Max Collins - Quarry in the middle

Then I asked her about Gigi Giovanni and his doctor appointments. Would she happen to know when his next one was?

“Funny you should ask,” she said. “It’s always the third Friday of the month.”

“What’s today, the second Friday?”

“No, silly. The third.”

The River Bluff Neurology Clinic was in Rivercrest Medical Park, a beautifully landscaped collection of recently erected one-story red-brick buildings with interconnecting drives and several shared parking lots-a sort of shopping mall for the sick.

This was West River Bluff, where I’d wound up following a dark-green late model Lincoln Town Car from the Lucky Devil parking lot. Enough vehicles had been there for me not to call attention to myself and, anyway, there was no reason to think any of Jerry G’s people would recognize my wheels. I sat parked between a pick-up truck and a Dodge Daytona and watched for almost an hour, thinking I’d probably missed my moment.

The only thing that had given me hope was that Lincoln Town Car, parked near the casino portion of the Lucky Devil. Hanging around near the Lincoln was a big guy with a butch haircut and a black suit with a tie-less white shirt, smoking one cigarette after another, occasionally leaning against the driver door, now and then checking his watch.

Finally Jerry G, in a yellow sport shirt and rust-color slacks, came out a casino exit, helping an older gent toward the car. Jerry G was smiling and talking, one arm around his charge, the other guiding him along. The old boy was short and squat but not really fat, not anymore; his head was squarish and his snow-white hair neatly barbered but indifferently combed. He wore a double-breasted wide-lapel gray pinstripe suit that had been in style a couple of times in the twentieth century, just not at the moment.

Was Jerry G going to accompany his pop to the doctor’s appointment? That was who this was-Giorgio “Gigi” Giovanni, and I wasn’t guessing, because I had done enough work for that family to have seen all the main players at one time or another, if from a distance.

No-Jerry G was depositing his pop in back of the Town Car, and the butch-hair boy was tossing a smoke to the gravel and coming around to get behind the wheel. They pulled out, Jerry G lingering to watch them go, then he headed back in. The Lincoln had exited the lot-access was strictly in back of the Lucky Devil, on a gravel strip along a row of trees-but catching up was no problem. Besides, I wanted to make sure I always had at least one car between us, and when I fell in behind them on the toll bridge, I had a two-car cushion.

Wearing sunglasses-not a disguise, this was a sunny day-I had followed them through the rolling city to its west outskirts and the medical complex. The Lincoln took a handicapped space, and I pulled around to park as far away as possible, at least for the moment. I watched while the burly chauffeur helped the old man out of the back seat, and walked him up a gently slanting walk to the double doors of the modern clinic.

When they were inside, I moved the car closer-I didn’t take a handicapped space, because I may be a killer but I’m not a prick, and anyway I didn’t have one of those hanging plastic cards that fend off fines. I wanted to be close in case I needed a quick getaway.

This might seem amusing, particularly since several other elderly patients were being helped into the clinic by relatives or whatever, indicating the facility was primarily geriatric. I would grant you few quick getaways had ever been made from this building.

On the other hand, that chauffeur was a big fucker, and the only reason I was walking around after that beating by his bouncer brothers was the Percodans perking in my bloodstream. Plus, that suitcoat hung loose enough that a handgun might be snugged under his armpit, and I was currently unarmed.

He was driving around the supposed godfather of Haydee’s Port, after all, a character with genuine Chicago bona fides-old Gigi only missed getting himself an episode of The Untouchables by maybe a decade.

A sign on the brick by the front doors spelled out the specialty of the house-neurology-and I went on into a small waiting room populated by senior citizens and their keepers. Nobody looked very bright-eyed, including the keepers. Two rows of chairs on either side faced each other, divided by a big coffee table where old magazines went to die.

I selected a Highlights, read for a while about Goofus and Gallant (speaking of pricks, how about that fucking Goofus?), and after ten minutes the nurse receptionist, a plump woman bursting her whites, called, “ George Giovanni! ”

Giovanni did not react, but the butch-hair bodyguard did, smirking disgustedly as he tossed his Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue on the coffee table, to rise and haul the old boy around and down a hallway at left.

I waited, and about ninety seconds later, the bodyguard returned, alone, and retrieved his reading matter.

I got up, went up to the porcine nurse (what the fuck kind of health message was she sending?) and asked where the men’s room was. I already knew, having spotted it from where I’d been sitting-it was down that same hallway where Giovanni had been walked, and abandoned.

She pointed toward the men’s room, mildly irritated (yeah, those bodily functions are a real nuisance), and I went down the hallway. It wasn’t a big place, maybe four little examining rooms, and they all had patient charts hanging on the door. The second chart I checked said “George H. Giovanni.”

Nobody else was in the hallway, and the fat nurse was busy resenting her lot in life, so I thumbed through the sheets. I’m no doctor, but the word “dementia” jumped out. Among the pages clipped to the board were several tests taken by Mr. Giovanni, including the faces of clocks that had been filled in with floating hands, as if Dali and a four-year-old had collaborated, and several pieces of startling news, including that Nixon was still president and that the patient’s favorite color was “ice cream.”

I went in, leaving the chart on the door, and said pleasantly to the little old man sitting on the edge of the examining table, “And how are you today, Mr. Giovanni?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Leefer.” That was the name on the chart, anyway. “How have you doing, Mr. Giovanni? Are the medications helping?”

I’d seen the names of the meds, but they were Greek to me. Right now, from my point of view, anything that wasn’t Percodan wasn’t pertinent.

“I’m doin’ okay, doc.”

“And how is your son doing?”

He frowned. The face that had once been fearsome was a lined, sunken thing, like a fruit that had gone off, and the eyes had less alertness than your average chimp. “I have a son?”

“You sure do.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!”

“His name is Jerry.”

“Yes! Jerry! He’s a good boy.”

“He’s taking care of you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. Can’t complain.”

“Getting what you need to eat and drink?”

“Yes. I get plenty of ice cream. All the ice cream I want.”

“That’s wonderful. Do you know who I am?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’m the doctor-Dr. Leefer.”

“Well, that’s right! Dr. Leefer.”

“Do you know a man named Cornell?”

“Do I?”

“Richard Cornell. Do you know him?”

“No. Can’t say I do. Might. I forget people’s names sometimes.”

“What about a place called the Paddlewheel? Do you know that place?”

“No. Is it a boat?”

“No, it’s a gambling house.”

“The Lucky Devil is a gambling house.”

“Right. Your son runs it for you, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. My son. Is his name Jerry?”