Fade the Heat (4 page)

That didn’t much surprise Jack. Since she’d been a tiny child, when Luz Maria zeroed in on something she wanted, she could grind like a belt sander. Besides, she had butted heads with her supervisor almost from day one, when the woman continually mispronounced her name, rhyming it with
buzz
instead of
cruise.

“I’ve called, too,” he told her. “But with all the budget battles, their manpower’s been cut to the bone. They said they’ll get to it.”

“
Eventually
, right? But when’s eventually?” she shot back. “How many more kids from that block have to die?”

She’d been the caseworker for the family of Agustín Romero, an eight-year-old whose father had carried him into the clinic, blue as death, when he’d stopped breathing. With paramedics en route, Jack had done everything he could to open the boy’s airway, but Agustín had been down too long. By the time they reached the hospital, his oxygen-deprived organs were failing one by one.

It had been one of the longest nights of Jack’s life, waiting helplessly for that beautiful child to die. Especially after trying to explain to the weeping family why, only days before, another doctor from the clinic had turned them away, saying that the boy’s asthma
was a chronic and not a communicable or life-threatening condition.

Not life-threatening, my ass. Tell that to the Romero family.

Since then, Jack had treated twelve more kids with breathing troubles at the clinic—and falsified the charts of every one, diagnosing contagious diseases instead of asthma, then slipping their parents drug-company samples for their treatment. And if Agustín’s death had hit him hard enough to push him to what might amount to professional suicide, what had it done to Luz Maria, who’d seen only a small fraction of the suffering he had witnessed?

“Maybe we both need to get out of this cesspool,” he said bitterly. “We can find some nice, clean jobs in the suburbs, help nice, clean yuppie kids learn to deal with their own sense of entitlement.”

Luz Maria’s eyes flashed. “Maybe that M.D. after your name cancels out who you are. Maybe it erases what happened to our papa, what’s happening to so many of our people still. But it will never, ever be that way with me.”

He doubted she remembered their father at all; she’d been only a toddler when he disappeared. And yet she claimed his memory, held it to her like a merit badge of unremembered suffering. Ten years older, Jack bit his tongue to keep himself from reminding her that he still bore scars from those days.

Changing the subject, he said, “You’ve made a lot of friends since you’ve been here. Maybe
you
can tell me who hates me enough to send that photocopied file to Darren Winter?”

She shook her head. “You have friends here, too, Jack. And all of them seem really mad about your getting in
trouble. It’s a stupid law—a travesty—but those idiot reporters are making it sound like you did something terrible. And Winter—the man’s a—a complete…”

She threw her hands up, clearly at a loss for words.

“What about the clinic?” he asked. “Is there someone here who’d like to see it shut down? Someone, maybe, who’s angry over the hours or the lousy pay or the conditions?”

She cracked a smile. “That would be all of us. But it’s not like most of the employees couldn’t find a job somewhere else. Especially the nurses. Do you know what kind of signing bonuses they’re paying at the suburban hospitals these days? Everybody’s crying for nurses.”

“Ever make you wish you’d gone into medicine instead of social work?”

She shook her head. “You know how blood makes me throw up and I faint when I see needles. But that’s okay. I’m better at shaking things up, getting things done for people.”

“So I’m hearing—and seeing, too.” Since the hospital district had sent her here, she had been a strong and sure advocate for patients, helping them navigate the confusing maze of social services and charitable programs to keep their families fed and housed and clothed. Impressed, the nurses dubbed her “The Piranha,” for the fearless way she tore into her clients’ problems.

At a rap against the security-glassed panel of the front door, Luz Maria looked up. “There’s Sergio. Want to say hi to him? And I do mean ‘hi,’ Jack, not the third degree. He gets too much of that from Mama as it is.”

Jack smiled, imagining that whatever details Mama
hadn’t ferreted out through her infamous cross-examinations, she had undoubtedly discovered through her contacts at the
yerbería
, the herb shop she’d owned for sixteen years. No matter whom her son or daughter might date, Mama could be counted on to know someone who knew someone who could provide the lowdown on the man or woman’s family, education, and potential earning power.

Jack nodded to his sister. “I’m heading out now, too.”

After walking out beside his sister and locking the front doors behind them, Jack shook hands with Sergio Cardenas, a very serious guy in his mid-twenties who wore a lot of black and kept his hair in a neat ponytail almost as long as Luz Maria’s braid. Jack had only met him a time or two in passing and didn’t really know him, but something about the man disturbed him nonetheless. Maybe it was the depth of his stare, the uncomfortable silences between them, or Jack’s own long-standing tendency to overprotect his little sister. Or maybe it was the motorcycle in the parking lot. Sitting beside the damaged Explorer, the thing looked sleek and deadly as a bullet.

The rain had stopped, yet the lot glistened beneath the lone security light, and puddles filled the ruts that pockmarked the asphalt.

“Kind of a wet night to ride, isn’t it? Streets are pretty slick.” Jack tried to keep the warning casual. Still, Luz Maria crossed her arms to let him know she considered him way out of bounds.

But Jack couldn’t help himself. He’d seen far too many victims of motorcycle wrecks during his ER rotation, far too many shattered limbs and fractured skulls, too much flesh abraded so badly by road gravel that it
looked like raw hamburger. He glanced at his little sister’s pretty face, unmarked by either age or blemish. And unsmiling, at the moment.

Sergio hooked his thumb toward the bike. “See? I brought two helmets. I’ll take good care of her, man.”

Jack looked him in the eye, meaning to hold him to that vow. The stare Sergio returned was brooding, almost sullen—the kind of look that most men understood meant trouble, but that a lot of women fell for.

“Your truck.” Luz Maria’s eyes widened as she took note of the damage. “Can you get inside?”

Jack nodded. “Passenger door still works.”

Sergio surveyed the dent and gouges with what looked like cool disdain. “Tough break,” he finally mumbled.

Jack ignored the annoyance spiking through him and kissed his sister’s cheek. “You two be careful out there, all right?”

Sergio nodded, but once the couple had put on helmets and climbed aboard, he revved the engine loudly and roared off, sending a rooster’s tail of pebbles flying. The sand and stones popped like hail against the Explorer’s freshly gouged hood.

Jack glared after the retreating bike. Next time he saw Sergio, the two of them were going to have a serious talk, no matter how much it upset Luz Maria.

As he fought traffic on his way to his Memorial-area apartment, Jack felt a killer headache building. He was worn out, not only from concern over his sister and the threat to his career and clinic, but from two years of slapping bandages—literally or figuratively—on the various afflictions that plagued the human body. Hurried and perfunctory as it often was, Jack knew
his work diminished suffering and—as it had been intended—eased the strain on the county hospital’s overcrowded emergency room.

Despite this, he still suffered from what one of his colleagues termed Little Dutch Boy Syndrome. For every finger he stuck into the dike of health care, ten more leaks burst out around him. Women went back to husbands who drank too much and beat them. Parents failed to have their children immunized because they feared deportation far more than disease. Patients stopped taking their prescription drugs as soon as they felt better. Others couldn’t afford to fill their prescriptions in the first place, or were too terrified to deal with a potentially life-threatening diagnosis…

Reagan Hurley rose wraithlike to haunt him. His ears rang with the harsh rasp her breath had made in his stethoscope.

Deliberately he shoved the memory from his mind. Of all the ailments out there—and he was reminded daily of their endless and terrible variety—asthma was the one he least wanted to dwell on.

He wanted nothing more than to down some aspirin, throw on jeans and a sweatshirt, and enjoy a Rockets game, a beer, and pizza. But before he could sag into the weekend, he was going to call Reagan to demand that she pay for the damages to his vehicle—as soon as he deleted every message from his machine that began with Darren Winter’s voice.

Since the overstuffed bastard had charmed or cajoled his private number out of his informant, Jack had been overwhelmed with the man’s increasingly insulting “invitations” to respond to his allegations on the air. Come Monday morning, Jack would answer to hospital administrator Dr. Ellen Fowler; until then, he
didn’t have a thing to say to anyone about the decision he had made.

Though he’d expected messages, Jack hadn’t banked on the news van he saw parked around the corner from his usual space. He never would have spotted it if the complex’s main electric gate hadn’t shorted out in the wet weather, as it was prone to do. But the moment he caught sight of the white van, he realized the TV stations meant to jump on his case, too.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, not with the way the media was already speculating what Winter would do with a two-year term as mayor—and bandying about comparisons not only to Schwarzenegger and Ventura, but to Ronald Reagan, who had parlayed his celebrity into the presidency. Jack’s part in the story was no more or less than today’s fresh angle, a blood offering to feed the ravening machine.

Fear knotted in his belly at the thought of facing some ambush reporter, possibly one holding a stolen facsimile of Jack’s own signature on yet another patient record.

“
So how do you explain the diagnosis of tuberculosis, Dr. Montoya,
” the viperlike voice hissed inside his throbbing head, “
when no TB test was given?
”

Despite the chill, hot moisture prickled on his upper lip and brow. It was bad enough to think of losing his job or seeing the clinic shut down, but what about those kids he’d been treating for asthma? How many would grow sicker or maybe even die?

“Damn it all.” Jack thumped the steering wheel, his hopes shot for a night of pizza-and-basketball oblivion. He turned out of the entrance and considered driving to his mother’s house in the Heights. Then another thought occurred. What if Winter or the other re
porters had her address as well? After all, she’d been the emergency contact on Jack’s employment forms, and someone, somewhere, had clearly leaked his personal data.

A nightmare image flashed across his vision: reporters confronting him on Mama’s lawn, then his mother struggling to defend him, her anguish captured for the evening news. Or Luz Maria coming home, losing her temper, and saying something that would endanger her job, too, and put the last nails in the clinic’s coffin.

Once more, Jack changed course, this time heading for the address that lay beside him on the SUV’s seat. Though he would have preferred to do it via telephone in case she was even more unstable than he suspected, it looked as if he’d be confronting Reagan Hurley face to face.

The man in the old green Ford didn’t normally stoop to torchings, but he had to hand it to the Firebug. This shit was giving him a primo rush. Not so much the heat and flames, nor even the shrill of the first alarms. It was the getting out so smoothly that really did it for him, then the sitting back to watch the residents scurrying around like roaches, followed shortly by the arrivals of the pumper and the first news van.

The rising smoke was still almost invisible against the dusk-dark sky. But it wouldn’t be for long, he reasoned as he heard the sirens of additional fire trucks approaching. The blaze would grow and spread, exactly as his old hero had assured him. Who knew?—It might take out the whole apartment complex, an older place that more than likely had no sprinkler system.

The Ford’s driver fought a smile, thinking how they would put it all on TV, the pictures and the interviews with people displaced by his work. They would get a statement from some firefighter, too, who would shake
his head and moan that all this trouble had been started by one person.

An unknown arsonist.

He liked it, and he would like it even better when they figured out where the blaze originated, started putting two and two together, and ended up with a freaking stampede of reporters, all here at his bidding.

He’d give his left nut to stay and watch it, but when he saw the dented red Explorer leaving, he reminded himself he still had another job to do.

And as a bonus, he would get to find out if the Firebug had been on the money on another count as well: that apartment buildings were a good start, but a living man burned best of all.

Finding Jack Montoya’s home address was child’s play, though the information came at a steep price.

Reagan remembered hearing, years ago, about the
yerbería
Jack’s mama had bought down off of Shepherd, and as luck would have it, Mrs. Montoya herself answered the telephone when Reagan dialed the number she’d found in the phone book.

When Reagan identified herself and asked how she was doing, Mrs. Montoya rewarded her with a litany of complaints about both Joaquín, as she still called Jack, and the baby, little Luz Maria, who had somehow gone and grown into a woman. Jack, Mrs. Montoya claimed, worked too hard and didn’t visit her enough, while who could keep up with Luz Maria and all those
novios
calling the house at every hour, wanting to take her to expensive restaurants?

After Mrs. Montoya described how she had successfully treated her own supposedly deadly gallstones with cactus tea and some kind of spiritual mumbo-
jumbo, the woman finally asked, “And how is your mama these days?”

“She’s dead,” Reagan answered, the way she always did, because the truth was not only harder to explain but far more painful. “It’s been five years now.”

“
Qué lástima!
Such a shame. Did she live to see your wedding day, at least, or any
nietos
born? You know—grandbabies? My son and daughter, they are waiting until they drive me to my grave to give me
nietos.
But then, in these times, children do not think so much of their mothers, only having fun.”

Reagan smiled and sat cross-legged on her living-room rug so she could scratch the greyhound’s pink-white belly. His tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, Frank Lee thumped his tail against the floor. On her television, which she kept on low for background noise, Kramer tumbled into Jerry’s apartment on a
Seinfeld
rerun.

“I don’t have kids, or a husband either,” Reagan told her, already uncomfortably aware of where this conversation might be leading. Still, if she wanted to get that signature this weekend, she was going to have to bite the bullet. “Listen, Mrs. Montoya, I called because I was hoping to look up Jack—your Joaquín.”

“Really?” A wheedling tone infused the heavy accent. “Did I mention to you, my Joaquín is a
doctor?
And I think he would enjoy hearing from a nice girl. You are still a nice girl, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Reagan fudged, though she doubted that a female firefighter who sometimes boxed would fit the seĊora’s definition.

“And not too fat, with all the fast food?”

“Oh, no, ma’am—at least, that’s what people tell me.”

“Modest, too. This is a good thing. Here, I give you
his address and the phone numbers,” she said. “
Normalmente
, I do not think much of this new way of young women calling men for dates, but since the two of you already know each other and my Joaquín is too busy saving other people’s
nietos
to worry that his own mother will drop dead before he gets around to such things, you have my blessing.”

In spite of her complaints, Mrs. Montoya’s health couldn’t be all that bad or she wouldn’t have had the breath to finish that sentence. But maybe, Reagan figured, recent events had clouded her judgment when it came to lung power.

After thanking the woman for her help and promising to visit the
yerbería
for some sort of candle that would supposedly improve her love life, Reagan tried to extricate herself from the conversation. When several attempts proved futile, she finally resorted to reaching out her front door and ringing her own bell to make it sound as if company had arrived.

She admitted the deception wasn’t very nice, but sometimes a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

And what she had to do was track down Jack Montoya and get that signature before he went out for the evening. His mama might believe he was home thumbing through medical journals, and Darren Winter might think he’d tormented Jack into hiding under a rock somewhere, but Reagan didn’t suppose for one minute that any man as good-looking as Montoya was spending his Friday nights at home alone.

Rising from the floor, she grabbed her jacket.

“Later, buddy,” she told Frank Lee, who was already eyeing the sofa speculatively. “And stay off the furniture.”

Yeah, right,
the thirty-five-mile-an-hour couch potato’s look said, and Reagan knew she’d be vacuuming white hair off the blue cushions later. Though he’d allegedly chased artificial bunnies with gusto for his first four years of life, Frank was one greyhound who took his retirement seriously.

Conceding defeat on that front, Reagan steeled herself for a far more important battle, one that she could not afford to lose.

And opened her door to find the enemy on her front stoop, his expression stony and his raised fist poised to knock.

When the door swung open and Jack saw Reagan’s eyes flare in surprise, he said, “I’m here to see how you’d like to pay for the damage to my vehicle.”

“What?”

He’d give her this. She bluffed well, covering her guilt with an upturned palm and an expression of pure bewilderment. Too bad it was bullshit.

“I know you were the one,” he said. “I heard what you were saying on the way out of the clinic.”

Looking past him, she appeared to focus on the truck, which he had parked across the street. She made a show of wincing, pretending that the sight of the dented door upset her. “A couple of off-color comments and you think I’d do
that?
”

He nodded. “I
know
you did it. You’re a hothead, always were.”

A large, white dog’s head peeked around her at his voice. For a moment, Jack feared he might get bitten, but the animal yawned before turning to disappear into the house.

Though Jack was five or six inches taller than she was, Reagan got right up in his face. “Yeah? Well, trust me, if I wanted to get back at you, I wouldn’t stoop to petty vandalism.”

He didn’t give way, not a fraction of an inch. “There’s nothing petty about that. It’s sure to cost at least a couple grand to fix.”

“Maybe you should bill your buddy Darren Winter. He’s the one who’s been whipping his ‘warriors’ into a frenzy over whatever the hell he’s so worked up about. Have you been home yet and listened to your answering machine?”

“Don’t try to pawn this off on someone else. I have the proof right on my truck.”

She stepped out, closing her front door behind her and fisting one hand against her hip. “This I’ve gotta see. Lead on, McDuff.”

As she followed him off the small porch, her confidence ignited the first spark of doubt in his mind. Refusing to acknowledge it, Jack led her across the neatly trimmed lawn to his truck’s mashed door and gestured toward the green streak.

“Does this look familiar?” he demanded.

She studied it before asking, “Should it?”

“Your car’s green, isn’t it?”

She looked right at him and flashed a Cheshire cat’s grin. “Why don’t you come see?”

After taking him around the side of the house and past a hedge of bushes drooping with moisture, she led him to a small, detached garage, which listed slightly to the right. With a flourish, she pointed out the deep blue Trans Am inside the open door. “I rest my case, Mr. Prosecutor. Oh, excuse me. Make that
Dr.
Prosecutor. But go ahead and check for damage if you
want. Sure, she’s got some dings and scratches, but you won’t find any red paint.”

He walked around the vehicle, though by this time he realized he’d been an idiot, coming here and launching into her when common sense should have told him that anyone, from one of Winter’s listeners to a run-of-the-mill vandal, could have done the damage. Why had he been so quick to latch onto the conclusion that his former neighbor had gone to such extremes?

Maybe because she’d taken up residence in his mind from the moment he had seen her in the exam room. Had his devious subconscious used suspicion as an excuse to look her up?

“I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “Looks like I had it wrong.”

She cupped a hand to her ear. “What was that? I don’t think I heard you. Could that have been an apology you mumbled?”

“You heard me just fine,” he said. “I’ve—uh—I’ve had a rotten week, and I—I guess I took it out on—”

She snapped her fingers, as if something had just come to her, and pointed at him. “Green car—old, ragged-out thing. I think I might have seen him. Jackass nearly ran me down as I was leaving.”

She coughed into her hand, a grating sound that went on longer than it should have. “Come inside,” she said once she recovered, “and I’ll tell you what happened—
if
you can refrain from accusing me of anything else.”

He hesitated.

“Oh, come on. Frank Lee doesn’t bite—or he wouldn’t make such a good therapy dog—and I don’t either. Call your mama if you don’t believe me.”

“You’ve talked to my mother?”

She flashed a stunning smile that affected him far more than he would admit. “Oh, yeah. This afternoon. And she was sure to fill me in on all your failings—at least until she figured out I’ve never married.”

He swore at the thought of enduring a round of questions from his mother about his “relationship” with their old landlord’s daughter, but he did follow Reagan toward her front door.

“You really need to get working on that
nieto
thing,” Reagan said over her shoulder. “Your mother must be starved for grandbabies if she’s willing to settle for a Protestant, blond
gringa
daughter-in-law.”

“Don’t worry,” he shot back. “Once she realizes how obnoxious you’ve gotten, she’ll scratch you off her list of hot prospects.”

“Huh. I can be plenty charming when people aren’t unreasonable—or accusing me of things I didn’t do.”

She led him inside a comfortable-looking living room with gleaming yellow pine floors and overstuffed blue furnishings clustered around an old-fashioned braided oval rug. Near the center of a bank of built-in bookcases, a twenty-one-inch TV was tuned to a local newscast. On the shelf above it, a fire helmet—undoubtedly her late father’s—sat in a place of honor beside several framed photographs, one of Patrick Hurley in his department uniform, another of a younger, trimmer version in a boxer’s robe, his grin radiant and his gloved fist held high by a referee. Among the pictures sat the snow-white pillar of a partly burned-down candle.

No wonder she’s not married. What living man could possibly compete with the memories centered in that shrine?

At her whistle, the skinny white dog jumped down from the sofa, where he’d been lounging upside down.

“Beat it, Frank. We have company,” she said, then turned toward Jack. “Would you like to have a seat? Maybe something to drink?”

He wasn’t about to get all chummy with her, no matter what she knew. “What I’d like to do,” he said, “is find out who wrecked my truck so I can report it to the police.”

Yawning, the dog slipped beneath one of her hands and leaned against her leg.

“All right, have it your way,” she said as she stroked the narrow white head. “When I finally got out of your clinic—with nothing for my trouble, I might add—this big green car came barreling toward me. I had to jump back out of the way to keep from being hit.”

“Did you get his license number?”

She shook her head. “He disappeared too fast. The guy was really moving.”

“Did you see him, or notice what kind of car it was?”

She hesitated, looking toward the ceiling as if trying to remember.

“Something American and four-door,” she said. “Maybe a Plymouth or a Chrysler, one of those old tanks. And it was painted that ugly avocado color, like they used to make back in the seventies.”

“What about the driver?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. A guy, I guess. I don’t think he was black, but beyond that, I’m not sure. He had one of those stocking-cap things pulled down low, the way a lot of the gang kids do these days.”

Old car, stocking cap—it probably was some kid, slamming into Jack’s truck for some imagined slight. Maybe his baby sister had squalled when Jack had given her a vaccination. Wounded machismo so often defied logic. Jack had seen men stabbed for the craziest
things, especially on Fridays, when young men flush with weekly paychecks blew a good part of them on liquor.

Over Reagan’s shoulder, flames danced on the TV screen and tugged at Jack’s attention.

“Could you turn that up?” he asked, realizing it was the building, not the fire, that had hooked him. “That looks like my apartment complex.”