O’Brien drove on through the lot, the sound of sirens in the distance. He whipped into a Mobile gas station and headed behind the building to a covered automatic carwash. O’Brien shoved eight quarters in the slots and drove his Jeep inside the carwash, stopping when a red light flashed. In seconds, the wash began. Even with the sound of water all around him, O’Brien could hear the MPD helicopter circling nearby.
The SWAT team surrounded the green Jeep in the parking lot. The teenager sat in his Jeep, rocking to his loud music, and talking to his girlfriend on the phone.
“Put your hands in the wheel! Do it now!” shouted the police command over the bullhorn.
The teenager swallowed nervously and said to his girlfriend, “Shit! I’m surrounded by cops! They’re pointing guns at me! Call my mom!”
O’Brien left the car wash and tore out of the lot toward Collins Avenue. His cell rang. It was Detective Ron Hamilton. “Sean, I’ve heard the noise on the radio. You have to turn yourself in! It can all be explained.”
“You know as well as I do that it can’t be explained quickly. I’d be held, then go for a bond hearing. In the meantime, a good chunk of time that Charlie Williams has left on the planet is gone. For his sake, I can’t afford to come in.”
“You can’t afford not to!”
“Volusia SO found a body, the prison guard. Name’s Lyle Johnson. He was assigned to watch Sam Spelling. Whoever killed Spelling and Callahan, killed Johnson.”
“You think it’s Russo?”
“I think it’s one of his hired guns.”
“We found that girl you were with at Club Oz.”
“Is she okay?” O’Brien almost knew what Dave was about to tell him.
“One of our detectives went over to Barbie Beckman’s house. First time, she wouldn’t come to the door. Second time, we entered with a warrant. Found her on the bathroom floor.”
“Is she alive?”
“Barely. She’s at Jackson Memorial. And she’s in bad shape.”
SIXTY-TWO
O’Brien maneuvered the Jeep around double-parked cars at Jackson Memorial Hospital, found a place at the farthest end of an employee parking lot to park. He pulled on a baseball cap and sunglasses before he got out of the Jeep.
O’Brien lightly knocked on the door to room 215. There was no answer. He opened the door. The name on the door said Elizabeth Barbie Beckman, but the woman in the bed looked like a mummy. Her face had been so badly beaten the swelling had forced her eyes closed. The lumps were the color and shape of dark plums. A knot on her head was the size of a lemon. IVs ran into both arms. One arm was in a cast. He saw dried blood in her left ear canal.
O’Brien stepped to the bed. The woman’s breathing was quick and shallow. He looked at the monitors. Her heart rate was fast, even in her sleep. She made small whimpering sounds, like a puppy might utter. Her body jerked as if she was trying to shake out of a bad dream. O’Brien leaned down, his lips near one of her ears. “Barbie, this is Sean O’Brien. Can you hear me?”
There was no movement. No flutter of the eyes. Nothing. O’Brien thought she may be in a coma. He said, “Barbie, this is Ken, how are you feeling?”
A soft moan, the words trying to rise to the surface. She managed to open her right eye. The entire white of her eye was dark red, the look of a moldy strawberry.
“Ken,” she mumbled. “You’re here…”
“Barbie, who did this to you?”
“He hurt me so bad,” she whispered. Her eyes filled with water, the tears spilling out of the swollen corners and soaking into the gauze.
“Who did it?”
“They’ll kill you…”
“Barbie, who hurt you?”
She sobbed and said in a raspy whisper, “Carlos Salazar.”
“Russo’s guy-”
“Please, don’t…they’re part of the mob…soldiers…life means nothing to them.”
O’Brien held one of her hands, careful not to touch the IV. “Listen to me, no man has the right to do this to you. Do you understand?”
“I’m so scared…he hurt me so…”
O’Brien used his thumb to wipe away the tears from her right eye. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’m going to help you.”
She tried to smile. Butterfly stitches in her swollen lips prevented it. She managed to say, “In my English lit class I read about poetic justice…you know like some Shakespearean play where good beats evil.”
O’Brien smiled. Barbie continued, “Kind of poetic justice that I’m in the same hospital where they brought Jonathan Russo. I read in the paper that they brought him here. You, sort of, put him in the hospital. And one of his guys did the same to me. I don’t understand it though, if good beats evil, then why am I here?”
“It’s not over, yet.”
SIXTY-THREE
As O’Brien left Barbie’s room, he picked up a clipboard on the nightstand. When the elevator doors opened to the eleventh floor, O’Brien stepped out. He casually looked right and left. He could see a man dressed in a tropical shirt near the end of the hall. O’Brien walked in that direction. He paused at every other door, glanced at the clipboard, and pretended to look at the patient’s name on the door.
A few feet from room 1103, the man in the tropical shirt looked out a window at the parking lot. O’Brien approached him and said, “Is Mr. Russo resting comfortably?”
Tropical shirt’s face was so bloated his eyes squinted. His breathing sounded labored. O’Brien could smell the stink of dried sweat, beer, and cigarette smoke on the man’s clothes. He looked at O’Brien suspiciously and said, “He’d be better if you people would let him sleep. You don’t look like no doctor. What kind of doctor are you?”
“Head doctor.”
“Shrink?”
O’Brien smiled, looked down at the clipboard for a second and said, “No, I aim for the head.” He hit the man squarely in the jaw, knocking him out cold. O’Brien dragged the man into a janitor’s closet. Then he opened the door to Russo’s room.
“O’Brien! How’d you get in here?”
“Your hall monitor is resting comfortably next to a mop. Probably wake up with a nasty headache, though.”
Russo reached for the nurse’s call button. O’Brien was faster, grabbing the remote control and pulling it off the wall.
Russo tried to sit up in bed. The heart monitor raced. “What do you want?”
“Why’d you sic your dogs on Barbie?”
“That fuckin’ whore, who gives a shit.” His voice was thick with disgust.
O’Brien lifted his Glock, holding it by the barrel, the butt of the gun pointed toward Russo’s face. “I give a shit. This is where your goon hit Barbie. It’s where I’ll bein with you. And guess what, Russo, if she slips in a coma or dies…you do too.”
Russo pushed himself as far back in the bed as he could get, the electrodes popping off his chest. “Please, O’Brien…I’m a sick man.”
“Why’d you have the girl beaten?”
“Wanted to make sure she knew not to show up as a witness when we took your ass to trial. Figured we could get you five to seven and it’d send a clear signal to others-cops, PI’s and anyone who thought they could shake us down or was thinkin’ they could come in our place, trash it up and threaten us.”
“Who’s us?’
“Me and Sergio Conti.”
“I believe you hired Carlos Salazar to hurt the girl, maybe kill her. Just like you hired him to kill three people, you wanted to make damn sure Spelling’s letter kept out of circulation. You wanted to make sure Charlie William’s takes a hot needle. And if you put me out of the picture, that pretty much guaranteed it. So now you beat up Barbie because she was with me in you club, maybe send me a message, maybe scare me.”
Russo’s eyes looked toward the door for less than a half second. It was long enough for O’Brien to know someone had entered the room
O’Brien dropped to the floor, rolled, and came up with his Glock pointed in the man’s face. “Drop it!”