Chapter 58

The voice was blurred, as if Mike were listening underwater. ‘Where’s Katherine?’

He mumbled, ‘I won’t fucking tell you ever.’

Another voice said, ‘Pleasant, ain’t he?’ And then he sank beneath another black swell.

This time he sensed the mattress beneath him.

‘—press is climbing all over everything,’ Shep’s voice was saying. ‘The state paid to medevac you in to Cedars-Sinai Med Center. And Annabel, too. Top care – bastards are scared of a lawsuit. They’re relieved you lived. I guess you had a cut in your kidney vein. What? Okay – renal vein. Bleeds fast, but not as fast as an artery. Lucky for you, huh?’

Mike tried to make his mouth move, but it wouldn’t obey.

Shep continued. ‘The feds raided the wrecking yard, found your parents’ remains in two of those crushed cars. McAvoy’s in custody. Looks like he’s fucked pretty good.’

‘He can’t hear you,’ someone said.

Shep said, ‘Yeah he can.’

Now his eyes were open, if barely, his vision blurry. His tongue was too thick to talk around. Metal pinched the skin of his stomach. A tan face was floating over him, saying, ‘Congratulations, Mr Wingate. You just inherited a Class III casino.’

Mike said, ‘Mmrm.’

‘You’ll be immediately commenced at a salary of three million.’

‘A month,’ Shep’s voice added from somewhere. ‘And the annual dividend? It’s got more zeros than can fit on a check.’

Mike could discern the shape of Shep now, standing at the foot of the bed.

‘Guess who’s a leading expert in casino law?’ Shep flicked his nail against something that Mike finally registered as a familiar taupe business card. Shep’s face came into focus briefly, time enough for Mike to see the gleam of that crooked front tooth. ‘’Member that high-ticket lawyer Two-Hawks hooked me up with?’

Mike took in the man who’d spoken earlier as a collection of parts – sun-baked face, hammered sterling oval belt buckle with a turquoise inlay, Gerry Spence buckshin jacket with fringe sloping across the shoulders. The man nodded solemnly, a hint of wryness livening his eyes, and said, ‘Chief Two-Hawks looks forward to a long era of peace and prosperity between our tribes.’

The scene blurred again, and a sharp female voice said, ‘You can’t be in here.’

Fading out, Mike heard Shep say, ‘What?’

He came awake this time – fully awake – with a single thought branded across his brain: Katherine.

He sat up abruptly but a hot spear lanced his gut, flattening him back down onto a brace of pillows. Even tilting his head was excruciating, but he managed to look down at himself. The hospital gown he was wearing was thrown open to reveal a railroad track of surgical staples running from below his belly button to his sternum. The edges of the wound were purple-pink. It took some time for him to register the slit as a permanent addition to his body. A large gauze patch was adhered to his side with paper tape. With some trepidation he peeled it back. The stab wound was cleanly sealed, tiny black sutures sticking out like cat whiskers. The skin below was trash-liner black, a shade he hadn’t known that skin could turn.

‘They had to open you up.’ The voice, from across the room, surprised him. A man sat in a visitor chair, picking a piece of lint from the thigh of his pressed slacks, a red tie sealed firmly to his throat. Mike recognized the clean-shaven face, but it took a few moments for him to place him as Bill Garner, the governor’s chief of staff. He noted, also, that there was no one else in the room.

‘Had to stop the bleeding, check your liver and bowel, all that,’ Garner continued. ‘You’ve been in and out for a few days. I guess you’re recovering really well, but there’s still gonna be a lot of—’

Mike tried to sit up again and cried out.

‘—pain.’

Mike rolled his head, looking around. The door was open, nurses and patients walking briskly past in the hall. On his nightstand, blood-sopped bandages rested in a bedpan. Still processing the shock of the scar, Mike tried to retrieve memories from the slush of the past few days. Shep had been here. And Two-Hawks’s attorney. Something about the state fearing a lawsuit – Yup, there it was.

Groaning, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, the oxygen tube pulling out from beneath his nose. He tugged an IV from his arm, saline pattering on the floor, then tore some excess paper tape from his biceps.

‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Garner said. ‘There’s a naggy nurse looking to live up to her adjective.’

Mike stood up and wobbled a bit until his legs firmed beneath him. ‘They found Hank’s body?’

Pinching his gown closed, he made progress gingerly toward the door, Garner following at his side. ‘They did,’ Garner said. ‘LAPD’s on the warpath – he was one of their own. Parker Center, FBI – everyone’s shoehorned into this thing.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Hank Danville may not have looked like much, but he was very well regarded in the law-enforcement community.’

Mike paused for the first time. Looked over at him. ‘Rightly so.’

‘And with the evidence?’ Garner shot a breath skyward, fluttering his bangs. ‘Brian McAvoy might as well give himself the lethal injection. There hasn’t been a case this airtight since O.J.’ He scratched his nose. ‘That was a joke.’

‘Sorry,’ Mike said. ‘I’m still back on Hank.’

‘You’ll have a chance to say good-bye properly. LAPD’s planning a big to-do, ceremony, all that. He’ll go out a hero.’

Mike didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded and kept on toward the door.

‘You really shouldn’t be up,’ Garner said.

‘Feels like that,’ Mike said. ‘Which way’s my wife?’

‘Down that hall there.’

‘Shep?’

‘Around somewhere, I’m sure. He hasn’t strayed far from your side since he was released.’

Mike leaned against the doorway, breathing hard. ‘Released?’

‘He’s under investigation,’ Garner said. ‘Your lawyer turned over the security recording from Graham’s house, as well as all the other documents. This is a high-order mess, clearly, but we’ve persuaded the AUSA and the DA to offer you full federal and state immunity in exchange for your truthful testimony and for your cooperation as pertains to the case against Brian McAvoy. Let me repeat: That’s full immunity.’

‘So I don’t sue the state,’ Mike said. ‘Which I assume is why you’re being good enough to check in on me. In a quiet hospital room before anyone else can get to me.’

Garner affected a bored expression. ‘While they’re willing to make some allowances for you given the early investigative . . . missteps, someone has to answer for the string of felonies you and Shepherd White left in your wake.’

Mike’s lip curled. ‘You need a fall guy.’

‘There were laws broken. Stolen vehicles, battery, robbery, the murder of an important state law-enforcement agent in his bedroom at night. There’s you, family man, honored community leader. And there’s a convicted felon. Someone fired that shot from the balcony.’

‘Graham was a murdering piece of shit.’

‘It might be less complicated for everyone if it doesn’t get advertised that way.’

‘Less complicated for who?’ Mike started forward again.

‘Let’s just stop a moment, Mike.’ Garner placed a hand gently on his shoulder, halting him. ‘You could end up in prison. This is no joke. You’re gonna want to think carefully about what you do here.’

Mike steered Garner’s arm away. ‘There’s a picture of your boss hanging in McAvoy’s trophy case in the casino. He was even good enough to sign it – “To Deer Creek Casino, friends of mine, friends of California”. You guys took in soft-money donations by the truckload from a guy who snuffed his opponents for generations with abandon while the cops, DAs, judges, and – yes – the governor looked the other way.’

‘Lower your voice, please.’

‘Not only is Shep not going down for any of these so-called crimes, but the governor has twenty-four hours to issue a full pardon or he can spend the last weeks of his campaign explaining why he’s not responsible for his corrupt police force and how the hundreds of millions that McAvoy gave the state budget didn’t have anything to do with how he got away with murder for decades.’

Mike stepped out into the hall, Garner scurrying at his side.

‘We can still make your life extremely difficult,’ Garner said.

‘You don’t know what difficult is.’

Two agents approached at a half jog, and Garner waved them off. They hesitated, not retreating, and Mike asked them loudly, ‘Am I under arrest?’

‘Sir, you’re not to leave the—’

‘Am I under arrest?’

The surrounding movement in the hall came to a halt. The agents looked at Garner. Garner looked back at them. They seemed to blink a lot, and then one of the agents said, ‘No.’

Mike kept going.

‘You’re in the catbird seat right now,’ Garner said, walking sideways next to him and doing his best to lower his voice. ‘You and your family have won the lottery a thousand times over.’ He skipped in front of Mike. ‘You’re prepared to throw all that away to protect a felon buddy?’

‘He is family.’

Garner’s stare stayed even, but his lips stretched a bit with concern.

Mike gritted his teeth against the pain. ‘Now, get the fuck out of my way.’

Garner contemplated for a moment, then complied.

Leaving him in his wake, Mike continued down the hall. He grabbed a pair of scrub bottoms from a passing cart. Pulling them on hurt more than he could have imagined, but the staples didn’t burst, and he finally managed, and let the gown fall to the floor. Every cough, every twist brought with it a fresh jolt of pain. He did his best to bend at the hips to avoid using his stomach muscles, but even that made his eyes water. Shirtless, he continued down the hall, eyeing the charts on doors, the names printed on the tabs, and finally, worn down by the pain and exhaustion, he started shouting his wife’s name, turning circles.

He heard her faint reply from around the next corner and took one jogging step before the blast of heat in his stomach reminded him to walk. Around the bend, Detectives Elzey and Markovic were standing near a partially open door. Elzey had a gift-shop bouquet in her hand, probably wondering how much leniency a fistful of carnations would buy when it came time for Annabel’s official statement. When the detectives saw Mike tottering toward them, scowling and stitched together like a low-rent Frankenstein, they turned sheepishly and slinked off.

Heat roared in his face, in his chest, in the mouths of both cuts as he finally reached the doorway. She was on the bed, her skin pale and smooth, her hair lying limp against her scalp. One of her hands moved self-consciously toward her face but froze halfway up from the sheet, the tiny, instinctive gesture rending him. He gripped the door stile, wheezing against the pain, the two of them drinking in the sight of each other. Her father faded from the room like an apparition before Mike had even registered his presence. Mike couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t move; he was frozen in pain and ecstasy.

‘You cut your hair,’ Annabel said.

She mustered a smile, then immediately started crying, the sight sending him, finally, into motion. He pressed his face to the top of her hair, breathing her in, the scent of her still there, deep beneath the iodine and dried sweat. A nurse was suddenly at his side, talking at them with great agitation, but he wasn’t processing her words.

Annabel hovered her fingers above his scars. He parted her gown, checked her bruised skin, the line of the wound. He felt helpless and grateful and full of rage, the emotions cycling through him like a tornado.

Annabel turned her pale face up at him, and he thumbed a tear from her cheek. ‘Let’s go get our daughter,’ she said.

The nurse came in then at full volume, ‘You are not going anywhere with that nicked artery, Mrs. Wingate.’ She wheeled on Mike. ‘And you. You’d best march back up that hall and get horizontal. And you’re due for some Percocet.’

‘Can’t take it,’ Mike said. ‘I have to drive.’

‘Drive?’

Annabel said, ‘Go.’

He kissed her softly on the mouth and walked out.

Shep was waiting in the hall, slumped with his shoulders against the wall like a Chicago gangster.

Mike said, ‘Can you get me some ibuprofen?’

‘How much?’

‘A million milligrams.’

Shep put a hand across his back, and they started for the elevator. Mike said, ‘You got a car?’

‘What kind you want?’

‘No, Shep. I want to borrow yours.’

Shep pulled the keys from his pocket. ‘It’s not a Pinto.’ He plunked them in Mike’s hand. ‘With your driving record, I’m just sayin’.’

Shep leaned over the counter at the nurses’ station and swiped a bottle of Advil from the back shelf. Mike swallowed six pills dry, and Shep shoved the bottle into the pocket of his scrubs, along with something else. Mike saw the furry white arm protruding and smiled.

Riding down in the elevator, Shep nodded at the bruises covering Mike’s torso. ‘What you did for your family . . .’ He shook his head with admiration.

‘You idiot,’ Mike said. ‘I learned it from you.’

The doors dinged open, and they walked across the lobby and outside, the breeze reminding Mike that he was, inanely, bare-chested.

The ’67 Shelby Mustang was waiting across the lot, spit-shined, the wide grille sneering. Shep said, ‘Gassed up and ready to go.’

A town car eased up to the curb nearby, and a white-haired man in a gray linen suit emerged quickly, waving at Mike and hurrying over to catch them. He had to walk briskly to match their pace.

‘Mr Wingate?’ he said. ‘I came immediately to offer our condolences about this terrible situation.’

‘You are . . ?’ Mike asked.

‘Now that Brian McAvoy has been detained for his egregious crimes, I am the senior trustee of Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc. And I come here on behalf of the board to tell you that we had no knowledge of any of Mr McAvoy’s indiscretions. And that we cared for your great-grandmother at the end of her life. I knew her personally, in fact. She wanted for nothing. If there’s any way we can assist you in this transition or anything you need—’

‘Yeah,’ Mike said. ‘I need a shirt.’

The man’s mouth came ajar, the fringe of his white mustache hanging over his upper lip.

Mike said, ‘Give me your shirt.’

The man pressed a smile onto his face. Shep helped him out of his jacket, and then the man loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and handed it to Mike.

Mike pulled it on, grimacing, and began pushing the buttons through the holes. ‘Thanks. You’re all fired.’

He and Shep continued on toward the Mustang.

‘You need us,’ the man called after him. ‘Who will run the casino?’

Mike said, over his shoulder, ‘You’ll have to talk to my chief of operations.’

The man, bare-chested beneath his suit jacket, climbed back into the town car, and the dark car eased away. They came up on the Mustang, and Mike ran a finger along one of the racing stripes.

Shep said, ‘Chief of operations?’

Mike tilted his head at him.

‘Yeah?’ Shep said. ‘How much?’

‘How much you want?’

‘Can I still pull jobs?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Mike tugged open the door, and Shep gripped his hands and helped lower him down into the bucket seat. Shep tossed in a wad of cash and his cell phone – the sole surviving Batphone – and Mike rested both by the e-brake and swung the door closed. The engine roared to life, but before Mike could back out, Shep tapped the glass.

When Mike rolled down the window, Shep said, ‘They always say it doesn’t solve anything. Revenge. But when you killed them, did it feel good?’

‘Yes,’ Mike said, and drove off.