Dragonfire

Two

The first time I struggled up into consciousness, the room was empty.

It was a hospital room, not the living room in Eberhardt’s house. White, sterile, windows with night on the other side; shadows, but no blood. No pain, either — a kind of tingling numbness all over. I moved my feet, moved my right arm, but I could not move my left arm. Fuzziness in my head, as if it had been stuffed with cotton, and a thought pushed its way through and lay in the cotton like something red and pulsing: They cut off my arm. Moment of panic. I struggled on the bed, struggled for more awareness. Then I saw my left arm lying there on the sheet and the panic went away. I kept trying to move my fingers, only nothing happened; the arm just lay there stiff and lifeless.

Another thought: At least I’m alive.

Another: But what about Eberhardt?

I think I called his name. But I was sliding by then, backward down a long chute, and I couldn’t stop myself because my arm was dead, and I yelled without voice until the blackness at the bottom of the chute closed over me.

When I came out of it the second time, there was a nurse in a starched white uniform leaning over the bed. She was fat and homely and had a mouth as wide as a child’s red sand bucket; she looked a little like Bella Abzug. There was daylight beyond the windows now — cold, gray. I remembered my left arm and tried to move the fingers again. They twitched, spasming, but I could not raise them off the sheet. For the first time I was aware of a dull pain in my left shoulder, in the upper arm all the way to the elbow.

“Don’t try to move,” the nurse said. “Just lie still.”

“Where am I?” It came out in a croak, like somebody trying to imitate a frog — somebody else, not my voice at all.

“San Francisco General.”

“My arm... I can’t move it...”

“Don’t try. You’re going to be fine.”

“Eberhardt,” I said. “Is he alive?”

“I’ll get Doctor Abrams,” she said.

She went out and I lay there trying to think. My mind wouldn’t work right; thoughts kept bumping into each other, veering off, breaking up into fragments. Metallic taste in my mouth, but I could not seem to bring up any saliva to wash it away. In my shoulder and arm, the pain thudded arhythmically in cadence with the beat of my heart.

Bella Abzug came back with a thin, cadaverous-looking doctor. He walked over and peeled back one of my eyelids and shone a pencil flashlight into the eye; then he did the same thing with the other eye. He did not have much hair and his forehead and the front part of his scalp were a mass of wrinkles, as if he had too much skin and somebody had grabbed a handful of it and bunched it up on his head. It made him look like a scrawny hound.

He said, “How are your faculties? Can you think clearly, remember what happened to you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ve had you pretty heavily sedated.”

“Eberhardt,” I said, as I had to the nurse. “Is he alive?”

“Yes. But his condition is critical.”

“How critical?”

“He’s in a coma,” Abrams said.

“Jesus. Will he make it?”

“I can’t answer that. He was shot once in the stomach and once under the right ear. It’s still touch and go.”

“The head wound — how serious is that?”

“Head wounds are always serious.”

“Brain damage?”

“Evidently not. But we can’t be certain yet.”

“What about the stomach wound?”

“Severe internal damage; the bullet struck the sternum and fragmented.” He pursed his lips. “We’re doing all we can,” he said.

“The man who shot us,” I said. “Did the police get him?”

“No, not yet. I’ll let them talk to you, if you feel up to it.”

“Any time.”

Abrams nodded. “You don’t seem very concerned about yourself,” he said then.

“I’m concerned. But the nurse said I’ll be all right.”

“You will be. The bullet penetrated the fleshy part of your shoulder and lodged near the scapula. We had no real problem in removing it.”

“I can’t move my arm or my fingers,” I said.

“Traumatic neuritis,” he said. “Which means there was some damage to the motor nerve, resulting in partial paralysis.”

“Temporary or permanent?”

“Temporary. You should regain full use of the arm in time.” He paused. “It is possible, though, that there’ll be some chronic stiffness, particularly in the thumb and the first three fingers. But I wouldn’t worry about it.”

No, I thought, it’s not your arm. I said, “How long will I be in here?”

“That depends. Another four or five days, I should think.”

“What day is it? Monday?”

“Yes. Monday morning.”

“Will you let me know as soon as there’s any change in Lieutenant Eberhardt’s condition?”

“Of course,” Abrams said. “I’ll send the police in now; they’re anxious to talk to you.”

I wish I had something to tell them, I thought. But I didn’t say that, either.

He took Bella Abzug away with him. I moved my head and looked out through the window at the cold gray light, at the red brick of another hospital wing across the way. Eberhardt. Head shot, gut shot, severe internal damage, lying in a coma somewhere nearby. Doorbell rings on a Sunday afternoon, he goes and opens up, and somebody puts two bullets in him and one in me. Why? For God’s sake, why?

The door opened again. I swiveled my head on the pillow and watched two men come into the room: Greg Marcus and Ben Klein. Marcus was a lieutenant attached to Homicide, just as Eberhardt was; I knew him slightly. Klein was an old-timer on the force, a sergeant now, a foot-slogger back in the days when I was working at the old Hall of Justice on Kearney and Washington. Like me, he was a good friend of Eb’s.

They took the two metal chairs in the room, pulled them up on the left side of the bed. Both of them wore grim expressions and had red-rimmed eyes; they looked as though they had been up all night, and they probably had. When a police officer gets shot, nobody in the investigative end of the Department gets much sleep.

Klein said, the way people always do in these situations, “How do you feel?”

“Shitty.”

“Yeah. But the doc says you’ll be okay.”

I didn’t say anything.

Marcus asked, “He fill you in on Eberhardt’s condition?”

“Yes.”

“Hell of a goddamn thing,” Klein said bitterly. He ran a heavy hand across his bulldog jowls, brought it down and made a fist out of it. “It makes you want to hit something. Or somebody.”

“You didn’t get the guy who did it?”

“Not yet. But we will. Count on it.”

“We thought maybe you could give us a description,” Marcus said. “You’re the only one besides Eberhardt who saw the gunman close up.”

“I didn’t get much of a look at him,” I said. “He was in the doorway when I ran in, but he was backlit by the sun. I think he was Chinese.”

“That tallies with what the other witnesses told us. Three neighbors heard the shots, came out in time to see a male Chinese running down the street. They yelled at him but he didn’t stop or look around; they couldn’t give us much of a description. Short, slender, long hair — that’s about all.”

Klein said, “Bastard had a car down the block. Neighbors didn’t get the license number. They couldn’t even tell us the make or model.”

Marcus shifted his big athletic body in the chair. “You said you ran in. So you weren’t in the living room when Eberhardt was shot?”

“No. I was in the kitchen.”

“Doing what?”

“Opening a beer. Eb was getting ready to put a couple of steaks on the barbecue when the doorbell rang.”

“Did he say if he was expecting anyone?”

“I don’t think he was. He said it was probably one of his neighbors.”

“What happened after he left the kitchen?”

“I heard him open the front door. Then he said, ‘What the hell?’ and there were two shots. Loud. Big gun, wasn’t it?”

“Three-five-seven Magnum,” Klein said. “Christ, it’s a miracle Eb’s still alive. Two Magnum slugs at close range can tear a man apart.”

Marcus asked, “How long was it after you heard the shots that you ran into the living room?”

“Couple of seconds. No more.”

“And the gunman was in the doorway?”

“Yes. As soon as he saw me, he swung the gun and squeezed off; I didn’t have time to get out of the way. Bullet knocked me down back of the sofa. He fired a second round but it was wild.”

“Did he say anything at any time?”

“No.”

“How old would you say he was?”

“I’m not sure. Young, maybe. It all happened so damned fast.”

“Just doesn’t add up,” Klein said. “The Chinese don’t go around shooting white cops, not in this city. They’re a close-knit bunch. They blow away their own people often enough — kid-gang rumbles, tong vendettas, all that — but they leave the white community alone. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“Was Eb working on anything in Chinatown?”

“That’s the first thing we thought of,” Marcus said. “He had a case two weeks ago — Chinese woman fell or was pushed off a fifth-floor walkway in one of the projects. It’s still in the open file, but he hadn’t been active on it. If there’s a connection, we can’t figure it. Routine homicide investigation, no apparent drug or underworld ties, no suspects. We’re still checking, though.”

“What about a revenge motive? Something in Eb’s past, somebody he sent up at one time?”

“Negative. The only Chinese he helped put away are either dead or still in prison.”

“Friends of theirs? Relatives?”

Marcus shook his blond head. “The most recent case was six years ago. Friends and relatives don’t wait six years to take revenge. Besides, like Ben says, the Chinese just don’t handle things that way.”

“Hired hand, then?”

“That’s possible. There are probably dozens of people in Chinatown who’d wash a body for a price. But it still doesn’t add up. Why would a Chinese put out a contract on Eberhardt?”

“Maybe it was a Caucasian who put out the contract.”

“Then why use a Chinese gunman? There’s plenty of white talent around. And there isn’t that much of an interracial mix in the underworld; anybody with a grudge against a cop would either do the job himself or hire one of his own kind.”

Klein asked me, “Eb ever mention any Chinese names to you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Then he didn’t have any Oriental friends?”

“If he did, he never talked about them.”

“Not to me, either. Pretty much of a long-shot angle anyway.”

“I can think of another long-shot angle,” I said.

“Which is?”

“The breakup of Eb’s marriage. He didn’t know who Dana was involved with, or said he didn’t. But maybe there’s some sort of connection there.”

“I doubt it,” Marcus said. “We talked to his wife last night; she showed up here at the hospital as soon as she heard about the shooting. She’s living with a man named Samuels down in Palo Alto — law professor at Stanford. We talked to him too. Neither of them has any relationship with a Chinese. And as far as she knows, neither did Eberhardt.”

My mouth and throat were dry; I still could not seem to work up any saliva. There was a pitcher of water on the nightstand, and I asked Klein to pour some into a glass for me. He got up and did that.

When I was done drinking, Marcus said, “Let’s try another tack. How did Eberhardt seem to you yesterday? Did he act worried, upset?”

“A little. He was still brooding about his marriage breakup.”

“Anything else?”

“He said he had some other things on his mind, but he wouldn’t talk about them.”

“Personal or professional?”

“Might be professional. He said something about hating his job sometimes.”

“Did he seem as though he might be expecting trouble?”

“I didn’t get that impression, no,” I said. “He was just broody.”

“He’d been drinking quite a bit, though, hadn’t he? Doctor Abrams told us there was a good percentage of alcohol in his blood.”

“Just beer, as far as I know. We’d both had seven or eight cans. He might have had a few before I got there, but he wasn’t drunk.”

The door opened and Abrams put in another appearance. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I can allow you, gentlemen,” he said to Marcus and Klein.

Marcus said, “We’re finished for now,” and they both got up. Then he said to me, “I don’t think you were a target; the gunman was after Eberhardt and you happened to get in the way. But we’ve posted an officer outside, just in case.”

“Whatever you think best. Will you let me know as soon as anything turns up?”

“For sure.”

When the two of them were gone I asked Abrams, “Anybody else waiting to see me?”

“No. There was a woman earlier, but I told her you wouldn’t be permitted regular visitors until later today. She said she would be back.”

“Was her name Kerry Wade?”

“Yes, it was.”

“I want to see her when she comes again,” I said.

“If you’re awake and feeling up to it. I’m going to give you some more antibiotics; they should make you sleep again for a while.”

He rang for Bella Abzug, and she came in and administered the antibiotics. Then she drew the shade over the window and they left me alone in the semidarkness, feeling drowsy and sick and badly used.

But underneath it all was a cold hard knot of anger. Things had seemed pretty grim for Eberhardt and me yesterday; he’d lost his wife and I’d lost Kerry and my license and my livelihood. But now we were both in hospital beds, Eb in a coma fighting for his life, me helpless and weak as a kitten. And somewhere out there was a cold-blooded son of a bitch with a .357 Magnum. It was a lousy goddamned world, full of injustice and full of evil, and there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was lie here bloated with drugs and bitterness and a growing polyp of hate. That was why I was angry. And I was going to keep on being angry; it was not the kind of rage that goes away easily, or that modulates into self-pity. I was all through with self-pity, with the kind of aimless resignation that had gripped me the past few weeks. Three bullets, two in Eberhardt and one in me, had done more than land the two of us in the hospital, done more than rip open flesh; they had ripped open something else inside me, too, and left a different kind of festering wound.

Those were the last things I thought before the drugs pushed me down into a heavy, dream-haunted sleep. And they were the first things I thought when I woke up again at three o’clock, dehydrated, with hunger pangs and the pain pulsing away in my shoulder.

Angry, damn it. Angry.