Sue Grafton - K Is For Killer

From the corridor I heard footsteps and the murmur of male voices. Cheney appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame. "Ah. You're back. You want to see Danielle?"

I sat up. "Is she awake?"

"Not really. They just brought her down from surgery. She's still groggy, but she's been admitted to ICU. I told the charge nurse you're a vice detective and need to identify a witness."

I pressed my fingers against my eyes and rubbed my face. I ran my hands through my hair, realizing that for once-because of Danielle's cutting skills-every strand wasn't standing straight up on end. I gathered my resources and let out a big breath, willing myself back to wakefulness. I pushed myself to my feet and brushed some of the wrinkles out of my turtleneck. One thing about casual dressing, you always look about the same. Even sleeping in a pair of blue jeans doesn't have much effect. From the corridor, we used the house phone to call into the ICU nurses' station. Cheney handled the formalities and got us both buzzed in.

"Am I supposed to have a badge?" I murmured to him as we moved down the corridor.

"Don't worry about it. I told 'em you're working undercover as a bag lady."

I gave him a little push.

We waited outside Danielle's room, watching through the glass window while a nurse checked her blood pressure and adjusted the drip on her IV. Like the layout in the cardiac care unit, these rooms formed a U shape around the nurses' station, patients clearly visible for constant monitoring. Cheney had chatted with the doctor, and he conveyed the gist of her current situation. "He took her spleen out. Orthopedic surgeon did most of the work, as it turns out. Set her jaw, set her collarbone, taped her ribs. She had two broken fingers, a lot of bruising. She should be all right, but it's going to take a while. The cut on her scalp turned out to be the least of it. Mild concussion, lots of blood. I've done that myself. Bang your head on the medicine cabinet, it looks like you're bleeding to death."

The nurse straightened Danielle's covers and came out of the room. "Two minutes," she said, lifted fingers forming a V.

We stood side by side, in silence, looking down at her like parents taking in the sight of a newborn baby. Hard to believe she belonged to us. She was nearly unrecognizable: her eyes blackened, jaw puffy, her nose packed and taped. One splinted hand lay outside the covers. All of her bright red acrylic nails had popped off or broken, and it made her poor swollen fingers look bloody at the tips. The rest of her was scarcely more than a child-size mound. She was drifting in and out, never sufficiently alert to be aware of us. She seemed diminished by machinery, but there was something reassuring about all the personnel and equipment. As battered as she was, this was where she needed to be.

Leaving ICU, Cheney put his arm around my shoulders. "You okay?"

I leaned my head against him briefly. "I'm fine. How about you?"

"Doing okay," he said. He pressed the down arrow for the elevator. "I had the doctor leave orders. They won't give out any information about her condition, and no one gets in."

"You think the guy would come back?"

"It looks like he tried to kill her once. Who knows how serious he is about finishing the job?"

"I feel guilty. Like this is somehow connected to Lorna's death," I said.

"You want to fill me in?"

"On what?" The elevators opened. We stepped in and Cheney pressed 1. We began to descend.

"The piece you haven't told me. You're holding something back, are you not?" His tone was light, but his gaze was intent.

"I guess I am," I said. I gave a quick sketch of my conversation in the limousine with the Los Angeles attorney and his sidekicks. As we emerged from the elevator, I said, "You have any idea who the guy could be? He said he represented someone else, but he might have been talking about himself."

"I can ask around. I know those guys come up here for R and R. Give me the phone number and I'll check it out."

"I'd rather not," I said. "The less I know, the better. Are they running prostitutes up here?"

"Maybe something minor. Nothing big time. They probably control local action, but that may not mean much more than skimming off the profits. Leave the nuts and bolts to the guys under them."

Cheney had parked on a side street closer to the front entrance than the emergency room. We reached the lobby. The gift shop and the coffee shop were both closed, shadowy interiors visible through plate-glass windows. At the main desk, a man was engaged in an agitated conversation with the patient information clerk. Cheney's manner underwent a change, his posture shifting into cop mode. His expression became implacable, and his walk took on a hint of swagger. In one smooth motion he'd flipped his badge toward the clerk, his gaze pinned on the fellow giving her such grief. "Hello, Lester. You want to step over here? We can have a chat," he said.

Lester Dudley modified his own behavior correspondingly. He lost his bullying manner and smiled ingratiatingly. "Hey, Phillips. Nice to see you. Thought I caught sight of you earlier, down around Danielle's place. You hear what happened?"

"That's what I'm doing here, otherwise you wouldn't see me. This's my night off. I was home watching TV when the dispatcher rang through."

"Not alone, I hope. I hate to see a guy like you lonely. Offer still stands, day or night, male or female. Anything you got a taste for, Lester Dudley provides…"

"You pandering, Lester?"

"I was just teasing, Phillips. Jesus, can't a guy make a little joke? I know the law as well as you do, probably better, if it comes right down to it."

Lester Dudley didn't suit my mental image of a pimp. From a distance he had looked like a surly adolescent, too young to be admitted to an R-rated movie without a parent or guardian. Up close I had to place him in his early forties, a flyweight, maybe five four. His hair was dark and straight, slicked back away from his face. He had small eyes, a big nose, and a slightly receding chin. His neck was thin, making his head look like a turnip.

Cheney didn't bother to introduce us, but Lester seemed aware of me, blinking at me slyly like an earth-burrowing creature suddenly hauled into daylight. He wore kid's clothes: a long-sleeved cotton knit T-shirt with horizontal stripes, blue jeans, denim jacket, and Keds. He had his arms crossed, hands tucked into his armpits. His watch was a Breitling, probably a fake, riddled with dials, and far too big for his wrist. It looked more like something he might have acquired sending off box tops. "So how's Danielle doing? I couldn't get a straight answer from the broad at the desk."

Cheney's pager went off. He checked the number on the face of it. "Shit… I'll be right back," he murmured.

Lester seemed to bounce on his heels, ill at ease, staring after Cheney as he moved over to the desk.

I thought I ought to break the ice. "You're Danielle's personal manager?"

"That's right. Lester Dudley," he said, holding out his hand.

I shook hands with him despite my reluctance to make physical contact. "Kinsey Millhone," I said. "I'm a friend of hers." When you need information, you can't afford to let personal repugnance stand in your way.

He was saying, "Clerk's giving me a hard time, wouldn't give me information even after I explained who I was. Probably one of those women's liberation types."

"No doubt."

"How's she doing? Poor kid. I heard she really got the shit kicked out of her. Some crackaholic probably did it. They're mean sonsa bitches."

"The doctor left before I had a chance to talk to him," I said. "Maybe the clerk was under orders not to give out information."

"Hey, not her. She was having way too much fun. Enjoying herself at my expense. Not that it bothers me. I'm always taking flak from these women's libber types. Can you believe they're still around? I thought they gave it up by now, but no such luck. Here just last week, this bunch of ball busters? Came down on me like a ton of bricks, claimed I was engaged in white slavery. Do you believe that? What a crock. How can they be talking about white slavery when half my girls are black?"