"Did he say why I should take a look?"
"No," she said. "I assumed you'd know. It was a short conversation. Milo sounded pretty hassled, still fighting to get warrants on that fat cat."
"Where'd Salcido show up?"
"On the street. Literally. Messed up-beat up. Looks like he ran into the wrong bunch of butt-kickers. A resident coming out to collect the morning paper found him. Salcido was lying in the gutter. His pockets were empty, but that doesn't mean he was robbed, he might not have carried a wallet. One of our cars got the call, recognized him from a picture I hung up in the squad room. He's at Hollywood Mercy."
"Conscious?" I said.
"Yes, but uncooperative. I left your name with the nurses." She gave me a room number.
"Thanks," I said.
"If you have any problems, call me. If you learn anything interesting from Salcido, you can call me, too."
"Because Milo's busy."
"Seems to be. Isn't everyone?"
"Better than the alternative," I said.
"You said it. By the way, I'm seeing Billy tomorrow. We're going over to see the new science center at Exposition Park. Anything you want to pass along?"
"Best regards and continue doing what he's doing. And keep busy. Not that he needs me to tell him that."
She laughed. "Yes, he's a wonder, isn't he?"
CHAPTER 30
IT TOOK FORTY minutes on the 10 East and surface streets to get to the shabby section of East Hollywood where Beverly meets Temple.
Second hospital of the day.
Hollywood Mercy was five stories of earthquake-stressed, putty-colored stucco teetering atop a scrubby knoll that overlooked downtown. The building had an inadequate parking lot, a cracked tile roof, some nice ornate moldings from the days when labor was cheap, most with chunks missing. City ambulances ringed the entry. The front vestibule was crowded with long lines of sad-looking people waiting for approval from clerks in glass cages. CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs; the same high-tech alphabet I'd seen at St. Michael's, but this place looked like something out of a black-and-white movie and it smelled like an old man's bedroom.
Mate's bedroom.
His son was recuperating on the fourth floor, in something called the Special Care Unit. An unarmed security guard was posted at the swinging doors that led to the ward, and my I.D. badge got me waved through. On the other side was a chunky corridor five doors long with a nurses' station at the end. A black man with a shaved head sat near a stack of charts, writing, and a lantern-jawed, straw-haired woman in her sixties tapped her finger to soft reggae thumping from an unseen radio. I announced myself.
"In there," said the female nurse.
"How's he doing?"
"He'll survive." She pulled out a chart. A lot thinner than Joanne Doss's encyclopedia of confusion. A Hollywood Division police report was stapled to the inside front cover.
Eldon Salcido had been found beaten and semiconscious at 6:12 A.M. in the gutter of a residential block of Poinsettia Place, north of Sunset.
Three blocks from his father's apartment on Vista.
Paramedics had transported him, and an E.R. resident had admitted him for repair and observation. Contusions, abrasions, possible concussion later ruled absent. No broken bones. Extreme mental agitation and confusion, possibly related to preexisting alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness or some combination of all three. The patient had refused to identify himself, but police at the scene had supplied the vitals. The fact that Salcido was an ex-con with a felony record was duly noted.
Restraints ordered after the patient assaulted staff.
"Who'd he hit?" I said.
"One of our predecessors, last shift," said the male nurse. "Her big crime was offering him orange juice. He knocked it out of her hand, tried to punch her. She managed to lock him in and called security."
"Another day in paradise," said the woman. "Probably a candidate for detox, but our detox unit shut down last month. You here to evaluate him for transfer?"
"Just to see him," I said. "Basic consult."
"Well, you might end up doing it for free. We can't find a Medi-Cal card on him and he isn't talking."
"That's okay."
"Hey, if you don't care, I sure don't. Room 405."
She came out from behind the counter and unlocked the door. The room was cell-size and green, with a lone, grilled window that framed an air shaft, a single bed and an I.V. bottle on a stand, not hooked up. The vital-signs monitor above the headboard was switched off and so was the tiny TV bracketed to the far wall. A low industrial buzz seeped through the window.
Donny Salcido Mate lay on his back, bare-chested, shackled with leather cuffs, staring at the ceiling. A tight, sweat-stained top sheet bound him from the waist down. His trunk was hairless, undernourished, off-white where it wasn't blue-black.
Blue coils squirmed all over him. Skin art, continuing around his back and down both arms. Pictorial arms striped by bandages. Dried blood crusted the edges of the dressings. A swatch of gauze banded his forehead, a smaller square bottomed his chin. Purpling bruises cupped both eyes and his lower lip was a slab of liver. Other dermal images peeked out from within the coils: the leering face of a nightmarishly fanged cobra, a flabby, naked woman with a sad mouth, one wide-open eye emitting a single tear. Gothic lettering spelling out "Donny, Mamacita, Big Boy."
Technically well-done tattoos, but the jumble made me want to rearrange his skin.
"A walking canvas," opined the straw-haired nurse. "Like that book by the Martian Chronicles guy. Visitor, Mr. Salcido. Ain't that grand?"
She walked out and the door hissed shut. Donny Salcido Mate didn't budge. His hair was long, stringy, the burnt bronze of old motor oil. An untrimmed beard, two shades darker, blanketed his face from cheekbone to jowl.
No resemblance to the mug shot I'd seen. That made me think of the beard Michael Burke had grown when adopting his Huey Mitchell persona in Ann Arbor. In fact, Donny's hirsute face bore a resemblance to Mitchell's. But not the same man. None of that cold, blank stagnancy in the eyes. These rheumy browns were bouncy, heated, hyperactive. Hundred percent scared prey, not predator.
I stepped closer to the bed. Donny Salcido moaned and twisted away from me. A tattoo tendril climbed up his carotid, disappearing into the beard thatch like a vining rose. Yellowing crust flecked the edges of his mustache. His lips were cracked, his nose had been broken, but not recently, probably more than once; the cartilage between his eyes was sunken, as if scooped by a dull blade, the flesh below a nest of gaping black pores. Orange splotches remained on his skin where he'd been disinfected with Betadine, but whoever had cleaned him up hadn't gotten rid of the street stink.
"Mr. Salcido, I'm Dr. Delaware."
His eyes jammed shut.
"How're you doing?"
"Let me out of here." Clear enunciation, no slur. I waited, got caught up in the skin mural. Subtle shadings, good composition. I got past that, searched for an image that would tie in with his father. Nothing obvious. The tattoos seemed to encroach on one another. This was the junction of talent and chaos.
Bumps in the crook of his arm caught my eye. Fi-brosed needle marks.
His eyes opened. "Get these things off," he said, rattling the cuffs.
"The nurses got a little upset when you tried to hit one of them."
"Never happened."
"You didn't try to hit a nurse?"
Headshake. "She aggressed on me. Tried to force juice down my windpipe. Not my esophagus, my windpipe, get it? Nasopharynx, epiglottis-know what happens when you do that?"
"You choke."
"You aspirate. Fluid straight into the lungs. Even if you don't suffocate, it creates a pleural cesspool, perfect culture for bacteria. She was out to drown me-if she couldn't accomplish that, infect me." A tongue, gray and fuzzed, caressed his lips. He gulped.
"Thirsty?" I said.
"Strangling. Get these things off of me."