“He’s right here,” Foster said. “Up on the third floor in the psychiatric ward. He’s got nothing left upstairs, according to the doctors. And he’s got terminal cancer to boot. They can’t ship him back to Cincinnati to stand trial unless he goes into remission. And the chances are that that’s not going to happen.”
“How long’s he been here?” I said.
“Since the day you got shot. Apparently he got sick that morning and some friend of his, some woman, brought him into the Emergency Room.” Foster smiled. “Bill gotta break there—or, at least, his girlfriend did. Because from what we can piece together Walt and Phil showed up at the woman’s home right after she and Parks left. They didn’t know he’d been hospitalized. They’d figured he’d gone out and that he’d be back later in the night.”
“Instead, we showed up,” I said, savoring the blackness of the joke. “We did it all for nothing.”
“Sorry, but that’s the way it figures,” Al said with a mordant grin. He got to his feet. “So long, Harry.” He raised his hand. “See you in the papers.”
“So long, Al,” I said.
Later that afternoon, when Flo was busy tending another ward, I worked my way out of bed, got into the wheelchair, and wheeled myself out to the elevators. The ugly little irony that Al had left on my plate had begun to stink. We’d done it for nothing. For sport. For the sake of a stupid locker room code. And Blue had ended up dead. And Clayton had ended up a hero. And Parks . . . I just wanted to see him—once. To let him know how much his friend had sacrificed to keep him alive. Only they wouldn’t let me talk to him when I got to the psychiatric ward. Just stare at him from a distance, as if I were still a spectator in the stands. I could see him from the nurses’ station at the far end of the ward. He was in a steel frame bed beneath a big barred window. The sun was shining through the window, lighting up a patch of floor and the sheet on the bed. His mother was sitting in the shadow beside his bed, reading from a book in her lap. She looked at Parks now and again. He looked at nothing. He was staring at the wall across from his bed, out the far window, at the blue sunlit sky. His face looked ravaged, thin and sunken. His eyes said nothing. They just stared out at the distant mountains beyond the barred hospital window.
36
IT WAS almost fall by the time I was released from the hospital. The first person I called when I got back to Cincinnati was Mike Sabatto at the Post. Somebody needed to know the truth, although I wasn’t sure he’d print it. But somebody needed to know.
He agreed to meet me at the Busy Bee. I showed up about a half hour early and went over to the bar to say hello to Hank Greenburg.
He smiled affectionately at me as I sat down at the bar.
“Long time no see,” he said, pouring me a Scotch and pouring one for himself. “I’m glad you’re back, Harry. I’m glad you’re okay.”
I smiled at him.
He raised his glass in a toast. “Who we drinking to?”
“To Otto Bluerock,” I said, picking up my glass.
“He used to play football, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I read where he got killed.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He got killed.”
“To Otto Bluerock, then,” Hank said, downing the Scotch in a gulp and smacking the glass down on the bar. “Hail and farewell.”
THE END
Enjoy all of Jonathan Valin’s HARRY STONER series, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
**********
The Lime Pit: Harry Stoner Series #1
Final Notice: Harry Stoner Series #2
Dead Letter: Harry Stoner Series #3
Day of Wrath: Harry Stoner Series #4
Natural Causes: Harry Stoner Series #5
Life’s Work: Harry Stoner Series #6
Fire Lake: Harry Stoner Series #7
Extenuating Circumstances: Harry Stoner Series #8
Second Chance: Harry Stoner Series #9
The Music Lovers: Harry Stoner Series #10
Missing: Harry Stoner Series #11
Life's Work Page 22