“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m half out of my mind!”
“Yeah, I know. I was in Key West when I got the word from Joan. We landed an hour ago.”
“Mike and the mayor will be here in a minute.” She looked around. “This is a real zoo, isn’t it? I haven’t seen this many uniforms in one place since the last...” She stopped.
“Inspector’s funeral,” Stone finished for her.
She laughed, then a man in green scrubs appeared and introduced himself as Dr. Gordon. “It went well,” he said. “He’s out of surgery and in the ICU. You can see him, if you want to, but I’m keeping him out for a few hours to let the swelling go down. He wouldn’t be able to talk.”
“I want to see him,” she said.
He led her away, and she came back a couple of minutes later. “I’m sorry I saw him,” she said. They were led into a VIP suite with a living room attached to a hospital room. A bed and a lot of equipment awaited Dino. The doctor came with them and sat them down. “Let me tell you what we’ve got here,” he said. “I’m no ME, but I’ve treated hundreds of gunshot wounds, and this is the oddest one I’ve seen.”
“Odd how?” Viv asked.
“This is how it went down, from what I’ve been told. Dino was coming out of the building with his detective, when a man in a motorcycle helmet and jacket appeared with a very short sawed-off shotgun. He fired both barrels from about twenty feet. The detective got the worst of it in the shoulder. He’s in surgery down the hall now and will be okay, after a lot of physical therapy. Dino was farther from the shooter than the detective by a few feet, and the shot pattern was expanding. There are nine pellets in a double-ought twelve-gauge shotgun shell. The detective caught half a dozen, Dino caught four — three in the side of his head and one that penetrated the soft tissue of his cheek and lodged in his tongue. He spat that out on the way to the hospital. That’s why his tongue is so swollen.
“Dino was very lucky. The pellets in his head stopped at the skull and didn’t penetrate or even fracture it. Those wounds are superficial and will heal quickly. He suffered a concussion but will be just fine, believe me. He’ll be walking and talking by tomorrow. I suggest you go home and get some rest, then come back first thing tomorrow morning. He won’t be awake until then.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Stone, I’ll take the sofa, you take the reclining chair.”
41
Stone was awakened by something being set on his lap. He opened an eye and found a young, pretty nurse beaming at him.
“Good morning!” she chirped. “Coffee’s on the coffee table, of all places.”
Viv raised her head and contemplated the food. “Thank you so much. When...”
“You can see your husband in one hour. He’s being slowly wakened now, and his swelling is down considerably.” She turned and fled the room before there were more questions.
Stone tried the eggs.
“How is the breakfast?” Viv asked, shaking her hair.
“I recommend it,” Stone said. “The sausages are particularly good, and the orange juice is freshly squeezed.”
They dug in and finished everything. Stone poured them coffee from the pot and found two copies of the Times on the table.
the headline read, and there was nothing in the story he didn’t already know.
“I’m told there’s a shower in there,” Viv said, pointing. “I eat more slowly than you, so you go ahead.”
Stone stood under a hot stream for five minutes, dried his hair with a towel, and got back into the same clothes. “Much better,” he said to Viv as he left the bathroom. “Plenty of towels in there.”
Viv emptied her coffee mug and went for the bathroom while Stone perused the Times for further news. “No suspects, shooter dressed in black motorcycle clothes and helmet, weapon: double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun, double-ought buckshot. Police detective recovering from shoulder surgery, in good spirits, commissioner sleeping.”
Stone heard a hair dryer from the bathroom, and a moment later Viv emerged looking fresh and ten years younger.
“Amazing what a shower can do for the human spirit,” she said, picking up the Times. “Nothing here we don’t already know.”
“I’m here to tell you more,” a voice said from the door. Dr. Gordon, in civvies, stood there. “Right this way.” He led them a couple of doors down the hall and into the ICU, where Dino and his detective were the only patients. The detective was out, still. They pulled up chairs to Dino’s bed.
“How do I look?” he asked, his thick tongue mangling his speech.
“Like somebody tattooed your face on a soccer ball,” Stone replied, making Viv laugh.
“Funny, that’s exactly how I feel,” Dino said.
“The doctor said you’d be walking and talking today,” Viv said.
“I’m not ready to tap-dance, but I’ll walk to my bed this morning. What does the Times say?”
Stone told him. “Haven’t seen the tabloids yet, but they’ll be more fun, if not more enlightening.”
“It was Gene Ryan,” Dino said.
“What?”
“The ex-cop who’s been dogging you. I guess he got tired of that and decided to dog me, and he got lucky.”
“Did you see him?”
“I didn’t see a damn thing, but it was Ryan. I’ve got a feeling.”
“You’ve got a feeling.”
“It was a guy on a motorcycle — that’s how he made the attempt on your car.”
“A swimmer found a motorcycle registered to him in the East River.”
“So he bought another motorcycle.”
“Did Bobby see anything?”
“The shooter and the motorcycle, said they were both all black. He didn’t see a tag or a number, but he heard it roar off.”
“I’ll pass that on to Dan Harrigan,” Stone said.
“You do that — he could use some prodding.” “Prodding” came out mangled, but the meaning was clear.
“Dr. Gordon,” Dino said, “can you get me out of here and into my room? I want a TV.”
“Is right now good for you?” Gordon asked.
“Right now is just fine.”
Gordon corralled a couple of nurses, and in five minutes Dino was down the hall in his suite and on the bed. His IV was hung on a stand and checked, and the remote controls for the bed and the TV were put at his hand. Dino got the bed just right, then turned on the TV. “Nothing,” he said after a minute.
“I expect they’ve been holding this tight, until they could make a complete statement.”
“I believe that’s happening right now,” Gordon said, looking at his watch. “I’d better get out there and lend some authority to the occasion.”
“Don’t leave it to the cops,” Stone said. “They can mangle any simple statement into unintelligibility.”
The doctor left, and the three of them sat and looked at each other.
“Okay, what now?” Dino asked.
“Now you get better,” Viv said. “Take a few days, get it right. I don’t want you to go back to work too early, then faint at your desk.”
“No police commissioner of New York City, not since Teddy Roosevelt, at least, has ever fainted at his desk.”
“Then let’s not start now,” she said.
“Listen to the woman, Dino,” Stone said.
“I always do.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah, tell Dan Harrigan to find Gene Ryan, and I don’t care if they shoot him on sight.”
“Got it,” Stone said, getting up. “I’m going to leave you two to whatever married people say to each other when one of them has a swollen head.”