City Hospital was a chaos of the suffering, the ill, and their anxious families. An unsettling din of pain and disease and succor oppressively droned. The heat amplified the misery; the place smelled of sweat and urine.
Frings pushed through crowds arrayed around the entrance, flashed his press pass at a security guard who was willing to admit anyone with the nerve to bluff him; passed through the double swinging doors into the sudden quiet of an actual ward. The hallway smelled of bleach and sweat and the yellow-tiled walls were damp with the humidity. Frings stopped an exhausted nurse with dark rings under her eyes and got directions to F ward, where Wayne was roomed.
He trotted down a hall, sliding by nurses and broad-shouldered orderlies; took a left turn into another hall, empty but for a couple of younger guys in suits, looking at a collection of pills one held in his hand. They watched Frings warily as he passed. He took another turn and found the elevator bank.
Fourth floor. A pair of nurses chatted behind a desk blocking the way from the elevator to F ward. They glanced briefly at Frings and went back to whatever it was that they were doing. He asked for Wayne’s room and the younger of the two jerked a thumb down the hall and said to look for the room with the cops outside. Frings had hoped to beat the cops to Wayne, when he might have had a chance to get Wayne to talk. With other cops around, there was no way. Defeat.
Frings found an alley in the working-class neighborhood, away from where kids in sleeveless undershirts threw a ragged baseball and women talked, the short sleeves of their dresses rolled up to their shoulders, hair pinned up, necks exposed to whatever wind blew through the streets. He found a reefer in his jacket pocket and lit it with a match scraped across the sole of his shoe. The smoke tasted green and alive, and Frings waited for his frustrations to melt away.
Minutes passed. His body relaxed. Frings looked down with mild surprise to see that he still held the lit reefer. He stubbed the cherry on the brick wall and dropped what remained into the inside pocket of his jacket. He left the alley, a destination in mind but in no real hurry. A couple of calls to the Gazette had given him Wayne’s home address, and he’d written the man a short note, letting Wayne know that he’d been pegged for the Uhuru Community assaults.
Frings walked with his hands in his pockets, taking in the scene on the street, the voices coming from open windows. Two hoods sat on a stoop, talking at high volume and petting a thick-necked dog with a chain collar. A half dozen girls—somewhere in their teens—stood in an entranceway, gossiping and laughing. An old man sat in a wheelchair at the top of a stoop, watching the street, expressionless.
Wayne’s building was on a nice enough block, modest apartment buildings on either side of the street. The door to Wayne’s building was locked and Frings didn’t see anyone inside. Several dozen blackbirds perched on an electrical wire overhead and screamed at the sky.
Frings lit a cigarette and walked west until he found a florist. He bought a five-dollar bouquet and walked back to Wayne’s building. He had to wait for fifteen minutes before an elderly woman pushing a small cart filled with groceries approached the door.
Frings pulled a slip of paper with Wayne’s address on it out of his pocket and put on his best smile. “Excuse me, ma’am. Does Sergeant Ed Wayne live in this building?”
The old woman was frail, her back stooped. She narrowed her eyes. “Sergeant Wayne?”
“That’s right.” Frings made a show of studying the slip of paper. “This is the address they gave me. Policemen’s Beneficent League, sending flowers, what with Sergeant Wayne in the hospital.”
“In the hospital?” The woman seemed unimpressed.
“Assaulted in the line of duty, I hear.”
She nodded. “That’s too bad, I suppose. Not the best of the tenants, Sergeant Wayne. But that’s a bad business.” She took a set of keys from her purse. Frings held the door for her as she pushed her cart past the threshold.
The woman retreated down the hall, shaking her head and making a tutting sound.
The lobby was clean and well lit, if modest. Wayne’s apartment was on the fourth of six floors, and Frings took the stairs. He heard dogs growling behind the door on the third-floor landing, took the remaining stairs two at a time.
Two doors were set into each side of the short hall on the fourth floor. Frings found Wayne’s door and paused, staring at some kind of marking on the door—a skull under a top hat. He thought of the paintings in the shanties and registered the dissonance of this symbol on Wayne’s door. Or maybe it had been put there by somebody else, raising different, unsettling questions.
He reached out to touch the graffiti, stopped himself for no real reason, and then, as he had originally come here to do, stooped to slide the note through the crack under the door. He was surprised to hear the sound of a radio inside, and footsteps. Frings stood. He hadn’t even considered that Wayne might be married, that someone else might be home. He pocketed his note and knocked.
The door was answered by a woman, cute face in a round sort of way, her hair tied back in a scarf, shabby summer dress that fit a little too tight, as if she’d bought it ten pounds ago. She looked tired and Frings thought that maybe she hadn’t slept that night, waiting for her husband to return.
“Can I help you?”
He smiled. “My name is Frank Frings. With the Gazette.” He handed her the flowers.
“I’ve heard of you,” she said, brightening a little and taking the flowers.
“Your husband’s fine,” Frings assured her. “Has he been in touch with you?”
“He’s at the hospital. But you probably know that.”
“That’s right. I’m very sorry that it happened. I’m glad that he’ll be okay.” He held her eyes. “Listen, it would be great for me to get a chance to speak with him. I just need to get his perspective on a couple of things; make sure he gets his story out.”
“What story?” She wasn’t suspicious, just curious.
“I’d rather wait to talk to him,” Frings said, flashing an apologetic smile. “I’d be obliged if you’d give him this note.”
She took the note and looked at it, turning it over, but not opening it. “Okay.”
“I appreciate that.” He turned to leave.
She laughed a little self-consciously. “Do all you Gazette people bring flowers?”
Frings stopped. “What’s that?”
“Do all you people bring flowers?” She reached into a pocket in her dress. “This guy brought flowers, too.” She handed him a card.
Art Deyna.