“Do I?” I made sure Jerry was still watching from his window.
“Detective Kelsey is…” She paused to think. “Emotionally challenged.”
“Does that mean he’s a lunatic?”
“No.” She had to think again, and whatever was going on in her thoughts made her seem angry, exasperated. “He isn’t a lunatic. He just needs to be protected. Jerry is an essential witness and I need to keep an eye on him. He doesn’t always know what he’s saying.”
“He seems lucid enough.”
“He thought you were a decorator, Miss MacGowen. Yesterday he got lost coming home from the store.”
“Yesterday, who did he think you were?”
“He didn’t recognize me at all.” Tears welled in her eyes. An odd reaction, I thought. And then I began to feel bad for picking on her. Not real bad, just sort of bad.
“I’m offering you some advice,” I said, “because I think someone is using you badly. That raggedy old cop isn’t your responsibility. If you think he can’t take care of himself, then find his family or call the social services people at the police department. But stay away from him until this case is resolved.”
She sniffled a little. If I could make her cry, then any vulture in court, a witness like Mike for instance, would shred her. I hoped she had a second career in mind when this one collapsed.
I got into the car and, after I had buckled in Guido to keep him from falling out, I gave Miller a parting word. “I fully intend to file on you. There is too much at stake for me to be nice about it. I hope you do spring Conklin. And I hope you win a big-time wrongful imprisonment case against the police in civil court. And I hope you get the usual thirty percent cut out of it, because Mike Flint could use the money.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Mike is going to sue you for defamation, libel, slander, and just for being too naive to be out on the streets alone. Don’t bother to put your fee check in the bank. Endorse it straight over to Mike.” I started the car and drove off, leaving her to fend off a flurry of loose gravel.
I said to Guido, “Jennifer Miller seems bright enough. So why is she behaving so stupidly?”
His only response was a snore. I’ve never known Guido to snore. Over a period of some hours he had consumed most of three beers and a quantity of scotch. Usually, he can hold his drink. Then I began to feel a little guilty. I had kept him out all night a couple of nights ago and worked him hard all day, in the heat. He was in good shape, but maybe I had worn him out.
The news station on the radio was taking call-ins commenting about the continuing demonstration in front of Parker Center. The easy rock station was full of commercials, the classical station was interviewing an aged diva. I played with the tuner until I found classic oldies, turned the volume low, opened all the windows, and avoided fast stops so I wouldn’t awaken Guido.
Guido didn’t stir all the way out Santa Monica Boulevard and up Highland. I missed his company, maybe, but I wasn’t concerned about him until I stopped in front of his house and tried to shake him awake. I couldn’t rouse him.
“Guido,” I said. “You’re home. Quit fooling around.” I lifted his eyelid. His pupils were fully dilated. It was too bright a day for fully dilated pupils even if he had his eyes closed. His breathing was shallow but regular, his pulse all right. He had a flush. Who didn’t? It was a hundred degrees out.
I fished his keys out of his pocket, went into his house for some cold water and a wet towel. When I came back he hadn’t moved, but his breathing sounded funny to me. I wiped his face with the towel and drank the water. The car was an oven. I had to get him inside where it was cooler.
Guido is about my size, but he’s all muscle. I managed to hoist him out of his seat and get him over my shoulders fire-rescue style. He was so heavy-dead weight-that I nearly fell three or four times before I got him into the house and laid him on the cool Mexican tile floor. My fingers had made deep red marks on his arms where I held him, but he never complained or groaned or even sighed in my ear. I was scared to the edge of stupid panic.
My strained back muscles hurt too much to straighten, so I crawled to the telephone, dialed 911, and asked for paramedics. While I waited for them, I sat on the floor beside Guido, talking to him, holding him, listening to his chest, waiting until I had to help him breathe, going over in my mind the routine for CPR. I kept trying to get him to wake up.
The paramedics arrived within five minutes, first an ambulance with a two-man crew, backed up by a fire truck. I ran out to meet them, to urge them to hurry. The first paramedic was out of the ambulance before it came to a full stop. He was a big man, about my age, in midnight-blue uniform and yellow rubber gloves.
“What happened?” he asked as we ran back inside.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He fell asleep in the car. I can’t wake him.”
The paramedic knelt beside Guido and began taking vital signs. He sniffed Guido’s breath.
“How much did he have to drink?”
“Not enough to pass out,” I said, feeling defensive. “Some scotch and a couple of beers.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
By then the second paramedic had come in. “O.D.?” he asked before he had even looked at Guido.
“She says not.”
“Guido doesn’t do drugs,” I said, not adding any more or asking whether they considered marijuana consumed with banana nut ice cream now and then to be drugs. “He rarely even takes aspirin.”
A couple of the firemen, massive men, sauntered in out of the heat to look on with vague curiosity. I overheard “O.D.” in their quiet conversation.
“Look,” I said, rising to my knees, “he didn’t take any drugs. He had a couple of beers-two and a half beers stretched over several hours. Then he had a scotch, a tall one, and part of a second. He was fine when we got in the car. A little wobbly on his feet, but he was lucid.”
Sometimes a single word hits you like a dictionary. Jerry Kelsey seemed lucid. I remembered holding a glass of scotch like a prop while I tried to get something useful out of him. Guido drank his scotch. One tall one and part of a second.
Chapter 16
“Huevos rancheros everywhere,” I said. Guido was nearly the same color as the hospital sheets. Maybe paler. “Lab analysis of your stomach contents may take a week.”
“S’okay. I’m not going anywhere.” The plastic drainage tube down his throat made him difficult to understand. “I’m going to sleep for a week.”
“Not in the hospital you’re not,” I said. “At these rates, my credit card will only keep you here through tomorrow. If you still want to sleep after that, I’ll get you a suite at the Four Seasons. Be cheaper, and they have cable.”
He managed to smile. “I woke up, saw where I was, thought you’d driven us through a brick wall. Thought I was dying.”
“Not yet, my friend. We still have things to do.” I had an obstruction in my own throat, a logjam of emotions. I felt relief that he was all right and guilt that I may have put him in harm’s way. And I felt bereft. Whenever any thought of losing Guido managed to rise through all the fuss involved in getting him to the hospital, signed in, pumped out, I felt nearly overwhelmed with sadness. I gripped his icy fingers.
“I called your mom,” I said. “She’s on her way.”
“I want to sleep some more.” He yawned. “My throat hurts. Let me sleep.”
“Go ahead.” I smoothed his blanket up under his chin and stayed beside him until he was softly snoring again. The doctor’s best guess was that he had taken a heavy barbiturate. Not good in combination with alcohol. The police were pursuing the source. I was clear what had happened, the question was, why?
I waited until Guido’s mother arrived, explained the situation to her as well as I could, and then I left her in charge of further fussing and pillow fluffing.