Ghost of a Flea Read Online Free Page B

like. “Anyhow, Tony Colado snagged a cake half the size of a football field from his uncle’s bakery, a deli a lot of the guys eat at up on Magazine kicked in a tray of sandwiches, like that. Whole thing ran maybe five in the afternoon to eight, eight-thirty.”
    Automatic doors from the ICU sprang open and a young man in blue scrubs ambled through. The scrubs, probably the largest available, struggled to cover the man’s chest and bulky shoulders. Weightless blond hair clung to his scalp like damp flower petals; a tiny silver and blue-enamel cross hung from one ear. Beckoning for me to come along, Santos went to meet him.
    “Dr. Lieber,” he said. “This is Lew Griffin, he and the Captain go way back.”
    Don’s rank and title had changed several times over the years. When he first took the job, not too long after we met, he’d been chief of detectives and a captain. Then sometime in the Seventies the department kicked him up to major. Twenty years later he’d become, at least briefly, maybe permanently—by this time I’d lost track, and he probably had too—an assistant superintendent. But cops don’t take to change any better than they do to handshakes and citizens knowing things about them, and for most of the men he worked with, those to whom he wasn’t just Walsh, he’d remained the Captain.
    Dr. Lieber held out hands that looked like a steelworker’s and we shook.
    “There’s no real change, sir. Vital signs are stable, the bleeding’s under control. He had developed, as I told you before, a secondary pneumothorax—free air in the chest, and hardly surprising in cases like this—but that’s been taken care of. He’s breathing on his own, without difficulty, though we’re keeping him on the ventilator as a precaution.”
    “Is he conscious?”
    “Not yet. Everything considered, we’d just as soon he’d stay under a while longer. The rabbit puts his head up, I’ll—”
    “Rabbit?”
    “Sorry, it’s been a long day. Just something we say all the time around here, among ourselves: that our job in ER is to pull rabbits out of hats and sometimes they don’t even give us the hat. What I meant, first time there is a change, I’ll let you know. Or if I’m not available, the resident on call will.”
    “Thank you.”
    “No need to. It’s my job. I take the job seriously. So, apparently, did your friend in there.”
    Dr. Lieber turned and, pushing the doors open, went back into the ICU. The other cops immediately came over. Santos told them what had been said, then the two of us stepped away. We stood near the wall, in a narrow channel bounded by the ICU doors and an unmanned information desk, looking out. Beyond our dull oblong of an island, visitors and hospital personnel swarmed everywhere, pushing carts, carrying flowers and paper bags of belongings, rubbing at eyes or the backs of necks, embracing. The cover of brochures stacked on a table nearby read Are you ready for Him?
    “Walsh stopped on the way home, at a Circle K just around the corner from his apartment. He went in, the guys were already there. He pulled some milk out of the cooler, started toward the register, then went back and got a six-pack. The store owner says he could see him staring into the glass door like he was trying to decide what kind of beer. Afterwards he figured that was why Walsh went after the beer in the first place—just so he could take a look around, without having it be obvious.
    “There’s two of them, one guy standing over by the magazines while the other one pretends he’s playing this video game. Only there’s no noise from the game machine, see, and it’s like all of a sudden the one standing there by the machine, he’s the one with the gun, thinks of this and starts getting nervous. Walsh and this guy start walking toward the register at the same time. The guy’s reaching in under his jacket for the piece when Walsh says, Hey buddy, have a beer, and chunks the six-pack right at him. Guy