Hardcase

CHAPTER 10

The Erie County Medical Center was a gigantic complex close enough to the Kensington Expressway for the patients to hear the hum of traffic if they wanted. Few did. Most of them were too preoccupied with living and dying and trying to sleep to notice the distant sound of traffic over the whisper of heating or air conditioning, the chimes and announcements, and the chatter in the hallways and rooms. Visiting hours ended officially at 9:00 p.m., but the last of the visitors were usually filtering out around 10:00 p.m.

At 10:15 on this October night, a tall, thin gentleman in a simple tan raincoat and a Bavarian-style hat with a red feather in it stepped off the elevator into the West Wing Intensive Care area. The man was carrying a small bouquet of flowers. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with sad eyes, a slightly distracted expression, and a faint smile under a well-groomed ginger mustache. He wore expensive black gloves.

"I'm sorry, sir, visiting hours are over," said the station nurse, intercepting him with her gaze before he took three steps from the elevator.

The tall man paused and looked even more lost. "Yes… I am sorry." He had a slight European accent. "I just arrived from Stuttgart. My mother…"

"You can visit her in the morning, sir. Visiting hours begin at 10:00 a.m."

The man nodded, began to turn away, then turned back with the flowers extended. "Mrs. Haupt. She is on your chart, yes? I just arrived from Stuttgart, and my brother says that Mumi is in very serious condition."

At the mention of the name, the nurse glanced at her computer screen. Whatever she saw there made her bite her lip. "Mrs. Haupt is your mother, sir?"

"Yes." The tall man in the raincoat shuffled his feet and looked at the flowers. "It has been too many years since I saw her last. I should have come sooner, but work… and I must fly home tomorrow."

The station nurse hesitated. Nurses and orderlies were bustling back and forth, bringing the bedtime meds to the patients. "You understand, Mr… Haupt?"

"Yes."

"You understand, Mr. Haupt, that your mother has been in a coma for several weeks now. She won't know you're here."

The sad-eyed man nodded. "But I would know that I had been there with her."

The nurse's eyes actually glistened. "Down the hall there, sir. Mrs. Haupt is in one of the private rooms, eleven-oh-eight. I'll have one of the nurses come down and check on you in a few minutes."

"Thank you very much," said the man in the raincoat and shuffled through the whirlwind of purposeful movement and all of its attendant chaos.

Mrs. Haupt was in a coma. Various tubes flowed in and out of her. On the nightstand next to her, her dentures grinned out from a glass of water. The man in the raincoat and the feathered hat took the paper off the stems of the flowers and set them in the glass with the old woman's teeth. Then he glanced out into the corridor, saw no one, and walked quietly down to Room 1123.

There were no guards. Carl was asleep, medicated, when the man entered the room. Carl's head was bandaged, his face was a mass of bruises coalescing into a raccoon mask, and his jaw was wired shut. Both legs were in casts and connected to an elaborate structure of guy wires, counterweights, and a metal frame. Carl's right arm was restrained with a thick strap, and his left arm was taped down to a board so that an IV drip could do its work. He had numerous tubes connected to him. The tall man quietly unlooped the nurse's call button from the headboard and moved it out of Carl's reach. Then he took a capped syringe from his raincoat pocket and held it in his right hand while he used his other hand to squeeze Carl's heavily wired jaw.

"Carl? Carl?" The man's voice was soft and solicitous.

Carl moaned, groaned, tried to turn over, was restrained by all of the straps and wires, and opened his one good eye. It was obvious that he did not recognize the man in the raincoat.

The man in the raincoat removed the cover from the needle with his teeth and drew the plunger back, filling the empty syringe with air. He softly spat the plastic cover from his mouth and caught it in the same hand as the syringe. "Are you awake, Carl?"

Carl's one eye showed groggy confusion fading into horror as he watched the strange man remove his IV drip from the monitor, click off the alarm, and slip the tip of the needle into the drip. Carl tried to roll over toward the call button. The stranger grasped his IV-attached arm and held him fast.

"The Farinos wanted to thank you for all of your faithful service, Carl, and to say that they are sorry that you were such an idiot." The tall man's voice was soft. He fitted the syringe needle deeper into the needle port on the IV-drip attachment. Carl made terrible noises through his wired-shut jaw and thrashed around on the bed like some huge fish.

"Shhh," the man said soothingly and pushed the plunger all the way down. The air bubble was actually visible in the clear IV tube as it flowed down toward Carl's forearm.

The tall man expertly recapped the syringe with one hand and set it back in his raincoat pocket. Holding Carl's left wrist as he was, studying the watch on his own right wrist, someone passing by would assume that this was a doctor on late rounds, taking a patient's pulse.

Carl's broken jaw cracked audibly and wire actually snapped. The sound he made was not quite human.

"Another four or five seconds," the man in the raincoat said softly. "Ahhh, there we are."

The air bubble had hit Carl's heart, essentially exploding it. Carl arched so wildly that two of the metal guy wires strummed like high-tension wires in a high wind. The bodyguard's eyes grew so wide that they seemed ready to burst, but then they glazed over into sightlessness. Blood poured from both of Carl's nostrils.

The man released Carl's wrist, left the room, walked down the short hall in the opposite direction from the nurse's central station, and took the back stairway down to the basement and the ambulance ramp up and out of the hospital.

Sophia Farino was waiting outside in her black Porsche Boxster. The hardtop was up against the rain that continued to fall. The tall man slid into the seat next to her. She did not ask him how things had gone.

"The airport?" she said.

"Yes, please," said the man in the same soft, pleasant tones he had used with Carl.

They drove east on the Kensington for several minutes. "The weather in Buffalo always pleases me," the man said, breaking the silence. "It reminds me of Copenhagen."

Sophia smiled and then said, "Oh, I almost forgot." She unlocked the small center console and brought out a thick white envelope.

The man smiled slightly and put the envelope in his raincoat pocket without counting the money. "Please give my warmest regards to your father," he said.

"I will."

"And if there is any other service I could possibly perform for your family…"

Sophia looked away from the tak-tak of the windshield wipers. It was just a few more miles to the airport. "Well, actually," she said, "there is something else…"