'I think she is, and if she's gone, then what they're saying about her on TV can't hurt her. I'm betting in the end this won't stick to you.'
'I thought you cared about her. You're just like the other guy.'
'I do care about her,' Tony said softly. 'In fact, I love Alexa like a daughter. But there are things you don't know about, and they demand this course of action.'
The door behind me opened and a nurse was standing there.
'What are you doing? His heart monitor on our station is going crazy. Get out of here this minute!'
I stood and moved to the door, but Tony stopped me. 'There's department rationale guiding this, Shane.'
'There may be department rationale,' I said. 'But the reasoning sucks.'
'There's still people at risk. I'm supposed to be the chief of the entire department. That includes everyone, not just you and Alexa. I have to evaluate each situation, examine risks, and play no favorites.'
I turned and walked out of the room without answering.
As I left the hospital I picked up John Bodine. He was still wearing Chooch's bloody sweatshirt and his head had tape all over it.
'Here we go again, John,' I told him. 'Don't try to be quite so original this time.'
He looked at me and shook his head. Then he started right in. 'In California, ain't no originals. Out here, everybody so busy bein' original, they all be 'zackly the same.'
I grabbed his wheelchair and pushed him out of the ER. Once we were outside, I stood him up.
'Don't be yank-slammin' me around. Lookit this what you done.' He pulled up the sweatshirt to reveal a pound of tape and gauze wrapped around his chest, stomach, and abdomen. 'This here tape an' shit's all that's holding my dick on. So don't be pushin' and shovin'.'
I got him out to Chooch's Jeep.
'Where you gonna dump me now?' he said.
'I'll make you a deal,' I said. 'If you shut up, you can sleep in the back. I'll sleep in the front.'
'Thought you was gonna let me bunk in that sweet garage room you got. Now you sayin' I gotta sleep in this Detroit coffin.'
'Shut up, John.'
'Man, you ain't nothin' but some drives-too-fast, run-a-man-down, gutter scum.'
A classification that seemed to fit.
Chapter 36
Alexa and I were in Antigua. We had gone swimming and were a mile up the beach from the hotel, lying naked on sand that had not yet cooled in the night heat. I could feel its warmth on my back and hear the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore. The scent of lush, sweet flora overwhelmed my senses. I held my beautiful wife, stroking her lustrous, black hair. Then she rose up looked down at me while soft moonlight fell across her breasts. Somewhere, in the shallow lagoon beyond, a fish jumped, then splashed back into the water and zipped away in a streak of green fluorescence.
Alexa laughed, smiled at me, then whispered, 'I love having you inside me. I love your hands. The way you touch me.'
I was hard and pushed deeper into her. Her breast brushed my lips and I kissed it.
'Muthafucka,' she said as I held her tighter.
What a strange thing for her to say, I thought.
'Hey, muthafucka!'
I opened my eyes. It was Jonathan Bodine in the backseat.
'You awake?' he asked. 'No.'
'You talking, means you awake. I ain't some head case, no matter what them, piss-in-a-bottle white coats at the mental health say.'
'Let's try and get some sleep, John.'
We were parked in the upper lot behind the Greek. Dorsey Loveboy had opened the gate and told me we could park here for the night but had to be gone before the maintenance crew arrived at seven. I was stretched out across the console and front seats of the Jeep Cherokee and my legs were cramping. I glanced at my watch. Four- thirty a. M. The sun would be up in another hour; we'd have to be rolling in two.
'Them alphabet docs at the Mental Health called me insane. Called me a paranoid schizophrenic. Pissants wouldn't know a paranoid schizophrenic if he shit in their lunchboxes.'
'I've got a big day tomorrow, I need to sleep.'
'It's a cheap diagnosis anyway, 'cause half them dirtbags down on the Nickel is either running on ether, heroin, or Mystic Glue. The way I see it, if a man hears voices and there ain't no voices, then he's a whack-job pure and simple, right?'
'Yep.'
'But if he hears voices and they really is voices, and them voices 'splains stuff to him, tells him what's gonna happen, then he's a visionary. Big damn difference.'
I didn't answer, hoping he'd just shut up. My cell phone was on vibrate and it had fallen off my belt, so I picked it up and checked for messages. I was worried if something had changed and Chooch tried to call from the hospital I might have missed it. Nothing. John kept up an endless litany.
'If you think people are plotting against ya, and the half-steppers really are, then you ain't paranoid, you just accurately informed. Them dickwads at the Mental Health don't understand that.'
'Shut up, John.'
'You're just a skeezy nickel slick who plows over po folks who's just minding their business, crossing with a light.' He'd miraculously added a traffic light to our accident. 'But 'side from that, and 'side from you gettin' me gizmoed for walking around with too much a your green in my jeans, I gotta tell you, for a po-lice, you ain't half- bad. You gimme food and ya don't just throw me away, like most a the shit birds I meet.'
'Maybe if you didn't steal their stuff, that wouldn't happen quite so often.'
John ignored that and kept going.
'I ain't insane neither. Was Edgar Allan Poe insane 'cause he drank himself to death? Was Van Gogh? That crazy Dutchman cut off his ear and today folks pay millions for one a his silly-ass, don't-even-know-what-it-is charcoal sketches. What is insanity? I challenge anybody ta give me a definition. Can't be done.'
'Insanity is when you keep repeating the same behavior while expecting a different result.' A definition that fit him perfectly, but it didn't slow him down. He just changed subjects.
'I hear dead people's voices. Okay? So big deal. But my voices tell me stuff. Like, Chief O. Half-stepper died in the African plague of oh-six, but he told me your old lady's lyin' in a coma. All the time we spent together since ya ran me over, and you ain't once told me that your old lady was about to catch the bus. I hadda hear it from a crazy old African chief been dead a hundred years. See what I'm sayin'?'
'You saw it on the TV in the ER like everyone else.'
'Them docs clockin' your old lady at the hospital got no faith and less vision. You want a definition of insanity, how 'bout a bunch a bozos tryin' to change what's written in the big book? Tryin' to change what can't never be changed while all the time thinkin' it's their job to change it. That's insanity!'
'Can we please go back to sleep?'
'When you got princely powers, you get a library card, lets you see in the Big Guy's book. Some of it be hard to understand, but I got my dead peeps like Chief O whisperin' down, explainin'. When he tells me your old lady ain't supposed ta go, then you can bet it ain't her time.'
'John, please.'
'I ain't kiddin', Shane.'
I sat up to look over the seat at him. It was the first time in two days that he'd actually called me Shane.
Then, without missing a beat, he segued again. 'L. A. ain't my home, anyway. This just a place where I been
