congestive heart failure is what finally took her. An alert nurse picked up the clinical change; within the hour we had her on a ventilator. But by then it was too late. It so often is.”
She touched his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. We did our best to get in touch. Apparently what contact numbers we had were long since invalid.” Her eyes swept his face, looking for cues. “Nothing I can say will be of much help, I’m afraid.”
“It’s okay, Doctor.”
Brought up on tonal languages, she caught the slight rise in pitch at sentence’s end. He hadn’t even known it was there.
“Park,” she said. “Doctor Park. Amy.”
They both turned to watch as a gurney came into view down the corridor. Barge on the river. African Queen. A nurse sat astride the patient, pumping at his chest. “Shit!” she said. “Just felt a rib crack.”
“I barely knew her. I just thought…”
“I really must go.”
In the parking lot he leaned against the Chevy, stood looking off towards the mountain ranges ringing Tucson. Catalinas to the north, Santa Rita to the south, Rincon east, Tucson west. The whole city was a compass. How could anyone ever have gotten so hopelessly lost here?
Chapter Twelve
Second and third runs with Irina’s husband went well. Driver’s gym bag on the closet floor under shoes and dirty clothes fattened.
Then the next run.
Everything started out fine. Ducks in a row, all on track, according to plan. Target was a low-end, homegrown shop offering check cashing and payroll advances. It hunkered down at one spare end of a Sixties strip mall, next to an abandoned theater with posters for dubbed science fiction movies and foreign-made crime thrillers featuring out-of-work American actors still under glass. To the other side sat a pawn shop so erratically open it didn’t even bother to post business hours. Its real business took place through the back door. Garlic, cumin, coriander and lemon from a falafel shop aromatized the region.
They’d gone in at nine, first opening. Metal shutters got pushed up then, doors unlocked. Only hired help about, workers getting minimum wage with no incentive to hold out or really give much of a shit, boss never around till ten or after. That time of day, even if there was an alarm, you could count on police being tapped out by rush-hour traffic.
Unfortunately, cops had the pawn shop staked out and one of them, terminally bored, happened to be looking at Check-R-Cash when Standard’s crew went in. He had a thing for the tall Latina who manned the front desk.
“Well, shit.”
“Wha’s wrong, she don’ love you no more?”
He told them. “So what do we do?” Not even close to what they’d been waiting for.
DeNoux being senior officer, it was his decision. He ran a hand through bristle-cut gray hair. “You guys as tired of this detail as I am?” he asked.
Tired of eating crap? Getting broiled all day in the van? Peeing in bottles? What’s to be tired of?
“I hear you. What the fuck. Let’s hit it.”
Driver watched as the commandos burst out the van’s back doors and charged Check-R-Cash. Knowing their attention was directed forward, he eased out from behind the Dumpster. Took him but moments out of the car, motor running, to slash the van’s tires. Then he pulled up at the front of the store. Gunfire inside. Three had gone in. Two emerged to slam into the back seat as he popped the clutch, floored it, and shot out across the parking lot. One of the two who’d come out was mortally wounded.
Neither of them was Standard.
Chapter Thirteen
“You’ve had the pork and yucca, right?”
“Only about twenty times. Nice vest! New?”
“Everyone’s a comic.”
Even this early, a little before six, Gustavo’s was packed. Manny squinted as Anselmo slipped a Modelo before him. Any time he left his cave the light was too strong.
“Gracias.”
“How’s the writing gig?”
“Hey, we’re the same. Sit on our butts all day guiding things towards disaster. Car or script goes over the edge, we start again.” He threw back his beer in a couple of gulps. “Enough of that shit. Let’s have something good.” Pulling a bottle out of his backpack. “New, from Argentina. Malbec grapes.”
Anselmo materialized with wineglasses. Manny poured, slid a glass across. They both sipped.
“Am I right?” He had another taste. “Oh, yeah. I’m right.” Holding onto the glass as onto a buoy, Manny looked about. “You ever think this was what your life would come to? Not that I know fuckall about your life.”
“Not sure I ever thought much about it.”
Manny held up his wineglass, peering across the liquid’s dark surface, tilting the glass as though to bring the world to level.
“I was going to be the next great American writer. No doubt in my mind whatever. Had a shitload of stories in literary magazines. Then my first novel came out and gave credence to the Flat Earth folk-fell right off the edge of the world. Second one didn’t even have energy enough left to scream as it went over. What about you?”
“Mostly I was just trying to get from Monday to Wednesday. Get out of my attic room, get out from under, get out of town.”
“That’s a lot of getting.”
“That’s ordinary life.”
“I hate ordinary life.”
“You hate everything.”
“I take exception, sir. A gross misrepresentation. While it may be true that I possess a distaste for such offal as the American political system, Hollywood movies, New York publishing, our last half-dozen Presidents, every movie made in the last ten years excepting those of the Coen Brothers, newspapers, talk radio, American cars, the music industry, media hype, the latest hot thing-”
“Quite a catalog.”
“-for many things in life I’ve an appreciation approaching reverence. This bottle of wine, for instance. The weather in L.A. Or the food to follow.” He refilled their glasses. “You still getting steady work?”
“Mostly.”
“Good. Not a total loss, then, moviemaking. Unlike many of today’s parents, at least it provides for its own.”
“Some of them.”
True to form, the food was everything remembered and anticipated. They followed up at a nearby bar, beer for Driver, brandy for Manny. An old man who spoke little English wandered in with his battered accordion and sat playing tangos and the songs of his youth, songs of romance and of war, as patrons stood him drinks and dropped bills into his instrument case and tears ran down his cheeks.
By nine Manny’s speech was slurring.
“So much for my big night out on the town. Used to be able to do this all night long.”
“I can drive you home.”
“Of course you can.”
