Maybe she been here all along, other side the bed. He felt something cold on his forehead, good. White woman in white. She got good hands, some kind of towel.
The Man stepping back. “What are his chances?”
“Barring complications, he ought to be okay in a few weeks. Able to talk-much better than now-in a couple of days.”
“I guess it’ll keep.”
Another voice, then, Hardy. “Can he talk at all?” Seeing him over the woman’s shoulder, hovering. “I just need a word or two.”
Now close up, like before. “Louis,” he saying, “you don’t like me and I don’t much like you either, but I don’t think you killed Rusty Ingraham, you hear me?”
Yeah, he hear that. Where that shit come from now? Why he in here they think that? How long they been thinking it?
He opened his eyes as far as he could and looked at the man. Least he don’t look like the devil, like the other one do.
“Wha…” he started to say. Croaking.
“He wants water.” The nurse, watching out for him.
But no, man, what he saying is asking “what?” But he takes the water.
Hardy back at him. “You told me about Rusty driving you to his place, you remember that?”
The eyes half close, call it a nod.
“The car you guys drove in-you remember what color it was?”
It come down to this shit? What kind of games these honkies playing?
He opened his eyes again. Everything foggy. His lung hurting, his throat sore. Hardy, though, focused, right in his face.
Louis took in a labored breath. What the hell? Nothing to lose. “Blue,” he said.
And it brought on a cough again.
The Man saying, “Come on, let’s go.”
Then they gone.
It might have been a lucky guess…
You could throw darts and reach this Zenlike stage of pure contemplation, or you could sit with a bunch of regulars at the bar of the Shamrock and drink four Irish whiskeys. Poured by Lynne and then Moses, call it the equivalent of six.
When Hardy had come in at six-thirty things hadn’t yet picked up. Lynne Leish was still tending, working overtime because of Hardy’s vacation, and he’d taken what he hoped was some good-natured abuse about his lifestyle, time off, pursuit of his other interests.
Then Moses McGuire coming on seven to two, taking ten with Hardy in a different vein.
The two guys, best friends, co-owners of the bar, shared a postage-stamp table back over by the dart boards. Hardy was working on his first Irish, Moses as always went with his single malt, The Macallan.
“So do I have to ask?”
Hardy again remembered pulling Moses, his legs shot up, out from enemy fire, picking up some lead in his own shoulder in the process. Moses hiring him when he’d changed careers after the death of his son.
“I’m not playing any games with her, if that’s what you mean.”
“If I thought that, your face would already be broken.”
Moses had no fear of a fist in the face. You run an Irish bar, even if you’re a Ph.D. in Philosophy, as Moses was, it comes with the territory. His own nose, he said, liked to get rearranged once a year whether it needed it or not.
“I don’t know. Something’s happening. I don’t think she knows exactly either. She call you?”
“No. I called her. Goes four or five days I don’t hear from her and I start to worry.”
The Mose had raised his sister from the time she was ten.
Hardy knew Moses only cared deeply about ten things in the universe, and eight of them were Frannie.
“So what’d she say?”
“That you were hiding out there a while.” Moses leaned forward, elbows on the tiny table. “But I don’t know, something about the tone.”
Hardy finished his drink, deciding the night wouldn’t be one of pure reason, and signaled Lynne to bring over another round. He put his index finger in the new drink, stirring.
“Anyway,” Moses said, “it came out.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know, Diz. She’s my baby. I still have a hard time thinking of her as all grown up, which I also know she is.” The lines deepened around his already sunken eyes. With his black beard shot now with gray, Moses was Hardy’s vision of God before he got real old. He shrugged. “It just worries me. I don’t want to see her hurt anymore.”
“I’m not gonna hurt her, Mose. Whatever comes down, that’s not happening.”
“I mean, I think she probably wants what she had with Eddie-plans and family stuff. A man comes home every night.”
“Maybe she wants that. I don’t think she’s very sure what she wants.”
“She wants the baby. I think she wants a father for the baby.”
“Eddie was the father, Mose. Nothing is changing that.”
“You know what I mean.”
Hardy knew. He sipped some whiskey. “She’ll likely let me know when she figures it out.”
“And then what?”
“Then I figure it out. And then it moves ahead, or it doesn’t, right? Nothing got planned here, Mose. It just happened. It’s real good, but Frannie doesn’t know where she wants to take it, and I’m not sure either. I don’t know where Jane fits in. I’m a mess. What can I tell you?”
Moses tipped his glass up. It was getting on to seven and he knew Lynne wanted to go home. “You can tell me when you’re coming back to work,” he said. Then, standing, starting for the bar, “I liked you better when you weren’t dating…”
Now, three hours later, well into a pretty serious right-brain workout, Hardy tapped the bar gently with another empty glass. He sat at the front now, near the window, and Moses would come down and sit on his stool behind the bar whenever there was a lull.
“It probably was just a lucky guess.”
“Yeah, I guess there aren’t that many colors to choose from.”
Moses hit him again, lots of ice, half a shot. Nurse ’em.
“Hardy,” he said, leaning over, talking quietly, “you and I know for a fact that there’s only three colors anybody ever mentions. Watch this.”
Moses walked the length of the bar, maybe a dozen customers on stools, drinking, talking, making the moves. He put a fresh napkin and a pencil in front of each one. “Kind patrons,” he said, loud, the gregarious bartender, “listen up a second. Free-drink contest.” As always, it got their attention. “Quick, don’t think, write down the first color comes to your mind. Quick!” He was already picking up the first napkins.
“Who wins the drink?”
“Hold on, hold on.”
He was back down by Hardy. “Okay, you be the impartial judge.”
“McGuire, what’s the contest? Who gets the drink? Anything we want?”
“Seven blues, four greens, two reds,” Hardy said.
Moses held his hands up. “Sorry,” he announced, “nobody wins, but thanks for playing.”
“That’s not a fair contest,” one of the women complained. “What were we going for?”
“Anything but blue, red, or green would have gotten the drink,” Moses said.
As the mumbling died down, a couple of people saying they were going to pick yellow, Moses told Hardy you occasionally did get a yellow.
“Well, that was sure a good time,” Hardy said, “but the point?”
“The point is your man Baker had a good chance of saying blue even if he’d never seen your friend’s car.”
“But it was blue.”
“And if it was…?”
“Then Rusty was lying to me about it being stolen.”
Someone called for a drink and Moses went down to pour.
Why would someone you hadn’t seen in years appear out of the-pardon the word-blue and tell you a lie? Hardy was getting muscle fatigue of the right brain. He pushed his glass to the back edge of the bar.
Wait a minute, he told himself. What if he somehow got his car that afternoon? He got on the bus across the street from here, then went downtown, stopping to order a handgun he’d have to wait three days for.
The computer said the car was still missing. But then the computer lagged several days behind. If it still had Louis Baker in San Quentin, it wouldn’t have the car returned either. Maybe he’d check again tomorrow.