I shook my head. The emergency ward was filled with people with problems far worse than mine, and I’d been lying on the bed for thirty minutes.
“I need to ask a favor,” Burrell said.
I moved my legs and patted the bed. Burrell sat down and smiled. Since getting my old job running Missing Persons, she’d started wearing pantsuits that showed off her trim, athletic figure. She was of Italian descent, small-boned and pretty, with slate-blue eyes that electrified her tanned face.
“Name it,” I said.
She started to speak, then glanced at the opening in the curtain. Down the hall, a man was talking in a loud, argumentative voice.
“Wait. Who’s that?” I asked.
“Frank Yonker.”
“What’s that jerk doing here?”
“He showed up in the emergency room with Bobby Monroe’s parents. He wants to get a statement from you.”
“About what?”
“He wants to know what happened at Lakeside Elementary this morning.”
When kids get injured or traumatized during rescues, their parents sometimes sued the police for negligence. Frank Yonker was a local attorney who chased ambulances for a living, and had caused the department plenty of grief over the years.
“What’s his beef?” I asked. “Bobby ran off school property and jumped into a pond. How can the police be liable for that?”
“Yonker is claiming that no one from Missing Persons was at the school, and that we sent you instead of sending a qualified detective to handle the search.”
“I’m not qualified?”
“You were thrown off the force.”
“Not to split hairs, but I resigned.”
“You left under a dark cloud, and the newspapers called you bad names. Yonker wants to know why you were sent to Lakeside. Once he gets a statement from you, he’ll probably file his lawsuit.”
I leaned back on my pillow. “So what’s the favor?”
“I was wondering if you’d slip out the back door of the hospital and get your cuts tended to someplace else. The department will pick up the tab.”
“What about Yonker?”
“I’ll deal with him.”
“You want me to turn into the invisible man.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“For you, anything.”
Burrell patted my leg. “That’s my Jack.”
“Can I give you some advice about dealing with Yonker?”
She started to reply, then simply nodded.
“Yonker is a tough character,” I said. “If he can’t get to me, he’ll work on you, and try to prove that you were negligent in the way you handled the case. You need to establish a timeline in case this goes to court. Write down everything you did this morning, starting from what time you got to work, when you got to the courthouse, and when you got the call that Bobby Monroe was missing. Have the other detectives in Missing Persons do the same.”
“What will that prove?”
“That you were doing your job when the call came, and acted appropriately. Do it now, while it’s fresh in your memory. When Yonker goes to interview you, hand him the timelines, and let him see what he’s up against. More than likely, he’ll go away.”
“You think so?”
“He doesn’t make money when he loses.”
Burrell rose from the bed and planted a kiss on my cheek. “By the way, Chief Moody wants you to join him for a drink after work. He really appreciates what you did.”
I climbed out of bed. Chief Moody was the reason I was no longer a cop, and I couldn’t see clinking glasses with him while reminiscing about the good old days.
“Tell him I’ll take a rain check,” I said. “My daughter’s in town playing in a college basketball tournament tonight.”
“Couldn’t you just have a drink with him?”
“Why should I?”
“You should mend fences. It’s healthy.”
I pulled back the curtain beside my bed. The hospital bed next to mine was unoccupied. I’d found my escape route. I snapped my fingers for Buster, who rose from the floor.
“Tell Moody to meet me at the Bank Atlantic Center at seven o’clock,” I said. “We can have a couple of cold ones in the parking lot before the game.”
Burrell rolled her eyes. “Right.”
I slipped through the curtain with my dog.
“See you later,” I said.
CHAPTER 5
I got out of Broward General without Frank Yonker spotting me, and drove to a nearby walk-in clinic. Parking in a shady spot, I rolled down the windows. Buster took the hint, and went to sleep in the back.
The clinic was filled with screaming kids and moaning old people. I was put into an examination room and told by a nurse that a doctor would be in shortly. Having nothing better to do, I took apart my Colt on the examining table, and used a Q-tip and some cotton balls I filched from a medicine cabinet to clean it.
I’d started carrying a 1908 Colt Pocket Hammerless my first day as a detective, and I considered it the best concealment weapon in the world. It was thinner than most handguns, and because there was no hammer to catch on my clothing, it was an easy draw. It had gotten me out of many tight situations, and had never let me down. They say you are in love with a gun when you see one dropped on TV and are afraid it might get scratched. That was how I felt about my Colt.
I had my guy reassembled and back in my pocket by the time a doctor entered the room. He looked Middle Eastern and spoke with a heavy British accent. I removed my shirt and pants, and showed him the cuts on my body. He asked me how I’d gotten them.
“Wrestling with an alligator,” I replied.
The doctor rolled his eyes.
“Now I’ve heard everything,” he said.
I left the clinic covered in Band-Aids. Walking to my car, I powered up my cell phone and found a message waiting from my daughter, Jessie. She’d called from the Bank Atlantic Center, where she and her teammates were practicing for tonight’s basketball game. There was urgency to her voice, and I called her back.
“Thanks for calling me back so fast,” my daughter said.
“Anything for you,” I said.
“Are you coming to the game tonight? A bunch of the girls’ fathers said they’ll be there.”
“Of course I’m coming to the game. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“There’s been a creepy guy with a video camera lurking around the court during practice. He kept shooting closeups of the team, even when we were just standing around listening to Coach. He’s got a press badge, but something tells me he’s a stalker. I asked one of the security guards to talk to him, but the guy disappeared.”
Bad guys trying to get close to young women often posed as TV reporters or fashion photographers. I said, “What did he look like?”
