Revenant Rising (50 page)
These he sets out on the narrow table that serves as a desk, settles in a wobbly chair, and opens the notebook several pages in from the front in case he ever wants to write down something that happened before yesterday.
Of yesterday’s happenings, the only place to begin is at the beginning—when Colin Elliot drove by him at a crawl while he was parked near the only way in or out of Old Quarry Court. That was at eight-fourteen in the morning, either very early or very late for a rock star to be awake and, by itself, not important enough to write down. But everything else is.
He makes a list of what he saw after he shadowed Elliot on foot and watched from the same bushes the old woman jumped out of the other day.
Foreign car – Black Jaguar sedan
No hired driver
No bodyguards
Rock star taller than thought
Appears to be in better shape than thought
Lawyerwoman ten times better looking than newspaper pictures
He had to move a ways out of the bushes and chance showing himself to get a good look at her when she came out of the house to greet the rock star. Then he was left to shrink back into hiding and puzzle why—if she’s his new girlfriend—she didn’t kiss the rock star or even shake his hand when she greeted him in the driveway.
What that behavior proved, Hoop still can’t guess, but her coming out of the house situated at 13 Old Quarry Court proved that luck and know-how did bring him to the right address. He writes that down and underlines it.
The next part he has to think through before putting pen to paper. He won’t have any trouble remembering what it was like to follow the black Jaguar when Elliot drove out of the court approximately an hour later with the Chandler woman in the passenger seat. And he needn’t write down how much that reminded him of the Northern Michigan chase back in ’84. He does, however, need to write down that the rock star didn’t seem to know he was being followed, and if he did, he didn’t seem to care.
After that, he starts in with everything he can remember about the place the rock star led him—a place that didn’t make sense at first, like maybe Elliot was only using the driveway to turn around.
Sawyer Manor Nursing Home
Alpine Road off Route 23 town of Wolcott New Jersey
Unlocked emergency exit at back of building
Lawyerwoman carried something that could have been food
She and Elliot stayed inside for three-quarters of an hour
To find that much out he had to count on the rock star remaining a blind jackassed-fool and hope the lawyerwoman didn’t have eyes in the back of her head. He had to be as bold as he was in Los Angeles when he got into the hotel room by acting like he belonged there; he had to act like he had right and reason to be where he was when he parked at the rear of the nursing home and sat in the El Camino like maybe he was waiting for somebody.
Writing any of that down would be boastful and overproud of the way he handled himself, so he begins a fresh page with observations made after Elliot and the Chandler woman came out the “do-not-enter” door they used earlier and drove away. When he’s done, these notes fill two pages and go on about how easy it was to find out that there was a patient with the same name as the lawyerwoman, that this more-dead-than-alive patient was salted away in a room near the faulty emergency exit and, going by the lineup of family photos on the windowsill of the patient’s room, that the empty old man was Laurel Chandler’s father.
He pauses to shoo away the remembered smells and images of the aged crazies that tried to claim him as their Sunday visitor when he freely investigated the place. Then, for what it’s worth, he draws a little diagram of the nursing home, pinpointing Benjamin Chandler’s room and the emergency door shortcut in and out of that end of the building. To this he tacks on his low opinion of loose security, careless workers, and nursing homes in general before realizing he’s carrying on like one of those soreheads that write letters to newspapers about wrongs that will never be righted.
A quick run-through of what he’s written so far satisfies him that it’s more operations manual than schoolgirl diary, and a quick look at his watch says he better start paying attention to the TV. He turns up the volume, readies a fresh page in the notebook, and hopes the bad behavior of some other rock star hasn’t made old news of the Colin Elliot story. His hope is met.
At three-twenty-two p.m. on Monday, April 6, 1987—he scribbles time and date—Colin Elliot is the lead story on the music channel newsbreak. The announcer says that after a late-night Manhattan recording session, Elliot was seen by paparazzi offering what appeared to be a controlled substance to Rayce Vaughn, another rock star, described as recently out of rehab and set to embark on a much-heralded comeback tour.
Hoop writes this down as fast as he can while the announcer goes on to say that Elliot took violent exception when an attempt was made to photograph the presumed drug exchange, and in the ensuing melee the photographer was thrown to the pavement outside a downtown recording studio, thereby smashing his face and camera. As the report continues, he learns that Elliot was restrained by stunned security people, remanded to police custody, and has since been released on his own recognizance with a court appearance set for early June.”
Hoop captures nearly every one of these words, then has to let a few go by so he can concentrate on information about the victim.
Sid Kaplan was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph’s Hospital in the West Village, where he’s undergoing treatment for a broken jaw and multiple lacerations. The alleged controlled substance was determined at the scene to be an over-the-counter headache remedy in powder form.
The announcer’s already moved on to another story by the time Hoop gets this all down and underlines the entire entry for further study. He sets aside the composition book and pen and flexes his writing hand a few times. When’s the last time he wrote more than a shopping list, never mind at breakneck speed? He could get overproud of what he’s accomplished just now if he didn’t have a sandwich to eat and thought to give to what this fresh information means.
The victim is automatically an ally for having been roughed up by the rock star, he reasons as he starts in on the sandwich. For being in pursuit of the rock star when this happened—he takes another couple of bites—this guy is automatically of the brotherhood that included Cliff Grant. But that doesn’t have to mean this Sid Kaplan guy has the same perverted mindset as Grant, he tells himself as he wolfs down the rest of the sandwich and licks his fingers. And if the hospital he’s in is anything like that nursing home yesterday, getting in to see him won’t be a problem.
A quick look at his Manhattan map shows that St. Joseph’s Hospital is in the same general neighborhood as Cravings and the Silent Woman Pub, so he can get there on the same subway train he rode last Friday.
He stashes all stray items in the gym bag, takes it and the tool case with him when he leaves. On the way through the lobby, he doesn’t bother scavenging for discarded newspapers; instead, he goes straight for the vending machines outside the main door, pays in his money and comes away with clean fresh copies of every paper available.
At the approach to the park-and-ride lot, Hoop changes his mind, brakes hard and peels off in another direction—in the direction of the Union storage facility. If the banged-up photographer is anything at all like Cliff Grant—perverted or not—he’ll want more than the promise of payment, and chances are there’s more than one kind of payment he’ll be willing to accept.
After a quick stop at a Shop Rite market for a box of plastic bags with zipper closings, he goes straight to the self storage unit in Union where he works the locks and shuts himself in before doing anything else.
Without saying a word to Audrey—it’s too soon to get her hopes up—he adds a known amount of cash to the dwindled supply in the tool case. Then he takes great pains not to spill overmuch when he transfers a generous amount of dope from the punctured package into one of the quart-size plastic bags he just bought. He tests the seal on the bag a couple of times before stuffing it in the tool case alongside the cash-money, then puts everything back the way it was.
On the bus into Manhattan, he sits in the back, some distance from the few other passengers on board. The tool case is within easy reach on the seat next to him, and there’s plenty of room to read the newspapers even though they’re not the kind that open wide.
Remembering that the gossip sheets came in extra handy when he leafed through Gibby Lester’s coffee-stained examples on the subway train, he hopes for similar today. But that won’t be the case because the three papers he’s looked at so far have more to say about Aurora Elliot than the rock star, and they all say something bad. He pores over every single tabloid—some for the second time—and her name stands out in every single story about Colin Elliot, and every single mention of her is false and hateful.
Hoop flings the papers aside; he’d tear them all to shreds if he thought the other bus passengers wouldn’t notice.
Inside the Port Authority terminal, he goes along as though nothing was bothering him. Same on the subway train, where he decides to get off early, at 14
th
Street, and walk the remaining ten blocks to the hospital. The walk does him good, so when he approaches St. Joseph’s Receiving Hospital and Emergency Center, he’s not as riled as he was thirty minutes ago.
He mixes in with the steady stream of people entering the main door and watches what they do the way he watched the comings and goings yesterday at the nursing home. Following their lead, he goes to the visitor’s desk where he’ll have to sign his name and write down who he wants to visit—something he didn’t have to do yesterday.
Casual-like, he pulls his stiff new Yankees baseball cap low over his eyes and hunches down in his equally stiff new Levi’s jacket, but he needn’t have bothered. When it’s his turn, the woman in charge doesn’t even look up while he writes what’s required; she doesn’t even glance his way when she forks over a clip-on badge and tells him to go to floor seven and follow the green arrows to room number 733.
Nowhere along the way does anyone appear to notice that he’s carrying a tool case. On the off chance someone does, he decides to use the fire stairs.
On the seventh floor, he enters a scene made familiar by yesterday’s exposure to the sick and dying. Every few yards, he passes someone in a wheelchair or leaning on a walker or pushing one of those hat rack things rigged up with bottles and tubing. And just like yesterday, there are no caretakers seeing to any of them, and when he passes the nurses station, no one’s there. In his head, he writes another of those letter-to-the-editor type complaints as he follows the green arrows painted on the wall and counts down the room numbers.
Sid Kaplan is in a room by himself and, unlike yesterday’s patient, very aware he’s being visited by a stranger. You might even say he’s alarmed. And he should be because he’s got something to hide.
The victim’s not near as bad off as was said on the TV report. His jaw shows no sign of being broken when he hollers out a challenge, and the multiple lacerations he’s supposed to have are nothing more than scratches. His nose looks broken, but not recently; he’s missing a couple of teeth along one side, but that doesn’t look like a recent alteration either.
“Hey! I said who the hell are you?” the bedridden faker hollers for the second time and hoists himself up on his elbows.
Hoop retreats a polite step or two, introduces himself by name, and states what brought him here.