Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (8 page)

I hurried in there. Mick sat at my old card table, which he’d set up against the wall by the fireplace, and on it was the
most elaborate radio setup I’d ever seen. Sound-level lights blinked as Mick fiddled with a transceiver; he was so intent
on it that he didn’t hear me come in.

Neither did Ralph, my orange tabby. He sat on the back of an armchair staring bloodthirstily at W. C. Fields, my crotchety-looking
silk parrot, who hung on a perch by the window. I’d bought the parrot for seventy-five-plus-tax big bucks last June in exchange
for information I thought might lead me to Hy, and ever since I’d brought it home, Ralphie had eyed it evilly, intent on ripping
its throat out. I was equally intent that he wouldn’t touch it, and as I crossed the room toward Mick, I swatted the cat off
the chair. He thudded to the floor, mowled in protest, and leaped over an empty cardboard carton next to Mick. Alice, his
calico sister, was sitting in the box; she and Mick looked up with identical bewildered expressions.

I asked, “What the hell is this?”

Mick turned off the transceiver. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were home.”

“So?” I asked, waving at the card table. “What is?”

“My radio. I assembled it myself from components I bought up at garage sales and flea markets.”

“You assembled it tonight?” I stared incredulously at him.

“Of course not—a couple of years ago. Last week when I talked to Dad I asked him to pack it up and send it UPS. It came this
afternoon.” His hand caressed the transceiver as if it were a beloved pet. “Look, Aunt … I mean, Shar. It’s got everything.
Here’s the police band, and here’re the fire calls. This is UHF, VHF, MHz.”

“You can listen in on the air traffic?”

“Yeah, at both Oakland and SFO. What’s the frequency for Oakland?”

“Ground Control’s one-twenty-one-point-nine.”

He flipped a switch, turned a knob.

“… Oakland Ground, this is one-two-one-three-Delta. I’m eastbound to Livermore with Alfa …”

Mick said, “Next time Hy flies down, you can monitor the radio, hear him call in to the tower, and be over there before he
phones you to come get him. Tell him you’re psychic; it’ll drive him crazy.”

Next time Hy flies down … I pushed the thought aside, smiled in response to Mick’s delighted grin. His pleasure was so keen
that I could hardly bear to blunt it, and yet …

Avoiding the obligatory discussion, I went to the kitchen to survey my supply of frozen entrées. Mick followed and crowded
in next to me, reaching into the fridge for a can of cola. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking that we really should
put together an earthquake preparedness kit.”

“A what?”

“I was reading an article last week on how to get ready for the Big One, and I looked around the house and realized you weren’t.
Prepared, I mean. So I called the state Earthquake Safety Hotline and got a booklet. I figure we could put everything we’d
need in one box and store it in the closet of the room you use for your home office.”

“That’s a good idea, but what if the closet collapses and we can’t get at it?”

“Won’t. I checked while I was installing the antenna for my radio—there’s a main support beam running over it.”

He’d installed an antenna on the roof of my house! “Mick,” I began weakly.

“I can’t believe you never put stuff together,” he said. “How’d you survive the quake of eighty-nine?”

“Crawled under a desk.” I took a package of creamed chipped beef from the freezer, trying to figure a way to get through to
him.

“You know, that’s probably not very good for you,” he told me, nodding at the package. “It’s got a lot of fat and sodium.”

My frayed patience snapped. I pointed to his cola. “That’s probably not good for you, either. Your mom’ll cut you off the
stuff as soon as you’re home.” I opened the package, poked holes in the plastic pouch, and stuck it in the microwave.

When I turned, Mick’s shoulders were slumped and his mouth curved down dejectedly. “What?” I asked. Added to myself, I refuse
to feel guilty.

He shrugged, avoiding my eyes and scrubbing with a sponge at the already clean countertop. I watched as his lips pushed out
in the same belligerent expression that his mother had worn for most of her adolescence.

Yes, I thought, he’s determined not to go home. He sends for his radio, he talks about “our” earthquake preparedness kit.
God Almighty, what
am
I going to do about him?

I studied Mick thoughtfully, an idea beginning to take shape. What was I going to do about him? Well, why not do to him what
had been done to me years before? I’d toss him into the business, give him a dose of hands-on experience, test his mettle.
Mick wasn’t a child any more; whether his parents liked it or not, it was time he started making his own choices. If he had
the makings of a private investigator, we’d find out soon enough.

I said, “I’ve been thinking—how’d you like to stay on and help me out for a while longer, if your folks are agreeable?”

The transformation in his spirits was tangible: he stood taller and his face shone with pure happiness. For a moment I thought
he might kiss me; instead he began scouring the counter with renewed vigor. “They’ll agree,” he said, “because you’ll talk
them into it.”

The microwave buzzed. I checked the pouch, found it lukewarm. Punched the buttons for a few more whirls. I was hungry and
tired and out of sorts. It seemed as if I’d spent most of the day doing things for other people, and now I couldn’t even get
the damned oven to behave—

“Something’s wrong with that machine,” Mick said. “If you want, I’ll fix it before I go to work tomorrow morning.”

Well, sometimes when you did things for others, they gave something in return.

The call from Suits came at roughly one-fifty in the morning. For some reason I’d turned off the bell on the phone in my bedroom,
so I heard nothing till Mick—his face showing the alarm of a person who wasn’t used to middle-of-the-night calls—tapped at
my door. I grabbed the receiver, motioned that everything was under control and he should go back to bed.

Suits’s voice was clogged with pain. “Sorry to wake you, but I need—”

The rest of his words were distorted by a siren’s wail. I sat up, gripping the receiver. “Where are you?”

“S.F. General. Emergency room. Can you come get me?”

“Of course. What happened?”

“Can’t talk now—they’re taking me to X-ray.”

“Wait—”

He hung up, leaving me with my questions. As I got out of bed and rummaged through my closet I decided that his injuries couldn’t
be too serious, since he’d been able to make the phone call. Still, the echo of the pain in his voice made me pull on jeans
and a sweater all the faster.

* * *

When I arrived at the big brick hospital at the foot of Potrero Hill, the lights of its parking lots were heavily misted.
A couple of white-coated attendants leaned against an ambulance near the emergency entrance, but otherwise I saw no one outside.
The city’s major trauma unit can be a madhouse at any given time, particularly on weekends and holidays, but it can also be
as peaceful as a church after services let out. The quiet reminded me of another early morning when I’d waited there for word
of Hank Zahn’s condition after he’d taken a bullet that I should have shielded him from. The memory still unsettled me, so
I pushed it away.

I went straight to the information desk inside the emergency entrance and inquired about Suits. Mr. Gordon, the intake worker
said, was still in the examining room. I sat down at the end of the nearest row of chairs, avoiding the glances of the dozen
or so people who waited there. Most were minorities, and a few had small children with them. A little boy was curled up asleep
on a coat on the floor; an infant cried fretfully. Behind me a woman’s voice droned, talking about the quality of care at
various Bay Area hospitals; after a moment I realized she was an emergency room junkie.

They’re a sad and disturbing type of individual, a nurse friend once told me. They crave attention, so they manufacture ailments,
and when their loneliness drives them from their homes, they head for the nearest emergency-care facility. The personnel are
quick to spot them; intake workers place them far down on the priority list, hoping they’ll give up and go home. But most
are content to remain in the waiting room, striking up conversations with anyone who will listen, disturbing people who are
anxious about the condition of a friend or loved one, and ultimately driving up health-care costs. When they tire of one facility,
they move on to another in a never-ending search for someone who will diagnose what’s really bothering them. An age-old problem,
chronic loneliness, and one that our system isn’t set up to deal with.

One’s compassion extends only so far, however, and mine didn’t stand me in particularly good stead during the next forty minutes
while the woman babbled about her symptoms and how Kaiser Foundation Hospital had treated them the week before. When a maternal-looking
blond nurse pushed Suits’s wheelchair through the swinging doors, I was more than ready to leave. His left arm was in a cast
and bound to his chest by a sling; his pale face was abraded and purpled around the left eye, and his lower lip was badly
split. When I came up to them, the nurse brought the chair to a stop.

“What happened to you?” I demanded.

“Long story.” He grimaced and flicked his eyes toward the nurse.

She said, “Mr. Gordon had a run-in with somebody who didn’t like him.” From her tone, I judged she found that unsurprising.
She added, “He’s given his statement to the police and is ready to go home.”

Suits said, “I’ve asked Ms. Lubbock here if she isn’t perhaps related to Nurse Ratchet. She denies any kinship, but you could’ve
fooled me.”

Nurse Ratchet—Big Nurse of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. No wonder Ms. Lubbock had spoken so stiffly! I glanced at her. She shrugged and gave me a long-suffering look. Then she
began guiding the wheelchair toward the exit. An orderly joined us, I went to fetch my MG, and the three of us maneuvered
Suits into the passenger’s seat. “Good luck, honey,” Ms. Lubbock said to me as she slammed the door.

I went around and slipped behind the wheel. “Why did you pick on that woman?” I demanded. “Don’t you know how difficult her
job is, without patients indulging in cheap shots?”

Suits slumped down in the seat. “Sorry. She reminds me of my mother.”

That gave me pause. Of course Suits had a mother, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what she might be like, what the
relationship between them might be. He’d never so much as mentioned his family. I let the comment pass, though, and asked,
“Now will you please explain what happened to you?”

He pressed his free hand over his swollen eye, pain momentarily stiffening his body. Then he sighed, relaxing some. “I was
at a dinner meeting with one of my moneymen. Came home, maybe twelve-thirty. Bastard was in my condo.”

“The person who did this to you, you mean.”

He nodded. “Beat me up, broke my arm.”

“For God’s sake, what’s wrong with Security in that building?”

The anger in my voice startled him; he glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. After a moment he said, “That’s what I want to know.”

“You get a look at him?”

“It was too dark. I passed out, came to, called the doorman on the house phone. He got the ambulance.”

“Well, obviously you’re not safe at Bay Vista. I’d better take you to a hotel.”

“Hotel?” He laughed harshly. “No decent place would take me, looking like this. And I’m long past my days of sleeping in fleabags.”

“What about an associate’s place? A friend’s?” As I made the suggestion, I realized its impossibility—and saw what was coming.

“Take me to your place, Sherry … Sharon.”

“Suits, I have a small house, and my nephew’s staying with me. There’s no room.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch, the floor. I’ve got nobody else to turn to.” The admission shamed him; he looked away.

I stared at the back of his head, its cowlick sprouting at odd angles and rendering him curiously vulnerable. Suddenly I was
transported back to the night of the infamous Halloween party, so many light-years before.

Suits had come to the party dressed as a troll, but nobody noticed he was in costume. The realization that his usual appearance
closely approximated that of a creature who spent most of its time under a bridge depressed him; he took refuge on the stairway
of the big house on Durant, watching the others through the balusters of its banister. I arrived late from one of my security-guard
gigs, and everybody thought my uniform was a costume; the realization that my on-the-job appearance was something of a joke
depressed
me
, and I joined Suits to share a joint. After a while someone—Hank, I think—took pity on us and brought over a jug of Carlo
Rossi, which we also proceeded to share; and as the evening wore on, we remained content to view the party through the bars
of our self-made prison. When I finally stood to stumble upstairs to my room, Suits looked up at me, and the naked loneliness
in his eyes made me hold out my hand. Now I realized with some surprise that I no longer regretted the act, or those that
had followed.

And I also realized that I wanted to take on Suit’s case.

* * *

I expected Suits to pay little attention to my house; after all, he was in pain and—in spite of his claim to the contrary—probably
exhausted. But he looked it over with interest and pronounced it charming. His flattery somewhat warmed me to his presence,
and while my innate cynicism told me that had been his intent, I offered to make up the couch and fetch him some of the Percodan
I had left over from my last trip to the dentist. He refused the pills, oversaw the bed-making, then asked if he could have
some coffee. I started a pot for him. He asked if I had an extra toothbrush. I provided one. Then he asked if he could make
some phone calls. By that time the effect of the flattery had worn off; I told him that if any of the calls were long-distance
he should use a credit card.