.”
“No, no, I’m a helleva lot better. Stronger every day.” Vinnie started coughing. Took him a moment to stop. “What’s up with you, man?
“I’m thinking of coming back to San Francisco. I can’t live this way ... I have to see Gina.”
“Maybe you ought to cool it a while longer.” Vinnie coughed again. “She’s in a bad place over Jenni and I don’t think she can handle one more crisis. And believe me, man, you’re one big crisis.”
“What’s with Jenni?”
“She’s dead. Gina’s positive it was that guy who’d been stalking her. Nothing definite, though.”
“Damn! How’s she taking it?”
“You can imagine.”
“Yeah. But I do need to talk to her ... try to get her to understand ... understand things can be different.”
“It’s your neck, but I’d give it more time if I were you.”
“I’m in a bad place, too, Vinnie. I’ve become friends with a woman out here, and she wants to work toward something permanent, if you know what I mean.”
“And I thought you were only into Gina.” An edge of irritation laced his words.
“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea. For me, it’s strictly friendship. She’s the one trying to take it a step further.”
>
“Can’t come and you can’t go, so to speak.”
“Not funny. Vinnie. I need to see Gina.”
“Give it a few more days. Try to get your shit together before you come back.”
* * *
He’d gone to the hospital administrator and that hadn’t gone so well:
“I know I signed up for some extra time over and above my original agreement, Mr. Simms, but that needs to be changed.”
“If you weren’t going to be able to stick to your contract, why did you sign up again? I could have had someone else, someone who was up and ready to go.”
Harry looked at the man’s pinched lips and stony eyes, knew he was in for it.
“I feel bad about this, Mr. Simms. I really do. But my future brother-in-law is very ill. You might have heard about how influenza is going wild in the San Francisco Bay Area. He needs help.”
“And there’s no one to take care of him?”
“Look, I don’t want to get into this. I have to go home.” Harry was already agitated, this was making things worse. “I’ve put in plenty of overtime, have done my best for the hospital, but I have to go.”
“When?”
“Within the week.”
“It’s going to cost you, Harry. I can’t have my nurses just up and going ... not fulfilling their contracts. You’ll have to pay a heavy fine for leaving in the middle of an assignment. It’s right there in your contract.” Simms shifted in his desk chair. “And forget about working at this hospital ever again.”
Harry was up and out of the chair. “If that’s the way it has to be, so be it ... it doesn’t change a thing.”
* * *
Harry ended his swing shift with a complicated emergency. At 9:00 P.M. there’d been some kind of shootout at El Peso bar.
Harry had never been in the place, but he’s heard it was a hangout for a rough bunch of people; people who were known to tote guns and knew how use them.
The EMTs brought the three men straight to ICU, bleeding out. All of them were critical, with head, chest, and shoulder wounds.
The attending was all over the unit. Of the three, the really big guy had taken a bullet in the chest; it shredded his lung. Not only was he covered in blood, he was spitting up blood and gasping for air. Watching him had Harry hyperventilating, like someone was sitting on his chest.
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