A Time For Justice (24 page)

Nothing happened.

Kovaks rose slowly to his knees. ‘Keep down,’ he warned the
others. He peered over the top of the desk at the envelope which
lay innocently on the floor. Two wires poked out of it. Shaking,
his heart pulsating to the point of bursting, he reached for and
picked up the phone which dangled on its wire over the edge of the
desk. He could hear Donaldson shouting at the other end. ‘Joe, Joe!
You OK, Joe?’

‘
Yeah, yeah,’ he breathed. He looked down at the prostrate
figure of Sue who hadn’t moved. Her dress had ridden up to reveal
her plump thighs and skimpy underclothes. ‘I think I’ve just opened
a letter bomb - but it didn’t go bang. Speak to you
later.’

He slammed the phone down.

‘
I think we’re OK, people,’ he announced. ‘If it was going to
blow it would’ve done by now.’

Gingerly the other two agents appeared from hiding. Kovaks
held out a hand to Sue and heaved her into an unladylike sitting
position, legs akimbo. She grinned her lop-sided grin at him and
said, ‘You don’t need an excuse to throw me to the ground and leap
on me, you know.’

He chuckled with a slightly hysterical undertone, but before
he could confound her with an off-the-cuff witty remark, the phone
on his desk rang out. He answered it. ‘Kovaks.’

‘
Agent Kovaks?’

‘
Speaking. ‘

‘
Broward Country Police here, Fort Lauderdale. Sheriff
Tomlinson.’

‘
Yep?’

‘
You live up here with a lady called Chrissy
Strand?’

‘
Yep - why?’ Kovaks asked cautiously. His eyes flickered to
the envelope on the floor.

‘
I’m sorry, but I’ve some bad news, sir. She’s in hospital.
Some kind of explosion at your apartment this morning ... We think
it could’ve been a letter bomb. It went off in her
face.’

It was a one-room apartment over a row of sleazy shops near to
Flagler Street in downtown Miami. In one corner of the room a baby
cried itself hoarse in a cot. It was poorly cared for, a scrawny
child, its growth stunted perhaps for ever by lack of proper
feeding and loving attention. Its diaper stank and probably hadn’t
been changed for twelve hours. It was soiled and wet. Underneath,
the baby’s skin was red-raw and sore. And the baby was hungry, but
it couldn’t have kept anything down because of a recurring stomach
infection.

But it hadn’t always been this way.

In another corner of the room lay the baby’s mother on a low
camp bed with a thin mattress and brown, stained sheets.

She was a black girl, nineteen years old.

She hadn’t always been this way.

Not many months ago she had been beautiful, big and full of
life.

Now she lay there half-listening to her baby’s screams of
anguish.

But they were noises that only vaguely registered in her ears.
They were miles away, of no consequence. What was immediate was
that her head was swimming and she was in a different,
crack-induced world.

She was on a high, but it wasn’t all that high. She needed
some more. The last hadn’t taken her far enough up. She’d seen the
peak she wanted to conquer in the distant mist, but it had remained
just out of reach. So she needed a lot more, but for the moment
this would have to do.

She closed her dry eyes and ran her hands down her naked body,
quivering with the sensation in her head.

Once her body had been beautiful, desirable.

Now she was thin and wasted. No one, no man, could possibly
want to make love to her. Her bones stuck out hard and cold, her
thin legs looked like they had rickets, her once large firm breasts
were shadows of their former selves. Her nipples, once rich and
scarlet, were pitiful and lifeless.

All she retained was her mouth.

That was still sensual, her lips thick and moist.

And that was how she made her living, with her mouth. She was
good with it - the very best. Last night forty customers queued up
and testified to the fact. At fifty dollars each that made two
thousand dollars, and it wasn’t her best night by any means. All
she got though was a measly two hundred, a hundred and fifty of
which went straight back to the man for dope.

And the baby cried in the corner.

The mother sat up, desperate for more. She searched
frantically for some in her bag. There was none, but she already
knew that anyway.

Then the door opened and two men came into the
room.

One was THE man.

‘
Oh God, thank God,’ she breathed in relief, not even
beginning to wonder why they’d come, just pleased with her good
luck. ‘I need it, man, I need it. I’ve got fifty dollars left
here.’ A hand slid under the pillow and came out clutching a wad of
crumpled dollar bills.

The man crossed to her.

With the flat of his hand he smacked her hard and accurately
across the face. ‘Get the fuck out of here -
now
- and take that little piece of
Whisper-shit with you.’

‘
I don’t understand,’ she whined, holding her face. ‘What’s
going on? What’ve I done? I need it, man. Please!’

‘
You’re being evicted. He’s decided,’ said the man, pointing
upwards as if to heaven, ‘that he don’t like bitches in any way
connected to people who talk to the law. Now, nigger, get your
clothes on, you skinny, ugly bitch, collect that thing and get out.
From this moment on, you’re a homeless person - and you can thank
Whisper for that.’

Joe Kovaks had a four-hour wait before they let him in to see
Chrissy. Part of the time he was accompanied by Sue who plied him
with sweet black coffee from a nearby dispenser and machine-gunned
him with small talk, which included her minor clash with Ritter.
Everything went in one ear and out the other before eventually
starting to irritate him. In the end he told her - not unkindly -
to go, explaining that he needed to be alone.

She understood and left reluctantly, only to be replaced
almost immediately by a young detective from Fort Lauderdale who
got Chrissy’s personal details from him, then a statement. It was
like getting blood from a stone. Kovaks didn’t feel very much like
talking. He wanted to sit and brood. He spoke in angry
monosyllables where he could and didn’t feel any remorse or empathy
for the detective. Fuck him, he thought. Just fuck him.

All Kovaks wanted to do was see Chrissy. Until then, he wasn’t
interested in making anyone’s life easy. What the fuck were they
doing with her?

When the detective left, muttering and bearing a statement a
rookie would have laughed at, Kovaks sat there alone at last ...
but only for a short time. In less than five minutes a nurse turned
up and asked him to accompany her.

He dropped the stub of his cigarette into his cold coffee, and
stood up on quaking legs. He wanted to see her, yet he didn’t. He
wanted, yet dreaded, the moment. With this conflict battling inside
him, he followed the nurse.

For the first time in his life he was totally shocked and
speechless as he stood at the door of the Burns Unit and looked at
the pathetic charred figure of Chrissy Strand, the woman he had
definitely grown to love.

In truth he couldn’t see all that much of her. There was a
spaghetti-like mess of tubes running across and into her body and
arms. A suit that looked like it was made of a combination of
plastic and tinfoil covered her upper torso and a sheet was drawn
up to cover the part of her body from her stomach downwards. A
hairnet, rather like a shower cap, was on her head and the whole
left side of her face was concealed by gauze. Her hands and arms
were covered with plastic bags.

He gasped in horror as he saw her blackened hands, burned like
an overcooked joint. He held onto the door jamb for
support.

She looked awful and the expression on his face registered his
shock and disbelief. His Chrissy.

At least she was unconscious and pumped full of drugs for the
moment. For the moment.

Hi-tec machines surrounding the bed monitored her functions.
Kovaks looked quickly at the displays. They all seemed to be
pinging healthily enough.

He took a deep breath and approached the bed.

He wasn’t sure how long it was that he stood there. Two
minutes. Could have been twenty.

‘
Mr Kovaks?’

He jumped back into the real world and turned round. A young
man in a classy suit offered a hand. Kovaks took it and they shook.
Kovaks’ puzzlement was cleared up when the man said, ‘I’m the
surgeon who operated on Chrissy. Dr Jefferson. I believe you’re her
boyfriend?’

‘
We live together as man and wife. We were going to get
married.’

‘
Right, right.’

‘
So, how is she? No bullshit, please.’

‘
Come - let’s discuss it out here.’ He indicated the
corridor.

Kovaks followed him out, amazed at how young and inexperienced
he appeared. He couldn’t have been over thirty, with a face like a
baby, all chubby and rubicund. But he exuded an air of confidence
and ability that Kovaks found reassuring, coupled with an outwardly
relaxed persona.

The doctor leaned against the wall and waited for a couple of
chattering nurses to pass. He cleared his throat. ‘Right ...
obviously she’s very badly burned. The device, or whatever you want
to call it, was designed to pour out a flash of flame as the
recipient opened the envelope. Normally that would result in hand,
facial and neck burns. I say normally because most recipients would
probably be fully clothed when opening mail. Chrissy hadn’t got
dressed.’

‘
Which makes it worse?’ The doctor nodded.

‘
She works late.’ Kovaks felt he had to explain her nakedness
for some reason. ‘She’d probably got straight out of bed when she
heard it fall through the door. We can hear mail coming in quite
clearly from the bedroom. ‘

The surgeon shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ He went on: ‘The problem is
that there was no protection whatsoever from any clothing.
Therefore much of her chest, upper arms and neck were burned as
well as her hands and face. It was actually the left side of her
face that took the brunt of the flames. The right side is hardly
touched at all. A great deal of her hair has been burned off
too.’

‘
So what’s the bottom line? What’s the future?’

‘
At this early stage it’s difficult to say. She will be badly
scarred, but plastic surgery can do wonders. She’ll be OK
physically. Her eyes are unharmed and in itself, her body remains
in good shape. It’s the mental side that’ll be the biggest problem.
All I can say is this: don’t think too much of the future at the
moment. Let’s take each day as it comes. She’ll need a great deal
of support,’ he added.

Kovaks nodded. His eyes watered over. ‘She’ll get it,’ he said
resolutely, biting his bottom lip, trying to hold back the
tears.

The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Good man. Does she
have some family?’

‘
Chicago. I’ll speak to them.’

‘
OK. I don’t think there’s much point in you staying around
here at this time, Mr Kovaks. She’ll be sleeping for many hours
yet. If you want to be here when she wakes up, come in tomorrow
about eight a.m. But go and get some rest yourself. You’ve had a
very exacting day so far and you’ll need all your strength for
Chrissy ... won’t you?’ He raised his eyebrows
questioningly.

‘
Yeah, you’re right,’ said Kovaks, acknowledging the sense.
‘Look, if you don’t mind I’ll have a few more minutes with her
before I go.’

‘
By all means.’ They shook hands again. ‘Good night. I’ll see
you tomorrow.’

‘
Thanks, Doc.’

He watched the surgeon walk away and thought that he rather
liked the man. Talked straight from the hip, as it were. He
believed Chrissy was in safe hands, which took a weight off his
mind.

Kovaks spent a few minutes sat by Chrissy’s bed, staring
blankly at her, listening to the shallow breathing, his mind in
turmoil. He wondered what the future would hold for them. Not eight
hours ago it was very rosy. Now it was all upside down, with its
guts twisted out and fed to the scavengers. In his mind’s eye he
kept seeing her opening the package, just as he’d done. The whoosh
of the flames. Her screams of terror.

Bastard. Whoever had done it.
Bastard.
It was a warning, wasn’t
it? And at that moment in his life, there was only one possible
source - Corelli. The Mafia godfather had just told the FBI to go
fuck themselves.

At the door he took one last look at Chrissy. She stirred
momentarily, then moaned slightly. He willed his thoughts to
transfer from his mind to hers, to penetrate the pain and the
drugged state.
I will be there for
you,
he told her.
Whatever happens, whatever the outcome. And whoever has done
this to you will suffer. They have bitten off more than they can
chew. I’ll find them, I promise you, and justice will be done. I
promise you. I love you.