Hooligans Part 59

63.

DEATHWATCH.

She looked like one of those wide-eyed French mimes you see on the stage. Tiny, fragile, vulnerable, terrified, and none of it an act, if I was any judge. This was a woman who was running out of control. A stone in the road could throw her over the edge.

The DA excused herself and got out of the line of fire. Dutch and the Stick had moved back down the hall, out of earshot.

"How is he is he all right?" she babbled, making one question out of two. t.i.tan looked at me as if I had bubonic plague. His nostrils flared like an angry mule's.

"Don't you ever light anyplace?" he growled.

"Jake, how is Harry?" Doe demanded, ignoring t.i.tan.

I steered her into a small waiting room adjacent to the ICU. t.i.tan scurried along behind us, his cane tapping along the linoleum floor like a blind man's. I pushed the door shut behind him. She stared at me with her saucer eyes, waiting.

"He's dead, isn't he?" she said.

"No, but there's very little hope," I said.

"Oh, G.o.d," she cried out. "Oh, G.o.d, I did this to him."

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"That's pound foolish," t.i.tan added.

She started to sag. I took her by the shoulders and put her in a chair. She sat there with her hands between her knees and began to shake.

"Better get a doctor in here," I said to t.i.tan, and he left to look for one.

"What did you mean, Doe?" I asked, kneeling in front of her.

"I do love Harry, I do. He's a fine person and he's been a good husband," she said in a whimper.

"I know it."

"Maybe if I'd been more honest . . . "

"You had nothing to do with it, Doe. Don't go off on some guilt tangent."

"Why did this happen?" she asked as tears burst from her eyes.

"I don't know."

"Was it something to do with the horses?"

"I doubt it," I said. "Did he tell you where he was going tonight when he canceled out of the party?"

She shook her head. "He called me from the track, told me about the accident, and said he was staying in town."

"He didn't say why?"

"No. It was fairly common-not the accident, his staying in town."

"Look, we'll find out who did this, I promise you."

She nodded but she was close to shock. Nothing was getting through to her.

"Where was he shot?" she asked.

"Down at the waterfront, in the Quadrangle."

"Oh," she sobbed, "his favorite place in the world." She stared around as if expecting some psychic cloud to drift into the room and erase her pain. "It was his idea. We donated the land for it."

I took her hands between mine and rubbed some warmth into them.

"Jake, I feel so . . . rotten."

"t.i.tan's right, that's pound foolish. Nothing good can come from that kind of thinking."

But she wasn't listening. She began to rock back and forth and moan like an injured animal.

"How did Harry sound when he called you?" I pressed on. "Was he angry? Sad? Confused?"

"He just sounded like Harry. He was funny about keeping things from me if he thought they would be upsetting. My G.o.d, listen to me, I'm talking like he's dead already. Oh, Jake, I'm so sorry."

She lowered her head into her lap and started sobbing. A moment later Dr. Hanson and t.i.tan came in. Sam Donleavy was with them. She jumped up and rushed over to him.

"I'm sorry. I just heard," Donleavy said. "I've been on the phone half the evening. I drove in from Sea Oat as fast as I could."

Doe turned quickly to the doctor.

"How is he?" she said, in a voice that was shrill and ragged at the edges.

He looked at me sternly and said, "May I speak with Mrs. Raines privately?"

"He's a friend," she said.

He didn't like that very much but it wasn't the proper time to argue the point. He said, "Doe, we're going to do the very best we can but I'm afraid that's not very much. Harry was shot in the forehead. They've done a scan and the bullet is lodged in the rear of the frontal lobe. It's inoperable."

She fell against him, her arms limp at her sides.

"I'm going to give you something to relax you," he said, but she started shaking her head violently.

"No, I'm not going to sleep through this. I've been protected enough in my life. I'm not a child, George."

"It won't put you to sleep, it will just take the edge off things a little."

"I want the edge. I want to feel it all. Don't you understand? This isn't your problem or Mr. Stoney's, it's mine. He's my husband and I will make whatever decisions are necessary here. I can't do that stoned out on a cot."

"Let her handle it her way," Donleavy said quietly.

Hanson was uncomfortable. He patted her shoulder. "As you wish," he said.

"May I see him?"

"Of course," Hanson said.

"I'll come along," Donleavy said, and followed them into the ICU.

The minute they were out of the room, t.i.tan turned on me, his teeth showing.

. "Keep out of this," he hissed, jabbing his finger in my face. "The one thing she don't need right now is you."

"That's up to her," I hissed back.

"I'm telling you, back off. Get out of her life. I blame all this on you, you and that bunch of stumbleb.u.ms of Morehead's. This never should have happened-"

"Forget it!" I barked back. "You can't blame Morehead. Your mighty Committee screwed up. That's how Tagliani got in here."

"d.a.m.n you," he said in a threatening whisper. "We ain't smart college boys like you hotshot federals. So they got in! Morehead's job was to keep this element in line if they did."

"Screw you, t.i.tan," I said vehemently. "You're just like the rest of these a.s.sholes who want to pa.s.s the buck to somebody else."

"I don't give a hoot owl's cross eyes what those wop b.a.s.t.a.r.ds do to each other," t.i.tan said, his voice rising to a shriek. "They want to kill each other off, that's G.o.dd.a.m.n good riddance, I say."

He was trembling with rage, the rage of a man whose power had been compromised.

"That ain't what I had to say to you, anyway," he went on. "I'll try appealing to your sense of honor, if you got any. Don't give the town reason to wag their tongues, doughboy. She surely don't need such as that at this time."

"Doe and I are old friends. Did it occur to you that I may be able to help?"

"Keep away from her!" he screamed.

"Mind your own f.u.c.king business," I said softly, and left the room.

"What was that all about?" Dutch asked as I joined them.

"t.i.tan got a little out of line," I said.

"t.i.tan doesn't get out of line," Dutch said.

"Wrong," I said. "He just did."

We hung around for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was obvious that Raines' time was running out, but the doctor was playing his prognosis close to the chest. Doe stayed in the unit with Raines while t.i.tan and Donleavy were knee to knee, palavering in the waiting room, probably deciding who would replace Raines in the political structure. There were several uniformed police hanging around and there was nothing further we could do, so we moved on after I scribbled a brief note to Doe with some phone numbers on it and left it with a nurse.

It had cleared up outside. A warm summer wind had blown away the storm, leaving behind a beautiful starry night. Dutch, Stick, and I drove back to the park in silence, each of us in his own way trying to make sense out of what appeared to be a senseless holocaust plaguing Doomstown.

There was still a light fog hanging over the Quadrangle, like a wisp of cloud, but I could see across it to Warehouse Three, on the opposite side. Cobblestone walkways crisscrossed the park like an asterisk, intersecting at its center. One of them dissected the park and ran straight to the river's edge; another ran between the bank and Warehouse Three.

Plainclothesmen and uniformed cops were still examining the scene and had extended their yellow control ribbons around the entire park.

Raines had met his a.s.sailant about halfway between the back of the park, where Dutch's ear witnesses were searching for the lost necklace, and the river. I stood next to the chalked form on the walk and looked back and forth. Chip and his fiancee had been less than thirty yards away when Raines was shot.

"I wonder what direction Raines was walking in and where he was going," I mused aloud.

"His Mercedes is parked down behind the bank," Stick offered.

I walked the fifty yards or so down to the river's edge. What had once been a dock had been converted into a small fis.h.i.+ng pier. The dark river swirled past its pillars, gurgling up small black whirlpools. The river walk ran from River Road, where it turned and coursed up an embankment to the highway above, along the river bank, and behind three warehouses that had been converted into office buildings.

"Findley Enterprises is in Warehouse Three, next to the park, and Costello and Cohen have their offices in One. That's three buildings down on the end," Dutch offered.

I looked up and down the river, then back toward the museum and the spot where Raines was shot.

"Any ideas?" said Dutch.

I had a lot of ideas, all of them pure guesswork, none of them provable, and none I cared to share at that moment.

"Not really," I said. "How about you two?"

"Let's say Raines parked his car over at the bank and started across the park toward the Findley office," Stick said. "That young couple was twenty, thirty yards away, talking. The killer must have heard them. Seems to me whoever did the trick had to know the park pretty well."

"And knew which way Raines was coming, so he or she knew exactly where to wait," Dutch conjectured.

"And was pretty desperate," I concluded.

"How so?" said Dutch.

"To shoot him down with witnesses a few yards away," I said. "I call that taking a chance."

We walked back toward the bank, looking on all sides of the walkways, but found nothing else of interest. The locals had obviously worked the place over. I stood at the shooting site for a moment or two more.

"Could've been Nance," said the Stick. "Could've come down from Costello's office, waited until Raines parked his car, started across the park, done the deed, and run back to Costello's office."

"Maybe," I said. "A lot of maybes, as usual."

"Why don't we talk this out over a piece of pie and coffee," Dutch said. "This caught me in the middle of dinner."

"Suppose it wasn't Nance," I said. "Suppose it was somebody who was so desperate they had to take a chance and blitz Raines on the spot. What would they do?"

"Run in the opposite direction from the witnesses," Dutch said. "Down toward the river."

"Yeah," I said. "And if they were real desperate, they might have ditched the weapon."