Don't Ever Look Back: A Mystery (Buck Schatz Series) (18 page)

If they’d sent Rose home to shower and change, that probably meant she’d been here overnight, which probably meant that Elijah had been in the hands of his kidnappers for between sixteen and twenty hours. The fact that I was able to maintain this train of thought, at least, was a good sign. The drugs were wearing off.

My daughter-in-law said: “I get so mad at him when I think about what he’s put her through. I sometimes worry about what will happen if she dies before he does.”

“He’s at that place. Won’t they take care of him?”

“Assisted living is for people who can mostly take care of themselves. I don’t think he can, anymore, and in a year or so, as the Alzheimer’s progresses, he’s just going to get worse.”

“It’s not Alzheimer’s. He says he might have mild cognitive something-or-other.”

“You’ve spent a fair amount of time with him recently. What do you think?”

“I’ve noticed he’s starting to sort of go downhill. He seems angry for no reason sometimes. And a little confused, I guess.”

“She seems tired.”

“She’s been sitting up in the hospital all night.”

“No. She seems tired all the time. She seems like she’s tired of everything.”

I couldn’t do much more than twitch my hands, and my eyelids were still stuck together. But my arms and legs were starting to get that pins-and-needles feel, instead of just being numb.

“Valhalla won’t be able to deal with his temper, without her to calm him down. Do you think they’ll make sure he eats and watch while he takes his pills, and all the things she does? He’ll need full-time nursing care, and I don’t think he’d be able to tolerate having those people around all the time.”

“When you say ‘those people,’ do you mean—?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Water, goddamnit,” I said.

“Oh, shit. He’s awake.”

24

2009

I was propped up in my adjustable hospital bed, sucking on ice chips, and I was feeling very anxious, because Elijah was probably off being murdered someplace. Since I didn’t like Elijah, this shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but I felt personally offended by his murder because the man had been kidnapped despite my firm objection into Clarence’s face.

I had a plaster splint stuck on my busted schnoz. It pinched a little, and made a whistling noise every time I inhaled, and there was an itch underneath it that was driving me nuts.

My grandson was sitting in a chair next to my hospital bed looking at me like he was staring into a coffin, which wasn’t improving my mood much. He was dressed in a suit and tie, which meant he’d come here straight from the airport. He looked masculine, and almost intimidating dressed like that. It set me on edge. I still thought of him as a child.

When he was little, I used to make William shake hands with me, and then I’d crush his little paw in mine, rolling the knuckles between my fingers. I couldn’t do that anymore. His forearms were like steel bands.

He said he worked out five days a week, for seventy-five minutes at a time, and saw a trainer three times a month. I’d seen him exercise when he was home from school, and he did his routine at the Jewish Community Center gym. His workouts were not like my trips to see Cloudy-ah; he ran against resistance on the elliptical trainer for an hour at a time, and came off the machine so drenched in sweat, he looked like he’d just been baptized.

Despite his efforts, there were still twenty or thirty pounds of excess chub hanging on his squat frame; when I hugged him, his chest felt solid, but I could have grabbed on to handfuls of him. The boy liked to eat.

Sometimes he’d call up, just to tell his grandmother and me about some weird New York restaurant he was at. He’d go to a Japanese place and eat sushi. He liked a Vietnamese oxtail soup called “fug.” He’d try the beef bull-googly bippity-boppity at a Korean barbecue restaurant that made him cook his own meat, or he’d have chicken tickers Marsala with sag veneers and Narnia bread at an Indian place.

Stranger still: He called once to tell us that he was eating at a restaurant where the food was “influenced by the flavors and textures of traditional Moroccan street cuisine.”

“Do you need to get some kind of vaccination before you go eat at a joint like that?” I’d asked.

“Very funny.”

“Is it expensive?”

“No, it’s really quite reasonable. Small plates cost twelve to fourteen dollars. Entrées are mostly between twenty-six and thirty-four. Sangria is only thirty bucks a pitcher.”

“The Moroccans must be doing really well these days.”

After twenty hours unconscious, I wouldn’t have minded some Moroccan street cuisine, though, and I might have paid thirty bucks for sangria if they’d let me drink it straight from the pitcher. I hated goddamn ice chips. I figured the nurse was probably right that I wouldn’t be able to keep anything down if I swallowed it too quickly, but I was thirsty, and the ice wasn’t helping. I hate hospitals.

“What’s happening with Elijah?” I asked. “Have they found him yet?”

“I don’t know who Elijah is,” my grandson said. I could tell immediately that he didn’t believe there was any Elijah. “You were riding in a car with your friend Andre Price, the police detective. Do you remember Andre?”

“Yes, I remember Andre,” I said. “How is he doing?”

“Not well, but he’s alive. They’ve got him in a medically induced coma. He had a serious head injury, and there’s some swelling that they’re trying to bring down.”

“We had a man called Elijah in the backseat of the car. He’s a bank robber responsible for crimes that have been unsolved for fifty years. He was turning himself in. The men who hit us kidnapped him when they fled the scene.”

“Nobody has mentioned anything like that. The police told us they believe Price was the target of the attack, because of a drug murder he’s been investigating. I think you might be a little confused.”

The police didn’t even know about Elijah. That was the problem with being an invisible ghost: When you went missing, nobody looked for you. Odds were that he was already dead. I told him, if he was killed, I would “rain vengeance” on his enemies. I didn’t want to have to go and do that.

“I guess I need to talk to the police,” I said.

He nodded. “They want to talk to you. We’ve been telling them that you need to rest.”

“I think I’ve rested long enough.”

My grandson left the room, and came in ninety seconds later with a tall black guy who had a detective’s shield clipped to his belt.

“I’m Rutledge,” he said. “Narcotics.” He was maybe forty-five and his hair was turning gray at the temples. He had the demeanor of somebody important. “I’ve heard a lot about you, and based on what I saw today, I guess a lot of it is true.”

He turned toward Tequila and crossed his arms in a way that said he wanted to speak to me in private. Tequila nodded to show he recognized the gesture, and then he sat down in the chair next to my bed, to show he didn’t give a shit. Apparently, he’d progressed to the point in his big-city lawyer education where he no longer felt intimidated by figures of authority. I was very proud of him. Everyone should be fortunate enough to live to see their grandchildren become stuck-up and entitled.

When it was clear Tequila wasn’t going anywhere, Rutledge, Narcotics, scratched his chin for a minute, and then decided he could say what he wanted to say in front of my grandson. “I want to assure you that we are going to get these guys,” he said. “Things have been bad the past couple of years. The city is hard up, and we’ve had fewer bodies and less overtime to throw at some of these problems. I’m not going to pretend we haven’t lost ground. But this attack on a police detective in broad daylight, in the middle of the street, has really woken us up. Price was one of our best, and you’ve got a lot of fans in the department. I think the boys see you as kind of a mascot.”

“You have no idea how gratifying it is for me to hear that,” I said. It wasn’t good that he was talking about Andre in the past tense. What had happened to him was kind of my fault.

Rutledge continued: “People are angry about this, and fired up. The coffers are open, and, with the full backing of the City of Memphis and Shelby County, we are rolling everything we can behind the largest drug interdiction operation I’ve seen in twenty years on the force. Our federal friends are pitching in as well. The U.S. Attorney is pursuing charges against street pushers that he would never have bothered with before, and guys who would have kept their mouths shut and served state time are lining up to snitch when the FBI threatens them with federal mandatory minimum drug sentences. It’s shock and awe out there in the streets, Buck.”

I nodded. All those men and unlimited overtime, and a spirit of cooperation with the federal government, and nobody was looking for Elijah.

“Who were the kids I shot?” I asked.

“Clarence O’Donnell, age twenty-two. According to the report, paramedics attempted resuscitation, but I doubt they tried very hard, considering his brains were splattered all over the street. Pronounced dead at the scene, obviously. He just got out of prison a couple of months ago; he was caught trafficking teenage prostitutes, and pled guilty to assault and false imprisonment. He did eighteen months for it, against a three-year sentence. I’ve got a daughter, Mr. Schatz, so I’ve got to say: If I were you, I wouldn’t feel too bad about shooting Mr. O’Donnell.”

“I’ve never felt bad about shooting anyone,” I said.

He laughed. “You wouldn’t, would you? The second one is Jacquarius Madison, age twenty. Couple of minor juvenile offenses. Served probation. Graduated high school. He was a student at Tennessee Tech until last fall. Guess he got mixed up with some of the wrong people.”

“Has he said anything yet?” I asked.

“Shortly after we arrested him, a slick-looking sharkskin lawyer showed up and said he was Madison’s counsel. Madison talked to him for five minutes, and then sent the guy away and asked for a court-appointed attorney.”

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I know this one,” Tequila said. I think he might have actually raised his hand and jumped up out of his seat a little. “The first lawyer was mobbed up; sent by the outfit that attacked the car. Madison didn’t want that lawyer, because he plans to cut a deal that involves informing on those guys.”

“That would be my guess as well,” said Rutledge. “But after he talked to the court-appointed guy, Madison refused to talk to us again. Something the lawyer said must have scared him.”

Had the people who took Elijah managed to bribe or intimidate the court-appointed lawyer? How could they have gotten to him so quickly? How could they have even found out what lawyer had taken on the case? Were these people omniscient? I needed to find out what I was up against.

“I want to talk to Madison,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tequila said. “A judge wouldn’t think it was very appropriate for you to talk to him, especially without his lawyer present. It could be used to throw his statement out later.”

I reached over and grasped his wrist as hard as I could. “I want to apologize to the kid, for blowing his leg apart,” I said.

“I thought you never felt bad about shooting people,” Rutledge said.

I shrugged. “Jesus. That’s horrible. I’m pretty sure I never said that. That doesn’t sound like something I’d say at all.”

Rutledge, Narcotics, looked over to Tequila for some sort of backup or confirmation. Tequila sat there silently, and gave him nothing.

“Madison is still here in the hospital,” Rutledge said. “He’s scheduled for another surgery tomorrow, to try to put his knee back together. But I’m not sure what purpose it would serve for you to speak with him.”

“I was a cop for thirty years,” I told him. “I understand why you’re worried, but I am not going to compromise your investigation. I just want to talk to the kid for a couple of minutes.”

“Even if I refuse, you’re going to go looking for him anyway, ain’t you?”

“If he’s still in the hospital? Damn near certainly.”

“Then I guess you have my permission, since you don’t need it. I know what happens to people who think they can stop you.”

25

2009

Rutledge, Narcotics, gave me directions to Jacquarius Madison’s hospital room, and I allowed Tequila to help me out of the bed and into a wheelchair. Then I left the two of them to babysit each other while I went to find the kid I’d shot.

Because of my age, I was admitted to the MED’s geriatric intensive care unit, a sad white hallway with a bleach-on-piss smell. The staff had all the levity and good cheer one might expect from people who had watched someone die before lunch, and would watch someone else die before quitting time.

When you get to be my age, visits to the geriatric intensive care ward carry a special significance, because you have to assume that it’s the place you’re going to die. For an eighty-eight-year-old in failing health, there are really only two ways not to die in the geriatric intensive care ward: The first is to die so fast that the paramedics can’t get you to the MED in time, and the second is to die so slowly that they ship you to hospice.

As soon as I wheeled myself off that hallway, the air somehow seemed lighter, although it still smelled like piss, because hospitals always smell like piss.

I got onto the elevator, and then couldn’t remember what floor I was supposed to go to, so I picked one at random, wheeled myself down to the nearest nurse’s station, and asked for help. The nurse told me she couldn’t look up Madison’s room number, so I decided to go back to my room to find Rutledge, and ask him to write the directions down. But when I got back onto the elevator, I couldn’t remember what floor the geriatric intensive care ward was on. I was too embarrassed to ask the nurses to help me, so I pushed all the buttons, and peeked out every time the door opened until I found the right place.

When I told Rutledge I got lost, he laughed at me, and Tequila offered to take me to Madison, which I thought was a little bit condescending. I found one of my notebooks and just wrote the directions myself, because I couldn’t stomach the indignity of letting my grandson wheel me down the hallway like some kind of invalid.