It was sometime near dawn, and in the emergency room cubicle, Shaw was having trouble keeping his eyes open. This little room was full of the usual hospital smells: the slightly stinging scent of a disinfectant, too many bodies, the cleaner they used on the floors. It smelled like fire, too, and greasy smoke. When Shaw moved, the paper on the examination table rustled.
North, in the chair he’d pulled next to the table, had his eyes closed, and he looked paler than usual, but his voice was its familiar hard smolder when he said, “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“You’re supposed to be resting too.”
“Huh,” North said. “I wonder what keeps interrupting me.”
Shaw wriggled around some more until he lay on his side, facing North, and the paper rustled and pulled and finally split along the edge. North opened his eyes to slits. They looked like sunlight, Shaw always thought. The way sunlight would look the moment it caught a sheet of ice. A blue so pale it speared through him, every day, every time, ever since that first day when he’d seen him in the dorms.
“I feel fine,” Shaw said.
North grunted.
“I don’t even have a concussion. The doctor said so.”
Nothing came from North this time, but those blue eyes were still slitted open. A pair of men walked past the cubicle, voices drifting with the lazy meter of people without a care. “It’s fine if you can get past that ninth hole; the rest of it plays like a dream.”
“I’m not talking about the course. The guy with the carts acts like he’s doing me a favor every time I give him my credit card. Give me a break; I can take my money somewhere else.”
One part about being in a relationship with someone was that, even after years and years, they could still surprise you. For example, Shaw hadn’t known until right then that North could roll his eyes when they were barely open.
“They sound nice,” Shaw whispered.
“They sound like that guy we caught humping his putter.”
“They could be your friends. We need more friends.”
“We need more friends like I need a hole in the head.” He put on what Shaw thought of as his Chouteau accent and said, “The ninth hole is a dream.”
Fighting a giggle, Shaw shook his head. “No, the ninth hole is the whole problem. Weren’t you listening? This is why we can’t ever make any new friends.”
North looked like he was trying not to smile. Then the expression guttered and went out, and something dark and collapsed was all that remained. He reached out, brushing that spot of Shaw’s hair he loved to touch, the one he always went back to, even though Shaw couldn’t see anything different about it. He swallowed, and his fingers trembled. “Jesus Christ. I thought—”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Emery asked as he blew into the cubicle. The curtain billowed in his wake, and John-Henry had to catch it and pull it shut behind him as he joined them. Emery continued, “I’m perfectly well aware that you do a lot of stupid shit, but this is a new order of magnitude for you.”
North surged up from his seat, his face hardening as he crowded Emery back. “I was doing my fucking job, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you.”
“Both of you—” John-Henry began.
“Please—” Shaw tried.
“You had a lead,” Emery said, “and instead of bringing it to us—which is the definition of your job, since you seem to have forgotten—you had to hare off and be Pecos fucking Bill. And now our last lead on our case is dead because as usual, you can’t do the one simple thing that’s been asked of you.”
“It’s not your case! Did you forget about that? Here, I’ll remind you: you’re not a cop. Not anymore. You’re a fucking nobody just like the rest of us. You can play with your balls and fantasize about the good old days and sniff around after him, but don’t give me that bullshit about ‘our case.’ You’re in the same position we’re in, and if it’d been you, you would have done the exact same thing.”
“I would have told John, and we would have brought Ezell in without getting him shot to death in the process! But that’s apparently too much for you—”
“Emery, enough,” John-Henry said.
“Too much for me?” North asked.
“North,” Shaw said, “Emery, please, we’re friends. We love each other.”
“What’s too much is having to watch while the little circle jerk you’ve put together fucks up everything I hand them. I turn over Gid and the Moss family, and what comes up? Crackerjacks. I turn over Brey and Maleah, and what do I get? Zilch. I give you Welch on a silver fucking platter, even though nobody else could find him, and it’s like watching a clown college do a fucking search. He’s sitting there right under your noses, and you still wouldn’t have found him if we hadn’t done your job for you. Again.”
Emery opened his mouth, but before he could speak, John-Henry caught his arm and wheeled him toward the curtained opening. He made a furious sound, but John-Henry said, “Get out in the hall, and don’t come in here again.” The curtain flapped once, and Emery’s heavy steps pounded the linoleum, and then he was gone.
Something seemed to break inside North. He didn’t seem to be able to stand up straight, and he had one hand pressed low against his belly as he breathed raggedly. “Finally,” he managed to say. “Thank you—”
“Stop talking,” John-Henry said. Even the golden tan couldn’t hide his exhaustion, as though the fluorescent lights had peeled everything back. The lines at the corner of his mouth were white with pressure. One hand was a fist, and he kept moving the fingers as though he wanted to loosen them but couldn’t. Finally, in a voice that didn’t sound very much like John-Henry, he asked, “Are you all right?”
North nodded.
“We’re ok,” Shaw said, and the words sounded small. “We know Emery’s upset—”
North made a sharp gesture with one hand, and Shaw subsided.
Quick steps hurried past, and the curtain fluttered on its rings. Shaw could hear his heartbeat inside his head. His face felt hot, and his eyes stung. North was still taking those terrible breaths.
“Fine,” John-Henry said. “I mean, good. That’s good.” Then he stopped again. “You’ve done some good work on this case. You found Welch; thank you for that. I think this is the appropriate time to close out your part in the investigation. If you’ll submit an invoice, I’ll see that you get paid as quickly as possible.”
North made a noise that might have been a laugh.
Shaw opened his mouth, but nothing came. Finally, he managed, “John-Henry.”
“I’ve got a uniformed officer waiting to give you a ride back to the motor court,” John-Henry said.
“But we’re not done,” Shaw said. “You don’t have to pay us, that’s fine, but this isn’t done. We don’t know who hired Ezell. We don’t know if Brey was behind it or Gid or someone else entirely. There are still links to the Cottonmouth Club, and we need to follow them back, find a way to get someone to talk. Otherwise, they’ll keep getting away with it.”
John-Henry gave him a look that might have been pitying. All he said was “Officer Foley will get you back to the motor court, and Auggie offered to drive you back to St. Louis.” He caught the curtain with one hand, his back to them now, and said, “I’m sorry this is how things worked out.”
The curtain fluttered behind him.
North slapped a plastic pamphlet holder off the countertop. It cracked against the wall, and pamphlets went everywhere. He shouted, “Fuck!” and kicked a stool, and its casters screeched as it spun away.
A nurse yanked the curtain back—fortyish, Black, with either a great ponytail or an even better weave. “What’s going on in here?”
North was taking those awful breaths again. It was the way something hurt breathed, Shaw realized. Something hurting so much it couldn’t get all the air it needed. He glared at the nurse, but it didn’t seem to faze her.
“Nothing,” Shaw said, slipping off the exam table. He took North’s hand. “We’re leaving.”