Two security guards eye us from the front desk, then exchange wary glances. It’s plain from their expressions that they don’t like what they see. And I don’t blame them.
Harry looks like an unusually well-fed refugee. Shin-high work boots and an old tan coat hide his suit. A day’s worth of salt-and-pepper stubble covers his cheeks and chin, and dark half-moons underline his bloodshot eyes. He’s either a man on a mission or he’s a nut.
I don’t need a mirror to tell me I look every bit as bedraggled as Harry does. Even my soul is tired.
One of the uniformed guards listens to Harry tell our story and checks both our IDs. The other one rides the elevator with us to the third floor, clutching a two-way radio. He faces his reflection in the elevator doors throughout the ride. He doesn’t look at us, doesn’t speak.
Geraldine sits in the small waiting area outside the intensive care unit, writing in a notepad. It’s a rare sight, Geraldine in a chair. She looks no different now than she did at nine o’clock this morning. Her dark gray suit and starched white blouse are unwrinkled. Her black spiked heels and smoky nylons are flawless, relentless snowstorm or not. And every blond hair is in place. I don’t know how she does it.
She stops writing as we approach, removes her glasses. Her arched eyebrows say she wasn’t expecting company. “Good of you to drop in,” she tells us. “But His Honor isn’t receiving guests at the moment.”
There are a dozen empty chairs in this antiseptic square, but Harry drops into the one next to Geraldine’s and leans toward her over their shared armrest. “Is he awake?”
Harry’s been doing this to Geraldine-invading her personal space whenever possible-for the past month. He’s aspiring to greatness, he tells her, emulating her hand-selected protégé, Stanley.
Geraldine doesn’t think it’s funny. She growls at him like an annoyed German shepherd, then gets to her feet. “No, he’s not awake. But he was a couple of hours ago-for a few minutes.”
“Did he say anything?” Harry pats Geraldine’s vacant chair, inviting her to reclaim it.
She scowls at the invitation, directs her answer to me. “No, not a word. But he tried. He couldn’t get anything out. His throat is bad.”
Geraldine takes a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and taps one out. I’m relieved, to say the least, when she doesn’t light it.
She twirls it around in her fingers instead. “His throat is sore from the tubes-or whatever the hell they put down there-during surgery. The poor guy’s dying of thirst. He kept reaching toward the water pitcher, but the nurse”-she points her unlit cigarette at us for emphasis-“and she’s a story for another day-anyway, she’d only give him ice chips.”
Geraldine waits for a reaction but neither of us has one. “Ice chips,” she repeats, as if we must not have heard.
Still, Harry and I are silent.
Geraldine shrugs, gives up on us. She puts the unlit cigarette between her lips, turns away, and starts pacing. “So he went back to sleep.”
At the wall she pivots to face us, cigarette in hand again. “I’d go to sleep, too,” she says, “if all the world could offer me was ice chips.” She points her cigarette at me, her expression suggesting she’s shifting gears. “The lab work,” she says. “It’s back.”
Harry straightens in his chair. I take a few steps toward Geraldine. “The blood?”
“All Sonia Baker’s,” she says.
Harry arches his eyebrows at me. This is good news.
I turn my attention back to Geraldine. “And the prints?”
She smiles. “All Sonia Baker’s.”
This news is not so good.
A sheet of white fills the small entry to the waiting area, and Geraldine lights up like a hundred-watt bulb. “Ah, Nurse Wilkes,” she says. “May I call you Annie?”
The large woman in white folds her arms beneath her substantial bosom and frowns. She’s apparently not a Stephen King fan. She points to her name tag: Alice Barrymore, RN.
“The judge is awake again,” she says in a full baritone. “But I’m not taking a crowd in there.”
Geraldine stares up at her newfound friend, who has a good six inches on her. “Crowd? What crowd?”
Nurse Wilkes keeps her eyes fixed on Geraldine but tips her gray bouffant toward Harry and me. Her undersized nurse’s cap doesn’t budge.
Geraldine looks over her shoulder at us as if she hadn’t realized we were in the room. “Oh, them.” She flicks one hand at the giant nurse, directing her out of the doorway. “They won’t say a word. They promise.”
For reasons I’ve never been able to articulate, people obey Geraldine. Annie Wilkes is no exception. She steps aside, then follows as Geraldine leads the way down the brightly lit corridor. Harry and I bring up the rear.
Annie takes charge again, though, when we reach the doorless entry to Judge Long’s cubicle. “Hold on now. Stop right there.” She issues her command to Geraldine’s back. And, surprisingly enough, Geraldine complies.
The nurse steps in front of her and blocks the entry to the cubicle. “Put it away,” she says.
“Put what away?” Geraldine looks around the corridor as if the nurse might be speaking to someone else. Her scowl says she already took one order; surely she can’t be expected to take another.
“That.” Nurse Wilkes points at the unlit cigarette.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Geraldine taps the butt into its pack and drops the pack in her pocket, shaking her head.
Annie Wilkes turns her back, then, her authority reestablished, and leads all three of us into Judge Long’s small compartment.
It’s high noon in here. Fluorescent tubes beam down from above, exaggerating the glow of silver equipment and white linens. Machines hiss and beep from every direction. A brightly lit monitor displays four lines of constantly changing graphics. And it must be eighty degrees. It’s hard to imagine anyone-even a postsurgical patient-sleeping here.
Judge Long lies perfectly still on his hospital bed, his head and shoulders somewhat elevated, a thin white blanket pulled up to his chest. Two IV bags drip from a pole at his bedside. One delivers blood to his left arm, the other a clear solution to his right. He turns his face toward us as we approach, his eyes open and pleading. He lifts his left hand just an inch, toward the opposite side of his bed, toward the water pitcher.
Nurse Wilkes stations herself between the bed and the bedside tray, blocking Judge Long’s view of the pitcher. “No water,” she says. “Not yet.” She takes a small paper cup from the tray and scoops a plastic spoonful of ice chips between her patient’s parched lips.
“The guy just wants a sip,” Geraldine argues. “He’s not asking for a goddamned martini.”
The nurse shakes her head.
“You’re an angel of mercy,” Geraldine tells her.
Annie Wilkes glares.
Geraldine turns her attention to the judge, all business. “Try,” she says. “Try to tell us what you know.”
Judge Long makes a guttural sound. It sounds like “Ndt.”
It’s Geraldine’s turn to shake her head. The nurse delivers more ice. And the judge tries again. This time it sounds like “Hndt.”
Harry moves to the head of the bed and squats, so his face is level with Judge Long’s, and the judge gives it another shot. It sounds no different to me, but it’s clear at once that Harry gets it. He nods at the judge, then turns toward Geraldine and me.
“Hand,” he says. “He saw a hand.”
Judge Long nods, then lifts his head an inch from the pillow. “Mnz.”
“A man’s hand,” Harry translates.
The judge nods again.
“White.”
We all got that.
With considerable effort, the judge raises one arm and presses his hand against his shoulder, forcing his upper body further down on the pillow. His assailant must have braced him from behind with one hand, stabbed with the other.