Blood Work полностью

THERE WERE NO taxi cabs waiting at the curb outside the emergency room. McCaleb decided to change his plan. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and was growing weak with hunger. He felt a low-grade migraine beginning to throb at the base of his skull and knew if he didn’t refuel, it would soon crawl over the top of him and encase his whole head. He decided to call Buddy Lockridge to come get him, then have a turkey and coleslaw sandwich from across the street at Jerry’s Deli while he waited. The more he thought about the good sandwiches they made over there, the hungrier he got. Once Buddy arrived, they could drive over to Video GraFX Consultants in Hollywood to pick up the tape and the hard copy of the frame Tony Banks had enhanced for him.

He quickly stepped back into the ER lobby and over to the pay phone alcove. There was a young woman on one of the phones tearfully telling someone about somebody else who was apparently being treated in the ER. McCaleb noticed that one nostril and her lower lip were pierced with silver hoops connected by a chain of safety pins.

“He didn’t know me, he didn’t know Danny,” she wailed. “He’s totally fucked up and they’re also calling the cops.”

Momentarily distracted by the safety pins and wondering what would happen if the woman yawned, McCaleb picked up the phone furthest from her and tried to tune her out. He was about to give up on Lockridge after six rings-on a boat like the Double-Down, you can’t be more than four rings away-when Buddy finally picked up.

“Yo, Buddy, ready to go to work?”

“Terry?”

Before McCaleb could answer, Lockridge’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“Man, where are you at?”

“Cedars. I need you to pick me up. What’s the matter?”

“Well, I’ll pick you up but I’m not sure you want to come back here.”

“Buddy, listen to me. Skip the bullshit and tell me exactly what is going on.”

“I’m not sure, man, but you’ve got people all over your boat.”

“What people?”

“Well, two of them are those two guys in the suits who were here yesterday.”

Nevins and Uhlig.

“They are inside my boat?”

“Yeah, inside. Also, they pulled the cover off your Cherokee and have a tow truck out there. I think they’re going to take it. I went over there to see what was going on and they almost put me down on the boards. Showed me their badges and a search warrant and told me to get lost. They weren’t nice about it. They’re searching the boat.”

“Shit!”

McCaleb looked over and saw that his outburst had drawn the attention of the crying woman. He turned his back toward her.

“Buddy, where are you, up top or below?”

“Below.”

“Can you see my boat right now?”

“Sure. I’m looking out the galley window.”

“How many people you see?”

“Well, some are inside. But altogether I think there are four or five of them over there. And there’s a couple more with the Cherokee.”

“Is there a woman?”

“Yeah.”

McCaleb described Jaye Winston as best as he could and Lockridge confirmed that a woman matching the description was on the boat.

“She’s in the salon right now. It looked like before when I was looking at her that she was just sort of watching.”

McCaleb nodded. His mind was running over the possibilities of what was happening. Each way he looked at it, things added up the same way. The fact that Nevins and Uhlig knew he had FBI documents would not have engendered such a response-a warrant search with a full team. There was only one other possibility. He had become an official suspect. Accepting this, he thought about how Nevins and Uhlig would conduct an evidentiary search.

“Buddy,” he said, “have you seen them taking anything off the boat? I’m talking about in plastic bags or brown paper bags, like from Lucky’s.”

“Yeah, there’s been some bags. They put them up on the dock. But you don’t have to worry, Terror.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think they’re going to find what they’re really looking for.”

“What are you-”

“Not on the phone, man. You want me to come get you now?”

McCaleb stopped. What was he saying? What was going on?

“Hang tight,” he finally said. “I’ll call you right back.”

McCaleb hung up and immediately dropped in another quarter. He called his own phone number. No one answered. The machine answered and he heard his own tape-recorded voice telling him to leave a message. After the beep he said, “Jaye Winston, if you’re there, pick up.”

He waited for a beat of silence and was about to say it again when the phone was picked up. He felt a slight sense of relief when he recognized Winston’s voice.

“This is Winston.”

“This is McCaleb.”

That was all. He figured he would see how she wanted to play it. He would be better able to judge where he stood by the way she handled the call.

“Uh… Terry,” she said. “How did you-where are you?”

“Whatever relief he was feeling now started to slip away. Its replacement was dread. He had given her the opportunity to talk to him obliquely, perhaps in code, acting as though she was talking to a fellow deputy or even Captain Hitchens. But she had used his name.