Michael Connelly - Chasing the Dime

"Lucy? Who is Lucy, Henry?"

"Ime…"

The mask was lifted.

"Rahvin. Gaw 'er."

Nicole nodded. She got it. The mask was put back over his mouth and nose.

"Okay, I will. As soon as we get to the hospital. I brought the number with me."

"No, now!" he yelled through the mask.

He watched as Nicole opened her purse and took out a cell phone and a small spiral pad.

She punched in a number she read from the pad and waited with the phone to her ear. She then reached out with the phone to his ear and he could hear Lucy's voice. It was voice mail. He groaned and tried to shake his head but couldn't.

"Easy," the paramedic said. "Easy now. Once we get to the ER we'll take off the straps."

He closed his eyes. He wanted to go back to the warmth and the darkness. The understanding. Where nobody asked him why. Especially himself.

Pretty soon he was there.

Clarity came and went over the next two hours as he was taken into the ER, examined by a doctor with a Caesar haircut, treated and then admitted to the hospital. His head finally cleared and he woke up in a white hospital room, startled from sleep by the staccato cough from somebody on the other side of the plastic curtain that was used as a room divider. He looked around and saw Nicole sitting on a chair, her cell phone to her ear.

Her hair was loose now and fell around her shoulders. The phone's antenna poked up through its silken smoothness. He watched her until she closed the phone without a word.

"Ni'i," he said in a hoarse voice. "Thas…"

It was still hard to make the k sound without pain. She stood up and went to his side.

"Henry. You -"

The cough sounded from the other side of the curtain.

"They're working on getting you a private room," she whispered. "Your med plan pays for it."

"Where am I?"

"St. John's. Henry, what happened? The police got there before I did. They said all these people on the beach called on their cell phones and said two guys were hanging somebody over the balcony. You, Henry. There's blood on the outside wall."

Pierce looked at her through swollen eyes. The swelling of the bridge of his nose and the gauze on the wound split his vision in half. He remembered what Wentz said right before he left.

"I dohn remember. Wha else did dey say?"

"That's it. They started knocking on doors in the building and when they got to yours it was wide open. You were in the bedroom. I got there when they were taking you out. A detective was here. He wants to talk to you."

"I don't remember anything."

He said it with as much force as he could. It was getting easier to talk. All he had to do was practice.

"Henry, what kind of trouble are you in?"

"I don't know."

"Who is Robin? And Lucy? Who are they?"

He suddenly remembered he needed to warn her.

"How long have I been here?"

"A couple hours."

"Gi' me your phone. I've got to phone her."

"I've been calling that number every ten minutes. I was just calling when you woke up. I keep getting voice mail."

He closed his eyes. He wondered if she had gotten his message and gotten out of there and away from Wentz.

"Le' me see your phone anyway."

"Let me do it. You probably shouldn't be moving around too much. Who do you want to call?"

He gave her the number for his voice mail and then the pass code number. She didn't seem to attach any significance to it.

"You've got eight messages."

"Any that are for Lilly just erase. Don't listen."

That was all of them except for one message which Nicole said he should listen to. She turned up the phone and held it out so he could listen when she replayed it. It was Cody Zeller's voice.

"Hey, Einstein, I've got some stuff for you on that thing you asked about. So give me a buzz and we'll talk. Later, dude."

Pierce erased the message and handed back the phone.

"Was that Cody?" Nicole asked.

"Yes."

"I thought so. Why does he still call you that? It's so high school."

" 'ollege, actually."

It hurt to say "college" but not as badly as he thought it would.

"What was he talking about?"

"Nothing. He was doing some online stuff for me."

He almost started telling her about it and everything else. But before he could put the words together a man in a lab coat came through the door. He had a clipboard. He was in his late fifties with silver hair and a matching beard.

"This is Dr. Hansen," Nicole said.

"How are you feeling?" the doctor asked.

He leaned over the bed and used his hand on Pierce's jaw to turn his face slightly.

"Only hurts when I breathe. Or talk. Or when somebody does that."

Hansen let go of his jaw. He used a penlight to study Pierce's pupils.

"Well, you've got some pretty substantial injuries here. You have a grade-two concussion and six stitches in your scalp."

Pierce hadn't even remembered that injury. It must have come when he hit the outside wall of the building.

"The concussion is the cause of the loginess you may be feeling and any headache discomfort. Let's see, what else? You have a pulmonary contusion, a deep shoulder contusion; you've got two fractured ribs and, of course, the broken nose. The lacerations on your nose and surrounding your eye are going to require plastic surgery to properly close without permanent scarring. I can get somebody in here tonight to do that, depending on the swelling, or if you have a personal surgeon, then you can contact him."

Pierce shook his head. He knew there were many people in this town who kept personal plastic surgeons on call. But he wasn't one of them.

"Whoever you can get…"

"Henry," Nicole said. "This is your face you're talking about. I think you should get the best possible surgeon you can."

"I think I can get you a very good one," Hansen said. "Let me make some calls and see what I come up with."

"Thank you."

He said the words pretty clearly. It seemed as though his speech facility was quickly adapting to the new physical circumstances of his mouth and nasal passages.

"Try to stay as horizontal as possible," Hansen said. "I'll be back."

The doctor nodded and left the room. Pierce looked at Nicole.

"Looks like I'm going to be here awhile. You don't have to stay."

"I don't mind."

He smiled and it hurt, but he smiled anyway. He was very happy with her response.

"Why did you call me in the middle of the night, Henry?"

He'd forgotten and the reminder brought the searing embarrassment again. He carefully composed an answer before speaking.

"I don't know. It's a long story. It's been a strange weekend. I wanted to tell you about it.

And I wanted to tell you what I had been thinking about."

"What was that?"

It hurt to talk but he had to tell her.

"I don't know exactly. Just that the things that happened to me somehow made me see your point of view a lot clearer. I know it's probably too little too late. But for some reason I wanted you to know I finally saw the light."

She shook her head.

"That's good, Henry. But you're lying here with your head and face split open. It appears somebody dangled you off a twelfth-story balcony and the cops say they want to talk to you. It seems like you went to an awful lot of trouble to get my point of view. So excuse me if I don't jump up and embrace the new man you profess yourself to be."

Pierce knew that if he were up to it, they were heading down the road to familiar territory. But he didn't think he had the stamina for another argument with her.

"Can you try Lucy again?"

Nicole angrily punched the redial button on her cell phone again.

"I ought to just put this on speed dial."

He watched her eyes and could read that she had reached the voice mail again.