Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 14

Millicent Altford awoke after midnight in her hospital room to find a doctor bending over her. She knew he was a doctor because of the surgical mask, shirt jacket and hair cap, all pale blue, and the no-color surgical gloves he wore over hands that held a fat pillow only a foot or so from her face.

The pillow erased his medical degree and made Altford scream although it was more yell than scream. She went on yelling as she rolled over twice to her left and fell off the bed. After landing on the floor with her eyes squeezed shut, Altford continued to yell and even swear so loudly she didn’t hear the false doctor leave. She was still making a racket when someone slapped her face. Altford shut up, opened her eyes and found Liz Ball, the night nurse, kneeling beside her and wearing that half-concerned, half-irritated expression that’s taught at nursing school.

“You just slap me?” Altford asked, knowing the answer.

“Damn right,” Ball said. “You were having a nightmare and cussing your head off.come on. Let’s get you back into bed.”

“I fell out of bed?”

“Fell or jumped, you’re on the floor.”

“Maybe you ought to get that big doctor to help,” Altford said, not proud of her slyness, but unable to think of anything better.

“What big doctor?”

“Well, maybe he was just an orderly — a real big guy who sorta popped in on me.”

“White or black?”

“White.”

“We haven’t got any white orderlies on this floor,” Ball said. “Fact is, we haven’t got any orderlies at all. It’s the shift change and one orderly left early and the other one’s late. And at this time of night, we sure as hell don’t have any doctors up here, big or little, white or black. Now let’s get you back into bed.”

Using the nurse’s strength, Altford rose slowly and carefully to make sure nothing had been sprained or broken. After she was back in bed, the nurse asked if she’d like something to help her sleep.

“I’d like a big glass of ice, please, Liz. And after you get that, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d pour in one of those miniatures of gin and let it sort of percolate down?”

The nurse left Altford propped up in bed on pillows, her hands wrapped around a tumbler of iced gin. Altford had two large swallows, put the glass on the bedside table, placed the nearby telephone on her lap and tapped out a number that was answered halfway through the second ring by Edd Partain.

“How long’s it gonna take you to get over here?” she said.

Millicent Altford let Partain drive this time and noticed he was a timer who hit most of the traffic lights on the green or yellow. She liked the way he drove and also the way he listened to her tale of the failed smothering.

When Partain was sure she had finished, or at least run down, he said, “The guy waited for the shift change.”

“Obviously.”

“Would you recognize him again?”

“In a second — providing he wore a blue mask, coat, hair cap and see-through plastic gloves.”

“You said he was big. How big?”

“Six-four at least.”

“What about his eyes?”

“You mean were they the cruel eyes of some crazed proctologist who’d rather kill than cure?”

“Just their color.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Too bad,” Partain said.

“Would you remember their color if a pillow was about to cancel your breathing?”

“Yes, but that’s what I do. Or did. Notice things. Like how many fingers has Mickey Mouse got?”

“You’re asking me?”

Partain nodded.

“Three,” she said. “Because it’s easier and cheaper to draw three than four.”

“Then you do notice stuff.”

“Yeah, when guys aren’t trying to smother me.”

Partain nodded his understanding.

“Fact is, I closed my eyes,” she said. “That’s a lie. After that first look at him, I squeezed them shut, just like a little kid.”

“A little kid wouldn’t have rolled off the bed,” he said.

“I reckon I also yelled and cussed a lot.”

“Even better,” Partain said, then asked, “He say anything?”

“Not a word.”

“If he’d said something, maybe you’d recognize his voice, if you ever heard it again.”

“Maybe,” Millicent Altford said.

It was just after 1 A.M. when Partain stopped the Lexus in front of the Eden’s glass doors, switched off the engine and turned to Altford. “Don’t get out till I open your door. I’ll see you up to your place, then come back down and put the car away.”

“You think he’ll try again?” she said, sounding more interested than frightened.

“I don’t know what he’ll do,” Partain said, got out, went around the car’s rear and opened the right-hand door. As Altford stepped out, a dark brown windowless van with no license plate stopped on Wilshire Boulevard, shifted into reverse and backed quickly into the Eden’s concrete drive until it was no more than thirty or thirty-five feet from the Lexus. By then, Partain had slammed the passenger door shut and forced Altford to kneel beside the right front wheel where it and the car’s V-8 engine would provide some protection should the shooting start.

But there were no shots. Instead, Partain heard, but didn’t see, the van’s back door open, then close. In between the opening and closing was the sound of something landing on the concrete drive. It made that peculiar sound of something that doesn’t mind being dropped. Huge sacks of flour or rice don’t mind, Partain thought, and neither do dead or unconscious bodies.

After he heard the dark brown van speed off, heading west on Wilshire, probably toward a freeway, Partain rose, hurried around the nose of the Lexus, went another seven or eight quick strides, stopped and stared down at the dead man who wore a lot of light blue clothing.

Altford called to him from behind the Lexus. “What is it?”

“I think it’s your fake doctor.”

She rose slowly and even more slowly joined Partain. The body lay on its right side, facing the street. The blue hair cap was still in place. So was the blue shirt jacket, but the surgical mask was gone. The one hand they could see, the left one, still wore a transparent surgical glove. The pants and shoes were the only clothing that wasn’t blue. The shoes were sockless cordovan leather loafers and the pants were tan cavalry twill, now badly soiled.

“Let’s make sure,” Partain said as he moved around the body.

“Of what?”

“That he’s dead,” Partain said.

“He’s dead all right,” she said, joining Partain in his inspection of the man’s face, which belonged to Dave Laney, late of Guadalajara. Laney’s eyes were open. So was his mouth, and something other than his tongue was sticking out of it.

Partain removed the car keys from his pocket and gave them to Altford. “Call 911 on your car phone.”

She absently accepted the keys, still gazing down at the dead man. “Dave tried to kill me,” she said, giving each word equal emphasis so that her sentence was neither accusation nor question but merely a statement of fact.

“Go make the call,” Partain said. Altford nodded, still staring at Laney until she turned and hurried toward the car.

Partain knelt to remove the thing that had been protruding from Laney’s mouth. It was a plastic key card that Partain was almost sure would unlock the front doors of the Eden and also the door to apartment 1540, the residence of Millicent Altford, her daughter and their temporary live-in bodyguard.