27

The hereafter came highly overrated. From what I heard in Sunday school, I expected trumpet symphonies, choirs of boy sopranos, angels dancing on the heads of pins, and murals on the order of the Sistine Chapel. I got public address pagings, clattering gurneys, and neutral beige walls. My celestial-issue robe exposed my backside. The only angel in the vicinity didn’t dance on a pin, she jabbed me with it. My halo had the shape of a bedpan. My white cloud lumped on the edges and sagged in the middle. Saint Peter’s breath reeked of Alpo.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said. His balloon wrapped around the high-wattage stainless steel overhead light fixture and melted into a circle of white icicles.

“Bulldog?”

“Unless you know another sucker willing to hang around City General for an hour while sawbones dig six ounces of lead out of your worthless carcass.” He opened his get-well present, a two-pound box of kibble. He removed a hidden fifth of gin. “You’re a lucky pug. Your redheaded buddy kept you pumping with mouth-to-mouth until the ambulance arrived.”

A classic case of good news, bad news. I’m alive, but filled to the gills with bunny breath. “You find the women?”

“Just where you suspected.” He slipped my glucose bottle out of its wire holder and replaced it with his smuggled crock of liquified juniper berries. “Roped to a railroad track.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“So, almost, did the women. We got their ropes off less than thirty seconds before the four-oh-five freight whistled through.” He plugged my IV tube into the hooch, instantly correcting my blood-to-alcohol imbalance.

“They all right?”

“Tired, scared, cold. A quack here at the hospital’s checking them for permanent damage. I doubt he’ll find any.” Bascomb sat on a slat wooden chair. He leaned back, balancing on the chair’s two hind legs, with his hindquarters stretched out on the end of my bed.

I pulled the hose off my needle, leaked gin into a specimen bottle, and handed it to him.

“I’m on duty.” He took it anyway and tossed it back. He yanked out the squared-off corner of my bed sheet and used it to wipe his mouth. “I had a long, intensive heart-to-heart this afternoon with your brother-in-law, Ferd Flatfoot.”

“Good thing I’m in a hospital.” I reconnected myself to my liquid nourishment. “I got a hunch you’re about to give me a pain. “

“Flatfoot’s a tough little monkey, no pun intended. I had to pull rank and my brass knuckles to persuade him to hand this over.” Bascomb held up a clear cellophane evidence envelope containing a circular spool wound with a thin strip of film. “Photographed in total darkness by one Louise Wrightliter, but surprisingly illuminating, nevertheless. I gave it a gander while you were in surgery.”

“I bet you loved what you saw.”

“Positive music to my eyes.” He bounced the film in his paw. “I been waiting my whole career to nail you on a rap of this magnitude.”

I held out my wrists a shackle’s length apart. One already sported a hospital bracelet inscribed with my name, age, height, weight, blood type, and the fact that I carried no medical insurance. “What are you waiting for?”

Bascomb stuck a pencil through the spool’s center hole. He yanked the film. It rolled off the reel and piled up in a tangled heap on the floor. “Unfortunately for me, your buddy supported your story. He swore he heard Potts confess to committing a quadruple dip: Enigman, LeTuit, Dodger Rabbit, and Baby Herman.”

“You believe him? A friend of mine? Will wonders never cease?”

“Can any notions you might be harboring that I’m turning soft, Valiant.” The last of the film hit the linoleum. Bascomb pinched the empty spool to a stop. He gathered up the snarled film and dropped it into the sink. “For two cents, I’d charge your sidekick with perjury and toss him in the cell next to yours. Lucky for you both, the museum guard corroborates. He heard Potts’s confession, too.”

“We talking about the same gent? Ancient sucker? Deaf, dumb, and blind? Suffers from chronic narcolepsy?”

“That’s where he fooled you, Valiant. That old bucket’s sharp as a tack. Doesn’t miss a trick.” Hard to tell exactly, since Bascomb never opens his eyes more than a slit, but I swear he winked. “Based on the overwhelming weight of accumulated evidence, I’m satisfied that Potts murdered the four stiffs in question. Hence, I’m declaring this case closed. Which means you’re off the hook, Valiant. And your rabbit friend, too. Good thing, since I really get a tickle out of that chowder-head. Besides, it would have kicked the slats out from under the value of his autograph If I had to execute him for murder.” Bascomb ignited a match. He threw it on top of the film. The damning evidence went up in flames, burning hot and bright.

Bascomb bit the end off a cheap cigar. He leaned in close to the conflagration and sucked his stogie to life.

The nurse, my needle-jabbing angel in white, entered my room on the run. “No smoking allowed in here, Officer,” she said. “How do you expect this man to get well?”

“I got a sneaky suspicion he’s feeling better already.” Bascomb turned on the water and washed my problems down the drain.

My bed quaked. I opened my eyes to find Bunk Thunker kicking the leg. “Visiting hours are over,” I told him.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Valiant. If I had my way, they’d quarantine this room ‘til doomsday and you along with it.” He searched his pockets by patting them hard. “I brought somebody who wants to see you. Though I can’t imagine why.”

Little Jo emerged from behind his cigarette pack just ahead of a hard smack. She wore a dress cut out of sterile gauze and belted with a Band-Aid. She’d tucked her hair into a skullcap made from the amputated thumb of a rubber surgical glove. Dabbings of Mercurochrome called attention to the facial abrasions around her mouth and cheeks. Except for those, and the string burns on her wrists and ankles, she appeared none the worse for wear.

“Hi-yah, Toots,” I said. “Good to see you. You okay? Doc give you a clean bill of health?”

“Oh, Eddie, I’m fine.” A tear the size of a mustard seed rolled off her eyelash. “But just look at you. You poor wounded dear. How heroic of you. Risking your life to help a friend.” She slid down the center gully of my mattress, crawled up to my head, kneeled on my pillow, and smooched me on the cheek. “I was worried beyond belief when Sergeant Bascomb told me you’d been shot. I was afraid I’d never see you again.” Her words came out in the fine, delicate line used by Victorian ladies to pen love letters.

“Aw,” gagged Thunker, jamming a wooden tongue depressor down his throat, “ain’t that sweet.” He placed his hand over his heart but only to pull out his shirt pocket. “Come on, Tootsie. Hop back in. I ain’t got time or the stomach for any more kootchie-coo. “

She combed her fingers through my eyebrows. If it’s all the same to you, Officer, I’ll stay here with Eddie.”

Thunker shrugged. “No accounting for taste.” He left us to our own devices.

Little Jo graced my mouth with a passionate smacker. The astringent taste of her antiseptic tingled my lips. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I should have asked you first.” She crawled under my blanket. “Do you care if I stay and nurse you back to health?”

With the type of first aid she administered, I didn’t mind one bit.