Fredric Stern - The Endorphin Conspiracy

The cop stood up abruptly. “Okay, wise ass, but don’t forget there’s gonna be an investigation here and we need every piece of evidence—wallet, papers, anything—just like I said.”

He paused and looked back down at the victim on the ground. “I think this one’s gonna’ be needing a priest, not a medic. Pretty bad hit and run.” The words trailed off as the cop stepped back out of the way and started walking across the street.

Santos carefully rolled the victim on his back and set him on top of the backboard. His face was swollen, bloody and bruised, but not beyond recognition.

“ Dios mio , Rosey. It’s Geoff Davis!”

“What?” Rosey Ceravolo placed her stethoscope to the patient’s carotid artery. She raised her hand to Santos to keep quiet so she could listen carefully for any sounds. “Got a pulse! It’s a bit thready, but it’s there.”

With precision and speed, she cut open Geoff’s blood-soaked t-shirt with her bandage scissors, then placed the stethoscope on his chest. “Respirations shallow, but regular. Both lungs inflated. I think he’ll make it, at least to the ER.” She looked up at Santos. “What’d you say?”

“I said this is Geoff Davis, Doctor Geoff Davis, Chief Neurosurgery Resident at the Trauma Center!”

“What?” she asked in disbelief.

“You heard me right, Ceravolo.”

“Shit,” said Ceravolo in disgust. “Ain’t fair.”

“No, it ain’t.” Santos quickly inflated the blood pressure cuff. “BP 80/30. Looks like he’s lost a fair amount of blood here,” Santos said, gingerly checking Geoff’s head. Bad head injury, real bad. Damn.”

Santos pried the lids open and checked his pupils. They were almost pinpoint, but reactive.

“That crazy son-of-a-bitch drivin’ that car must have been going ninety miles an hour! Had to be on drugs or somethin’, man!”

Santos shot a glance at Ceravolo. “Whoever hit him knew what they were doin’. Look at those skid marks over there. They overlap and go in both directions.” He nodded towards the pavement as he wrapped Geoff’s head with gauze. “That driver kept at him, back and forth, back and forth. He was aimin’ for him.”

“The cop didn’t say anything like that. What makes you such an expert?”

“I know a hit when I see one, Ceravolo. This was a hit , not a hit and run. Same thing happened to my little brother. Drug dealer finished him off. A hit. Skid marks looked just like that.”

She paused as she ripped off a piece of tape with her teeth. For a moment she was speechless. He had never told her that before. “How come our cop friend over there didn’t say anything like that?”

They looked up briefly, glanced over at the tall, pock-marked plainclothes cop, who was awkwardly looking through the low hedges and flowers in the center island of the traffic circle across the way.

“Looks like our friend over there has more interest in finding what he’s lookin’ for than skid marks, Rosita.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re right. So what if this was no ordinary hit and run. Especially now that you tell me who this is. Maybe it had somethin’ to do with the attempted murder of that lady doc at the hospital. Maybe it was revenge or somethin’, you know what I mean, like the papers are sayin’?” She looked up at Santos. “You think he did it?”

Santos threw her a scornful glance. “No more than I think my own mama did it! No fuckin’ way! It ain’t in him to kill someone, especially the way they tried to kill that lady doc. Forget it.”

“Hey, just askin’, Santos. You know him as well as anyone, just thought I’d ask.”

“Let’s move him. Ready on three.”

They hoisted him up onto the stretcher. As they did so, something fell to the ground. Santos picked up the manila envelope and examined it, puzzled.

“What the fuck is that?”

“What the fuck does it look like, Ceravolo?”

“Well I know what it is , Santos, but what’s it doin’ in his shorts? Funny place to keep your mail, don’t you think?”

“Doesn’t look like mail.” He held it up to the light, then shook it back and forth. Something other than papers slid around inside. “Looks like some papers, a computer disk of some kind. Couple of small plastic vials, too.”

The envelope was sealed with packing tape and had a name written in black marker on the outside, but no address, no stamps. The word “URGENT” was scribbled underneath, underlined in red. “He was probably going to deliver it himself. Maybe he was on his way there when he got hit. Probably felt it was too important to trust to the post office,” he said as they lifted the stretcher and slid their patient in the back of the ambulance.

“What are you going to do with it?” she asked as she climbed inside.

“Hand it over to Detective O’Malley, 22nd Precinct, NYPD.”

“Maybe you should just give it to that guy in the unmarked car over there. He’ll get it to him. I mean, this looks like police stuff, Santos. Evidence. You know what I mean? Maybe this is what the cop is lookin’ for in the bushes over there. We’re medics, not detectives. We’re not supposed to get involved in this kind of thing.”

Santos looked over at the detective walking back in their direction. “That jerk? No fuckin’ way, babe. I don’t know him, and I don’t trust him. If I handed this envelope over to that bozo, this O’Malley might have it by Christmas, if he was lucky. No, this one’s being hand delivered by Enrique Santos. I’ll take the heat.”

He looked up and grinned. “Besides, you never saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“Didn’t think so.” Santos slammed the back door and climbed onto the driver’s seat. “Now let’s get this man to a doctor.”

“What the hell’s going on up there, Papa Bear? Have you lost control of your senses?” Bluebird was fuming, his usual controlled demeanor fallen by the wayside.

Balassi’s hand squeezed the receiver tightly, his jaw tense. “Quite the contrary, Phillip. I’ve just taken into my own hands what you and your team obviously couldn’t handle. Things are under perfect control now, let’s cut the fairy tale code names. I’ve had enough of this game.”

“You’re not paid to take anything into your own hands, Balassi! You’re paid to do research. Rather handsomely, I might add. That’s all! You should have stuck to your lab work and left the rest to us.”

“I would have if I could trust you’d have handled it, Phillip, but obviously that didn’t happen. I refuse to let thirty years of brilliant research go down the drain as a result of sheer incompetence!”

“Research you could never have done without our help, you fool. You scientists think you know everything about every fucking thing! Well, let me tell you what you’ve done. That pathologist you tried to have killed, Gibson, she was an agent working for the CIA Inspector General’s Office. The Inspector General! Do you know what that means?”

Balassi moved the receiver away from his ear as Lancaster raised his voice.

“We were watching her so closely she couldn’t change a tampon without us knowing about it. She hadn’t conveyed anything to the IG’s office, Balassi, not a goddamn thing. We were damn close to recruiting her to the project, and you had to have her sliced and diced.

“Now I have the boss looking into every crack and crevice, my asshole included, trying to find out who tried to knock her off! He’s been rattling cages like a mad gorilla, and someone’s gonna’ talk. It’s just a matter of time. The Sigma Project, your ass included, is in jeopardy, you idiot.”

No one calls me an idiot!