“What you got ticking? Anything hot I can look over for you while you’re gone? Got a bust or two coming up? I love the hairy stuff, you know me. A commando type.”
This was a joke; Hap stood five feet eight and weighed about 150 pounds, while Nick was a wide man, thick and strong and a judo champ, black belt, and still the best shot in the office. But Nick didn’t laugh, because he’d sort of phased out there for a second. He blinked, and pulled himself back.
“Oh? Uh, nothing, no. The usual. Following Colombians all over the town with Mickey Sontag, that’s all. Mickey’s out at the cop range today on that SWAT qualification. I was just going to push some paper, more or less, until he comes back.”
Hap was the supervisory agent in charge here in the New Orleans office, and a very good guy, easy to work with. He specialized in organized crime, while Nick worked drugs, usually in liaison with the DEA, mainly because he had a diplomatic touch and got along well with what most of the other men called the DOA boys.
So it was no problem for Nick to drive out to the hospital. He got there in fifteen minutes, on a drive so blank it could have lasted for fifteen hours and taken him from Omaha to Tallahassee.
They hadn’t moved her.
“Do you mind? Could I be alone with her for just a minute?” he said to the nurse.
“Sure. But we’ll have to take her to the mortuary soon enough.”
“Yeah. I know.”
They scurried out. Nick looked around, hating the goddamned room. It was like all the rooms he’d spent his life in, anonymous, personalityless, some fake paintings on the wall, the smell of plastic and disinfectant heavy in the air. Yet, hating it, he knew Myra wouldn’t have minded it. It was never her way to mind such things.
“I was meant to die that day,” she once told him, “like the other two girls, and that man. But your bullet saved me. It delivered me. It gave me you, Nick Memphis, it made me Mrs. Nick Memphis, and so what I’ve got is all gravy. It’s dessert. Six years of dessert.”
Well, dammit, now he was crying, wasn’t he? She’d forbidden that. When it became clear that her collapse was accelerating and Dr. Hilton said there was almost no chance at all, she’d told him she couldn’t have him crying.
You should be happy. No more lady in a wheelchair. You’re still a young man. Go out, get drunk, throw a party.
He went to the bed where she lay under a sheet. He’d seen corpses, of course, at crime scenes, in morgues, and when his mother had died in 1977, while he was at Quantico. And of course he’d seen them in the Tulsa street that day. But still he found himself shuddering and had to make himself pull the sheet back, wondering if he should. But he wanted to. He wanted to see her once more.
Of course the coma had drained the flesh from her face, and her eyes, those hot, bright, fascinating eyes, were closed, and some time ago they’d cut her red hair short, almost as a boy’s. But it was Myra.
She looked like a little bird. Her skin was pale, and her bones were as fragile and precise as doilies. But the pain was gone. Myra had pretty much lived in pain for six years. No arms, no legs, plenty of pain. So her face had a kind of repose it never quite achieved in life.
Oh boy, he thought, honey I am really fucking up. You said not to cry and I’ve just lost it, lost it, lost it.
“Nick?”
It was the doctor.
“Nick, you want us to get you anything?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“We have to take her now.”
“All right.”
He stood back and let them have his wife.
Nick went out into the sun, blinked, reached for a cigarette before he remembered he’d quit. He put on his sunglasses, because he felt his eyes swollen and pouchy. He tried to think. Then he remembered there wasn’t much to think about. They’d made plans, he knew where she was going, and when the funeral would be. It would be in two days, which would make it, let’s see, Thursday. Between now and then, it was all automatic, all of it.
He supposed he ought to go home, maybe some people would come by or something, some guys from the office, maybe their wives. He’d taken Myra to some of the parties over the years, and once they’d gotten over their clumsiness about The Tragedy, as he knew it was called, they got to like her, and some of the wives grew close to Myra and had the habit of dropping in.
But he shook the image out of his head, feeling the temptation to slide back into the good old days. He knew that way was craziness, he’d end up in another crying jag. He tried to get hold of himself, thought the best thing might be to go for a long drive, just point the car toward Biloxi and go, maybe spend a couple of days lying at the beach. Jesus, maybe find a girl, like Myra said, get laid, for crying out loud.
But he knew he couldn’t and he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t know what to do. That was the hardest part. He just didn’t know what to do. Then he thought about going to the movies or something, anything to just take his head out of here for a few hours. But movies were usually filled with people getting killed or maimed and he didn’t feel up to it.
At last he hit on the lake. He’d just drive over there down by the water where it would be calm and cool and he could sit there and enjoy the scenery and let the sun melt on his face for a couple of hours, and just chill out, flatten out, drift a bit. But he figured he ought to call in, what the hell, just in case.
He found a pay phone and dropped the quarter.
Fencl answered.
“Hey, Hap, I think I’m shorted out for the day. I’m going to fade, okay?”
“That’s cool, big guy. Hey, the guys want to take up a collection.”
“No flowers. She didn’t want flowers. And don’t break any arms, okay? They want to give, fine. If not, that’s fine, too. And give it in her name to some charity. That would be very, very nice, I’d like that a lot.”
“Great, no problem. By the way, you got a snitch named Eduardo?”
“Huh?”
“Guy calling himself Eduardo calls in, ’bout half an hour ago. Said he had to talk to you. Very shook. Latino accent. Probably nothing, but you can’t tell.”
Nick ransacked his head. Eduardo? He had about fifteen investigations going, mostly small-time drug runners, most of them thought to be working for Gilly Stefanelli, the capo of the New Orleans organized crime branch. But he could place no Eduardo in this catalog of losers, grifters, sharpies and angle-players, though indeed the name sounded familiar.
Then, yeah, he had it. It was a pass-over. Wally Deaver, who’d just left DEA for private business, had told him he’d given his name to a few of his snitches and contacts, because he didn’t want the guys in
“What’s the number?”
“Ah, lemme see, nine-eight-eight, twenty-twenty, room fifty-eight.”
“From the exchange, I’d say it’s out by the airport, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I could hear jets overhead. You know, Nick, why don’t you pass on it? It’s no big deal, these guys call in with shit all the time, that’s all. If it’s important, he’ll call back. Take some time, sort it all out. Put all your pieces back together, it’s no problem. I’m sorry I even mentioned it.”
“No, I ought to give the guy a call. You never know. Talk to you.”
Nick hung up, fished for another quarter, and dialed the number quick before it vanished from his head. He got a desk clerk, identifying the place as the Palm Court, and asked to be put through to room 58. The phone rang and rang and rang.
“I guess he ain’t there,” said the clerk.
“Hey, where are you?”
“It’s just off I-ten at the airport exit. We’re on the left, two down from the Holiday Inn.”
“Great, thanks,” said Nick, looked at his watch, and with a sigh decided to go back to work.
The Palm Court Motel turned out to be a shabby nonchain budget joint familiar by type out of half a hundred third-rate dope deals that Nick had either watched or busted or simply listened to. It was one of those cinder block
