Tom frown deepened. “I’ve done nothing but think about it ever since I heard about Dave’s murder.”
“Have you spoken to anyone about it?”
“No.”
“Not even Maria?”
“You can’t think she’s got anything to do with what happened to you guys.”
“Why not?”
Tom looked appalled. “She’s a great little gal.”
“She’s hardly a gal. What do you actually know about her?”
“Just that she was a wildly successful bartender at The Double Helix before she came to work for me.”
“She was more than just a bartender there—she owns the place.”
Tom’s eyes widened.
“And that’s not all she owns.”
“Such as?”
“Most of the block around your bar.”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know?”
“Public records. Remember, I once made my living as an investigator.”
A blush rose up Tom’s neck until it stained his cheeks. “What are you saying?”
“Just that you should watch your step. Don’t make any rash decisions—like a sudden marriage proposal.”
Tom’s eyebrows shot up. I’d definitely hit a nerve.
“You’re way out of line, Jeff.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough. But please don’t mention our conversation to Maria. I’d hate for her next attempt on my life to be successful.”
I looked at the casket, then glanced around the room but didn’t see Richard. “I’ve got to go.”
“Take care,” Tom said, but I wasn’t sure how sincere the wish really was.
I turned and headed for the exit. I had a feeling I’d just lost a friend, and worse, may have made an enemy.
Out in the parking lot, I headed for the van, but stopped some ten feet from it. I could see Richard sitting in the driver’s seat, but his arms were folded over the top of the steering wheel, his head resting on them. My stomach did a somersault and, panicked, I shuffle-hopped as fast as I could, thinking the worst, and wrenched open the passenger door. “Rich?”
Slowly, he turned his head to look at me through bloodshot eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
His voice was strained. “I think I’ve been poisoned.”
“What?”
“I need to get to the ER.”
My mind was spinning. “Should I call for an ambulance?”
“No, I can drive. We’re not far. Get in.”
My mouth went dry, my hands shaking as I tossed my left crutch over the passenger seat, grabbed the handhold just inside the passenger side door, hauled my left ass cheek onto the seat, shifted my other crutch in and over my head, and pulled the rest of me inside. I grabbed the door, slamming it. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” he said, and turned the key in the ignition. His brow was beaded with sweat.
“When did this start?” I asked as the van lurched forward.
“I felt rocky most of the afternoon. When we got inside the funeral home, I had to go to the men’s room where I literally lost my lunch.” He looked both ways before pulling out of the lot and headed for Sisters Hospital.
I buckled my seat belt. “What did you eat today?”
“Leftovers from the fridge in our room.”
“Food poisoning?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Nobody could have gotten to it. I mean, you were there all day.”
“I left the cleaning women alone for a few minutes just to get away from the sound of vacuuming. One of them could have put something in the food. I should have known better than to leave the room.” He braked for a light and I could see his fingers were wrapped so tight around the wheel they were bloodless.
“Do you think Maria got to one of them?”
“I wouldn’t underestimate her.”
Hadn’t I intimated the same to Tom just minutes before?
The light went green and his foot slipped from the brake onto the accelerator, jolting us forward. “Can you make it to the hospital?”
“I haven’t got much choice,” he said, sounding worse by the moment.
Could Maria have bribed one of the hotel workers to taint the leftovers in our fridge? Most food poisoning takes a day or two to show up. What would they have used? Something chemical? A bio agent?
I felt the gun on my hip dig into me. What good was it as a form of protection against something like poison?
Richard turned onto Kensington Avenue. My nails were biting into my palms as I caught sight of the hospital up ahead, but instead of pulling up to the doors of the Emergency Department, Richard bypassed that driveway and chose the big lot adjacent to it. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t leave the van in front of the ER—you can’t drive it away.”
“The hell I can’t!”
“Bullshit.” He pulled into the first empty slot and nearly hit the car ahead of us. He shoved the gearshift into park and turned off the engine, yanking out the electronic key.
“Can you walk all the way to the entrance?”
“What choice have I got?” he said, but already he sounded exhausted. He opened his door and oozed out of the van. I had a harder time getting out and grabbing my crutches. He waited for me, then pressed the fob and locked the van before shambling forward. I couldn’t do a damn thing to help keep him upright, and he stumbled against the cars as he made his way across the lot, with me struggling to keep up with him.
A line of ambulances were parked nearby and he made the first one his target, leaning against it until he made it to the next one and the next until he practically stumbled to the big glass doors. He triggered the magic eye and the automatic doors whooshed open. A line of the walking wounded waited to be seen at reception. This could take some time.
“Go sit down in one of the chairs. I’ll stand in line for you.”
“Bullshit,”’ he said again, and bypassed the queue, moving to the left to lean against the counter behind the receptionist.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to wait your turn,” one of the women dressed in scrubs behind the desk said.
“I’m Dr. Richard Alpert, I don’t have my ID with me, but I’m affiliated with the hospital. I think I’ve been poisoned.”
The woman turned to her keyboard, her fingers dancing across it.
“Rich, this isn’t like you.”
“This is the first time I’ve been poisoned. There’s a bloody hand, a swollen foot, and a bad rash in line. They can wait an extra few minutes, where I might not have that luxury,” he managed. His breathing was growing labored.
The woman pulled up a picture of Richard on her computer—the same one that was on the ID card he usually wore on a lanyard around his neck when he visited the hospital for a meeting or on the rare occasion when he called on a patient.
“Hang on, Doc. We’ll get a chair and come get you,” she said, motioning to the security officer nearby, who grabbed an empty wheelchair. Another of the scrubs-clad women came around the desk to commandeer it. Seconds later, Richard was whisked inside the ER with me left standing there like an asshole.
“Are you with the doc?” the first woman asked.
I nodded dumbly—shook myself, and answered, “I’m his brother.”
“Why don’t you wait in one of the chairs?” She nodded to the room at large. “We’ll call you when he’s settled.”
“Thanks.”
“Here,” the security guard said, handing me a laminated visitor’s badge, which I clipped to my shirt.
The place was fairly crowded, and I had to search for two empty seats before I could get settled on one of the hard plastic chairs and haul my right leg up on the other. Why in hell did hospitals everywhere provide such crappy seating for those who had to wait for loved ones? My heart was pounding but I was pretty sure it was from worry and not exertion.
I’d sat in an ER b
efore, scared shitless my brother would die after he’d been shot trying to protect me. After he’d tried to save Gene Higgins’ life, attempting to staunch the flow of the guy’s life blood with no latex gloves between him and possible infection, Richard had lived with the specter of HIV for six months.
Oh, yeah—I knew about worry.
There was nothing but a wrinkled copy of the morning’s paper around—which I’d already read—and the large-screen TV bolted to the wall, which had been set on mute, as entertainment. Should I call someone?
That didn’t seem like a good idea, at least when I had no news—good, bad, or indifferent—to share. I’d just scare Brenda and Maggie by reporting Richard’s whereabouts, and we really had no idea if he’d been poisoned. Maybe he had appendicitis. Hell, I’d been sick as a dog and puked myself empty when mine had gone south half a lifetime before. Maybe Richard had guessed wrong. Then again, he was a doctor. He knew what to look for when assessing poison over appendicitis.
Goddamn Maria. She’d obviously found where we’d set up our base camp and had infiltrated it. It was bad enough that she’d targeted me—and killed my co-worker—but now she’d gone too far by going after my brother, who had never done anything to hurt her. Hell, Dave and I were in the same boat. She’d attacked us with no provocation simply because she’d seen us as a potential threat. How ruthless were her attacks against people who’d actually been hostile toward her?
Ten minutes went by.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty.
“Relative for Richard Alpert?” a voice called out.
It took a moment for me to react, then I swung my leg off the chair, made a grab for my crutches, and hauled myself to my feet as the woman gave yet another call. “Coming!”
She waited for me to make my way to her, eyed my crutches but made no comment. “If you’ll follow me.” She punched a big square button with a wheelchair symbol on it that opened the double doors leading to the ER’s inner sanctum. I followed her through the large room filled with men and women in scrubs, past patients lying on gurneys in the aisles, to treatment room eleven where a drape of swirling pastels had been pulled to give the glass-enclosed cubicle some privacy.
“There you go,” she said and moved aside to let me enter, then abandoned me.
I stepped into the room crammed with all kinds of medical monitors and found my brother lying on the gurney clad in a hospital gown looking like death warmed over, wired for sound, and with an IV running into the back of his right hand.
“You look like shit,” I said, and his eyes opened at the sound of my voice.
He turned his head toward me. “I feel like shit,” he said and sounded that way, too.
Yet another uncomfortable plastic chair was wedged between a monitor and the wall. I took it. There was nothing for me to prop my leg up on. “What’s the verdict? Are you going to live?” I asked, half afraid to hear the answer.
“It’s a good possibility.”
Thank God, I said to myself, despite the fact I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in such a deity—although it seemed my brother did.
“What’s next?”
“Observation. If I had someone to take care of me, I could probably leave in a couple of hours.”
“But I won’t cut it as a caretaker,” I said unnecessarily.
“Unfortunately, no.”
Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, the monitor to my right continued to beep in time with Richard’s heartbeats. The place made me feel vaguely queasy. After all, I’d been a patient in one of the rooms down the aisle just a few weeks before.
“So, what do I do next?”
He let out a long breath. “You could go back to the hotel.”
“Where I’m probably not safe.”
“Or you could stay the night here with me.”
“And sit in this chair?”
He shook his head. “They’ll find me a room. They can bring in a recliner for you. I’ve still got some pull around here, you know.”
“Thank goodness for small favors.”
“Very small,” he agreed and closed his eyes.
The muffled ringtone on Richard’s phone sounded from somewhere nearby.
“Oh, shit. It’s probably Brenda. I’m late calling her.”
I scrambled to figure out where the sound was coming from, found a white plastic bag with Richard’s clothes in it, and came up with the phone just as it stopped chirping. “Shall I call her back?”
“Only if you let me do the talking.”
“And what if some nurse or tech comes in while you’re on the phone?”
“I can tell her I’m at the ER for another reason?”
“Such as?”
“Don’t look for trouble,” he warned.
I hit the call icon and handed him the phone. He seemed to be steeling himself, and when he spoke, he’d plastered a smile across his lips and almost sounded like his usual self. Almost. Brenda must have detected it right away. “Nothing’s wrong. Jeff and I had to go to Dave’s wake, and while we were in the neighborhood, I decided to stop at the ER to visit Rob McIntyre. He was on a break, but—”
I knew the bullshit was going to pile higher and higher and tried to tune out the rest of the conversation—which was not that easy to do when there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
Finally, the exchange wound down. “Yeah, I love you, too. And I hope you can come home in a day or two. I’ll call you in the morning. Bye.” He handed me the phone.
“Did she believe you?”
“Not a chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up tomorrow morning on the first plane in from Philadelphia.”
“If it’s any consolation, something’s going to happen—and soon.”
“Like?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But something.” Again, I could feel the weight of the gun resting against my hip. I didn’t know what was coming at me down the pike, but there was a good possibility my new gun was going to see some kind of action. I just didn’t know what or where.
24
Being able to nap in a recliner had been a godsend at Richard’s house, namely because he’d spent some decent bucks on a comfortable chair. The chair the hospital supplied me that night could have doubled as a torture device. It wouldn’t go back all the way, and the cheap plastic was probably hygienic, in that it could be scrubbed if soiled, but it was hot and stuck to my sweaty skin. Hospital routine never seemed to vary, and some tech or other seemed to come into the room about every twenty minutes or so, waking both of us when they took vitals or performed some other invasive act.
Of course, lying awake half the night gave me plenty of time to think about our next move, not that I came to any real conclusions. We were fucked. We weren’t safe in our hotel room, and I didn’t know what else to suggest except the one obvious thing; we should leave town, too. And go where?
But thanks to my funny feelings, I also knew that something was going to happen that day that would blow everything apart.
I didn’t have long to wait to find out, either.
I must have conked out around dawn, for light peaked around the edges of the curtains and the sound of a TV greeted me as I opened my eyes.
“Good morning,” Richard said. He sat propped up in his hospital bed, looking rumpled and stubbled, but better than he had the night before.
“I’ve had better,” I said, feeling achy and grumpy. I hadn’t had a pain pill in forever.
The local all-news channel was squeaking on the tiny speaker that doubled as the combination TV remote-call button-bed control. The station’s meteorologist was gushing about what a beautiful day we had in store for us—not a chance of rain.
“When can we get the hell out of here?” I asked.
“The resident on duty will be around in an hour or two. There’s paperwork that has to happen, too. I’m guessing we’ll be out of here by lunchtime—if we’re lucky.”
“Luck hasn�
��t been in abundance of late,” I commented, and the weather segued into a commercial. “And neither has food. I’m starved.”
“You’re better off going to the cafeteria to find something edible.”
“I’ve got no money,” I reminded him.
“I do.”
I nodded. The poor schmuck always had to pick up the slack.
“By the way, I felt so crappy yesterday I never had an opportunity to tell you what I learned from the book on Prohibition here in Buffalo. In all the US, Buffalo was only second when it came to ignoring the eighteenth amendment.”
“How so?”
“There were approximately eight thousand speakeasies in the area.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head. “You could cross the Niagara River to get a legal drink, but everybody and his brother also tried to smuggle it in. And if they weren’t doing that, they were making bathtub gin or beer.”
“I’ll bet it tasted like swill.”
“You’re right, but if it didn’t poison you, you could still get lit.”
It didn’t sound all that appealing to me, but I’d been legally able to buy a beer on my eighteenth birthday—just before the rules had changed.
“Interestingly enough, there was a paragraph about Hiram Newcomb.”
My interest piqued. “Oh, yeah?”
“He was known as one of the most ruthless of the rumrunners, also known as hard-fisted Hiram.”
“Did it mention Alice?”
He nodded. “Newcomb considered her collateral damage—the bastard fuck.”
I’d never heard Richard use that expression. That it was delivered with such vehemence was telling. “And what about the genealogy you’ve been working on?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve come up with a couple of scenarios, but there’s a missing link.”
“Any ideas on where to go?”
Before he could answer, yet another tech entered the room to take Richard’s vitals. It seemed like overkill when he was obviously on the mend. By the time the guy left, I’d lost track of our conversation. My stomach grumbled, reminding me I needed to get something to eat. I cast around for my crutches.
“I know it’s an inconvenience, but I was wondering if you could go down to the van and retrieve the paperwork,” Richard said. “Playing with it would give me something to do during the next couple of hours.”
Shattered Spirits Page 24