Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

Nick exhaled. I tried to shake off visions of Susan and me dragging Stanley Turner’s corpse out of the back of my car. If Clay didn’t find him that afternoon, I would have to call in an anonymous tip.

“What about the big guy?” Nick said. “The one whose kneecap Vinny blasted out.”

“That’s Hamdy. He went to Addison Gilbert and then they lost him,” I said.

“They lost him?”

“They literally lost him.” I nodded. “He had checked in and was waiting for surgery when he disappeared. He’s either hobbling around somewhere with a shattered knee or Cline got him too.”

Nick walked away from me, rubbing his neatly shaven head, blowing air out in angry huffs. We took the elevator to the psychiatry clinic on the third floor. Nick signed in, and then we stood in the empty waiting room. The tiles were sticky and the magazines on the low table offered exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s wedding.

“I can’t do this, man,” Nick said, turning to leave. “Cline’s coming for us next. Once he’s gotten rid of his old crew, he’ll assemble a new one, and we’re the only loose ends in this thing. We gotta go.”

I put a hand on his arm, stopping his progress. “You’re not going anywhere. An hour or so isn’t going to make a difference.”

“You kidding me?” Nick pushed away my hand. “Cline wrapped up half his business last night. We’re—”

“We’re fine without you for the moment,” I said. “Malone and Effie have got the house. Clay’s on the murders. I’ll stay out of trouble until you talk to the people here. Nick, you’re doing the right thing. You need this.”

“Mr. Jones?” The woman behind the front desk stepped out, holding a clipboard. Nick looked at me like he’d just been shut in the gas chamber and I was the guard about to turn the lock and walk away.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

I WASN’T WORRIED about Nick. He was doing the right thing. I was sure he had PTSD, and now the veterans hospital would take care of him, schedule therapy, maybe put him in a support group. That had to be the hospital’s bread and butter. But as I wandered the halls, I began to feel an aching concern in my stomach. There were elderly men in wheelchairs staring out the windows at the parking lot; one was sleeping with his head at an awkward angle, the front of his shirt soiled with food stains. At a counter on the second floor, an exhausted-looking nurse was having a shouting match with a patient on crutches. She stopped to bat away a fly that had been buzzing around her face. I watched the fly go, strangely disturbed by its presence in the hospital. The smell of this place wasn’t the same nostril-tingling, disinfectant freshness of Addison Gilbert. It was faintly sour and tainted with something unmistakably biological.

I wandered the corridors, thinking about Cline, my head down, tracing the smudgy footprints of others on the linoleum. After a while I came into a hallway and witnessed another argument, a nurse trying to reason with four very large men standing outside a darkened ward.

“You have to respect visitor protocols,” she said. “We have a system here, and you have to have approval.”

I watched, my hands in my pockets. The four men were obviously military. They had the functionally muscular bodies of men who worked out several times a day, but in addition to the muscles that looked pretty, they had well-developed muscles in their hands, forearms, and necks, the kind of muscles you get only by picking up and moving heavy equipment across long distances. They were dressed in civilian workmen’s clothes that had never been worked in. Flattops you could rest a beer can on. Two of them were backing the nurse toward me without touching her, their big hands up, a moving wall of hard flesh.

“Thanks for your concern, ma’am,” one of them said. “We got it from here.”

Something seemed to tell the nurse that whatever it was, their having it was set in stone, and her protests were useless. She turned and brushed past me as she left, bringing me to the attention of the men. The nearest one met my eyes as the four of them walked back to the door, and I saw recognition flash there.

“Is there a problem, sir?” he asked.

“No problem.” I noticed a restroom door behind the wall of men. “Just want to use the restroom.”

“There’s one on the second floor.”

“I want to use that one.” I pointed. “It’s my favorite.”

“It’s out of order.” The meathead squared his shoulders. “Move on.”

Now I knew what I was dealing with. I smiled and nodded toward the door.

“Cline’s guy,” I said. “Russell Hamdy. Tell him I want to see him.”

CHAPTER NINETY

RUSSELL HAMDY TOOK ten minutes to decide whether or not he’d see me. The recognition I’d seen in one of the guys probably meant they had been briefed on people who might approach the room, and I was one of them. Russell’s military friends watched me silently from the doorway, looking from their charge to me, their eyes mean and their mouths hard. In time I was beckoned in, although no one moved to let me through, which forced me to slide between tautly stretched fabric and clouds of strong antiperspirant.

Cline’s man was sitting upright in the bed, a complicated apparatus around his bloodied and bandaged knee. His face was pale and drawn; an oxygen tube was under his nose. Russ had his hands beneath a blanket on his lap, and I knew that he was holding a loaded gun that was pointed at me.

“This is one hell of a disappearing act,” I said, looking around at the curtain pulled tightly over the window and the four empty beds. “How do the nurses feel about you giving yourself a private room?”

“They’ll do what they’re told,” he said. His words were slightly slurred, probably an effect of whatever painkiller he was on. “They don’t want my blood all over the floor any more than I do.”

“So you’re ex-military,” I said. “What’s Cline doing with an ex-military guy on his crew? I thought he only took losers and jailbirds.”

“I was a loser and a jailbird.” Russ gave a lopsided smile. “After two tours in Iraq, I was deployed to help out after the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia in 2004. We were pulling bodies out of the water for six weeks straight. Kids and all. That kind of shit fucks you up pretty good.”

I nodded.

“I did some things I’m not proud of, and Cline stepped in when I hit rock bottom,” Russ said. “But before all that I was a Marine. And once a Marine, always a Marine.”

The guys in the doorway stirred, wanting to give an oo-rah , perhaps, but not wanting to drop their menacing cover. I admired the setup. Russ must have called the team of military thugs from his past when Vinny popped him, knowing that if his old friends didn’t swoop in and rescue him from Addison Gilbert, Cline would come creeping in before dawn. Even if Cline knew Russ was ex-military, he’d be safe from the drug lord behind his wall of human steel, at least until he was charged and incarcerated for attacking my house. I wondered if Bess, the nurse at the triage desk, had helped the men secure a way out for this damaged soldier turned gangster. She’d have known, looking at his injuries and the state of affairs in her hospital, what she was likely dealing with. Her assistance of the man before me might have cost the woman her life.

“Have the police been here yet?” I asked Russ.

“Two undercovers.” He shifted painfully against the pillows. “And I told them the same thing I’ll tell you. I’m not talking about Cline.”

“Are you serious? You’ll go to prison for that merciless prick?” I said. “You’ve got these beefcakes standing guard to protect you from him. You know he’s coming to kill you. Why don’t you put him where he belongs and save yourself?”