Chance (93 page)

Chance stood watching.

“That’s what you meant . . . coming clean, doing time . . . and you at the place . . .”

Chance said nothing.

“The fuck, man?”

“I got to his computer. I saw some of his reports.”

She stared at him a good long while. “You know what?” she said. “You shouldn’t even tell
me
that. Does
he
know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know what he knows.”

“And you stand there asking if he’s behind this other . . . Really?” Her voice trailed away. Chance waited. “Well . . .” she said finally. “You’re fucked, is what I think.” She had begun to rock back and forth on the bed in the manner of a deranged street dweller. “We’re kind of both fucked,” she added, “but he at least
likes
me.”

“Did he like Jane too? Did he fall in love? Did he bring her home? Maybe he found out she could do the numbers, or knew
the business . . . And how about Myra Cohen, while we’re on the subject? . . .”

“Stop it,” she said. She reached out suddenly to take him by the wrist, surprising him once more with her strength even after all they’d been through. “We’ve been made, buddy. Don’t ask me how.”

“How?”

“That’s rich. He’s got fucking eyes, is how. He’s hooked up. I’ve told you he can get things done. Now you’re seeing what he can do.”

“Is he still in the hospital?”

“He was there for two nights and they sent him home but I haven’t seen him. He’s called but I didn’t return.” Chance made to pull away but she held on tight. “You are a good person,” she said yet again. “I can’t imagine how you got to his computer or what if anything you had to do with that goat fuck in the alley . . .” She paused but kept hold of his arm and for a moment was something like amused. “I’m saying that ’cause if I didn’t you’d probably fucking tell me. Don’t. Never cop to anything and never talk to a cop. First rule, for Christ’s sake, and if you’ve got a magic rabbit someplace you better go find him and you better hope he’s still your pal. Is this making sense? Am I getting through?”

“Help me find my sock,” Chance said.

She was still on the bed when he’d finished dressing. She’d taken what he guessed to be the last of the beers from the hotel minibar and was sipping from the can, staring out into the unpleasant light, toward that place where the Oakland airport shimmered in the distance.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked.

“Would that be a joke?”

But he was still trying to process, to place everything she had given him into some kind of real-world perspective, given her state, given his, given every other fucking thing. . . .

“Listen to me,” she said once more. “If I
can
find anything out I will and I will give you a call. But don’t call me.”

“Righto.”

“I would go with you if I could.”

“Probably not the best of ideas.”

“You know what I mean,” she told him and he guessed that he did.

“Thanks anyway,” he said, then thought of something that had not occurred to him till just now, though well it might. “I thought you had gone off to see your daughter,” he said. “I thought that’s where you were.”

“Really? And here
I
thought you were looking for
me
.”

“I was looking for cameras.”

“What did I just tell you?” she asked.

“And your daughter?”

“Let’s not.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Two farmers meet on a road.” He’d stopped in the doorway and was looking back at her in the bad light. “One farmer has a pig that he is holding up to eat the leaves of a tree. The second farmer takes this in, asks the first guy what he’s doing. The first farmer says, ‘I’m feeding my pig.’ The second farmer says that must take a lot of time. The first farmer says, ‘What’s time to a pig?’ ”

She gave him a long look. “Would this be the kind of thing you generally charge your patients for?”

“To tell you the truth . . . I don’t really see that many people, as patients.”

She gave it a beat. “Wow. Let me think . . .”

“Yes, they scare the shit out of me.”

She said nothing to that.

“Think about the story.”

“And that’s it?”

“It’s all I’ve got,” he told her. “The room is on my card. I’ll tell them you’re going to sign for it on your way out.”

“I really am sorry.”

“Me too.”

He closed the door behind him. Within minutes he had gained the freeway, heading north then west, the great span of the Bay Bridge groaning beneath the weight of midday traffic, cars stacked four abreast for as far as the eye could see, a harsh metallic rainbow run to the spires of the city it had so often pleased him to call his own.

H
E ARRIVED
at the hospital shortly before the lunch hour, availing himself once more of staff parking but not bothering with the white coat. He was not feeling much like a doctor, or anything else for that matter, reduced by things as they were to little more than some bit of exposed nerve, passing like a shade through familiar corridors as if seeing them for the first time, returning straightway to the emergency care wing where he was just in time to find them spilling from one of the waiting rooms in varying states of rage and panic. They were all there, his soon-to-be ex-wife together with her support team, a small gaggle of soon-to-be ex-relatives and former friends, the dyslexic personal trainer among them. Chance, the only son of deceased parents, was quite alone in the face of their onslaught. If he had been hoping for a friendly face anywhere within hailing distance he was shit out of luck, having already been informed at the nurses’ station by a Hispanic orderly of no more than twelve that it was Gooley’s day off.

The source of their consternation, apart that is from the sudden appearance of Chance, apparently enough in and of itself to produce in his ex-wife an immediate and violent outburst, was the sudden disappearance
of Chance’s daughter. It seems that she was no longer in the building. Chance could only gape in wonder, to ask how such a thing had been allowed to happen. He might as well have stood upon the shoulder of the Great Highway at high noon to inquire of the wind.

“You’re a fine one to ask,” Carla shouted at him, drawing stares from staff and passersby, a pat on the shoulder from her current flame.

Chance just looked at her.

“About anything,” she cried, shaking off the boyfriend’s hand. “Why are you even here?” When he attempted to answer she turned away, burying her face on the shoulder of her mother, a faded glamour queen with heavily bleached hair Chance could scarcely recall ever having a single meaningful conversation with during the entire length and breadth of his marriage and who looked upon him now with the withering stare of a deep and lasting disapproval. He could only guess at his appearance.

In time certain things were made clear. Facts were established, emerging, it seemed to Chance, as might icebergs from a dense fog. At approximately ten fifteen that morning, the pulmonary doctor in charge of her case had decided that Nicole had been stable long enough to remove the breathing tube and to bring her back around. This had gone off more or less as planned and she had indeed regained consciousness, emerging from her long sleep in what was described to Chance as a rude and grumpy mood, wondering what the big deal was and wanting only to go home. “She kept on asking for her cell phone,” the dyslexic personal trainer from Sausalito told him, his particular contribution to the unfolding narrative.

It was the first time that Chance had actually been in the same room with the man or spoken to him face-to-face. The guy was a head taller than Chance and in excellent shape. Chance declined to speak to him directly, preferring to address himself to Carla instead: “And you let her have it?”

“How dare you,” she said. “How dare you stumble in here after all this time and start making accusations . . .” She paused as if really taking him in for the first time. “My
God,
” she said, “you look like absolute shit.” In the aftermath of which she raced off to speak to a nurse. Her mother shot Chance a last hateful look before striking out in pursuit of her daughter. Other members of the support team withdrew in silence. Chance was left in the hallway, in the company of the trainer.

“Hey, man . . .” the trainer said to him. “I’m really sorry about all of this. I really am. I can only imagine how you must be feeling.”

Chance nodded. The guy really was, it seems, the only person among the current support team willing to give him the time of day. “We’re not sure how she got the phone,” the trainer said. It occurred to Chance that in point of fact he could not recall the man’s name. “We’re thinking it must have happened this morning, just after they took the tube out and removed the restraints. There was some kind of a break where one nurse went home and this other nurse came on. . . . Looks like Carla must’ve left her purse in the room. She sat up in there with her all night. Anyway . . . Nicole must’ve seen this and seen she was alone and grabbed Carla’s phone and made a call. . . . There really wouldn’t have been time for more than one.”

“Looks like maybe one was enough,” Chance told him. In light of the man’s stab at some form of camaraderie, he was hoping to keep the rancor from his voice, or at least hold it to a minimum.

“It’s fucked up,” the trainer agreed.

“And then what? It’s not that easy to just walk out of here.”

“She said she wanted to use the bathroom. She would just have to have gotten to those stairs.” The man pointed to a doorway at the end of a short hall, a green exit sign above the door. “It’s only one floor down,” he added. “If somebody was waiting right out there, with a car . . .”

“Have we looked at the phone . . . to see who she called?”

“She took the phone with her.”

“Right.”

“She’s very enterprising.”

“Ah.”

“We’ve called the police.”

Chance was still trying to decide how he felt about this when the man went on once more. “We’re hoping they can get to the records from Carla’s phone, get an address for whomever she called.”

“We’re guessing it was the boyfriend,” Chance said.

The man nodded. They were guessing that it was.

“And do we know his name?”

“Tao.”

“That’s it?”

“Nicole’s never said much about him. Carla got what she did from one of her friend’s mothers.” The man gave it a beat. “I know it’s a mess,” he added. “But they
will
find her. She may even come to her senses and come home. She was together enough to walk out of here.”

Well, Chance thought, the guy was trying, however clumsily. Not trusting himself to speak, he simply nodded and looked down the hall, in the direction taken by his daughter while making good her escape. If the worst were true, the name probably wouldn’t help much. It was doubtful Blackstone’s boy toys went about using their Christian names.