Deadly Beloved

by Max Allan Collins

  “That’s right...sorry. Didn’t mean to jump on you.” She smiled at the officer. “Go on and take your call, at the nurse’s station. I’ll stay with the patient till you return.”

  He smiled back at her, said thanks, and as Clemens headed down the corridor, tucking away the evidence—his Nintendo DS—into a pants pocket, Nurse Garcia slipped into Freemont’s room.

  On entering, the nurse’s pleasant expression hardened into a blank mask as she studied, in a clinical fashion, her patient, unconscious in his bed, the heart monitor’s blipping providing a percussive undercurrent.

  The nurse tossed her clipboard on the foot of the bed and removed from her pocket a hypodermic syringe already filled with a black liquid. She pointed the hypo needle up to check it, giving it a test squirt.

  Then she moved in on the unconscious Freemont, needle poised....

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Ms. Tree,” Dr. Cassel said, and he was on the edge of his chair. “But how can you know this? Where were you when this was going on?”

  I grinned over at him. “Didn’t I mention it, Doc? I was who Roger was sharing the room with....”

  I whipped the privacy curtain open.

  The empty bed where I’d been sitting and waiting—in slacks and blouse, not a hospital gown (I wasn’t sharing the room to that extent)—was to my back, and I was on my feet, with my nine millimeter in hand...

  ...and aimed right at the “nurse.”

  I gave her a smile at least as nasty as the black remedy in that hypo.

  “Maybe,” I said, “it’s time for your shot....”

  But she was fast, and didn’t fluster, I’ll give her that: she hurled the hypo at me like a knife, and the damn thing hit me in the arm, hard, hard enough to pierce the blouse and stick in my arm and quiver there and for that matter bump me back against the bed, jarring me so that the gun went flying, clattering to the floor somewhere.

  This put me out of commission long enough for Nurse Garcia to book it out of the room, moving quickly, not quite running.

  I yanked the damn hypo from my arm—“Fuck!”—and wasted a second or two trying to spot my fumbled nine mil, slipping the hypo in my slacks pocket.

  Gun was out of sight, so I said, “Shit,” and took pursuit, anyway.

  I could see Garcia up there, nearing where she’d have to turn either left or right, but there were several real nurses in the hall as well; calling out was too risky, because it would encourage Garcia to take a hostage or otherwise misbehave....

  Down at the end of the corridor, beyond the fleeing Garcia, came Uniformed Officer Clemens, trundling around the corner, gesturing in confusion. And right on his heels was another nurse, a genuine nurse, pushing a steel cart of meds.

  “Hey,” Clemens said to Garcia, “I held on for like forever, and Valer didn’t—”

  What happened next I saw but couldn’t do a damn thing about....

  Nurse Garcia casually removed a small automatic from her right-hand dress pocket and shot Clemens in the head, just above and between the eyes.

  He went down in a cloud of blood spray and landed on his gaming system, which made a pathetic little dying bleep bleep, and the poor dead bastard wound up sitting against the corridor wall, slumped there, game over.

  As this was happening, that real nurse shrieked, abandoned her cart and ran back the way she came. And Nurse Garcia shoved the cart out of her path, upending it, spilling pills and other medical supplies, so that when I reached that point, the overturned cart was between me and Garcia and the route she’d taken, though I could see her, on the run now, full throttle, shoving aside people in white, nurses and aides and doctors, like human bowling pins.

  And then, without slowing her pace, Garcia glanced back and her arm came up and straightened and she threw a shot at me, that little automatic making a loud little firecracker report in the hallway.

  I anticipated the shot enough to duck into the nearest hospital room.

  But that slowed me down, and Nurse Garcia was still on the move.

  I bolted back out and ran to the cart and uprighted the thing and, with every ounce of strength in me, propelled it down the corridor....

  ...where it clipped Nurse Garcia, in the right side and leg, just as she was about to round another corner, knocking her off balance.

  In her awkward on-the-run fall, Garcia hit her head on the wall, hard, and slid to the floor, leaving a snail’s trail of red blood smear.

  She seemed to be out cold, but I made my approach cautiously—after all, my gun was God knows where, back in Roger’s room.

  I knelt over her.

  Checked the woman’s throat pulse.

  But then her hand was on my throat, and she sure as hell wasn’t checking for a pulse....

  I winced in pain as she twisted around and brought her other hand to bear, ten fingers choking me now as we squirmed on the floor, me wriggling like a fish on a boat deck and her squeezing the damn life out of me....

  Somehow my hand found the hypo in my pocket—the thing was still loaded with that foul black shit.

  And as the lights flickered in my head, wanting to go out, I managed to will myself into one final act: jamming the needle into Garcia’s leg.

  Her hands loosened on my throat, her eyes goggled and I was free of her grip. She was on top of me but did not really have the advantage any longer, as a look she sneaked confirmed: that needle was deep in her outer thigh and my thumb was poised to dispense medicine.

  Her eyes locked with mine. Hard eyes, dark and mean and cold and, best of all, scared shitless.

  “Gee,” I said. “I wonder what that drug is, honey? In this helpful hypo of yours?”

  Her eyes saucered. “Don’t! Jesus sake, don’t!”

  Then we did this shifting of positions that got her off of me, slowly, carefully, until she was on the floor and I was just above her, in control of my unhappy prisoner.

  My hand patted her pockets until I found her gun in one. I got it out and held the little .22 in my left hand, gripping it as tight as she had my throat, and jammed its snout in her neck, ready to cure her permanently, if she fucking blinked.

  These last minutes had gone down in a sort of claustrophobic close-up world that included only the two of us, me and my nurse.

  But I suddenly became aware of a small crowd of doctors and nurses gathering, stunned, wide-eyed, on the periphery of the scene of our two-woman struggle.

  I glanced up at my little audience of medicos and my eyebrows climbed. “911, anybody?...STAT!”

  In just over an hour, back in my blue trenchcoat now, I was standing outside Roger’s room, keeping a brand-new uniformed officer company; he was a black kid, barely twenty-one, who was seated where the late Officer Clemens had formerly been. We chatted a little and I learned he was an Iraq vet, and he seemed on top of things; I felt Roger was in good hands.

  Before long Lt. Valer came down the corridor and faced me, his expression pleasant, even pleased.

  “How’s the arm?” he asked.

  I touched the spot. “Tad sore,” I admitted. “But I’m not complaining—I’ll bet that hypo, if it took the plunge? Would serve up a real killer cocktail.”

  “Lab’ll have that soon enough,” he said with a crisp nod. “And you’ll be glad to know we’ve already identified that ‘nurse’ of yours and Roger’s.”

  “Let me guess. Her real name isn’t Garcia.”

  “Francesca Marquez. Out of town player. M-13 farm team out La La way.”

  That got my attention. “Salvadoran?”

  Another nod. “El bingo.”

  I leaned in, held his eyes with mine. “Rafe, I’m telling you, the Muertas are still pulling the strings—and they’ve got the other, new O.C. factions out on the front line, taking the hits.”

  “And delivering them,” he said. He thumbed toward the closed hospital room door. “How’s Roge?”

  “Still sawing logs. You’d think the commotion would’ve—”

  I was interrupted
by Dan, coming out of Roger’s room with a big grin going. “He’s awake!”

  Rafe said, “Hot damn.”

  Dan turned to me and half-smiled. “He’s asking for you, Ms. Tree.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  Soon I was standing near Roger’s bedside smiling down at him as he smiled weakly up at me.

  “So,” he said, voice weak but gruff, “you saved my ass?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “My lap...my....”

  I touched his shoulder. “Slow down. Take it easy. All the time in the world.”

  He nodded. Managed, “My laptop, Ms. Tree. At my office. Get—”

  Dan, right behind me, chimed in: “Don’t worry, buddy! We got it.”

  Rafe, back there next to Dan, said, “You do?”

  I glanced back and saw Dan realizing what he’d just said, as he turned to the Homicide captain with a caught-with-his-pants-down expression. “Yeah, uh... Ms. Tree kinda liberated it. Stuck it in her car, before you guys got to Roger’s office.”

  Rafe said to me, “What the hell for?”

  “I have my reasons,” I said.

  But Roger was saying, “Good! Good....Rafe....”

  Rafe stepped up to the bedside next to me. “What do you want, you old hardass?”

  Roger’s hand came up and grabbed onto Rafe’s sleeve; it was an effort, but he did it.

  “You I trust,” he said. “All of you. But keep what Mike and I found out...keep that to...to yourselves....Don’t go public till...”

  Roger was getting a little too worked up.

  “Easy, Roge,” I said, patting his arm. “We’re on top of it. I promise. Get some rest.”

  Roger, breathing hard, weaker than hell, some-how found the strength to nod, several times. “Yeah... good....Listen...”

  I leaned close, as Rafe resumed his position behind me, next to Dan.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Kinda like to...kinda like my quarter back.”

  Behind me, Rafe whispered to Dan, “What’s he talkin’ about? Football?”

  I glanced back and caught Dan shaking his head. “No,” he told Rafe. “Something else.”

  Roger said, “I...I want to buy back in. I want... wanna come home.”

  The regret in his face seemed to pain him worse than anything an assassin could dish out. He’d gone undercover for a whole year, alienating people he valued, like Dan and Rafe and, yes, me.

  I told him, “We’re gonna rewrite the Tree Agency partnership, soon as you get out of here—33% Dan Green, 33% Roger Freemont.”

  Roger managed a little snort of a laugh. “Just like a woman.”

  I frowned. “What is?”

  “Keeping that extra percent for yourself....”

  TWELVE

  “Did you have enough evidence to clear Mrs. Addwatter?” the doctor asked.

  “Couldn’t really clear her, Doc,” I said. “Let’s face it—the smoking gun in this case was in her hand, after she killed her husband and his hooker.”

  “Yes, but surely her mental condition, this reprehensible manipulation of medications....”

  “Oh, I had extenuating circumstances locked up, Doc. Plenty for Counselor Levine to use the insanity defense with confidence.”

  Once again Bernie Levine and I were seated in the Cook County Jail visitor’s area, in our little booth across the Plexiglas from Marcy Addwatter in her orange jumpsuit. This was a specially arranged evening meeting, no other prisoners and guests present.

  And this Marcy Addwatter, while physically the same (if better groomed, with a tamed-down hairdo), seemed a different woman—alert, intelligent. Not at all dazed or halting in her speech.

  An upbeat, animated Levine, on the phone with his client, was saying, “Michael and her partners, Dan Green and Roger Freemont, have gathered all the evidence of extenuating circumstances we could ever have hoped for.”

  While I couldn’t hear Marcy, the words her lips formed were easy enough to read: “I’m very grateful.”

  “There’s no question your medication was tampered with, exchanged for drugs that would aggravate and, frankly, take advantage of your condition. And, yes, definitely, the voices you heard were piped into your bedroom, whenever your husband was away.”

  Marcy frowned and this time her response was such that I could not lip-read her.

  Levine covered the mouthpiece and turned to me. “She wants to know...why. Why anyone would do this to her.”

  I gestured for the phone and Levine handed it over.

  I said, “Marcy, we’ve just started the ‘why’ phase of this investigation. But I can tell you where it seems to be heading.”

  “Please.”

  “We’re convinced your husband was planning to expose certain illegal practices by an Addwatter client with ties to organized crime.”

  She frowned. “Then it had...had nothing to do with us? As a couple? As man and wife?”

  I shook my head. “No. Nothing. You weren’t one of the intended victims here, any more than that woman in the motel room was. Your husband was the target, and you were just part of a scenario someone put in motion.”

  Her eyes widened, just a little. “Then I was...used.”

  “You were used. Manipulated.” I sat forward and held her eyes with mine. “But you will get your life back, Marcy.”

  “No I won’t,” she said.

  With an awful casualness.

  For several long moments, I just sat staring at the impassive face. The drugs she was on now, correct as they were, did provide a certain Zen-like state of calm, but it was every bit as artificial as the voices she’d once heard.

  “Don’t think...” she began. She sighed. Composed herself. “Don’t think I’m not grateful, Michael. I’m very grateful...but Richard is still dead. And I still killed him...Richard, and some...some poor unfortunate woman who never did a single thing to me....”

  Then Marcy hung up the phone, forced a small terrible smile, nodded to me and to Bernie—the protectors who could free her from the legal system but not her own judgment—and turned herself over to the attending policewoman, to be escorted out and back to her cell.

  Just outside the door, in the corridor, Bernie and I paused for a moment.

  The wind out of his sails now, the attorney said, “You know, Ms. Tree—no matter how hard we try... how much good we do...in our business, happy endings are goddamned hard to come by.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Closure has its place, Bernie,” I said. “It helps heal...but there’s always some scarring.”

  He nodded.

  “And if you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I have some closure of my own to take care of.”

  That night, at the apartment that was now mine but had once been Mike’s, I sat up in bed, pillows propped behind me. I wore the top of a pair of black silk men’s pajamas, blankets down around my thighs but the sheet coming up fairly high.

  Sheer curtains let the lights of the city in and the traffic pulse broken by the occasional siren let you know the world was still out there. But the only light on in the bedroom was the muted one on the nightstand on the side of the double bed that was reserved for the likes of Chic Steele.

  Who had just arrived—both our evenings had gotten away from us, and neither of us had felt like meeting for a late bite. So when Chic suggested he stop over and “cut straight to dessert,” I didn’t argue.

  Even at the end of the day Chic Steele looked crisp and sharp—I’d always secretly hated him a little for that. I’ve never known a professional woman who didn’t wilt by the end of a long business day, and that certain men could pull off perpetual freshness was an annoyance and, somehow, an insult.

  His gray suit was an Armani and he was just getting started in stripping down, loosening the darker gray silk tie.

  He said, “And the word on Roger’s good?”

  “Very good,” I said. “Slug went in and out—nothing vital hit. I told him he was lucky
they tried for his heart, since he doesn’t have one.”

  “Ha,” Chic said, arranging his suitcoat over the back of the nearby chair. His shoulder holster with the .38 Police Special was brown and didn’t quite go with the blue-gray shirt.

  “It was blood loss,” I went on, “that put Roger in that hospital room.”

  Chic slipped off the shoulder holster and slung it over the chair. He shot me a thoughtful frown. “What d’you make of that Salvadoran hit woman?”

  I shrugged. “You’re the OCU guy—what do you make of her?”

  He was unbuttoning his shirt cuffs now. “Never heard of the woman, but there’s a lot of players on that team.”

  “What about the feds?”

  Now he was unbuttoning the shirt, nodding. “There was a federal package on Ms. Marquez, which I’m having shipped electronically to Rafe, once some red tape is cut and a few i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.... Those p.j.’s new?”

  “Old,” I said, gesturing to the black silk men’s pajamas. “Mike’s.”

  His shirt was untucked and he was getting out of it. “Well, he’d have been proud of you today, Michael.”

  “Really think so?”

  “Sure.” He draped the shirt over a chair arm. “Only, what the hell’s a California Latin gang’s connection to a Chicago Loop accounting firm, d’you suppose?”

  “I’m not sure there is one.”

  “Oh?” He pulled his t-shirt off, revealing a well-tanned torso and admirable abs. Abs of Steele, I’d kidded him, more than once.

  I said, “Roger wasn’t even working the Addwatter case.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me, getting his shoes off—Italian loafers. “Really? I figured you’d pulled him in, and turned him loose on—”

  “But there is a connection.”

  He was shaking his head, tugging off his socks now. “First you say there isn’t one, then you say—”

  “A Muerta connection.”

  He got onto his bare feet and turned to face me. “Michael, my people’ve been looking for a link between these new ethnic factions and the old Muerta mob for months...hell, over a year.”

  “Not surprising,” I said. “You’re in a perfect position, after all.”