Edgar paid little attention to the details, allowing his thoughts to float free. Once he heard the word “convince,” he knew his special talents would be put to use. “When” and “where” would be up to the boss and Lou. The “what” and “how” were his.
Matt stood in front of his bathroom mirror and ran his hand over the stubble on his scalp. The staples were out. The incision lines were still pink, but they’d soften and fade and eventually be covered by hair. For now maybe he’d opt for a cap. He had a number of baseball caps in his closet, and this might be the time to make use of them. Then again, the shaved and semi-shaved head look seemed to be popular right now. He was still experimenting with one of those around-the-mouth beards to complement his new look.
Matt made his way to the mailbox and silently rejoiced when he saw the first-class envelope with his bank’s return address on it. With his new debit card, Matt could tap the small reserve in his checking account to replenish the cash in his pocket.
The other pleasant surprise of the day was an express delivery of a box with his replacement cell phone. That, at least, had been something he was able to handle over the phone. He inserted the battery in the new phone and put it on the charger—one more step toward getting his life back together.
Back at his desk, Matt pulled his to-do list toward him and was about to make another call when the phone rang. The caller ID showed Southwestern Medical Center. What now?
“Dr. Newman.”
“This is Hank Truong. I know you said you’d call me, but I wanted to give you this information before I forgot.”
“Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you, Hank,” Matt said. “I’ve been sort of busy. What do you have?”
“I checked out that patient I saw with the lacerated leg, and you were right. He used a false ID. The address he gave was a vacant lot in east Dallas, and his insurance information was somebody else’s. So I don’t know how we might track him down.”
Matt hadn’t really thought the kidnapper would have been stupid enough to give his real name and address, but it was worth a try. “Thanks anyway, Hank.”
“I hope you get better soon. Be sure to let me know if there’s anything I can do here.”
He guessed it would have been too simple to be able to direct the police to one of the kidnappers. But a patient with wounds matching those of one of his assailants should be some sort of evidence that he didn’t just dream up the whole episode. Oh well.
Matt still needed transportation, and that meant Hector Rivera’s car. After he got it from Rick, assuming he ignored the standard warnings against driving this soon after a head injury, Matt would be mobile again. At least until the DA . . . No, he wasn’t going to think about that. He had a lawyer, a good one, and he had to trust her. He’d do his job, and hope she did hers.
Matt called the ER but was told that Dr. Pearson wasn’t working today. Would Dr. Newman like to leave a message? No, Dr. Newman wanted—make that, needed to talk with Rick Pearson today, not tomorrow when he returned to duty. He hung up and was checking Rick’s home number in his address book when the doorbell rang.
He wasn’t expecting anyone. Maybe his attackers had decided to take the simple approach: ring the bell, shoot him when he opened the door, make a quick escape. He’d even heard of homeowners being shot when they put their eye to the peephole in the door. Better do it this way. Matt tiptoed to a window that gave a partial view of the front porch, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. His whole body relaxed when he saw Rick Pearson standing there whistling.
Matt opened the door. “Rick, come in. I was about to call you.”
“I brought you a present,” Rick said, and pointed over his shoulder at the gray Chevrolet parked at the curb. “A Malibu, low mileage. Blue book value is something over three thousand dollars, but Hector said he’d take two.” He moved inside and headed for the living room.
Matt followed him and pointed toward the room’s only comfortable chair. “I could pay five hundred now, maybe spread the rest out over ten or twelve months, if you think Hector would take that.” He took a seat at the desk and rummaged for his checkbook. If he ever got his own car back, he could sell this one. In the meantime he had to have transportation.
“Between the two of us, Hector will take whatever I send him.” Rick pulled two pieces of paper from his hip pocket. He put the first on the end table beside him. “Here’s a note showing you paid two hundred dollars down and will pay the rest monthly over the next year. I only need your signature and a check.” He laid the second paper beside it. “And here’s the title. Hector signed it before he left. Don’t forget to transfer it.”
“Rick, are you sure—”
“Listen, Hector was anxious to leave; you need a car. It’s win-win.” Rick leaned back and crossed his legs. He pointed at the papers on the table. “When you’ve finished that, I’m going to buy your lunch, then you can drop me at my place. On the way we’ll talk about your new job.”
Matt found his pen on the floor where he’d dropped it when the doorbell rang. He opened his checkbook and ignored the balance as he wrote the check for the car. One problem solved. Only one, but Matt was willing to take small victories when they came. He had a hunch there were more fights ahead. Lots more. What did that verse say? Something about not worrying about tomorrow, because there will be enough troubles today. One day at a time.
The bartender looked up as the door opened. Edgar stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust. Outside, it was bright and hot and smelled like exhaust. Inside, the bar was dim and cool and smelled of stale beer and staler cigarette smoke. Outside, the noise of traffic was loud. Here the sound came from the jukebox sending forth the nasal tones of Willie Nelson.
Edgar took a stool at the near end of the bar, leaving as much space as possible between him and the other two patrons. Both were bent over their beers, not talking with each other, only occasionally glancing up at the TV set above them.
“Draft beer, whiskey chaser,” Edgar said.
The bartender was moving before Edgar finished speaking. He topped off a mug with just the proper amount of foam, poured a generous jigger of cheap whiskey, and put them both on coasters in front of Edgar.
“Run a tab, will you?” Edgar said.
“Can’t do that,” the bartender replied. “Owner says you owe too much already.” He covered the mug in front of Edgar with one hand, the whiskey with the other. “If you can’t pay, I gotta take these back.”
Edgar reached into his pants pocket and peeled off two bills from a thick roll. “This should take care of it.”
The bartender nodded as though hundred-dollar bills passed through his hands all the time. He reached behind the cash register and extracted a slip of paper from a bundle nestled there. It took him a minute to tally up Edgar’s tab, but in a moment he opened the cash register, put the two bills inside, and pulled out several others. He slapped them on the bar and said, “We’ll play pay as you go until that runs out.”
By this time Edgar had tossed back his whiskey and almost finished his beer. He slammed down the mug and said, “Hit me again.”
The exchange had caught the attention of the two men at the other end of the bar. “When did you get so rich, Edgar?” one said.
Edgar turned to the questioner. “I do important work for a big man, and he pays me real good.” He stopped talking long enough to gulp the second whiskey and down half the next beer. “One more time,” he said.
“What big man is that?” the other guy asked.
“You wouldn’t know him. He keeps to himself, but he’s important, trust me.” Edgar smiled. “A really big man.”
“What do you do exactly, Edgar?” the first man asked.
Edgar laughed. “I hurt people when they need it. Sometimes I even make them disappear.”
The two men shrugged and turned their attention back to the TV. The bartender busied himself cutting lemons. And Edgar continued to drink, silently now. After one more round, he scooped up his
change and ambled out without leaving a tip.
The bartender pulled the phone from beneath the bar and tapped out a number. “Lester, this is Solly. Edgar, the little guy who works for Mr. Grande, was just here shooting off his mouth.”
He listened for a minute. “Yeah, a little too much. I thought you might want to let Mr. Grande know.”
“I appreciate this.” Matt scanned the area. No one appeared interested in him or the man sitting beside him outside the zoo’s monkey house.
His companion was a short man whose clothes declared, “Salvation Army thrift store.” His lifeless brown hair was a week overdue for cutting. When he spoke, his eyes darted everywhere while his lips hardly moved.
Matt pulled a stack of bills, fresh from the ATM machine, out of his pocket and slid them into the man’s hand.
“Here you go, Doc.” The man handed Matt a brown paper sack as casually as a mother delivering lunch to her fifth grader. “If you hadn’t patched me up that time, I wouldn’t be here. Glad to do you a favor.”
Matt watched the man sidle away. He hated to do this, and not just because the very act put him on the wrong side of the law. But desperate times called for desperate measures, as someone once said. Was it Shakespeare? Or the Bible? He should have read more of both. Then maybe he’d know the answer to that question—actually, to a lot of questions.
His reverie was cut short by a yelling group of preteens, apparently on a field trip to the zoo, herded by teachers en masse to see the primates housed to Matt’s left. As they hurried along, one boy said to the friend beside him, “Have you seen the new gorilla? He’s huge! I guess he’s behind some pretty strong bars.”
If Matt had any thought of seeing the exhibit, the boy’s words quashed it. I’m not sure I want to see anything behind bars. He hefted the sack, which was heavier than he’d expected, and headed for the zoo exit and the parking lot. He had lots to do. “And miles to go before I sleep.” Another quotation, the source of which eluded him. He thought about that all the way to Hector’s Chevy. As he started the engine, Matt promised himself he’d do more reading in the future. He hoped it wouldn’t be books taken from the prison library.
Sandra Murray barely noticed the images flickering on the TV in front of her. The sound was low, and she couldn’t even remember the name of the program or why she’d tuned in to it. Since she and Ken broke up, her social life was pretty much confined to this: throw some sort of dinner together from the contents of her refrigerator and eat it in front of the TV while reading articles and opinions from a law journal.
The ring of her cell phone roused her. She reached into the pocket of her jeans for it, noticing that her journals had slid to the floor. Try as she might, she couldn’t recall what she’d been reading. That was it. No more reading in front of the TV. It was more effective than Sominex in inducing sleep.
Sandra punched the remote to still the set and checked the caller ID on her phone. Ken Gordon’s cell. Her mind raced through the possibilities. Had some complication forced Matt back to the hospital, maybe even requiring an emergency re-operation? She wasn’t a doctor, but she knew enough about head injuries and bleeding to know that re-bleeds were possible. Was Ken calling her because he knew she was representing Matt? Did she need to— Oh, get over it. Answer and find out.
“Ken, what’s up?”
“I hope I didn’t call at a bad time.” Ken’s voice was calm, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d discovered that the neurosurgeon took everything in stride. Maybe it was a product of dealing daily with life-and-death situations.
“No, no. Just reading some law journals.” Her next words tumbled out as uncontrollably as water roaring over rapids after a heavy rain. “Is something wrong with Matt?”
There was a moment of silence while Sandra’s heart thundered in her chest. Then Ken replied, “No, not that I know of. And I wonder why that was the first thing you thought of when I called.”
Think fast. “I was reading some cases that might apply to his, and I guess I automatically made the leap.” Sandra reached for the bottle of water on the TV tray in front of her, brought it to her lips, and had a healthy swallow. She cleared her throat. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking about us,” Ken said. “Maybe we didn’t give it enough of a chance. Would you like to have dinner with me sometime and talk about it?”
Sandra’s initial inclination was to accept the invitation. After all, she and Ken had parted as friends, and maybe they’d been hasty in their breakup. They’d seemed so right for each other, at least at first. But before she could get the response out, something made her stop—the memory of the first incident that planted a seed of doubt in her mind. Over the next few weeks, the seed had bloomed into full-blown conviction that she and Ken weren’t a match.
“I . . . I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said.
“I know why you said that, and I won’t try to change your mind right now,” Ken said, “but I seem to remember that one of the tenets of that faith you talk about is forgiveness. And that’s what I’m asking you to do. Let’s put our differences aside and move forward.”
The conversation continued for a few more minutes, but it was obvious both of them were uncomfortable thinking back to what had separated them. After she’d ended the call, Sandra closed her eyes and let the film from that episode play out behind her eyelids.
She’d given Ken a copy of a novel she’d enjoyed, thinking since it was medical fiction, he might like it. A couple of weeks passed, and finally she asked him if he’d read it.
“Frankly, I quit about a third of the way in,” Ken admitted.
“Didn’t like the writing?”
“No, it was well written. I couldn’t even find fault with the medical details. But what turned me off was the way the doctor in it always came back to his Christian beliefs. I mean, everything was falling apart for him, but he still prayed and believed God was going to make it come out all right.”
Sandra felt a vague uneasiness, but she could no more let the conversation die than she could keep her tongue out of a fresh cavity in a tooth. “And if you’d kept reading, you’d have seen why he felt that way.”
“Sorry, but religion has never been a part of my life. Matter of fact, I’m sort of uncomfortable around folks who keep bringing it into the conversation.”
“Like me?”
“No, no. I just hate people who are always preaching to me about my relationship with God.”
“So you don’t believe in God?” Sandra asked.
Ken paused and seemed to gather his thoughts. “I believe in science, in what I can see, what I can prove. I’m not much for that faith stuff.”
“And when you operate on a brain, you don’t marvel at how a Creator could make such a marvelous operating system for the human body?”
“I don’t think much about how we got here. I’m more interested in what I do with what I’ve been given.”
The conversation continued for a while before Ken rather clumsily redirected it to a safer subject. But the warning bells were already going off in Sandra’s brain. And a verse kept running through her head, one she’d learned in Sunday school. She hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but memorizing it had gotten her brownie points with the teacher. Now she understood it better, or at least she thought she did. “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” And that’s where she appeared to be headed if she didn’t steer clear of Ken Gordon.
Sandra placed Elaine’s coffee on the center of her desk in their usual morning ritual. “Ken Gordon called me last night.”
The secretary looked up sharply. The sudden move made her half-glasses fall off the end of her nose and left them dangling at the end of their chain. “I thought you two weren’t seeing each other anymore.” She removed the plastic cover and sipped her hot coffee.
Sandra shrugged. “We’re not. At first, since Ken’s the neurosurgeon who took care of his injury, I thought he was calling to tell me something had happene
d to Matt . . . to Dr. Newman.”
“But I’ll bet that wasn’t his reason. Am I right?”
“As always. No, he wanted us to have dinner—maybe talk about getting back together.”
“And I’m guessing you told him no?”
Sandra bought herself some time by blowing across the surface of her cup. “Right. At one time, I thought I could get past Ken’s unbelief, but now I don’t think it would work.”
Elaine looked up and smiled. “Have you ever considered that maybe God wants to touch Dr. Gordon through you?”
Sandra wasn’t sure she had an answer for that. Was she hesitant to try getting back together with Ken because she was developing feelings for Matt? She thought about that for a minute. Then she took a swallow of coffee and turned away. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
As they had several nights before, Lou and Edgar sat in Lou’s car, parked about half a block from Matt Newman’s house. At midnight, when they’d arrived, one light showed in an upstairs window. In a few minutes, the light went out, leaving the home in darkness. Lou looked at his watch. “We’ll give him some time to get to sleep before we go in.”
Lou patted the pockets of his black jacket, making sure he had what he needed. His Beretta was tucked into the waistband of his pants, but he didn’t plan on using it. If force was necessary, he’d depend on Edgar and the lead-weighted sap he always carried on forays like this. A tap from that on the back of the good doctor’s head would put him to sleep faster than the chloroform Lou planned to use. But if they could do this without leaving any evidence of trauma, it would help the police buy the suicide-by-slitting-his-wrists scenario.
Edgar had his cigarettes out and a match in his hand when Lou stopped him. “Put that away. In the dark, this car looks empty. Strike a match, and you might as well light a Roman candle and yell, ‘Look at me.’”
Edgar shrugged, but complied. “How much longer?”
Stress Test Page 9
