H Is for Homicide

  Chapter 22

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  The tricky part of any lie is trying to figure out how you'd behave if you were innocent. I couldn't act like I didn't know Dawna Maldonado at all. We'd both been there Tuesday night when Chago was killed. Should I treat her as a friend or foe? Under the circumstances, it seemed wise to keep my mouth shut and let the scenario play out as it would, like improvisational theater. As there was no escaping, I tucked the handbag under my arm and moved over to the kitchen table. I sat down, placing the bag casually near one leg of my chair. I picked up Bibianna's ragged deck of cards. I shuffled the cards, trying to remember how Bibianna set up the solitaire she always played.

  Meanwhile, conversation between Raymond and Dawna had turned to the shooting. It was just at that point that Dawna finally caught sight of me. "What's she doing here?"

  Oh, well, I thought, here we go.

  Raymond seemed startled by her reaction, which had a distinctly hostile tone to it. "Oh, sorry. This is Hannah. She's a friend of Bibianna's."

  Dawna's eyes were ice blue, lined with black, her gaze calculating. "Why don't you ask her! She was with 'em that night."

  "She was?"

  "She was there at the restaurant, sitting at the table with 'em when I got off the phone."

  Raymond seemed confused. "You're talking about Hannah?"

  "God, Raymond. I just got done sayin' that, didn't I?"

  He turned to me. "I thought you met Bibianna in jail. I thought you said you were cellmates."

  I started laying cards out like this was no big deal. Seven stacks, first card up, the other six facedown. "I never said that. We got thrown in the slammer together, but I'd met her before that, at a singles bar. I figured she'd told you or I'd have said something myself."

  Next round, skip the first pile. The face-up card went on the second pile, the other five facedown. Just playing solitaire here, casual as all get-out. Luis was eavesdropping, being careful not to call attention to himself lest Raymond take off after him.

  "What the fuck were you doin' there with her and Jimmy Tate?"

  Ah, he'd figured out it was Tate, probably from the description Dawna'd given him of the guy. "I wasn't doing anything. We'd just gone next door for a bite to eat when those two showed up."

  "Bibianna was with Jimmy Tate?"

  Dawna snorted. "Jesus, Raymond. What's the matter with you? You sound like a parrot." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see how much she was enjoying herself. In her family dynamic, she was probably the kid who puffed up her self-importance by tattling on all her siblings.

  Raymond ignored her, focusing on me. "How come you never told me she was with him that night?"

  "Jimmy Tate was with me. We ran into Bibianna at the bar and asked her to join us for a bite to eat. What's the big deal?"

  "I don't believe it."

  I stopped dealing out the cards. "You don't believe me?"

  "I think you're lying."

  "Wait a minute, Raymond. I've known you all of five days. So how come I'm suddenly accountable to you for my behavior?"

  Raymond's eyes were glittering, his voice too soft to suit me. "Dawna says Tate was the one killed my brother. Did you know that?"

  Oops. Actually I did know that. I said nothing, wondering why my mouth was suddenly so dry. I couldn't think of an adequate response and for once the glib lie didn't spring that readily to mind.

  "Answer me," he said. "Tate killed my brother?"

  I picked my way through the possibilities, not wanting to commit myself to a course of action just yet. "I don't know," I said. "When the shooting started, I hit the pavement."

  "You didn't see Tate with a gun?"

  "Well, I knew Tate had a gun, but I don't know what he did with it because I wasn't looking."

  "What about Chago? You knew he was hit. Who you think did that?"

  "I have no idea. Honestly. I didn't have a clue what was happening. All I know is Tate and I run into Bibianna, we go next door for a bite to eat, and next thing I know these two goons show up and take Bibianna off at gunpoint. Shooting breaks out, cops show up. Bibianna and I are hauled off to jail..."

  I was on slightly safer ground here because I knew Dawna had disappeared about the time Chago was hit. I was working on the assumption that she didn't have any idea what had gone on after that. Actually, I wasn't as nervous about the current subject as I was about the possibility of her remembering she'd seen me at the California Fidelity offices.

  She'd been studying my face, her brow furrowed with one of those quizzical looks that indicate a marine layer blanking out memory. Any minute now the fog might begin to lift. "She's bullshitting you, Raymond."

  "Just let me handle this," he said irritably. He turned away and lit a cigarette, watching my face as he took the first drag of smoke.

  The phone rang. The four of us turned and stared. Luis moved first, picking up the receiver. "Hello?" He listened briefly, then covered the mouthpiece with his right palm. "Cop on the line says they found the car."

  Raymond took the phone. "Hello?... Yeah, this is him... Anybody hurt? Oh, really. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Where is that? Uh-huh... yeah. Where's the car now? Yeah, right. I know the place... Hun, he did? Hey, that's too bad."

  Raymond got off the phone with a glance at Luis. "Bibianna had an accident up in Topanga Canyon. Chopper pushed the Caddy off a cliff, from what this guy says."

  "No shit," Luis said.

  I could feel my heart beating in my throat. "What happened to Bibianna? Is she okay?"

  Raymond waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it.

  She's at St. John's. Get a jacket, baby-doll. We got work to do." He flashed a grin at Luis. "This is great. Caddy's totaled. We're talking twenty-five hundred bucks." He caught sight of my face. "What are you lookin' at? I got a legitimate auto claim here," he said self-righteously.

  "What about me?" Dawna said, protesting.

  "You can come with us if you want or you can stay here and sleep. You look beat. We'll be back in an hour and then go over to the funeral home."

  She stared indecisively, then conceded. "You go on. I'll grab some rest."

  Raymond drove way too aggressively for traffic conditions. I was sandwiched between him and Luis in the front seat, one hand braced on the dashboard, making small involuntary sounds each time Raymond changed lanes without warning or pushed the Ford up within a few feet of somebody's back bumper before he pulled out and around, passing them with a dark backward scowl. His jaw was set, his tics almost constant, and everything in life was someone else's fault. Even Luis began to react, murmuring, "Jesus," at one of Raymond's hair-raising near misses.

  The two talked across me as if I were empty space, so it took me a moment to realize what they were saying.

  Raymond said, "Stupid bitch must have got off the 101 at Topanga. God, how dumb can you get? That's the middle of nowhere. You know that road?"

  "Hey, that's rugged," Luis said.

  "The worst. Mountains sticking straight up. Sheer drops off the sides. She should have stayed in the populated areas and found a cop. She's not going to get any help out there. All Chopper had to do was wait till she hit one of those hairpin turns and boom!" Raymond gestured his contempt. "Cop says he must have rammed into the Caddy's rear end and got himself hung up but good." He made a diving motion with his hand.

  I glanced at Raymond. "He went off, too?"

  Raymond gave me a look like I'd suddenly started speaking English. "What do you think we've been talking about? Chopper's dead and she's not that far from it. Serves her right. You didn't figure that out? Bibianna's in whatchacallit... intensive care."

  "Oh, no," I said.

  "What is it with you? You gonna make that my fault, too? Bibianna steals my car and totals the fuckin' thing and I'm to blame?"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Raymond. Take responsibility. This is all your doing and you know it."

  "Don't push your luck, bitch. I didn't do nothin'!" Raymond's face darkened and he dro
ve in stony silence. I could feel anxiety seeping into my chest wall, squeezing my digestive system.

  We got off the 405 at the Santa Monica Freeway, heading west as far as the Cloverfield exit, which we took and then turned right. I'd been to St. John's some years ago, and by my recollection, it was not far away, somewhere around 21st or 22nd Street, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire. It was ten-thirty by now. Hospitals are rigorous about visits to ICU, but Raymond would no doubt bull his way in.

  We parked in one of the visitors' lots and crossed to the main entrance, passing under an arch. A fountain lined with blue-green tile splashed noisily in the center of a brick-paved court. Beyond the fountain was a bronze bust of Irene Dunne, the first lady of St. John's. The place was massive, cream-colored blocks that had probably once been a fairly straightforward chunk of concrete. Now a portico jutted out in front, two wings flanked the building on either side, with a multistory addition looming up in the rear. It looked like most of the available land had been devoured by new construction, surrounding properties annexed as the space needs of the hospital grew. The rest of the neighborhood was a modest assortment of single-family dwellings, 1950s style. An ambulance passed us, emitting an occasional short howl. Its yellow lights were flashing, sirens off, as it headed for the emergency entrance.

  Wheelchair ramps swept up to the front on either side of the main entrance with a central staircase. We moved up the center steps and into the lobby with its muted maroon carpet and the spicy scent of carnations. To the left, an entire wall was devoted to listing the names of those who'd made significant financial contributions to St. John's, the range extending from benefactors, to patrons, to fellows, to donors too miserly for categorization. On the far side of the wall, Admitting was dominated by a large oil painting of a curly-haired person looking heavenward in torment.

  Raymond inquired at the Patient Information desk for the whereabouts of ICU. I comforted myself that she must have been conscious when they brought her in or the cops never would have found out who she was. As far as I could tell, she'd had no identification with her.

  Behind me, I overheard a fragment of conversation. A woman said, "... so I says to this chick at the sheriff's department, 'What business-is it of yours? If he ain't been charged with nothing, how come you're talkin' to his probation officer about it?' That's like a violation of his civil rights or something, isn't it?..."

  Two wires connected in my brain, completing a circuit. I made the kind of "oh" sound that escapes your lips when you spill ice water down your front. I knew who Dr. Howard's daughter was, the bride in the photograph. She was the civilian clerk who'd given me such a hard time at the S.T. County Sheriff's Department when I was trying to get Bibianna's address. Oh, hell, I had to get to a telephone. No wonder Dolan thought he had a leak!

  Raymond marched us to the elevator, which we took up to the second floor. When the doors opened, we turned right, passing the maternity ward, where a recently delivered mother, in robe and slippers, proceeded at half speed, touching the wall gingerly as she walked. Raymond was on his best behavior, moving quickly, his gaze front and center. I could see Luis's eyes flick into an occasional empty room. I did likewise, unable to resist, though there wasn't that much to see. The air already smelled of lunch.

  The wing designated 2-South housed Intensive Care, Coronary Care, the Cardiac Surgery Unit, and Intermediate Care behind closed double doors. A sign said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, with a wall-mounted telephone nearby. Apparently, you had to call in and get permission to enter the department itself. Four women sat in the adjacent waiting room, variously conversing and reading magazines. I could see a public pay phone, a magazine rack, a color television set. In the hallway, there were a water fountain and, in a niche, a statue of a male saint supporting baby Jesus by his bare bottom. The floor was made up of polished marble chips in squares with thin metal seams between.

  Luis took a seat on a beige leather bench, his knee jumping. A lab tech walked by with a fat tube of dark red blood. Luis got up and moved to the wall, where he studied three lines about the visiting hours. It was the first time I'd seen the two of them in a situation they couldn't handle with machismo.

  Like Luis, Raymond was apparently one of those people made uneasy by illness. He was subdued, respectful. The ticcing had started up, the head jerk reminding me of the sort of startle reaction I sometimes experience when I'm on the verge of sleep. Hospital staff, catching sight of him, seemed to diagnose him in passing, thinking no more about it than I did at this point. From Raymond's manner, I had to guess he'd been hospitalized as a child, subjected to medical processes that had left him edgy and alert. Almost imperceptibly, he slowed, shoving his hands in his pockets while he decided what to do next.

  He was just picking up the telephone when the double doors opened and a nurse emerged. She was a redhead, in her thirties, white pants suit, thick-soled white shoes, wearing a nursing school pin but no cap. "Can I help you?"

  "Yeah, uhm, I got a... my fiancée was brought in last night. She was in this automobile accident? The cops said she was here. It's Diaz, the last name... I was just wondering, you know, if I could see her."

  She smiled pleasantly. "Just a minute, I'll check." She moved on to the waiting room, where she stuck her head in, beckoning to one of the visitors. The woman set her magazine aside and followed the nurse back through the double doors. I took the liberty of peering through the glass, but all I could see was an extension of the corridor and, at the far end of the hall, a glass-enclosed room furnished with monitoring equipment. The patient was barely visible and there was no way of knowing if it was Bibianna or not.

  Luis was shifting from foot to foot, fingers snapping softly. "Oh, man, I hate this. I'm going down to the lobby. You can pick me up on the way out. Maybe I'll find the coffee shop and get me something to eat."

  "Do it," Raymond said.

  Luis crossed his arms and hugged himself casually. "You want me to get you some coffee, something like that?"

  "Just get outta here, Luis. I don't give a shit."

  "Maybe I'll come back in a while," he said. He glanced at me and then walked backward for a few steps, waiting to see if Raymond had any serious objections. Raymond seemed to be fighting his own inclination to bolt. Luis turned and headed toward the elevators.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I touched Raymond's arm. "I think I'll look for a ladies' room, okay?"

  The nurse returned. "It'll be a few minutes. The neurologist just left, but I think he's still in the hospital. Would you like to have him paged?"

  "Uh, yeah. Could you do that?"

  "Of course. You can have a seat, if you like," she said, indicating the waiting room.

  "She going to be okay?"

  "I really couldn't say," the nurse said. "I can have Dr. Cherbak talk to you about her condition as soon as he gets here. Your name is?"

  "Raymond. I'll just wait. I don't want to interrupt nobody..."

  "There's a vending machine if you want to have some coffee."

  "Can you tell me where the restrooms are?" I asked. God, couldn't I think of any more imaginative way of getting away from these guys?

  The nurse pointed toward the corridor. "First door."

  I went into the waiting room with Raymond. As soon as he sat down on the couch, I said, "I'll be right back."

  He could hardly pay attention, he was so uneasy by then. I walked away from him, trying to control myself, trying not to break into a run. I passed the restroom and kept going, looking for a place I could have a little privacy and the use of a telephone.

  Two-South segued back into 2-Main without any noticeable shift in floor covering or the wall colors, which were pale blue and pale beige, with a pattern of cattails or full-foliage trees in silhouette. I became aware that I had moved from near death to near birth, the signs on the wall pointing to Labor, Delivery, the Newborn Nursery, and the Fathers' Waiting Room. I was looking for a pay phone, fumbling aside the gun in my bag for loose change,
feeling panic mount as the seconds ticked away. Once I got the relevant information back to Dolan, I was out of there.

  I passed the desk on 2-Main. There was a counter to my left with wall-mounted monitors that showed green lines I assumed were vital signs.

  A black nurse coming out of a room marked "Staff Lounge" nearly bumped into me. She was wearing an ankle-length white gown that tied in the back, a mask pushed up on the middle of her forehead like a pale green hump. She was in her forties, slim, with dark eyes and a clear, unlined face. "Can I help you?"

  "I sincerely hope so," I said. 'This is my situation and you just have to trust me on this. I'm a private investigator from Santa Teresa. I'm working undercover on an auto insurance fraud case and I'm here in the company of a thug who's going to start looking for me any minute. I have to get a call through to Lieutenant Dolan up in Santa Teresa. Do you have a telephone I could use? I swear it won't take long and it could save my life."

  She looked at me with the blank contemplation of somebody assessing information. It must have been something in the tone I used, pure desperation overlaid with "earnest."

  It certainly wasn't anything in the way I looked. For once, I was telling the truth, using every cell in my being to convey my sincerity. She listened, brown eyes intent on my face as I spoke. It's possible the tale I told was so preposterous she just didn't think me capable of making it up. Without a word, she pointed toward a telephone on the desk behind the counter.

  Chapter 23

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