He looked up at me, all the world the likeness of some venerated Caesar and just as forgiving. “The shotgun wound to your leg has healed moderately well?”
“Yep.”
“No lingering symptoms from pneumonia from drowning?”
“I didn’t really drown.”
His voice was sharp. “When you have to be resuscitated, you drowned.”
“Okay.”
“Take off your coat.”
I did, and he took my left hand and examined the scar tissue. He held my upper arm and turned my forearm, rotating the elbow. “Does this hurt?”
I lied. “No.”
He unsnapped my cuff, raised the sleeve of my shirt, and looked more closely at the elbow itself. “You have some swelling here, under the scar tissue.”
I lied again. I didn’t usually lie, but with the Doc it had become a habit. “I’ve always had that.”
He shook his head and manipulated my shoulder. It sounded gravelly like Geo Stewart’s. “The shoulder?”
“It feels great.”
“It doesn’t feel great to me, and it doesn’t sound so good either.” He frowned as he compressed the joint and lifted my arm. “How’s that?”
It actually hurt like hell, so I pulled my arm loose. “Not so great, which is why I’ve dropped mandatory departmental saluting.”
“How is your foot?”
“Fabulous.”
He studied me with a look, and the only description that might apply would be askance. “You’re still limping.”
“I’ve come to consider it a character trait.”
“Take off your hat.”
“I don’t think that’s going to help with the limp.”
He placed his hands on my head, adjusted the angle, and pulled my left eye down for a look; this was the part I was dreading. He released my head and got a small plastic bottle of something from the cabinet behind him. “These drops are for your eyes; would you like to do it, or would you prefer I administer them?”
“How many drops?”
He held up two fingers, and I did my part for the advancement of medical science. My vision became blurry as he studied his wristwatch and waited. After a bit, he reexamined my eyes. “Well, your pupils don’t show any particular abrasion, but it’s the damage to the ocular cavity that has me worried.” He released me, picked up the file, and stepped back, folding his arms over the folder and his chest. “I can’t make out any detachment of the retina, but it’s possible that there’s some trauma.” He thumbed his chin and continued to look at me like a card player would an inside straight.
“I could’a been a contender, Doc.”
“You could also go blind as a bat in your left eye if you get hit there again.”
I froze. “What?”
“Just a little medical humor. If you’re not going to take your condition seriously, why should I?” He hugged my file a little tighter. “Still having the headaches?”
“Only when I come in here.”
I had made the mistake of mentioning to Ruby that I had had a few recurring headaches, which must have resulted in this examination. I started to edge my rear end off the table.
“How often?” He continued to study me without moving out of my way.
I took a breath and settled. “Every once in a while.”
“What about the flashes?”
“It was a onetime thing; I just moved my head too fast.” Once again, it was a lie, and I was pushing my luck because the Doc was pretty good at spotting them. After those smiling government Gruppenführers with black uniforms had taken him away, Isaac Bloomfield had become a walking polygraph test.
“You’re sure?”
The trick to a good lie, no matter how outrageous, is sticking to it. “Yep.”
He shook his head very slightly, just to let me know he knew I was lying. “Walter, I have a deal for you.”
“Okay.”
He started to speak but then stopped. After a moment he licked his upper lip and tried again. “I will sign these forms indicating that you are in fine shape, which you are for a young man with this many accumulated injuries.” I liked it when the Doc called me a young man and tried not to dwell on the fact that he was in his eighties. “But, only on one condition.”
There was always a catch with the Doc. “And that is?” “You have Andy Hall in Sheridan do a complete examination of your left eye.”
“All right.”
I had started to get up again, but it was too quick of an answer and he placed a hand on my knee, the bad one, to stop me. “I will set up the appointment.”
I hedged. “I can do it, just give me his number.”
“No, I will make the appointment for you. What time this week is good?”
“This week?” Even with my blurred vision, I could see his large brown eyes studying me.
“Yes.”
Damn. I thought about it and figured the more time I had, the more time I’d have to get out of it. “Friday?”
He produced a pen from his lab coat pocket and scribbled on the top of the forms with a flourish followed by a stabbing period. “Thursday.”
“That’s Valentine’s Day.”
He smiled, his mission accomplished. “Maybe your heart will be in it.”
I pulled on my coat and put on my hat. “All right, now that you’re through cutting me off at the pass, do you mind telling me how Geo Stewart is?”
“Routine dislocation of the left shoulder.”
“Well, that would explain why he was waving at passing traffic with only one arm.”
Isaac nodded. “I’d like to keep him here for observation, but there’s something else that’s come up in casual conversation that I thought you might need to know.”
“Now why do I not like the sound of that?”
Isaac Bloomfield cleared his throat. “It would appear, that at the dump—”
“You mean the Municipal Solid Waste Facility?”
The Doc continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “They have found a body part.”
2
“We could put it in the lost and found.” I stared at him as he scratched his substantial beard. “Are you sure it’s a finger, Geo? ’Cause if we drive all the way out there, and it’s the end of a leftover bratwurst . . .”
“Not ’less they started puttin’ fingernails on hot dogs.”
I looked around the room. Neither Saizarbitoria nor Doc Bloomfield was offering much help. I sighed and chewed on the inside of my lip. “I don’t suppose there’s an engraved ring with the owner’s name inside on that finger, is there?”
He thought about it. “Nope, just the finger.”
“That was a joke, Geo.”
“Oh.”
I studied the old man and decided that his hat might’ve been a red and white floral pattern when it started out, but the accumulated grease gave it a rich patina that approached black. Curls of dirty silver escaped from underneath the cap and reached down past his predominant Adam’s apple. His skin was roasted a burnt coffee from the acid of long, hard labor and more than a few lines were etched around the welled sockets of his mouth and his Caribbean blue eyes.
Whenever I saw his eyes up close, I wondered what he would look like if he ever washed or shaved. Chances were, the collective county would never know.
“Can he travel, Doc?”
The attending physician nodded and crossed his arms over his ever-present clipboard. “I suppose so. His family members are still in the waiting room.”
I took a deep breath and leaned in as close to Geo as the fumes would allow. “Promise me, this time, you’ll ride inside the car?”
I pulled my ten-year-old Ray-Bans from my breast pocket and steered them onto my face to give my dilated pupils a little relief. Even though the skies were gloomy, damp, and gray like a dead body, there was enough of a glare to affect my sight. It was that part of the winter that stretched out like a Russian novel—a really, really long one.
I carefully picked my way across the frozen moguls of the Durant Memorial Hospital parking lot with Santiago Saizarbitoria trailing along behind me.