Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  He knew he was getting weaker as he lost more blood from his shoulder. Things started to go dim, and he didn’t hear the terrible small crunching sounds from Dexter’s throat, didn’t see that Casey’s thrashing was a different kind now as she tried to get him to stop squeezing the lifeless husk of John Dexter.

  Just before he passed out, R.J. thought he heard something, at last.

  It was a voice, calling out, “Police! Freeze!”

  It sounded a lot like Henry Portillo.

  CHAPTER 34

  They kept R.J. overnight in the hospital. The emergency-room doctor, a young guy with pimples and red hair, made a lot of jokes about pincushions. R.J. didn’t laugh.

  But when he was lying in bed later, he smiled a lot. It might have been the painkillers kicking in. The feeling of relief from all those stab wounds was enough to bring a smile to the face of a gargoyle.

  And then, maybe it wasn’t just the painkillers. It might have been the visitors.

  Hookshot came by. They’d refitted his hook, and he was even wearing his black silk jacket.

  R.J. looked at him fondly. “How in the hell did you get that jacket back so fast?”

  “Benny brought it by.” Hookshot laughed. “Kid’s got a heart under all that mean. Lookit here!” He held up the sleeve and the tail of the jacket to show where the ice pick had pierced them. The holes were neatly mended. “Benny took it over to Mendlebaum, got it patched.”

  “Nice kid,” R.J. said, drifting a little from the drugs.

  “Bullshit,” said Hookshot. He took a slip of paper from the jacket’s pocket. “Gave me the goddamn bill.”

  R.J. smiled, and he came as close to laughing as he could with all those damned tubes going in and out of him.

  “Anyway,” Hookshot said at last, “I’ll leave you folks be. You mend up, brother.” He snapped a half-salute with his gleaming silver hook and was gone.

  R.J. reached out to the side of the bed. A hand met and held his, and he looked up into Casey’s eyes.

  Casey had stayed with him in the ambulance the whole way to the hospital, right beside him, not letting the paramedics bully her out of the way. Uncle Hank had been along for the ride too, flashing his badge when they tried to put him off the ambulance. But Portillo had finally left when they got R.J. patched up and into a bed. He’d said he was going to get the door fixed at R.J.’s apartment and camp out there.

  Casey stayed. And all through the night, as R.J. drifted in and out of a lightly drugged sleep, Casey was there beside the bed, watching him, even holding his hand.

  In the morning, before he was released, R.J. had three more visitors.

  He had just finished his breakfast when he heard hard shoes in the hall. They were cop shoes, no question. For some reason cop shoes always sound different. The cop might be wearing the same shoes as anyone else, but they had a sound all their own. It was a little harder, a little brisker.

  And sure enough, the sound paused at his door and Lieutenant Kates came in, followed by Bertelli and Boggs. At the door, Kates turned to Boggs and said, “Wait in the hall.”

  R.J. grinned. He could see Boggs hated that, hated it like hell, but he shut up and did what he was told. R.J. knew it was the only apology he was going to get from Kates. It was enough.

  Bertelli, standing behind Kates, gave him a quick grin and a thumbs-up.

  “Well, Brooks,” Kates said, looking at him with faint distaste. “Pretty close to a major fuckup. Pardon my language, Miss Wingate.”

  “Don’t give it another fucking thought, Lieutenant,” she said sweetly.

  Kates took a breath, then heard what she’d said and turned to look at her. But Casey looked innocently back and Kates was obviously not sure he’d heard it. He cleared his throat and looked at Bertelli, who was trying not to laugh, and then at R.J., who smiled at him.

  “Go on, Fred,” R.J. said. “What were you saying?”

  But Kates was blushing. In the end, he could only stammer out a few vague statements encouraging R.J. to be more cooperative in the future.

  R.J. was glad to agree. For the first time in weeks, he believed there was going to be a future.

  Kates left, dragging Boggs with him. Bertelli hung behind just long enough to shake his head at R.J. and Casey and tell them, very softly, “shame on youse.” Then he was gone too, his cop shoes clicking after the others.

  “You talk to your mother with that mouth?” R.J. asked Casey.

  She snorted. “You should hear what my mother says back.”

  * * *

  They got back to his apartment a little bit after noon. R.J. was surprised at how weak he felt. But as the doctor reminded him when he checked out, he had lost a lot of blood and would need to take it easy for a few days.

  R.J. didn’t need the reminder. With the sling and the dozen or so bandages hanging from his body he felt like a medical experiment gone bad.

  Uncle Hank was waiting for them at the apartment, and true to his word, he had managed to get the door fixed. R.J. paused to admire the new door. Uncle Hank stood beside him.

  “Steel-reinforced,” he said, rapping on the door with his knuckle. “I had them put in steel around the frame, with six-inch bolts to hold it in. And two new deadbolts, top and bottom.” With a small flourish, he handed the new keys to R.J.

  “For Christ’s sake, Uncle Hank. What in hell did you think I keep in here?”

  The older man looked slightly hurt, but he smiled through it. “You, chico. You keep you in here.”

  There was nothing much to say to that. So R.J. leaned on Hank’s arm and let him help him through the door.

  “Sit,” Portillo told him. “Just sit. You need to eat something.”

  “What are you thinking about feeding him?” Casey asked with a raised eyebrow. “The doctor gave strict orders—”

  Portillo cut her off. “I have been dealing with wounded men my whole life. I know what to feed him.”

  “Nothing greasy or spicy, not for at least three days.”

  “Is that what you think about Mexican cooking? Because—”

  R.J. raised his voice as much as he could and butted in. “Guys? Can you get me to the chair and then kill each other?”

  Casey took one elbow and Henry the other, and he managed to sink weakly into the easy chair, beside a frantically blinking answering machine. He sat for a moment with his eyes closed and then reached over and played back the messages. He could hear Casey and Portillo fussing around together in the kitchen.

  Probably arguing about what sort of gruel I can have, he thought with a very feeble smile.

  He rolled the message tape.

  The first call was from Pittsburgh. The nasal voice identified herself as Barbara, the drama professor he’d spoken to at Carnegie-Mellon. She said she’d gotten the picture and was pretty sure it was a former student, John Dexter.

  R.J. snorted.

  The next was from Arthur in Hollywood. He said he’d had a bit of luck and thought he’d found someone to identify the picture. It looked rather like a chap named Dexter, quite a good actor, really.

  The last message was from Wanda, in Buffalo, telling him that if he let anything happen to him she was going to kick his ass.

  He lay back in the chair, his head lolling on the headrest. It was all too much, had finished up too quickly, and he felt like he hadn’t caught up with himself yet.

  The voices in the kitchen heated up a little and then died away. R.J., feeling happy for a change, drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  Much later that night, after Hank had gone to the airport to catch the shuttle back to Quantico, R.J. lay in bed, his eyes closed, still sorting through all that had happened.

  He felt a gentle feather of a touch on his cheek and opened his eyes.

  Casey stood beside the bed, looking down at him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Okay. A little bit weak, but not so bad.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed beside him and for a few
minutes they were silent.

  “You’re all right, Wingate,” R.J. said.

  “You better believe it,” she said.

  He took her hand again and held it for a moment.

  “Thanks, Casey,” he said after a while.

  “For what?”

  “For staying with me. I—it means a lot to me.”

  “Forget it,” she scoffed. “This pays for itself. This is a great finish for my story.”

  He turned his head to look at her full for a minute, then smiled.

  “You know what, Wingate?”

  “What?”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  She finally smiled, softly, almost tenderly, looking into his eyes. Then she leaned all the way over and kissed him softly on the lips.

  “Maybe,” she said.