Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye

  If he was right, he wasn’t the only one who’d been pulling a Sammy Keyes.

  25—ANNIHILATING INNOCENCE

  While Sergeant Borsch was headed for the exit door at the end of Sammy’s hallway, the “orderly” was tearing his hair out. (And dying to tear it off.) Six different disguises. Six different attempts. Six different annoying, meddlesome, infuriating interferences.

  So now what?

  He couldn’t just forget about it.

  If the brat woke up, it was all over!

  And there was no way he was going back to the slammer!

  He stood in the stairwell, not knowing if he should go and come back later, or just wait a little while and try again. He could just kick himself for wanting her to see his face last night. For wanting her to know who was doing her in. If he’d just done the job, he wouldn’t be in this predicament!

  But she’d humiliated him.

  Made his life miserable!

  She needed to pay for his agonizing time in jail, but what was the use in making her pay if she didn’t know what the payback was for?

  So he’d shown his face.

  And he’d heard her gasp when she’d recognized him.

  It had been so satisfying!

  And the terror in her eyes?

  Priceless.

  So yes, it was worth it, but if he could go back and do it again, maybe he wouldn’t worry so much about making it look like an accident. Maybe he’d just strangle her.

  Or stab her.

  Or shoot her!

  He’d wanted to avoid evidence or noise, but now he had this whole mess. Which didn’t seem fair. Especially since he’d been so patient and careful. So meticulous in his preparations!

  After his release from jail, he’d rented two rooms. One under his real name on Boone Street, and another under a fake name at the Heavenly Hotel. The Boone Street address kept his parole officer happy. The view from his window at the Heavenly kept him happy.

  It was very appropriate payback, he’d thought, to watch her from his window with binoculars. It’s how he’d figured out her little jam-the-jamb trick. She thought she was so sly, but he’d verified the situation himself.

  She’d used bubblegum.

  And jamming the jamb and sneaking up and down the fire escape were not things you did if you were just visiting. No, she was living there. Illegally.

  Which made her a criminal herself.

  The snotty little hypocrite!

  So after he’d planned and plotted and watched and let enough time pass to minimize suspicion, the embers of hatred were red-hot and he was ready to make the leap from thief to killer.

  He began concealing himself in the shrubbery near the Highrise, lying in wait. Strangely, though, she seemed to stop using the stairs. Night after night he waited, but she didn’t show up. And he didn’t see her from his window anymore, either. Not in the morning, not in the afternoon, not in the evening.

  Was she on to him?

  Had she moved?

  But then last night he’d seen her go into the Pup Parlor. And feeling a certain desperation and urgency, he’d hidden himself near the base of the Highrise stairs and waited.

  And waited.

  And (growing increasingly angry) waited some more.

  And then suddenly there she was, stealing up the fire escape like a cat in the night.

  By the third floor he’d caught her. “Remember me?” he’d asked, and he could almost feel his teeth sparkle in the moonlight. Then he’d put the muscles he’d built in the exercise yard to good use and dumped her.

  But the brat had survived!

  How could anyone survive that fall?

  Even into bushes!

  She was a living nightmare, and now she turned out to be Darren Cole’s daughter? How could she be Darren Cole’s daughter?

  If he’d known that, he might’ve ransomed her instead!

  But … her being Darren Cole’s daughter made no sense. A guy like that wouldn’t let his daughter live illegally at the Highrise! Well, unless he was one of those cheap millionaires who couldn’t bother putting his relatives up in some classy joint.

  So maybe it was a trick! Something the cops had masterminded as a way to get people to call the hotline.

  Which didn’t make sense, either! What would Darren Cole be doing in Santa Martina?

  Well, at this point it didn’t matter whether it made sense. What mattered was that if the girl woke up, he was dead. And the only solution was to make sure she was dead before she woke up!

  And after six attempts, the best way to make that happen still seemed to be suffocation. She was already unconscious, right?

  And he was prepared. Last night when he’d looked up how long it took to suffocate someone (because he sure didn’t want to find out later that he hadn’t finished the job again), he’d stumbled upon information on the Internet about coma patients and motion sensors.

  Motion sensors!

  He’d had no idea.

  So after reading up about those, he’d determined that all he needed was three minutes with a pillow. (The Internet said it would take six, but being unconscious was like being half dead, and it’s not like she’d fight back!)

  Three measly minutes.

  But there were always people there! First that damn cop.

  The same one who’d arrested him, no less!

  Then that kid who’d told him to shave.

  Then the rock star, who’d thrown him by just being there. How could Darren Cole be two feet away from him? “Watertower” was one of his favorite songs. He’d lifted to it in the jail yard! Maybe he should have asked for an autograph. He coulda made a bundle on eBay.

  Whatever. The second time he saw Darren Cole, he’d stayed cool and collected, and getting him to leave the room would have been easy if it hadn’t been for the mom (who made it more than clear who the brat took after).

  There were also those nuns who he’d thought were there because she’d died on her own, but oh, no. She wouldn’t do him the courtesy of just dying.

  And then there was that weird bird-looking guy who’d appeared out of nowhere and had scared the hell out of him.

  Six tries and he still couldn’t get three measly minutes?

  It wasn’t fair!

  So there he stood, in the safety of the stairwell, brooding, trying to decide how long he needed to wait before trying again, wondering if he should switch disguises again, when he heard a click. A loud click. Followed by the unmistakable whoosh of the door on the level above.

  As silently and quickly as he could, he started down the steps. And he would have just flown down the levels to the first floor and out of the stairwell, but on the level below him there was another loud click.

  And another whoosh.

  And lots of whispering voices.

  Panic swelled inside him. Were people after him? Was he trapped?

  And then he heard a voice on the level above.

  A voice he recognized.

  When Gil Borsch pushed the stairway exit door open, the first place he looked was the doorjamb.

  Sure enough, the latch-plate hole had something crammed inside it.

  A napkin, folded up into a hard, stiff wad.

  “Kids!” he called over to the teens standing outside Sammy’s room. “Don’t let anyone in there you don’t know!” And then he was gone, pounding down the stairs.

  His mind ran down the List. The possibilities.

  Garnucci was locked up in jail, so it couldn’t be him. Of the others who were out of jail, one stuck in his mind as the clear choice because criminals tended to repeat their MO.

  Like the use of disguises.

  And wadded napkins.

  Which had both been used previously by only one of the criminals on the List.

  Sammy had trapped the lowlife in true Sammy style—by pinning him half inside a Dumpster and then jumping up and down on the lid to keep him from escaping. He’d never heard a man yelp (or curse) like that before (or since). When they
’d finally extracted him from the Dumpster, he was covered in trash and slime.

  And mad as a hornet!

  Now, while Gil Borsch was moving down the stairs (as fast as his composition and coordination would allow) with all of this flashing through his mind, the “orderly” had run into an unexpected situation that was potentially worse than trying to get past a cop without being recognized.

  What the orderly faced was not hospital personnel taking a shortcut out of the building.

  What he faced was a group of kids.

  Teenagers.

  And when he saw the shoes, he knew.

  This was trouble.

  But suddenly he was struck with a very clever idea.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling through the bullets that were sweating past his wig. “Your friends are waiting for you up on Four. The door’s open.”

  The teens (who’d been ditching unfriendly hospital staff left and right and were down from thirty-seven to seventeen in number) were surprised to find themselves not only not busted, but helped by an orderly. “Thanks, man!” they said, and while they began pounding up the stairs, the escape artist caught the closing Floor 2 door and slipped inside.

  Which left Sergeant Gil Borsch roadblocked by seventeen teens in high-tops.

  Now, at one time, this would have caused the lawman to have a coronary.

  Or perhaps a stroke.

  Or (more likely) both.

  But something had changed in Gil Borsch. Something for the better.

  Based on the shoes, these were clearly friends of Sammy’s. So instead of asking them what they thought they were doing, messing around on the hospital stairs, he asked, “Did you see anybody on the stairwell? A guy in blue scrubs?”

  “Yeah!” a girl in the group answered. “He went through the door we came out of.”

  “What floor?”

  “Two!”

  “How long ago?”

  “Just now. He told us to go up to Four. That our friends were waiting for us.”

  “Clever,” the Borschman grumbled, then said, “Guys, I need your help.”

  And the teens (doubly surprised to be recruited by a cop after fleeing dozens of people in a variety of uniforms) simply held still and said, “Sure.”

  “Go up to Four. Tell your friends about the guy you just saw. He isn’t a real orderly. I think he’s the one who hurt Sammy, and I’m pretty sure his name’s Larry Daniels.”

  “Larry Daniels?”

  “Otherwise known as Oscar the Ice Cream Man.”

  “An ice cream man tried to kill her?” someone cried.

  “That’s just wrong,” another teen added.

  And then came a fast and furious exchange inside the group.

  “Dude, my fragile innocence has been annihilated!”

  “Shut up! This is serious!”

  “I am serious!”

  “Yeah! Who doesn’t trust the ice cream man?”

  “Oh, right. When have you ever seen an ice cream man?”

  “In the movies?”

  “No, really! There used to be that guy on Broadway? Remember him?”

  “Stop it!” Sergeant Borsch cried as he muscled forward. “Just go up there and tell them! Please!”

  “Dude,” the kid with the annihilated innocence said as the lawman went by, “you sound like you’re planning to die or something.”

  “Just tell them!” the lawman begged.

  Then he pushed through the teens and hurried down the stairs.

  26—THE CHASE

  Up on the fourth floor, Casey Acosta could hear a commotion outside of Room 411. And (still talking to his kick-ass sleeping beauty) he interrupted himself to tell Sammy, “Something’s going on out there. I’m gonna go check.” And since he was holding her hand, he kissed it and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  But no sooner had he stood and turned than he heard, “Case.”

  It was so quiet that it might have been from outside the room … only it had come from behind him.

  He whipped around and there she was, wrapped in gauze, plumbed with tubes and wires and … awake!

  “Sammy!” he cried, then spun around twice not knowing what to do first. “Sammy!” he cried again, then held up a finger. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I’ll be right back!” He raced to the door, flung it open, and yelled, “She’s awake!” then raced back to her side. His eyes were burning with tears as he grabbed her hand. “You’re awake!”

  She gave him a weak smile, but instead of saying anything, her smile drifted away.

  “What’s wrong?” Casey asked, shifting from euphoric to panicked.

  “Oscar pushed me,” she whispered. “Did they catch him?”

  Casey had no idea who Oscar was, but his phone was out in a flash and he was calling Sergeant Borsch. “She’s awake,” Casey said when the lawman answered. “She says it was Oscar. Do you know who that is?”

  “We’re on his tail now,” Gil Borsch replied. And then (with a voice that could only be described as choked up) he said, “Give her a kiss for me,” and hung up.

  So Casey delivered the kiss to Sammy’s forehead, saying, “That’s from the Borschman. He says they’re on his tail now!” He hesitated, then said, “Who’s Oscar?”

  “The Ice Cream Man? The Hotel Thief?”

  “That guy you waved at?”

  She nodded. “That’s the one.”

  Casey shook his head. There was so much he wanted to ask her. So much he wanted to tell her. Like about what everyone was doing to try to help. Like about the List.

  So much had happened!

  But first he got busy with his phone again. “I need to tell your grandmother and Hudson! And your mom and dad! They’ve been going nuts.”

  “How long was I out?” Sammy asked, testing her arms and legs.

  “Forever! Uh, I mean, almost twenty-two hours? Something like that.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded as he waited for the ringing line to be answered. “Do you feel okay? What hurts?”

  She gave him a small grin. “Uh, everything?”

  Casey’s attention snapped to the phone. “She’s awake!” he said. “She seems to be fine!… Yes … Yes … I don’t know … Sure!… Can you call Lana and Darren?” And when he got off the phone, he grinned at Sammy and said, “They’ll be right here. With your parents, I’m sure. And Marko!”

  “Marko’s here?” she asked. But then she began blinking and turned away. Like she was trying to remember something.

  “What’s wrong?” Casey asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Was … was Dusty Mike here?”

  Casey’s eyes popped wide. “Yes!”

  Sammy kept blinking. “Oh … wow.” She looked at him. “And you … you kissed me?”

  “Yes!”

  “And cried …?”

  “Yes!”

  “And my … my mom? She was …” She looked over at where Lana had slept, and tears filled her eyes. “It’s like a dream. Like an invisible movie.” She blinked some more as she wiped away her tears. “Wow.”

  “So you remember …?”

  She looked around. “Marko singing about teddy bears?”

  “I hadn’t heard about that one! But these bears were Marko’s idea.” He handed one to her. “Everyone wrote on the ribbons.”

  “Oh!” Sammy said, reading. “This is awesome!”

  When she reached for another bear, Casey said, “I need to go tell Marissa. And Holly and Dot! And Heather!”

  “And Billy?”

  “Billy! Right! I wonder where they went.”

  And he was about to run up to the waiting room (where he was sure their friends had been banished) when Nurse Scrabble walked in. “I did hear correctly!” she said, grinning. “Hello, Samantha! Glad to have you back with us. How are you feeling?”

  “Really strapped down,” she said, looking at all the tubes and wires. “Can we get rid of this stuff?”

  “Let me get the doctor in here,” she said, checking
the machines over. “But I’m pretty sure we can make that happen.”

  “Can you tell our friends in the waiting room that she’s awake?” Casey asked.

  “Uh, no.”

  “No?”

  “They all took off. Which was good because they were loud and rambunctious and I have no idea how that new batch got past the sign-in desk.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “I heard them say something about catching the ice cream man.” She laughed and shook her head. “When’s the last time you’ve seen an ice cream man?”

  “Last night,” Sammy said. “When he tried to kill me.”

  Nurse Scrabble’s eyebrows went flying. “What?”

  Sammy shrugged. “Well, you’re right. He’s not actually an ice cream man. That was just his cover—a blind ice cream man.”

  “A blind ice cream man? This story keeps getting stranger and stranger.” Nurse Scrabble shook her head. “But let me get the doctor so he can let you know what to expect.”

  Now, as badly as Sammy might have wanted to get out of the hospital, there was one person who wanted out more:

  Larry Daniels.

  Also known as the formerly blind ice cream man.

  Or the disorderly orderly.

  After narrowly escaping Sergeant Borsch, Larry Daniels had ripped off his wig and fake glasses and stuffed them in a laundry hamper on Floor 2, and was now proceeding (as nonchalantly as he could) along the corridor of the maternity wing to the elevator. In a test of both patience and acting ability, he politely fielded two requests (one for changing linens, another for restocking toilet paper) before blithely continuing his trek toward the elevator.

  Unfortunately for the formerly blind ice cream man, when the elevator door opened he came face to face with a mob of teenagers.

  And recognized some of their faces.

  It was the same group he’d seen in the stairwell!

  Doubly unfortunately for the formerly blind ice cream man, there were a few extra teens in the mob.

  One who recognized him.

  Marissa (who had also witnessed the Dumpster Incident) pointed and cried, “That’s him!”

  And with that simple statement, the chase was on.

  The problem was, the good guys looked like bad guys (they were teenagers running and shouting through a maternity ward, after all), and the bad guy (still dressed as a hospital worker) looked like the good guy.