Стюарт Вудс - Desperate Measures

Stone took a seat. Muldoon was the next arrival and sat down next to him. “Tell me,” he said.

Stone ran down the story for him, and by the time he had finished, Dino had arrived, followed shortly by Calabrese, wearing a new suit. Stone noticed, because he had just seen one like it on a dummy at Bloomingdale’s: it was made by Ermenegildo Zegna, an Italian company, and it cost more than three thousand dollars.

Dino noticed it, too. “What’s with the suit?” he asked Muldoon quietly.

“He dresses better off duty, I guess,” replied the detective, who was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers. “I think he must have a rich girlfriend.”

A doctor came out of the exam room and looked at the group. “Is the guy on my table a cop? He was wearing a doorman’s uniform. Was he undercover?”

“He’s a doorman,” Stone said.

“One we need to speak to,” Dino added.

“He’s not conscious and is obviously concussed. We’re sending him downstairs for scans to make sure there’s no brain injury.”

“When can we talk to him?” Muldoon asked.

“When he wakes up,” the doctor replied, “and I can’t guess when that will be. I’ll know more when I see his scans.”

“Okay,” Dino said to his group, “there’s no point in all of us hanging around here. Calabrese, you’re low man on the totem pole, so you do the hanging and call me the moment he seems to be coming to.”

“Yes, boss,” Calabrese replied.

“Let’s go get some coffee,” Dino said to Stone and Muldoon. They found the doctors’ lounge, made themselves at home, and took advantage of the free coffee and donuts.

A moment later, a woman who looked familiar to Stone entered the room and looked around. “Ah, there you are,” she said, walking over to Stone and handing him a Bloomie’s shopping bag. “You dropped these. I had my cab follow the ambulance.”

“Thank you,” Stone said.

“I’d have kept them, but my husband is a size forty-four,” she said, then walked out.

“What was that?” Dino asked.

“Boxer shorts,” Stone replied.

“You have them delivered wherever you are?”

“I dropped them when Eddie got hit by the car while trying to get her a cab, and they got mixed up with her packages.”

“A likely story.”

Donald Trask entered the hospital by the main entrance, walked through a door marked STAFF ONLY, and found himself in a locker room. He grabbed a green coat with an ID pinned to it and put it on over his jacket, then he started looking for the ER. His cell phone rang. “Yes?”

“He’s downstairs from the ER where they do the MRIs and CT scans. I’m there, and it’s very quiet.”

“Then you take care of him,” Trask said. “There’s twenty-five thousand, cash, in it for you.”

“Nope, I’m not that greedy.” He hung up.

Trask walked back into the hallway and checked the signs, then he took an elevator down two floors and got off. The quiet was broken only by occasional hums. He walked from door to door looking through the windows, until he found a room where a man on a stretcher was being buckled in and readied for entering a large machine. Outside the door a cart held an ornate uniform coat. He had found Eddie.

Trask waited for a moment while the medical personnel cleared the room, then walked in, drawing his weapon. A voice behind him shouted, “Freeze! Turn around” He raised his hands, still holding the gun, and turned around.

Calabrese fired two shots: One caught Trask in the neck and the other hit above an eye. He collapsed in a heap. “One case cleared,” Calabrese muttered to himself. He walked over to Trask, still pointing his gun, and checked him for signs of life. The man was dead. Then the detective heard another voice.

“That’s not how we clear cases,” Dino said. “Drop your weapon or join your pal.”

Calabrese turned to find the commissioner and Muldoon facing him with drawn weapons, while Barrington looked on. Calabrese dropped his weapon.

Stone, Dino, and Muldoon walked into Eddie’s hospital room an hour later to find him sitting up in bed drinking soup through a glass straw.

“Hi, Mr. Barrington,” he said, “who are your friends?”

Stone introduced Dino and Muldoon. “They’d like to hear your story, Eddie,” he said, “if you’re feeling up to it.”

“My story?” Eddie asked. “What story?”

“The one you told me a couple of hours ago at Bloomingdale’s.”

“I wasn’t working Bloomie’s today,” Eddie said. “I was at the Carlyle.” He furrowed his brow. “I think. What am I doing here? Nobody will tell me anything.”

“You were hit by a car,” Stone said, “and you have a concussion.”

The doctor entered the room. “I’ve seen your scans,” he said, “and you have no serious brain injury. We’ll keep you overnight, which is policy in these cases, and you’ll be back at work in a day or two.”

Eddie looked at Stone. “Does this make any sense to you?”

“Eddie,” Dino said, “I think we’ll wait a day or two, then talk again.” The three men wished him well, then left.

“That’s the second guy in a week I’ve talked to who had no memory,” Dino said.

“I guess we’re not going to need Eddie, anyway,” Muldoon observed.

“Can I give you a lift?” Dino asked Stone.

“Sure,” Stone replied.

They got into Dino’s car and headed downtown on Lexington Avenue. Stone looked at his watch. “You want some leftovers for dinner at my house?”

“Sure,” Dino replied.

“It’s weird, but I have a strange feeling of letdown.”

“Yeah, I get that sometimes,” Dino replied, “when a case is cleared.”

“Are you having any luck from your surveillance of Mike Adams?”

Dino shrugged. “Well, we were a little slow off the mark on that one,” he said. “But now that we’ve got Donald Trask off our hands, we can make some manpower available.”

“What’s going to happen to Calabrese?”

“That’s up to the DA, but if he’s charged with murder, he’ll probably get off.”

“You think?”

“The union will weigh in and get him a hotshot attorney. He’ll claim he was making an arrest of an armed suspect, who drew a weapon. Which is true, except that Muldoon and I saw how he handled it.”

“I, as well.”

“You don’t count.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Calabrese will be off the force soon, though. You can count on that. Muldoon found an envelope in his partner’s pocket with Trask’s old Greenwich address on it, containing eighteen hundred dollars and change. He’s been tipping Trask along the way. That’s why Donald-boy was so hard to nail.”

“So Calabrese nailed him for you.”

“As a way of covering his ass. Should I be grateful?”

“Well, you cleared a case, and you’ll have a bad cop off the force. That’s not a bad day.”

“I guess not,” Dino said, brightening.

Suddenly Stone said, “Driver, pull over!”

“What for?” Dino asked.

“We just passed the hotel,” Stone said, “and there was a light on at the back of the lobby. Why don’t we check it out?”

“Oh, what the hell,” Dino said. “Back it up, Tim.”

Tim reversed and set them down in front of the hotel.

“No work light in the lobby,” Dino said, peering through a door.

“Looks like it’s coming from the manager’s office,” Stone said.

Dino started trying doors and found one unlocked. He opened it and stood back. “After you,” he said, drawing his weapon.

Stone drew his own. “With your permission, Commissioner.”

“Granted,” Dino said.

They moved quietly into the lobby and toward the rear, from which chamber music was coming. They stopped on either side of the manager’s office door, and Dino pointed to himself.