“Listen to me,” she said. “Get yourself to a hospital. Now.”
“Ma, are you crazy? I go to the hospital with a gunshot wound, and they call the cops.”
“Teddy, I’d rather visit you in jail than identify your body at the morgue. A bullet to the abdomen can be lethal. God knows how many of your organs got torn up. Get your ass to an ER before you bleed to death internally.”
“My organs are fine,” Teddy said. “You’re thinking like I got shot in the belly button. That’s not what happened. It’s more like the bullet went through the fat parts that hang off the side.”
“Love handles?” Annie said.
“Yeah. That’s not so bad, right?”
“Of course it’s bad. You want to get an infection and die of sepsis? We have to treat it right away. Where are you?”
“I just got off the subway. I’m standing outside the station.”
Annie gritted her teeth. The subway. The station. Teddy had never mastered the art of spelling out details. “Which station?” she demanded.
“Yours, Ma. I took the N train to Astoria Boulevard. I’m right here under the el by the Pizza Palace on 31st Street.”
“Jesus, you’re right around the corner?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to just come up to the apartment in case the cops are watching it.”
“Smart thinking, kiddo,” she said.
The catchphrase was a throwback to Teddy’s grade-school days, when he was a permanent fixture in the slow learners’ class.
Early on, Buddy came up with a plan. “The kid may not be too bright,” he said, “but we can’t be the ones to reinforce it. Our job is to con him into thinking he’s smarter than he is.”
From that day forward, whenever Teddy did or said something that would be normal for an average kid, Annie and Buddy rewarded him, sometimes with a sweet treat, sometimes a little gift. But the positive feedback that always made Teddy the happiest was those three little words: Smart thinking, kiddo.
It still worked. “Thanks, Ma,” Teddy said. “So what do I do now?”
“I’ll come for you,” she said, lifting the lid of the trunk where Buddy had kept the tricks of his trade. “First I’ve got to find something for you to wear so nobody recognizes you. Now just promise me you’ll stay out of sight till I get there.”
“I’m starved.”
“Promise, damn it.”
“Okay, okay, I promise.”
She hung up the phone. “The boy is in deep shit this time, Buddy,” she called out to the urn containing the ashes of her dead husband as she rifled through the wigs, props, and collection of uniforms that had helped the con man pass as anything from a meter reader to an airline pilot.
Two minutes later, she had what she needed, raced out of the apartment, and then checked every parked car on Hoyt Avenue. Twenty-four minutes after that, Teddy Ryder walked through the front door of his mother’s building in plain sight.
Annie was positive that there were no cops watching, but even if there were, she doubted they’d realize that the man with shoulder-length blond hair wearing a bright orange safety vest and carrying a red insulated pizza bag was the one every cop in the city was looking for.
Chapter 25
Teddy put the pizza box on the kitchen counter, pulled out a slice, and grabbed a can of Bud from the refrigerator.
“Alcohol dehydrates you,” Annie said, snatching the beer out of his hand and dumping it into the sink. She opened one of the bottles of orange Gatorade she’d brought home from the Pizza Palace and handed it to him.
Teddy inhaled half the slice and took a swig of the neon-colored drink. “You ever patch up a bullet wound when you were a nurse?” he asked.
“Nurse? I was a candy striper. I learned a few things from watching the nurses, but mostly I stole morphine ampoules to sell to the junkies in my neighborhood. Now take off that stupid wig and strip down to your shorts. I’m going next door to borrow a few medical supplies.”
She took a tote bag from the hall closet and left. By the time she got back, Teddy was three slices into the pie, and his jeans and shirt were on the floor.
“That’s the beauty of living in a building full of old people,” Annie said, setting down the tote bag. “It’s like an all-night pharmacy. They have everything you need for a do-it-yourself gunshot wound repair kit.”
She handed him a bottle of pills. “Amoxicillin,” she said. “Take four now, and then we’ll space them out, four a day.”
Teddy didn’t argue. He popped four of the antibiotics and washed them down with Gatorade. Annie spread a sheet on the sofa and pulled a bottle of Smirnoff vodka from the tote bag. “It’s not the pricey stuff,” she said, “but it’ll do.”
“I thought you said no alcohol,” Teddy said.
“This isn’t for drinking. Lie down so I can see where you got hit.”
Teddy stretched out on the sofa, and Annie studied his bloodied left side. “You’re lucky,” she said. “It’s a clean shot. The bullet went in the front and out the back, but I’m sure it dragged pieces of fabric from your dirty shirt along with it. We have to kill the bacteria before it spreads. Bite down on that throw pillow.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s going to hurt like hell, and I don’t want you to wake up the neighbors when you start screaming.”
“Ma, I’m not going to scre—”
She poured the eighty-proof Smirnoff disinfectant on the wound, and Teddy let out a piercing shriek that he managed to stifle with the pillow.
“Next time maybe you’ll listen to your mother,” Annie said, dabbing his skin with a soft cloth. “When I tell you it’s going to hurt, it’s going to hurt. And when I told you Raymond Davis was no good for you, I was right. But no, you had to wait for him to shoot you before you took my word for it.”
“Don’t talk bad about Raymond, Ma. He didn’t shoot me. He’s dead. The guy who shot me shot him first.”
“Jesus, Teddy. What the hell were you two involved in that someone would want to kill you?”
“This guy Jeremy hired us to steal some shit, so we did, and then when it was time to pay us off, he decided to kill us instead.”
Annie reached into her tote bag and took out a box of adult diapers. She opened one and placed the absorbent fabric so it covered both sides of the wound. “Stand up and hold this so I can wrap it,” she said.
Teddy did as he was told.
“What did you steal?” Annie asked as she began wrapping an ACE bandage around Teddy’s waist.
“A diamond necklace.”
“I can’t believe it. You robbed a jewelry store?”
“No,” Teddy said, his head down. “A limo. There was this actress in the back, and Jeremy knew she’d be wearing this expensive necklace, and—”
“Oh my God. Elena Travers?”
Teddy didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“You killed Elena Travers?” Annie said.
“I didn’t shoot her, Ma. Honest. Raymond did.”
“But you had a gun.”
“Yeah.”
“And what’s the one cardinal rule that your father taught you?”
“No guns.”
“And now that poor actress is dead, and you’re facing life in prison. Who is this Jeremy, anyway? What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know. Raymond did all the up-front work. Tonight was the first time I saw him. He was supposed to give us ninety thousand for the necklace, but Raymond didn’t trust him, so when Jeremy shows up, Raymond tells him we’re not giving him the necklace until he hands over his gun.”
“And of course he did,” Annie said. “No arguments.”
“Right. So then I go and get the necklace and put it on the coffee table.”