Sleep Tight (14 page)

 

Tommy lost sight of the ambulance when it zoomed into the emergency driveway on Wacker Drive, where only medical or rescue vehicles were allowed. He pulled around the block and parked in the underground garage. He couldn’t find the stairs and had to take the elevator instead.

While waiting for the doors to open, doubts started creeping into his head. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its cutting-edge medical research. Cook County General wasn’t exactly known for its quality medical care if you wanted to get down to it. He wasn’t sure why Cook County General would have a team of specialists in whatever disease was keeping Don asleep.

The doors slid open and he stepped inside. He tried to stand still under pale fluorescents that hurt his eyes as the elevator lurched up the four stories to the lobby, but all those stories about Cook County General being a sick joke in the city knocked down the walls of his optimism.

The place was chronically underfunded, for one thing. Nobody knew who was really in charge, only that the city ran the place, so if you had no money left, no money at all, this was where you ended up. Sometimes, on a slow day for tragedy, the news would get all worked up over people literally crawling into the emergency room because they had no insurance and the ambulance companies wouldn’t pick them up. The streets were full of horror stories about the emergency room, of waiting all day for a shot that turned out to be prepared with a dirty needle, of being forgotten, of people dying on the benches and being there all night before somebody called their name, gut-churning tales of malpractice, of doctors stealing drugs to feed their own habits, of AIDS-INFECTED blood, of MRSA contaminating every doorknob, every water fountain, every surface imaginable, of rusty scalpels and dirty floors.

The emergency room wasn’t as crowded as Tommy expected. He stood fifth or sixth in the line at the front desk, and overheard the nurse telling people with obvious injuries to go seek treatment at either Northwestern or Rush instead. Of course, most people, especially those bleeding on the tile floors, didn’t take the news well. “Are you fucking kidding? What the hell is this? You call yourself a hospital?”

“We’re undergoing a change of management,” was all the nurse would say.

When it was Tommy’s turn, he said, “I’m here to see Don Wycza. They just brought him in an ambulance.”

The nurse, a black woman with a face that exhaustion had cut to the skull, checked the charts. “No, I’m sorry. There’s nobody here by that name.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been added yet. I followed the ambulance here.”

The nurse rechecked the clipboards on her desk, then stood and searched a few more places around her station. No luck. “What’s his name again?” the nurse asked. “It’s possible they didn’t bring in the paperwork yet. I’ll see if I can’t find him. In the meantime, you have a seat. I’ll call you if I hear about your friend.”

“Okay, thanks.” Tommy gave a little wave of gratitude, then sank into a chair in the middle of a long line of plastic seats bolted to a long steel bar. He checked his phone. No calls. No texts. He snapped the phone shut and tucked it into his coveralls.

The patients in the emergency room could be divided into three categories. The first, and most popular, group was five people who held bloody towels around some limb, usually either a hand or foot. Summertime, and a lot of drunk people decide to fucking cut loose with a power tool while tackling some exterior home improvement project.

Tommy noticed that patients had their own groups of friends. The guys in the first group, and it seemed to be all guys, all had wives or girlfriends and sometimes young children. Sometimes, if the guys were old enough, the adult children would bring a parent in who’d had too much barbecue and beer and decided to prune the hedge with a chainsaw.

The second group was a little harder to define on its own, but the look of the friends helped. These were people who’d ingested too much alcohol or crack or meth or coke or something else. They had been brought in by one or two peers who desperately looked around for the best opportunity to slip away.

Everybody in the first and second group was being shuttled off to different hospitals.

The third group was only two people; one man and one woman. It was difficult to pinpoint the cause of their distress. Both were nearly catatonic. The man had been brought in by a cab driver who couldn’t wake him up, and had driven halfway across the city to leave him at the only hospital that would take him because he didn’t have an insurance card in his wallet.

The woman’s husband had brought her in. He kept trying not to cry and squeezing her hand. She sagged against the plastic chair and gazed unseeing at the ceiling. A dark stain appeared at her crotch. Urine ran out of the bottom of her jeans and collected on the speckled tile floor. Tommy looked away.

“Tommy, Tommy Krazinsky?” the nurse at the head station called out.

Tommy bounded up. “Yeah? You got him?”

The nurse spoke into the phone, “Yes, he’s here. Do you wish to speak—” After a moment, she hung up the phone. “Ahh, I’m sorry. I was just given a message to make sure you were at this location. I don’t know who was asking.”

“Probably my boss? I left a message at work telling them Don was coming here. Have you heard anything about him?”

“Sorry, not yet. I’ll let you know.”

Tommy sat back down, confused. He wasn’t sure who would be looking for him. He kind of doubted his boss would try that hard to look for Don. He dug around in his overalls, pulled out a handful of business cards. He found the right one, dialed the number.

Two rings. A click. A voice. “This is Detective Johnson.”

Tommy said, “Uh, hi. This is Tommy Krazinksy. Me and my partner met you yesterday at City Hall, the Streets and Sans guys. Don’s at the CCG, but it’s . . . Something’s going on. See, he’s—” There was a high-pitched squeal and the phone went dead.

 

 

Tommy tried to call again, but his phone wasn’t working right.

Lee appeared and dropped into a seat across the aisle. “What the fuck is going on?”

Tommy jumped. He hadn’t seen Lee come in.

Tommy was angled so that he could keep an eye on the front door, and looked up every time he heard the automatic doors swish, thinking that maybe Don might have woken up and been turned loose. Instead, he watched as injured people came in, and were sent almost immediately to another hospital. He hadn’t seen the ambulance drivers either. They must have been busy shuttling people over to Northwestern.

Lee looked nervous. He was perfectly groomed, as always, snug in a tailored suit; the tie was color coordinated with his eyes. But something in his movements was off. Lee couldn’t make eye contact, and this was his strength. Lee could maintain an almost supernatural eye contact with people, making them feel at ease, or intimidating the hell out of them. It was his most formidable method of communication, and he was acting as if he could catch some sort of venereal disease if he looked at Tommy. “What the fuck happened to Don?” he finally asked.

Tommy spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t know. I went by his place because he didn’t show up for work. Found him unconsciousness on the floor. They brought him here.”

“You and Don are the two Streets and Sans guys that killed a rat in City Hall yesterday.”

Tommy nodded. “I guess so. Unless there was another rat.”

“Your partner told that story over a dozen times last night.”

Tommy nodded.

“He claimed otherwise, but honestly now, did that rat bite him?”

Tommy shook his head.

“It’s important. Did that rat draw blood in any way? The doctors need to know this.”

“No. I saw his hands afterward. No scratches.”

“His leg? Any bite anywhere?”

Tommy shook his head.

Lee’s eyes flicked to the raccoon scratches on Tommy’s hands. “You killed it with a baseball bat?”

“It’s down in the van. I didn’t break any rules that I know of.”

Lee finally looked him dead in the face, blinking furiously. “No. No, of course not. Do you want to see him?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Let’s go then.” Lee got up and Tommy followed.

Four soldiers entered the emergency waiting room and carried the two catatonic patients into triage. Curtains were drawn.

Lee led the way into the emergency center, past three or four nurses gathered at the work station in the center of the room, cubicle rooms along the outer walls, doors nothing but shower curtains. He didn’t turn his back to Tommy. Nobody looked at them. Lee wound his way through the nearly empty emergency room to a restricted elevator. He punched in a code, and they waited for the doors to open.

“What’s wrong with him?” Tommy asked.

Lee was quiet for a moment. “They’re not sure. I was hoping you could shed some light on the situation.” They stepped into the elevator. Lee hit the fifth-floor button.

“Well, is he going to be okay?”

“They’re not sure. Nobody knows anything right now. Do you mind answering a few more questions from the doctors?”

“I’ll do whatever I can to help Don.”

“Good. That’s what I like to hear in an employee. Loyalty and enthusiasm.”

The doors opened on the fifth floor. The hallway was completely empty, and utterly enclosed in sheets of plastic, sealed shut with black Gorilla Tape. The ceiling and the floor were also covered. Each of the patients’ rooms had its own plastic tunnel through the doorway. The sheeting was thick and opaque, and filtered the light into a shifting, flickering haze. Air drafts caught the plastic, giving the whole hallway a shimmering, fluid light, almost as if it were underwater.

“Don’t worry about this,” Lee said, tapping on the plastic with his shoe. “This is something else, entirely. Got nothing to do with you. They’re painting or fumigating or some damn thing.” Lee pointed at the first room off to the right. “You can wait in there. Doctors’ll be along shortly.”

Tommy stepped through the doorway and didn’t see the men on either side of the door until it was too late. They took him down just inside the room, each grabbing an elbow, a shoulder, then sweeping his feet off the ground and slamming him to the floor. The breath exploded out of him and blackness swam in his eyes.

Something hot jabbed into his left butt cheek.

A moment later, wet concrete flowed through his veins, deadening any feeling; first his legs, then his back, his arms, and in three seconds he couldn’t hold his head up. The darkness overwhelmed his eyes and he drifted into oblivion.

 

Sam parked in front of a fire hydrant and left the flashers going. They got out, looked up at the hospital. Lot of bad memories in this place. Too many late nights, waiting for a gunshot victim to make it through surgery and survive long enough to give a statement or for a suspect to sleep off a bad trip so they could haul them to the station. Too many late nights interviewing weeping family members. Too many late nights full of bad coffee and surreptitious visits down to the car park for a quick gulp at the flask. This place was a goddamn black hole, sucking them in if they got too close. Sam popped another stick of nicotine gum, threw the wrapper in the gutter, and followed Ed inside.

He’d never seen the emergency room so empty. It wasn’t just lacking patients; the staff, the nurses, the doctors—all of them, except for a young white guy sitting behind the intake station—were gone. There were a few patients scattered around the room, either asleep or staring at the floor.

They got a better look at the young man in the intake station. He wore nurses’ scrubs, but Sam decided that he’d eat his own shoe if this guy was a nurse. Clean shaven, closely cropped hair. Cold look in his eyes. No, this guy was military, Sam was positive.

“Evening,” Ed said. He’d taken to simply leaving the star hanging outside his chest pocket. Made things easier. Sam had told him that Ed secretly just wanted to pretend he was a sheriff in the Old West.

“What can I do for you, officer?” the guy said.

“Looking for a witness. Heard the ambulance brought him in. Name’s Don Wycza.”

“Okay. Let me see what I can find,” the guy said, tapping the keyboard.

“Kinda quiet tonight, huh?” Sam said, both detectives playing good cop.

“So they say,” the guy said in an offhand way. “I wouldn’t know. Just started.”

Sam caught Ed’s eye. Something wasn’t right about this setup. Ed let a smile flicker at the edges of his mouth. He agreed. The kid hadn’t asked how to spell the witness’s name.

Sam wandered away from the desk while the guy put on a show of clicking the mouse around and hammering at the keyboard. Sam let his eyes flicker around the room and took note of the eyeballs in the ceiling, little half spheres of black glass. He wondered who was watching the empty emergency room.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Tommy. There was no ring, just an odd squeal. He held his phone up so Ed could listen. “You ever heard this before?”

Ed shook his massive gray head slowly. “It’s not a bad signal.” He didn’t know much about cell phones, except that he had a cheap knockoff, and he had a lot of experience with lost calls. “Sounds like . . . interference.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Sam headed back to the front desk. The need for two good cops was over; it was time to see if a bad cop could accomplish anything. “You track our witness down yet?” he asked the guy behind the desk.

The guy furrowed his brow and feigned confusion. “Not yet. Are you sure you’ve got the right hospital? We’re sending a lot of patients over to Northwestern tonight.”

“And why is that?”

The guy pretending to be a nurse frowned. “What’s the nature of your business with Mr. Wycza, again?”

Sam fixed him with a dark stare. “What’s your fucking name, asshole?”

The guy stared right back. The frown was gone, replaced with an echo of Ed’s grin. Smooth and collected. Sam scared him about as much as the Tooth Fairy. “Why don’t I get my supervisor on the phone. See if he can’t help you more than I can.”

“Wouldn’t take much,” Sam said, knowing intimidation wasn’t going to work.

Ed popped Sam’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “The fuck’s he doing here?” he said, pointing with his chin at the elevators beyond the front desk, back in triage.

Lee Shea stepped through the elevator doors and headed for the back exit.

“Downright curious,” Sam said. He and Ed stepped around the desk and followed Lee.

The guy behind the desk said loudly, “Gentlemen! You can’t go back there.”

Sam and Ed ignored him.

“I’m calling my supervisor,” the guy threatened.

Sam called over his shoulder, “Please do. I’d like to have a word.”

Ed and Sam moved briskly and caught up to Lee; they flanked him, matching him stride for stride. Ed said, “Evening. Well, well. Mr. Cornelieus Shea.” A grin split his wide face.

Lee had had too much practice as a politician, with news cameras catching him at all hours of the day, to be caught looking guilty. A sincere, good-natured smile appeared, as easily as slipping on a pair of old socks. He stopped. “Hi, there. Can I help you?”

Sam bit his tongue, letting Ed do the talking.

Ed chuckled. “Us? No, no. Of course not. Just wanted to say hi. Seeing you here. How about that rat at City Hall yesterday, huh?”

Lee let puzzlement flash across his features. “I’m sorry, Mister . . . ?”

“Detective Jones.”

Lee stuck out his hand and shook Ed’s enthusiastically, then was on the move again. “I’m afraid we’ve never met. Always good to meet a member of Chicago’s law enforcement.”

Ed’s smile never left his face. Sam thought Ed could give Lee a run for his money in maintaining a friendly appearance. Ed released Lee’s hand but didn’t relent. “Yeah, that business at City Hall. Pretty crazy, huh?”

“City Hall’s a pretty crazy place sometimes.”

“Truth, my man, truth. But yeah, that rat that got loose. Bet that’s never happened before.”

“I wouldn’t know too much about that.”

“Well, what would you know?” Ed asked. Ed and Sam lengthened their strides and got ahead of him just for a brief second, then slowed down, pinning Lee between them.

Disbelief flickered across Lee’s face for just a split second, echoing his thoughts, but he got control and smiled again. “Like I said, I don’t know much. I got a call, saying a rodent was loose in the building. I deferred it to my supervisors and I have full confidence that they handled the situation as needed. Now, if you gentlemen don’t mind”—he checked his watch—“I’m afraid I’m late for a meeting.”

Ed and Sam blocked the door. Ed scraped his thumbnail through the stubble on his chin and said, “One quick question. See, we got a call earlier, saying that one of the guys, one of your employees, one of your employees who dealt with that rat yesterday, well, we got a call saying that he’s been admitted to this hospital this evening. Problem is, we can’t seem to find him.”

Lee said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how I can help you. I don’t know anything about it.” He nodded back toward the nurses’ station. “You really should ask the hospital.”

Sam gave a smile of his own. It was more like the expression on a corpse of a primitive man who had been caught in an iceberg for a few thousand years. “Can I ask, what exactly is your business here tonight?”

Lee blinked. “I don’t see how that is any of your concern.” “We’re detectives.” Behind them, Sam heard the elevator doors open. “Everything related to our case is our concern, Mr. Shea.” Sam still didn’t want to turn around, still wanted to keep Lee pinned. He heard at least three, four men behind him.

Ed’s right hand fell. It was now a full half second closer to his revolver.

Lee noticed this; his expression went blank, unreadable.

“Gentlemen,” a harsh, brittle voice called out behind them.

“Federal law maintains than anyone within a restricted area will surrender identification immediately.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Ed said to Lee and didn’t move.

Lee shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I don’t even know which employee responded to that call. Now, if you will excuse me, I am sure these gentlemen would like a word with you. Maybe, if you play nice, they’ll extend their professional courtesy and assist you with your case. Good night.” He gave a slight bow and turned away.

Sam glanced over his shoulder and saw four soldiers waiting.

 

 

Qween heard the cruiser well before the spotlight danced across her part of the shore. She had plenty of time to simply slide a little lower, hidden in a little alcove formed by a tumble of concrete slabs that had been tossed along the edge of Lake Michigan to stop the waves from tearing out any parts of the park along Lake Shore Drive.

She listened to the cops drive past, along the bike path, and enjoyed her own private view of Lake Michigan at night. The moon was behind her, off to the right, so she could see stars, something she couldn’t see from any of her hideouts downtown. Once in a while a feeling took hold, and she got to missing taking a long look at the night sky, so when she found a bottle, she would stash the cart, and spend the night two miles north, hiding out by the golf course.

The wind had died, and the air was growing hotter and stickier. She stretched out on the slab and listened to the water as it leisurely lapped at all the concrete and broken glass, hoping for a hint of wind. She closed her eyes for a moment.

A sound grew out across the lake, a droning storm of violence. Qween wanted to ignore it, wanted to pretend that it was part of her dreams. Eventually, though, she sat up and squinted at the horizon.

The turmoil took shape. Six or seven helicopters raced across the water, dropping in from the northeast. She counted at least three big fat ones, and four or five thin surrounding choppers. They roared overhead, low enough that she could see the outlines of guns or missiles or whatever the hell they were, and screamed across the golf course, passing over a nearly empty Lake Shore Drive, and climbed over the apartment buildings.

Fourteen seconds later, the helicopters crossed the Chicago River.

Qween settled back in and stared for a while at the seemingly endless stretch of water. She finished her bottle and struggled to her feet. She replaced the cap and stowed the empty bottle safely under her poncho. A lot of people would have been tempted to just toss the bottle in the lake, and while she had to admit the idea held a certain appeal, she knew better. She might be homeless, but that was no excuse to disrespect the environment.

She crawled over the concrete slabs until she reached the grass of the golf course. She paused a moment, catching her breath. The lights of downtown looked the same as always, but she knew better. Something in her city was cracking; some sort of cancer was seething under the surface, something that threatened her home.

She rolled the kinks out of her shoulders, scratched an itch under the Viking helmet, and headed south, moving parallel to the bike path, following the helicopters.