“Don’t get up, Mr. McKnight,” a voice said. “Please, just stay right there.”
I blinked a few more times. Then I saw a face. It looked familiar.
“Do you know who you are?” the voice said.
“What?”
“Your name. Tell me your name.”
“McKnight. You just said it. My name is Alex McKnight.”
“Okay, good. What day is it?”
“I don’t know.” I tried to sit up again. The hands kept me down.
“Please, Mr. McKnight. You have to lie still.”
Everything else started to come into focus. The white ceiling, the fluorescent lights. I was in a hospital room. The doctor was looking at a medical file. He had a white coat on, and a stethoscope hanging around his neck. He had a beard. I knew this man.
“What happened?” I said. “How did I get here?”
“You tell me,” he said. “Someone brought you into the emergency room. The man said he almost ran over you.”
“Where have I seen you before?”
“My name is Doctor Glenn. I treated you once before. That time it was cracked ribs and a collapsed lung. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” That meant I was in War Memorial, on Os-born. I was just a few blocks away from the church.
“This time it’s your head. Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“It’s all kinda fuzzy, Doc.”
“I bet.” He held his pen in front of my face and moved it from side to side. I followed it with my eyes. He seemed satisfied and went back to his notes.
“Do I have a concussion?”
He looked up at me. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Grade three, Mr. McKnight. Do you know what that means?”
“I’ll be sitting out a few games.”
“You have a hairline fracture in your right eye orbital. Another hairline fracture in your cheekbone. The cut above your eyebrow took twenty-seven stitches, ten internal and seventeen external. And you have fifteen stitches in the back of your head.”
I reached up and felt the bandages on my head. “What about the rest of me?”
“You have bruises all over your torso, but no broken ribs this time. I guess that’s the good news.”
“Some of my bottom teeth feel a little loose.”
“They may tighten up on their own,” he said. “If they don’t, you’ll have to see your dentist.”
“So aside from all that, I’m just fine.”
He shook his head and flipped a page. “I see we found a little something in your chest last time,” he said.
“The bullet. That was from a long time ago.”
“The eighties, you told me.”
“Yes.”
“I believe I asked you then if you’d been having your annual chest X-ray, to make sure the bullet hasn’t migrated.”
“Doctor, can we talk about this later? No offense, but your voice is like a drill in my head right now.”
“Everything’s going to hurt for a few days,” he said. “Sounds, lights, you name it. Now that you’re awake, we can start some medication.”
“How long am I gonna be here?”
“At least two days,” he said. “Maybe three. Is there somebody you’d like me to contact?”
I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said. I gave him two names-Vinnie LeBlanc and Leon Prudell, along with the phone numbers. I thought about adding Natalie to the list for about a second and a half, but then I thought, no way. No way in hell.
“I’ll send the nurse in with the meds,” he said. “In the meantime, try not to move. The police should be here in a few minutes.”
“Doctor-”
“This one’s automatic,” he said. He closed the file and tucked it under his arm. “Last time, what did you tell me? You hurt yourself skiing?”
“I think I might have said sledding.”
“Yeah, well, I let it go then. I probably shouldn’t have. This time, somebody really did a number on you, Mr. McKnight. I’m not just going to send you back out there. Even if I wanted to, the law wouldn’t let me.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.” I put my head back on the pillow and immediately regretted it. Damn, it hurt to do anything. Anything at all. I looked over at the other bed in the room. It was empty. A dark television screen looked down at me from just below the ceiling. I thought about turning it on, but no, I was sure watching television would hurt, too.
My clothes. Where were they? I was wearing a paper hospital gown beneath the covers. God, I hated hospitals. Every bad thing in my life had something to do with a hospital. Watching my mother die when I was a kid, and then my father many years later. Being older didn’t make it any easier. Then when I got shot. Lying there with all those tubes stuck in me, my soon-to-be-ex wife looking down at me and then around the room, like she was thinking of escaping out the window.
And somewhere in that same hospital, on that hot summer day way back when in Detroit, in the basement, my partner Franklin was lying on a bed of cold steel, a white sheet over his head.
Yeah, I hated hospitals. The last time around, I had promised myself I would never spend one minute in a hospital again. Yet here I was.
A nurse came in and gave me some drugs. I asked her to help me up so I could use the bathroom. She told me I’d be better off with the little urinal bottle, but I disagreed with her right up until I actually tried to sit up straight. “Bring on the bottle,” I said. Even using that hurt.
A little later, Chief Maven appeared at the door, just to make the day complete. “You realize,” he said as he came in, “this is the third time I’ve seen you in a hospital bed.”
“And it never loses its magic.”
“Cut the crap, McKnight. What happened?”
“You didn’t have to come over here yourself,” I said. “You could have sent an officer.”
“No, this one I had to see for myself. What did you do this time?”
“I don’t think I did anything, Chief. I think it was all done to me, you know what I mean?”
“Who are we talking about?”
I hesitated.
“Come on,” he said. “They found you on Portage Avenue, right in front of St. Mary’s. Just a couple of hours after Simon Grant’s funeral.”
“You know how Catholic funerals are. They can get a little rough.”
He didn’t smile. “McKnight, God damn you,” he said, moving closer. “Were you listening when I told you to leave that family alone?”
“I actually was, yes.”
“Then what the hell were you doing there?”
I started to feel dizzy again. I closed my eyes and waited for it to pass. “Chief, I went to the hotel and I asked about Chris Woolsey. He was the doorman that night, the night Mr. Grant died. I had no idea that he was the man’s grandson. Then later, I stopped by his parents’ house-”
“Why did you do that?”
“I told you, I just wanted to talk to him.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, and then?”
“I figured I’d just go to the funeral, to pay my respects. That’s when I found out Mrs. Woolsey was Simon Grant’s daughter.”
“Then the Grant brothers beat the living shit out of you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I know those boys,” he said. “Believe me.”
“Yeah, well, now I know them, too.”
“Listen,” he said, “did it ever occur to you that maybe I was looking out for you when I told you to stay away?”
“No. Not really.”
“I’m serious, McKnight. I know you think I’m just a hard-ass, but for once in your life did it occur to you that I was trying to do you a favor?”
“No, Chief.”
“Look at you,” he said. “God damn it. Nobody deserves to get beaten up like you did, McKnight. Nobody.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. He was starting to sound almost human.
“Did they say anything to you? Did they give you any reason?”
“I’m trying to remember. They were saying something like… Like, how’s this, not the same as roughing up an old man, eh?”
“They said that?”
“Something like that. It’s a little fuzzy.”