Jack put the gun back in his holster, then we carefully left the room. I thought we were in the clear; the hallway looked empty, but the two men who’d just left were doubling back, complaining about grabbing the wrong file.
“Hey! You there!” The smooth guy, in a dapper suit, two-toned shoes, and sharp fedora turned to the swarthy giant by his side. “Get them!”
Jack went for his gun again, but by the time he cleared it out of his overalls, the gruff thug lunged at him. Jack wasn’t a small man and when the two crashed together, it was like a pair of freight trains colliding.
The two men grappled then went down hard. I heard Jack cry out on the floor. The gun had flown down the hall and I ran off to get it, but I didn’t know how to remove the safety or properly aim and fire it. I held it, feeling helpless, trying at least to keep the gun ready for Jack when he could get clear of the big man.
The giant tried to kick Jack, but he rolled and got back on his feet. The big man rose too. Fists flew and blows were exchanged. Finally, Jack got the upper hand. He used some evasive maneuvers that looked like rudimentary martial arts. He’d said something about learning jujitsu in the service, and it sure looked effective to me. The guy was bigger and he’d gotten the drop on Jack, but now he couldn’t touch the PI.
In a few swift moves, the giant was down, holding his head and moaning. The smooth, dapper gent had disappeared, and I assumed he’d run off to sound the alarm and get more help.
“Let’s go,” Jack barked, taking my arm.
“How do we get out? Back stairs again?”
“No, honey. When you break in the back, and they catch you, you might as well go out the front.”
And that’s exactly what we did.
We ran all the way back to our alleyway. Amazingly, no one had disturbed our clothes, although a few fat rats were sniffing around the old fridge where I’d left mine.
“Shoo!” I cried. They weren’t impressed. So I changed with an audience.
“What the hell…” Jack muttered.
I looked up, as I zipped my skirt. “Jack, what is it? Are you okay?”
He was still half undressed, standing in his undershirt and boxers, but the blood made me forget all modesty. I rushed over to find him bleeding from the thigh. The cut wasn’t too bad, but I was puzzled how it happened.
“The oval frame broke,” he informed me. “I transferred everything I was carrying into the overalls, including that picture of Vincent Tattershawe. So when the big guy sent me down, the glass must have broken and cut me.”
I lifted my wool skirt and pulled down my slip, used it to clean the wound, then pressed it to see that it properly clotted.
“Thanks, baby. You make a pretty good nurse, you know?”
“What is it with this nurse obsession?” I smiled. He smiled back. Then he finished dressing and transferred his personal items from the overalls back into his suit pockets. He tossed the broken glass and the oval frame into a nearby trash can, keeping only the photo.
“What’s this?” he murmured, removing the photo from the frame backing.
“What’s what?”
He showed me a small key. It had been taped to the backing of the frame, hidden between the photo and the glass. There was a tiny slip of paper wrapped around the key—like the ticker tape used to update stockbrokers on the market. My hands were smaller so I unrolled it.
“It’s a Sixth Avenue address in midtown,” I said.
“Looks like we got ourselves another clue.”
“What do you think this key will open?”
Jack examined it. Three very tiny letters were engraved on the side. “SDB,” he murmured, puzzled for a moment, then lifted an eyebrow. “Safety-deposit box.”
CHAPTER 20
It was a wild explanation, for a dozen reasons it wouldn’t hold water. Yet I couldn’t think of anything better.
—Francis James, “Dance of the Bloodless Ones,”
I OPENED MY eyes to the sound of an emergency siren. I soon realized that I was flat on my back, strapped to a rigid pallet, staring at the interior of a speeding ambulance.
In another case of stone-cold irony, the wailing vehicle brought me directly to Benevolent Heart Hospital. Only now, instead of marking time in the dreary old waiting room, I was treated like royalty.
While a helpful administrator processed my medical insurance information, I was whisked by stretcher into the triage center where my cuts and scrapes were cleaned and bandaged, injections were offered and accepted, and X-rays were taken. At last, I was placed on a gurney and wheeled into a white, featureless room.
Through an interior window, I watched the medical staff scurry around. A nurse arrived after fifteen minutes or so and took my blood pressure and temperature—for about the hundredth time.
Finally, a young intern arrived to pronounce sentence. His shaved head and the barbed-wire tattoo encircling his muscular biceps threw me for a moment, but I soon figured out he was a doctor because he wore green OR scrubs and had a stethoscope draped around his neck.
I wasn’t sure what threw me more, my woozy head or being back in the present again. I was about to speak to Jack about the dream when the doctor spoke up first—
“Mrs. McClure? I’m Dr. Fortino, a physician on staff here at Benevolent Heart Hospital.”
I figured he was giving me his job description because I was eyeing him kind of funny, like I thought he should be out drinking with his fraternity buddies instead of staffing an emergency room.
“Uh-huh,” I said eloquently.
“Fortunately there’s no sign of a concussion that we can find, but by your own admission you lost consciousness for a period of time right after the accident, and that’s never a good thing. So I’ve scheduled you for a more thorough evaluation in the morning. We’ll take another look at that bump on your head, and I’d like a specialist to check out the hairline fracture on your left forearm.”
The arm in question was black and blue, and every beat of my heart caused it to throb with a pain that radiated from my wrist to the tips of my fingers. I was actually surprised the damage was not much worse.
“You could get out of here tonight, but I recommend you remain here for observation, until the tests are conducted in the morning. If all goes well, you’ll be out of here by noon.”
I agreed to stay for a lot of reasons. I was tired and a bed sounded nice, and I didn’t relish the look on the face of my son when he got his first peep at his mommy the mummy. But mostly I agreed to stay overnight because it fit in with my plan.
Dr. Fortino said goodnight, and I was wheeled by a pair of nurses—both young and attractive women, to Jack’s delight—into an elevator and transported to the fourth floor, where I was placed in a bed. It wasn’t a private room, but the other bed was empty. The room was an antiseptic-white space with a single window overlooking the parking lot.
Outside, the sky was purple and the rain fell much lighter now, dewing the window with tiny drops that twinkled in the glow of the halogen street lights.
I waited until the nurses tucked me in and left me alone, then I grabbed my scuffed purse and fumbled for my cell. I checked that the digital pictures had survived the crash. Of course, before I’d left Chesley’s mansion I’d dispatched a copy of the files to my aunt’s cell, just in case. But I was relieved to find my own digital files inside the phone’s memory.
Next, I called my aunt. She hadn’t heard from me since I phoned that afternoon, and she was worried sick. It
