Skinny Dip - Страница 27

"And then?"

"I look around till I find the ones with stick-on patches."

"Jesus." The doctor suddenly got quiet.

"Well?"Tool demanded.

"Does Mr. Hammernut know you do this?"

"Red don't pry hisself into my bidness."

"Smart man." Charles Perrone reached for a pen. "The nearest hospital is Cypress Creek. I'll write down the directions."

"Draw me a pitcher instead."

"A map, you mean."

Tool smiled. "Yeah, that'd be good."

He had dumped the minivan at Hertz and defected to Avis for a black Grand Marquis. The extra legroom was a treat, and the air conditioning was purely glorious. Once Tool located the hospital, he began scouting adjacent neighborhoods for likely targets. The first place was called Serenity Villas, but he backed off as soon as he realized it was an assisted-living facility. That meant that the old folks were still hoofing around pretty good, and in Tool's experience they did not part easily with their medications.

His next stop was Elysian Manor, a convalescent home run by a local church. Tool put on the size XXXL lab whites that he always carried, and entered through a rear service door. For a large man he moved unobtrusively, checking one bed at a time. Some of the patients, as frail as baby sparrows, were sound asleep; those Tool gently rolled over to inspect for patches. The patients who were awake behaved cooperatively, although one launched into a fractured monologue that Tool couldn't sort out-something about a sellout in Yalta, wherever the hell that was.

The lack of visitors was one reason that Tool favored nursing homes over hospitals. Why people spent so little time with their ailing mothers and fathers, he didn't know, but it was a bankable fact. In only one room at Elysian Manor did Tool encounter a relative perched at a patient's bedside-Tool excusing himself with a wave, and moving on down the hall. Nobody in authority displayed the slightest interest in his presence; the harried nurses assumed he was a newly hired orderly, turnover being universally rampant at geriatric facilities.

He hit pay dirt in no. 33, a private room. The patient, a bony-shouldered woman with permed silver hair, was curled up, sleeping with her face to the wall. The back of her cotton gown was untied, revealing on her papery gray skin a crisp new patch of fentanyl. Tool crept forward and began to peel it off. The woman spun violently, her knobby right elbow nailing him like a cudgel between the eyes. Rocking backward, Tool groped for the bed rail to steady himself.

"What're you up to?" The woman's fierce blue eyes were clear and alert.

"Changin' out your patch," Tool mumbled.

"But they just gave me a new one an hour ago."

"Ma'am, I just do what they tell me."

"I believe that's a load of bull crap," she said.

This is no good, Tool thought. She's too damn ornery.

"They'll bring you more," he said. "Come on now, roll over."

"You're sick, too, I can tell. Is it cancer?"

Tool fingered the rising lump on his forehead. "I ain't sick," he said, glancing at the door. He expected somebody to barge in any second.

"I'm Maureen." The woman pointed at a straight-backed chair in the corner. "Pull that over here and sit. What's your name?"

Tool said, "Nice and easy now. Lemme take off that patch, then you can go back to sleep."

Maureen sat herself up, plumping a pillow behind her head. "I must look terrible," she said, touching her hair. "I wasn't sleeping, for your information. In my condition, who could sleep? Pull up that chair, I'll give you what you want."

All Tool could think about was the warm embrace of the drug, deep and delicious. He dragged the chair over to Maureen's bedside and sat down.

"You're in pain, aren't you?" she inquired.

"Damn straight. I gotta bullet up the crack a my ass."

"Yow."

"That's how come I need the dope," Tool said. "So, what d'ya say?"

He didn't want to take it by force. She was a scrapper and he'd have to get rough, maybe even strangle her…

"How did you happen to be shot?" she asked.

"Huntin' accident."

"And they couldn't remove it surgically?"

"Guess not," Tool said.

"My late husband was a police officer in the city of Chicago, Illinois. He shot a man once."

"Not up the ass, I bet."

"It was in the shoulder," Maureen said. "The fellow was a hardened criminal. He robbed a gypsy cab. Are you a criminal?"

"Not to my way of thinkin'." Tool was perspiring through his medical whites. He fought the urge to tear the patch from the old coot's hide and bolt for the door.

Maureen said, "All right. I can see you need the medicine more than I do." She turned and presented her bare back, gesturing over one shoulder. "Go ahead and take it, but please be careful. I tend to bleed for no darn reason these days."

Tool started at a top corner of the patch and peeled carefully downward, as if removing a decal. "They'll bring you more," he assured Maureen. "Tell 'em it come off while you was in the bath."

"I don't have a tub, young man. They bathe me with a sponge."

"In bed? Don't that make a mess?"

Maureen said, "I miss my privacy, I really do."

After Tool was done, she rolled over to look at him again. "I'm eighty-one years old, but I feel like a hundred and ten. Please tell me your name."

"Earl." Tool scarcely recognized his own voice. Nobody left on earth called him Earl.

"Is your mother still alive?" Maureen asked.

"Nope. Not my daddy, neither."

"I'm sorry, Earl. I hope it wasn't cancer."

"That's what you got?"

Maureen nodded. "But some days I feel pretty chipper. Some days I surprise myself."

Tool stared at the flesh-colored patch in his hand, thinking: Why couldn't she have been asleep? Or at least a veggie?

"No, you keep that," Maureen said, patting him on the arm. "I want you to feel better."

" 'Predate it."

He was three steps toward the door when he heard: "Earl, could you pop in and visit me again sometime?"

Tool stopped and turned. "Ma'am, I… I don't really work here." "Oh, I know." Her blue eyes were dancing. "What do I look like, some sort of nitwit?"

Rolvaag was working on his resignation package when Captain Gallo came over and said, "Tomorrow's the last day you waste on Perrone."

"Yes, I remember," Rolvaag said.

"Reason I mention it, I got a call from the man."

"No kidding."

Gallo always referred to the sheriff as "the man."

"He asked what you were doing up in LaBelle yesterday, and I didn't have a real swift comeback," Gallo said, "seeing as how I've been in Florida thirty fuckin' years and never had a reason to go there."

Rolvaag explained that he'd been tracking a lead in the cruise ship case.

"And that took you to the office of Mr. Samuel Johnson Hammer-nut," Gallo said. "I hope you know who he is."

"A farmer," the detective said.

"No, a millionaire CEO farmer with heavyweight clout. Soon as you leave, Hammernut calls his asshole buddy, the sheriff of Hendry County, who right away calls the sheriff of Broward County-that would be my boss and yours-and wants to know who the hell's this Karl Rolvaag? Next thing I know, I get a call asking how come you're hassling a fine upstanding citizen like Red Hammernut?" Gallo spread his arms as if awaiting crucifixion. "And what is my response, Karl, besides stuttering like some sort of mental defective? What can I possibly say to the man?"

Rolvaag capped his pen and sat back. "It's interesting that Hammernut would react that way. Don't you think?"

"Are you dicking with me, Karl?"

"No, sir. I'm only trying to finish my resignation papers."

Gallo said, "Aw, knock it off."

"I'm serious about the job in Minnesota."

"Yeah, whatever," the captain said. "Just tell me how a rich Cracker like Hammernut could possibly fit into your case-and I use the word loosely."

Rolvaag informed Gallo about the man staking out Perrone's house. "He used one of Hammernut's credit cards to rent the minivan."

"And that's all?"

"So far. But it's strange, you've got to admit. Why would anyone be tailing a recently widowed man?"

"Karl, we can't go to a grand jury with strange. The whole damn human race is strange," Gallo said. "You and your choice of roommates, for example. Some people would say that's slightly shy of normal."

Rolvaag said, "Lots of folks keep pet snakes."

"I'll explain to the man it was just a dry hole, your road trip to LaBelle."

"Okay. If it'll make your life easier."

"What about you? And don't give me any more horseshit about moving back north," Gallo said. "Just tell me what you want, Karl. A raise? Weekends off? I can't promise anything, but sometimes miracles do happen."

The detective said, "I think Mr. Perrone pushed his wife off that ship. I probably can't prove it in the short time before I leave here, but that's what I believe. Could you give me a couple more days to work the case?"

What bothered Rolvaag the most were the broken fingernails that he'd found in that bale of grass. He couldn't stop thinking of Joey Perrone, desperate and terrified, trying to hang on in the waves, all the while pondering the dreadful thing that her husband had done; hanging on in the chill and the darkness until finally her arms went numb and she slipped into the sea.

"No way," Gallo was saying. "Sorry, Karl, I'm pulling the plug."

"Suppose I came up with the motive."

"In the next, what, twenty-four hours?"