Runaway Heart

ELEVEN

At 9:45 the next morning Herman was still in the hospital. He had changed into his regular clothes, waiting to be released, and was sitting on the side of the bed talking to Roland's mother on the phone.

"I'm so sorry, Madge." His voice cracked. Tears stung his eyes. "I feel like… I don't know. I feel like… like I sent him to his death."

There was a long silence on the phone while Roland's devastated mother evaluated that admission. "No," she finally said. "It wasn't you."

But he knew it was. He would never forgive himself. He had really come to like Roland. More than like, even- Roland had been a treasured friend.

He remembered his first meeting with the geeky hacker. They'd been in the attorneys' room at the D.C. federal lockup. Roland Minton had been convicted of federal computer crimes. He'd penetrated the White House Budget Office mainframe for some harebrained reason that was never fully explained. God only knew what he had been up to. What the feds were doing with the national budget was bad enough without having Roland in their damn computer, screwing around with the data. Herman had agreed to represent the skinny little hacker whose mother was a motel maid.

Herman wondered why Roland didn't get a job, didn't do something to help Madge and his two sisters, instead of doing show-off criminal hacks-but that was beside the point. Herman had been hired to get Roland's conviction overturned on appeal. If he didn't get it reversed, this skinny, vulnerable kid was going to end up at Raiford, and Herman didn't wish that on some computer geek with purple hair.

That was four years ago. Herman had found a loophole in the search and seizure of Roland's computer, which the original trial judge had wrongfully admitted as evidence. Then Herman did a standard "fruit of the poisonous tree" defense, which dictated that all evidence or testimony resulting from an illegal search and seizure was inadmissible. After that, the government's case came apart like antique stitching and Herman had Roland back on the streets.

During the appeal he discovered the skinny hacker was much more intriguing than he would have guessed. Roland had a sly sense of humor and a world-class IQ. As a high school student Roland also had no friends, so he and Herman compared locker stories. Roland was so smart that he became bored easily and withdrew into his computer world. His criminal hacks began a year later. He and Herman began matching wits. Herman usually won on theory and abstract thought, Roland on anal logic and X-over-Y deductive reasoning.

Herman often tried out his legal arguments on Roland and found, to his surprise, that the young hacker could almost always find embellishments and improvements. His mind was so logically bulletproof that Herman was often put to shame.

They soon learned that they shared the same latent anger and sense of disenfranchisement. They began to bond with each other for support… or for protection? Or both?

Now his friend was gone.

He could hear Madge sniffling on the other end of the phone, in her little walk-up apartment in Washington, D.C. He could picture her chapped, dishwater hands, her soft-but-wrinkled complexion, her tired gray eyes.

"Madge, I'm going to find out who killed him," Herman promised, not using the pronoun what, as Sergeant Cole had. Not wanting to add the specter of some savage, unearthly beast ripping and shredding her only son.

"Herman, it's not your fault," she repeated, sniffling. But Herman shook his head, vigorously denying that, even though she couldn't see him.

"He was killed trying to get information that I asked him to get. How can it not be my fault?"

"The police said I couldn't have his body yet… that they… they…"

"I know," he said, interrupting, trying not to put her through that sentence. "Madge, I'll get his body back for you. It'll be the first thing I do, okay?"

"Would you?" she said softly. "Please-it would mean a lot. I feel… it's like… it's not finished until he's home with me."

"I promise. They can't hold it for long. Once the medical examiner is through I'll make them release it. I'll go up there myself if I have to."

"Thank you, Herm."

They were both silent, listening to each other's sad breathing on the phone. Madge finally spoke: "You know, he loved you, Herman. It was strange, the effect you had on him. He told me once that you were the most special person he had ever known. I guess that even included me."

"No, Madge, not you. You were his mother. I was… I was just somebody he could try stuff out on. I was like his intellectual godfather, or something."

"I've got to go now," she said. He could tell by her voice that she didn't want to talk about this anymore.

"I'll be in touch," he promised and, after the good-byes, hung up the phone.

It was almost 10:00 a.m. and he was still waiting for his release form to be signed, when Susan came through the door with Dr. Shiller.

"I'd like to just move you upstairs right now and get you prepped for tomorrow," Dr. Shiller said.

"I know. I… it's just. It's just that I have to meet with a federal court judge this morning. Her office left a message that I should be in her chambers in an hour, at eleven.

"Don't be late,' she told me. If you ever got a chance to examine this judge, you'd discover a cardiopulmonary first: no heart and an extra lung. So I'd better do what she says and not be late."

"We'll see you back here no later than two or three, then?" Dr. Shiller said sternly.

"He promises to be here," Susan said.

Dr. Shiller signed Herman's release and handed it to him. "I'll get the floor nurse to bring a wheelchair and we'll get you on your way."

After the doctor left and Susan was alone with her father, she put an angry scowl on her beautiful face.

"What?" he asked.

"If you try and get out of this operation… I'll… I'll kill you myself. You promised, Dad."

"I know, I know… right, I promised, and we both know what a lawyer's promise is worth."

"Dad." It was a threat, the way she said it.

"Okay," he grinned. "But I gotta go see Melissa first, and, while I do that, I have a job for you."

"What?" she said, still suspicious.

"I want you to find us a new private detective-not a computer guy like Roland, but a real gumshoe, somebody with good resources in San Francisco. Resources means friends on the San Francisco Police Department. We need a look at the ME's report, the crime scene evidence. An ex-cop who's now a P.I. might be a good place to start."

"An ex-San Francisco cop?" she said.

"Maybe, but I think it's better if the guy lives down here and has worked cases up there, 'cause we're gonna be in L.A., and I don't wanna have to be flying him around, paying per diem, and stuff like that. So, call around. Start with the L.A. Police Department and get a list of ex-L.A. cops who are now in the P.I. business and who worked cases up north. If that doesn't work, try finding one in San Francisco."

"Dad, we can't investigate Roland's death, the police will do that. And you're going to be out of action until your condition is fixed."

"We can't not investigate it."

She looked at him for a long, painful moment.

"What?" he said, putting a little push on it. But it was just acting, because he couldn't help noticing how concerned she was standing at the foot of the bed, her fists on her hips, trying to figure a way to steer him, to get him to do what she wanted.

"Dad, if you don't do this, I'm gonna brain you."

"Can't hurt me if you hit me on the head… nothing much up there."

A nurse came in and unhooked Herman from the monitors. A few minutes later he was being rolled down the corridor on chrome and plastic wheels and pushed into the elevator like a two-hundred-pound holiday turkey. Susan followed. He was slumped, yet full of stubborn pride, heroic but clumsy, brave but ill-prepared. He was a million dollars in debt, yet headed downstairs to drive away in a movie star's expensive sports car.