John Sandford - The Devil's Code

People were coming and going in the hall, and I kept looking for the heavyset woman; fifteen minutes after I got there, I was rewarded: she went by the door, walking with purpose, clutching her purse with both hands. I checked the hallwaya little cluster of a man and two kids, all, from their looks, from the same family, were gathered by a doorway fifty feet downand stepped around the corner into Green's room.

Green was in the first bed, separated from the other by a pull curtain. A television was bolted into the far corner of the room, tuned to the romance channel. Green rolled his head toward me when I walked in. I turned my hands palm-up in a question, and raised my eyebrows; he shrugged, but put a finger to his lips. I stepped over next to his bed and put my head close to his. He whispered, "What are you doing here?"

"Needed to talk. Are you okay?"

"I will be. Gonna be in physical therapy for a few weeks."

"Sorry."

"Not as sorry as I am. I was supposed to cover Lane. She's dead." He looked ineffably sad when he said it.

"I need to know about the two guys. Were they both shooting?"

"Yeah, big time. Didn't bother with silencers or any of that shit. I think it might have been a pickup, but when they saw me, it was just boom-boom-boom. You got the computer?"

"Yes. I need to know what the guys looked like. You hit one of them."

"Not bad, I don't think. Maybe even ricocheted him. The short guy knocked me down first thing through the door, right on my ass into the bathtub. Not a goddamned thing I could do but keep pulling the trigger."

"Good thing for you that the tub was there."

"You got that right. I don't think" but he thought anyway, for a second, for probably the ten-thousandth time"I don't think I could have saved her."

"Not a chance," I said. "These guys: What'd they look like?"

"They were two mean white boys; nylons over their heads so you couldn't see them very well. But in good shape, thin and hard. I think, real short hair; I couldn't tell for sure, but that was the impression I got. One was maybe six-two or three, the other was maybe three inches shorter than that, but a little thicker. You'd notice if you saw them together. I shot the short one."

"All right. Are you headed back to Oakland?"

"I guess. I'd be happy to stay, but I don't know what good I'd do you."

"No, no. What we need the most is for you to go back to Oakland and do absolutely what you'd do if everything was just like you said it was. You're a bodyguard who doesn't know anything about anything. Go back, do therapy, go for walks, get laid. If the feds are still interested, you gotta bore them."

He nodded: "That's what I'll do."

From the other side of the curtain, a man's voice croaked, "Hey, Leth, you mind if I switch this over to Cinemax? I think they got one of them car-wash movies on."

"Go ahead," said Green. "I could use a car-wash movie."

I stuck a hand out, shook Green's, and went out the door. Down the elevators, across the doctors' parking lot, and into the car.

"How'd it go?" LuEllen asked.

"Fine. Green's cool, and we're good."

"Why do you look so bummed out?" She swung the car in a U-turn and we headed back toward the Interstate.

I told her about Morris Kendall, next door to Green. "There wasn't a single personal belonging in the room, that I could see. He's up there dying with nothing to keep him company but a cheap bouquet of yellow flowers from a stranger."

"Country song," she said.

That was the easy part of the day. We checked with Bobby, to see if he had anything new. He had a time and a place in Little Rock: three-thirty the next day, at a restaurant by Little Rock National Airport.

With that all fixed, I jumped LuEllen. Nothing slow and playful, the way her taste runs in sex, but straight ahead, pinning her on the bed, taking her down. When we were done, she said, "All right, Kidd. What was that all about?"

"I'm shipping your ass out," I said. "I figured you'd be pissed for a while, and I wanted some sex to remember you by."

She sat up: "You fucker."

"LuEllen. you're always reserving the right to take off when life gets too cranky, right? Well, it's going to get crankier, and there's no reason for you to be around. I'd just have to think about taking care of you, and I don't want to do that. I'm gonna have enough to do taking care of myself."

"You've never had to take care of me," she said. She said it in her dangerous voice.

"I don't mean take care of you, like a baby; I mean, watch out for you, too."

"What're you going to do?"

"I have an idea. I don't want to tell you about it, because it wouldn't be good for you to know yet. Maybe later. But what you've got to do is get somewhere public. You have your passport, right?"

"Kidd, what the fuck."

"You've got your passport?"

"Yeah, I've got."

"Tomorrow morning, early, I put your ass on a plane to somewhereNew York would be good, with the San Francisco ID. Then you shuttle back to Minneapolis, with the first ID you hadthat's still good?and then fly out to the British Virgins or the Bahamas under your own name. It's a lot of flying, but I want you checked through customs somewhere, and I want you in public for the next few days. Where people will remember you."

Now she was curious. Still pissed, but curious: "What are you going to blow up?"

"I'm not going to blow up anything. But this is all coming to a head, and you can never tell what these alphabet security agencies are capable of. If they put us together, you could be in trouble, and Bobby says they're peeling back the names."

"I'll never get all the flights."

"I booked you this morning," I said. "You're all confirmed."

"This morning," she said. She turned that over for a second, then said, "Asshole. This morning? You."

We argued about it, off and on, for the rest of the evening. Tried to get some sleep; she was throwing clothes around the next morning, but at eight o'clock, her little round butt was in line at DFW, for the New York flight. She's absolutely capable of turning her back on me and walking away, I think. But this time, she didn't. After several hours of chill, she gave me a serious kiss good-bye, whispered, "Take care," and got on the plane.

I was on my own, and on my way to Little Rock.

The drive to Little Rock took six hours, with time out for a cheeseburger and a couple of bathroom breaks. I was in the part of the country where, instead of getting french fries, you get home fries. Home fries are actually pure grease, soaked into grasslike strips of potato so you can get it to your mouth. A waitress in a uniform the exact color of two-day-old pumpkin pie dropped off the burger and fries, did a searching scan of my tabletop and said, "My goodness; somebody forgot to put out your catsup." She was back in a minute with a bottle of Heinz, and said, "Home fries just ain't right without catsup."

She was, and is, correct. They just ain't right.

I'd only been to Little Rock once before in my life. If you live in St Paul, Little Rock isn't on the way to anywhere except itself. I didn't get to see much of the place, either. The guy I was meeting was waiting at a Shoney's. I picked him out as soon as I walked in.

"How are you, John?" I asked, sliding into the booth. He reached across the tabletop and we shook hands

"Not too bad. I heard about Green and that lady you're in some shit." He looked at me sideways, his dark wraparound sunglasses glittering in the fluorescent light.

"I'm sorry about Green," I said.

"I'm sorry about your friend," he said.

John Smith was a black man, originally from Memphis, but now going back and forth between Memphis and a small town in the Delta, where his wife lived. He was both hard and intelligent, a political operator, a friend of Bobby's, and an artist, a sculptor. "I just got in," he said. "I'm having the open-face turkey sandwich, home fries, coconut cream pie, and Diet Coke."