Joel Goldman - No way out

“Shit, dude. I’m not stupid.”

He brokered a broad grin, slipped his hand into his back jean pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed his driver’s license to Carter, who glanced at it before giving it to Officer Fremont and motioning Staley to a bench between the elevator doors.

“Have a seat, Brett. We’ll get back to you in a few minutes.”

“I don’t have a record,” he said, sliding onto the bench, slouching against the wall, fingers tapping a beat on his knees. “Not even a traffic ticket. You’ll see.”

“That’s real reassuring, son,” Carter said. “Your mother must be proud.”

Carter looked at Joy and then at me. “You going to introduce us?”

“Sorry. Joy Davis, say hello to Quincy Carter.”

She smiled and took the hand he offered. “Jack and I used to be married. Now we’re just roommates.”

Carter shook his head. “I don’t know whether that’s a promotion or a demotion, but do me a favor, Joy, and keep Mr. Staley company while your roommate and I have a talk.”

She joined Brett, and I followed Carter around the corner, past the nurse’s station.

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s how it is. You can talk to Roni Chase, but I’m going to be standing right next to you. Take it or leave it.”

The nurse’s station was the hub in a wheel with three spokes, each one a hallway leading to patient rooms. Activity was concentrated at the far end of one hall; cops gathered outside a room, a forensic crew shuffling in and out. An exit sign hung from the ceiling just past the door.

“You put Crenshaw in a room at the end of the hall next to a stairway? Could you have made it any easier for the shooter?”

Carter bristled. “It was the only room available when he came in, and we had no reason to think someone would try to take him out.”

“Is that the excuse the cop on the door gave for not staying put?”

Carter waved his hand at me. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any excuse is a lousy excuse after the shit flies. Now, like I said, you can talk to Roni but not alone. Deal?”

I ignored his offer again. “Any witnesses see whoever it was went into Frank’s room?”

“No. It’s after visiting hours. The only nurse at the station was hollering at Roni, who was busy stirring up a shit storm.”

“Which let the shooter use the stairs-quick in and out. What about surveillance videos?”

“We’re checking them.”

“Anybody hear a gunshot?”

“No.”

“Are the rooms that soundproof?”

“They’re pretty quiet, and all the doors were closed. The patients in the rooms next to Crenshaw and across the hall were post-op and sleeping off anesthetic. They wouldn’t have heard a bomb go off. The other patients on his wing were sleeping or watching TV. None of them heard anything.”

“Maybe the shooter used a silencer. Or, he could have made it easy and used a pillow.”

“No pillow unless he took it with him,” Carter said.

“A contract hitter would have used a silencer and would be out of town by now.”

“You going to keep pretending you didn’t hear what I said about talking to Roni?”

“Let me finish working this through. You put Crenshaw in a room at the end of a hall next to the stairs. You got a cop on the door that screws up the one thing that should be impossible to screw up. You got a shooter who knows what room Crenshaw is in and times the hit for the exact moment Crenshaw is unprotected and anyone else who might see or hear anything is zoned out. Those are a lot of planets to line up.”

“And I’m no astronomer, but that’s too much for the shooter to count on unless he knew Roni was going to mix it up with the nurse. If he did, odds are Roni knew about the hit.”

“You swept her office this morning. You find anything that would give her reason to do something so stupid as that?”

Carter grinned. “Figure out which side you’re on and I’ll tell you.”

“You don’t have anything, because if you did, she’d be downtown by now. Which means there are at least three other possibilities. The shooter was checking out the setup, making a dry run, and saw his chance and took it. Or, he could have been planning to take the cop out too and got lucky or the cop was in on it. Which one do you like better?”

“I don’t like any of them any better than I like you.”

“I don’t blame you, but you’re stuck with them and me. One last question?”

Carter heaved. “What?”

“You ever work the gang squad?”

“Spent some time.”

“Does Nuestra Familia operate here?”

“They’ve just about got an exclusive on the drug trade in Northeast. It’s Cesar Mendez and a couple dozen of his closest friends and relatives, plus a waiting list of wannabes. Why the interest?”

“What about guns?”

“You know a gang that isn’t armed to the teeth?”

“Any chance they’re branching out from drugs, adding another line of merchandise?”

“Make your point.”

“Frank Crenshaw killed his wife with a gun that was traced to the robbery of that gun dealer last month. Maybe Mendez pulled that job. Maybe he’s arming his boys or maybe he’s filling an order from the folks back home.”

“How’s someone like Frank Crenshaw hook up with Cesar Mendez?”

“It’s the law,” I said.

“What law?”

“The law of supply and demand.”

Carter pointed toward the elevators. Joy looked at me as we waited for one of the doors to open, her eyebrows raised in a silent question I answered with a shrug. Her shoulders deflated, and her eyes lost their luster. She tired easily, no matter how much rest she got, always needing more, raising questions we couldn’t answer.

How do you live when you know you are dying? Do you ignore what’s happening inside you, conceding nothing? Do you conserve your strength, spending it only on the things that matter the most? Do you do the most and best you can and not worry about the rest? Joy’s answer was yes to all of that. I didn’t know how she did it.

Staley ignored us, earbuds plugged into his phone, listening to music and texting. I leaned toward her, a hand on her shoulder, whispering, “You okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “You?”

“Marvelistic.”

“We’re both lousy liars.”

“Long as we know it. Hang in there. This won’t take long.”

“Take as long as it takes. This is the most comfortable hospital bench I’ve sat on all day.”

“You’re too good for words.”

“I know,” she said, smiling and stroking my face with her palm. “Don’t forget you said that because I won’t.”

Officer Fremont motioned to Carter from the nurse’s station, and Carter joined him. Fremont said something I couldn’t make out, but Carter’s grimace said it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Bad news?” I asked when Carter returned.

Carter bent over, tying a shoelace that wasn’t untied, pretending he hadn’t heard me. The elevator arrived, and we stepped on, the doors closing, the car giving us a jolt before it began its descent. I leaned against the handrail, closing my eyes and clenching as the day rattled my cage.

“Still with the shaking,” Carter said.

I took a deep breath as the tremors passed. “Yeah.”

“Be better off home in bed.”

“Lot of ways to be better off.”

Carter nodded, watching the numbers for each floor flash by. “I get what you do. The whole protect-the-weak-and-innocent bit.”

My torso pretzled, my chin planted on my shoulder for a three count until the spasm let me go. “Keeps me busy.”

“Trouble is, you start out from the wrong place. You want people like Roni to be innocent so bad you quit thinking like a cop. You push things the way you want them to go instead of going where the evidence takes you.”