bruises and so forth. Kid stuff.” The security guard
touched his head, presumably where he’d been shot.
“He’ll live.”
“That’s more than his wife did,” Renie declared.
“She never got out of this place alive.”
“Now, now,” Torchy said in a soothing tone. “That
was a different matter.”
“How different?” Judith asked.
“Well,” Torchy began, then paused and scratched his
bald spot, “she had an operation. And then . . . well,
maybe she was taking some stuff on the side. You
know.” He winked again.
“Actually,” Renie said, “we don’t know. Mr. Kirby
doesn’t think his wife was taking ‘stuff on the side.’
Have you talked to him, Security Officer Magee?”
Torchy gave a little jump. “Me? Why, sure. That’s
SUTURE SELF
85
my job. But what do husbands know about what wives
do when they’re not with the old man?” He winked a
third time. “Or the other way around, for that matter.
Besides, she was an actress. You know what those theater people are like.”
Renie held up a hand. “If you wink again, I’ll
have to kill you. Yes, I know something about theater people. But the real question is, what do you
know about the untimely deaths of three well-known
local residents in this very hospital? Isn’t that your
business?”
Johnny Boxx had strolled to the door, maybe, Judith
thought, in an effort to disassociate himself from
Torchy Magee. “If you think of anything else,” Boxx
said to Renie in a courteous voice, “let us know.” It was
clear he meant the police, not security.
“I will,” Renie promised.
Torchy lingered after Officer Boxx went out into the
hall. “Let me know first,” he said to Renie, his jocular
manner evaporating.
“Sure,” Renie said, her brown eyes wide with innocence.
Judith pushed herself up on the pillows. “Drugs,
huh?” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Fremont and
Somosa both, I heard. And Bob Randall committed
suicide. How horrible.”
Torchy’s close-set gray eyes narrowed. “Where’d
you hear all that?”
Judith shrugged. “Hospital scuttlebutt. You know
how people like to gossip.”
The security man, who had been midway to the
door, stopped at the foot of Judith’s bed. “Don’t pay attention to what you hear. Of course,” he went on,
lightly caressing the iron bedstead rail, “sometimes
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