They started again. WEATHER STRIPPED out of the sterile gown, head-covering, shoe covers, and surgical gloves, and tossed it all into disposal baskets and walked down to the lounge where the twins' parents were waiting.
They both stood up when Weather walked in, and she smiled and said, "It's going. I made the first incisions, and Hanson is getting started on the entry."
"How are the girls?" Larry asked.
"They're strong. Sara's heart is fine. This next part will take a while…" The parents nodded. They had a time line, knew about what each procedure would take. The bone-cutter would be working for a couple of hours, followed by the neurosurgeons.
After talking with the parents, Weather left them in the lounge and walked down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a roll. Several members of the team were there, called or waved to her when she came in; she went to the line for a roll, then joined them.
Barakat had come in well behind her, watching, got a slice of pizza and a cup of coffee, careful to keep his back turned when she might look his way. When she was seated, he carried his tray to a table behind her, his back to her. A few minutes later, after some chatter about the twins, she was telling her friends about doing an artist sketch for the police, of the man coming out of the parking structure.
Barakat finished his coffee, checked the time. Too early for a civilized call, but the Macks weren't civilized, and Lyle Mack said to call as soon as he knew who she was. WEATHER WAS IN the gallery when the operation started going sour. The first indication was simple enough, when the anesthesiologist said, "We're looking at a little thing with Sara's heart, here."
Maret nodded to an associate and backed away from the table. "What can we do?"
He and the anesthesiologist began talking about it, and the cardiologist came in and looked at all the numbers on all the machines. He wasn't sterile, so he stayed back, watching.
The anomalies continued to develop. The cardiologist ordered medication to steady the rhythm of Sara's heart, but the medication began to slow Ellen's, and finally the cardiologist told Maret that they needed to move the children to intensive care, where they could be taken off the anesthesia and treated for the heart problems.
"You see no alternative?" Maret asked.
"We could go a little longer, but then, if Sara really gets into trouble, it could take longer to bring them both back… we could wind up with an emergency." An emergency most likely meant Sara would die.
"Damnit." But Maret acceded, looked up: "Weather, we'll need to close up here." "ANOTHER FIVE THOUSAND, and all you have to do is make the one ride," Lyle Mack told Cappy. They were back in Cherries, Cappy an hour out of bed. "We've got a bike spotted for you, a Yamaha sports bike. Almost new, perfect condition. Owner keeps a spare key in a magnet box shoved up under a flap behind the seat. Joe will drop you at his garage. The guy doesn't come home until eight o'clock. You ditch the bike after the ride, Joe'll pick you up. Clean, quick."
Cappy's eyes slid over to Joe Mack. "Saw your picture on TV Like you used to look."
"I saw it; it don't look like me. Like I used to look," Joe Mack said.
"Not exactly, but it had all the right parts in the right place," Cappy said.
"Once this woman's gone, it's no problem. Can't identify somebody on the basis of a drawing-thing if the witness is gone," Lyle Mack said.
"The thing that bothers me, a little bit, is the spotter," Cappy said. "You know… that's another guy. I thought we were cutting down on the number of guys who know."
"Well… maybe we can talk about that sometime," Lyle Mack said.
Cappy smiled his minimalist smile, a slight widening of his narrow lips. "I was thinking about it at work. This could be like a job. I could be, like, you know, one of those eliminators."
"You could be," Lyle Mack said. He scratched his head, and like any small-business man, got thinking about the bureaucracy of it. Nobody ever thought about the bureaucracy, but that's most of what any small business was. He said, "I don't know how you'd set it up. You know, find guys who need the work. If any one of them folded up, you'd go down with them. But we ought to think about it. If there was some way to do it, you could sure make some bucks."
"I wish…" Joe began. Then, "I'm not sure we oughta be doing this. This is like, remember that Walt Disney cartoon with the tar baby? It's like we're getting more stuck in the tar baby."
Lyle Mack took a quick circular pace, his jowls shaking, and he said, "Joe… She saw ya, goddamnit. We gotta do something about it, while we got the chance." He looked at Cappy: "By the way, I got a question. That goddamn shotgun, even cut down… how you gonna manage that?"
"Not using the shotgun," Cappy said. He took a revolver from his pocket, wrapped in Saran Wrap, turned it sideways so the Macks could look at it. "Got it in Berdoo. Perfect bike gun. Can't touch it, because I wiped it."
"What the hell is that?" Lyle Mack asked.
"It's the Judge," Cappy said. "Three.410 shells with Four-O buckshot, that's five pellets the size of a.38 in each shell. And two.45 Colts in the other two chambers. Gotta get close, but I won't do it unless the barrel's touching her window glass."
"Dude," Lyle said, "you got the equipment." As HE AND JOE went over to get the bike, Cappy thought about killing people for money. Well, what was the difference between that and killing a guy for his bike? Maybe that was when he crossed some kind of line-the first guy he killed, he did almost out of self-protection. Later on, he did it because it was interesting.
He'd seen all kinds of killing on TV, ever since he could remember-crime movies and war movies, cop shows, people being killed every way you could think of. Machine-gunned and executed and shot with long-range rifles and stabbed and strangled and poisoned and electrocuted and beat with baseball bats, everything. Real airplanes flying into real buildings, guys blowing themselves up on the news.
You'd always get some news chick telling you how bad you should feel about it, but Cappy didn't feel much of anything, except interested, and neither, he thought, did the news chick. Or anybody else. It was entertainment, was what it was, and in real life, it was kind of more entertaining.
Like riding a bike too fast: you didn't know exactly what was going to happen. It was almost like he was killing people in a movie, except more. Like you see Bruce Willis cap somebody, that's how much he felt it, times ten. Times a hundred. He liked rerunning it, when he'd pulled one off, but he liked rerunning Bruce Willis movies, too.
The thing is, it was intense.
But, Lyle Mack was right. How would you get in touch with the people who needed the work done? Maybe you could find some big Mafia guy and contract out for it. Have to think about it. "HERE WE GO," Joe Mack said, as they turned down an alley. He pointed out the garage: "The white one with the red doors. I'll drop you off right in front of it. Nobody can see us, unless they're right in the alley. Got to get in and out quick, though."
Cappy nodded. "I can do that." He reached under the seat and pulled out a Penney's bag with the handgun in it. "See ya."
He seemed really calm, Joe Mack thought, as he dropped him. Joe Mack could hardly hold on to the steering wheel, and every time he closed his eyes, he saw the smiling faces of Mikey and Shooter, followed by a fade-in of the dead faces. It was creeping him out. He planned to drink a lot that night, so he'd get some sleep.
In fact…
He fished a pint of bourbon out from under the seat and took a pull. Looked both ways for cops, and took another one. AT THREE O'CLOCK in the afternoon, the sun was already dipping toward the horizon. Weather came out of the parking garage, looked both ways, took a left, down toward the I-94 entrance. She'd take it only a mile or so to the Cretin Avenue exit, then head south.