I smiled too, like that’s where I wanted to be.
“As for you,” he said to Lucinda, “I’d keep away from this guy. He just blew his only chance.”
Lucinda put her hand on my thigh, squeezed, and said nothing.
The van stopped and the back door opened. We’d driven in a circle and were where we’d started. The woman in front handed the manila envelope back to the lead man. He glanced at it and handed it to me.
We climbed out, the door slammed, and the van drove west for a block and disappeared around a corner.
Lucinda looked at me. “Why’d they let you go?”
I shook my head. “Why’d they give me Bill’s envelope?”
“Maybe they want you to keep doing what you’re doing.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said.
She laughed uncertainly.
“I don’t,” I said.
“Come on,” she said. We crossed the street and stepped into the cold shade of the parking garage.
My cell phone rang. Lucinda and I jumped. I flipped the phone open, said hello.
It was Raj. “Where the hell are you?” he said.
“Why?”
He backed off. “I saw you at Daley Plaza. Then you were gone.”
I wondered what he’d seen. If he’d seen us following Bill out of the Plaza, that would be trouble. If he’d seen the FBI agents shadowing me, that would be more. “I got tired of the noise and left.”
“Pretty woman you were hanging with. Does your ex-wife know about her?”
“What do you want, Raj?”
“Change of plans. Monroe wants to meet this morning.”
“I’m not available.”
“Ten thirty at The Spa Club.”
“Sorry. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
He sounded annoyed. “You’ve got something more important?”
“Than seeing you? Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
ELEVEN
JASON HAD A FOURTH-FLOOR room in Children’s Memorial on Fullerton. The IV stand had a sock puppet over the top bar. Stickers of Spider-Man, Bart Simpson, and other cartoon characters covered the sides of the monitors. Painters had striped the white walls with yellow, red, and blue. In a lounge at the end of the corridor, a television was set to the Cartoon Network. But under every smiling face, you knew there was pain.
When I went in, Jason was lying in a hospital bed adjusted a quarter off horizontal, like a deck chair positioned to take in the afternoon sun. The television in his room was tuned to an animal show called Wild Rescues, which was doing a segment on koala kidnapping.
A doctor was examining Jason.
Mom sat in a chair by the window.
Jason grinned when he saw me. He was a tall, skinny eleven-year-old, and he wore a blue-dotted hospital gown. As usual, he needed a haircut. Mom got up and came to me, gave me a long hug, whispered, “Joseph,” like I was a wild kid who’d finally fallen asleep. She was pushing seventy but normally looked fifty-five. Today she looked eighty. I wondered if I was responsible.
Jason tried to sit up but the doctor, whose tag identified him as Elijah Abassi, said, “Whoa, not yet, young man.”
I went to the bed and handed Jason a bag with an iPod in it. “To pass the time until they let you out of here,” I said.
He plugged it into his ears. “Sounds like a singing pirate,” he said.
“Tom Waits.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
Mom moved over to me and put her hand on my arm like she needed to touch me to make sure I was real and solid and safe. I knew how she felt. I put my arm around her shoulders and hugged her.
I asked the doctor, “How long until you spring him?”
The doctor shrugged. “Another day or two. Possibly three.”
“For an appendectomy?”
“For a postoperative infection.”
“What happened?”
“It’s not unusual, especially when the appendicitis is as far advanced as it was in Jason. The antibiotics seem to have it under control now.”
“How far advanced was it?”
Another shrug. “Another hour or two, the appendix would have ruptured.”
I turned to Mom. “Why didn’t you get him here earlier?”
Her face lost color and she moved away. “Don’t-” Her anger surprised me. “You were in jail,” she said. “Jason was upset. When he said his stomach hurt, I thought-” She broke off.
I realized that she’d been as scared for Jason as I was. “I understand,” I said, as gentle as I could manage.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You were in jail. I don’t like the work you do but I say nothing. You make your own decisions. But you’re also my boy and I worry. My stomach hurt.” She turned to Jason. “And then this happened.”
I went to her but she pulled into herself and glared. She said, “No,” and walked out of the room.
Jason looked at me. “You screwed up.”
“That’s a first.”
He laughed, then clutched his side. “Ow.”
The doctor said, “When we release Jason, who will be caring for him?”
“My mom, at first,” I said.
“Good.” He followed Mom out of the room.
I pulled a chair to the side of Jason’s bed and sat. “How’re you feeling?” I said.
He gave me his grin. “I’m okay.”
I figured that was a lie but I didn’t push him on it.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” He said it like a question.
“No, it wasn’t. But I’m sorry anyway.”
He pushed himself onto his elbows, winced, lowered himself. “Are you going back to jail?”
I shook my head. “They had me as a witness so they could talk to me any time they wanted. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“The news said you shot a policeman.”
“The policeman was threatening to shoot at other policemen. I shot to stop him.”
He looked unsure but said, “Good.”
There was a gentle knock at the door-polite, the way you knock when you know you’re interrupting something but want to come in anyway.
Corrine stepped in. I’d never managed to call her but she came to me and gave me a quick kiss like I’d never made a bad move in my life. In the last couple of years she’d gotten thick in the hips, and her long black hair was streaked with gray. But I liked to look at her. She dropped a brown paper bag on Jason’s bed and said to him in a fake whisper, “Dirty magazines. Don’t tell your uncle.”
Jason ripped open the bag. It held three magazines-Games, Skateboarding, and Powerboat. “I don’t skateboard, but thanks,” he said.
We sat and talked about the Chicago parks that would be best for skateboarding if he ever started. We debated which powerboats would be good for fishing if we happened to move to an ocean-side village south of the Florida border. After awhile, Jason closed his eyes and drifted to sleep.
Corrine and I sat some more and watched him breathe, then stood and slipped out of the room.
The corridor was white and gleaming and quiet. A red line was painted down the middle of the white tile floor for busy times when the staff needed to divide the corridor into lanes.
Mom was standing outside Jason’s door with a cup of tea.
I touched Corrine’s elbow and said, “Give me a minute, okay?”
Corrine walked to the nurses’ station. Mom looked up at me and said, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” I said. “You were right. I was feeling bad that I wasn’t here for Jason, so-”
“I know,” she said.
“He’s looking good. Thanks for taking care of him.”
She smiled as if to say, What else would I do?
For a moment, we stood without talking. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee with Corrine,” I said.
Mom nodded. “Tell me that you’re innocent.”
She knew I wasn’t, not in the bigger sense. I said, “I’m innocent.”
She said, “Is this over?”
I didn’t like to lie to her. “Yeah, it’s over,” I said.