Finally, I got to Rachel. I hugged her, her form warm and vibrant in my arms. This, I thought, is the roughest of duties. Amazingly enough, she had not yet reached that point where she was on automatic pilot. She was still actually hearing the words of sympathy from each person, still feeling the loss, the conflict of despair, sadness, along with the good dose of anger we all feel at the dead. How dare you die on me, you rat bastard?
She sobbed in my arms, her face tightening, although her eyes remained dry. The tear ducts can only work so hard before even they give out. But the heart continues.
I felt like hell for her. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, take her away from this grim room. I even found myself with that old familiar burning down below that she’d always fired in me. I had to fight to suppress that one, let me tell you. Nothing like getting frisky at a funeral to get yourself dropped off the A-list at party time.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, pulling away from me.
“What can I do to help you?”
“You can take care of yourself. Be my friend. Come see me after all this is over.”
“You got it,” I said. “No problem.”
I wove through the rest of the line, meeting the relatives and the in-laws, shaking my head in sadness and agreeing that this was indeed a terrible tragedy. Then I took a seat in the chapel about midway down the aisle. I looked around and saw Dr. Collingswood and Dr. Zitin sitting next to each other. James Hughes sat farther back with a group of other medical students. I looked around for LeAnn Gwynn, then realized she was in the back of the chapel with Jackie Bell and a covey of much younger nurses. All we needed was Bubba Hayes to complete the cast, but I doubted if bookies were in the habit of showing up for their customers’ funerals. After all, how could they collect?
Yes, I’d agreed with someone from Conrad’s family in the receiving line: this was a terrible tragedy. But for at least one person, and probably one person who was somewhere in this room, this was not a terrible tragedy.
It was simply and completely a job well done.
19
I can’t decide whether I was born a good liar, or it was simply a skill I acquired over time out of the necessity of need and the tedium of practice. I guess it’s lucky I was born with a sense of moral value as well, because I have no doubt that had I been so inclined, I’d have made a pretty fair grifter.
“This is Dr. Evans, Neurosurgery,” I said to the hospital night operator.
“Oh, yes, Dr. Evans,” she said. “I recognize your voice.”
“I’m trying to locate two residents who should be in the hospital tonight. Do you have any way of checking the scheduling?”
“Why, you know better than that, Dr. Evans. Of course, I do.”
I thought quickly, then laughed. “No, of course, I know you can do it. I meant, have I caught you at a bad time?”
“Oh, no, Doctor. Things are quiet around here tonight. Who are you trying to locate?”
“Doctors Albert Zitin and Jane Collingswood.”
“Please hold.”
I leaned back in my office chair and put my feet up on the desk. Outside, the traffic was finally thinning, and the temperature was taking a slide out of the nineties. Conrad’s funeral had been a long one, what with the drive out to Mount Olivet and all. I’d stayed for the duration. For Rachel’s sake, I’d told myself. Most of the people, though, had chosen to do otherwise. And outside of the family, a couple of TV cameras, and the university hotshots, there probably weren’t twenty people at graveside.
“Dr. Evans?” the pleasant voice came back.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Zitin is not on call tonight. Dr. Collingswood is doing a rotation in E.R.”
“Thank you,” I said, equally pleasant. “I really appreciate your help.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she said, clicking off.
It occurred to me that if the real Gordon Evans ever called this woman, he was going to have an awful time avoiding arrest for impersonating a doctor.
So Dr. Jane’s in E.R. I’ll be damned if I’ll go out and bung up my leg again just to see her. The swelling had gone down almost completely, and I’d now been almost twenty-four hours without a twinge. All that was left were some nasty blue and yellow streaks that would probably be around for at least a month.
I lowered my pair of good legs to the floor and stood up. Down the hall, I could hear a guitar strumming and the sound of voices. Slim and Ray were holding their nightly songwriter’s cocktail hour. I thought I might drop in on them. I hadn’t said much of anything to either of them since the day Rachel Fletcher walked into my office. They were good people; I’d best reconnect with them.
I spread my jacket across the back of the chair and rolled up my shirtsleeves. Casual was the order of the day at Slim and Ray’s office. In fact, I’d be the only one down there out of denim, not to mention the necktie. I was about to leave the office when I heard the squeal of tires and a blaring horn outside.
The corner of the building blocked part of the view, but apparently somebody had taken the curve at Church and Seventh a little too tightly and almost collided with a car illegally parked in the loading zone for the drugstore on the corner. Idiots, I thought, turning away.
Then I looked back.
It was a Lincoln, a long black bear of a car. You didn’t park a car like that; you docked it. Was it the same one that had been in the loading zone the other day? Maybe the one that followed me on the parkway last night? I wasn’t sure, but something set off bells and whistles.
I stood there scanning the car, trying to recognize the driver. But the windows were smoked just enough, and the setting sun was striking the glass at just the right angle. It was impossible to see inside.
If I went down there and knocked on the glass, one of two things would happen. If the person inside was tailing me, then I’d blow his cover, and there was no telling what might happen next. If the guy wasn’t tailing me, he’d just think I was another urban crazy.
I turned away from the window. I knew I’d seen a long black car a couple of times in the past few days. But was it that car? Where had I seen it before? If I could only remember …
The boys down the hall struck up another tune. Slim and Ray’s office looked directly out the front of the building. I could keep an eye on the Lincoln from their window even better.
I walked down the hall. Their door was cracked, but I rapped a couple of times with my knuckles.
“Yo!” a voice inside yelled, halting the strumming of guitars.
“Yo, yourself,” I said, stepping in.
“Hey, Harry, you dirty rascal. Where have you been, boy?” Ray jumped up from a desk with his guitar in his left hand. He stuck his right hand out and jerked mine like a pump handle.
“Must be a special night,” I said. “You’ve got the Martin out.”
Ray’s prized possession was a thirty-year-old Martin D-28. It was a work of art, as preserved and cared for as the day it was brand-new. Even a musically ignorant, tone-deaf brick like me knew it was a classic.
“Yeah, we been working on this new song. Think it’s going to be our next hit, don’t you, Slim?”
Slim looked up from the strings of his Ovation, smiled at me, and shook his head. Slim was decidedly not the lyricist in this team. I doubt I’d heard him say twenty-five words in the months that I’d known him.
There were four other people as well crammed into the tiny, two-room office: a bleached blonde in worn jeans and a T-shirt, two other cowboys, and a girl who looked maybe sixteen. I tried to figure out who was with whom, without any luck. The woman had an old, beat-to-hell guitar with nylon strings. Cowboy No. 1 had a shirt pocket full of harmonicas, and Cowboy No. 2 had a fiddle.
A bucket full of longnecks in ice cubes sat on the floor.
“Mind if I listen?” I asked.
“You know better than that, boy,” Ray said. “And grab that one on the left. It’s got your name on it.”