Bad Scene

by Max Tomlinson

  The ER nurse, a black woman with a short Afro, said, “That would be on the ambulance report.”

  “Which ambulance service brought him in?”

  The nurse gave her a squint. “How about you tell me who you are first?”

  “A friend,” Colleen said, introducing herself. “I’m almost certain he’s got no family.”

  “DPH,” she said. Department of Public Health. She dug through an admittance log on a clipboard, showed Colleen: M. Donaldson, H003 EMT/Paramedic, Truck 41.

  “Mickey Donaldson,” the nurse said. “Mickey D.”

  “You don’t have the phone number of his station, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “It would really help if I knew whether Herman was conscious, said anything.”

  “I can’t give you his number. Sorry.”

  “What happened to Herman’s things? His clothes? His wallet?”

  “Why don’t you let SFPD handle that?”

  “Right, but the surgeon said that might take a while.”

  “Leave your number. I’ll put a call in to DPH. But you might not hear anything right away. I can also have SFPD contact you. They’ll have to write it up.”

  Eventually. Colleen thanked her, left. In the hallway by the ER she found a payphone, called directory services, asked for the number of Central Emergency on Grove Street. There were half a dozen city DPH ambulance stations. Central would be the place to start.

  A clerk at Central told her truck 41 was dispatched out of Mission Emergency. They gave her the phone number. She called Mission Emergency. EMT Mickey Donaldson was out on a call. She asked about an emergency he worked concerning a man picked up probably around one a.m. They couldn’t give that information out. She asked what time Mickey Donaldson went off shift. They said seven a.m. She left her numbers.

  Back in the hospital, Lucky had been moved to Intensive Care. They balked at letting Colleen into the ICU at first but Colleen pushed and was shown to a room where, behind a blue plastic curtain, she recoiled when she got a look at him.

  A thick bandage covered the top of his head and one side of his face. What skin was visible was bruised and swollen, purple in places, crimson in others. His observable eyelid was a puffy slit. A ventilator tube snaked into the side of his mouth, the hiss of oxygen like a deflating tire. An IV hung from a bracket on a stand, feeding a clear fluid into his arm. A high-tech computer device that seemed to be reading his cardiac state was connected to him with wires. An inconsistent green line on a dark screen hobbled from left to right. Lucky’s pulse rate was displayed in changing red letters: 45, up to 90, then back down to 55, and so on. Even to a medical novice like Colleen, that didn’t seem good.

  The head nurse stood by. She was a matronly woman with dark features.

  “Can he talk?” Colleen whispered.

  “He mumbles now and again,” the nurse said. “Nothing intelligible.”

  Colleen turned. “Well, that’s a good sign, isn’t it? Talking?”

  The nurse frowned. “Possibly.”

  “Where are his effects?”

  “Bedside table.” She nodded at it.

  “Okay if I take a look?”

  The nurse grimaced.

  “I’m trying to find out what happened to him,” Colleen said. “It would really help.”

  “Be quick.” She opened the bedside cabinet, removed a large paper sack, handed it to Colleen. Colleen rested it on the corner of the bed, next to Lucky’s blanketed foot.

  She went through the items. Shoes, socks, underwear. Lucky’s jeans. A plaid shirt he’d worn almost every time she’d seen him, still damp with the blood that saturated the collar. No down jacket.

  She handed the bag back to the nurse. “I’m guessing his jacket’s a goner?”

  The nurse nodded. “We took whatever was in the pockets and put it to one side. Along with his wallet.”

  “Where would that be?”

  She squinted. “At the nursing station. We hold them until he’s discharged. Or give them to SFPD.”

  “If I could just go through it quickly,” Colleen said. “You can watch.”

  “I don’t have time for that.”

  “Then maybe you can just find out one thing for me. Is there any money in his wallet?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to determine if he might have been robbed.” A robbery meant a possible random event. No robbery pointed at Shuggy Johnston.

  “Wait here.” The nurse padded out of the room. Colleen turned to Lucky, put her hand on the back of his. It felt cool and waxy, which sent a chill through her. Suddenly, his head turned. He murmured around the tube in the corner of his mouth.

  “Luck, it’s me—Colleen. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been in an accident. But you’re going to be okay.” One could only hope. “Can you hear me?”

  Lucky’s one visible eye split open a millimeter.

  “Coh?” he tried to say, but it was almost without sound. She was doing her best to read his lips, not easy with the breathing tube. And painful to watch.

  Colleen squeezed his hand.

  “Don’t try to talk,” she said. “Can you feel my hand?”

  Lucky returned a feeble clasp.

  “Good. I’m going to ask you some yes or no questions, and you nod, or squeeze my hand. Whatever works—got it?”

  Small hand squeeze.

  “Do you have any idea who did this to you, Lucky?”

  Shook his head no.

  “Can’t remember?” she asked.

  Shook his head.

  “Remember anything about it, Luck?”

  Miniscule headshake.

  “Were you at the Hugo?” That was the hotel Colleen had directed Lucky to.

  Headshake.

  A jolt of alarm caught her. “Not the Thunderbird?”

  He nodded.

  So Lucky had stayed at the Thunderbird after all.

  “Were you in your usual room?” she asked. “313?”

  Head nod.

  “Next to Shuggy Johnston in 312? The biker den?”

  Nod.

  Colleen’s heart sank. “Did Shuggy have his biker friends over last night?”

  Head nod.

  “Were you spying on them?”

  There was a delay before he responded. Then, a single sad nod.

  A wave of nausea washed over her. “Did they catch you spying, Luck?”

  Now there was a longer delay. He looked away. The ventilator hissed.

  “Luck?”

  Nod.

  “Oh, Luck,” she said, squeezing his hand. But there was no point reprimanding him. The damage had been done. “I’m so sorry.”

  He looked back. His one visible eye glistened.

  “Is your stuff at the Thunderbird?” she asked.

  Nod.

  “I’ll get it, keep it at my place until you’re out of here. I’ll call the Chronicle, let them know you won’t be selling papers for a while.” If ever, she thought.

  Nod.

  She saw him try to speak around the ventilator tube. The word “thanks” formed on his lips. She squeezed his hand. “I’ll be back later to check on you. Don’t go anywhere without me, okay?”

  Hs tried to smile at the joke. He squeezed her hand. He was trying to form a word on his lips around the hissing ventilator tube. It seemed important.

  “What is it, Luck?”

  It looked like he was saying “Pap.” Pah.

  “What about your pop? You want me to call your pop? Where is he? I don’t have his number. Where is it?”

  Shook his head.

  “Pah,” he gasped, his one eye wide open, glassy, but alert. He was trying to tell her something.

  Her heart leapt at the possibility.

  “Did you say Pam, Luck?”

  Painful nod.

  “Excuse me,” a woman’s cold voice said behind Colleen.

  Colleen spun, not realizing how focused she had been on the conversation. The head nurse had a black wallet in
her hand.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she said. “This man is in critical condition.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to leave—right now.”

  “If I could just have another moment …”

  The nurse turned her head and shouted. “Security!”

  Colleen put her hands up in appeasement. “That’s not necessary. I’m gone.”

  The door to the ICU opened and a heavyset guard in black pants and gray uniform shirt came charging in, his belt jangling.

  “Show this woman out,” the nurse said.

  He took Colleen’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Got it,” Colleen said. “Got it.”

  She stifled a sigh as she was led out of the ICU. Lucky had wanted to tell her more. But he’d told her enough. If he wasn’t delirious, he knew something about Pamela.

  Did Pam have something to do with Shuggy? Colleen shuddered at the thought.

  Outside, Colleen lit up a Slim, blew smoke into the wet night air.

  Finally, a trace of Pam—maybe. But, once again, associated with the wrong people.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Outside the emergency room a sharp wind blew up 22nd Street as Colleen stepped out her cigarette. The images of Lucky’s swollen and bruised face lingered. Pam’s possible involvement didn’t help. The next step was Shuggy Johnston. But how?

  Colleen went back inside, blinking away the fluorescence, called her answering service from a payphone in the hall outside the ER. No new messages.

  Commotion outside alerted her to the fact that a fresh emergency had arrived.

  Back in the emergency room, paramedics were hustling in a woman on a gurney that reeked of smoke. She was chattering away deliriously in Spanish and one of the paramedics, a Latina with black hair in a braided ponytail, consoled her as she pulled the gurney. The man doing most of the pushing was compact and muscular, with a sculpted, swept-back jet-black pompadour. His powerful arms bulged out of a short-sleeved blue shirt with a blue Department of Public Health Paramedic patch on one arm.

  Colleen looked for a name tag. None.

  “’Scuse me,” he said as they rushed past.

  Colleen went through the receiving door to where the white DPH ambulance was parked, its doors still open. The truck number was 41, the same one that brought Lucky in earlier that night.

  Not long after, the paramedics returned, wheeling the gurney back out, heaving it back into the rear of the ambulance. Colleen waited for them to finish.

  Then she caught the man’s eye.

  “I think you brought my friend in earlier,” she said. “Around one thirty a.m.”

  He stopped. “The guy beaten up pretty bad?”

  “‘Pretty bad’ is a nice way to put it,” she said. “You must be Mickey D.”

  “I am he.” He gave a broad grin, which quickly faded. “How’s your friend doing?”

  “Still alive—barely. Just got out of surgery. Where’d you pick him up?”

  He stood for a moment, rubbed his cheek with a finger, obviously thinking about divulging information.

  “I’m a friend,” Colleen said. “I’m trying to retrace his steps.”

  He nodded. “We got a call from a payphone at the Shell station on Sixth and Mission, after someone heard moaning from a dumpster.”

  “You found Lucky in a dumpster?”

  Mickey shook his head and grimaced. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  There would also have to be more than one person to throw Lucky in a dumpster.

  “Lucky for your buddy he was groaning,” the EMT said.

  Colleen called SFPD from the payphone, reported the crime. 911 said they would follow up.

  She waited for close to an hour, then went back inside to check in on Lucky. No change, which wasn’t bad, considering, but they wouldn’t let her in the ICU. SFPD didn’t stop by.

  She waited outside the ER until her bones chilled, then headed home, swinging by the Thunderbird. No bikes parked outside. The third-floor rooms, where Shuggy stayed, were dark.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “And you heard nothing unusual last night?” Colleen asked Lawrence, the manager of the Thunderbird.

  It was evening, the next day.

  “Define unusual,” Lawrence said in a weary monotone, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “You know how it gets around here.”

  That she did. It was like that right now: TVs, stereos, residents laughing and shouting.

  Colleen knew Lawrence from her short occupancy when she needed a verifiable address to satisfy parole. For a man in his thirties, he did not look well. He was too thin, face too drawn, dark rings under his eyes. His lanky blond hair hung over his forehead in an unkempt swoop. Colleen wasn’t sure if drugs were the culprit, or some illness.

  “Yeah, I know how it gets around here,” Colleen said. “I used to live here, remember?”

  “Last night wasn’t any different.”

  “Lucky might not live,” she said, in the hopes of triggering a response.

  Lawrence took the cigarette out of his mouth, flicked the filter with his thumb, knocking ash onto the beat-up hardwood floor of the hall.

  “That’s a bad scene,” he muttered.

  “You don’t recall anything? It would’ve been late.”

  “I zoned out early.” He pointed at his ear. “Headphones.”

  “See Shuggy at all last night?” she said with a side look.

  Lawrence’s face turned to stone before he shook his head.

  “His room was right next to Lucky’s,” Colleen reminded him.

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “I know you know. Because it’s the room you always give Lucky. Because no one else wants it.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “I’m pretty sure Lucky paid for his room,” she said. “But the police are going to be following up. So, if you know something …”

  Lawrence tapped more ash onto the floor. “You don’t have to tell me how it works.”

  “Shuggy have friends over last night?” she asked.

  Lawrence gave an irritated shrug. “I mind my own business, Colleen.”

  “I couldn’t care less about the fact that he deals. But if you know something that is evidence in a crime, especially something this serious, it’s unlawful to keep it to yourself.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  He probably wouldn’t tell the police anything anyway.

  “I need to pick up Lucky’s stuff,” she said. “I’m going to hold it for him.”

  They looked at each other. Upstairs someone called someone an asshole at volume. Somewhere else, a man brayed with laughter.

  “I can’t let you do that,” Lawrence said.

  “Sure you can. You know Lucky knows me.”

  “I’ll put it in storage. Check back tomorrow.”

  She wanted to check out Lucky’s room. “I don’t want his stuff to disappear, Lawrence. And I don’t have time to come back tomorrow.”

  Lawrence huffed, disappeared down the hall, returned with a key on a yellow plastic diamond. “Knock yourself out.”

  She flashed a plastic smile, took the key, went up to the third floor, unlocked 313. 312, Shuggy’s room next door, was silent. The rest of the floor was relatively quiet, if you ignored a TV down the hall blaring One Day at a Time.

  In Lucky’s room, the bed was unmade. She found his backpack leaning against the wall. She gathered his stray clothes, his Chronicle apron from the arm of a chair. She folded it, put it in the backpack, hoping he’d make use of it again. In the bathroom, she found a pair of drugstore readers, a toothbrush, comb, and stick of deodorant. She took the glasses, decided to forgo the other items and buy fresh for Lucky.

  Next to the john sat a small stack of Chronicle newspapers. Yesterday’s unsold papers were Lucky’s TP supply. Sections of pages had been torn off.

  She was about to t
urn away when she saw an almost illegible scrawl on the top corner of one paper, next to the weather prediction.

  joly ranchers 312 10 pm monday pamila

  She froze. The Jolly Ranchers were what Lucky called members of Moon Ranch, the orange-robed, head-shaved, baseball bat–wielding spiritualists who practiced their faith up at Point Arenas—where Pamela had once been a member, until she ran off almost two months ago. Lucky’d spotted her once, nearby. Colleen wasn’t allowed up at Moon Ranch as they had taken out a restraining order against her, and a parole violation would be the end result if she did.

  This scrap of paper looked like a note Lucky had written to himself. He had mentioned—or tried to mention—something about Pam before Colleen was tossed out of SF General ICU. Had he overhead Shuggy talking about Pam? Colleen checked the date of the paper. Tuesday. Yesterday. So what was Monday about? Next Monday?

  She tore off the pertinent part, folded it, slipped it in her pocket. She checked the rest of the papers for notes. Nothing. She tossed them in the trash can.

  Pam. Monday.

  How in hell did her daughter get connected with all of this?

  She exited Lucky’s room with his few extra belongings. A Hertz commercial with O.J. Simpson thundered down the hall. She went next door to Shuggy’s, 312. Still silent. She knocked anyway. No answer. She didn’t bother to rattle the doorknob because there was a serious combination padlock on a heavy-duty bracket on the door.

  Downstairs on the first floor, a door opened.

  “How’s it going up there, Colleen?” she heard Lawrence say. “You about done?”

  “Just finished.”

  Downstairs, backpack over one shoulder, she handed Lucky’s key back. Lawrence had a fresh cigarette going. “If you hear anything, give me a call,” she said. “And I’d appreciate it if you kept this visit between the two of us.”

  He flicked more ash. “Don’t feel the need to rush back here, Colleen.”

  “Have a wonderful evening, Lawrence.”

  Lawrence didn’t bother her as much as wondering about the connection between her daughter and Shuggy Johnston. And what Monday meant. And if it had anything to do with shooting the mayor.

  Colleen went out onto O’Farrell, up the block, heaved Lucky’s backpack into the trunk of her car. The working girl in the gold hot pants was coming out of a liquor store with a pack of cigarettes. They traded stares as Colleen took off.