CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I reenter the world of the living from a haze, a foggy view of the plastered ceiling in the Mexican’s apartment.
Flat on my back for some reason, I’m feeling no pain. The hard floor is gone, replaced by something softer. I try to sit up, but I can’t. I am strapped to a gurney. I start to raise one hand toward my head, and somebody reaches out and grabs my arm. “Stay still. You’re gonna pull the needle out.”
Guy in a blue uniform taping a needle down on the back of my hand. He has one knee on the floor, working over me, adjusting a little plastic wheel on a tube from a bag of clear fluid that is running down through the needle, and into me.
“How you feelin’?”
I try to talk. “Like I got a chip of wood in my throat.”
“Don’t talk. Lieutenant. He’s startin’ to come around.”
The bag for the I.V. drip is being held by another EMT, standing over him. The needle is in my good hand, the left. My right arm is bandaged, gauze and tape all the way from the wrist to the elbow. My arms are laid across my chest, like they were getting ready to put me in a box.
“You lost a lot of blood.”
Through the frog in my throat, I talk. “I can’t feel anything.”
“That’s the pain meds.” The words come from another voice. “Don’t worry, in the morning you’ll feel like shit.” The face finally comes into view, familiar, but I can’t place it. He’s in shirtsleeves and tie, wearing dark glasses and carrying a notepad in one hand and a can of Diet Coke in the other.
“Let me sit up.” The straps hold me in place.
“No. No. Stay there.” The EMT is not going let me move.
“Right. So you can fall on your ass and sue the city.” The Diet Coke still has the icy sweat of chill on the can.
“I’d offer you one, but then you’d puke all over the crime scene. Some fucking lawyer’d find a way to use it against us in court. The vomit defense. Then we’d never be able to solve that.” He motions off to the side with the can in his hand.
I roll my head in that direction and see Espinoza. The top of his body, anyway. Most of it still wrapped in plastic except for his head and upper torso where the sheet has been sliced and peeled back like the husk off a cob of corn. His complexion is white. A narrow crease of dried blood, the thickness of dental tape, runs across his throat.
I roll my head back to look at the guy in the dark glasses. “Do I know you?”
“Oh, yeah.” He takes the glasses off. “Lieutenant Ortiz.” He gives me the pearly whites, skin so tight over the bone structure of his face that the dental feature could be part of a naked skull. “Remember? Had that nice conversation in your office. I did the monologue. You claimed privilege. Talked about your buddy Nick Rush, Gerald Metz. You do remember?”
I nod.
“I couldn’t be sure. All the drugs they’re putting in you from that bag. Probably almost as good as the shit Metz was selling. What do you think?”
I don’t answer him.
“What, no opinion? OK, fine. We’ll let that go. What do you think about this?” He wags his head toward Espinoza’s body. “You think it was an accident? I understand Rush was an accident. Read it in the paper,” he says. “Oh, yeah. Wandered into the path of a cruising bullet. It’s like they say, speed kills.” He looks at me, leaning over again.
I don’t respond.
“What, nothing to contribute? Jeez, for a fuckin’ mouthpiece, you don’t have much to say. And I was led to believe you were the mastermind behind that insurance coup. Well, that’s fine. You save your voice. We can talk tomorrow. Besides, one dead body at a time. Which leads us back to this one. You didn’t happen to see it when it happened, did you?”
I shake my head.
“I shoulda figured that. What can you tell me? Let’s see. We know he’s dead. What did he use, a scalpel?”
I turn my head the other way, toward the floor across the room. It’s gone. I look back at Ortiz. “A straight razor.”
“Aw. That what he cut you with?”
I nod.
“A name?”
I have to clear the frog living in my throat before I can get the word out. “Saldado.”
“Ah. I take it somebody you didn’t represent this time. Good for you. He’s the one lived here, right?”
I nod.
“Man has a funny way of treating visitors,” he says.
One of the EMTs checks the bandage on my arm, and I wince.
“You can roll him out in a minute,” says Ortiz. “I want to talk to him just for a sec.”
The guy checks the I.V. quickly, then moves away to gather his equipment.
“For a lawyer, you don’t seem to get it,” says Ortiz. “You’re supposed to hand out your business cards to the injured, not the dead.” He’s holding my card in his hand. The one with the note on the back to Espinoza.
“You wanna tell me what this was all about?”
“I used the card to get in. He had them.”
“Who?”
“The mother. The child.”
“The nine-eleven call. Domestic violence.”
I nod.
“I see. And who gave you the cape and tights? Why didn’t you wait for us?”
“No time. Where are they?”
“They’re all right. She’s gonna have a shiner in the morning. But she’s alive. More than we can say about her uglier half over here.” He motions toward the dead body on the floor next to me.
“Must say she’s taking it pretty well, considering. Then again, it probably wasn’t a picture-perfect romance. Who beat her up? Saldado?”
I nod. “You get him?”
“No. We got here, he was already gone. But we got people out looking, checkin’ every house, looking in the sewer. Everyplace we can. He’ll turn up.”
“Don’t think so.”
“What, you know something?”
I shake my head.
“Trust me. We’ll get him.”
If they didn’t snag him coming out of the apartment, they won’t find him now. People who do what Saldado does for a living move without suitcases and call signals without a huddle. They would have a dozen contingencies worked out before the cops came knocking, holes they could dive into or pop out of, places to hide, be picked up from, or dropped off at. In a few hours, after dark, if I hadn’t shown up, Espinoza, his wife, and baby would have each been gift wrapped, dumped in the back of the dark Blazer, and probably headed for a shallow grave somewhere in the desert east of the city. Unless I miss my bet, Saldado or whatever his real name is, is long gone, probably on his way to Cancun.
Ortiz breaks from note-taking to inspect my arm and head, then adds a few entries for his report. “He sure as hell did a number on you.”
“Like they say. You shoulda seen the other guy.”
“What did you do, serve him with process?”
