“That’s why I ask.”
He peered into my face. I shook my head, hoping that Joe Cicero was dying somewhere.
A young white doctor with a pointy nose came up to us.
“Your friend is going to be fine,” he told me. “No major vascu-lar damage. The shot went through.”
“Can I speak to him?” the policeman asked the doctor.
“He’s in shock and under sedation,” the doctor said. He wouldn’t meet the policeman’s eye. I wondered what secrets he had to hide. “You won’t be able to talk to him until morning.”
Blocked there the cop turned back to me.
“Can you tell me anything else, Rawlins?”
I could have told him to call me mister but I didn’t.
“No, Sergeant. That’s all I know.”
“Do you think this woman you’re investigating might have something to do with it?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“You say you were investigating her.”
“My findings were inconclusive,” I said, falling out of dialect.
The cop stared at me a moment more and then gave up.
“I have your information. We may be calling you.”
I nodded and the police took the doctor somewhere for his report.
e v e r y t h i n g c a l m e d d o w n after half an hour or so. The police left, the doctor went on to other patients. Mouse was long gone.
I stayed around because I knew that someone wanted Lee dead, and so while he was unconscious I thought I’d watch over him. This wasn’t as selfless an act as it might have seemed. I still 2 5 9
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needed the haughty little detective to run interference with Cicero. I didn’t know if Lee had actually seen Cicero shoot at him, if Lee had shot him, and, if he had, if the wound would ulti-mately be fatal. I had to play it as if Cicero was still in the game and as deadly as ever.
The only thing worth reading in the magazine rack in the waiting room was a science fiction periodical called
The purpose of the main character, a freed slave, was to emanci-pate his people. I read the story in a kind of wonderment. Here white people all over the country understood the problems that faced me and mine but somehow they had very little compassion for our plight.
I was thinking about that when a shadow fell over my page. I knew by the scent who it was.
“Hello, Miss Adamant,” I said without looking up.
“Mr. Rawlins.”
She took the seat next to me and leaned over, seemingly filled with concern.
“He knows you set him up. He told the cops that,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“He knows that you sent Cicero down to blow him away.”
“But I . . . I didn’t.”
She was good.
“If you don’t know nuthin’ about tonight then what the fuck you doin’ here? How the hell you know to find him in this emergency room?”
“I came down because I knew you or Saul would tell him about our conversations. I wanted to talk to him, to explain.”
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“So you were outside the bar?” I asked. “Watchin’ your boss get shot down?”
“No. I was at the Clarendon Hotel. I heard on the news about the shooting. I knew where the meeting was.”
“What about Cicero?” I asked.
Her face went blank. I could tell that this was her way of going inward and solving some problem. I was the problem.
“He called me,” she said.
“When?”
“After you came to see us. He wanted to talk to Mr. Lee but I told him that all information had to go through me. He said that we had interests in common, that he wanted to find Philomena Cargill and a document that Axel had given her.”
