I could see Raines, in the tiny black—and-white TV screen, half his face bound up in
bandages, muttering to himself.
“Do you have a tape recorder in that war wagon of yours?” I asked the Stick.
“Yeah, minicorder. A Pearl with a voice activator.”
“Get it fast,” I whispered, and he was gone, returning in less than five minutes with a recorder
no bigger than the palm of my hand.
“Fresh batteries and a fresh tape,” he said. “You gonna try and tape Raines?”
“Yeah. Keep the jokers at the door busy for a minute or two.”
When I could, 1 slipped behind the curtain into Raines? cubicle and hung the tape recorder
over the retaining bar by his head. His lips were moving but his words were jumbled. He was
the colour of clay, his unbandaged eye partially open and rolling crazily under the lid.
As I came back out of the cubicle, a small whirlwind of a woman in a dark gray business suit
burst into the room. She was about five one, on the good side of forty, could have dropped
ten or fifteen pounds without missing it, looked colder than a nun?s kiss, and was meaner than
Attila the H un. She took over like the storm-troopers in Paris, snapping orders in a voice an
octave deeper than nature had intended, punctuating every word with a thin, manicured spear
of a finger. I could hear the arctic air whistling through her veins as she snapped orders to the
four men with her. I stood back and watched the performance.
“You two get into hospital blues,” she said. “You, get on the door. Nobody gets in unless I
say so. And you, sit by that control desk.”
Then she saw me.
“Who are you?” she snapped icily, jabbing the spear under my nose.
“I could be the doctor,” I snapped back.
She looked me up and down. “Not a chance,” she said.
“The name?s Kilmer. Federal Racket Squad.”
“Out,” she barked, tossing her thumb over her shoulder like an umpire at home plate. “He?s
mine.”
“And who the hell are you?” I demanded.
She stuck her tiny, bulldog face as close to mine as she could get it without standing on her
toes and said, “Galavanti. Honoree Galavanti, G-a-l-a-va-n-t-i. Oglethorpe County DA. I?ve
got my own people with me. I don?t need you, so out.”
“Not so fast,” I challenged.
“Listen, here, uh, what was your name again?”
