Devil's Waltz (48 page)

“In what way?”

“C’mon, Doctor. Milo, here, told me you found out about her military
career
. The woman’s a
slut
. A lowlife
loser
. On
top
of what she’s doing to the kid. Can’t exactly be what the old man had in mind for Junior.”

He grinned. Scarlet again, and sweating heavily. Nearly levitating off his chair in rage and delight. His hatred was tangible, poisonous. Stephanie felt it; her eyes were thrilled.

“What about Chip’s mother?” I said. “How did she die?”

He shrugged. “Suicide. Sleeping pills. Entire family’s fucked up. Though I can’t say I blame her. Don’t imagine living with Chuck was any barrel of primates. He’s been known to play around — likes ’em in groups of three or four, young, chesty, blond, borderline intelligence.”

I said, “You’d like to get all of them, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve got no use for them,” he said quickly. Then he got up, took a few steps, turned his back on us, and stretched.

“So,” he said. “Let’s aim for tomorrow. You get ’em out, we move in and play Captain Video.”

“Great, Bill,” said Stephanie. Her beeper went off. She removed it from her belt and examined the digital readout. “Where’s your phone, Alex?”

I walked her into the kitchen and hung around as she punched numbers.

“This is Dr. Eves. I just got… What?… When?… All right, give me the resident on call…. Jim? This is Stephanie. What’s up?… Yes, yes, there’s a history of that. It’s all in the chart…. Absolutely, keep that drip going. Sounds like you’re doing everything right, but get me a full tox panel, stat. Make sure to check for hypoglycemic metabolites. Check all over for puncture wounds, too, but don’t let on, okay? It’s important, Jim. Please…. Thanks. And keep her totally isolated.
No
one goes in…. Especially not them… What?… Out in the hall. Leave the drapes open so they can see her, but
no one goes inside
…. I don’t care…. I know. Let it be on my head, Jim…. What?…
No
. Keep her in ICU. Even
if
things lighten up… I don’t
care
, Jim. Find a bed somewhere. This one’s crucial…. What?… Soon. Soon as I can — maybe an hour. Just — What?… Yes, I will…. Okay. Thanks. I owe you.”

She hung up. Her face was white and her chest heaved.

“Again,” I said.

She looked past me. Held her head.

“Again,” she said. “This time she’s unconscious.”

Quiet night on Chappy Ward. No shortage of empty rooms.

This one was two doors down from 505W. Cassie’s room.

That cold, clean hospital smell.

The images on the TV I was watching were black-and-white and fuzzy and small, a miniaturized, capsulated reality.

Cold and clean and a medicinal staleness — though no one had been in this room for a long time.

I’d been in it most of the day and all of the evening.

Into the night…

The door was bolted shut. The room was dark, except for a focused yellow parabola from a corner floor lamp. Double drapes blotted out Hollywood. I sat on an orange chair, as confined as a patient. The piped music barely leaked through from the hallway.

The man who called himself Huenengarth sat across the room, near the lamp, cradled by a chair identical to mine that he’d pushed up to the empty bed. A small black hand radio rested in his lap.

The bed was stripped down to the mattress. Resting on the ticking was a sloping paper ramp. Government documents.

The one he was reading had kept his interest for more than an hour. Down at the bottom was a line of numbers and asterisks and a word that I thought was
UPDATE
. But I couldn’t be sure because I was too far away and neither of us wanted to change that.

I had things to read, too: the latest lab reports on Cassie and a brand-new article Huenengarth had shoved at me. Five typed pages on the subject of pension fraud by Professor W. W. Zimberg, written in starchy legalese with lots of words blacked out by a broad-tipped marker.

My eyes went back to the TV. No movement on the screen other than the slow drip of sugar-water through plastic tubing. I inspected the small, colorless world from edge to edge. For the thousandth time…

Bedclothes and railings, a blur of dark hair and puffy cheek. The I.V. gauge, with its inlets and outlets and locks…

I sensed movement across the room without seeing it. Huenengarth took out a pen and crossed something out.

According to documents he showed Milo in the deputy chief’s office, he’d been in Washington, D.C., the night Dawn Herbert was butchered in her little car. Milo told me he’d corroborated it, as the two of us drove to the hospital just before sunrise.

“Who exactly is he working for?” I said.

“Don’t know the details but it’s some sort of covert task force, probably in cahoots with the Treasury Department.”

“Secret agent man? Think he knows our friend the colonel?”

“Wondered about that myself. He found out pretty damn fast that I was playing computer games. After we got out of the D.C.’s office, I shot the colonel’s name at him and got a blank stare, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them attended some of the same parties. Tell you one thing, Alex — asshole’s more than just a field agent, got some real juice behind him.”

“Juice and motivation,” I said. “Four and a half years to avenge his father. How do you think he managed the million-dollar budget?”

“Who knows? Probably kissed the right ass, stabbed the right back. Or maybe it was just a matter of the right person’s ox getting gored. Whatever, he’s a smart cookie.”

“Good actor, too — getting that close to Jones and Plumb.”

“So one day he’ll run for President. Did you know you were going twenty over the limit?”

“If I get a ticket, you can fix it for me, right? Now that you’re a real policeman again.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you pull it off?”

“I didn’t pull off anything. When I got to the D.C.’s, Huenengarth was already there. He gets right in my face, demands to know why I’ve been tracing him. I think about it and tell him the truth, because what’s my choice? Play hard to get and have the department cite me for improper use of departmental time and facilities? He then proceeds to ask me lots of questions about the Jones family. All this time, the D.C. is just sitting behind his desk, hasn’t said a word, and I figure this is it, start thinking private enterprise. But soon as I finish, Huenengarth thanks me for my cooperation, says it’s a shame, the crime rate being what it is, that a guy with my experience is sitting in front of a screen instead of working cases. The D.C. looks as if he just sucked pigshit through a straw, but he keeps quiet. Huenengarth asks if I can be assigned to his investigation — LAPD liaison to the Feds. D.C. squirms and says sure, getting me back on active duty was the department’s plan all along. Huenengarth and I leave the office together and the minute we’re alone he tells me he doesn’t give a fuck about me personally, but his case on Jones is just about to break and I’d better not get in his way while he moves in with the killing thrust.”

“Killing thrust, huh?”

“Gentle soul, probably doesn’t wear fur… Then he said, ‘Maybe we can cut a deal. Don’t fuck me up and I’ll help you.’ Then he told me how he knew about Cassie from Stephanie, but hadn’t done anything because there wasn’t enough evidence, but maybe now there was.”

“Why all of a sudden?”

“Probably because he’s close enough to getting Grandpa and wouldn’t mind doing a total destruct on the family. I also wouldn’t be surprised if on some level he enjoys seeing Cassie suffer — the curse of the Jones family. He really hates them, Alex…. On the other hand, where would we be without him? So let’s use the hell out of him, see what happens. How does this look on me?”

“High fashion, Ben Casey.”

“Yeah. Take a picture. When it’s over.”

Movement on the screen.

Then nothing.

My neck was stiff. I shifted position while keeping my eyes on the TV.

Huenengarth continued to do his homework. It had been hours since anything I did caught his attention.

Time passed, slothfully cruel.

More movement.

Shadowing one corner. Upper right-hand.

Then nothing, for a long time.

Then…

“Hey!” I said.

Huenengarth peered over his pamphlet. Bored.

The shadow grew. Lightened.

Took shape. White and fuzzy.

Starfish… human hand.

Something grasped between thumb and forefinger.

Huenengarth sat up.

“Go!” I said. “This is it!”

He smiled.

The hand on the screen advanced. Grew larger. Big, white…

“C’mon!” I said.

Huenengarth put down his article.

The hand jabbed… poking at something.

Huenengarth seemed to be savoring the picture.

He looked at me as if I’d interrupted a terrific dream.

The thing between the fingers probed.

Huenengarth’s smile stretched under his little mustache.

“
Damn you,
” I said.

He picked up the little black radio and held it to his mouth.

“On your mark,” he said.

The hand was at the I.V. gauge now, using the thing between its fingers to nuzzle a rubber-tipped inlet.

Sharp-tipped thing.

White cylinder, much like a pen. Ultra-thin needle.

It darted, a bird pecking a wormhole.

Plunged.

Huenengarth said, “Go,” to the radio.

It was only later that I realized he’d skipped “Get set.”

He moved toward the door, but I threw the bolt and was out first. All those years of jogging and treadmilling finally paid off.

The door to 505W was already wide open.

Cassie was on her back in the bed, breathing through her mouth.

Post-seizure slumber.

She was covered to the neck. I.V. tubing curled from under the blankets.

Cindy was sleeping, too, flat on her stomach, one arm dangling.

Milo stood next to the I.V. pole, baggy in green surgical scrubs. A hospital ID badge was pinned to his shirt. M. B. S
TURGIS
, M.D., his photographed face cross and bearish.

The real face was policeman-stoic. One of his big hands was clamped over Chip Jones’s wrist. The other bent Chip’s arm behind his back. Chip cried out in pain.

Milo ignored him and told him his rights.

Chip had on a camel-colored jogging suit and brown suede running shoes with diagonal leather stripes. His back was arched in Milo’s grip and his eyes were splayed and bright, sick with terror.

It was his fear that made me want to kill him.

I ran to the bed and checked the I.V. gauge. Locked — sealed with Krazy Glue. Stephanie’s idea. None of what was in the cylinder was entering Cassie’s blood-stream. Creative, but a risk: seconds later, Chip would have felt the pressure build behind the needle. And known.

Milo had him cuffed now. Chip started crying, then stopped.

Huenengarth licked his lips and said, “You’re fucked, Junior.” I hadn’t seen him come in.

Chip stared at him. His mouth was still open. His beard trembled. He dropped something on the floor. White cylinder with a tiny, sharp tip. It rolled on the carpet before coming to a stop. Chip raised a foot and tried to step on it.

Milo yanked him away. Huenengarth put on a surgical glove and picked up the cylinder.

He waved it in front of Chip’s face.

Chip made a whimpering noise and Huenengarth responded with a masturbatory movement of one arm.

I went over to Cindy and nudged her. She rolled and didn’t waken. A shake of her shoulders failed to rouse her. I shook harder, said her name. Nothing.

A cup was on the floor, near her dangling hand. Half-filled with coffee.

“What did you drug her with?” I asked Chip.

He didn’t answer. I repeated the question and he looked at the floor. His earring tonight was an emerald.

“What’d you give her?” I said, dialing the phone.

He pouted.

The page operator came on and I called for an emergency resuscitation.

Chip watched, wide-eyed.

Huenengarth advanced toward him again. Milo stilled him with a look and said, “If she’s in danger and you don’t tell us, you’re only making matters worse for yourself.”

Chip cleared his throat, as if preparing for an important announcement. But he said nothing.

I went to Cassie’s bed.

“Okay,” said Milo, “let’s go to jail.” He pushed Chip forward. “We’ll let the lab figure it out.”

Chip said, “Probably diazepam — Valium. But I didn’t give it to her.”

“How much?” I said.

“Forty milligrams is what she usually takes.”

Milo looked at me.

“Probably not lethal,” I said. “But it’s a heavy dose for someone her size.”

“Not really,” said Chip. “She’s habituated.”

“Bet she is,” I said, lacing my fingers to keep my hands still.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Chip. “Search me — see if you find drugs of any kind.”

“You’re not holding because you gave it all to her,” said Huenengarth.

Chip managed to laugh, though his eyes were frightened. “Go ahead, search.”

Huenengarth patted him down, turned his pockets inside out, and found only a wallet and keys.

Chip looked at him, shook hair out of eyes, and smiled.

“Something funny, Junior?”

“You are making a big mistake,” said Chip. “If I wasn’t the victim, I’d really feel sorry for you.”

Huenengarth smiled. “That so?”

“Very much so.”

“Junior, here, thinks this is funny, gents.” He wheeled on Chip: “What the fuck do you think is going on here? You think one of Daddy’s
attorneys
is going to get you out of this? We’ve got you on videotape trying to kill your kid — everything from loading the needle to sticking it in. Want to guess where the camera is?”

Chip kept smiling but panic fueled his eyes. They blinked, popped, raced around the room. Suddenly he shut them and dropped his head to his chest, muttering.

“What’s that?” said Huenengarth. “What’d you say?”

“Discussion closed.”