Tyres squeaked on the paving, like something out of one of my nightmares of retribution. I thought of hiding, or climbing the wall into next door’s garden. But I had to face it. I’d always known it would come. And better here than in Australia with Sam. At least Sam would never have to know who I really was, what I’d done. I turned to face it.
A wheelchair came to a stop just by the rhubarb bed. He raised his head, white-haired now and stared right at me. His dark eyes were the same. His voice, too:
“Thank God you’re safe, Kim.”
Good Intentions
Michael Z. Lewin
It seemed like the rain would never stop. I was getting cabin fever and I wasn’t even in a cabin. Had I ever been in a cabin? I mean, a cabin? I couldn’t remember one. I wanted to go to a cabin. Experience Cabinness. Be thoroughly cabined. The rain seemed like it would never stop.
I was bored. There is only a certain amount that a private investigator can do constructively when he is without clients, even in a fascinating, action-packed city like Indianapolis. I’d done it and it wasn’t even noon yet. We do get rains like this here but not usually in November. Or is it common in Novembers? Had the incessant rain washed my memory away?
So it was with pleasure that I thought I heard footsteps on my office stairs. Normally I’d dismiss such sounds as self-delusion – so few clients ever arrive without an appointment. And then there was the rain. I mean . . . Could I really be hearing footfalls among the plops of those endless raindrops?
As it turned out, I could. There was a knock at my door. Even the most savage rain doesn’t do that. I dashed to respond. The last thing I wanted was for a prospective client to dissolve away.
The last thing I expected was to open the door and recognize the prospective client. My repeat clients always call, make appointments, even summon me to come to them. But then again this prospective repeat client was not a normal kinda guy.
“LeBron,” I said. “Come in. Get out of the wet.”
I stood back but he didn’t cross the threshold. At first I thought he was being contrary, but then I saw it was hard for him to move at all. One arm hung loose at his side. His clothes were torn. He was standing askew.
“LeBron, what’s wrong?”
Faintly he said something. When I leaned forward and asked him to repeat it he said, “It’s Wolfgang now.”
It took a while but eventually I sat him in my Client’s Chair. He groaned with each step. I sat on my desk facing him. “How badly are you hurt?”
He didn’t respond.
“How badly are you hurt, Wolfgang? Should I call an ambulance?”
“We heal quickly.”
I didn’t like the way he held himself in my chair. I didn’t like the sound of his breathing. I didn’t like the sight of blood dripping on to my floor. I picked up the phone.
“No.”
“Yes.”
He passed out. I dialled 911.
1
St Riley’s emergency department was full, which surprised me. Ice and snow produce broken bones, but rain? What were they all here for? Near-drownings? Mould?
Whatever the answer, the emergency crew jumped Wolfgang to the head of the line. “So what happened to your friend?” asked the nurse when I followed him to a cubicle.
“I have no idea.”
“What’s his name?”
“Wolfgang.”
“Wolfgang,” the nurse said. “Interesting.” She turned to him. “Wolfgang, my name is Matty. Can you hear me?”
He made a sound. I couldn’t make out, like, a word, but Nurse Matty seemed happy with the noise itself. She turned back to me. “Has he lost consciousness since it happened?”
“He passed out when he arrived at my office, just before I called 911. Before that I don’t know.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Did you do this to him?”
“No.”
“You know that, do you?”
“He came to where I live, dragged himself up a flight of stairs and knocked at my door. That was about . . .” I looked at my watch. “Fifty-seven minutes ago, when I called 911. I don’t know what happened before he got to me, where it happened, when it happened or how he got to my place.”
“He’s . . . your boyfriend?”
“He’s not a friend of any description. Two months ago he hired me to do a job for him. I haven’t seen or spoken with him since.”
“That was September?”
“Yes. I finished the job for him in a day.”
“You’re not a plumber by any chance?”
“No. Sorry.”
She sighed. “So, why did he come to you?”
“Once you and your colleagues put Wolfgang Dumpty back together again, maybe he’ll tell me.”
“That’s his last name? Dumpty?”
“I have no idea what his last name is. When I worked for him he called himself ‘LeBron James’. If he’s ‘Wolfgang’ now, chances are that the rest of his handle was Mozart. He has an interest in prodigies.”
“What’s all that supposed to mean?”
“He changes his name sometimes.”
“He changes his name?” She looked from me to him and back again. “Why?”
“I’d rather he told you himself.”
“Is he crazy? Is that it?”
“Personally, I think he’s unusually sane. But he does have some quirks.”
“You’re not helping me here.”
“I’m helping you as much as I can.”
“Does he have medical insurance? Wait, let me guess. You don’t know.”
“I can probably remember his address.”
“But he was rich enough to hire you for a day in September?”
“Yes.”
“Are you cheap?”
“I’m fabulously expensive and worth every penny.”
“A doctor will be here in a minute. I’m going to check his pockets now. They might have some ID that will help.”
She checked his pockets. They were empty. Which surprised me because when he came to my office in September he was carrying a lot of cash. So maybe he’d been robbed.
“Go tell them what you can at the desk,” she said.
“And will you let me know when you find out what’s wrong with him?”
“You’re waiting around?”
“Yeah.”
“Even though you’re not a friend?”
“I give good customer aftercare.”
She made a face at me.
I left to deliver a second batch of “I don’t knows” at the reception desk.
2
I expected to be left to my own devices in the waiting room for a long time, but Nurse Matty came to get me less than a quarter of an hour after I picked a seat.
“You are still here.”
“Didn’t you expect me to be?”
“Not after we found your friend – no, your non-friend – has stab wounds.”
“That’s not nice.”
“No it’s not.”
“And you thought I was the stabber and had made a run for it.”
“Look, can you come with me and go through what you know with our head of security?”
“While you wait for the cops to come and have me go through what I know with them?”
“Or hunt you down like a stray dog if you don’t stay. Your call,” she said with a bit of a smile.
“Why don’t you tell me something about Wolfgang’s prognosis?”
“The doctor found two wounds in his belly before I came to look for you. Neither looked deep or in a vital place but they’ll take him up to an operating theatre in a few minutes to make sure.”
“And has he said anything about what happened or who did it?”
“He’s been mumbling things. Maybe an old friend like you will be able to understand him better t
han I can.”
I followed Matty into the treatment labyrinth. I wasn’t sure what to tell the security people – or the cops. When I knew him, Wolfgang’s fickleness about names wasn’t his main peculiarity. That honour fell to his insistence that his father was an extraterrestrial.
But with me he behaved rationally and paid cash. By no means all the terrestrials I deal with do either.
The security guy was a woman who was taller, younger and arguably more muscular than I am. She waited for me at the foot of Wolfgang’s bed, but as I was about to introduce myself, the patient spotted me and tried to sit up.
He said, “Albert.”
It was quiet but clear enough for Nurse Matty to ask, “Is that you?”
I nodded and went closer to his head.
“Four of them,” he whispered.
“Who were they?”
What he’d already said seemed to have left him exhausted. But then he made one last effort and said what sounded like, “Terrorists . . .”
3
Once the magic “t” word was passed on to the police it wasn’t long until two officers in uniform homed in on me like I was the door to their future careers. By then Wolfgang was in surgery.
I followed the cops to a visitors’ room but it didn’t take long for me to repeat my collection of “I don’t knows”. However, it was long enough for Nurse Matty to stick her head in with an update. “Sorry to bother you, officers,” she said, “but the surgeon upstairs believes that the two abdominal wounds were done with different knives.”
The uniforms looked at each other. I said, “How do you tell something like that?”
“Think about an ordinary knife,” she said. “One side sharp, one side blunt.”
“Okay.”
“And think about it being pressed through skin. Once the point goes in, one side of the wound is cut by the sharp edge but the other is just rubbed by the blunt one. Maybe torn open a little, but not cut. The result is that the two ends of the wound look completely different under magnification.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said.
“Apparently one of the blades that cut him had two sharp edges, whereas the other had only one. That’s what he says. He also says that he can’t be completely certain without doing an autopsy.”
I leaned forward.
“But he doesn’t think it’ll come to that,” she said. “Oh. And they found another cut. On his back. Not as deep. He didn’t say if he thinks it was done by one of the original two knives.” She left.
“She says there were three wounds, not two?” the smaller of the two cops asked.
I nodded. Poor ol’ Wolfgang.
The smaller cop crossed something out in his notebook and wrote a correction.
The larger cop just said, “What’s he expect?” He was a big guy who looked the age and size of a high-school lineman.
“What do you mean?” his colleague asked.
“He said it was terrorists,” the lineman said. “If he’s going to mess with terrorists . . .” He looked from his colleague to me, looking for support.
I said, “If someone is attacked by terrorists, they’re responsible?” I shook my head. “You’re saying the 9/11 people were messing with terrorists?”
“I just said . . .” the lineman began. But he stopped.
His colleague smiled and shook his head slowly.
I said nothing more. And at least they had treated me as a witness rather than a suspect, probably because Nurse Matty had stressed that I stayed around after Wolfgang came in.
But with the patient in surgery and the uniforms unable to think of more questions for me not to know the answers to, I began to consider leaving. However, then a southside detective, Imberlain, showed up. So I got to do it all again.
By which time Matty had a further update. The surgeons had found a fourth cut. They were now putting Wolfgang’s spleen and liver back together. So I decided to leave, at least for the time being.
I’d followed the ambulance in my car, so I had wheels. But instead of using them to go back home, I went to Wolfgang’s house.
Wolfgang had showed up at my office about eleven-thirty. Now it was nearly four, and still raining. I didn’t know when he’d been attacked by the “terrorists” but he’d been away from home for many hours.
Though when I got there it didn’t seem like the house was empty. Through the rain I could see some lights on inside. But not behind curtained windows. I could see them through the wide-open door.
I parked and went to the porch. It was then that I discovered the door wasn’t wide open after all. It had been pulled off its hinges.
4
I had no idea what Wolfgang had been doing in the two months since I’d last seen him. Then he was hale and hearty – not a single stab wound. He had talked optimistically about the future, wanting to create a project to help the people he described as society’s “invisibles”.
And when I’d last visited his house, the interior was immaculate. Wolfgang – though then he was LeBron – had converted the conventional interior into a large space. He’d done all the work himself, having trained as a carpenter. And he’d painted pictures and designs on the walls. There wasn’t much furniture when I’d been there, just what a half-alien gentleman would use when living on his own.
But now, coming through the open doorway, I saw pieces of furniture everywhere. Most seemed once to have come from beds, and there were also mattresses ripped open.
This was clearly a matter for the police, though none was on the scene.
Which left me with a decision to make. I ought to call Imberlain, who’d given me his card. But my impulse was to call my daughter. She was a cop just off her probationary year. Sam didn’t work southeast but Wolfgang’s house wasn’t far from the southwest sector where she did work. And she, at least, was used to me. She wouldn’t ask me endless questions about why I’d gone to Wolfgang’s house instead of going home.
“Why did you call me, Daddy?”
“You’re a cop. This is a police matter.”
“Call 911.”
“It isn’t an emergency. The house isn’t on fire. The front door’s been ripped off its hinges. The owner’s in hospital with four stab wounds. There are a few lights on but I don’t know if anyone’s inside. I didn’t want to go in without somebody knowing where I am and what I’m doing.”
“So naturally you called me.”
“My daughter, the cop. Naturally,” I said, “I’m not asking you to drop whatever you’re doing and rush out here, but would you stay on the phone while I go in?”
“You shouldn’t go in. It’s a crime scene. You should call the police.”
“I did call the police. And what if someone’s in there, and injured?”
“Call 327 3811. That’s the number for non-emergencies.”
“I’m going in.” I was already inside the front door, but dwelling on details would be pedantic.
“Call the number, Daddy.”
“Just hang on while I look around.”
“Daddy!”
Slowly I walked into the middle of the open room. The room was chaos. A large television set had been tipped off its mounting. DVDs were scattered over a whole corner. In the kitchen area large pans were on the floor. More and larger pans than I would have thought a man living alone would have. Mind you, there were pieces from a lot of beds – I counted what looked like half a dozen without trying. How many people were sleeping here? Had Wolfgang set up an open-plan B & B?
“Daddy?”
“I’m here, honey. Just hang on.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Please don’t do that.”
Given the beds, I was interested in what I didn’t see. Which was evidence of people – their bags, their clothes . . . Such things might be underneath the wreckage, but I saw nothing on top.
I made my way to the back door. That was still on its hinges but it swung loose in the bits of breeze that passed through the house.
/> I didn’t get it.
“Daddy, I’m hanging up.”
I was about to say okay and that she should get back to whatever or whomever she was doing when I heard a whimper.
“Hang on. I hear something. Or someone.”
“Who?”
“I’m looking.”
I followed the sound. I found its source in the bathroom. It was a child. “It’s a little boy.”
The kid looked up sharply. He had tear-stained eyes. “I’m a girl,” he said.
“I mean a little girl.”
“How old?” Sam asked.
“About . . . seven.”
“I’m ten.”
“I mean ten. She’s about ten. And her name is Jane.”
“Nicole,” the girl said.
“I mean Nicole. And she’s resting in the bathroom because she just broke all the furniture here and destroyed the place.”
“I’m hiding,” Nicole said. “I was scared.”
5
Sam arrived about half an hour later. She wasn’t wearing her uniform.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“I hope you didn’t disturb anything.”
“I had to think of Nicole.” Nicole looked up from a chair she was using as a table in the kitchen area. “She was hungry.”
“Thirsty,” Nicole said.
“And thirsty. I made her a glass of water.”
“You don’t make water,” Nicole said.
“And I made her cinnamon toast.” I stuck my tongue out at the child. She laughed. I turned to Sam. “Like I used to make for you.”
“Is that your wife?”
“My daughter.”
“Is that really your daughter?” Nicole asked.
“My lovely daughter, of whom I am double-proud.”
“Why double?”
“Proud of her as an outstanding police person and proud of her as a wonderful human being who has come through a lot of difficulties in her life.”
Nicole frowned. “She’s police?”
“Sure as shootin’.”
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