Nobody Runs Forever

time he helps me out a little, with a money order. It probably works out to more than alimony anyway, and there’s no lawyers involved, no judges, no bad feelings on any side. Honest to God, Monica, I understand why you think what you think, but I’m telling you, I’ve got the best ex-husband in the world, because I never have to confront him, I never have to argue with him, and I never have to be mad at him.” With a little grin, she added, “And in addition, I’ve got Eugene.”

“Oh, Eugene,” Monica said, with her own little grin, because both women agreed that Eugene was a total stud muffin. Unfortunately married, but nobody’s perfect.

“Never you mind Eugene,” Grace told her, though she had no fear that Monica might poach. “You just go on feeling sorry for me over Nick.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Monica insisted. “I just think it’s weird, that’s all. Well, you heard me on this before. Time’s up, anyway.”

Back at her desk, Grace saw that a fax had come in. It was just the one sheet of paper, blank except for a large, scraggly handwritten 4.

This was precisely the sort of thing Monica would find weird, so Grace had never gone into detail with her about the kinds of favors she sometimes did for Nick. He’d phoned her about this a few days ago, that a fax would come in containing a number from one to thirty. He didn’t tell her what it was about, and she didn’t want to know.

So here it was, and now she was to phone Nick. He wouldn’t answer—he didn’t even have the ringer on at his place, wherever that was—but after ten rings a light would go on, and she’d hang up. On her way home today, she would stop at the public library and go to the hardcover mystery section, and put the folded fax into The Gracie Allen Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine, which was always there, and then she’d continue on home.

And in a little while, a nice money order would arrive in the mail. What was so weird about that?

8

The bullet coming out was worse than the bullet going in. Not the instant of it—they had him doped for that—but the aftermath. The anesthetic wore off slowly, leaving him dazed, with a jumble of dreams he couldn’t remember, couldn’t even understand when they were going on, except that some of them seemed to have something to do with prison. Happy goddam thing to dream about.

What brought him out of the daze finally was the discomfort. They had his leg in a sling hung down from a contraption over the bed, so it was up in the air with the heel pointed at where the ceiling met the wall to the right of the room door. He was like that, and would be for the next few days, because they didn’t want him to lie on the wound for a while. But that meant he couldn’t move much of himself at all, except his arms.

His leg hurt like hell, once he was conscious again. It felt much worse than when he was shot, like a really hard punch that just wouldn’t ease up.

There was a television set on a shelf high on the wall, and he tried watching it for a while, but everything he saw irritated him. So after a while he switched the thing off and just lay there, alone with his thoughts.

Alone. They’d told him, no visitors right after the operation; he’d be too woozy. But he wasn’t woozy exactly; he was just uncomfortable, with the leg aching as if a dinosaur had just bit him there, and stuck up at an angle so he couldn’t get comfortable even without the ache.

He spent a lot of the time thinking about yesterday’s visit from Wendy. The amusing part was her meeting with Parker. It took a lot to knock Wendy off her pins, but Parker had done it. Jake wished he could have been there when Parker opened the candy box and showed her the gun. She was still a little green around the gills when she’d told him about it.

The other things she’d told him were more serious, and they all had to do with the fact that it was Elaine who had shot him, and she’d shot him so he’d be in the hospital at the time of the robbery and wouldn’t be a suspect. Stupid Elaine; where did she ever get that bright idea?

If he’d known she was going to react this way, the hell with it, he’d have skipped his parole officer meeting after all; he’d have gone to Vegas or someplace and checked himself into a county jug.

But the worst thing Wendy’d told him was that the woman detective, Reversa, thought maybe it was Elaine that had done it. Elaine or the useless husband—she was ready to go either way—but the problem was, she was already pointed in the right direction.

She didn’t have any motive yet, not for Elaine, but thought maybe she had one for the husband. But when the robbery went down? Here she had a woman linked both to the bank and to the guy that was shot, her onetime and maybe still boyfriend. Here she had a woman whose gun was conveniently lost just at the right moment. Here she had a robbery of that bank just when all its assets were being transferred. And to put the cherry on the icing, the mysteriously shot guy was an ex-con with former associates of the wrong kind, what Wendy yesterday had called his “bad companions.”

Was that enough for Reversa? Would she look at what she had, and connect the dots? Jake might not remember those anesthesia-induced prison dreams, but he remembered prison, and he didn’t want to go there again.

Maybe the job was no good. Maybe Elaine had screwed it up for everybody, and now it was nothing but trouble.

And if it was trouble, some of the other people might take it on the lam, but Jake himself wouldn’t get far, on his back in a hospital bed with his leg pointed at the ceiling.

Come to think of it, the trouble was probably exclusively for Jake and Elaine. Parker and Dalesia could go ahead as planned. So far as they were concerned, nothing had changed.

Jake was beginning to feel desperate. This was some miserable bind he was in, all of a sudden.

What if . . . what if he could give Detective Reversa a different motive, one that didn’t have anything to do with the bank? But what motive would that be? “Oh, yeah, Detective, I think you’re right, Elaine shot me, because uhh . . .”

And then what? Yeah, we’re seeing each other again? How does that get me away from the robbery? If Elaine is the one that shot me, then that ties me to the robbery.

But what if it was Jack? Oh, he’s wrong about us, we aren’t seeing each other any more. But if he’s wrong, and there’s no evidence, why would he suddenly turn into this violent guy he’d never been before?