Then I hoisted that gym bag and crutched my tottering way downto the street, fighting gravity. I talked the cops into calling a wrecker tohaul Sandy’s Mercedes over to our apartment building and waiting around untilit showed up. I had the keys, but couldn’t drive with the cast on my leg. And Ididn’t want to leave her car for the jackals — no idea what she might havestashed in it and no time to check. Turned out, nothing dangerous, but it was agood car. Still is.
I left them and hitched a ride in the ambulance, jump seat upfront and out of the way of the action. As a passing bit of irony, we ended upat the hospital where records showed one Nefertiti Cash as a ghost patient.That turned out to be the closest ER to the scene of my crime. I spent moretime crutching up and down corridors, smelling medical odors and listening tocoded medical beeps and intercoms, waiting. Hospitals were getting to be ahabit of mine, a bad one.
They declared Sandy dead in the OR, after about three hours ofcardiac arrests and resuscitations and seizures and invasive procedures. Noquestion about the death certificate, natural causes, cerebral hemorrhage.
I got back to my apartment, showered away the stink of fearand loathing and climbing too many stairs, and got in touch with Nef’s coloneland my theoretical boss, direct phone this time, not email. Found out for surethat she was still alive. I told him I thought I’d solved the leak, and he didn’task any awkward questions, just gave me her new name. We decided we shouldleave the security in place, just as a precaution. So I called the handicaptaxi service and paid them to haul my butt across town again and drop me at thehospital where she really was.
Inside, I did the ID dance with the information desk and got aroom number and directions through the maze. This time I had the sense to dumpthe slip of paper in a toilet and flush it after finding her floor and ward.Yes, I was locking the barn door after the horse was gone, one of my usualhabits. At least I don’t often make the same mistake twice. I’ll figure out ashiny new one, instead.
The door was closed. I knocked, got a nurse blocking my way,bedpan time or a sponge bath or changing bandages. So I waited, talking to theward boss about Nef — found out they might let go of her in a couple of days ifprogress continued to progress, that the surgeon had declared himself surprisedbut pleased with her foot. Then I crutched up and down the hall for a while. I’vealways been a pacer, can’t sit and wait even when getting into and out of achair isn’t a major exercise in leverage and mass and momentum physics.
A couple of nurses came out and gave me the green light to goin. I chewed on my lip, working up courage, and faced the music. Sometime inthe last couple of days, they’d unhooked Nef from the ropes and weights andpulleys, taken off the straps holding her down, and allowed her the luxury ofcranking up the head of the bed so she could sit. They’d hauled away most ofthe electronics.
She looked better — normal skin color and they’d fixed herhair. She glared at me.
“Who the hell are you?”
Normal attitude, too. I could tell that wasn’t any chemicalfog or amnesia. She was pissed that I hadn’t been in to see her.
“Special Agent John Patterson, reporting for duty.”
“Kiss my ass.” But she held her free hand out to me and I tookit and kissed that instead, with a Renaissance flourish half-ruined by thecrutches.
“Here? Now?”
She glanced at the door, wrinkled her nose, and shook herhead. Hospital room doors don’t provide locks. “Don’t tempt me.”
Yeah, she was feeling better. I found a chair that looked likeit might handle my weight and settled into it. Sitting felt good. Tracking andkilling Sandy and all the rest of it had left me drained.
Cash was staring at me with narrowed eyes. I guess some thingsshowed, either to someone who knew me well or to a guerilla witch. Cash hadalways seen too damn much.
“Tell me.”
I told her. I told her the whole thing, forged signatures andillegal tampering with the hawk and waiting until I was sure that Sandy woulddie and every other little ugly bit. She deserved the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth. If I ended up in prison for it, maybe they’d give methe cell next to Maggie and we could hold hands through the bars.
No way that would happen, of course. We’d be lucky to exchangebirthday cards on alternate leap years. And that’s assuming I didn’t justvanish into never-never land when the FBI or CIA or NSA found out what I knew.Hell, Cash could vanish for knowing that I knew those things . . .
One thing I didn’t mention, I’m sure she noticed but didn’task, was what I had done with the relic. I wound down and we sat in silence.She’d closed her eyes about halfway through the story — if I hadn’t seen thetense line of her jaw muscles, I could have thought she’d fallen asleep. Icouldn’t read anything else on her face.
Then, “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
More silence. I sat there, thinking over my sins.
She opened her eyes. “Sandy. That . . . sad . . .bitch. Twenty-five goddamn years, gnawing at her revenge. Shecouldn’t just go out and find another man. And you’re right, you can’t do adamn thing about getting Maggie out. Oh John, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t say a word about the laws I’d broken, nothing aboutthe bomb under her car and getting damn near killed. That’s Nef Cash.
And she didn’t seem upset that I tried to set Maggie free atthe cost of my own ass. But I’ve already told you, I don’t understand women.
“John, I’ll tell the colonel that the case
