I sat on a gurney and looked over the innards of the Cook County ER. According to Theresa Jackson, it had been a pretty typical night at the Knife and Gun Club, which translated to a handful of gunshot wounds, a couple of stabbings, three sexual assaults, and two gang members who tried to smuggle a gun into an examining room a half hour ago so they could finish off a rival they’d shot up earlier in the evening.
Silver casters rattled on a metal rail to my left as Nurse Jackson pulled back a dark green curtain.
“Enjoying the view?”
“How do you do this every night?”
“Going on twelve years.”
“Why?”
“Honestly? I grew up less than a mile from here. Seems like it’s the right thing. Besides, this is one of the best trauma centers in the country.”
“You mean one of the busiest.”
“Looks like a sausage factory ’cuz that’s what it is. Only the good ones can handle it.”
She gave me a bottle of pills and clipped an X-ray up on a light board.
“How do you know Rodriguez?” I said.
“He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head.
“Good for him. See that?” She pointed to one of my ribs on the X-ray.
I didn’t see anything but nodded anyway. “Broken?”
“Hairline fracture. I had one of the residents take a look to verify.”
“Twelve years in here, I believe you.”
“That’s nice. Now you want to tell me who shot you?”
“You figured that out, huh?”
“The bullet wound gave it away.” Theresa swept a hand around the room. “Was it anyone in here?”
I shook my head.
“Good.” She pulled the X-ray down and handed it to me. “A souvenir. Keep your side taped, and take your pills.”
“How long?”
“Before you heal?”
“Before it stops hurting every time I breathe?”
“Take the pills. You should be able to move around without a lot of pain as soon as they kick in.”
“Thanks.”
“Tell Rodriguez he owes me.”
“You can tell him yourself.”
The detective had just pushed through the doors and was walking our way. Theresa crossed one arm over the other and cocked her hip.
“Has he been behaving?” Rodriguez said.
“You’re the one who needs to show a little manners.”
“I owe you?”
“Damn straight, Mr. Detective.”
“Got a girl now, T.”
“Actually, I was hoping for a younger brother.”
“Ouch. What did she do to you, Kelly?”
“He’s fine,” Theresa said. “Just get him out of here before admissions asks where his chart is.”
“Thanks, T.”
“Take your pills, Mr. Kelly. And quit running around with your detective friend here. Or at least learn to shoot first.” Theresa Jackson walked off across the ER.
“What’s her deal?” I said.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Okay.”
“She was raped a half mile from here. Damn, must have been three years ago now.”
On the other side of the room, Theresa was taking a patient’s blood pressure. The kid in the bed was laughing, flirting, trying to catch her eye.
“She was walking home from this place,” Rodriguez said. “Actually, she was headed out on a date. Wearing those skinny jeans women wear.”
“Skinny jeans?”
“I never heard of them either. Until this case. But you’ve seen them before. Tight jeans.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“That’s what the rapist pleaded at trial. ‘Skinny jeans defense,’ the Trib called it.”
“I remember something like that.”
“He claimed the jeans were so tight, he couldn’t have taken them off without her help.”
“Did it work?”
“Might have. Except two people saw him drag her by the hair into an alley. Didn’t do anything about it. But at least they testified. And then there was the broken nose and fractured cheekbone. Skinny jeans defense didn’t go down so well with the jury when that all came in.”
“Yeah?”
“Theresa got up on the stand and said if she could, she’d hire someone to do to him what he did to her. Then she’d cut his heart out and watch it stop beating in her hand. Jury believed her, too.”
“Where’s the guy?” I said.
“Pulled sixty years in Stateville. Lasted six months. They force-fed him a bottle of Clorox and dropped him from the top floor of the roundhouse.”
I looked over at Theresa, who was joking with a doctor on her way out of the ER.
“She’s a neighborhood girl,” Rodriguez said. “West Side. Takes care of people. They take care of her.”
“You like that?”
“Why not? What did she give you?” Rodriguez held out his hand. I shoved the bottle of pills into it.
“Cracked rib.”
“You drive your car here?” Rodriguez said.
“It’s in the lot. How’d it go at the grocery store?”
“Just getting started. They’re hauling the bodies over to the morgue. I gotta head back.”
“And I need to get some sleep.”
Rodriguez tossed the bottle back into my lap. I got up and started to look around for my coat. A few feet away, a young black kid was strapped to a gurney. They’d brought him in unconscious a half hour ago and left him in a far corner. Then they’d moved him a little closer and hooked him up to some machines. Now he was suddenly awake, ripping an IV out of his arm, thrashing against his restraints, and groaning. An intern tried to calm him. The kid lay back, head whipsawing back and forth, breath more of a wheeze, like his chest was full of dry feathers. There were fresh welts on his arms, and small blisters cooked on his face and neck.
The intern moved closer, picking up the IV stand and punching some numbers into a wall phone. Presumably, a call for help. The kid snapped forward again, body rigid, straining for upright. One of the thick blue straps snapped and the metal buckle cracked the gauge on a blood pressure cuff. The boy craned his mouth open. For a moment I thought he was choking. And maybe he was. Then he coughed, a thick, rich sound. Bright red blood splattered the intern’s scrubs. The boy took in a breath of air and slumped back to the gurney.
Theresa Jackson pushed back into the ER, flat eyes passing over the two of us as she pulled the green curtain across. The last thing I saw was a second intern tugging on some gloves and a mask, an older doctor slipping close to the gurney, and Ellen Brazile, glasses up on her forehead, staring intently at the patient’s chart.
“Fucking hate hospitals,” Rodriguez said.
“I think I need a second, Vince.”
“For what? Let’s get out of here.”
“A second.”
Rodriguez nodded toward the doors. “I’ll be up at reception. Five minutes, then I’m gone.”
“All right.”
Rodriguez left. I put on my coat and moved a little closer to the drawn curtain. Theresa stepped through. She wore a white mask and a paper smock sheathed in plastic. Her gloves were glistening with fresh blood.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“That guy okay?”
“Probably some sort of internal bleeding. Whatever it is, it ain’t good. And you need to stay away.”
Jackson slipped out of her smock and gloves, bundled them up, and dropped them into a hazardous-waste container. Then she pushed the mask up off her mouth. “You hearing me?”
“The woman in there. You know her?”
Theresa shook her head. “She’s with Dr. Peters. A colleague or something.”
“What’s she doing?”
“What’s she doing? Nothing. Just reading the chart and looking at the patient. Where did Rodriguez go? He needs to get you out of here.”
“Reason I ask is the woman is a friend of mine.”
“That woman?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ellen Brazile.”
Jackson slipped the mask back down. “You stay here.”
Two minutes later Ellen Brazile came through the curtain and lifted her mask off her face. She wasn’t smiling either.
“What are you doing here?” Ellen said.
We were standing in a dark hallway, near a rack of vending machines from 1963. I looked through the clouded glass at a row of selections. At the very end was a Zagnut bar.
“I didn’t think they still made Zagnuts. You have any change?”
She wasn’t amused. I found a few quarters and got the Zagnut anyway.
“I got hurt on a job. Cracked a rib.” I lifted up my shirt and showed her the white bandage. Then I unwrapped the Zagnut and offered it to her.
“No thanks.”
I took a bite. “Smart move. Anyway, my ribs hurt. At least they did before I popped one of the pills they gave me. What’s your story?”
“I don’t have one, Mr. Kelly.” Already she was creating distance. She’d wanted to know why I was at Cook County. Now her curiosity was sated.
“You have a story, Doc. Everyone does.”
“I need to get back.”
“Let’s start with that.”
“With what?”
“Today, we investigated a possible pathogen release in the subway. Tonight, you’re in the Cook County ER, standing over a patient who’s spitting up blood.”
Brazile shot a look down the hall. A couple of nurses were chatting in a drab smear of light, maybe fifty feet away.
“Afraid they’re going to hear me?”
“You need to get yourself under control, Mr. Kelly.”
“What does that mean?”
“The pathogen release was a false alarm. My presence here is completely unrelated to anything that went on in the subway.”
“Spitting up blood, red blotches, open sores. You must have a dozen monsters in your lab that can do that. You’re telling me there’s no connection?”
“I’m here because a colleague asked me to take a look at a patient. There are other things we do at CDA besides hunt for bioweapons. Many other things.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Really?”
“You’re right. What the hell do I know?”
Her face cleared, and I realized, not for the first time, how incredibly attractive Ellen Brazile could be.
“I guess I’m sorry, too,” she said. “I overreacted.”
“Been a long day.”
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with the kid? Nurse said it was internal bleeding.”
Brazile nodded. “It is, but not caused by any sort of physical injury. At least not anything we can see.”
“So?”
“Could be some sort of food poisoning. He lives in an area nearby that’s got a lot of toxins. Lead in the paint. Something in the water. Could be a lot of things.”
“You gonna run some tests?”
“I’ll take a look at his blood and see what’s what.”
Down the hallway, I caught a glimpse of Rodriguez ducking into a small room near an elevator.
“I gotta run,” I said and held out my hand. “Twice in one day. We have to stop meeting like this, Doctor.”
She glanced at the candy bar in my other fist. “Mind if I take you up on that bite?”
“This?” I held up the half-eaten Zagnut. “Listen, they don’t rotate the stock down here very much. If you know what I mean.”
“Old?”
“Older than me. And that’s saying something.”
She took a bite anyway, chewed, and forced a smile. “Not bad.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“Thanks for today, Michael.”
A part of my brain noticed the switch to my first name and liked it. The rest of me took it in stride.
“For what?” I said.
“The subway. I think I told you before. It had to be unnerving.”
“I got used to it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Anyway, I know I can be a little short sometimes. But thanks again.”
She handed me back the candy bar and turned to walk away.
“Hey.”
She stopped.
“You want to get coffee? Not tonight, but, you know, some time?”
She nodded slowly, picking up my invitation and then gently putting it back down. “I can’t.”
“That’s fine.”
She held up a hand and circled closer. “I’d like to. But I can’t.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sort of … it’s bad timing.”
I wanted her to stop now. Wanted to find Rodriguez and get out of Dodge. Why did I get the goddamn candy bar, anyway?
“I see someone, too,” I said. “Well, not really. I see her, but she doesn’t see me. It’s complicated.”
She laughed, and that made everything a little better. “Always seems to be that way, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“You have a card?”
I gave her the one with my home and business address. I wrote my cell number on the back. She slipped it into her pocket.
“I better get back. And thanks again.”
“Sure.”
She pushed through the doors and back into the ER. I was alone. Just me and the vending machines. I pulled the lever for a second Zagnut and put it in my pocket. Old, maybe, but they were still damn hard to find.
I wandered down the hallway in search of Rodriguez. I found him in the small room, holding the corner of a white sheet, staring down at a corpse.
“A friend?” I said.
“Not really.” Rodriguez let the sheet fall back over the dead man’s face.
“Who is it?”
“Cop named Donnie Quin. Been dead most of the day.”
“Why’s he still here?”
Rodriguez shrugged. We stepped away from the body and back into the corridor. The elevator beside us was a large one, used to carry freight and, at some point this evening, Donnie Quin to his appointment with the Cook County coroner.
“What’s bugging you?” I said.
“Couple of things. First, he was one of the dirty cops I was investigating.”
I looked back toward the large lump under the sheet. “Quin?”
“Met with him this morning. He helped me set up the drug drop for the Korean.”
“What did he die of?”
“That’s the other thing. They have no idea. First, they thought it was his ticker. But the doc told me that wasn’t it.”
“What were his symptoms?”
“EMTs said he was struggling to breathe. Burning up. By the time they got him here, he was gone.”
“Where did you meet this guy today?”
“On the West Side.”
“Where?”
“Couple of miles from here. A food mart just off Austin. Why?”
“Where was he before that?”
“K Town. I told him we were cutting out the Korean. He told the Fours. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. What did you say the cop’s first name was?”
“Donnie. Donnie Quin.”
“When are they sending him over to the morgue?”
“Don’t know. Listen, I gotta get back to the Korean’s store.”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Vince.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
Rodriguez tapped me on the shoulder and left. I took a final look at the white sheet and toe tag. Then I left as well.