Crime Always Pays (2 page)

          'Madge booked it Sunday, before we mentioned about snatching her.'

          Anna lifted her massive head and whined. Karen scratched her under the chin, gazed into the cloudy amber eye. 'It's okay, hon. You're doing fine.'

          'What'd the doc say?'

          The doc, after he hoked the bullet out of Ray's arm, reckoned Anna was doing as well as could be expected, the girl shipping a .22 round point-blank. While admitting he was no expert in gunshot wounds in wolves, the guy reckoned the plate of bone that was Anna's forehead meant the slug probably came off worse.

          'He said to keep her doped, the last thing you want is a wolf with a migraine. But, she gets enough rest, she should be fine.'

          'That's fantastic,' Ray said, 'a real weight off my mind. He say anything about me?'

          'Sure. It's a clean break, six weeks in a cast. You can still drive, right? One-armed.'

          'Drive where?'

          'The Med, Ray. Athens.' Ray was still a little woozy from the shock and the pills, this after five or six hours of dozing off and on, adrenaline spikes fritzing him awake. Giving Doyle plenty of time to get Frank out of the woods, put the news on the wire. 'We'll be needing all sorts of documentation if we want Anna to fly,' she said. 'And there's quarantine. That means waiting, I dunno, weeks. Maybe months.'

          'You want to smuggle the wolf out of the country.'

          Karen shrugged. 'Rossi rats her out at the hospital, how she ripped his ear off, they'll be looking to put her down.'

          'I hear you.' Ray pushed out his slinged arm, looking to Karen like a stroke victim trying the Funky Chicken. 'But there's no way I'll make it all the way to Athenslike this.'

          'I can drive.'

          'You ever driven a van before?'

          'There's a first time for everything.'

          'Not when you're fugiting from justice there isn't. What about Madge, has she ever driven a van?'

          'Not likely. Besides, she's flying.'

          'Bad idea. They'll be watching the airports.'

          'Terry's making private arrangements. Says he likes the sound of a cruise, never took one before.'

          'Terry's taking the cruise?'

          'Madge told him about plugging Frank. Guy nearly creamed himself.'

          'Terry did?'

          'Why wouldn't he?'

          'She just shot 
Frank
. The woman's a cop magnet, she might as well be free doughnuts.'

          'Maybe that's his buzz. He's torn between two, y'know …'

          'He fancies some posh is what it is. He can't make these private arrangements for Anna?'

          'He tried, yeah. No joy. But he has an automatic, a van, out on the lot. Says all I have to do is point it and drive.'

          Ray shook his head, then heaved himself up onto his good elbow, glanced around. 'Where's the money?'

          'It's here.' Karen kicked the bag she'd tucked under the bed. 'Think Terry'll still want his fifty gees?'

          'That was the deal.'

          'Yeah, but --'

          'I can tell him how the insurance company only paid out two hundred instead of the full half mill,' Ray said, subsiding onto the pillow again, 'I don't know, maybe there'll be a miracle. But it was Terry who cut us in, him and Terry Junior, for a flat fifty. He's owed.'

          Which was disappointing, but more or less what Karen'd expected. 'One more thing,' she said.

          'Just the one?'

          'I don't have a passport.' 

          'No?'

          'Never been out of the country, Ray. Not with Anna to look after. What do you think, will that be a problem?'

'I doubt it,' Ray said. 'Terry Swipes is a man of many talents.' 

Madge

'Import-export,' Terry said, a grin starting, when Madge asked what he did.

          'What's so funny?' she said.

          'Nothing.'

          'No, really. What am I missing?'

          Terry behind a huge walnut-wood desk, maroon crushed-velvet curtains in the bay window behind, a green-shaded reading lamp on the desk. Clipping a cigar now. A nicely lined face, a little worn, the eyes webbed with laughter lines, mischief sparkling in their faded blue. A benign thug, putting Madge in mind of Paul Newman, only bald. 'You ever watch the Bond movies?' he said.

          'Not by choice,' Madge said. Frank had liked the Bond movies. Sitting on the green-leather couch, dimples the size of saucers, sipping on the brandy Terry'd poured for medicinal purposes, Madge wondered when she'd be officially cured. Maybe then Terry'd get around to pouring a more sociable measure. 'All that macho stuff,' she said, 'it's not really me.'

'Says the lady who blew out her husband's knee.'

          'Ex-husband. The divorce comes through on Friday.'

          'I guess you can kiss that alimony goodbye.'

          'I'll live.'

          'I'll just bet you will. How's that brandy treating you?'

          'Like a gentleman, more's the pity. Listen, Terry, can you keep a secret?'

          'Depends what it is.'

          'I'm fine.'

          'Okay.'

          'Seriously, I'm good. Karen, I know, she's worried about me. Thinks I'm ready to freak because I shot Frank's knee.' Terry leaned forward, elbow on the desk and chin on palm, cigar forgotten. 'She's concerned, and it's an admirable trait she has, that I'll melt down once the shock wears off.'

          'You're saying it won't.'

          'She's young, Terry. I mean she's smart, don't get me wrong, and I love the girl to bits. But she still thinks everyone should feel how she does. You know she used to pull stick-ups?'

          'Karen?'

          'It's how she met Ray, he walked into a place she was sticking up. Surprised her, came up from behind.'

          'Lucky he didn't get his head blown off.'

          'See, this is Karen all over. She never loaded the gun. Couldn't cope, even thinking about it, with how she'd feel after putting a bullet in someone.'

          'You're saying, you're coping.'

          'Put Frank in front of me now, a gun in my hand, I'd do it again.'

          'But only Frank.'

          'No one else ever gave me enough reason.'

          Terry got up from behind the desk and went to the drinks cabinet, poured a brace of brandies. 'Remind me,' he said, carrying them across to the couch, 'never to give you a reason.'

          Madge took his balloon glass away, poured its contents into her own. 'Remind yourself,' she said. '
Slainté
.'

Rossi

'Y'think maybe the cops have their own hospital?' Sleeps said. 'Their own ER at least, it makes sense. No one wants to be flat-backed beside some perp they've just whacked. That's bad juju.'

          'It was Madge,' Rossi said, 'who blew Frank's knee out.'

          'While he was handcuffed to the cop.'

          Rossi used one of the cop's handcuff keys to scratch up under the turban, the bandage drying out stiff and purple-black over where his ear used to be, the wound already itchy. 'I never heard of no cops' hospital,' he said.

          'So then we're looking at her coming here. With you, y'know, under arrest. She read you up, right?'

          Rossi flinched as the metal teeth snagged on the catgut stitches. 'She started to,' he said, easing the key out from under the turban. 'Then she stopped when I fired down on her. So I dunno if that qualifies as properly habeas corpused and shit.' He shrugged. 'What d'you want, we sit outside the cop shop 'til she shows up there?'

          Sleeps had another squint out over the parking lot, seventeen rows all the way to the ER bay. 'We should be gone, Rossi.'

          'You're the one wants to go back inside,' Rossi pointed out, 'do soft time.'

          'That was then. Except now there's cops involved, cops and guns.'

          'And on the other side,' Rossi said, doggie-paddling his hands on an invisible see-saw, 'there's two hundred grand and the ear.'

          'The ear's gone, man. Forget about the ear.'

          'Forget about it? The bitch chewed my 
ear
 off.' Rossi shook his head, wincing even as he did it. 'Don't doubt it, I'm ripping the hound open, digging it out.'

          'And then what – you sew it back on? After it's been a couple a days in her gut? It'll be eaten away with acids.'

          'You heard the doc. It's not just hearing, your balance gets screwed too. I'm looping the fuckin loop over here.'

          'That'll be the goofballs. The vet said two every eight hours, not eight every two minutes. And what he said was, you start messing with the bandage and the inner ear gets infected, you'll --'

          'Hold up.' Rossi pointed across the car park to where an ambulance had pulled in at the ER doors, was now discharging its cargo. The cop still cuffed to Frank, bent double at the waist until the medics extended the stretcher to its full height. 'The seagull,' he said, 'has landed.'

Doyle

'It doesn't look good, Steph.' Ted paced as far as the window, twitched the blind, glanced out into the parking lot, then came back across the office and slipped in behind his desk, pointed at his left ear. 'How's the hearing coming on?'

          'What?'

          'I said, How's your – oh.'

          'Sorry.'

          'This is serious, Steph.'

          'I know. Go on.'

'Want a smoke? A coffee or anything?'

          'I'm fine, Ted. Really.'

          'Okay.' Ted scratched his stubble glancing down at the prelim report laid out in front of him. Doyle wishing she had her gun, could toss it on Ted's desk. Be Clint, be gone. 'So you're saying here,' he said, 'you didn't see who shot Frank.'

          'I closed my eyes after I got shot at,' Doyle said. 'Forgot to open them again.'

          'And this tinnitus you got probably means you didn't, uh, hear anything that might, y'know …'

          Doyle shook her head.

          'And I'm guessing you didn't smell anything. How's your sixth sense, that female intuition?'

          'That went on the fritz the first night I slept with you.'

          'That happens a lot.'

          Doyle felt bad stringing him along. Ted was one of the few good guys, solid. None of the smarmy crap about Doyle being some kind of affirmative action experiment, let's make a college girl detective, see how badly she and her shiny degree in psychology can fuck it all up …

          Except Doyle, okay, it had taken a while, but she'd fucked up. Nine years of clean nose and regular collars, slow promotion, all screwed in ten minutes flat. Christ, Rossi'd even taken the keys to her cuffs, they'd had to saw them off at the hospital. The boys in the bullpen were going to love that, a Pamplona charge to see who'd get to drop the juicy dime first.

          Ted riffled through the report once more, cleared his throat. 'So we have Frank Dolan,' he said, 'a plastic surgeon. Except he's running a kidnap scam, juicing insurance companies. What's wrong with this picture?'

          'The guy's under investigation, some surgery went wrong. So he's branching out.'

          'Okay. But he sets up his 
wife
 to be snatched?'

          'They were separated. She'll be his ex-wife by Friday.'

          'Right. So Frank has this guy Ray kidnap his ex-wife-to-be. Then, he's already insured her against kidnap for half a mill, he stings Trust Direct. Except then this Ray guy comes to you looking to double-cross Frank, hang him out to dry.'

          'That's about the height of it, yeah.'

          'So how come you know this Ray?'

          Doyle'd been waiting for it. 'He made himself known.'

          'Just dropped into your lap.'

          'Not literally, if that's what you're asking.'

          'I'm not. What's Ray gain by blowing the whistle?'