One of the maxims I’d heard Phoebe use—Lincoln this time—was that a lie stands on one leg, the truth on two. There seemed to be a lot of wobbling going on, and, if not outright lies, at least half-truths that had me scratching my head in confusion. Like why was Frank Droney overseeing the case? Was it really about political careers? Had Flora Nuñez loved Troy Pepper or feared him? Was there another man in her life? Was Pepper a killer or simply a man incapable of convincing anyone otherwise? I hadn’t forgotten what Ms. Parigian had said about the quiet ones. I set the questions aside and drove over to All Saints Hospital. Roland Cote was walking across the visitors’ lot as I was getting out of the car. Seeing me, he came my way, frowning. “What are you doing here, Rasmussen?”
“My bank account’s on life support. I visit when I can.” I nodded toward the entrance. “I’m going to try to visit Warren Sonders. You heard he landed here?”
“I was just up there. He blew out an ulcer. Stress’ll do that. He should’ve just gotten out of town and left Pepper to face his punishment alone.”
I wasn’t going to mix it up with him, but as I started past, I thought of something. “I saw Patrolman Duross at the victim’s funeral earlier.
Was he hoping the real killer would return to the scene of the crime?”
Like any cop, Cote was much happier asking questions than answering them, and adept at bleeding the emotion out of his reactions. He showed nothing.
“Then it must’ve been for the purest of reasons—like you coming over to wish Sonders well.”
He gave it a quarter inch of grin.
I bought some flowers in the lobby shop and took an elevator upstairs. A male nurse at the nurses’ station had me identify myself, then called down to intensive care and directed me there. A middle-aged woman with the manner of friendly reassurance you wanted in a place like that met me. She had a little glass-enclosed office with views of the patient rooms. “He’s resting comfortably now,” she said in response to my question. “We’ve got him on antibiotics and some other things.”
“What’s the outlook?”
“It’s a peptic ulcer that perforated. With abdominal bleeding, we don’t take any chances, but at least it didn’t bleed into the peritoneum. That would be real serious. For now, he’s stable and his signs are good. He’s known of it for some time, I think, but he hasn’t been very careful about treating it. He reminds me of someone in the comic strips. You know, stubborn but likable.”
“Popeye?”
“Crankshaft. You know that one? You can go in and sit if you like. If he wants water, it’s okay for him to have it.”
With the blinds drawn, the room was dim and cool. Sonders lay asleep, tethered with IV tubes and sensor wires. In repose, his face was a wrinkled, half-deflated balloon. He had lost his color since I’d seen him last; there was little contrast between his hair and his skin and the pillowcase. I set the flowers on the windowsill and moved across the rubber tile on soft feet and took a chair by the bed. Pop didn’t stir except for the rise and fall of his breathing. In the semidarkness, with the delicate sounds of the machinery, I felt as if I were on vigil in a submarine. I half-closed my eyes, settling into the rhythms of the place.
At the sounds of movement I looked up. Pop was awake, gazing at
me with an odd, unfocused gaze. As I stirred, he tried to pull away, but there wasn’t anyplace for him to go. “So you’re with them?” he croaked. He sounded as if someone had dumped a spade full of dirt into his throat. I got out of the chair and poured a cup of water from a plastic pitcher and offered it, but he ignored it and went on staring at me peculiarly. “You’re one of ’em, aren’t you?”
“Come again?”
“A cop, right? You’re a cop.”
I realized he was dazed, possibly from whatever they were pumping into him. “Drink this.” He took the flex-straw between his dried lips and sipped. I told him who I was and why I was there. Had to tell him more than once. He finally seemed to get it and relaxed a little, and I did, too. “How are you feeling, old timer?”
“More rested than I have in weeks.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to see if I can get them to move one of these beds into my motor home.”
“I think the deal is if you stay in the bed, you’ve got to do it here.”
He grunted. “That bull working the murder case—whatshisname?”
“Cote. I saw him. What did he want?”
“Probably thought he’d grill me one more time before I took the last chariot to glory.”
I drew the chair closer to the bed. “It’s not like that, though, right?”
“Him with the questions?”
“The other part.”
“An old sinner like me? I’ve got to hang on for spite. Actually, I was half asleep, and I think Cote gave up any idea I’d have answers. Sorry I didn’t recognize you for a minute there.” He arched his bushy eyebrows. “You here to grill me, too?”
“Only if you’re up to it.”
He rolled his head sideways on the pillow and sighed. But some of his color had returned. “Feature it, all these years working my butt to the bone, I finally get a break from the grind by blowing a gut gasket. How is everyone?”
“Concerned about you.”
“Mutual. I don’t suppose anyone told you when they’re gonna spring me?”
“I’m not in that loop. Nicole and Moses are walking point there.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be here if that’s what the docs say I need. But I prefer my own machines and their big winking lights to these contraptions. That’s what keeps me going, not all these tubes and wires and …” He trailed off. “Why are you here?”
I told him I’d been to Flora Nuñez’s funeral. His eyes locked on mine with some of their familiar force for a moment before he sank back into his pillows with a grimace. “I’ve thought about her. I had Nicole send flowers. That can’t have been much fun for you. Any more than seeing Troy Pepper in the joint. He still there?”
“Nothing’s changed, but right now you don’t need to worry about any of it.”
“I’m determined as ever. We run now, they’re right about us. And Pepper is standing under the gallows, as good as hanged.”
I didn’t point out to him that Massachusetts didn’t have a death penalty. There was an electric chair around somewhere, but no one had fired it up in close to sixty years as far as I knew. Of course, no one had died of rabies in that state in that long, either, but it didn’t keep people from worrying about strange-acting skunks and raccoons. Or clowns, for that matter. “About the chat,” I said, “maybe it can keep for another time.”
“No. Now.”
Insisting that he make it brief, I asked him what he could tell me about Ray Embry. Pop shut his eyes and gave his gray-whiskered mouth a pucker. Words came slowly, and I got it that Embry had once been with a circus, one of the biggest, and had traveled with them all over the country and Canada. “Then he got involved with a young woman who ran off from home to travel with him. Well, someone worked up some sort of Mann Act rap against him. It never went nowhere, but it must’ve shook up the management, or wised them up, because he was out of a job the next season. When I met him, a few years later, he was a department store Santa Claus. Funny thing was, he used to be a damn good clown, had trained under some of the best. Good juggler, too. He did this bit with half a dozen flaming torches. He still practices it sometimes. Anyways, I hired him.”
“So what ax is he grinding?”
He craned a questioning look my way. I hadn’t gotten into my plans to meet with the crew that night. Pop said, “He’s like a ballplayer who’s sent down from the majors. Attitude out to here. When he came to work with us, he acted like he should run the whole shootin’ match. He’s smart enough. Hell, I was ready to make him a manager, but he … he rubs people wrong. Somewhere in there, though, is a decent guy. Or was once. But he’s meaned up over the years.”
The nurse came in and saw her patient was awake. “How are we doing this afternoon?” she crooned.
His face crinkled into crabby lines. “We?”
“Good,” she said. She checked the IV drip and gave him some pills to swallow, which he did obediently. When she’d gone, I told him I was going to let him get some sleep. My other questions could wait.
As I moved to the door, he said, “Thanks for the flowers.”
I nodded.
“And sorry for that crack about you being a cop.”
“You’re welcome. You should hear what the cops call me. Rest.”
My cell phone rang ten minutes later. “Are you sitting down?” Ed St. Onge asked.
“I better be. I’m doing forty on the VFW”
“I just got the ballistics back on your exterior decorator. It’s the same nine-millimeter that was used in a drive-by in the Acre in June. No one killed that time, but not for lack of trying. We think it was tied to one of the bangers we’re interested in.”
“That Vanthan character you asked me about?”
“Vanthan Sok. He runs around with a pair of nickel-finish SIG-Sauers, like some cowboy, and loves to light them up. You see any connection to what you’re working on?”
“I can’t see one.”
“Neither can I. Well, I thought you’d like to know, another name to add to your fan club. But seriously, if he crosses your path, don’t go up against him.”
“Part of that’s up to him.”
“I’m not kidding, Raz. He’s a stone killer. You see him, you dime him. The sooner we take him off the street, the easier I’ll breathe.”