“Good. Because if you’d had this wound back then, you’d be dead. In a way, you owe your life to the street gangs.”
“How so?”
“They’ve given us lots of practice. Our techniques are much better than they used to be.”
“I’ll drop them a thank-you note.”
The doctor grinned and stuck out his hand. “Go on, get out of here. Take your pills and call me if you turn for the worse. I’ve made an appointment for the end of next week, just to be sure you’re on schedule.”
“Don’t I get wheeled to the door?”
“We don’t have the manpower anymore.”
I waited until he looked me in the eye. “I appreciate what you did for me, Doctor.”
“It’s my job.”
“I’m glad you’re good at it.”
He reddened and looked away. “Speaking of jobs, if I were you I’d consider a new line of work.”
“When they start paying wages for watching the Giants, I’ll hand in my license and bury my gun. Which is where, by the way?”
“The police took it the night you came in. Evidence of something or other, they said.”
I picked up my bag containing my jammies and the unopened bottle of scotch—the Oreos were already history. “If you’re ever in need of detective work, I owe you a big favor.”
“The only thing I need to find is some spare time.”
“I’ll lend you some. I’m one of the few people I know who’s got plenty.”
“Out,” was all he said.
Half an hour later I was home, inhaling the musty air of my apartment, flushing the brown water out of the taps, tossing out the bad food in the fridge, hauling the sheets and towels down to the laundry room—I was so manic and efficient I worried that my stay in the hospital had made me a neat freak.
While it was good to be home, and while even sour and mildewed air was preferable to the medicinal musk of the surgical ward, by the time I finished cleaning up I was both exhausted and depressed. Exhausted because despite the adrenaline rush of the morning, my body wasn’t nearly back to normal—my lungs were laboring and my heart seemed close to fibrillation. And depressed because nearly everything I came across, from the poker chips on the shelf to the beer bottles in the fridge, reminded me somehow of Charley. He was gone and would never be back and I would be lonely forever because of it. It hadn’t hit me fully in the hospital, I guess, because now it hit me like a Tyson right hand, or at least a Tyson bicuspid.
Usually what I do in such circumstances is drink. I don’t recommend it, I don’t even claim that it helps, but that’s what I do when I’m sad. Thanks to Ruthie Spring, I had some quality scotch in my duffel bag that was beckoning me as seductively as an episode of Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker. But I was still taking four different medications a day, none of which called for alcohol as a chaser; in fact, I’d been explicitly warned to lay off. So I made do with the second best tranquilizer I know of—I ate.
A trip to the store produced Oreos, Red Vines, burnt peanuts, a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa, and a pièce de résistance in the form of a chocolate cake frozen and packaged by Pepperidge Farms. The clerk at the cash register couldn’t stop giggling at the subtext to my purchases and I was already halfway into an anticipated sugar high as I climbed the hill toward my home, but what the hell? I’d had a tough time, I’d lost thirteen pounds, my best friend was dead, so I deserved a fucking treat.
But one man’s treat is another man’s folly. I ate so much preprocessed bilge I got sick, involuntarily purging into the dingy porcelain stool in my bathroom, finally falling into a slumber that didn’t lift till ten the next morning. Eleven hours of sleep not even courtesy of a hangover. Maybe that part of the regimen would become a habit.
Thankfully, the quality of my menu picked up. The woman across the hall brought vegetable soup in a vat the size of a hogshead. The triple divorcée from Guido’s bar brought a casserole dish full of her patented tuna and noodles. And the widow of one of my former clients sent over a five-course meal catered by one of the city’s best restaurants. So I was feeling fairly fat and sassy when someone brought me something far better than food, far better than booze, far better than anything any doctor had ever prescribed. On Sunday evening at six, Millicent Colbert brought me my daughter.
My daughter’s name is Eleanor. She was born to a surrogate mother and turned over to Millicent Colbert and her husband Stuart pursuant to the contract they had made with the surrogate, a contract drafted by the lawyer who had hired me to verify the surrogate’s suitability for the role. I got to know the surrogate a little too well, as it happened. That it was my sperm and not Stuart’s that fertilized the surrogate’s egg is unknown to both of the Colberts—I hope it will always be thus. That my sperm was able to find purchase in the surrogate’s ovum was a surprise to me as well, since I thought the birth control method I’d employed had made such a union impossible. Not so, as it turned out, although conception was by the surrogate’s design rather than by accident. In any event, I’ve been a proud papa for more than two years, although the papa part of it I kept under wraps even from Charley Sleet.
Millicent greeted me with a kiss and a grin. She wore a form-fitting blue jump suit that was cinched by a silver conch belt and snow white tennies that looked fresh out of the box. It was what she always wore when I saw her, maybe because she looked great in it and I always told her so. Her blond hair was drawn back in a bun; her eyes were made even bluer by some form of mascara. Somehow Millicent made tending a child seem as casual as minding a goldfish.
Eleanor greeted me with a hug around my kneecaps. That she was already walking and talking and had taken on a distinct personality was a continual wonder to me. That she and her mother included me in a large portion of their lives is the blessing I’m most thankful for. That something vile and violent might happen to Eleanor one day, that the world that provides me my living might lash out and scar her for life, is the stuff of most of my nightmares.
They filed into my apartment and took seats side by side on the couch. They bounced till they were comfortable, then crossed their hands in their laps in a precision as deft as a drill team’s. I thought for a minute it was some kind of burlesque, then decided it was only good breeding.
“Hi, Mush,” Eleanor said suddenly.
Millicent rolled her eyes. “That’s her new name for you. Mush.”
“Hi, Mush; hi, Mush.”
“I like it,” I said, then placed my hand over my surgically repaired interior. “Fitting, too.”
After a couple of minutes of baby talk, I hauled out the box of toys I’d bought for when Eleanor paid me a visit—dolls, balls, rattles, and blocks—and dumped them on the floor for her pleasure. After receiving permission from Mom, Eleanor slid off the couch and began to rummage. I watched with as much pleasure as I’d had in two months.
With her daughter fully engaged with the toys, Millicent inspected me closely. “You’re hurting still, aren’t you, Marsh?”
“A little.”
“And you’ve lost weight.”
I glanced at the half-empty bag of burnt peanuts. “Not for long.”
“Do you need anything at all? Can I bring Juanita over to clean house for you some afternoon?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine, Millicent.”
“I’m doing it anyway. And you need food, surely. Come to dinner on Tuesday.”
I hesitated, then opted for truth. “I make Stuart nervous.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
She smiled. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Why don’t we skip dinner? I’ll drop by some afternoon for a snack.”
“Juanita’s off on Wednesdays. Come then; I’ll make that coconut cake you like.”
“Perfect.”
Eleanor threw a ball at my head. I caught it just before it bounced off my chin and rolled it back to her. When it ran through her legs she sat down with a thump. “E three,” I sa
id.
“What was that?” Millicent asked.
“Baseball talk. How’s she been doing, anyhow?”
“She’s been doing great. I would have brought her to see you in the hospital but they said it was against the rules.”
“It’s good you didn’t. Lots of germs floating around those places. You’d think they’d do something about it.”
Millicent’s smile was disappointingly perfunctory. “You won’t go back to work for a while yet, will you?”
“Probably not.”
“I don’t like to think this could happen again.”
“Odds are good that it won’t,” I said. Though not as good as she thought they were, given the night in the alley off Broadway.
“Stuart said he would be happy to put you on the security staff at the store. You could work any shift you wanted to.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. But thank him for me.”
“It would be safer than what you do now.”
“Among other things.”
Millicent’s aspect turned grave, her eyes shaded by her brow, her forehead rippling with concern. “It would be horrible for Eleanor if anything happened to you, Marsh. Horrible for both of us,” she added firmly.
I was tempted to slide to her side and give her a kiss, but I made do with a pat on the hand. Our attraction is such that someday Millicent and I will probably have an affair. I hope we’ll be smart enough to keep it short and secret.
“I’ll watch my step,” I said. “Don’t worry.” I looked toward the girl with the toys. “Would Eleanor like to play horsey?”
“Horsey! Horsey!”
“Do you really think you should—”
“I’m fine,” I interrupted.
It was a lie, and the next ten minutes almost killed me, but I did it nevertheless. Horsey on the living room floor, Eleanor screaming with joy and kicking uncomfortably close to my incisions, me gritting my teeth and enduring the pain, a dumb idea but an essential one, at least so it seemed at the time.
Thankfully, Millicent called a halt before something gave way. She helped me put the toys back in the box and made me promise to come to her house at mid-week. They left after kisses all around and I was feeling so good and so gregarious that I fished in my wallet for the paper that had Rita Lombardi’s phone number written on it.
The phone rang for a long time. The person who picked up was male and under stress, his voice leaden and lugubrious and lightly accented. “Lombardi residence. What is it?”
“May I speak to Rita, please?”
He paused. “Who is this?”
“A friend from San Francisco.”
“Rita doesn’t have any friends in San Francisco.”
“I met her in the hospital up here. We were both patients. We used to take walks together for therapy.”
“Yeah, well, that was a waste of time.”
“Why?”
His voice broke like a stick. “Rita’s dead. What therapy is going to fix that? Huh? You tell me. What therapy is there that’s going to bring Rita back to life?”
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About the Author
Stephen Greenleaf (b. 1942), a former lawyer and an alumnus of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, is a mystery and thriller writer best known for his series of novels starring PI John Marshall Tanner. Recognized for being both literate and highly entertaining, Greenleaf’s novels often deal with contemporary social and political issues.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Stephen Greenleaf
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-2743-4
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Flesh Wounds Page 30
