Стюарт Вудс - Contraband

“Sure thing, Max.”

“And don’t get lost. I hope you’re feeling better soon,” she said. Then she and Tommy left the room.

“You buy that?” Max asked.

“No,” Tommy said. “I don’t believe in amnesia. I’ve seen too many cases up close: some people prefer it to outright lying.”

She looked down the hall and saw a crime-scene tech dusting outside the door for prints. They walked down the hall and watched him finish.

“Can I have the card?” Max asked.

“Don’t you want the prints run?”

“You can do that on-site these days.”

“The scanner’s broken, Max. I’ll call you when I get a match.”

They walked downstairs and got into the car. Max backed it out of the parking space. “How long does an emergency test take at the tox lab?”

“About a month,” Tommy said drily.

“Where is the tox lab?”

“Right over there,” Tommy said, pointing at the hospital. “Basement.”

Max reparked the car, then she and Tommy walked back into the building and down the stairs. They followed the signs to the tox lab. Inside a skinny young woman in a lab coat was sitting with her feet up on a desk, doing a crossword puzzle. “Hi,” Max said. “I’ve got an emergency tox screen needs doing.”

“Just leave it on the desk. It’ll be about a month.”

Max walked around the reception counter and looked through a half dozen paper bags on the desk, then came up with one. “Here you go,” she said. “An emergency means now. I’ll wait.”

“Sorry, you gotta get in line,” the woman said.

“Funny, I don’t see a line, so I have to assume I’m at the head of it.” She held up her badge. “Once again, now.”

“You ever hear of procedure?” the woman asked.

“You ever hear of obstruction of justice?” Max asked back. “The usual sentence is two to five years.” Max had no idea what the sentence was, but she thought two to five sounded good. She fixed the woman with her gaze and waited.

“Oh, all right,” the woman said, picking up the bag. “Take a seat.”

Instead, Max followed her into the next room and stood, leaning against the door. She looked at her watch for effect.

The woman opened the paper bag, pulled out the IV bag, shook it up, then plunged a needle into it and extracted a couple of ounces. She emptied it into a receptacle, inserted it into a machine, and pressed a few buttons. Lights came on, and there was a whirring noise.

Max looked at her watch again, but didn’t get a response. Two minutes later the machine spat out a sheet of paper.

“How many copies you want?” the woman asked.

“Three, all certified.”

The woman extracted two more copies from the machine, stamped them with an old-fashioned rubber stamp, signed them, and handed them to Max. “There you go.”

Max looked at a sheet. “What’s propofol?” she asked.

“An anesthetic, used for surgery. It’s what killed Michael Jackson. And a lot of other people who tried to use it for fun.” The woman walked to a door marked LADIES and shut it behind her.

Max walked out of the lab, followed by Tommy. She handed him the sheet.

“What’s propofol?” Tommy asked.

“It’s what killed Michael Jackson,” she replied. She checked her watch. “Not bad. An hour on the job, and we’ve got a case. All we need is a perpetrator. Let’s get to the Lame Duck.”

Max spun out of the hospital parking lot while Tommy Scully gritted his teeth.

“You know they were fucking, don’t you?” Max said.

“What? Who?”

“That young resident, Keith, and Julie, the nurse. They were fucking when somebody tried to kill Dix.”

“That sounds like a great leap into the dark,” Tommy said, chortling.

“C’mon, Tommy — have you no instincts about these things?”

“Instincts, yeah. About ‘these things,’ maybe not. Those have been dulled with the passing years.”

“They were using an empty patient room somewhere when she got an alarm on her wristwatch.”

“What is it with the wristwatch?” Tommy demanded.

“Dix is hooked up to a monitor, and his heart rate went up when somebody tried to kill him. Her wristwatch picked it up.”

“A broadcasting heart monitor? Well, that’s a new one on me. From down the hall, too.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, Tommy, though you’re a little late arriving.”

“I’ve got instincts about other things,” he said.

“Which ones are those?”

“You’ll find out when the time comes.”

“I can’t wait.”

They pulled up at the Lame Duck; the parking lot was already half full and it wasn’t even noon yet. Sometimes called the “Other Parrot” in comparison to the Green Parrot — which was bigger, more crowded, and had better bands — the Lame Duck catered to Conchs and regulars who start drinking at breakfast, not so much to the tourists, who uniformly found it and the clientele smelly and unattractive.

They took stools at the bar and waited for the bartender to finish making a mojito for someone to have with his eggs.

“Hey, Max,” the bartender said cheerfully, when he was done. “A little early for you, ain’t it?”

“He dragged me here, Danny,” Max said, jerking a thumb at Tommy, who rolled his eyes in response.

“What can I get you?” Danny asked.

“Ice water with nothing in it — in a clean glass,” Max replied.

“Make that two,” Tommy said.

“Big spenders,” Danny said, serving them. “You hear about Dixie?”

“I heard something. What did you hear?”

“I heard they unloaded him from a chopper at the hospital, and he’s in critical condition.”

“From what?”

“I heard he got beat up.”

“Well, you can stop spreading that rumor. He was in a small airplane crash, and he’s doing fine. Be out in a few days.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“From the horse’s mouth. I left him fifteen minutes ago.”

“Okay, I’ll file that with our editorial department.”

“Was Dixie in here for breakfast two days ago?”

“No, he usually is though. He was here the day before.”

“Anybody with him?”

“No, but he got a phone call that went on for a while. His eggs got cold, and he had to reorder.”

“What time was he here?”

“Oh, eight to eight-thirty, I guess. He’s usually here most of the morning when he’s not working.”

“You know a girl, maybe a nurse. Tall, slender, shortish dark hair — oh, and nice tits?”

Danny grinned. “I wish. We don’t seem to get many of that type in here. Especially not nurses. They’re picky about germs.”

“Has Dixie been meeting the same person more often than others?”

Danny thought about it. “Nah, he just sits down with whoever’s here, or them with him. Nobody I don’t know.”

Max took a swig of her water and hopped off her stool. “Well, thanks for the free water,” she said.

“Who said it’s free?” Danny protested.

Tommy put a five on the bar. “Calm yourself,” he said, then followed Max outside.

She started the car. “So, Tommy, what did your instincts tell you about Danny?”

“That he had a shot of Irish before opening up, and that he was telling the truth.”

“You’re right about your instincts,” she said. “I missed the Irish. Is there a germ-free zone around here where we can get some lunch?”

He directed her to a small Cuban place off Duval Street, where they ordered Cuban sandwiches.

“So,” Tommy said, “did you really spend some time on a fancy yacht at Fort Jefferson?”

“You bet your sweet ass I did, and it was the most gorgeous thing you ever saw, called Breeze .”