There was a lobby with hospital lobby furnishings, plush orange chairs, bare coffee tables, nondescript prints of flowers on the green walls. Out of that lobby was one door that led inside to the home and in front of that door, behind a counter, was a guard. He wore blue with a cop hat and as I got closer I could see the gun. A large register squatted atop the counter.
“I’m here to visit one of the patients,” I said. “A Mrs. Connie Lamb.”
“Are you family?” asked the guard. His nametag said James P. Strickling. He was an older man, with deep lines of dissatisfaction fanning out from either side of his pinched mouth.
“A friend of the family,” I said.
“After eight I can’t let you in unless you’re family,” he said.
“I’m sort of a cousin,” I said.
“Well, then, I sort of can’t let you in,” he said.
I knew what that meant. I could read it in that dissatisfied face as clear as a tabloid headline. I slipped my wallet from my back pocket and pulled out a twenty. “I just want to say hello.”
He looked at me.
I pulled out another twenty. “Just to cheer up the old lady.”
He looked at me.
I opened my wallet wide and stared inside. I pulled out a five and two ones. “That’s all I have.”
“That’s not enough,” he said. And then he laughed, a big hearty laugh that shocked me, coming as it was from this dour-faced man behind the counter. “Take your money back, son. If I could be bought I wouldn’t be worthy of this uniform, now would I?”
I took a closer look. It was a private security agency uniform, some sleazy outfit that hired retired guys off the street, gave them a gun, and stuck them behind a booth as fodder should anything go wrong. What I figured, as I embarrassedly picked up my money, was that the uniform wasn’t worthy of this Mr. Strickling.
He picked up his phone. “I’ll get an attendant, we’ll see if a visit’s all right.”
While a heavy woman in a nurse’s outfit waited for me on the other side of the door, I was required to record my entrance in the register. Strickling checked my driver’s license and then pointed out where I should sign. I signed and he filled in the date and time.
“You’ll have to sign out, too,” he said. Then he winked. “Enjoy your visit, Mr. Carl.”
I followed the heavy woman down the hallway, past a meeting area with a television on, past a recreation area with men and women sitting in their chairs and playing chess or crocheting or just plain shaking. And there were the rooms, of course, many with their doors open, the residents lying in bed, waiting.
“I’m sure Mrs. Lamb will appreciate your visit,” said the woman attendant. “All she ever sees is her son.”
“He here today?” I asked.
“Not today,” she said.
“Are visitors allowed to stay overnight?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said, looking at me sideways.
“I didn’t think so.”
This is what I had been told by Veronica and Chester both. I had been told that Chuckie Lamb was visiting his mother the night that Bissonette had been beaten to comatosity, that he had stayed overnight because she was especially ill that day, that he had been in the nursing home the whole of the time of the beating. I didn’t buy it. Chuckie didn’t seem the type to care that much. And did I mention the smell? It was a medley of favorites: cat piss and overcooked string beans and the sharp scent of the alcohol swab they give you before they prick you at the doctor’s. I couldn’t see Chuckie spending more than five minutes at a time in that smell.
“Mrs. Lamb,” said the attendant in a loud voice, leaning over the bed once we were inside her private room. Chuckie Lamb, the dutiful son, had sprung for the best. There were flowers in a vase and nice curtains and on a table was a boom box and a stack of cassettes, opera. “Mrs. Lamb. You have a visitor.” She straightened up, smiled at me, and stood by the door while I approached the bed.
Mrs. Lamb stared past me, up at the ceiling, her gums working one against the other, her eyes darting back and forth, back and forth, not seeing me in their journeys back and forth. She was a small, toad-faced woman, shriveled, her skin, even with its deep cracks, tight against her face.
“Hello, Aunt Connie,” I said.
Just the gums worked in response to my greeting.
“She likes it if you hold her hand,” said the attendant.
It sat atop her sheet like a withered claw. I leaned over and touched it, barely able to hide my revulsion. “You look good, Aunt Connie.”
Just the gums working. She seemed as delighted to have her hand held by me as I was to hold it. I had wanted to ask her some questions, see if I could get anything definitive from her about her son’s alibi, but I wouldn’t get it out of that face, those lips, those god-awful gums.
“Doesn’t say much, does she?” I said when we were out of there.
“Not anymore,” said the attendant. “Your aunt’s been very sick. There were times we didn’t think she’d make it, but she’s stronger than she looks.”
“When she gets seriously ill, is it possible then for a visitor to stay over?” I asked.
She didn’t stop walking me back to the lobby as she spoke. “If we believe the end might be imminent, and there is a private room, then sometimes we let immediate family stay. But no nephews, Mr. Carl, just spouses, siblings, or children.”
“Does cousin Chuckie come often?” I asked.
“All the time,” she said with a smile. “He’s a very devoted son. I’ll be sure to let him know you were here.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said. “We’re not so close anymore.”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Carl,” said Strickling when I had been deposited back outside into that lobby. “Those books are private records.”
“But it’s very important,” I said, reaching again for my wallet and then stopping when he shook his head. “Listen, Mr. Strickling. I’ll level with you. I’m a lawyer.”
“Well in that case…” said Strickling, laughing at me.
Being a lawyer might have meant something at some time, but not anymore. I knew I was in trouble when I was forced to resort to the truth. “I’m representing a man accused of a murder, Mr. Strickling, a murder I think Mr. Lamb might be involved in. He says he was here overnight the night of the murder. I just want to check it out.”
“Oh, right. I seen you on TV,” said Strickling. “You’re representing Councilman Moore.”
“His aide, actually. I just want to know if Chuckie was here the night Zack Bissonette was beaten into a coma.”
“I saw Bissonette play down at the Vet,” said Strickling. “What a bum. I remember once, ninth inning of a tie ball game, slow bounder to second, the guy kicks it. He kicks it. Like he thought he was playing soccer. Two runs scored.” He took a deep breath. “Well, seeing as you were on TV and all, what’s that date again?”
That was it, I guess. Lawyers were as nothing in the new scheme of things, as were scholars and doctors and businessmen. But have your face flashed for a few seconds on TV and all of a sudden you were somebody to be trusted, to be revered, someone to do favors for. I gave him the date and he searched below the counter for the applicable register. With a heave he lifted it up and turned it around to let me look. There it was, Chuckie’s signature going in at 9:37 P.M. the night of the murder and not leaving until 6:45 the next morning.