Chasing the Dime

by Michael Connelly

  "What's wrong? Why are you talking funny? Why did you need the number of that woman?"

  Despite his pain and fear and everything else, he found himself angry at the way she said

  "that woman."

  "Lohn story and I cah . . . I . . ."

  He felt himself fading out but as he started to roll off the wall to the floor, the angle of his body sent jabbing pain through his chest and he groaned from somewhere deep inside.

  "Henry! Are you hurt! Henry! Can you hear me?"

  Pierce slid his hips down along the rug until he could lie flat on his back. Somehow an instinctive warning came through. He knew he might drown in his own blood if he stayed in his current position. Thoughts of rock stars drowning in their own vomit passed through his mind. He had dropped the phone and it was on the carpet next to his head. In his right ear he could hear the tinny sound of a far-off voice calling his name. He thought he recognized the voice and it made him smile. He thought of Jimi Hendrix drowning in his own puke and decided he'd rather drown in his own blood. He tried to sing, his voice a wet whisper.

  " 'Suze me why I iss the sy . . ."

  He couldn't make k sounds for some reason. That was strange. But soon it didn't matter.

  The small voice in his right ear drifted off and soon there was a loud blaring sound in the darkness. And soon even that was gone and there was only darkness all around him. And he liked the darkness.

  21

  A woman Pierce had never seen before was running her fingers through his hair. She seemed strangely detached and perfunctory for so intimate an action. The woman then leaned in closer to him and he thought she was going to kiss him. But she put her hand on his forehead. She then lifted some sort of tool, a light, and shined it in one eye and then the other. He then heard a man's voice.

  "Ribs," he said. "Three and four. We might have a puncture."

  "We put a mask over this nose and he'll probably hit the roof," the woman said.

  "I'll give him something."

  Now Pierce saw the man. He moved into view when he raised a hypodermic needle in a gloved hand and squeezed a little spray into the air. Next he felt the jab in his arm and pretty soon warmth and understanding flowed through his body, tickling across his chest.

  He smiled and almost laughed. Warmth and understanding in a needle. The wonders of chemistry. He had made the right choice.

  "Extra straps," the woman said. "We're going vertical."

  Whatever that meant. Pierce's eyes were closing. The last thing he saw before escaping into the warmth was a policeman standing over him.

  "He going to make it?" he asked.

  Pierce didn't hear the answer.

  The next time he regained consciousness he was standing. But not really. He opened his eyes and they were all there, crowded close to him. The woman with the light and the man with the needle. And the cop. And Nicole was there, too. She was looking up at him with tears in her dark green eyes. Even so, she was beautiful to him, her skin brown and smooth, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, the blonde highlights shining.

  The elevator started to drop and Pierce suddenly thought he might throw up. He tried to get out a warning but couldn't move his jaw. It was like he was tied tightly to the wall.

  He started to struggle but couldn't move. He couldn't even move his head.

  His eyes met Nicole's. She reached up and put her hand on his cheek.

  "Hold on, Hewlett," she said. "You're going to be all right."

  He noticed how much taller than her he was. He didn't used to be. There was a pinging sound that seemed to echo in his head. Then the elevator door slid open. The man and woman came to either side of him and walked him out. Only he wasn't walking, and he finally realized what "going vertical" meant.

  Once they were out he was lowered and rolled through the lobby. A lot of faces watched as he passed by. The doorman whose name he didn't know looked down at him somberly as he was rolled through the door. He was lifted into an ambulance. He wasn't feeling any pain but he had difficulty breathing. It was more labor-intensive than usual.

  After a while he noticed that Nicole was sitting next to him. It looked like she was outright crying now.

  He found that in the horizontal position he could move a little bit. He tried to speak but his voice sounded like a muffled echo. The woman, the paramedic, then leaned into his field of vision, looking down at him.

  "Don't speak," she said. "You've got a mask on."

  No kidding, he thought. Everybody's got a mask on. He tried again, this time speaking as loudly as he could. Again it was muffled.

  The paramedic leaned in again and lifted the breathing mask.

  "Hurry. What is it? You can't take this off."

  He looked past her arm at Nicole.

  "Gaw Lucy. Geh 'er ow a dare."

  The mask was put back in place. Nicole leaned close to him and spoke.

  "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 calli
ng 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.

  She snapped the phone closed and looked at him.

  "Henry, what's going on with you?"

  He tried to shake his head but it hurt to do so.

  "I got a wrong number," he said.

  22

  Pierce came out of a murky dream about free-falling while blindfolded and not knowing how far it was he was falling. When he finally hit the ground he opened his eyes and Detective Renner was there with a lopsided smile on his face.

  "You."

  "Yeah, me again. How are you feeling, Mr. Pierce?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Looked like a bad dream you were having. You were thrashing around there quite a bit."

  "Maybe I was dreaming about you."

  "Who are the Wickershams?"

  "What?"

  "You said the name in your sleep. Wickershams."

  "They're monkeys. From the jungle. The non-believers."

  "I don't get it."

  "I know. So never mind. Why are you here? What do you want? It happened —whatever happened —in Santa Monica and I already talked to them. I don't remember what happened. I have a concussion, you know."

  Renner nodded.

  "Oh, I know all about your injuries. The nurse told me the plastic surgeon put a hundred and sixty microstitches across your nose and around that eye yesterday morning.

  Anyway, I'm here on Los Angeles police business. Though it's looking more and more like maybe L.A. and Santa Monica should get together on this one."

  Pierce raised his hand and gently touched the bridge of his nose. There was no gauze. He could feel the zipper of stitches and the puffiness. He tried to remember things. The last thing he could clearly recall was the plastic surgeon hovering over him with a bright light. After that he had been in and out, floating through the darkness.

  "What time is it?"

  "Three-fifteen."

  There was bright light coming through the window shades. He knew it wasn't the middle of the night. He also realized he was in a private room.

  "It's Monday? No, it's Tuesday?"

  "That's what it said in the paper today, if you believe what you read in the paper."

  Pierce felt physically strong —he had probably been asleep for more than fifteen straight hours —but was disturbed by the lingering feeling of the dream. And by Renner's presence.

  "What do you want?"

  "Well, first of all, let me get something out of the way. I'm going to read you your rights real quick here. That way you're protected and so am I."

  The detective pulled the mobile food tray over the bed and placed a microrecorder down on it.

  "What do you mean, you're protected? What do you need protection from? That's bullshit, Renner."

  "Not at all. I need to do it to protect the integrity of my investigation. Now I'm going to record everything from here on out."

  He pressed a button on the recorder and a red light came on. He announced his name, the time and date and the location of the interview. He identified Pierce and r
ead him his constitutionally guaranteed rights from a little card he took from his wallet.