Эд Горман - Fools Rush In

“She is?”

She smiled. “I can tell you’ve met her. She’s a looker, isn’t she?”

“Oh, she’s all right if you like that much intelligence mixed with that much beauty.”

“Same old Sam. You should settle down and get married like Bill did last year. She’s already pregnant.”

“How’s he like St. Louis?”

“Oh, he’s still adjusting. It’s quite a change from our little town.”

Jane Sykes was outside room 301 talking to a uniformed police officer.

No smile when she saw me approach. Just a barely perceptible nod. A yellow summer dress and a matching yellow straw hat. I was alive to other women and grateful to her for that. But I was also scared as hell, as I always was when I knew I’d already loosened my grip on the self-control handle.

When I reached her, she said, “So if you hear him even so much as mumble, be sure to get in there and try to catch what he’s saying. Even if it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure, Miss Sykes.” His eyes dazzled with fondness for the beautiful, stylish lady in front of him.

She didn’t say anything to me, just nodded at the elevator. The doors were open, so we stepped inside.

“I know you can talk,” I said, “I heard you just now telling that cop something.”

“I’m saving it till we get to the cafeteria. I’m starving.”

The typical hospital cafeteria. The nonmedical staffers sitting together enjoying leisurely lunches. The doctors and the nurses seeming in a bit more of a hurry.

Just once I’d like to play doctor. Walk around with a stethoscope dangling around my neck. In my high school days I’d been convinced that that was the easiest way of all to attract girls. While all the other boys were making fools of themselves trying to attract the most unattainable of girls, there I’d be walking up and down the ol’ high school corridors, very cool in my white medical jacket and ’scope, a perfect combination of raw male sexuality and deep medical seriousness. Dr. Sam McCain, M.D.

She didn’t order as if she were starving. Fruit cocktail, a bowl of chicken-rice soup, and a 7UP. I had a burger and a Pepsi.

“Now can we talk?”

“Sure.”

“Have we found out his name yet?”

“‘We’ certainly have, Sam. James Neville.”

“The same Neville as Richie Neville?”

“Half brother. They share a father.”

“Any kind of record?”

“A long one. The biggest rap was for extortion. Served six years in Joliet. Armed robbery as a juvenile.”

Will Neville, the man who blamed David Leeds for the murder of his brother, hadn’t bothered to mention any James Neville. I’d have to talk to him again.

A doctor interrupted us. Young. Nice-looking. No wedding ring. Leaning unnaturally close to Jane as he spoke. “I hope you got my invitation.”

“I did, Dr. Higham. And I appreciate it.”

“And even more, I hope you’ll consider joining me.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

He glanced at me and said, “I didn’t know that DAs trafficked with defense attorneys.”

Then she won my heart. “When they’re as charming as Sam they do.”

His smile was more of a grimace. Just the way I wanted it. He said good-bye and left.

“He made the mistake of pawing me at the party Judge Martin gave for me. Very possessive. Not the right approach, not for me anyway.”

“Me, either. I hate to be pawed.”

“Very funny, McCain. Now tell me what you’re going to do about Neville upstairs?”

“About Neville upstairs I plan to see his slug of a brother. And then I plan to find this biker.” I told her what I’d heard in the barbershop.

“Now that’s interesting, if it’s true.”

Not until then, me being a slow learner, especially when I’m so taken with a woman, did I realize what was happening here.

“We’re working together.”

“Yes, we are, Sam. And that’s just the way I planned it. I confide in you, you confide in me. Neither Clifford nor Judge Whitney has to know. The point is to serve justice, as stuffy as that sounds.”

“This is like a secret club.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “Here’s my unlisted number at home. You’d better write it down.”

Then she went and spoiled our little movie moment. “And please don’t call me at this number unless it’s business. I need my private time, Sam.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, though that’s all I’d had since Mary had gone back to Wes. Private time.

I needed more information about James Neville. It was likely he was staying in one of the local hotels, maybe even the one my old friend Dink worked at. I called his home.

“Dink, please.”

“He isn’t here right now.”

“Please, Mrs. Dink—”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“You don’t recognize my voice?”

“The TV’s up too loud.”

“Look, I know he’s there because you won’t let him go out unless he’s going to work.”

“He tell you that?”

“It was my idea.”

“Oh, then this is McCain.”

“Yes.”

“Darn right he don’t go out. He only gets in trouble.” I didn’t tell her that I was calling to get him in some trouble for me.

“Well, I wonder if I could talk to him.”

“They didn’t cancel his bail, did they?”

“No, but I need him to do me a favor.”

Suspicious. “What kind of a favor?”

“He’s still at the hotel every day?”

“Yeah, his uncle’s the only one who’d hire him.”

“Good. Then I need to talk to him.”

“I don’t want him in no more trouble.”

The way I had figured it out, he wouldn’t have to get in any trouble if he did what I told him.

“He’ll be fine.”

“And I didn’t appreciate that ‘Mrs. Dink.’”

“I apologize.”

“I’ll go get him.”

When he came on the line, Dink said, “The wife, she don’t care for you much.”

“I called her Mrs. Dink.”

“That ain’t why. She said you shoulda got me off on probation.”

“I did get you off on probation. Then you stole that cop’s billfold. That’s why you’re headed back to court.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess she forgot that.”

“Listen to me. I need you to do something for me.”

He listened.

“Thanks, McCain.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve been needin’ to do something illegal. I’m goin’ nuts here.”

“It’s not illegal. Not if you do it the way I told you.”

“Well, at least it’s sneaky. That’s a start in the right direction.”

“Remember what you need to do, now.”

“You knock something off on the bill?”

“You mean the bill neither you nor your parents have paid me anything on for five years?”

“I guess you got a point there.”

“Call me as soon as you do it.”

I drove past both of the garages where the bikers tended to hang out when they weren’t at the Iron Cross, the tavern on the edge of town where the local gendarmes had to come in full force several times a week to break up fights. The local gendarmes often looked worse than the bikers when it was all done.

But there were no signs of Harleys or Indians anywhere. I assumed they were out on the highway or at one of their enclaves in the nearby woods.

I found a Debbie Todd Carlyle in the phone book and drove on out to the hardscrabble little acreage where chickens seemed to have taken over. They were everywhere. I had to park on the edge of the gravel road. There were too many of them in the drive to scatter.

Debbie, a heavyset woman in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt and jeans, stood with her hands on her hips watching me approach. She didn’t look happy.

When I had to slow down because I was entangled in chickens, she said, “You might as well go back to town, McCain. I don’t plan to talk to you.”