by Larry Karp
***
He was upset? All the way to Iggy’s, those three words ran through my head, like a hippie’s mantra. To save Mel Richmond’s stinking job, I should go take my wife on a nice trip. No way. I was going to finish this case on my own, and I was going to finish it right. If the price of keeping my job was to let Sanford walk, I didn’t want my job.
***
Good there were no customers at Iggy’s. The little guy was reading a newspaper behind the counter, but when he looked up and saw me, he dropped the paper to the floor. “What, Mr. B?”
I gave him the quick version of my meeting with the chief. “I’m working privately now,” I said. “You’ve been great, a huge help, but I don’t want you to get caught keeping bad company. Give me the stuff you’re holding, and I’ll go find a room in a motel with a safe.”
He set his mouth, shook his head. “That ain’t the way I do things, Mr. B. I don’t jump ships. I told you before, if you’re in, I’m in. Something in particular you want me to do, just say it.”
I started to object, but I didn’t get a word out. “I’m serious, Mr. B.”
Deep breath. “Okay, Iggy, I hear you, and I appreciate it. Nothing right now, but I may have something big for later.”
“All you gotta do is ask. Easy as that.”
“Thanks, Ig,” I muttered. “I’ll check in with you dinnertime.”
***
I drove to Pill Hill, left the car in the Med Center Garage, and made a flying stop at Puget Community’s Medical Records Department, where I flashed my badge, and a few minutes later, walked out with a copy of the newborn chart for Baby Robert Jackson Kennett. A couple of minutes paging through it on a bench in a hallway told me I was going to need help, so I crossed over to the Doctors’ Tower, and took the elevator to the third floor, the low-rent district. No surgeons here, no OBGYNs. This was pediatrician and family doctor territory.
Halfway down the hall was Dr. Milton Edgerton’s office. I went in, and up to the reception counter, then held out my badge to the receptionist. “My name’s Bernie Baumgartner,” I said. “I’m a patient of Dr. Edgerton’s, but I’m here on police business. I need to ask him a question.”
The receptionist gave me the look she probably used to get five-year-old patients to sit down and shut up. “Dr. Edgerton’s having a terrible morning, all kinds of emergencies.” She reached for a pad. “If you’ll tell me your question, I’ll pass it along to Doctor, and he’ll call you as soon as he has a moment.”
“I’m sorry, but I really need that moment now. I promise, it won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”
She sniffed, then picked up the phone, and dialed a two-digit extension. “Dr. Edgerton, there’s a policeman out here who’s one of your patients. He says he’s got to see you urgently, on police business.” She looked back to me. “What’s your name again?”
“Baumgartner.”
“Baumgartner…all right, Doctor. I’ll tell him.”
She hung up the phone, then motioned me across the room. “Please have a seat. The doctor will be out as soon as he can.”
I thanked her. She pretended not to hear.
I’d gotten through only two pages of a six-month-old Sports Illustrated when Doc Edgerton came through the door. Good-looking man, over six feet, slim, wavy white hair with a nice trimmed mustache to match. He wore a white jacket over a green scrub suit, bloodstains on the legs, and a smear of God knows what on the front of his jacket. He extended a hand, which I shook, then released as quickly as I could. “Sorry to bother you, Doc, but I need some help.”
He grinned. “Police business, eh? Something interesting, I hope.”
“It is to me.” I pulled the chart copy out of my pocket, and put it into his hand. “Look at these blood types. The woman’s A positive, and her husband’s B positive. And the baby here is O negative. Any reason to think the husband’s not the father?”
Edgerton laughed. “Well, there’s always a reason to think that. There was a study not long ago of a fishing village in England where blood tests showed that fully one-third of the children could not have been fathered by the mother’s husband. But in this case, no. You can’t prove this man wasn’t the father.”
“Even with the A’s, B’s, and O’s all different like that?”
He snatched a glimpse at his watch. “Here’s how it works. In the ABO blood groups, A and B are dominant over O, so a Type A mother can have two A genes, or one A gene and one O. Same with the husband there—he could have two B genes, or one B and one O. And if the baby got an O-gene from each parent, he’d type out as O. It works the same way with the Rh system. The father and the mother could be Rh positive, with one positive Rh gene and one negative, and the baby could have gotten the two negative genes, making him Rh-negative. You see?
“Yeah, I do. You explain things well.” I folded the page back into my pocket. “Not what I wanted to hear, but knowing it, I’m still better off than before I talked to you.”
“There are more detailed blood tests that might show up discrepancies. If that helps.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Doc.”
***
It was three-thirty. Sanford would be in the middle of his afternoon office hours. I was hungry, hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I took the elevator to the lobby, but pulled up halfway to the coffee shop. A block down from the Medical Center and around the corner was Maxie’s KayCee Barbecue. Sold. I hustled out through the revolving door, crossed the street, and started along the sidewalk, but right as I was about to turn the corner onto Williams Street, I heard a loud pop, and felt a giant bee sting on the left side of my ass.
I pulled my gun from the holster, and staggered a step to dive around the side of the building. Good thing I’d gotten Richmond to requisition the piece, good thing he hadn’t thought to take it back. I edged a look around the marble cornerstone. No one on my side of the street. On the other sidewalk, three women strolled in my direction. I hobbled across the street, motioned the women to come over. They looked away and upped their pace along the sidewalk. My rear end hurt like hell, but I forced myself into their path. “Did you hear a gunshot just a minute ago?”
They could have been grandmother, mother, and teenage daughter, three generations of beetle-brows. “Yeah,” the teenager chirped. “I did hear a shot.” She pointed across the street. “See that alley there? After I heard it, I saw somebody duck back in there and take off.”
“Somebody like who?”
“I ain’t got no idea, I didn’t see him but a second. I couldn’t tell you if he was short or tall or fat or thin, or how old, or what color, or nothing.”
I looked at the other two women. “Either of you see any more than that?”
They both shook their heads.
The girl was practically jumping up and down. “You want, I’ll go find a cop for you.”
Just what I’d need, having to explain to Mel why I wasn’t at a travel agent’s, making reservations for a nice trip. I shook my head. “Thanks.”
I crossed the street, and peered down the alley. Nothing. No point chasing down there. If the guy was waiting around the far corner, I’d be a pigeon all the way down that narrow corridor. I thought about hightailing it back to the Med Center, and seeing whether Sanford was out of his office or maybe had just come back from a little break, but I wasn’t in shape to hightail anywhere. Not with my ass throbbing the way it was. First consideration, get the bullet out.
But how? If I went back to the hospital ER, they’d report the case, and next thing, I’d be in Richmond’s office. Have to be inventive. I limped along the sidewalk, around the corner, into Maxie’s.
No man has ever been better named than Maxie Gross. Just about my height, weighing in at an easy three-fifty, he was the best ad around for his food. Maxie and I had a little history, going back t
o when he used to run as many numbers cards as platters of ribs over his counter. But Maxie always took care of people in his neighborhood, widows and orphans, down-and-outers. Nobody on Williams Street went hungry if Maxie could help it. So one time I told him what a shame it’d be if a sting that was going down in a few days, or another one some time in the future, would set a bunch of people to dumpster-diving, begging in the streets, or grabbing stuff that wasn’t rightfully theirs. The next time I went in for a plate of ribs, Maxie let me know that any insistence on paying would be taken as a serious insult.
Fortunately, at a quarter to four, the restaurant was empty, save for a couple of men at a table in the back. Maxie waddled up from the counter, and started to give me the big hello, but then looked down to my legs. “Hey, Mr. Baumgartner, you’re limping. You hurt or something?”
“Somebody took a shot at me,” I said. “Can we go in the back?”
“You don’t want to go to the hospital?”
“No.”
Maxie knew when to stop asking questions. He loosed a phlegmy cough into his hand, then led me behind the counter, through the kitchen, and into his office. After he closed the door, I turned my back to him, undid my belt, and slid my pants and shorts down to my ankles. Maxie whistled. I snatched a peek at him over my shoulder. He could’ve been Fats Waller, bugeyed to the limit.
“What’s it look like?” I asked.
“Like a kindergarten kid’s finger painting. Red and blue and purple, and a little black around the edges.”
“Can you see the bullet?”
He grunted to squat, then struggled back upright, and pushed a messy pile of papers from the front to the back of his desk. “Go lay on your stomach there.”
I climbed up, slowly stretched to the limit. Maxie pushed this way on my butt, then the other. He wiggled his fingers. Pain shot down the back of my left leg. “Yeah,” Maxie grunted. “Right in the middle of your bun here, feels like a little bump. Not too far under the skin.” He coughed again.
I looked around. “Maxie, you ought to lay off the smokes.”
“You sound like my doctor. I just got a little cold, that’s all.” Another cough.
“You think you can get that slug out?”
All the red juice drained out of the big man’s cheeks. “You’re kidding, Mr. Baumgartner, right? All I ever done in my life is work in a restaurant, and you want me to dig a slug outa your ass?”
“ I want even less to go to a hospital and have to explain how it happened. You’ve got clean knives, right?”
“They ain’t sterile.”
“Got a lighter? Some alcohol?”
Maxie pulled a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket. “Only alcohol I got is in the booze.”
“I guess that’ll have to do.”
“But what the hell am I gonna use to pull the thing out?” He held up a hand before I could say a word. “Hold on, lemme think…” A huge grin broke through the barrier. “I got it. Be right back.” He started for the door. “Don’t go nowhere, okay.”
Not three minutes, he trucked in, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels in his right hand, another brown bottle tucked into his left armpit. “Peroxide,” he said. “And some JD, unopened.” He put the bottles on the desk, then pulled a knife from his pocket, and waved it in my face. “Paring knife, ain’t never been used. I can make a li’l cut…” He pulled a flat red leather container out of his back pocket. “Then pull out that mother with something from in here.”
“What, you keep a surgical kit in your restaurant?”
“Not exactly.” He ran a zipper around three sides of the pouch, opened it, held it to my face. “Bonnie, one of the waitresses, she spends more time fixing up her face and her hair than looking after customers.” He plucked a small pair of tweezers free of its holding loop. “Looks like this was made for the job.” He tapped the peroxide bottle. “This’s Bonnie’s, too. You know, ‘Her blonde comes out of a bottle, her blonde comes out of a bottle.’”
I groaned. “Let’s get it done.”
Maxie set the case next to the bottles, then took a handkerchief from his pocket, opened the Jack Daniels, dripped some onto the cloth, swabbed the knife, and set it on the edge of the desk. Carefully, he picked up the tweezers, dipped the business ends into the whiskey bottle, then flicked his lighter open and held first the knife, then the tweezers, up to the flame. Pale blue shimmered off the tweezers. Maxie laughed.
“What the hell’s so funny?”
“Just thinking about doing this at a table. Specialty of the house today, Tweezers Flambe.” He snapped the lighter shut. “Okay. Ready…oh wait a minute.”
He set down the tweezers and the knife, then walked around the desk, opened the top drawer, pulled out a small drinking glass, filled it with whiskey. “Here. Anesthetic.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got a visit I need to make after you’re done, and it won’t be good if I show up stinking of JD.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Then he looked at the glass, threw back his head, downed the whiskey in a gulp, and let out a long “Aaaaah. It shouldn’t go to waste.”
“God forbid.”
I stretched out flat on my stomach. Maxie poured peroxide onto the handkerchief, wiped it over my rear end. “Burns,” I said.
“Yeah, well, it’ll kill the germs. Okay, here we go.”
I picked up a pencil from his desk, bit on it, hard.
Maxie grunted. “I’m down on top of the slug, ain’t deep at all. Put your hand on your ass over here and pull sideways. That’ll open up the cut so I see better.”
“Yeah, be good if you can see,” I muttered around the pencil.
I felt Maxie slide the tweezers into the crevice, then work them down slowly, around the bullet. My fingers went icy and slippery from sweat; my stomach thought it was on open water during a hurricane. Another cough; the tweezers sent little electrical charges down my leg. “Keep pullin’ your cheek sideways,” Maxie muttered. “Here goes.”
You want to talk about pain? This was blinding. I felt the tweezers fly up and out of the hole. I made a sound, something like ‘bulurp,’ and swallowed hard.
“Got it,” Maxie shouted. “You okay, Mr. B.?”
“Fine and dandy.” Cold sweat poured into my eyes, down my cheeks, past my ears. “How’s it look?”
A moment of silence, then, “Pretty good, considering. It’s oozing a little blood, and the skin’s kinda burned around where the bullet went in. Maybe I ought to clean it out.” Maxie set down the tweezers, opened the peroxide bottle, and poured.
I wasn’t ready for that. It felt like he’d lowered the flame from his cigarette lighter into the hole. I threw a hand over my mouth, wiggled around on the table, flung my legs every which way. Maxie whistled. “Looks like a Pink Lady in there.”
“Push the sides together,” I groaned. “Squeeze that shit out.”
Slowly, the agony tapered off. “Maxie, what the hell is that stuff.” I grabbed the bottle away from him, read the label. “Jesus Christ. ‘Madame Louise’s 20 Volume Peroxide. Best hair lightener available…not for medical use.’ This stuff is twice as strong as drugstore peroxide.”
Another shrug. “So what’s the big deal? It’ll kill twice as many germs.”
I started to sit up, but Maxie grabbed my hand. “Hey, wait a minute. You got this open hole in your butt, about an inch, inch and a half. We better close it up.” He looked around the room, then waddled back to the other side of his desk, and returned holding a roll of masking tape. “It ain’t sterile or nothing,” he said. “But it’ll hold the sides together. Better’n walking around with pieces of fat hanging out.”
I rolled back onto my stomach and let Maxie tape me up. “Bet no doctor’s ever thought of taking out a bullet this way,” he said.
“Bullet…” I reached
for the tweezers, grabbed the little slug, scratched it with my thumbnail. “Copper-washed lead, a twenty-two short.” I closed my eyes. “That alley where the guy shot me from was about thirty, thirty-five yards away. He must’ve been aiming for my heart.”
Maxie shook his head. “Lucky for you he didn’t know shit from shoe polish about guns. Twenty-two from thirty-five yards? I’m surprised he didn’t hit you in the foot. Probably a kid being a wiseass or joining a gang.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t really think so. I slipped the bullet into my shirt pocket. “When I find out who fired this sucker, he’s gonna have it in his ass and then some.” I pulled up my shorts, then my pants. Then I pulled out my wallet, took out a fifty, pressed it into Maxie’s hand.
He pushed the money away.
“Relax,” I said. It’s for your waitress, Blondie, Bonnie, whoever. Somehow, I don’t think she’ll want to use those tweezers again.”
He gave my hand a hard shove. “What she don’t know won’t hurt her. I’ll give her a Jack Daniels on the house.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Baumgartner
Next morning, my rear end was sore and more than a little stiff, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I stopped by Bergstrom’s, picked up a pair of pants that wasn’t air-conditioned in the left rear, sat for an hour with a newspaper over coffee and a donut, and got to Sanford’s office about a quarter to twelve. Sally gave me the big New York greeting. “Mr. Baumgartner—hey, maybe Dr. Sanford ought to put you on the payroll, you’re here so much. He’s on his last patient now. Soon’s he’s done, I’ll let him know you’re waiting.”
