Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Thirteen

Everyone thinks of twilight as following sunset; but there’s a morning twilight, too, and as I stood snatching a smoke under the overhang outside the Sidon Medical Center ER entry, I watched the blue sky sneaking up to assert itself. I’d just tossed the butt trailing sparks into what was left of the night, promising myself to quit again, when the red light of an ambulance pulled in, flashing but not accompanied by a siren.

Though such an occurrence was hardly unusual under these circumstances, I thought I knew what this was, and I was right. Dr. Larry Snyder stepped from the rider’s-side seat, leaving a white-uniformed attendant at the wheel, to pull his vehicle over to one side should a more pressing case arrive before the expected passenger could be loaded in to this one.

The Snyder Clinic’s honcho was a slender guy with a pleasant if nondescript face, his black-rimmed glasses going well with his black hair, though some silver was working the sideburns. Jesus, even Larry was wearing them long and bushy like the kids these days. Could it be I was out of step?

Hell, no. The world was out of step with me.

From Larry’s black suit and crisp red-and-black striped tie, you’d never know I’d woken him at his private number and that he’d got out of bed to drive here from upstate New York and do a favor for a friend.

We shook hands.

“How’s the girl?” he asked. His voice had a professorly midrange tone.

“You tell me. They’ve still got her in a triage bed in the ER ward.”

We entered through automatic sliding doors into the usual stark white world of the Emergency Room. Pretty quiet right now, no patients awaiting admission, any relatives off in a private area, and the two nurses behind the counter exhibiting that combo of weary and bored that comes near end of shift.

Nonetheless, the admitting nurse knew to expect Dr. Snyder’s arrival and made a call summoning the medic on duty, which was the same female doc with the Elsa Lanchester hair who I’d spoken to not so long ago. A thousand years back.

She was expecting us, too, and led the way. Larry fell in with me.

“I’ll make a preliminary exam and get this in motion,” he said. “You’ll be going along, I trust.”

“Yeah. Just so this isn’t an elaborate trick designed to dry me out again.”

That amused him, though part of him seemed to take it seriously. “Why, Mike? Did you fall off the wagon?”

“No, but I thought about it.” As we walked, I put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, I’ll be up at Velda’s room.” I gave him the number. “Just want to see how she’s doing. If the docs approve, she may make the ride with us.”

“She is very close to her sister,” he said with a knowing nod.

“Close as it gets,” I said.

I found Velda just finishing up her breakfast on a tray that swung out from the little bedside stand. She looked damn good for a babe out of make-up with one side of her skull bandaged.

“You look like you have a story to tell,” Velda said, raising an eyebrow.

“I do, as long as nobody but you is listening.”

“My doctor’s already been around. Shoot. If that isn’t too dangerous a suggestion to make to Mike Hammer.”

I stood close at her bedside, leaning in, and gave her confidential chapter and verse. Judging by her facial reactions, she might have been watching a horror movie.

After I wrapped it up, she gave a long sigh. “Oh, what our girl has gone through.”

“About that.”

“Yes?”

I locked eyes with her. “I haven’t told Mikki. I had other things on my mind, like wiping down anything I might have touched at that cottage.”

“Always a good practice after a killing,” she said dryly.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“What do you think, Mike?”

Now it was my turn to sigh. “It’s a little late in the day for me to be a good father. To drive her and a date to the senior prom. To give her away at the altar to some lucky bum.”

Velda reached out and took my hand and squeezed it. “It’s your call, Mike. Really, I had no business keeping it from you, for all these years. Can you... can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh, hell, I already have.”

The big brown eyes were swimming with tears, but she didn’t let them loose. It wasn’t her way. I was the sentimental slob between the two of us. Oddly, I was dry-eyed — what I’d been through the long night before had a dulling effect.

“Doll, you had good reason to keep the truth from me. You couldn’t know if I’d be a blackout drunk one day or a psycho blasting bad guys on another, like the Lone fucking Ranger.”

Her mouth turned up at the corners. “I didn’t mind being your Tonto.”

I summoned a grin. “I always suspected those two fooled around, after dark by the campfire. No, baby, listen. You may not have noticed, but I’ve made my share of enemies over the years.”

“And more than your share of friends.” She squeezed my hand again. “You don’t have an impressive record of taking on paying clients when there’s some windmill to chase.”

I huffed a laugh. “Now I’m Don Quixote.”

“Which makes me Sancho Panza, doesn’t it?”

“I always wondered about those two, too.” I slung a hip up onto the side of her bed, with a squeak. “No, and who’s to say what windmill I might go chasing after next? Only they aren’t, they’ve never been, imaginary foes. It’s been real dragons, not windmills posing as any. They’ve left me beaten to a pulp or in burning buildings or shot half to pieces, and they have grudges. I’m not the only guy going after payback, you know. Who insists on getting even.”

“And then some,” she admitted.

“No, let’s leave it that way.”

Her expression turned curious. “Leave it... what way?”

I shrugged. “You’re Mikki’s sister. I’m her godfather, her ‘Uncle Mike.’ Let her live a normal life. A safe life. Safer, anyway.”

Velda’s expression darkened. “Mikki will always know, though, won’t she?”

“Know...?”

“That she took a life.”

I shrugged again, more elaborately this time. “Hell, doll, I don’t know if she’ll even remember it. It may be a bad dream she relives in the middle of the occasional long night. Small price to pay for saving her old man’s life. Even if she doesn’t know that’s whose life she saved. Even if... she can’t ever know it.”

Those big brown eyes held onto mine for a long, long time.

Then she said, “That’s your decision, Mike?”

I slipped off the bed onto my two feet. “No, it has to be our decision.”

She thought about that. “Our decision.”

“You okay with it?”

Her soft hand and their soft fingertips found my unshaven cheek. “I’m okay with it, darling.”

I kissed the hand and gave it back to her. “Hey, don’t forget. We aren’t married yet. You had that kid out of wedlock. Surely you don’t wanna come clean and make a little bastard out of her, do ya?”

That made her laugh, hard enough to raise a hand toward her bandage, then lower it. “Mike... you and Larry Snyder, you’re going to convey Mikki to that rehab clinic of his, right? Like, right now?”

“That’s the plan.”

She gestured around her; the monitoring gizmo still beeped. “Well, they’ve had me under observation all night. I think I can get them to discharge me... if necessary, sign my care over to Dr. Snyder. Can you try to make that happen?”

“Absolutely. That female medic of yours? I think she’s got the hots for me. I’ll go wrap her around my little finger.”

I kissed her forehead, gently, and headed out.

But I was still at the door when she called out: “Mike?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, baby.”

I told you I was a sentimental slob.