The 7th Canon (19 page)

Simeon tried to speak, but it came out a gurgle, like water flowing through an obstructed drainpipe.

Connor loosened his grip and turned his head. “I couldn’t quite understand you. Let’s try that again.”

Simeon hissed in air through clenched teeth. He tried to speak, but his lips would not respond to what his brain wanted. He stuttered. “F-F-F-F . . .”

Connor lowered his ear near Simeon’s mouth.

“F-F-F-F-F . . . fuck y-y-y-you.”

Connor straightened. “You know, I’m trying to be nice here, because I can see by the chart that you are in considerable pain from those ribs. And I know how that can be.” He slid his hand down Simeon’s side and let it rest on the bandage. “Awful painful,” he said, applying pressure.

The pain shot through Simeon like an electric jolt. He moaned, but Connor’s left hand covered his mouth as the right hand continued to apply pressure. Simeon gripped the metal handrail, causing it to rattle and bang. His legs kicked at the thin white sheet.

Connor released the pressure. “I assume from your prior response there are records. Next question. Where does he keep them?”

Simeon spit through the gaps in his teeth. His chest heaved from the pain pulsing through his body, but the pain had also helped him to focus through the drugs. Connor no longer floated about the room.

Connor patted the bandage wrap. “Where are the records, Dingo?”

Simeon slowly and cautiously moved his right hand, feeling beneath the thin sheet.

Connor put pressure on the wrap. “Don’t be stubborn, Dingo.”

Finding the nurse-call button, Simeon pressed it. “F-F-Fuck you.”

Connor pushed hard on the bandaged ribs. Simeon’s back arched into a bridge. He screamed through Connor’s hand, a horrific moan.

The door to the hospital room swung open, the nurse rushing in. “My God, what happened?” She stepped between Connor and the bed, trying to keep Simeon from thrashing.

“He’s in horrible pain.” Connor stepped back. “I was talking to him, and he just screamed and started flailing his arms and legs. I was trying to hold him down. I was afraid he would hurt himself.”

The nurse checked an array of machines behind Simeon. “His pulse is racing.” She pressed the call button, seeking assistance.

“Maybe it’s the drugs. You know, he’s had a problem before,” Connor said.

“I’m sorry. I know you traveled a long way to see your nephew on Christmas Eve, but we’re going to need some room. We have to get his pain under control.”

“I understand,” Connor said. “I only want what’s best for Danny.”

“You’ll have to wait outside.” Others hurried into the room as the nurse undid the IV needle from the plastic implant taped to Simeon’s arm. Connor reached out and put a hand on Simeon’s cheek. “You do just what the nurse says, Danny. And remember, I’m not far away.”

Donley looked across the emergency room to where a woman sat hunched over, clutching her knees to her stomach. Donley overheard her tell the nurse she fell into the corner of a table, but the woman also had a black eye. Next to her sat a bald, overweight man with a graying goatee.

“They’ll separate them,” Harris said, his head tilted back against the wall. “They’ll ask her questions when he isn’t around. It doesn’t matter, though. They have to go home sometime.”

Donley knew that to be the truth. He used to sit for hours in the park at the top of his street watching the San Francisco skyline late at night, thinking of reasons not to go home. He’d watch the red taillights of cars driving east on the Bay Bridge and think of the people in those cars, wishing he could be one of them, going anywhere but back to that house. But leaving was not an option; he couldn’t leave his mother alone with his father.

Donley shifted his attention to two men huddled in another corner of the room. One appeared to be in considerable pain. Pale and gaunt, he looked fifty years older than his partner. Donley tried not to eavesdrop, but it was clear they were afraid this could be their final trip to the hospital.

“M&M?” Harris held out a pack of candy he’d bought from the vending machine.

Donley took the pack and poured several colored candies into his palm. The taste of chocolate made him remember the buffet he was missing at home, which made him remember the party he was missing at home. Maybe it was the sugar, but something sparked the thought that followed.

“Where do they take people who can’t pay?”

“What’s that?” Harris asked.

“People who don’t have medical insurance. Where do they take them?”

“Here.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve done it enough times myself. We’ll pick people up off the street and bring them here to general. The private hospitals won’t keep them.”

Donley stood.

“Where’re you going?” Harris asked.

“Be right back.”

Donley approached the nurse at the station. She edged her seat away from the counter. “I wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. I was upset.”

She nodded but offered no forgiveness.

“I was wondering, where would I find admissions? Where would I go to see if a patient has been admitted?”

“Was he admitted to the hospital, or did he come in through the emergency room?”

Donley thought for a moment. “Emergency room. December twenty-first.”

She turned to a computer screen. “Admission will be closed or short-staffed tonight. What’s the patient’s name?”

Donley tried to remember the name Father Martin had provided. “Danny.”

She gave him an inquisitive look.

“Simon,” he said. “Danny Simon.”

The nurse typed. A moment later she ran her finger down the front of the screen.

“Simeon?”

“That’s it,” Donley said.

“Daniel Simeon.” She ran a finger across the computer in a straight line. “He was moved this morning to a room on the third floor, west wing. Three twenty-seven. But you won’t be able to see him,” the nurse said. “Visiting hours are over.”

Donley called down the hallway to Harris. “Let’s make some phone calls home.”

When they exited the elevator onto the third floor, a stocky nurse stepped out from the nurses’ station. “Do you have a patient named Danny Simeon?” Donley asked.

“Mr. Simeon is resting.” She looked frazzled. “You’ll have to come back in the morning. I just sent his uncle home.”

“His uncle?” Donley looked to Harris, thinking it unlikely Simeon, who’d grown up on the streets, had an uncle who cared enough to pay him a visit on Christmas Eve.

“What did he look like?” Harris asked.

“Excuse me?”

“His uncle. What did he look like?”

Donley started quickly down the hallway, scanning the numbers of the rooms on the wall.

“I don’t remember.” The nurse turned to Donley. “Sir—”

Harris badged the nurse. “What did the man look like?”

“He was white. Six foot two or three, I think. Husky, over two hundred pounds. He had a crew cut.” She called out to Donley. “Sir, you can’t go in there.”

Donley pushed open the door to Room 327 and slapped at the wall switch.

The thin, white sheet lay crumpled in a ball, the tube from an IV bag dripping clear fluid onto the floor.

Chapter 13

December 26, 1987

Frank Ross wedged a knee beneath the steering wheel, balanced a cup of coffee in one hand, and dunked a cinnamon-twist doughnut with the other, maneuvering the dripping pastry to his mouth. Nothing better on a cold Saturday morning. If the best things in life were free, the next best things could be bought for less than two bucks at the local 7-Eleven.

Unfortunately, the cinnamon twists would be a casualty of his New Year’s resolution, a begrudging concession to his inner conscience, bathroom scale, and wife. The day after Christmas, he’d weighed in at 270 pounds, too heavy even for his six-foot-five-inch frame, and the slide to three hundred was a slippery slope getting more slippery by the doughnut.

This morning, however, not even the thought of his last doughnut could depress him. He felt rejuvenated and excited to get to his office for the first time in a long time. After a few days in Tahoe for the Christmas holidays, he was going to work with a sense of purpose. When was the last time he could say he was working on something real and substantial, not the dime-store cases that had become a vivid reminder of how far he’d fallen?

He clenched the doughnut between his teeth, steered the black 1965 Fleetwood past the OK Barber Shop and Elk Motel, and turned onto Eddy Street. A blinding glare greeted him, the sun reflecting off the rain-soaked pavement and building windows. Ross lowered the visor and quickly corrected the steering wheel as the Cadillac drifted precariously close to a parked car.

The hard rains might have washed other areas of the city glistening clean, but it had done little to improve the brick and stucco buildings of the Tenderloin. The ten square blocks of graffiti-splattered buildings, wedged tighter together than impacted teeth, still looked in need of a massive paint job. Ross honked the horn at an orderly line of homeless waiting for a hot meal at the St. Vincent de Paul Society’s shelter. No one reacted. Even the homeless had become accustomed to Ross, another of San Francisco’s misfits. Ross could have taken a more scenic route to the office, but he’d turned on Eddy to see the homeless, a reminder that no matter how bad things got, he still had a roof over his head, and he sure as hell wasn’t starving.

Halfway up the block, he spotted a parking spot, thanked the Lord for small miracles, and nudged the curb. Coffee spilled over the rim of the cup, missing his leg and splattering on the floorboard to be soaked up by discarded napkins and old sports pages. He finished the last bite of the cinnamon twist, licked his fingers, and stepped from the car to a high sky of billowing clouds that offered some hope of relief from the persistent rain.

Ross pushed aside a shopping cart filled with other people’s discards and placed the brown bag containing a second cup of coffee and cinnamon twist near a blue sleeping bag on the tile entryway.

“Rise and shine, Annie. Breakfast.”

The mound stirred. Two arms stretched out the top of the bag followed by dark hair and dark skin. Annie squinted and raised her hand to cut the glare.

“Lordy. You must be an angel. Couldn’t be no Frank Ross because he gone and deserted old Annie.”

“Now, you know I wouldn’t do that, Annie. I told you I was going to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days. How do you like sleeping in that bag?” It had been a Christmas present. Ross couldn’t afford it, but Annie couldn’t afford to freeze, either. Her old bag and plastic tarp had been stolen.

“Like a caterpillar in a cocoon,” she said in her raspy voice. “Warm. Too warm. Can’t shake the sleep now; it’s got a grip on old Annie for sure.” She brightened at the sight of the brown bag and removed the plastic top on her cup of coffee to dip the twist the way Ross had taught her. “Mmmm. Mmmm,” she said.

Ross handed her a paper napkin. “Is it going to rain again today, Annie?”

Annie set the coffee down and balanced the cinnamon twist on the rim. Then she took a deep breath of the chilled morning air. “Smells like rain. Yep. It does smell like rain.”

Ross considered the sky. “I’m tired of the rain, Annie.”

“Not the rain that makes a man tired. It’s his soul. You have a tired soul, Frank Ross.”

Ross looked up and down the block. “Yeah, Annie, I guess I do.” He reached into his pocket and handed her spare change. “But not today. You keep an eye out for those meter maids. No sleeping on the job.”

“They ain’t pulled one by on Annie yet, has they? Annie knows when they’re coming.”

Ross stepped past her and pulled open the glass door, gathering the newspapers and mail delivered while he’d been away. He hadn’t wanted a vacation, not with Lou Giantelli hiring him to work the case involving the priest of Polk Street, but he also knew he couldn’t disappoint his wife. It had been their first vacation since they’d lost Frank Jr., and neither wanted to be in the house during the holiday, not with the memories still so fresh. Lou had told Ross to go. He said nothing much would happen over the holiday, anyway.

Ross thumbed through his mail as he walked up the tiled steps to the second floor. The windowless hallway smelled like damp carpet. He hoped it was damp carpet and not the lingering odor of the accountant’s rotting corpse. Paramedics had found the man sitting upright in his chair, a heroin needle stuck in his arm. He’d gone unnoticed for nearly a week, until he failed to pay his rent and the landlord brought a locksmith.
Surprise.
They’d carried his body out in a sitting position.