by Mike Knowles
IN PLAIN SIGHT
MIKE KNOWLES
ECW Press
For Andrea.
It could be for no one else.
CHAPTER ONE
The beeping woke me up. It was a steady drone, pounding out beat after beat. It was my heart I heard being digitally reproduced for an audience. The machine beside the bed was monitoring its uniform spasms. I lay with my eyes closed, ignoring the beeps, focusing on the other sound that erupted intermittently. I waited for what felt like ten minutes until the eruption happened again. A wet phlegmy cough started low in someone’s gut and fought gravity all the way up. In the midst of the coughing fit, I opened my eyes and looked around the room. A second later, I closed them and tried to re-create the scene in my mind while the coughing subsided. The room was white, as were the machine and the bed rails. Handcuffs joined my wrist to the bed. The chair by the door was overflowing with a lot of bad suit. The fabric was worn and out of style. Every pocket on the jacket brimmed with papers and the tops of pens. There was also an angular bulge on the right side of the coat, visible under the thinning material. The suit and the gun bulge had cop written all over it.
Almost 4,000 beeps later, the cop got up from the chair. He had to take a few seconds to get his wind back from the exercise.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he chuckled.
The door creaked twice, open then closed, and my eyes opened. I was in a windowless box of a room. Fluorescent lighting showed every imperfection on the walls and the floor. Every scuff and scratch stood out and showed the age of the hospital room. I breathed deep and felt the air rush into my nostrils. The antiseptic scent made me nauseous. The sudden pang of discomfort tuned me in to every other pain I was feeling. A wash of anguish rolled over me. My head ached and my ribs hurt. I tried to reach up to my face, but the shackles held me solid. The chains slammed against the bed frame with a loud metal-on-plastic crack. The sound was an explosion in the small white room. I lay back and closed my eyes — expecting company, but no one came in.
I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling thinking back to the last thing I could remember. I had been forced to work a job for a mob boss. I had told Paolo Donati that I was done being his problem solver, but no one quit on Paolo. He used my friends to force me into finding who had kidnapped his nephews. I became a fixer again and found out that Paolo’s nephews were kidnapped as part of a coup. His former right hand, Julian, wanted the brass ring and thought going after the boss’s nephews would unhinge Paolo enough to knock him off his throne. The two mob heavies were on a collision course with me in the middle. I did the only thing that would keep me above ground. I led Paolo into his enemies’ web and let nature take its course — after I got Julian admitting on tape that he killed the two kids. The info was enough to keep Julian away from me forever: the kids had powerful relatives in the States who would be honour bound to settle up with Julian if they found out what he did. I remembered walking away from Domenica’s, Julian’s restaurant, a free man. Then I remembered leaving the pavement. Everything after that was blank.
I took the alone time in the hospital room to research. There was nothing nearby that I could get my hands on, nothing to use against the cuffs holding me down. Everything I could touch was flimsy and soft. I kept looking for an option until I heard the doorknob twist. The door swung in, and the wheezing cop wedged himself back into his chair. I fake slept to the tune of beeping and coughing with crinkling plastic on drums. The cop ate at a rapid pace, pausing only to unwrap the snack on deck. It was as though he thought someone might burst through the door and take the food right out of his mouth. After about a minute, my nose picked up the scent of stale cigarettes. The cop was a smoker and enough of an addict to leave his post to sneak a smoke break. I tried to run through scenarios in which I could get my hands on the cop and out of the cuffs, but my arms had barely enough slack to reach the thin mattress. My lack of options took my hands out of my equations. My feet were free, but there was no guarantee that I could kick the cop in a way that would still leave me access to his keys or his gun. I couldn’t lift his piece or pick his pockets with my toes anyway, so I let the idea drift out of my mind. I had to play the waiting game until a new opportunity presented itself.
I lay chained to the bed for two days feigning unconsciousness. Every time the fat cop took off to sneak a cigarette, I stretched out as best I could and looked for anything I overlooked before that would help me escape. I was always disappointed.
On the third day, I was counting the perforations in the ceiling tiles with my eyes when the door opened earlier than I expected it to. I usually had a few minutes and a few hundred beeps before I had to begin faking sleep again. I quickly adapted to the schedule change and resumed my conscious coma, listening for the cop’s breathing. What I got was something entirely different. Rubber-soled shoes squeaked as someone approached the bed. It wasn’t the doctors or nurses — their footwear didn’t make a sound. The fat cop had worn-in dress shoes that slipped on the glossy floor. I had heard him stumble and break his fall on expensive medical equipment several times. This was someone new.
The fluorescent light dimmed outside my eyelids as the person who was now standing over me took a huge deep breath and slowly let it out. This was not like the fat cop’s breathing — this person was in shape. The breath lasted over thirty seconds. I took a slow breath of my own to slow my own heart. I didn’t want the monitor giving anything away. Just as I finished exhaling, a heavy hand closed over my nose and mouth. The hand pressed down and the bed groaned in response. The machine beside the bed monitoring my heart picked up speed, but my body stayed slack. The beeping quickened its pace, becoming more and more of a solid sound as another hand tore the monitor pad from my chest. The machine registered a flatline. It was going on too long. I could no longer afford to play dead. My mouth opened and found part of the hand over my lips. I bit down hard and tasted blood.
“Shit!”
The hand moved away as the door flung open. The fat cop rushed in, at his snail’s pace, ahead of a nurse and a doctor.
“Morrison!” the fat cop said.
“Don’t worry, Miller. Our patient woke up. It’s a miracle.” The man who had been suffocating me was pressing his thumb over where I had bit. His face was to the door, giving me only a look at his suit; it was tight, but not like the fat cop’s. The material was taut across muscular shoulders and arms.
“But the nurse’s station got an alert that his heart stopped. Whatever was monitoring his vitals said he was dying.”
“When you left for your little break, our patient must have removed the sensor. The alert wouldn’t have happened if you managed to stay at your post.”
“Sir, I . . .”
“Shut the fuck up, Miller. Get everyone out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”
“Now hold on a minute, I have to check on my patient.”
“Later, Doc, later. Right now he has to check in with me. When I got what I want from him, you can have him.”
“I am his physician, and while he is in this hospital he is under my care. Hospital protocol demands I check on him after an alert,” the doctor protested. He had a hard time realizing that he was outranked on his own turf.
“Miller, get them out of here now!”
The fat cop turned and spread his arms. The pudgy net swept up the nurse and the doctor, both of whom obviously wanted no contact with the sweat-stained blazer, and forced them out of the room. The man over me slammed the door behind them before crossing the floor and unplugging the heart monitor. He dragged the fat cop’s chair to the bed and sat down. He didn’t say anything right away. He was too busy pressing an old tissue from his pocket onto the bite on his hand.
“You broke the skin.”
>
“You tried to kill me.”
“Nah, it was reverse CPR. It always works on fake coma victims.”
“What if the coma was real?”
“Reverse CPR’s got only one side effect I know of.”
“Where am I?”
“Hospital.”
“Who am I?”
“Cut the shit.”
“Who am I?”
“I said, cut the shit.” The cop stood, and I got my first good look at him. He was tall, maybe six-three, and muscular, not bodybuilder muscle but wrestler muscle. His body conveyed a sort of all-over strength. Not the kind that came from lifting a dumbbell over and over again, but rather the power that evolved out of years of driving people off their feet and then grinding them into the ground. His skin was dark, not black, more of a deep tan. It wasn’t the olive complexion of the Mediterranean I was used to; the features were more foreign, the nose wide and flat and the forehead large. I had not seen this look before. The dark hair on his head was trimmed short. It was strong healthy hair; the kind that held its shape without gel. This cop was a tough bastard. It radiated off him. I could sense it like dogs sense other dangerous canines. He leaned in over me and outstretched his hand again.
“I know who I am. I want to know who you think I am,” I said. My words stopped the hand from covering my mouth again.
“You’re a guy who’s in a world of shit. Way I see it, I don’t know your name, but I know you’re a killer. We found you in the road in front of that wop front, Domenica’s. You had a gun on you, a knife, and a dog bone. There was something that looked like a tape recorder, but it got mashed to bits when the car hit you. Funny part is, the restaurant was closed. There were three cars out front: one registered to the owner of the place, the second to a very bad man — one outside my department and paygrade. The owners of the first two cars weren’t around, but the owner of the third vehicle, a van, was there. He was dead in the passenger seat. Caucasian, long hair, beard, name Gary Ford. Most people called him Gonzo though. Seems Gonzo was at the hospital earlier for a fall.”
“Must have been some fall to have killed him.”
“Nah, he walked out of the hospital with a clean bill of health. Well, he didn’t walk so much as limp. The emerg Doc said the wound looked like a gunshot through the foot. Bullet went right through, so there was nothing to recover, but the impact drove some of his old canvas Chuck Taylor Converse into his foot. Into the . . . metatarsal bones, the doctor called them. Gonzo swore up and down that he stepped on a pickaxe in his garage when he fell down some stairs. Good story, except a pickaxe won’t send pieces of canvas into bones in the middle of your foot. The Doc called it in, but the greasy punk took off. He ended up dead in the van before we could bring him in. Dead from two more bullets. That brings me to you.”
“You think whoever tried to kill me with the car shot this Gonzo guy too?”
“No, I don’t think that. A drunk driver hit you. You shot Gonzo with the gun you were carrying. Ballistics will prove it, once I run the gun.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?”
“I’ve been here a long time. Why haven’t you run the gun yet?”
“Heh, you’re not as dumb as I thought.”
Neither are you, I thought. This cop had me dead to rights whether he knew the whole story or not. The gun they had on me would tie me to Gonzo all right. It would also tie me to a gunfight and two bodies outside of Ave Maria, a local religious store and mob front. The fact that the gun had not yet been run through the system meant that the cop standing over me wanted something.
“Tell me,” I said.
“You’re not a suspect yet, just a person of interest. One word from me and the prints I took off you get attached to a murder charge. You’re a person of interest only, for now, because you and me got similar interests.”
I shifted around in the bed trying to get comfortable. When I found a spot that didn’t feel like I was on a hot spike, I spoke again. “What interests are those?”
“You want to stay out of jail and I want you to stay out too.”
“We do see eye to eye about that, but you can’t always get what you want.”
“That’s a good song. Back on the island we got that record.”
“What island?”
“New Zealand.”
That explained the features I couldn’t place.
“So did we send some fat, pale cop there, and we got you in exchange?”
“Nah, mate, I’m local. Have been for years and years.”
I shifted on the bed again.
“You can’t always get what you want,” he sang. “But if you try some time, you get what you need. Song’s true, and you’re going to have to figure that out.”
“So what do I have to do to get what I need?”
“Nothing too taxing. I just want a bigger fish.”
“And you think I can get you one?”
“Figure you can. Found you in front of a mob den with two abandoned cars belonging to some underworld heavy hitters. I think you know some things about some people that I don’t know . . . yet.”
“You think that talking to you will improve my prognosis? I’m already on a list somewhere if what you say is true. Someone will want payback, and it won’t be hard to get at me when I’m chained up like King Kong.”
“Good film. I even liked the remake. But that might just be me rooting for a hometown face. You ever see his Lord of the Rings?”
I shook my head.
“Blow your fucking socks off, ya know what I mean? That was epic, just epic. Not like you, you’re not epic. You’re not even on anyone’s radar. No one even knows you’re here outside of Miller and me.”
“The nurses,” I said.
“We fed them a lie about you being a cop killer.”
“Explains the violence and why they let it happen,” I said, nodding.
“Some in the west just don’t appreciate Maori medicine. To them you’re just passing through. You’re not even worth their time, and they won’t miss you when you’re gone. There’s no one to miss anyway: you’re not even in the system yet, and as far as the Italians know, the drunk driver outside Domenica’s hit a bum, not far off on that one, eh? But you’re on my shit list, and you’ll be there until you give me something better to spend my time on. If you don’t come up with a name for me, I’ll hunt you down with a blue army behind me, and I’ll make sure the Italians aren’t far behind. Your best bet is to help me out and then get the hell out of town, mate.”
“You’re some cop, Serpico.”
“I’m local, but I still got some of the old island ways inside me.” He accelerated fast to his feet and hit his chest with a closed fist. The sound echoed off the tight walls. His face became wildly expressive as his tongue shot out to his chin and his fist rose in the air. It was something that could have looked ridiculous, but this imposing man had the eyes of a believer. His display of the old ways was an eye opener. This man wasn’t soft, he had a fire inside that hardened him. This ritual showed me what he was underneath the suit and cop shield. I understood the cop, but I wouldn’t let him know.
“That dance mean it’s going to rain?”
“That is no dance. It is part of the peruperu. It brings the god of war. It’s the old, old ways.”
“You think what I can tell you will lead you to war?”
“I don’t want you to talk to me. I said I want you to get me a fish, not draw me a map to the fucking watering hole.”
“How can I get you anything from here?”
“You got a few days to figure out how you can get me what I need. After that, I just process you and take what I can get with the prints on the gun. I don’t care how you do it, just try not to break any more laws getting me what I want. I’d hate to have to arrest you again. You’d hate that too, that Maori medicine is a bitch the second time around.”
The big cop got up and reached inside his jacket. His hand came out with a white b
usiness card. He handed it to me and then bent to plug the heart monitor back in. The machine said its thank you in steady electronic beats.
“Call the number on the back when you get me my fish. Wait too long, and the picture we took of you while you were out will start making the rounds at roll call; your prints will go into the machine too.”
I didn’t watch the cop leave. I studied what he had handed me instead. Detective Sergeant Huata Morrison’s card had two numbers on it — business and cell. It was a generic cheap business card, thin and plain. The only exception was the handcuff key taped to the back.
CHAPTER TWO
I pulled the key off the back of the card and fit it into the cuffs with my right hand. I managed to find a position where I could use my thumb and index finger to turn the key. I felt the mechanism start to slowly turn and the cuffs begin to release. I opened the cuffs slowly, one size at a time until I could slip my hands from the metal rings with little friction. I couldn’t walk out right away — there were too many people around, not to mention the fact that all I had to wear was the thin, assless hospital gown I had on. If I could get clothes, I could get to the car. The Volvo I rode into town on should still be parked close to Ave Maria. Its years of wear and tear would make it virtually unnoticeable in the urban jungle. It was like a boxy European mechanical tiger hiding in the long concrete grass. No one saw it coming and no one saw it go. Under the hood, the car was all after-market improvements. It would give any souped-up sports car on the road a run for its money. The car was more than a conveyance; it was a temporary bank too. In a compartment inside the trunk, under the spare, lay a few hundred thousand in cash in a fireproof box. Paolo Donati had put me in a dangerous spot a few years back. I left the city in a hurry with enough travelling money to last me years. Paolo found me in two, and I brought the balance back across the country with me, just in case I had to buy my freedom or the bullets I would need to take it. I never planned to be in town for more than a few days, so I never set up a safe place to stash the cash. I had to be prepared to leave without more than a second’s notice, and I couldn’t afford to leave my money behind. My need outweighed the danger of leaving all of my eggs in one basket.