Dead Skip

Twenty-two

The fog was in, ponderous and wet, when Ballard parked on Bush, went in the ambulance entrance of Trinity Hospital. Fifty paces through the misty fog had furred his clothes and hair with moisture. He wiped his face with his handkerchief as he pushed the button; the elevator was slow enough so he had gotten two Mr. Goodbars from the candy machine, had bolted one and was crunching on the other before it arrived.

The third-floor hall was warm, quiet, dim except for the hard white light from the duty desk at the far end. A bulky white shape came from behind the desk; he recognized the gimlet-eyed nurse who’d been shocked at Whitaker’s language on Wednesday morning. Wednesday? Seemed weeks rather than days ago. Involuntarily, he gave a huge yawn.

“Mr. Ballard?” she asked in a hushed angry whisper.

“That’s right.”

“Well... Doctor said you could go in,” she said grudgingly. “Visiting time was over hours ago...”

For a moment Ballard thought the radio message had been a cruel hoax. Heslip still lay as silent as before. His eyes were still shut, his head was still swathed in bandages. Then Ballard saw the look on Corinne’s face as she started to her feet, and he knew it was all right.

“He just fell asleep waiting for you to get here,” said Whitaker.

The jaunty little doctor was sitting on the arm of Giselle Marc’s chair, one arm across the back of it and thus draped loosely around her shoulders, the fingers of the other hand resting with artful casualness on one of her bare forearms. The tall blonde looked bemused, like a greyhound under amorous assault by a Pekingese.

“You got my radio message?” She seemed delighted with the diversion Ballard provided.

“From Dunlop Jensen? Yeah. I promised him a bottle of booze.”

She stood up with a lithe, quick movement, smoothed down her short plaid wool skirt. “Want me to go with you when you deliver it?”

“I’ve already volunteered you.”

He turned toward Corinne, almost warily. She reached up to put her fingertips against the side of his neck.

“You know I’m sorry, don’t you, Larry? Giselle told me—”

Ballard put his arms around her. She clung fiercely to him. Whitaker cleared his throat as a somewhat wan voice came from the bed.

“Hands off the woman, honky.”

Without releasing Corinne, Ballard turned to look down at Heslip. He let his eyes move over the still form under the blankets, from bandaged crown to toe and back again. Then he slowly shook his head in disbelief. “It looks like it was strained through a handkerchief.”

“I hear you’ve been working my assignments, screwing them up.”

“Trying to get them unscrewed from the mess you left them in.”

Ballard let go of Corinne and went around the bed to the head of it. He made a fist and touched Heslip’s cheekbone with it, then reached behind him to pull up a spare chair and sit down.

“Dan wanted to bring you a watermelon as soon as you woke up,” he said, “but I took him over to East Bay and lost him. Last I saw he was driving a red and white T-Bird—”

“You mean the Griffin car?” exclaimed Heslip.

“Griffin!” yelped Giselle. “You got Griffin?”

“We got his car,” said Ballard. He turned back to Heslip. “How much do you remember about Tuesday night?” He looked over to Whitaker. “Or aren’t I supposed to ask?”

“Ask,” said Whitaker. He waved the chromed watch. Ballard wondered if the wife had gotten him into the bathtub yet. “There’s mental shock connected with this sort of injury and coma, a disorientation that can be quite devastating to the patient. The more that he can place himself in time and event without becoming agitated, the better for his own peace of mind.”

“Oh no!” wailed Corinne softly. “Not you too, Doctor! Not tonight!”

Whitaker gave an apologetic shrug.

Heslip was frowning. “I’ve been trying to... get it together since they told me what happened. Truth is, I coulda actually been driving that damn Jaguar for all I can remember...”

“Remember talking to me on the radio?”

“I remember the Willets repo, I remember... yeah, I remember telling you about it. I was gonna meet you at the office, right?”

“Right.”

“Giselle, can’t you stop them?” asked Corinne, as if she hated the idea of Heslip even talking about it.

Giselle looked over at Whitaker. He gave no reaction, so she shrugged wryly. “I’m as bad as they are, Corinne. I want to hear.”

“Do you remember working the Griffin case on Tuesday?” asked Ballard.

That Heslip remembered. He had seen Leo at JRS Garage in the morning, had gotten the California Street address in Concord; that had seemed not enough to warrant a run over there. He usually would have just turned it over to the Oakland office, but on a dead skip like Griffin any field agent would love to turn him alone, thus giving a not too subtle finger to the field agents working out of the office of origin.

“Did you talk to a girl named Cheri?” asked Ballard.

He hadn’t. He’d dug out the landlady, found out about the accident to the T-Bird, had gone to the Concord cops and asked them what garage it had been towed to after the Christmas Eve smash. Ballard just shook his head on that one. Jesus! Some investigator he was! Heslip had made all the moves that Ballard should have made.

“Doctor, can’t you stop them?” demanded Corinne.

Whitaker looked at his watch and nodded thoughtfully. “It is late, and he does need rest.”

“Cat at the garage had a mailing address on Griffin,” said Heslip.

The address Ballard had been able to get only roundabout, through Harvey E. Wyman, insurance agent. At the Beaghler house, Heslip had seen the kids playing in the yard and had talked with them. They knew all about the T-Bird, knew “Howie” drove it and had been in prison. When Sharon had come back from the laundromat, Heslip had said he was an ex-con just out of stir, and she had given him the address of the rooming house in Concord. Just like that. Any friend of Howie’s...

“And you talked with Odum,” said Ballard in total self-disgust. He didn’t even make it a question.

“I think that’s enough now,” said Whitaker.

Both men jumped; they had been in that shared professional world from which Corinne was excluded because she was without the manhunting instincts they had, that Giselle had, that Kearny epitomized.

“I talked with him,” said Heslip quickly. “Didn’t get anything out of him; he said he dropped the car off at the garage in April for a guy he met in a bar. Griffin, of course. Only the description he gave me was a phony...” He stopped there, an odd remembering look on his face.

Ballard stood up guiltily; he didn’t want to cause a relapse or some damned thing.

Heslip was frowning again. “I keep thinking that on the way back... I stopped... somewhere...”

“Out,” said Whitaker in a suddenly no-nonsense doctor-ish voice. Corinne had gotten a smile of triumph on her face, when he turned to her also. “Even you, my sweet, my love. The crisis is past. Shoo.”

“But... he needs me, he...”

“Out out out — before the nurse reports me to the AMA.”

“... remember talking with the cop on that Willets repo,” said Heslip dreamily. “I... yeah! Left my damned case sheets out above the visor of the Plymouth...”

“And you went out to get them?” supplied Ballard. “And... what?”

“And nothing,” said Heslip ruefully. His eyelids were drooping again. “I went out to get them... I turned around... And baby, it was Friday night...”

Ballard let himself be herded easily; it was Giselle who held back. She started explaining that they had to probe Bart’s memory for anything else he could remember of that Tuesday night, but Whitaker just shook his head. “He never will, my dear. Not ever. I’m amazed he can recall as close to the moment of impact as he can. Most unusual. A remarkably well-balanced mind to penetrate its own defenses as far as it has.”

He paused; and then a look of beatific evil suffused his features. He thrust out a pointing arm in the classic, old-time gesture. He ended with a quivering forefinger pointing down the hall toward the blinding snowstorm obligatory to all such scenes. “Do not darken my doorway again,” he said to Giselle in a thunderously Victorian voice. “I am not the father of your child!”

“Doctor!” gasped Gimlet-Eyes, just passing on her rounds.

But Whitaker had firmly shut the door in all of their faces.

“He doesn’t understand!” exclaimed Corinne disconsolately. “Bart needs me, he’s going to have a bad night, he—”

“He needs sleep” said Gimlet-Eyes triumphantly. “And from now on, you will have to observe normal visiting hours like everyone else.”

The nurse stopped; she had lost Ballard. He was over at the duty desk, delving behind the counter with a long arm.

“Oh!” She charged him, her several corpulences jouncing to make Corinne break into sudden giggles. “What are you doing? You get away from that counter...”

“Phone book,” said Ballard curtly. When she didn’t respond, he snapped his fingers under her nose impatiently. “Come on, come on. Phone book.”

She got him a phone book, almost meekly. No telling what sort of disturbance he would cause if she didn’t. And no use appealing to Dr. Whitaker, either; he was as eccentric as the rest of them.

If the murderer wasn’t in the phone book, had an unlisted number, say, he’d have to go all the way back downtown to the DKA office, get the city directory and hope that...

No. Here he was, 27 Java Street.

Java Street? Hell. Ballard didn’t know where Java Street was. And if it wasn’t within walking distance of Twin Peaks, say twenty minutes walk at the outside...

He needed a city map. Had one down in the car...

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave—”

“Huh? What? Oh. Yeah.” He flipped the phone book shut on top of the counter, turned away, organizing his face into a belatedly casual expression for Giselle’s sharp eyes. “Sure. Thanks.”

“... don’t really want you to bother with running me home,” Giselle was saying to Corinne.

“It would be really no bother, Giselle.” Corinne looked suddenly exhausted, blasted, as if by release from the tension which had sustained her.

“I’ll have Larry drive me across the Bay.” Giselle had never learned how to drive; none of the field agents had the patience to teach her. Her very blue eyes were narrowed slightly, fixed on Ballard with intense speculation. “He won’t mind, will you, Larry?”

“Mind what?” he said, trying to duck out of it. Dammit, it would kill an hour altogether, going and coming.

“Driving me over to Oakland tonight.”

“I’m, ah... pretty exhausted myself, Giselle.” He started a fake yawn, ended up with a real jaw-creaker that wasn’t faked at all. He was damned tired, but he had to get into that house, the proof that Griffin was dead might be there somewhere. “If you’re short cab fare...”

“I will not ride a cab, Larry Ballard, when you’re here with a perfectly good DKA car burning DKA gas...”

“As long as Corinne offered—”

“I’m riding with you,” she said with finality. “Corinne is going home and going to sleep. She hasn’t slept for days.”

Corinne was looking from one to the other with an unbelieving look on her face.

“I don’t understand you people,” she said weakly. “I really don’t understand anything about you.”

“Lots of times I don’t understand us myself,” said Giselle.

Corinne smiled her brilliant smile. “But I’m sure glad he’s going to drive you home. All of a sudden, I’m just dead.”

What the hell, he’d just have to swallow that extra hour’s delay. He’d dump Giselle, come back. Java Street had to be close enough to Twin Peaks for it to have worked; nothing else, nobody else fit. Heslip, after all, had turned around.

He grabbed Giselle’s arm. “Well, c’mon, you’re in such a rush to get home.”

Giselle went with him meekly. Too meekly. He should have known.