Stress Test (4 page)

Jennifer Ball slammed the phone into its cradle. She’d forced herself to tolerate, even expect, calls from Matt to cancel plans at the last minute. But to simply stand her up? And then not return her calls, her texts, her emails? This was too much.

She belatedly looked around to make sure no one in the office had noticed her display of anger. No, the work of the district attorney’s office was proceeding uninterrupted. Phones rang, computer keyboards clicked, printers spat out documents full of legal terms.

Jennifer opened her center desk drawer and extracted a small compact. Not a blond hair was out of place. No tear tracks marred the makeup on her fair skin. There was nothing to tell the world how upset she was. She picked up a folder and held it in front of her face to hide the flush she felt spreading across her cheeks.

Everything had seemed so right, but now it was all going wrong. Jennifer and Matt had been an item for a while. Matt was handsome, funny, and made a good living as a general surgeon in private practice, although she didn’t know exactly how well he did. A few weeks ago Matt shared with her his plans to leave his practice and take a position at the medical center, and the news had thrilled her. Being the wife of a medical school professor sounded even better than the wife of a surgeon. Jennifer didn’t intend to be a secretary all her life. On the contrary, she had her life with Matt carefully planned: their two children would attend a private school while she lunched at the club with her circle of friends and frequented the better stores in Dallas.

Of course, if she and Matt were to become man and wife, he needed to know there were things she wouldn’t tolerate, even with his new position. No more dinners that cooled as she waited for a husband delayed at the hospital, or movies interrupted by the silent buzz of Matt’s pager and his whispered words, “We’ve got to go. Emergency.” A serious talk was in order. But before anything like that could happen, she had to get in touch with him. And that appeared to be impossible.

No matter how Lou Hecht squirmed and twisted, the arms of the unpadded wooden chair in the waiting room prevented him from achieving any degree of comfort. Finally he perched on the front edge of the seat, moving first one haunch and then the other into the confined space, barely managing to avoid sliding forward onto the floor. He nervously tapped first one foot, then the other on the carpet.

Lou looked around the small outer office. Nothing much had changed in the two years he’d been coming here. Gold leaf letters spelled out “Grande Limited” on the frosted glass upper panel of the hall door. Plain, industrial-grade gray carpet covered the floor. Three visitor’s chairs, one of them currently torturing Lou’s anatomy, were arranged along the left side of the room. Two framed reproduction prints of generic landscapes hung above them, the only concession to decor. Locked filing cabinets occupied most of the space against the right wall. Two closed doors provided the only break in the rear wall. The one on the left led into the boss’s office. Lou had seen the other door opened only once, just long enough to glimpse corrugated file boxes stacked along the back wall of the room.

An attractive young Latino woman sat behind the reception desk guarding the entrance to the inner office. Before her were a computer monitor and a multi-line phone that rang frequently. She answered each call the same way: “Grande Limited.” She continued the conversation in English or Spanish, depending on the language of the caller, he guessed. The calls were always brief, and after each one she typed a few notes directly into the computer.

Lou had seen a stranger enter this outer office only three or four times. Each time, the scenario was the same. A few words, in English or Spanish, and the visitor left in a hurry. From what Lou gathered,
the receptionist conveyed with an economy of words that Grande Limited was a private business, didn’t have any dealings with people who walked in without an appointment, and that situation wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.

In marked contrast to Lou’s discomfort, Edgar’s slim frame fit easily into the chair next to him. The small man sat quietly, apparently lost in his own thoughts, listening to sounds no one else could hear.

“How much longer?” Lou growled under his breath.

The receptionist surveyed him coolly. “He’s busy. Besides, you’ve been coming here long enough to know that he’ll see you when he’s ready. Not before.” She hit a key on the computer and winced. She checked her blood-red nails, apparently found no damage, and returned to her work.

After what seemed to Lou like hours, the phone on the receptionist’s desk buzzed softly, a different signal from the muted ring that signaled an incoming call. She picked up the receiver, listened a moment, and hung up without comment. She looked up at Lou, ignoring Edgar as though he were a piece of furniture. “Go in,” she said dismissively.

Lou pushed out of the chair, cocked his head to signal Edgar it was time to move, and started toward the unmarked door on the left, his size 14 shoes thudding on the poorly padded carpet.

He knew people took one look at him and decided such a big ox had to be dumb. That was okay. The more they thought he wasn’t too swift in the brains department, the more advantage he had when the chips were down.

Lou never felt fully at ease in the boss’s office. Lou was a big man who carried a gun and wasn’t hesitant to use it. To anyone who encountered him he was an obvious danger. But the man behind the
desk was not only bigger than Lou, he was much more dangerous. Lou didn’t want to forget that.

Like a soldier awaiting the verdict of a court martial, Lou stood stolidly in front of the huge mahogany desk that separated him from his boss. In a few sentences, he explained what had happened, then waited for a reaction. Lou had been here many times before, but each time the tension was the same.

“You idiots!”

The spray from the angry words drifted down in a misty cloud. The boss’s voice and the violence of his words mirrored his rage. His pudgy fingers were clasped together on the desk in front of him, the knuckles white. He took in a massive breath, inflating his protruding belly even further, like a misplaced beach ball.

“I gave you a simple assignment.” The big man’s voice was softer now, but the words were acid. “Grab the doctor as he leaves and take care of him.” He fixed Lou and Edgar with eyes as cold as a mountain stream. “What part of that didn’t you understand?”

“But you told us—”

“I know what I told you. And you made a mess of it.” The boss’s glare was like a laser beam. After a moment, he leaned back in his oversized, upholstered leather swivel chair and laced his fingers together across his stomach. The movement made the vest of his suit gap slightly.

“What about the other one?”

Lou was on solid ground here. “We got her at her home. Edgar picked the lock. We shoved a pillow over her face until she passed out.”

“Go on.”

“Edgar shot her in the head. Used the pillow to muffle the shots. We put her in the trunk of the doctor’s car, near where we lost him, left it.”

“The pillow?”

“A Dumpster on the other side of town.”

The boss nodded once, practically a commendation medal coming from him. “Fingerprints?”

“We wore gloves the whole time. The only prints in the car will be the doctor’s.” Lou grinned. “And his wallet must have fallen out while he was in the trunk. We left it there under her body.”

“Where is the doctor now?”

Lou shrugged. “We don’t know yet. We’re going to go back to the area where we lost him, interview some of the people who work there. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll make some phone calls.”

The big man nodded once. “See that you take care of it. But do nothing that can be traced back to me or to our operation. And, equally as important, nothing that calls the attention of the police to Metropolitan Hospital. We can’t afford to have them nosing around there too much.”

“No, sir,” Lou said. He stood in silence while the boss took a cigar from a leather-covered humidor on the desk and spent a full minute preparing it and getting it properly lit.

The man took a deep puff before he turned back to look Lou in the eye. “Don’t mess up again. Understand?”

Lou nodded.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get out.”

Lou turned on his heel and hurried from the room. He didn’t look around, but heard Edgar’s footsteps behind him. Lou went straight through the waiting room and into the deserted hall outside.

Edgar stopped beside his partner and looked up at him. “So, what’s next?”

Lou motioned toward the elevator. “Let’s get out of here. I need a drink, maybe two or three.”

“Then?”

“Then we find the man we lost.”

“And if we find him?”

Lou shrugged his shoulder rig into a more comfortable position. “There’s no ‘if.’ It’s ‘when.’ When we find him, we kill him.”

FIVE

Matt’s first impression was of colors, like a prism that cut the light into strips and aimed them at his eyes. He turned his head a fraction, but the colors didn’t move. He turned a tiny bit in the other direction. The colors didn’t change position. Strange. Why didn’t they move?

Matt tried to blink. That’s when he realized his eyes were closed. The colors were in his mind. Were they real? He tried to open his eyes, but the lids seemed stuck together. He frowned, tried again, and managed to open the left one to a bare slit. Everything was blurred. He appeared to be in a room, but nothing looked familiar.
Try the
other eye. Maybe that will help
. Three tries, and the eye wouldn’t open. He squinted, trying to sharpen what he was seeing with his one eye, but a gauzy haze clouded his view. And the colors were still there, sort of in the back of his consciousness, not related to what his eye was showing him.

He moved his head a fraction to the right. Something bright was directly above him. Matt tried once more to open his right eye, and this time he succeeded. Would two eyes help? No, all he’d done
was transform one fuzzy light into two.
Strange. That’s not the way it
should be
. He’d have to sleep awhile and think about it.

The next time Matt awakened, he was conscious of sounds. Voices in the far distance spoke words that sounded sort of familiar, like a foreign language long forgotten. A rhythmic beep came from his left. A regular whooshing sound issued from just off his right shoulder. Shuffling steps and an occasional squeak came and went nearby.

Now the colors were gone. Matt willed his eyelids open, and this time they obeyed. He blinked hard and the film over his eyes partially cleared. There were still two lights above him. He concentrated hard and they fused into one. He turned his head slightly right and left. He was alone in a white room, in some sort of bed. Matt tried to move his right hand. It stopped after a few inches. He cut his eyes to the right and saw that his hand was tethered by a padded strap to a metal railing at the side of the bed. Another movement, another glance, confirmed the same situation on his left.

He was tied up somewhere. Why? Was he a prisoner? He knew one thing. He had to get away. Panic spurred his thinking, and foremost in his mind were thoughts of escape.

Matt tried to speak, to cry out, but something was wrong with his voice. He could form the words but, despite his efforts, only a strangled sound emerged. Panic began to build inside him.

Wait! There was something under his right hand. He fingered it, using his sense of touch as a blind man would. A rectangular box, maybe plastic, with several buttons and a couple of dials. A thick cord ran from the end of the box. He started pushing the buttons, all of them. He felt the bed move under him, first up, then down. He heard a sudden noise, and a television set mounted high in the far corner sprang to life. A buzzing sounded outside his room. A figure in white hurried into his field of view.

“Well, my gracious,” she said. “Our patient’s awake. Let me get the doctor.”

Ken Gordon entered the room quietly. He satisfied himself that only the dim overhead lights, not the stronger exam lights, were on. Patients recovering from a head injury were sensitive to loud noises and bright lights, and this one didn’t need the extra stimulation. Ken put his head near the patient’s ear and whispered, “You came through your surgery just fine.” Because these patients were typically confused, his next words were meant to help the man on the bed reorient himself. “You’re in the Intensive Care Unit.”