Killer (24 page)

“Not Miss Charming?” I asked.

“Bitch was a total waste of space.”

During the drive back to the station, Milo made several fruitless calls to Binchy. A couple of times his driving suffered but who was going to give him a ticket? By the time he dropped me off he was sullen.

Happy to distance myself from the case, I drove home. A shiny white Range Rover was parked behind Robin’s truck, tricked out with big wheels and chrome spinners, the windows tinted way past illegal. Efren Casagrande got out of the driver’s side and watched me approach.

I said, “Hey, what’s up?”

“You’re okay with me here?”

“Unless you’ve switched gigs and are working for the IRS.”

“Seriously, Doc. It’s cool?”

“You need to talk, it’s cool.”

He grinned. “You always were the man.”

As we walked to my office, I offered him coffee. He said, “I’m good,” and settled on my battered leather couch, one knee pumping. Twitches
traced his jawline, fleas jumping beneath the skin. I settled behind the desk.

“Here’s where it’s at, Doc,” he said. Waiting for a moment before continuing. “You know what happened but you don’t really know what
happened
.”

The knee pumped faster.

I said, “You’re talking about the hit on me.”

“You sound all cool with that, it don’t bother you?”

“It bothered me plenty. I just thought it was over.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the thing. It’s over but it’s like … actually I can take some coffee. Cream.” He smiled. “Sugar would be nice but not today.”

His shirtsleeves were rolled midway up to his elbows. Tiny red nicks dotted his left forearm. Better testing equipment allowed patients to save their fingers. He’d been drawing blood regularly.

When I returned with two cups he hadn’t budged. The knee had stopped moving but when I handed him his coffee the jackhammer rhythm resumed, as if his body anticipated the caffeine jolt.

He took a quick sip. “ ’S good, Doc. I’m okay with coffee, my endo-doc says it can be good at night, y’know? Raising the level when I can’t eat so I don’t get the hypoglycemia.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“I drink a little before I go to bed and … anyway … I’m doing okay. With the D.” Faint smile. “You weren’t here, I’d say the fuckin’ D.”

I smiled. “Don’t let me hold you back.”

“Sometimes I think of it as a dude, you know? Some motherfucker trying to poison my blood and I’m killing his ass. That’s stupid, huh?”

“Not at all.”

“There you go,” he said. “Just like before, like everything I do is cool with you.”

“So far it has been.”

His eyes hooded. “Yeah … sometimes’s good not to know everything,
Doc.” The coffee cup wobbled. “Anyway, why I’m here is about you not me, Doc. What the cops tell you about how it went down?”

“Connie Sykes contracted with Ramon Guzman to kill me, Guzman talked to you, you called it off.”

“Okay,” he said, shifting his body to the side.

“That’s not all of it?”

He drank. “Yeah, the bitch talked to Ramon. And yeah I ended it but not because Ramon told me.”

He winced. Turned away for a second. Was that moisture in his eyes? “You get what I’m saying, Doc?”

“It was a close call?”

He put the coffee cup down. “You don’t know, man. How close it was.”

I figured I was making a good show of staying calm. My mouth tasted of wet copper. My bowels were twisting.

He said, “Ramon’s a dumb motherfucker. He
shoulda
told me because he’s nothing in the … what he did is, he told someone who didn’t need to know. That individual told someone else.” He bent forward. “Who told me.”

“Are you here because there’s still a danger of—”

“No, no, I’m telling you because it came fucking
inches
close, Doc, and it wasn’t like she—like this person who told me was even saying it like it was a big thing, you know? Not like checking it out with Effo. It was like … like bullshit, part of something else.”

She
. Pillow talk had saved my life?

I said, “It came up in casual conversation.” My voice was tight.

He winced. “I’m sorry, Doc. It’s like … this person, she’s joking about how Ramon’s asking around to get someone done, gonna pay a thousand to the shooter and keep four, do some rich doctor up in Beverly Glen, up there in the hills, nice and quiet, gonna be an easy job. She’s like … laughing. What’s really funny is Ramon’s already got
two
guys wanna do it—like competing to do it, feel me? So now he’s bargaining. Who’ll do it for nine hundred, who’ll do it for eight.”

The joys of free enterprise.

I said, “Bargain hunting.”

“It ain’t funny, Doc.”

“I know.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess you’re making like it’s no big deal so it don’t get to you.”

“Good guess, my friend. But it’s already gotten to me big-time.”

“I’m sorry, man, I’m really sorry. I mean I wasn’t even listening to this bullshit until I hear Beverly Glen. I ask what kind of doctor, this person don’t know, she’s just—it’s bullshit talk, okay? I call someone else, say bring in Ramon. Those other dudes, too.
Now
.”

His face was an Aztec stone carving. “We had like a meeting. I’m talking a
day
before it was supposed to go down, they were planning to split the money.”

My lungs felt limp and boggy. I exhaled. That hurt my chest.

Efren said, “I told Ramon he fucked up big, had to pay. He got a beat-down.”

I smiled. “Hope he learned his lesson.”

He took a long swallow of coffee, licked his upper teeth. “I’m still thinking about it. Over and over, like a thought gets stuck in your head, you can’t let go, it just keeps going round and round. You feel me?”

I said, “It’s called a brain-worm.”

“A worm … yeah, maybe … it used to be that way with the fucking D. I was like thinking about it
all
the time. Before they sent me to you. Then you tell me I’m not an asshole, I can stop thinking about that shit.”

He tapped his temple. “It’s like you helped me un-mess it in here. So it ain’t like that with fucking D anymore but now it
is
like that with fucking Ramon. I mean, Doc, if the bad thing happened, it would be like worms forever, feel me?”

And worms would be feasting on me
. “I do.”

“Ramon
really
fucked up.” He clicked his tongue. “So
now
I’m like maybe a beat-down ain’t enough.”

He sat back, crossed a leg, mimed a finger-gun.

“Not a good idea, Efren.”

“Maybe not for you, Doc. But maybe for me.” Mimed trigger pull. Three times. “No more worm.”

I shook my head. “Forget it, Efren.”

He said, “It was so
close
, Doc. I keep
thinking
about it.”

“We can deal with that, Efren.”

“Like what, a pill? I already got enough pills.”

“Not a pill. Mental training.” That sounded flimsy and ridiculous.

He snickered. “You gonna
train
me not to take care of my own problem? Like a exercise? Like a worm gym class?”

“I can help you stop thinking about it.”

“Maybe I don’t
wanna
stop, Doc. Maybe I wanna take care of
business
.”

“Maybe you do. But don’t,” I said.

“Why the fuck not, Doc?”

“First off, it’s wrong.”

He stared at me. “You serious? Motherfucker tries to kill your ass and you’re like
save
his ass?”

“He means nothing to me, Efren. If he came at me, I’d do my best to finish him off.”

“With what, a book?”

Years ago, I’d killed a man who’d tried to kill me. Whatever crept into my voice when I said, “Trust me, I’d take care of business,” made Efren look at me as if for the first time.

“So what’s the problem, Doc? Stupid motherfucker needs to—”

“I’d have to report you to the cops.”

His lips slammed shut. His eyelids lowered. “You’d rat me out? What the fuck for?”

“It’s the law.”

“All this time you been telling me what I say here is secret—”

“It is secret but there’s an exception. It’s called the
Tarasoff
warning. A patient tells me he’s going to hurt someone, I have to report it.”

His legs uncrossed. “That’s fucked.”

“It’s the law.”

“It’s the law,” he mocked. “Like Ramon gave a shit about the law when he tried to kill your ass.”

“I know it sounds—”

He sprang up, walked to the door, paused. “What it sounds is
bullshit
, Doc. First you tell me I got a worm in my fucking brain then you’re like don’t tell me the truth.”

“Efren—”

“Exercises? You think I come here for exercises, Doc?”

“Why exactly did you come here?”

He stood there.

“Efren—”

“You tell
me
why I came here, Doc. You’re the smart one.”

I shook my head.

“Then I don’t know, either.”

He left the office. Dropped something on the floor and left it there.

I went after him. With his back to me he waved me away, walked faster.

“Ef—”

“We’re cool, Doc. Thanks for your time.” He began sprinting. By the time I got down the stairs, he was in the Range Rover, peeling out in reverse.

I returned to the house and retrieved what he’d dropped.

Plain white envelope. Inside were crisp twenties. I counted them.

The exact amount I’d charged for therapy, back when he was a kid with lifestyle issues.

I waited an hour before phoning Efren, left a message I knew he wouldn’t return.

What, like a exercise? Worm gym class?

Legally, ethically
—technically
—I’d done the right thing steering him away from revenge. That didn’t stop me from feeling out of touch.

In a simple world I’d stalk and kill Ramon Guzman myself. Tossing in the two would-be hit men who’d been bargaining for the privilege of ending my life.

Same fate for Connie Sykes, who started the mess. If Ree had taken care of that, I should be cheering her on, not aiding in finding her.

Meanwhile, I’d damaged my relationship with Efren, probably beyond repair. In the jungle he prowled, nuance was a felony.

I was wondering what to do about all of that when my service rang in with a message from Judge Nancy Maestro. Would I be downtown in the near future for a “chat”?

I phoned her chambers. A female bailiff said, “She’s in session, sir.”

“Will she be out at four thirty, as usual?”

“Give me your name again, sir.”

I complied and repeated the question.

“She’s over on Commonwealth, sir, you can try there.”

The court building on Sixth and Commonwealth handles big-time corporate litigation. Maybe Nancy was finally transitioning to the white-collar trials she craved. The first clerk I spoke to had no idea who she was and I got nudged along a chain of civil servants before a familiar male voice said, “Deputy Nebe.”

The tight-ass I’d met at probate court.

Today, he sounded more human. “Doctor, thanks for getting back. Unfortunately, Judge got tied up in meetings, will be back in chambers tomorrow.”

Newfound warmth. Maybe he was getting a promotion, too.

“I can drop by in the afternoon.”

“Would one p.m. work for you?”

“Sure.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ll tell her.”

At twelve forty-five the following day, I was nearing Grand Street when Nancy reached my cell. “Glad I caught you. Listen, I’m running late, got stuck having lunch over in Little Tokyo. Any way you could find your way here? If you haven’t eaten, it’s on me.”

“Yes, on both counts.”

She directed me to Ocean Paradise, a place on First Street that I already knew. Second floor of a smallish shopping center erected back when Japan was considered a financial threat. Decent eateries, schlocky souvenir shops, an old-school sushi bar. From time to time, I’d stopped there when testifying downtown.

The ensuing years had left the structure wilted and rain-streaked with a serious vacancy rate, including the space that had housed the sushi joint. One advantage: cheap, ample parking, and I was heading toward Nancy’s corner booth ten minutes later.

Ocean Paradise was a small, overly lit room smelling of broiled fish and seawater. A live tank featured dark squiggly things. Nancy was drinking Perrier and chopsticking a bowl of rice topped with crunchy, spiderish pinwheels.

The place was mostly empty, save for three older Asian women and a pair of tan uniforms stationed at a center table. Deputy Nebe, his bronze-lensed glasses at his right elbow, sat across from a woman around his age. Thin but chesty with curly gray hair and rimless glasses, she chewed on a piece of maki. When she saw me she grinned and waved and I realized she was also a bailiff I’d seen before. Gregarious woman assigned to custody court, trying to make everyone feel comfortable during times of stress. I’d never bothered to learn her name.

She kept smiling.

I detoured over.

The woman’s badge said,
W. Nebe
. Sergeant stripes on her sleeves.

She said, “Hey, Doc, so now you know the entire family. Has Hank been nice to you?”

“He’s been great.”

“Sure he has.” She laughed.

Hank Nebe smiled weakly.

“Anyway, nice to see you again, Doc. You slated for any testimony with us in the near future?”

“Nothing at the moment.”

“Lucky you, it’s been crazy. Enjoy your lunch.”

I sat down opposite Nancy. She said, “You know Willa?”

“I’ve seen her in court.”

“She and Hank are an example for all of us, been married forever.”

“Sometimes it works.”

“You happily wed?”

“Been with the same woman for a long time.”

“But no paper, huh?” she said. “That’s the way it is, nowadays. Gays crave the legitimacy, everyone else wants nothing to do with it.
Myself, I wouldn’t mind the paperwork, just never found anyone after I ditched the first loser.”

She motioned to a waitress and said, “Menu?”

I said, “Not necessary,” and when the woman came to the booth, I ordered green tea and a few pieces of sashimi.