Mae nodded. “If he gets tired of cartoons, we’ll play games.”
“Those bastards on the TV news, they always have to show you the blood,
get the ratings. I don’t want him seeing his father’s blood on the
ground.”
The storm washed all the color out of the day. The sky was as charry
as burned-out ruins, and from a distance of even half a block, the palm
trees looked black. Wind-driven rain, gray as iron nails, hammered
every surface, and gutters overflowed with filthy water.
Louie Silverman was in uniform, driving a squad car, so he used the
emergency beacons and siren to clear the surface streets ahead of them,
staying off the freeways.
Sitting in the shotgun seat beside Louie, hands clasped between her
thighs, shoulders hunched, shivering, Heather said, “Okay, it’s just us
now, Toby can’t overhear, so tell me straight.”
“It’s bad. Left leg, lower right abdomen, upper right side of the
chest. The perp was armed with a Micro Uzi, nine-millimeter
ammunition, so they weren’t light rounds. Jack was unconscious when we
hit the scene, paramedics couldn’t bring him around.”
“And Luther’s dead.”
“Yeah.”
“Luther always seemed …”
“Like a rock.”
“Yeah. Always going to be there. Like a mountain.”
They rode in silence for a block.
Then she asked, “How many others?”
“Three. One of the station owners, mechanic, pump jockey. But because
of Jack, the other owner, Mrs. Arkadian, she’s alive.”
They were still a mile or so from the hospital when a Pontiac ahead of
them refused to pull over to let the black-and-white pass. It had
oversize tires, a jacked-up front end, and air scoops front and back.
Louie waited for a break in oncoming traffic, then crossed the solid
yellow line to get around the car. Passing the Pontiac, Heather saw
four angry-looking young men in it, hair slicked back and tied behind,
affecting a modern version of the gangster look, faces hard with
hostility and defiance.
“Jack’s going to make it, Heather.”
The wet black streets glimmered with serpentine patterns of frost-cold
light, reflections of the headlights of oncoming traffic.
“He’s tough,” Louie said. “We all are,” she said.
Jack was still in surgery at Westside General Hospital when Heather
arrived at a quarter past ten. The woman at the information desk
supplied the surgeon’s name–Dr. Emil Procnow–and suggested waiting
in the visitors’ lounge outside the intensive care unit rather than in
the main lobby.
Theories of the psychological effects of color were at work in the
lounge. The walls were lemon yellow, and the padded vinyl seats and
backrests of the gray tubular steel chairs were bright orange–as if
any intensity of worry, fear, or grief could be dramatically relieved
by a sufficiently cheerful decor.
Heather wasn’t alone in that circus-hued room. Besides Louie, three
cops were present–two in uniform, one in street clothes–all of whom
she knew. They hugged her, said Jack was going to make it, offered to
get her coffee, and in general tried to keep her spirits up. They were
the first of a stream of friends and fellow officers from the
Department who would participate in the vigil because Jack was well
liked but also because, in an increasingly violent society where
respect for the law wasn’t cool in some circles, cops found it more
necessary than ever to take care of their own.
In spite of the well-meaning and welcome company, the wait was
excruciating.
Heather seemed no less alone than if she had been by herself.
Bathed in an abundance of harsh fluorescent light, the yellow walls and
the shiny orange chairs seemed to grow brighter minute by minute.
Rather than diluting her anxiety, the decor made her twitchy, and
periodically she had to close her eyes.
By 11:15, she had been in the hospital for an hour, and Jack had been
in surgery an hour and a half. Those in the support group–which now
numbered six–were unanimous in their judgment that so much time under
the knife was a good sign. If Jack had been mortally wounded, they
said, he would have been in the operating room only a short while, and
bad news would have come quickly.
Heather wasn’t so sure about that. She wouldn’t allow her hopes to