Concourse, p.27
Concourse, page 27
part #2 of Bill Smith & Lydia Chin Series
I held the cup. She took other things out of her bag.
“You’re not as blurry,” I told her.
“As what?”
“As before.”
She turned from what she was doing, smiled. “Good,” she said gently. “I’m glad.”
I tasted the pale liquid she’d given me. It was salty and sweet and warm; it echoed with flavors like the tones that linger when a chord has almost died away.
“God,” I said. “Great.”
“It’s full of minerals and Chinese herbs. It’s a healing broth. It’s very good for you.”
“Did you make it?”
“My mother did.”
“Your mother?” I felt myself smile. “She likes me.” I sipped my Chinese herbs.
“She hates you. She also hates that I spent the night here with you. If you were a decent man, you’d die, she tells me. But since you won’t, this will help you get better fast, and then maybe I’ll come home where I belong.”
“That’s what I said. She likes me.” I drank some more. “Where’s Bobby?”
“He went home. The doctor said you’re out of danger now, it’s just a matter of healing. Mr. Moran needed to rest.”
“How is he?”
I couldn’t quite read her expression, even with the light to help. “Not well, Bill. He doesn’t look good.”
I finished my healing broth, settled back, closed my eyes. I hurt in a lot of places now, but my mind was clearer. Maybe they were giving me fewer drugs. Or maybe the Chinese herbs were working.
“We’re close,” I said. “I can feel it.”
Something was working its way up from the depths, trying to break the surface of my thoughts. Floating, I tried to relax, give it room, and that almost worked; but two deep, muffled booms that I felt as well as heard scared it off, sent it diving for the bottom.
“Christ,” I said. “What’s that?”
“From the construction next door,” Lydia told me. “It’s driving everyone crazy, Dr. Horowitz says.”
“Who’s Dr. Horowitz?”
“Me!” a voice rang from the door. It belonged to a mustached, curly haired man with a stethoscope stuffed in his pocket. “God, what an entrance! I love that! How’s he doing?” he asked Lydia.
“He’s fine,” I said.
“Hey, he talks, he walks—well, maybe not that.” He lifted the chart from the foot of the bed. “Five minutes for some man talk?” he asked Lydia. “You could powder your nose, or have a cigarette.”
“Bill already had one,” Lydia ratted on me.
“Did you?” Horowitz raised bushy eyebrows. “Well, there would’ve been no point in powdering that nose.”
Lydia smiled at him and left.
“Has she got a sister?” Horowitz asked.
“Four brothers.”
“Hmmm. Listen, you shouldn’t be smoking.”
“You do.”
“Wow. They told me you were a detective. What is it, my yellow teeth? The tobacco odor on my breath?”
“Newports … in your pocket.”
“Oh. Well, they didn’t bring me in here on a stretcher yesterday. Of course,” he reflected, “if I don’t quit, eventually I suppose they will.”
“Can I … get out of here soon?”
“Are you kidding? You can’t even get out of bed soon.” He listened to my chest, lifted the blanket, poked around. I asked him some questions, he gave me answers.
He peered at my eyes. “Well, you’re lucky. Ten days, maybe two weeks, everything should be clear.”
“If only.”
He laughed. “I meant your eyes.”
The muffled booms came back, and the distant roaring of a large engine.
“God,” Horowitz said. “Well, it’s almost five. They knock off at five. Pain in the ass, huh? I guess you know all about that.”
“Construction?”
“No, pain in the ass. You’re going to be sore for a long time, my friend, so get used to it. But it wasn’t true what I said about your getting out of bed. I want you walking tomorrow.”
“Tonight?”
“Don’t be greedy. Listen, this isn’t an official visit. I was on my way home and I thought I’d drop by. You know, get introduced to someone I already know so intimately. But I’d like a look at this. Can I?”
By “this,” he meant my right arm. I wanted to say no, but that sounded stupid, even to me.
Horowitz stuck his head out the door, asked a nurse to step in. She was a tiny, tan woman; he spoke medical words to her. Then he started to unwrap my arm.
“Your wife,” he said as he worked. “She’s a gem, isn’t she?”
Maybe I hadn’t heard him right. “My wife?”
“She was here all night with you. She’s a private eye too? I think you win the Most Exotic Couple of the Month award.”
“Lydia?”
“She brought in a specialist to look at your hands. I told her there was nothing wrong with them, but she said besides your eyes, that was the only thing you’d care about and she wanted to make sure.”
“She was right.” It occurred to me this whole conversation was designed to distract me from what he was doing. It only half worked; as he lifted the gauze pad from my arm I felt my left hand dig into the sheets, felt my breathing stop.
“I know,” Horowitz said sympathetically. “The good news is I think it’ll heal nicely.” For all his casual air, I saw he had positioned himself to block my view. He took something from the nurse, dabbed at my arm. It tried to yank itself away, but he wouldn’t let it move.
“All right,” he said soothingly, “all right, I’m through. I’m going to wrap it up now.”
“Let me see it.”
“You really want to?”
“Yes.”
Horowitz hesitated, then moved aside, cradled my arm differently. I tried my best to focus. Lifted in the doctor’s hands, my whole forearm glistened with whatever he’d put on it. Under that, red, purple, angry, a hooded cobra seemed to shimmer, as though seen through water.
I closed my eyes.
Horowitz rebandaged my arm. “I’m going to send Sol Mayer down here tomorrow,” he told me. “He’s a plastic surgeon. There’s a lot he can do for something like this.”
“Does it need that? Skin graft? To heal right?”
“No, it doesn’t need it—”
“Forget it.”
“It’ll be a pretty ugly scar.”
“Either way.”
I could see he was confused, but after a moment’s pause he chose not to argue with me.
“All right. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He prepared a syringe. “This is for the pain.”
“Wait,” I told him. “Not yet. Puts me to sleep.”
He grinned. “That’s part of the point.”
“I want to … talk to Lydia first.”
“This takes a few minutes.” Horowitz pricked my arm with the needle. “I’ll send her right in.” Then, smiling, he left, stepping aside with a flourish to let the nurse go first. It was a nice exit, but not as good as his entrance.
FORTY-TWO
Lydia came in soon after, just enough time between them that I knew she’d stopped to discuss me with Dr. Horowitz.
“The doctor said you wanted me,” she said.
“Always. When did you … marry me?”
“In the ambulance on the way here. I thought they’d be more likely to tell me things and let me stay with you if they thought we were married.”
“Was the … honeymoon good?”
“We’re getting divorced as soon as you can get out of bed.”
“Long time.”
“Dr. Horowitz says you’ll be up tomorrow.”
“Blabbermouth.” I asked casually, “What about Paul Kao?” Maybe I’d hallucinated the guy in my delirium.
Lydia didn’t answer me.
“None of my business?” I offered.
She smiled softly but still didn’t say anything.
I got it. “He was mad? Because you … stayed here?”
Now she said, “None of your business.”
Her tone ended that discussion. “You should sleep,” she said. “Look, I brought you some music.” She pointed to a small boom box and a handful of tapes. “I didn’t know what to bring. I just took some from your shelf. I did find the one that was open on the piano.”
“The Schubert?”
“I think that’s it.” She flipped through the tapes. “Do you want to hear that?”
“No. Not yet. You said … before … a story?”
“Once upon a time,” she said promptly, “there was a bank account at Emigrant Savings Bank. Now it’s closed.”
“Reynolds?” What was it Margaret O’Connor had said? “Medical Services, Inc.?”
“You know this story?”
“Closed?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” The room had started to sway gently. “Reynolds was … already dead.”
“That’s the punch line.”
“Who, then?”
“I don’t know.”
For a minute, nothing. Then, floating on the gentle waves, I started to laugh. It hurt too much; I had to stop.
“Bill? Why is that funny?”
“Doesn’t end,” I said. “Always another. That place. Think you found it … back to the beginning. World without end. Amen.”
“All right,” she hushed. “Go to sleep. Don’t think about it now.”
Floating, I didn’t have the strength to open my eyes. “Lydia?”
“I’m here.” She touched my hand.
“Chopin?” Music suddenly seemed very important.
“Wait,” she said. “Let me look.”
Silence, then clicking. Then the room was flooded, whirling with the Chopin C-major Prelude. Half a minute, then the A-minor; then the others, G-major, E-minor, D-major, the rest, all independent, separate pieces, but all connected, interrelated. I’d never learned them all. Always meant to. Unfinished business. Maybe Ida played them, used to. Lots of unfinished business. Separate. Connected, interrelated.
“Bill?” Lydia’s voice was soft. “Is that good?”
“It’s good.” I reached for her hand, found it. “It’s good.”
FORTY-THREE
The next day was different. I ate Jell-O. I drank coffee. I had all my remaining tubes and wires disconnected, and I got out of bed.
The tiny, tan nurse, whose name turned out to be Amy Isham, bustled into my room after breakfast and said, “Let’s go.”
“Anywhere,” I told her.
She helped me maneuver onto my feet. My legs were strong as rubber bands. The room took up spinning again.
“Lean on me,” Mary Isham ordered.
She couldn’t have weighed half of what I did. “I don’t think—”
“I used to work at Bellevue, stuffing psychotics into straitjackets.” She lifted my arm onto her shoulder.
I leaned. Her bones were so sharp through her uniform I thought they were going to cut my hand.
“Let’s go,” she said again.
We went down the hall, a full twenty yards. At the end of this accomplishment we stood at the window, gathering strength for the hike back.
Outside, a huge dewatering apparatus sprawled in the center of a deep excavation. Gray sludge rushed away through a wide-mouthed pipe. For the most part, everything was blurry to me, but there seemed to be moments when, briefly, my vision was clear.
“Is that going to be part of the hospital?” I asked. A whole sentence without a pause for breath, and after strenuous exercise, too. Must be the Chinese herbs. Or the Jell-O.
“No,” Mary Isham said. “It’s part of the Bronx Renaissance.”
Back in bed, I was listening to the Chopin Preludes again and trying to see if there was a way to breathe without moving my chest when a large bouquet of chrysanthemums floated through the door, followed by Arthur Chaiken.
“Hi,” Chaiken said tentatively. “Are you up to visitors?”
“Sure,” I answered. “Figuratively.”
“That’s good enough.” He let the door close, then opened the cabinet by the bed. “Ah! Just what I need. Let me take care of these.” He took the flowers to the bathroom, came out with them spreading from a plastic vase. He put it on the windowsill, where the yellow and white blossoms glowed fiercely in the morning light like junior suns.
“From your garden?” I asked.
“Yes.” He beamed back at the chrysanthemums, then came around the bed. “I tried to come yesterday morning, but they told me only family. I didn’t know you were married, by the way. Congratulations.”
“No, that’s my partner. She lied so she could keep an eye on me.”
“Oh.” He must have decided that whatever that meant wasn’t his business; he went on, “How are you? Are you all right? Is there anything you need?”
“No, thanks. Just time. Unless you have a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “I gave it up. Smith, what happened? Who did this? What was the point?”
“The point was to kill me. I don’t know who and I don’t know why.”
“I feel responsible.”
“Did you order it?”
His mouth fell open. “Good God, no. You’re not serious?”
“Then why would you be responsible? No, I don’t think I was serious.”
Chaiken shifted in his chair. “Still. You were carrying out an investigation at one of our facilities. I should have been able to offer you some kind of protection. It didn’t—” A muffled boom stopped him, as it had stopped me the day before. “What was that?”
“The Bronx Renaissance. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what it is.”
He smiled. “The Bronx Renaissance? It’s sympathetic magic.”
“Sorry?”
“You know. You want the courage of a lion, eat a lion’s heart. You want the stealth of a panther, wear a panther’s pelt. You want to stimulate the economy of the Bronx, seed its neighborhoods with publicly financed development.”
“Money attracts money?”
“That’s the dogma.”
“You don’t sound like a believer.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Each time the City does this, or talks the State into it, real estate booms in the immediate area and service establishments expand. I suppose it could work. But there’s no commitment.” He looked toward the window, where his flowers filled a small patch of sky. “No staying power. It’s like planting a garden and not watering it. The politicians want instant success, and when they don’t get it they wander off looking for something else.”
“What would work?”
“Oh, any idea will work if you stick with it long enough. The Bronx Renaissance is as good as any. But they’ll give it up as soon as the Mayor and the Borough President get tired of each other.” He stopped abruptly, looked at me. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’m sorry, Smith. It happens it’s one of my hobbyhorses, political fickleness. I’m sure you don’t need a public-policy lecture right at the moment.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I just need distraction. Or a cigarette.”
The phone rang.
“Shall I?” Chaiken asked.
“Thanks.”
Chaiken answered the phone, told it to hold on a minute, moved it to where I could reach it. “It’s your partner,” he said. “I’ll wait outside.”
I thanked him again, took the receiver out of his hand.
“Hi,” Lydia said, after I’d grunted at her. “How are you feeling?”
“Lousy.”
“Good. That’s much better than yesterday. Can I go through with the divorce?”
“See if I care. I was hanging all over a cute little nurse this morning. She picked me up.”
“Literally, I’ll bet. I’ll be up soon. Is there anything you want?”
“Cigarettes.”
“Hah. Bill, who was that who answered the phone?”
“Arthur Chaiken. He brought me flowers.”
“Oh.” Her voice was worried. “Bill, be careful. Someone tried to kill you. It could be anyone.”
“I thought of that. But if I tell them no visitors I’ll die of boredom. Besides, whoever wanted me dead the other night could’ve just shot me, if he was going to do it himself. It’s surer and easier.” “Surer” was tough to pronounce. I reprimanded myself for getting cocky. “But I get the feeling this was hired out. I don’t think whoever’s behind it is going to stroll in here and try it himself.”
As it turned out, only half of that was right.
Chaiken came back a few minutes after I’d hung up the phone. “Do you want more distraction?” he asked. “Or do you want to rest?”
“Either one.”
“Spoken like a man who wants to rest. Listen, Smith, I’ve thought of something I can do for you, and I’d like you to let me.”
I raised my eyebrows, but it was the facial equivalent of saying “surer.” “What would that be?”
“This.” He nodded at the room. “It gets expensive. I—”
He stopped, because I was shaking my head.
“Wait,” he grinned. “I wasn’t offering you money. I assume you’re insured.”
“That’s right.”
“What I’m offering you is expertise. By training and long practice, I’ve become, if I say so myself, one of the great form-filler-outers.”
I must have looked bewildered, if my expressions were readable.
“It matters.” Chaiken was still grinning. “You have no idea. If the forms are correctly filled out you’re much less likely to have your claims questioned. Sometimes I think they don’t even care if the claim is completely bogus, as long as the paperwork is correct. You’re bound to find yourself drowning under paperwork, with a thing like this. Call me if you need help with it. Let me check it before it goes in.”
“Well,” I said doubtfully, “if I need to.”
“I’m telling you, it’s all that matters,” Chaiken said. “How good your paperwork looks.”
It was much too bright, but not warm enough. A snake slithered up my right arm, scraped me like a rope burn. “It has to be correct.” The tight-lipped woman waved a SIG Sauer at the blindingly white piles of paper that towered above the walls of my roofless cabin. “Or they’ll know.” The door clicked behind her. I looked up where the roof had been, aching to see the glowing autumn hillside sloping up from the cabin; but the trees were gone, the hills bare and sandy. I heard the ocean, breakers pounding, felt the sudden hammering of my heart. I’d never have time to finish before the sea crashed over the walls, sucking the snake, the papers, me, into a whirlpool the depths of which I was afraid to even imagine.
