Storm Prey Part 20

BARAKAT SHOWED HIM a drawing of the hospital and gave him a key. "This only works for one door, which is this closet." Barakat tapped the map. "I've got to let you in. I tried to get the outside door key, but they watch them. Getting out is just a push-bar."

Cappy looked at the key. "So the key is just about useless."

"No, not at all. If you've got to hide, you can get in there and pull the door shut. There are about a million doors and they're all locked, most of the time. Could give you a break. The thing is, n.o.body uses the closet. It's empty. You can leave your clothes there and put on the scrubs... Scrubs are hospital clothes."

"Okay," Cappy said. Barakat seemed really smart to him.

"I got an ID for you. I'll show you where to clip it on," Barakat said. "The picture doesn't look too much like you, but you can say you cut your hair off. n.o.body looks at the pictures anyway, if you keep walking."

They talked about it for another fifteen minutes, then Barakat looked at his watch. "You know, you're catching on pretty good. You are are pretty smart. But we gotta get going. Get over there, on the fourth floor--you'll go past some signs that say patient parking, and then physicians parking, and then you're in general parking, probably on the fourth floor but maybe the fifth. Just wait. When I can get loose, probably a half hour after I get in, I'll come open the door for you." pretty smart. But we gotta get going. Get over there, on the fourth floor--you'll go past some signs that say patient parking, and then physicians parking, and then you're in general parking, probably on the fourth floor but maybe the fifth. Just wait. When I can get loose, probably a half hour after I get in, I'll come open the door for you."

"Okay."

"If you really want to go," Barakat said.

There was something in the tone of his voice that made Cappy look up. "I thought that was the deal. Get the chick."

"That's the deal, except for one thing," Barakat said. "That is, it's crazy dangerous. She's got this cowboy-looking guy with guns who goes around with her. Her bodyguard. He's always out in the hall. I got his name and checked on him, and he's known to be a killer. So's her husband."

"Don't mean much to me," Cappy said.

"It should. It means they're in the same business you're in, and they've had more practice," Barakat said.

Cappy thought about it for a minute, then raised his eyebrows. "Okay. Something to think about. So? You were leading up to something."

"Look. It wouldn't do you any good to kill me. n.o.body knows I'm involved, or even suspects I'm involved, except you and the Mack brothers. I can't tell anybody, or I go to prison forever." He shuddered at the thought, and let Cappy see it. He didn't mention Shaheen. "But. Instead of going after this woman, who's going to be hard to get at, if something were to happen to Joe Mack? If Joe Mack died, there'd be no link."

And he thought, If Joe Mack were dead, even if the woman remembered seeing him in the elevator, they wouldn't be able to prove anything. If Joe Mack were dead, even if the woman remembered seeing him in the elevator, they wouldn't be able to prove anything.

"Lyle would figure it out," Cappy said. "He'd be p.i.s.sed. Those brothers are tight."

Barakat took the point: if Joe Mack were killed by Cappy or Barakat, maybe he could find a way to turn them in, without paying the penalty himself. He said, "What if something were to happen to Joe Mack and and Lyle Mack?" Lyle Mack?"

Cappy grinned at him. "You really are are an a.s.shole." an a.s.shole."

"LISTEN TO ME, CAPRICE," Barakat said, shaking a finger at him. "The Macks are dealers. I know these kind of people. Joe Mack will try to deal if he gets caught. What does he have? He has you and me--me for the hospital, you for the lady in the van. If he deals ... maybe he gets off with fifteen years. Maybe less."

"I think they're too scared of me."

Barakat shook his head. "Scared now. Scared if they're locked in a jail, with more bikeists in there?"

"Bikers ..."

"Bikers. They'll have friends in prison," Barakat said. "We won't. They will deal us. That's all I worry about now. I pray that Joe Mack is killed by the police, but I'm thinking, for both of us ... maybe we could make it happen."

"What's in it for me?"

"I have no money," Barakat said. "I'm slave labor at the hospital, until I finish. Then there are possibilities. But one thing we know. We know that the Macks have a million dollars of medical-quality drugs. If you would help, if we could find Joe Mack ... I could get him to tell us where they are. I know they are not yet moved."

Cappy thought again. Then, "How'd you do that? Get him to talk?"

Barakat spread his hands: "I'm a doctor. I have scalpels."

[image]

"I GOTTA THINK about it some more," Cappy said.

"But you're not saying 'no."'

"Well, you got some good points," Cappy said. "I hadn't thought about ... you know, they could sell me out for doing the woman. I mean, h.e.l.l, except for the guy they kicked at the hospital, I'm the only one who's killed anyone."

They both pondered it for a minute, then Barakat said, "This is a very interesting name that you have. 'Caprice.' In English it means an unpredictable action, does it not?"

"I don't know," Cappy said. "I don't know if it's a real word in English."

"Yes, it is. I remember it, because it's also a word in French--a kind of musical composition."

"You can speak French?"

"Yes. And Arabic."

"Huh." Cappy was impressed. 'All I know is, my old man told me I was named after an "eighty-two Chevy."

Barakat smiled at the idea--naming your son for a car--then glanced at his watch. "If we're going to go, we have to go now."

"Better go," Cappy said. "Tell the truth, I'd like to catch that b.i.t.c.h somewhere. She almost ran my a.s.s over. Just couldn't believe it; cut me off, then almost ran me over."

Barakat laughed: "LA car talk," he said.

He was quite taken with Caprice, and slapped the boy on the back as they went out.

[image]

INSIDE THE HOSPITAL, Barakat led him to the closet, showed him how to wear the orderly's uniform, clipped the ID on his chest. "If anybody asks, you work in sanitation, and your boss, whose name is Rob Jansen, gave you a map and told you to spend the morning learning the hospital. Stay out of the bas.e.m.e.nt. Jansen's office is there."

Easy enough to do.

Cappy ghosted down the hallways, patients, doctors and nurses, visitors, coming and going, all the time: people lying on gurneys, in wheelchairs, shuffling down the halls, sometimes towing bags of saline mounted on wheeled racks; people staring out of hospital rooms, watching television; beeps and boops from equipment, chimes from elevators, more laughter than you'd think.

He got a quick sandwich in the cafeteria, actually helped move a patient from one floor to the other, on a cart. Pushed a guy in a wheelchair to an elevator, took him to the cafeteria, the guy breathing oxygen from a bottle on the back of the chair, who said, when they arrived, "Thanks, son."

He thought at first that the other orderlies would look him over, but n.o.body paid any attention to him; after a while, he began to get the feeling that he was effectively invisible. He asked about, and located, the special operating room for the twins. Barakat had told him about the overhead observation room, and he found that, looked it over. Thought: Can't take her here.

There'd be too many people around ...

Started on an idea.

If he could wait in a doorway, on a hall where she'd pa.s.s by, he could shoot her, slam the door, block the door somehow, and run for it. The place was such a tangle of hallways that if he worked out an escape route in advance, he'd probably make it out ...

But that meant watching her for a while, so he'd know where she went. And watching her meant that a lot of other people would see his face around.

Maybe he could simply wait for the twins' operation, and watch her. When she got ready to leave the hospital room, he could run down the stairs, shoot her when she came out--thirty feet or so--step back into the stairwell.

If he'd stashed a piece of two-by-four in the stairwell ahead of time, he could wedge it between the door and the bottom step, and that would block the door as effectively as a padlock.

He could then run up or down the stairs, mix with the other uniforms, and disappear into the crazy maze of hallways.

Be out of the place in four or five minutes.

Maybe.

10.

VIRGIL, LUCAS, and Shrake saw Weather safely into the hospital, all the way to the women's locker room. "Do not go off by yourself," Lucas told her. "Virgil can be there in one minute. Don't get a c.o.ke or a candy bar. Just call him."

"I will," she said, but she said it in a way that made Lucas turn back to her.

"Weather, if you don't, I'll be sincerely p.i.s.sed off. I mean it," he said. "There's a guy in this hospital who might be trying to kill you."

"I'll call," she promised.

A pretty blond nurse, carrying a load of fresh scrubs, had piled up behind them, and she said to Lucas, "We'll take care of her."

"I'd appreciate it," Lucas said. "And I want you to rat her out, if she cheats. This is serious stuff."

The nurse nodded, paused as she pa.s.sed Virgil, and said, "How're you doing?"

Virgil said, "How're you doing yourself?"

"I'm doing fine ..."

Weather hooked her by the arm and said, "Don't flirt with the hired help," and they went inside, the nurse turning to wiggle her fingers at Virgil, who wiggled back.

Lucas said to Shrake, "She didn't say, 'How're you doing?' to us."

Shrake said, "She was saying it to me, but that f.u.c.kin' Flowers jumped in front of me."

"I'm so hot," Virgil said. He touched a thigh with a fingertip and made the steam sound: "Chhhh."

Lucas covered his eyes in mock embarra.s.sment, and Shrake laughed and said to Virgil, "You're so f.u.c.kin' gay."

LUCAS AND SHRAKE drove back across town to the BCA to meet with an agent named Lannie Tote, a gang-squad guy who specialized in the Seed, and Del. They picked up Del, who was talking to Lucas's secretary, and found Tote in Frank Harris's office. Tote was a thin man, a runner, who dressed in conservative gray suits with white business shirts and dark blue neckties with American flag pins on the lapel. He had a reputation for being conservative and Christian and competent.

Lucas told them what had happened to that point. They knew the outline, but not the details. When they were done, Harris asked, "Where are you on Joe Mack? Eighty percent?"

"Ninety-nine percent," Lucas said. "What we need, ideally, is a guy we can really put the screws on. We need to get a biography of the Macks. We need to know who they hang with, who'd be likely to stick Joe up in the attic, even knowing what he's done."

"Have you talked to their old man? Ike? He'd do it," Tote said.

"Where's he at?" Lucas asked.

"Up by Spooner. Got a place back in the woods. Works at an auto-parts store in town, does custom work on old Harleys. Does some welding."

"A bad guy?" Del asked.

"You know, small time," Tote said. "All the Macks are small time. Lyle is the pinnacle of Mack achievement. There was a rumor that Ike used to cook up some meth and move it through his boys, but quit when it got too hot. I'm pretty sure he buys stolen bikes, takes them apart, uses the parts on his custom jobs."

"You got anything we could use as a lever?"

Tote shook his head. "We don't pay too much attention to him--he doesn't run with the gang guys anymore. Too old, and what ... mmm ... eight, nine years back, he had to lay his bike down, up on Highway 53. Busted his legs in about twenty places, and his pelvis. He gets around, but he's pretty hobbled."

Harris showed a thin smile: "So if he runs on you guys, you can probably catch him."

"Not funny," Shrake said.

Lucas asked, "Who else, guys? I'd like to get a name where you've got a lever. Somebody who'll spill his guts."

"Ansel Clark," Tote said, after a moment's hesitation. "I was going to hold him back until I had time to really debrief him."

"What's his story?" Del asked.

Clark, Tote said, was locked up in the state penitentiary at Stillwater. He'd gotten a five-year sentence for an armed robbery in Forest Lake, in which a bypa.s.ser had recognized him. The bypa.s.ser hadn't recognized Clark's accomplice, but Clark had given him up for a sentence reduction. "He's not a popular guy. Every time Clark gets a new TV, somebody'd shoot it full of WD40 and it'd be ruined. The prison guys turned the cell around, so the set's on the back wall, but he's already lost three of them, and he's got no money, no family or friends on the outside to get him one."

"He needs a TV," Shrake said.

"He's pretty desperate," Tote said. "The last time they had a lockdown, all he had in his cell was an old AARP magazine and a picture dictionary. Didn't even have anything with which to ... entertain himself."

"No stroke books," Shrake said.