Head Case Read online

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Good thing your friend was packing. Maybe I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Someone steal your luxury car?’

  Jose narrowed his eyes. ‘You get smart alecky with me, you see if I fluff your pillows. You don’t think I have a car anybody want to steal? Because I’ve got brown skin and my name’s Jose? You think I drive a lowrider through the barrio, that what you think?’

  ‘I think anyone who talks and acts like you must get fired a lot. So, no, I don’t think you have a car worth stealing.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got bigger problems than someone stealing my top-of-the-line. So do you, if you’re in this place. That’s why I’ve got your back. Don’t want nothing to happen to you.’

  Kelson said, ‘I’m sure with you around, I’m in good hands.’

  Jose shook his head. ‘Now you get smart alecky again.’

  There was a tap on the door, and a woman stepped into the room. She wore a white doctor’s coat unbuttoned over a red dress. ‘Ah, Mr Feliciano,’ she said to the nurse, ‘Dr Jacobson’s looking for you.’

  The nurse said to Kelson, ‘When Dr Jacobson calls, I come running.’

  ‘Wait,’ Kelson said, ‘your name’s Jose Feliciano?’

  ‘Yeah, what about it?’

  ‘Like the Puerto Rican Elvis Presley?’

  ‘First, I’m Mexican. Second, do you want an extra juice box with your lunch, compadre?’ Without waiting for an answer, he left the room.

  The doctor gave Kelson a wry smile. ‘I’m Dr Madani. I’ve been checking in on you over the last two days. It’s good to see you awake.’ She parted her long hair in the middle.

  Kelson shook her hand, staring at the door as if Jose Feliciano might pop back through it with a guitar.

  ‘Quite a character, isn’t he?’ the doctor said. She inspected the bandage on Kelson’s wounded arm. ‘Did he tell you he used to be in the rodeo?’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘He showed me the clippings. He was quite successful – a star. Are you in any pain? We can adjust the medication.’

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Well, you’re a long way from good,’ she said. ‘But you’re getting better, and we’ll take it a step at a time. How’s the feeling in your fingers?’

  Kelson looked at the hand on the injured arm. The bruising and swelling extended from the bottom of the bandage to his fingertips. He wiggled his fingers – stiffly. ‘Where’s the guitar?’

  She touched the fingers. ‘With injuries like yours, there’s often nerve damage. Your hand was without regular circulation for over an hour.’ She massaged his fingers in hers. ‘How does this feel?’

  ‘Exciting,’ he said.

  She dropped his hand.

  ‘I mean it feels good,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t hurt – as much as it might.’

  ‘Good.’ She touched his fingers again. She separated them and ran her index finger up and down the inside of each, to see if he registered the touch.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘exciting.’

  She set his hand down on the bed. ‘The nerves seem fine. I don’t know about the rest of you.’

  A monitor showed his pulse on a screen. She used a stethoscope on his chest anyway.

  ‘Less exciting,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up and breathe,’ she said.

  He breathed in deep. He breathed out.

  ‘Again,’ she said.

  ‘You’re driving me wild,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  He breathed in. He breathed out.

  She pulled the stethoscope away. ‘No fluid. You’re a remarkable man, Mr Kelson.’

  ‘Some people say I’m a miracle,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll keep you another night. Then, unless we see an infection or other problems, we’ll let you go.’

  He looked at her brown eyes. He considered the way her white coat fell open over her red dress. ‘I wish you wouldn’t.’

  She smiled. ‘You’re pale, unshaven, and smelly. You have a gimp arm. Even before we wheeled you in, you had brain trauma that would keep you off any sane woman’s list. What makes you think your come-ons will work with me?’

  ‘My winning personality?’

  ‘Who told you it’s winning?’

  ‘Jose likes it.’

  ‘Ask Jose for a date.’

  ‘You know I can’t help it, right? The disinhibition. If it’s in my head, it comes out of my mouth.’

  ‘Maybe you should try harder to keep it out of your head.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘I have ideas.’ She smiled. ‘But, you know, the Hippocratic Oath.’

  ‘Do no harm?’

  ‘Might be hard for anyone who spent time with you.’

  FOUR

  Jose Feliciano brought Kelson an extra apple juice on his lunch tray. He also brought a chunk of chicken covered with brown gravy, a scoop of mashed potatoes, and a side bowl of steamed green beans and carrots. The plastic wrap on the salad hadn’t kept the brown off the lettuce. Kelson prodded the square of spice cake with a swollen finger. ‘You could clean a sink with it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s better than it looks, amigo. But don’t eat the chicken.’

  Kelson shifted the food around on the tray. He offered one of the juice boxes to Jose.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ the nurse said. ‘The coffee in the break room tastes like the chicken.’

  Kelson stuck his fork into the mashed potatoes. ‘I hear you used to be in the rodeo.’

  Jose grinned. ‘Claro. I did the Chicago Ford Tough Series. “Toughest Sport on Dirt.” I fell off a bull and broke my back. The ambulance brought me here, and the doctor fixed me. He said if I fell again, I would maybe never walk again.’

  ‘So you became a nurse.’ Kelson abandoned the mashed potatoes. He tried the green beans.

  ‘The doctor fixed my back. But a nurse named Jill gave me a reason to live. I fell in love.’

  Kelson abandoned the green beans. ‘Ah, the old story. Boy falls off bull, boy meets nurse, boy becomes nurse. Happily ever after.’

  ‘Not happily ever after. I fell in love with Jill, but she didn’t want me. But I knew what she did for me. I thought maybe I could do this for someone else. Maybe even you.’

  Kelson prodded the spice cake with his fork. ‘If you think I’m going to fall in love with you, it isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘Sure, you laugh at the Mexican nurse. But I already found someone new. We’ll get married in April.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  Jose exposed his forearm to show Kelson a tattoo. It was the head of a long-horned bull. ‘This is the one that broke my back. You should never forget someone who tries to kill you.’

  Kelson forked a bite of cake into his mouth. ‘Huh,’ he said.

  ‘Better than it looks, right?’

  Kelson said, ‘You think I should get a tattoo of the guy who shot me in the arm?’

  ‘You laugh at me, but I think maybe you should.’

  ‘I’m not laughing. If words come into my head, they come out of my mouth. But I think I’ll try to forget Gary Renshaw.’

  ‘What about the other man – the one who shot you in the head?’

  ‘Bicho?’

  The nurse looked confused.

  ‘Bicho,’ Kelson said. ‘His street name. He was just a kid. A punk. Seventeen years old. I won’t forget him. He haunts me.’

  ‘Never get a tattoo of a ghost. But’ – Jose regarded his empty juice box – ‘if you respected Bicho, maybe he would stop haunting you.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re a character.’

  Jose smiled. ‘Only a hard man can do what I’ve done.’ He watched Kelson eat another bite of the cake. ‘And only a hard man can be a detective with a hole in the head.’

  ‘My ex thinks I should quit.’

  ‘What does she know?’

  ‘She’s harder than I am.’

  ‘A hard woman is good.’

  ‘The one you�
��re marrying?’

  ‘Very hard. She’s from Haiti – she had it tough before she came here. A hard person should be with another hard person.’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve worked it out.’

  ‘I watch people.’ He watched as Kelson finished the cake. ‘How much do you cost, Mr Detective?’

  Kelson eyed him. ‘Depends. Usually seventy-five an hour or three hundred a day. Sometimes I charge by the job. You looking for a one-armed detective who can’t keep his mouth shut?’

  ‘You know, when I was in the rodeo, I won a lot of prize money. But you’re right, I don’t drive a fancy car – I drive a Yaris. I don’t own a fancy house – I don’t need it. I spend my money on what I see, you understand, compadre? I see things.’

  ‘Ghosts.’

  Jose came close to the bed. ‘Can I tell you this?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This is what I see. My sister – her name is Felicita—’

  ‘Now you’re screwing with me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Felicita Feliciano? No way.’

  The nurse looked annoyed. ‘I’m telling you something important, my friend.’

  ‘I’m just saying, your mom and dad had a weird sense of humor.’

  ‘Are you going to listen?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Felicita and her husband had two girls—’

  Kelson grinned. ‘Don’t tell me their names.’

  Jose gave him a hard look.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘They had two girls. When the second one was born, Carlita—’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Around this time, my sister’s husband crossed the border. He’s in Los Angeles now. My sister stayed in Mexico until Carlita turned one, and then she tried to cross with the girls. She paid the coyote to take them to LA, but the man left them in Mesa, Arizona. The police arrested them at the bus station and sent them back to Mexico. Six months later they tried again. This time they got to Palo Verde. The third time, right after they crossed the border, La Migra chased them – the ICE police. Listen to this now, amigo. My sister hid in a canal – an acequia. The border police saw her and ordered her to get out. My sister told her older girl, Alisa – she was six years old – to hold Carlita tight, to hold her and never, never let go. I don’t know what she was thinking – maybe you don’t think right at a time like that. This is what I’m telling you – when the police went back for the girls, Carlita was gone. Do you understand? They found her body in the canal two days later. That’s why I see things. They aren’t ghosts – they’re the bodies of dead little girls. That’s also why I became a nurse – along with love. I promised my sister.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I also promised myself,’ Jose said. ‘If I see something – if I see a person hurting – I will get justice. That’s for Carlita and for my sister and for me.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’ Kelson thought of Sue Ellen and the fights he would jump into to keep her safe, the revenge he would seek if anyone ever hurt her. ‘Maybe it’s all you can do.’

  ‘You understand, compadre? I think you do. There are things like this – I see them. The bosses and the police don’t fix them. Do you know who I blame for Carlita’s death?’

  ‘I take it, not your sister.’

  ‘She wanted her family together. She would do anything – what’s wrong with that? She wanted to go to the husband she loved.’

  ‘But you don’t blame him either.’

  ‘I blame the men who chased my sister into the canal like she was an animal. I blame the ICE police and the police in Mesa and Palo Verde. My sister isn’t an animal. Alisa isn’t an animal. Carlita wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kelson said again.

  Jose leaned in close, as if to tell him a secret – though Kelson wouldn’t keep it no matter how hard he tried. ‘My friend, this place is killing people.’

  Kelson looked at him uncertainly. ‘This place?’

  ‘This hospital. Messed up, right?’

  Jose was moving too fast. ‘People die sometimes,’ Kelson said. ‘At hospitals. They do that. Sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ the nurse said. ‘This is my job. When they die, I wipe the spit off their chins. I put Vaseline on their lips before the relatives come in. I comb their hair. I change their diapers and wipe them so they don’t smell bad. Don’t tell me people die.’

  ‘Right,’ Kelson said.

  ‘But people also sometimes don’t die. I’m talking about those people. But here they do. Two men. One woman. No reason they had to die. This lady – she came because she broke her hip. Two days later, she had a heart attack. She was seventy-three – not so old.’

  ‘How about the men?’

  ‘The first, he was twenty-one. Car accident messed up his legs real bad. He stopped breathing. The other, he was like a bum. Some other bums beat him up, I think. He had a thing with his kidneys.’

  Kelson said, ‘So three people came here with different injuries. Then they died in different ways.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No pattern.’

  ‘Exactamente.’

  ‘No pattern means no connection,’ Kelson said. ‘No connection means no crime – or three unrelated crimes. Where do you see the problem?’

  ‘How long were you a cop?’

  ‘Fourteen years. Why?’

  ‘You been doing the detective thing a while?’

  ‘Going on three years.’

  ‘How’re you still an amateur then?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’re like a novato – a rookie rider. OK, a bull bucks twice left, then fades, and spins right. Then the bull bucks twice left again, fades again, and spins right again. Then the bull bucks twice left again. What does he do next?’

  ‘Fades?’

  ‘No, cabrón, he bucks a third time. Maybe he bucks five times. Or ten times. Because he’s a bull. The novato – that’s you, Mr Detective – he thinks the bull is going to fade. Why? Because he thinks like a rookie, not like a bull. The bull throws him in the bleachers and breaks his back. The bull doesn’t act like you think he acts. He isn’t in your head. He acts like a bull. This killer that put down the woman and those men, he acts like a killer. Not like what you think.’

  ‘If I remember right, a bull broke your back too,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Sí, cabrón. Which is why, even though you know this is a killer, you need to be very careful. He’s like one of those angels of death. What do you think, will you take a look?’

  ‘What will you pay me?’

  There was a knock on the door, and Dr Madani came in, this time with her white coat buttoned over her dress. ‘Ah, Mr Feliciano. Dr Jacobson needs you again.’

  Jose picked up Kelson’s tray. ‘We’ll talk about this later. Think about it, amigo. A man like you can’t afford to turn down work.’ He grinned at the doctor. ‘Dr Jacobson calls, and I come running.’

  When Jose carried Kelson’s tray out, Kelson said, ‘He has a lot of stories.’

  The doctor had a big-toothed smile. ‘I’ve heard most of them.’

  ‘He thinks people are dying here.’

  The doctor gazed at him, as if Kelson didn’t get it. ‘This is a hospital.’

  ‘That’s what I told him. But he thinks you’re killing them – not you personally – I don’t know what he thinks of you, though I don’t see how he could object. He thinks someone is killing them. Intentionally.’

  She looked exasperated. ‘We’ve talked to him about this before.’

  ‘Why do you keep him on?’

  ‘Patients love him,’ she said. ‘They ask for him when he’s gone.’

  ‘He fluffs their pillows.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She checked the monitors and wrote notes on her clipboard. ‘How’s the pain now? We can increase the meds.’

  ‘You trying to make me compliant?’

  She winked. ‘If I want you compliant, I don�
��t have to ask. I can roll you over and give you a shot.’

  Kelson grinned. ‘Jose and I were talking about women like you.’

  ‘After he accused me of killing my patients?’

  ‘We agreed, hard is good. Tough is.’

  Dr Madani said, ‘What do you say we discharge you first thing tomorrow morning? My shift starts at eight. Let’s have the night staff get you out of here by seven or seven thirty at the latest.’

  Kelson expected Jose Feliciano to come back, but another nurse brought dinner. Then Kelson spent the evening alone. He talked to himself about Sue Ellen. And about the cats Sue Ellen had named Payday and Painter’s Lane. And about the kiss Nancy gave him on the forehead … Did it mean there was hope? No, it wasn’t a kiss of desire. About Dr Madani … Why did he find her sexy? About Jose Feliciano, who found causes in suffering, as if suffering had meaning one could make sense of, though even a quick glance showed much of it was random. About Renshaw and his gelled-up hair and skinny teeth and the way he seemed to evaporate in a mist of blood and bone when Rodman shot him.

  At ten p.m. Kelson was talking about Rodman’s difficulties, when there was a knock on his door. Rodman himself stepped in.

  Rodman carried a lot of his enormous bulk in his chest. His eyes – small, narrowly set on his big head – might look cute on a person a third of his size. On him, they suggested a gentleness at odds with his size and apparent strength. He wore blue workpants and an oversized parka. If he worried that the Chicago Police were looking for him, his smile didn’t show it.

  ‘Hey there,’ he said. ‘I heard you were back from the dead.’

  ‘Hey,’ Kelson said. ‘I was just talking about you.’

  Rodman glanced around the empty room. He knew better than to ask. He pulled two bottles of Red Stripe lager out of a parka pocket. ‘Flower shop was closed,’ he said. ‘Best I could do.’ He gave a bottle to Kelson, popped the cap from the other, and took a long drink.

  ‘Venus Johnson came by this morning looking for you,’ Kelson said. ‘Something about being pissed off you saved my life.’

  Rodman smiled that gentle smile. ‘Came by my apartment too. Cindi gave her a cup of tea and sent her on her way. I was hiding in the bathtub. You know how ridiculous it is for a man like me to hide in a bathtub?’