“Hey Rude,” Jerry Number One said. “My prostate’s been acting up again. Wanna give it a look?”
“Tell you what, Jer,” Rudy said. “You’re a big enough asshole-why don’tya squat on a mirror and do it yourself?” he said.
That got a few laughs, but its edge was a little sharp for Rudy. I tapped the bar in front of me once to alert AJ that I wanted to buy Rudy’s drink. Rudy looked like he needed one, and I heard him order a Hennessy with specific instructions for AJ not to bruise the ice.
I slid off my stool and headed down to the one on Rudy’s right, away from the Foursome. Rudy had beads of sweat on his forehead and great big rings of sweat under his arms. The man was stressed out.
“Rude,” I asked, “you all right?”
“Fuck, yeah,” Rudy exhaled heavily and took a serious sip of the brandy. “That fuckin’ prick Gabbibb…”
“What’s up with him?” I asked. “Or is it just his usual bullshit?”
“That fuckin’ asshole is Broseph’s suck-up. They’re both on my ass because of my charts being behind. Gabbibb blows off any of my recommendations, and he’s so fuckin’ arrogant I want to rip his throat out.”
“So it is his usual shit,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Rudy said. “There’s no doubt Gabbibb’s a fuckin’ genius, but where’s the rule that he has to be a fuckin’ asshole to go with it? Besides all that, I get the sense I’m being set up.” Rudy got quiet and stared at his drink.
He ran his fat, stubby fingers through his thin hair and drank his cognac. He vented like this frequently, and I was glad to listen. The man had done me more than a few favors over the years.
“Is that all that’s getting you? You usually don’t let the DAT man rile you like this,” I said.
“No, there’s something else.” Rudy looked down into his Hennessy and ran his stubby index finger around the rocks glass. “The hospital administrator, Dr. Broseph, is going to take away my privileges.”
“Privileges? What’s that mean, you won’t be able to golf at the club or something?”
“Nah, Duff.” Rudy looked up but not at me. He stared mindlessly into the mirror on AJ’s back wall. “Privileges are what allow you to practice in the hospital. Without privileges you don’t work.”
“You’re saying you’re getting canned?”
“Pretty much.”
“How can they can a doctor? Who’s going to take care of your patients?” I said.
“That’s the problem, Duff. Broseph says my average length of stay is three days over the average and that’s unacceptable.”
“Average length of stay?”
“How long each patient of mine is in the hospital.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Rudy threw down his entire drink and motioned to AJ for another.
“The way it works now, the insurance companies pay the hospital by the ailment. The longer a patient stays in the hospital, the less money the hospital makes,” Rudy said.
“What if the patient isn’t ready to go home?”
“Too bad-they send them home and have a nurse visit once a day. Except I won’t go for it and I’ve defied his orders to discharge patients.”
“And now it’s going to cost you your job?”
“Yep.” Rudy finished the second Hennessy. “It’s even worse for your guys. They all have Medicaid, which pays shit, so they are always getting run out. Sometimes they find reasons to refuse them admission, which is, by the way, against the law,” Rudy said.
“That’s bullshit. I can’t believe you’d get fired for taking care of people.”
“Yeah, Broseph ordered me to send home an eighty-three-year-old woman two days after her hip replacement operation even though she lived alone. He said she’d be fine because we assigned her homecare.”
“He can do that?”
“You better believe he can. The guy takes in half a million a year, more if the hospital finishes in the black. He’s got a mansion outside of town with two Mercedes and a Porsche. He treats people like shit.”
“Can’t you sue him or bring him to some board or something?”
“Ahh, fuck it, Duff, it doesn’t work that way. Everything he does is wrapped up in all this hospitalese that makes it sound like he’s loving and caring. Look, let me change the subject.”
“Sure, please,” I said.
“I got some mixed news on one of your guys,” he said. Rudy’s tone had changed. He was speaking as a doctor again, not an AJ’s rummy.
“Mixed?” I said.
“Mikey came out of the coma, and he looks like he’ll make it,” he said.
“What’s the but, Rude?” I said.
“They found cancer in him,” Rudy exhaled hard. “He’s got pancreatic cancer pretty bad. They’re going to have to go after it aggressively.”
“Fuck… what the fuck kind of luck is that?” I said to no one in particular.
“No kind of luck at all,” Rudy said back.
Rudy explained to me the type of therapy Mikey would be up against. It involved radiation to get the cancer but it would also mean a brutal toll on Mikey’s body. Mikey was obsessed with his appearance, and losing his coif, his tan, and his body weight would be devastating for him emotionally. There wasn’t a choice, but this was going to be an incredibly hard row for Mikey to hoe.
It also meant that Mikey, Rudy, and me would be dealing with Gabbibb all the time. Cancer-wise, there wasn’t a better man in the country. Human-wise, I would rather get jabbed in the eye with a sharp stick than have to deal with him. I guess if the guy could keep you alive when the grim reaper paid a visit, I shouldn’t care what kind of asshole he was.
There was something else on my mind.
“Rudy?” He was busy ordering a double order of wings from AJ, so I waited for just a second.
“What’s up, Duff?”
“Mikey say anything about who beat him?” I said.
“He was kind of in and out, but he kept talking about some bald bastard. You know how Mikey talks,” Rudy paused trying to remember Mikey’s words. With a bad imitation of Mikey, Rudy continued. “‘That bald biker bastard…’ was what he kept saying, but he was pretty close to delirium.”
“Couple more Schlitzes and I’ll be pretty close to delirium myself,” I said.
Rudy’s wings were delivered and I didn’t want to disturb him or witness the carnage that was involved when a stressed-out Rudy sublimated his emotions on twenty-four innocent chicken wings. Instead, I went back to my original spot and watched the Yankees middle relief blow their lead.
I lost count of the Schlitzes and figured it was time to check in on Al, so I began to head for the door. The Foursome had a new focus as I was leaving.
“Yeah, the pilots got in big trouble,” Rocco said.
“What?” TC wasn’t buying it. “You’re telling me that the Navy pilots were deliberately flying over groups of penguins just so they’d tip over as they flew by?”
“I’m 100 percent serious,” Rocco said.
“Isn’t it dangerous for jets to tip over like that?” Jerry Number Two said.
“God, you did too many drugs, Jer,” Rocco said. “Not the planes, the penguins. They would look up and tip over while they watched the jets fly by.”
“How’d they get back up?” Jerry Number One asked.
“The Seals helped them,” Rocco said.
“I wonder if their whiskers tickled the penguins’ backs?” Jerry Number Two asked.
“You asshole,” Rocco said. “The Navy Seals.”
“I wonder how they keep the sailor caps on…?” I heard Jerry Number Two say as the door closed behind me. I headed home and didn’t even try to sort out the day, there was just too much. The Schlitz evened it out a little for me and I let Elvis take me home.
The ride to the Moody Blue isn’t a long one, but between the industrial section of Crawford at night and the deserted area where I live there isn’t much traffic. It probably wasn’t anything, but a block or two after I left AJ’s, I noticed a Crown Victoria was behind me. It was silver and it was pretty new, and whoever it was stayed behind me all the way home. When I pulled onto the gravel in front of my house, the Crown Vic just kept going. It was probably nothing.
The next day, I was in the office waiting for Clogger McGraw to show up for his 9:00 a.m. session. At about 9:35, the Clogster knocked on my door.