Small Vices Part 26

"You are going to live," Susan said.

"I don't seem to have much feeling in my left leg or my right arm."

"Doctor said to expect that," Susan said.

"For how long?"

"I don't think he knows," Susan said.

I nodded, which made me feel a little funny, and I closed my eyes again for a moment. When I opened them the sun was too bright against the far wall. Susan was gone and so was Hawk. Martin Quirk was sitting where Hawk sat, and a man in a white coat was standing staring down at me over half gla.s.ses. He was a lean guy, with graying hair and a thin, sharp face. The face was tanned. There was a stethoscope hanging out of his pocket. Under the white coat he wore a white shirt with wide blue vertical stripes, and a blue tie with small white polka dots. He had a wedding ring on his left hand. His hands were tanned. His nails were square and neat as if they'd been manicured.

"My name is Phil Marinaro," he said. "How do you feel?"

"Like I got shot and fell in the river," I said.

"Makes sense," he said. "You feel like talking?"

"I feel more like listening," I said.

"Okay," Marinaro said. "If the man who shot you had used bigger bullets, you'd be dead."

"Twenty-two longs," Quirk said. "Same as Miller."

"And you were lucky. The cold water probably slowed down the bleeding a little, and some of the internal swelling. The kids who found you probably saved you from dying of exposure. They covered you with their ski parkas, and one of them, in fact, pressed herself against you until the ambulance came."

"Who can blame her," I said.

"By the time the EMTs got there, you didn't have a pulse," Marinaro said. "They got you started on the way to the hospital. With all of that, the small caliber gun, the cold water, the resourceful Harvard kids, the professional EMTs, with all of that, if you weren't as big and strong as you are, you'd be dead."

"Right now I feel about as strong as a chicken," I said.

"Right now you are about as strong as a chicken," Marinaro said. "You are going to need a lot of rehab. Can you move your right arm?"

I couldn't.

"Left leg?"

No.

"How technical do you want this," Marinaro said.

"Eventually I want it all," I said. "But right now all I want is a prognosis."

"I don't really know," Marinaro said. "I'm a good surgeon. The repair job is first-rate. But you were d.a.m.ned near shot to pieces and almost drowned. A bullet fractionally missed your spine. I can make some informed guesses, which is mostly what prognosis is anyway. I think if you are willing to work hard enough you can come back from this. I don't know how far. It is probably a matter of how hard you work."

"I can work pretty hard," I said.

"That's what they tell me. Once you're able to get up, we'll start you on some simple exercises with a trainer. It will be a long, slow process."

"How soon," I said.

"Don't know. We'll watch you. We'll get you started as early as possible."

"Not a big rush," I said.

"No, you're pretty battered, and the amount of anesthesia you've had is debilitating. Captain, do you wish to say anything?"

"Yeah," Quirk said.

He stood and stepped to my bedside and looked down at me.

"You know who shot you?"

"Gray Man," I said.

"We figured. Hawk brought me up to date on that."

"I saw him," I said.

"Dr. Marinaro knows who you are and why you're here. Everybody else thinks your name is Hick.o.c.k and you are the victim of a jealous husband. We've told the papers that your lifeless body was recovered from the Charles River. Both papers ran an obit on you. You'll probably enjoy them."

"Call in some favors, did we?"

"Several," Quirk said.

"Aren't you a little out of line?" I said.

"Yeah."

"When you a.s.signed Belson and Farrell to Susan, I said you weren't really in a position to do that, and Hawk said that was true, but you didn't give a s.h.i.t."

Quirk shrugged.

"Why you think it took me so long to make captain?" he said.

"I always wondered."

Quirk grinned.

"Besides, from Hawk that's a compliment."

"True."

"We'll keep somebody with you while you're here," Quirk said. "Hawk will be around a lot, and Vinnie Morris, and some of our people. I'm transferring Belson and Farrell to this detail."

"The cops and the robbers," I said.

"Changes places and handy dandy," Quirk said.

"Well," I said. "You literate son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"I heard you say it once. I got no idea what it means."

"As long as the Gray Man thinks I'm dead, and he has no reason not to, Susan's safe. This is a guy doesn't waste time killing people for nothing."

"That's what Hawk and I thought, but we also figured he might watch her for a while just to be sure. So when you woke up, we had the Cambridge cops pick her up and take her in as if for questioning. Then we smuggled her over here."

"And no one followed her?" I said.

"Hawk brought her," Quirk said.

"I withdraw the question," I said.

I might have said something else, but I'm not sure, and then I was back in dreamland listening to the music of the spheres.

Chapter 36.

I LEFT IN a wheelchair. Hospital rules required it anyway, but even if they hadn't, I still had very little use of my left leg. Susan and Hawk and Dr. Marinaro and I went down in a freight elevator and into a bas.e.m.e.nt garage with Dr. Marinaro pushing the wheelchair.

"Morgue's over there," Marinaro said, nodding toward a pair of double doors. He grinned. "Our mistakes go out this way," he said.

"How cheery," I said.

Quirk and Belson were leaning on the front fender of a black Ford Explorer near the overhead doors. Pearl the Wonder Dog was in the backseat, looking out the window. The rest of the garage was empty. We wheeled over to them. Belson opened the front door of the Explorer.

"I can stand," I said, "and walk a little. I'll need a little help getting in."

Hawk came around and picked me up and put me in the front seat. Pearl began to lap the back of my neck. There was luggage in the storage s.p.a.ce in back.

"I didn't need that much help," I said.

"He ain't heavy," Hawk said. "He's my brother."

"And he's lost thirty pounds," Susan said.

"Can you shoot left handed?" he said.

"Some."

He handed me a short-barreled Colt Detective Special and I stuck it into my left-hand jacket pocket.

"Guy will have to be pretty close for me to hit him left handed with this," I said.

"He'll be close," Hawk said, "'cause he'll have gotten by me."

"Unlikely," I said.

"Very," Hawk said.

"Where'd you get the car," I said to Susan.

"Hawk arranged it," she said.

I looked at Hawk. He smiled.

"Oh, never mind," I said.

Marinaro said, "You've got my number. Call me if you need to."

I said, "Thank you."

He gave a small thumbs-up gesture, like the RAF pilots used to do when they were climbing into their Spitfires. Susan went around and got in the driver's side. Hawk got in back with Pearl. Belson closed the front door and stepped away. Susan started the car. Marinaro pressed a b.u.t.ton and the garage door went up. It was dark outside. Quirk and Belson went outside and stood at each side of the doorway looking into the darkness. Quirk waved us forward and Susan drove the Explorer out of the garage. Quirk and Belson went back inside. The garage door closed. Susan drove down an alley and turned out onto a side street and then onto Cambridge Street heading toward Storrow Drive with the river on our right, looking as hostile as I remembered. I patted Pearl over my shoulder with my left hand. There was ice on the river now, and the Esplanade was snowy. Across the river the lights around Kendall Square looked cheerful.

"Where we going," I said.

"Santa Barbara," Susan said.

"California?"

"Yes."

"We're driving."

"Yes. It's safer."

"You mind if I sing 'California Here I Come' as we roll along?" I said.

"You're in a weakened condition," Susan said. "It's better if you rest."

"I'm just thinking of you," I said. "It's a long ride."

"Remember I got a gun," Hawk said.

"You'd shoot me if I sing? Your brother?"

"Shoot myself," Hawk said, "you sing a lot."

Pearl stopped lapping my neck finally and settled against the backseat and looked out the window. "We're not flying because someone might see us?" I said.

"And also because we can't leave the baby behind," Susan said. "It will take you a long time to rehab... and she obviously isn't going in a crate in the belly of an airplane."

"Of course not," I said. "Why Santa Barbara?"