He examined the wound.
The young man was improving well.
“It’s looking good. You can go home tomorrow.”
Aaron winced. “The pain. Man, it’s really bad still.”
Comments like this always raised a red flag with Bakshi, as it did with all doctors, who might be in a position to prescribe pain meds. Of course, the drugs existed for a vital reason. But the border between relief and abuse was often thin as fishing line. Aaron had answered on the admission sheet that he had three glasses of wine a week and did not do recreational drugs.
The template response of ten million patients.
You could cut and paste it.
“It’s just, it’s not only the burn. My neck too, the crash.”
Aaron’s ortho scans had come back negative, but pain was a creature unto itself. Both cunning and a master of disguise. It appeared, it vanished, it attacked, it retreated, then circled in from the rear.
“I’ll give you four days’ worth. Then check in with your regular GP.”
“Great. Thanks.” The gratitude seemed delivered with an edge of grudge.
Natalia was saying, “Tomorrow? Not today?” She hadn’t lifted her head as she texted and Bakshi realized she was responding to his comment from a moment ago.
She continued, “I’d like to get him out of here as soon as—”
The sentence had ended abruptly and with a gasp.
“No one move,” came a man’s stern voice from the door.
Bakshi spun around.
“Shit,” Aaron was saying.
“No!” A dismayed whisper from his sister.
Into the room was walking a trim blond man who, with an exceedingly grim face, was gazing from patient to sister and back.
“It’s him, that Pulaski! He’s the one who hit Aaron!”
“Sir—” Bakshi shut up when he saw the gun in the man’s hand.
Pulaski said, “Could you give us a minute?”
“I... I...”
Natalia said, “He can’t be here! He’s not supposed to be here! Call security!”
Bakshi gripped the chart tablet and looked back at the nurses’ station. It was empty.
“Help!” Natalia cried.
“Shhh,” Pulaski said, wincing at her mini scream.
Pulaski glanced at Bakshi, who said in a whisper, “Can I leave?”
“I just asked you to, didn’t I?” Pulaski now sounded almost amused.
The doctor backed slowly into the hallway and, when he figured it would be safe, ran silently to the nearest station and grabbed a phone from its cradle.
72
“Ron,” came the voice from the doorway. A tall, uniformed PD officer walked into the room. Her brown hair was gathered into a businesslike bun.
“Hey...”
The officer, Sheri Sloane, turned her long, dark-complected face to Aaron and looked him up and down, then took in the woman.
Aaron snapped, “The hell is going on?”
Natalia said, “You’re suspended! He told us...” Her voice faded with the lapse. “We heard you were suspended.”
Pulaski noted how she’d begun the sentence.
Sloane tugged on blue latex gloves and approached. “Could you stand please?”
“I—”
Pulaski snapped, “Stand.”
Anger filling her face, the woman did as told. Sloane frisked her carefully. Then the policewoman went through her purse.
“Clean.”
Her role and Pulaski’s reversed. She drew her weapon and Pulaski holstered his. They had worked together in the past and had the choreography down.
Pulaski pulled on gloves of his own and tugged the patient’s bedclothes up, searching closely. His backpack as well. He too was unarmed.
The woman laughed in astonishment. “You’re trying to intimidate us! Scare us out of suing you! When we get you in court, you’re going to be so fucked...”
Pulaski frowned — an exaggerated expression. “Court? You think that’s really a wise move?”
“You can’t talk to us that way,” Aaron said, sounding like a petulant schoolboy — though in actuality he was a student only in the sense that he hadn’t graduated from high school.
“Shhhhh.” Pulaski waved a palm like pushing away campfire smoke. “Now, let’s get the technical stuff out of the way. Natalia Baskov and Aaron Stahl, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud, for subverting police procedure, obstruction of justice — always a good one.”
“The kitchen sink,” Sloane said. “One of my favorites.”
“There’ll be other charges too, but that’s enough for us to get started.”
Aaron muttered, “This is such bullshit.”
Baskov — not a sister, not a relative at all, but the daughter of a Brooklyn mob capo. Aaron was a numbers runner for her father and all-around punk.
The officer ran through the Miranda warning and when they acknowledged understanding it, he said, “Do you wish to waive the right to remain silent? But before you answer that let me just tell you what we’ve found. Might be helpful.”
Aaron began to bluster again. Baskov said, “Shut up.” And turned back to Pulaski. “Go ahead.”
“First, I’ve been reinstated as an officer. Just so you understand. Now, I’ve also been authorized by the New York County District Attorney to discuss your assisting us in an investigation in exchange for possibly — and I said possibly — coming to some agreement about charging. I need you to listen. Are you going to listen?”
Aaron tried: “What the—?”
Baskov said, “We’re going to listen.”
“There were a few things that made me curious about the accident and I thought I’d check them out. First, I went to the city hospital records room and got your blood workup from the accident.” He was looking at a suddenly less defiant and considerably more concerned Aaron.
These papers were what he’d had with him when Charles Hale’s assistant, Woman X, tranqued him and hauled him off to the acid room. (Lyle Spencer’s news that Burdick was probably planning to use a fellow cop’s own medical chart about an old injury against him might have inspired someone else to slip into the hospital and steal and destroy those records. Which, of course, Pulaski would never do. “Borrowing” Aaron Stahl’s file, though, while a little borderline, was really just part of his investigation.)
He continued, “Aaron, your blood work showed the presence of triamcinolone and lidocaine. Injectable painkillers. Which the responding medical technicians did not give you. You shot yourself up with them before the crash so that it didn’t hurt too much. Because you were paid to drive in front of me and take the hit. I suspect you didn’t expect to catch fire, but” — he shrugged — “every job has its downside, right? And also on your chart, Narcan, administered probably two days ago. You’ve got an opioid problem, Aaron. Which means you have a dealer — and therefore access to fentanyl. Somebody in the crowd helping me after the accident managed to get some on my skin. That’s why I tested positive. Hell, you might even’ve paid off an EMT. I don’t know.”
Pulaski wondered if Aaron had intentionally passed an arm through the unexpected flames at the crash, just so he could hit the doctors up for more drugs.
If true, nothing but sad.
“And after that I went to look at your burned-out SUV, the junkyard where they towed it in Queens. And guess what I found inside? A wad of plastic that had been an Opticom.”
“Shit,” muttered Baskov.
Opticoms are remote controls carried by many first responders to change traffic lights, so, say, a fire truck can turn all the reds it’s approaching to green.