- •I took the case. Somebody had to do it and I’m too poor to keep my hands clean.
- •Chapter 2
- •I also let that pass. Danny has an exaggerated opinion of my decadence.
- •I started to put my sweater back on.
- •I didn’t wait long, fortunately, because money does not guarantee taste, as this sitting room proved.
- •I decided the walk would do me good. Besides, I didn’t think I had the exact change for a bus or the patience for Quarter parking.
- •I handed her my private investigator’s license. She looked at it for a minute.
- •It was too much. I had to burst out laughing. I was remembering why he had left me. It was back in sixth grade. This only caused Barbara to look more concerned. Maybe I had gone crazy.
- •I didn’t see her again until after lunch. We ran into each other in the bathroom.
- •I handed him over. He let out a breathy mew at being moved, but he didn’t seem to mind too much. Cordelia pulled her jacket around him. He was a little marmalade cat with big green eyes.
- •I shrugged to show that it wasn’t important. I turned back down the way we came.
- •It was Danny.
- •It was Monday morning again. But this was the last Monday morning that I would have to deal with bright and early, at least for a while.
- •I walked out of the door and into one of the guards.
- •I dialed Sergeant Ranson’s number. Some bored clerk answered.
- •I tripped instead, doing what I hoped they wouldn’t notice was a shoulder roll. I used my landing as an excuse to make some noise.
- •I was sitting there feeling very dirty, not to mention sorry for myself, when Danny Clayton walked by. Without recognizing me, I might add.
- •I told them my story with only a slight interruption for dinner. It took me over two hours, between my fatigue and Ranson’s questions.
- •I started to protest, but was interrupted by the phone. Danny picked it up, then handed it to me. It was Ranson.
- •Visiting hours wouldn’t start for a while, so my first destination was Sergeant Ranson’s office to see if she had arrested Milo and cohorts yet.
- •I had to say something or I’d start sniffling.
- •I started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, but it was too absurd for my present state of mind.
- •I shuddered. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
- •I looked up. Miss Clavish was standing there, in her prim navy blue dress, wearing white gloves and holding a large shotgun. That was the thunderclap—she had fired over our heads and into the wall.
- •I started to protest, to say that as long as Barbara Selby was in this hospital, I wasn’t dropping out, but Ranson waved me silent.
- •I slowly sat up, then slid off the examining table and assumed a standing position.
- •I picked up my canvas bag, found the keys that Ms. (it had to be Ms., not Miss, after that shotgun trick) Clavish had removed from my door. I locked up and we left.
- •I finished in the bathroom in time to hear the tail end of her last message. It was a male voice saying he’d see her real soon and that he loved her and so on.
- •I stuck my head in.
- •I went back into the living room and put on the Brandenburg Concertos to lend a cultured air to this affair. Danny nodded approval at my choice.
- •I knew that by “in time” she meant Barbara more than she meant me. I was glad that Barbara hadn’t been forgotten.
- •I picked up the heavy platter and carried it out to the table.
- •I heard my answering machine being played back.
- •I made introductions. Torbin explained his plans for the next few days. Good food, great movies, and perhaps a few lessons on makeup. I didn’t ask whether he meant Frankie or me.
- •I got in, leaving my door open, and turned the ignition. The engine hummed smoothly, all the usual clanking sounds gone.
- •I quickly put the tools away. Ben was staring at the unchanging marsh when I came back.
- •I spotted Ranson.
- •I noticed a patch of yellow under one of the rags. I picked it up. A half-empty tube of horse liniment. Equus Ben-Gay. No, I couldn’t do that. Not even to Karen Holloway.
- •I saw Frankie at the far edge of the light. He was standing by himself, waiting, it seemed.
- •I nodded. She opened the door. The hallway was empty.
- •I kissed her on the mouth. Then I put my arms around her and held her. She returned the embrace and the kiss for a moment, then she broke off.
- •It wasn’t a disaster, it was delicious. Fortunately, neither Ranson nor I had bet on it being inedible.
- •I looked at her like she was crazy.
- •I was close enough to see Cordelia’s face. The barrel of Ben’s gun was pressed against her neck. Her eyes were a blazing blue against the stark paleness of her skin.
- •I remembered Alma, small, pale blond, and eight months pregnant. David, their son, pale like his mother, was three.
- •I refused to bow my head. I had nothing to pray for.
- •I jerked. Other hunters with other guns aiming at other people.
- •I nodded, knowing I was asking too much.
- •I nodded. “Eight months.”
- •I puzzled for a minute.
- •I was hungry. All I’d had to eat so far today were the crawfish on the pier.
- •I put my hand on her arm to stop her.
- •I shrugged.
- •I led the way and lit some candles and a hurricane lantern to light the kitchen. I started the wood stove. It was chilly in here.
- •I turned back to her, but she stood there, no words coming forth.
- •I washed my face, but I still looked like shit.
- •I shook my head. Ranson had to be right, it couldn’t mean anything.
- •I pretended to think for a minute.
- •I shrugged. I didn’t want Cordelia to be hit, but I couldn’t write Danny’s death warrant to save her. The thug lifted his hand again.
- •I stood beside her, next to the door, not wanting to let her go. I started to give her directions.
- •Voices carried from the lawn. I stopped, afraid that, if I could hear them, they could hear me.
- •I’m still alive. Oh, shit, how am I going to pay for this, was my last thought.
- •I was. Even the goulash that Barbara was eating looked appetizing. The nurse did the usual nurse things to me, then went off to see about getting me some food.
I was sitting there feeling very dirty, not to mention sorry for myself, when Danny Clayton walked by. Without recognizing me, I might add.
“Danny,” I said. She kept on walking. “Assistant District Attorney Clayton,” I said, getting her attention.
“Do I…” she started. “Micky!” she exclaimed when she recognized me. “My Lord, woman, what happened to you?”
“Oh, I ran into a doorway,” I answered. The expression on Danny’s face told me better than any mirror how bad I looked.
“It must have been one hell of a door,” she replied.
Ranson walked up, casually said hello to Danny, noticed me, and did a double take. I did get some satisfaction out of having thrown her.
“Shit, Micky, what did they do to you?” Ranson asked in a tight voice.
“They?” Danny asked, looking first at Ranson, then at me.
“Come into my office. No, wait, let’s go to the women’s room and get you cleaned up,” she said and led the way.
Since there weren’t too many women in this area, we had it all to ourselves. Ranson went to get me some sweatpants and a T-shirt from her locker.
I started trying to wash the blood and coal dust off. I had a big bruise on my cheek and jaw where Turner had hit me. My clean arms were a welter of bruises and cuts. Both wrists were torn and scraped from the ropes. My left foot had a nasty cut on the arch and both feet had a number of minor cuts from the oyster shells. The more dirt that came off, the more concerned Danny looked. I almost wished she wasn’t here. I had treated her too badly recently for me to feel I deserved the concern she was showing.
Ranson returned with her gym clothes. I took off the dirty rags.
“Who did this to you?” Danny asked in an angry voice.
“A coal chute, oyster shells, a swamp,” I answered as I dressed. Danny took my chin in one hand and turned my face to her, then started to trace the bruise on my face. I flinched as she hit a sore spot.
“No oyster shell did that. Or that,” she said, pointing to my wrists. “There are laws against people hitting other people,” she finished.
“Yeah, but you should see the other guy,” I said, trying to make a joke. Then I remembered the other guy was in a body bag.
“Can you identify him?” Ranson asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “I can even tell you where he is.” Ranson cocked an eyebrow. “In a morgue somewhere in St. John the Baptist Parish,” I answered. The jokes were over.
“Did you…” asked Danny, leaving the “kill him” hanging.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Let’s go back to my office,” Ranson said, leading us out.
The first thing Ranson did was call out and order us some po-boys for supper. It was past six o’clock already. She seemed willing to let Danny stay, and I didn’t mind.
I told them my story with only a slight interruption for dinner. It took me over two hours, between my fatigue and Ranson’s questions.
When I finished, she stood up and said, “Okay, now it’s time for you to go home and go to bed.”
“She’s coming home with me,” Danny added.
“Good idea,” Ranson said.
But there was still some unfinished business.
“Barbara Selby,” I said. “I have to know how she is.”
Ranson told me that the last she had heard, which was several hours ago, was that Barbara was still in surgery.
“Go get some sleep, Micky. I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens,” she added.
“You had better. I have to know. Call me as soon as you find out,” I answered. Then Danny and I left.
Chapter 12
Danny had stopped and called Elly, so she was not surprised when we showed up. She had even made up the sleeper couch for me. It looked very inviting, but common courtesy compelled me to take a quick shower first. The bathroom in the police station had only gotten off the first layer. Besides, I was hoping that Ranson would call and tell me that Barbara was all right.
The quick shower was actually a quick bath, since my feet felt they had held up my weight enough for the last few days. Danny came in as I was drying myself off and handed me a bath robe. I realized I was embarrassed at her seeing me naked. That had never happened before. The embarrassment, not the nakedness. Maybe because I had finally realized how crappily I had been treating her. Maybe embarrassment is natural when you’re naked in front of an ex-lover with her current lover in the next room. I suspected it was a bit of both.
She looked me over, shaking her head the whole time. I was pretty thoroughly bruised up, all of them painful.
“Lucky for you, Elly is a nurse and she is waiting in the living room with our in-case-of-alligator-attack camping first aid kit.”
“I can’t wait,” I said. “Danny, uh, I…”
She waved me off and said, “Come on out, I want you to meet Elly.”
We left the bathroom for the living room. Elly was there, complete with a large, bright orange first aid kit.
Elly Harrison was not very tall, but she still looked willowy. If she wanted to, she could probably look fragile, but she didn’t now and I doubted I would ever see her that way. She had black, shoulder-length, wavy hair and penetrating hazel eyes.
She sat me down and started working on my cuts with the professional cheerfulness common to all good nurses. We talked while she worked, her side of the conversation being more intelligible than mine, since I did a fair amount of groaning and bitching. Elly didn’t work in a hospital, but was a visiting nurse. She traveled around to homebound patients, checking up on them and evaluating their conditions. She said that most of her patients were terminal, cancer and AIDS, but they didn’t need to be in the hospital. The more we talked, the more impressed I was with Elly. I couldn’t dismiss her even if I had wanted to.
“Come on, Danno, bedtime,” Elly said, catching sight of me starting to nod my head. I was tired, but I didn’t want to lie down yet.
“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “Get some sleep, Micky.”