Stephen Cannell - The Plan

Ryan had been aching inside for so long, he couldn't believe the feeling of comfort, the loss of pain, just holding her gave him. She told him she would never leave him, that she was his for the rest of her life. He started to taste the salt from the tears that were running down her cheeks.

The lovemaking was slow and more consuming than he had ever believed possible. She moaned with pleasure as they exploded together in climax, reaching secret places he had never explored before. And then they held each other in silence, listening to their hearts beating in combined rhythms. No words could describe their feelings, but in that moment, without needing words, they pledged themselves to one another.

Kaz came back to the room at the Blue Rainbow Hotel to check on Ryan. He'd been told by the intern on the fourth floor of County Hospital that the results of Brenton's surgery were problematic. The anchor had a dime — size aneurysm that had ruptured and knocked him flat.

They'd opened Brenton's skull and tied off the bleeding vein, but until he woke up, or didn't, they would have no way of knowing how much damage had been done. Ka z h ad tried to press the intern for a prognosis, but the youn g d octor had refused.

"Each one of these is a whole new deal," he'd fudged. "We can't tell how much damage was done before we released the cranial pressure."

Kaz had learned that the practitioners of the fine art of sawboning hated to be wrong, more than they hated socialized medicine. They also panicked over the possibility of a malpractice suit. Therefore, they rarely gave prognoses. So Kaz had learned to ask medical questions differently.

"If you saw ten cases with about the same degree of cranial hemorrhaging, how many of those ten would ever regain any reasonable sense of normalcy?"

By asking the question that way, Kaz was allowing the doctor to avoid comment on a specific case and, at the same time, allowing him to exhibit his vast knowledge of cerebral hemorrhages without running the risk of being wrong.

"I'd say about two or three in ten would get back to something resembling a normal life," the intern said, giving Kaz the answer to the question he'd asked in the first place.

Brenton Spencer had less than a 30-percent chance to wake up and start talking not very good odds.

The lobby was filling up with the press, so Kaz had gone back to the hotel to wait for news.

When he arrived, he found Ryan sitting up in bed, dressed in new clothes. Seated next to him, smiling, was Lucinda Alo. Kaz looked at them with disgust.

"Lucinda's going to help us," Ryan said, as Kaz scowled.

"I'm fucking delirious about that." Kaz moved to the window and, pulling the curtains aside, looked out into the alley, half expecting to see a dark sedan with two goombah hitters oiling silenced Sig-Sauers. The alley was empty.

"I assume you're Mr. Kazorowski. "

"That's right." Kaz closed the curtains. "Where'd you get the new duds?"

"Lucinda bought them for me."

"You don't get it, do you? Her brother is trying to kill you. Why should she help you? Sicilians teach family loyalty from birth. . Nobody is ever allowed in between. But because you've got great teeth and sun-bleached hair you think this Mafia princess is gonna throw her family away so she can play house!" He started to collect his few belongings and jam them into his duffel bag.

"What'm I doing hanging with you? Good luck, but I'm outta here."

Ryan changed the subject.

"What happened to Brenton?"

"Brenton looks like a science fiction experiment. Got enough tubes comin' out of his head to plumb a duplex. We're probably not going to get anything outta him, but right now, he's all I've got."

"I had another idea. Cole Harris."

"Who's Cole Harris?"

"Cole Harris is a guy I knew in L. A. a while back. He used to be a reporter for UBC. Vidal Brown told me he was canned because UBC wouldn't run a series of stories he did on the underworld. Apparently, he accused Steve Israel of collusion with the mob and he was out on his ass before the end of the day."

Kaz stood looking at Ryan for a long time, not sure how to grade it. "That doesn't mean he knows anything about Brenton's connection to the mob or Haze Richards."

"Cole is one of those humorless bastards who thinks he's always right. If he thinks they fucked him, he'll be digging through their trash looking for evidence until he proves it."

"Where is he?" Kaz said, getting a little more interested.

"I don't know, but I'm gonna find out."

"Gonna take her with you?"

"Yes. I need help. I still can't walk."

"But you still can fuck, I bet," Kaz said, wishing immediately he hadn't.

"You're really something of an asshole, aren't you?" Lucinda said.

"You got that right. It's why I'm still alive. Assholes are hard to kill," Kaz fired back.

They glared at each other as a hooker screamed an insult through the wall.

"How do I reach you?" Kaz asked, relenting.

"I have my mother's cell phone," Lucinda said. "I'll loan it to you."

"And I have credit cards," Ryan said. "I'll buy another cell phone."

Kaz looked at the phone in Lucinda's hand, then took it from her. "I'm going back to the hospital," he said and walked out of the room, leaving Ryan and Lucinda alone. "He's pleasant."

Ryan stood up, using the chair for balance. "Let's get outta here."

Lucinda bought a pair of crutches for Ryan at a hospital supply store. Ryan took the last of the antibiotics that Dr. Jazz had given him, hoping he had passed the danger point for infection. They picked up a cell phone at a Radio Shack with Ryan's credit card and gave the clerk an extra twenty to get it programmed immediately. Then they went to a fast-food restaurant and Ryan hobbled on his crutches to the pay phone. He dialed Steve Israel's assistant on the Rim in New York.

"How's Spencer doing?"

"Not good. He's still unconscious," she said.

"Listen, . I know this is a bad time, but I'm trying to reach Cole Harris. You got a number on him? We were friends in L. A. I'd like to look him up."

"He's an asshole. Steve fired him 'cause he was accusing everybody in the 'morning meeting' of killing stories for the wrong reasons."

"Did you ever see the stories?"

"No, but Steve said he didn't have corroborating sources. We'd've been sued if we'd run it."

"So, you don't know where he is?"

"Haven't heard from him. Wait a minute. I think he had a brother in Rye. Carson. Carson Harris. He's probably in the book."

"Thanks. See ya around." And he hung up.

Steve Israel met his assistant at the elevator and they got in together.

"Remember Cole Harris?" she asked.

"Do I ever," Steve responded.

"I was just on the phone with Ryan Bolt. He's trying to get in touch with him."

C. Wallace Litman had spoken to Steve the day before about Ryan Bolt. Wallace said that Ryan had left Haze's

campaign and that nobody at UBC should cooperate with him. "Did you give him Cole's number?"

"I didn't have it, but I remembered he had a brother named Carson. I told him maybe he knows where Cole is."

The elevator stopped in the lobby. Then Steve snapped his finger. "Damn," he said. "I forgot something. Go ahead, I'll see you later."

Steve went back up to his office on the Rim and called C. Wallace Litman and told him what he had just found out.

Charlie "Six Fingers" Romano had made Thirteen Weeks see Mickey personally to explain how he'd fucked up the job on Ryan Bolt.

He met with Mickey at the gangster's home in New Jersey, just a few days before Joseph Alo died. Thirteen Weeks sat on a carved wood chair in the entry hall, his nose still taped together, hoping that Mickey wouldn't go apeshit and do something crazy. He was facing an oil portrait of a beautiful girl who looked a lot like the one who had hit him on the head with the ashtray. He walked over and looked at the painting more closely.