Lifeblood

by Penny Rudolph

  “Tonight we have someone with us whom we haven’t seen in a while,” Brian announced when the room had quieted. “Rachel? Would you like to say something?”

  She got to her feet and made her way to the podium.

  “My name is Rachel. This is my fourteen hundred and twenty-first day of sobriety—I think that’s right.” She paused, then said in a quavery voice, “I almost didn’t make it past fourteen hundred and twenty.” She rested her elbow on the podium and put her hand to her forehead.

  The room went totally silent. Carol started to get up from her seat in the second row, but sat back down again.

  “I’ve been accused of stealing a drug called OxyContin from a hospital.”

  There was a collective intake of breath in the room.

  “I didn’t do it. I’d barely heard of OxyContin.”

  The room exhaled.

  “What I did do, though, was last night I bought a bottle of vodka. Danilov vodka. Real class. I put it in the freezer and I was practically drooling when I took it out.”

  The crowd gave an appreciative chuckle.

  “Then I took it and bashed it against a concrete wall.”

  “You go, girl,” someone said.

  “Yes!” said another.

  “Thanks,” Rachel said. “It made an awful mess, though. And I cut myself cleaning it up. That’s the closest I’ve come to blowing it since I got into AA.

  “I started hitting the bottle really hard after my mom died. She’d been thrown from a horse on our farm up in the delta. She was in bad shape from that, but it didn’t kill her. What killed her was a flu virus that I gave her. I picked it up shopping—shopping, for God’s sake—in San Francisco.

  “My dad’s a gambler. That same summer, he sort of lost the farm in a poker game, so I couldn’t go back to college for my senior year. Instead I ran a man and his two little kids off the freeway and into a ditch. A nice alternative to college, don’t you think?

  “Thank God it just shook them up and made some bruises,” Rachel went on.

  “I only had a blood alcohol content of point-one-four when the cops pulled me over. I was barely beginning to feel good. And I had five ounces of crystal on the floor of the back seat. After all, if you drink as much as I did, you need a lot of speed to wake you up. That was enough to get me free room and board at County.”

  The room was absolutely silent.

  Rachel cleared her throat and went on. “An old family friend hired a wheeler-dealer attorney who got me off on a technicality.

  “Anyway,” she finished, “I’ve been away too long. I thought I was over…it. Not over being an alcoholic, but you know, the feeling that a drink will solve anything, make anything better. But I never dreamed someone would put a bottle of drugs in my pocket and I would be arrested for something I didn’t do.” She looked over the room. “Thanks for being here tonight.”

  She left the podium and refilled her coffee cup at the urn. Three or four people patted her shoulder when she sat down.

  “Next?” Brian was saying. No one got up, so he went on to tell his own tale, including his pouring the garden hose in his garage full of vodka—vodka was the hard liquor of choice for many because it leaves little telltale odor on the breath.

  Rachel read the twelve steps written on a chalkboard hanging on the wall next to the podium. She wasn’t sure which step she was on. Maybe that was part of the problem.

  “That was a magic garage,” Brian was saying. “My wife couldn’t figure out how I could go in there sober and come out drunk. She searched the place from top to bottom. But she couldn’t find the bottle. That’s because there was no bottle. Then one day she accidentally knocked the hose off its hook….

  “She has this cast iron frying pan. That’s when I decided it would be better to quit the booze than to get beaten to death with a frying pan.”

  The people on the folding chairs nodded and laughed a little. Their stories had different words, but they all told the same sort of story.

  “I’ve been sober for twenty-two years and four months,” Brian said. “I don’t know how many days that is.” He smiled at Rachel, and sat down as Manny went to the podium.

  When the last person had spoken, they all formed a circle, held hands, and chanted, “Keep coming back.”

  Roger drove her home. “You just wanted a ride in my Maserati.” He wasn’t kidding. The low-slung car looked and sounded like it belonged on a race track. He did makeup for some of the big studios.

  “How many horses?” Rachel asked.

  Roger laughed. “You can’t count that high.”

  He pulled up to the sidewalk door of the garage and kissed her on the nose when she thanked him. Then was off in a roar of engine revs.

  Feeling better, but totally exhausted, Rachel locked up the garage and decided to take the elevator for once.

  She knew something was wrong the moment she reached the top level.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  When the elevator opened, the door to the apartment rattled a little, then swung a few inches on its hinges.

  She had closed and locked it. Hadn’t she? Surely she hadn’t been that distraught.

  “Clancy,” she called, dashing into the living room, remembering another burglary when the big tomcat had gone missing. But this time he was hiding behind the sofa, all but his orange tail, which gave him away. He emerged at the sound of her voice, his grape-green eyes still big with alarm, the way they got when a car backfired in the garage.

  The rooms looked normal. Almost. This burglar had been careful, even polite. Only small things like the door ajar, a few books oddly askew in the bookcase, a light on in the bathroom, testified to a visit by a stranger. There was no apparent sign of haste.

  Rachel sat down on the sofa and patted her knees. Clancy landed in her lap in one eager leap, pushed his nose against her chin and began a throaty, hesitant purr.

  “Who was it?” she whispered, patting his head, scratching behind his ears, calming him. “And why?” The last burglary had sort of made sense. She’d hidden something that could identify a killer. But why now? She hadn’t hidden anything. She didn’t have anything to hide. Then she remembered the sliced-off strap across her shoulder and her missing purse.

  Rachel hadn’t been carrying the keys to the garage that day when she and Goldie had lunched at the hospital cafeteria—the day the gypsies had performed in the lunchroom and absconded with wallets, handbags, and cash from the register. But the key to the apartment had been in her purse along with her driver’s license giving the address of the garage. Had they now come to her apartment to see what more they could steal?

  Why hadn’t she had the lock changed?

  She hadn’t felt threatened by the theft of her purse, just severely inconvenienced. Did gypsies stoop to common burglary? Maybe they had sold her purse with everything still in it, or taken the few dollars from her wallet and tossed the rest in a Dumpster somewhere. Given the address, someone could find the garage, but how would they know about the apartment on the top floor?

  Unless the finder of the key was a client.

  It seemed unlikely that the business and medical people who parked at her garage would be doing Dumpster diving or burglary on the side.

  She checked to be sure the apartment door was locked and bolted. A frown burning lines in her face, she began a systematic search of the three rooms she called home.

  A kitchen drawer was slightly open, the stack of towels in the bathroom linen closet was at a different angle than she usually left it. But nothing seemed to be missing.

  Still, there was something eerie about the whole place. Something that made the hair on her arms prickle.

  When the phone rang, she leapt to her feet, heart racing. Her eyes fluttered closed when she heard the voice.

  “Sorry I haven’t called. You can’t imagine how busy it’s been up here.” Hank.

  “It’s been busy here, too,” Rachel said wanting to tell him about her arrest, how her life had sl
ammed into a wall, and equally wanting to avoid saying anything at all about it.

  “They’re giving me a three-day weekend to make up for all the late nights,” he said, and she could tell he was yawning.

  Late nights? With whom?

  “I can catch a flight late Thursday or early Friday. Can you get away from that god-awful garage for three days?” It was now Wednesday.

  “It isn’t god-awful. It’s—”

  “I know. I know. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. But you’re so married to that place.”

  “It supports me, Hank. I am married to it.”

  “The question is, can you get away for a few days?”

  Rachel hesitated. “I guess,” she said tentatively. “Maybe.”

  “I’m desperate for someplace quiet,” he said. “I need to just lie in a heap and listen to the ocean, or maybe the wind in the trees in the mountains.”

  “God, that sounds good.” The words escaped her lips. She didn’t mean to sound so eager.

  “Are we on, then?”

  “I’m not sure…I’ll have to talk to Irene….”

  “What else would she be doing? Shopping on Rodeo Drive?”

  “That would surprise me less than you think. She does go to Santa Monica and Venice to do fortunes on the beach.”

  “I’ll call you Friday morning.”

  She sensed he was hanging up. “Wait…It isn’t so much whether Irene is available, the problem is I’m having some financial problems. I’m not sure I can afford to pay her and I don’t like to ask her to wait for the money.”

  “For God’s sake, Rache. With expenses paid, I’ve been making more than I can spend up here. Let me pay her.”

  “I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “Look,” Hank said, his voice rising, “this is a dire thing for me. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. I have this awful feeling that I’m losing you, I’m exhausted, my life is falling apart. Please. Just this once, let me do something for you. For me. Let me pay Irene.”

  She thought about that. “Okay.”

  999

  Rachel had made a list of things to do and was getting ready for bed when she saw the corner of the bottom drawer of her dresser was out of line. Had she checked that drawer? She was almost too tired to think.

  She opened the drawer. Just her turtlenecks. Nothing missing. Who would want a worn turtleneck?

  Wait. She had hidden something in that drawer.

  She slipped her hand under the shirts. Nothing.

  She had hidden something there. Something she actually had stolen. The medical record, the papers from the bed in that peculiar ward at the hospital.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Despite the unease about someone rooting through her belongings, Rachel woke more refreshed than she had felt in a long time. An AA meeting could do that. She hurried into her clothes and gulped down her breakfast. Thursday was going to be a busy day. She had to get a locksmith out. That would probably set her back a bundle. But maybe this would be the day she’d land a good mortgage on the garage.

  She called Alvin’s Lock Shop first. Alvin told her she probably wouldn’t have to get a new lock, just a re-jigger, as he called it, of the old lock and a new key.

  Next, she dialed Irene, still marveling at the woman’s ownership of a cell phone. Rachel was leaving a message when someone knocked on the booth’s side window. Gabe.

  Her blood rose until it was pounding in her cheeks.

  He gave her a small tentative wave.

  “Hi. What can I do for you?” Rachel’s words felt a little tight coming out.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I just thought I should come by and say I don’t believe a word of it.”

  She blinked her amazement, then managed a weak smile. “Well, thanks. I figured everyone over there was sure I was guilty.”

  “It’s totally insane,” he said. “Why would you do something like that?”

  “I don’t even know why anyone would bother to steal OxyContin.”

  “It’s a pain reliever.”

  “It’s not a street drug or a party drug. Why would anyone steal a pain killer? It’s a whole lot easier to go to a doctor and get a prescription.”

  Gabe looked at her as if he were sizing up her statement. “Are you as naive as you sound?”

  Rachel lifted one shoulder. “I guess I must be.”

  “Ever heard of morphine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Pain killers are among the most addictive drugs around. What makes OxyContin so street worthy is that it apparently provides a striking sense of euphoria along with pain relief.”

  An exiting car squeezed by Gabe, and Rachel told him to come up the step into the booth. The space was small. She stepped back and hoisted herself to the countertop, leaving the stool for him.

  He didn’t take it. Instead, he drew a toothpick from his shirt pocket, stripped the paper from it, lodged it between his teeth, and said around it, “People are afraid of heroin, but they think if doctors prescribe this stuff, it must be safe. They don’t realize you can be addicted in as little as five days.”

  “Seems like pretty short-term pain relief.”

  “It’s mostly prescribed only for severe back injury and for terminal cancer patients. OxyContin is why that nut-case assemblyman resigned and went into rehab after getting caught conning doctors into prescribing it for him. And who knows what else people do with it? Druggies are very creative, always coming up with something new. They may mix it with something else and snort it or shoot it. I hear it sells for about a dollar per milligram on the street. That bottle you had—a hundred of the eighty milligram—is the highest dosage. We get about ten bucks a pill.”

  “You mean I had a thousand dollars’ worth in that bottle they found in my pocket?”

  “You bet. And that’s retail. On the street a hundred doses might fetch eight thousand.”

  “Jesus.” Rachel examined his face as she asked, “Did it come from your pharmacy?”

  “Apparently it did. It’s a class two narcotic, so we keep it under lock and key. We did an inventory and a bottle of that size and type was missing.”

  “You keep that stuff under lock and key?”

  “Of course.” Gabe shifted the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “People hold up drugstores to get their hands on class twos.”

  “But surely not your pharmacy. You’re inside a hospital.”

  “We have a door to the street.”

  “You have security guards.”

  “We also have a lot of pretty sick, screwed-up people, and not all of them walk in off the street, or, for that matter, are patients.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gabe scratched an ear. “Accepted rule of thumb is that about ten percent of physicians are impaired. My guess is that it’s even higher. More often than not, impaired means substance abuse.”

  “You mean ten percent of the doctors over there are addicts?”

  “Probably not that many. Some are alcoholics.”

  “Jesus. That’s reassuring.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “Practicing medicine ain’t for sissies. They may bury their mistakes but I don’t think they ever forget them. Or stop worrying about making a career-ending screw-up. After all, they’re dealing with human lives.”

  “What’s the figure for pharmacists?”

  Gabe raised his eyebrows and dipped his chin. “About the same, I guess.” He gave the toothpick a few quick bites.

  “Thanks for letting me know you don’t believe I took that bottle. That means a lot to me.”

  “I don’t see how you could have. Unless someone left it on the counter. I can’t say that’s never happened—a class two left on a counter—but it’s unlikely. We’re pretty careful. I’ve never seen that happen at Jefferson.” Gabe bit down hard on the toothpick.

  Rachel thought he looked sweet and didn
’t like thinking so.

  “Who could have taken that bottle? Who has access?”

  “All the pharmacists. Some of the techs.”

  “Doctors?”

  “Some, yes. Maybe. But access isn’t necessarily the whole point. The main question is who would want to plant something like that on you, and why?”

  Rachel had opened her mouth to say she had some thoughts on the why if not the who, when Irene appeared at the garage entrance and pushed her cart up to the booth.

  “Hello, dear girl. I got your message and thought I would just reply in person. No sense running up the cell bill when I’ve got two perfectly good feet.”

  “Good.” Rachel turned to Gabe. “I guess I should get back to work.”

  He gave her an affable nod.

  Rachel watched him stroll up the ramp toward his parking place. She’d have to wait to ask his take on her suspicions about whether someone would plant that bottle of pills on her because of her nosing around about those boys or that ward.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chez Chic restaurant was in a one-story, cleverly artificially aged building on a pedestrian-only street of shops in Valencia. Marty had told her to ask the hostess for E.J.

  Rachel wished she had changed out of her jeans when she saw the white tablecloths and cobalt blue napkins. She’d expected something like a bistro, hadn’t realized a restaurant in Valencia might be this upscale. Especially one that apparently was a front for a gangster.

  The time was 1:20. Nine diners were finishing their meals at tables near the windows. The hostess wore a blue dress that matched the napkins, gold helix earrings, and a hairdo that rose in a swirl on top of her head.

  Rachel asked to see E.J.

  “Ah…yes,” the hostess eyed Rachel up and down as if appraising her for purchase.

  “You will please be seated.” The accent didn’t sound French, but the woman was certainly exotic. She showed Rachel to a table at the back of the room, away from the other diners, and beckoned a waiter, who brought a stemmed glass containing ice and a slice of lemon.

  He poured water over the ice, causing the lemon to swim, and when Rachel didn’t take her napkin, he unfurled it with a flourish, handed it to her and asked, “Madame is alone today?” He wore a single earring, and a big-sleeved shirt of soft, white fabric.