The Last Refuge (18 page)

“We’re doing a performance audit on your area,” the voice on the other end of line said, or something like it.

“Sounds fine. When you’re done we’ll come over and do one on yours.”

“We’re hoping this can be as undisruptive as possible.”

“That’s good. Because shit like this plays hell with our performance.”

I knew most of the people who ran the company. I’d say hi to them in the halls and occasionally stand in front of the board of directors, priestly looking guys in shiny gray suits and white hair, and tell them how I was looking after our $45-million divisional budget. They never looked all that happy or secure. I guess you can make your own crap to live in even when you earn enough in stock options alone to buy a medium-sized city. I think some of them actually liked me. I was one of the few people in the company who did something tangible, who made things you could touch. I symbolized for them a mythical time when substance was presumably valued over style.

But still, when it all hit, they watched in silence through neutral eyes, their minds preoccupied with portfolio management and grandchildren.

One day two big security guards, black guys I’d greet every morning as I walked through the parking lot, stood and watched me empty out the desk Abby gave me. I left it with the schefflera. It didn’t seem right to break up the set.

They helped me throw the stuff from the desk into a dumpster behind the building. We talked about our kids and the sad decline of the normally aspirated big block V-8 engine.

I thought of them when I came to in Southampton Hospital, watching a huge dark brown and white mass take shape as a Jamaican physician.

“Hey ’der, you know what I’m saying to you?” I heard him say through all the wet glop stuffed inside my brain.

I think I nodded.

“Dat’s a yes? You call dat a yes?”

“Yuff.”

“Oh, so dat’s a yes. I get it.”

His hair was cut close to his scalp and he wore neat gold wire-rim glasses. His face would have been more handsome if it was smaller. The white medical coat stretched impossibly across his shoulders and chest, and a pink button-down Oxford cloth shirt showed at the neck. He had about a half dozen pens and a few evil-looking chrome instruments stuck in his front pocket. He leaned into me and adjusted something attached to the side of my skull. Nausea crept around inside my gut. My head felt like it filled up half the room. There was an IV in my arm. I looked down at it.

“Get it out.”

When I spoke my tongue lit up like a firecracker. I felt a big lump on the side when I moved it around my mouth.

“Can’ do dat now,” he looked down at my chart, “Mr. A-cquillo. You need what’s in dere I’m sure.”

I shook my head.

“No painkillers.”

“You don’ know what you’re askin’.”

I nodded as furiously as my head would let me. Panic began to bubble up in my throat.

“Rather have the pain.”

Some people are afraid of snakes. Or airplanes. With me it’s drugs. Especially painkillers.

“Get it out.” I shook the tube. The Jamaican’s powerful hand clamped down on my arm. He studied me carefully. Warmth flowed from his hand.

“Don’ do dat, now. You’re my responsibility.”

I stared at him. His face softened.

“I go get the attending. But you gotta stay still and not do anyt’ing loony, you know?”

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch.

“’Bout five-tirty.”

“I gotta get out of here.”

A broad smile lit his face as he shook his head.

“Oh no, Mr. Acquillo, you don’ go anywhere till we say. You got a concussion der prob’ly.”

“I left a dog in my car.”

He shook his head again.

“No, ladies brung the car wit’ the dog. He’s at the vet’s ’round the corner. Good place. He’s all set. We do dis all the time.”

“He’s gonna hate that. I got to get outta here.”

“I go talk to attending, he come in here and explain your situation.”

I couldn’t seem to keep my head up off the pillow, so I set it back down.

“Okay.”

“Okay, but you gotta not try to take off on me.”

I nodded.

“You promise me, or I’ll tie you down,” he said.

I nodded.

“Sorry. Not your fault,” I told him.

He let go of my arm and patted it. I lay there when he left and took stock. I was conscious. I knew I was in a hospital—I assumed it was Southampton. I could move my head and all my limbs and digits. I could see, though the outlines were a little fuzzy. I could open and shut my mouth, despite that wad of something on the side of my tongue. It made it difficult to probe around the inside of my mouth, but it felt like I had all my teeth—both the real and the gold ones I got because of Rene Ruiz.

I was in an area contained by rolling room dividers and white curtains. There was a window open nearby and wind from the Atlantic was busting in and flipping through a newspaper on the table next to my bed. No flowers. No get-well cards. No worried-looking relatives.

Aside from a hernia I fixed a long time ago, I wasn’t very experienced with hospitals. I don’t like them. I don’t like giving myself to somebody else to look after. Plus, it’s wicked hard to get a vodka on the rocks or a pack of cigarettes out of anybody.

The attending doctor was a skinny little guy with shiny skin and hair like balls of single-ought steel wool. He looked me right in the eyes and shook my hand.

“Hey, welcome to the conscious. How’d you sleep?”

“Hard to say.”

He read the chart and nervously clicked a retractable ballpoint pen.

“Markham tells me you tried to go AWOL.”

“Don’t want the IV. Don’t like painkillers.”

“Prefer the pain?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell for?”

“That stuff makes me dopey.”

“Some consider that a nice side benefit.”

“Please. Get it out.”

He spun the bag around and looked at the label.

“Well, we got a lot of important stuff in here— like an anticoagulant. Don’t want you pulling a stroke on us. You do realize you’ve had a traumatic blow to the head?”

“Two.”

“Pardon?”

“Two traumatic blows to the head. Plus one to the gut and a kick in the teeth.”

“That reminds me,” said the doctor, pulling open my jaw and looking into my mouth. “You left a piece of your tongue back there at the Playhouse.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Not a big one. Otherwise, you’re in pretty good shape. Just a slight concussion and a gash. No bone damage.”

“Hard head.”

He reset his heavy horn-rimmed glasses on his nose and looked at my chart again. I wondered if it recorded my manifold sins and omissions. He looked up at me again as if struck with a new thought.

“These things can be cumulative. Going by your face you’ve been through this before. You made it this far without brain damage, but I wouldn’t push your luck.”

“Wasn’t my idea.”

“Okay. None of my business.”

“Guy suckered me. Hit like a bastard.”

Markham came into the room.

“Hey, dat’s more like it. Actin’ civil with the attending.”

“So it was definitely an assault,” said the doctor. “The police were curious.”

“Who told them?”

“We told them. We always tell them when there’s a fight. They’ll want to talk to you.”

“If you call a Town cop named Joe Sullivan you’d be doing me a favor. He knows me.”

“I could do that.”

“After all the trouble you give us we supposed to be doin’ you favors?” said Markham.

I looked up at him.

“I could’ve used you the other night.”

“Yeah? Who say I’m on your side?”

“We put about five stitches in your head,” said the doctor, “where you probably caught a towel dispenser or stall divider. Your tongue’ll just have to grow back on its own. Other than that, we’ll keep an eye on you for another four hours, then throw you out of here.”

“The curse of the managed care,” said Markham.

“Don’t start,” said the doc.

I wiggled the IV.

“Do me a favor and unplug this thing. I’ll sign whatever you want.”

They were both looking at me. Markham looked bemused.

“He don’ want any additives. Give him the heebie-jeebies.”

The doc shrugged.

“Okay. Your body.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

It took about an hour for a nurse to come and unhook the IV. After that I fell asleep and dreamed of flying fists and frightening confrontations with slobbering demons and polar bears. Mangled corpses of old, white-haired people stacked up like cordwood. The constant look of disgust on Abby’s face, and other nightmarish images. This is why I don’t like having clear liquids pumped into my veins from little plastic bags. It never goes well.

The headache woke me up. I pushed the button for a nurse and got Markham instead. He looked happy.

“Havin’ second thoughts?” he asked me.

“Hurts too much to think.”

“Ha. Don’ go blamin’ me.”

“You on one of those eighty-hour shifts?”

When he spread his arms they seemed to swallow the entire room.

“Someone got to keep de place in business.”

He checked my pulse out of reflex. He pulled a pen-sized examination light out of his front pocket and clicked it on. His lips pursed when he shot it in my eyes.

“Not too bad, considerin’.”

“That’s a comfort.”

He clicked off the light and stood straight, still frowning with concentration.

“You got any beef with aspirin?” he asked me.

“Works on a hangover.”

“It’ll help.”

He scribbled on my chart and yelled to a passing nurse. She went off for the aspirin.

“Say, Doc.”

He looked up from my chart.

“Were you here when they brought me in?”

“Sure. I got you from the ER.”

“How’d I get here?”

“Some nice ladies drive you, I t’ink. Don’t really know. Der were some cops, but we shoo dem away.”

“Two or three ladies?”

He shrugged and shook his massive head.

“I only saw two. Dark-haired skinny one and a blond-haired bigger one. Gave me her card. Couldn’t tell if she want to sell me a house or jump down my pants,” he said cheerfully.

“She’s in real estate. It’s more or less the same thing.”

“I can ask the folks in the ER, but they don’ usually see nothing but the patient. Takes some concentration, that job.”

“That’s okay. Just wondering.”

“I could ask.”

“Nah. Just curious.”

He tucked his pen back in his pocket and patted the area around my head bandage. His enormous hands moved with a practiced ease. He seemed content with the job they’d done.

“Headache’s not the only noise you got in der, Mr. Acquillo. I can see that.”

“Probably what’s keeping me awake.”

“I can fix ’at. Offer’s still open.”

“Aspirin’s looking pretty good.”

“We’ll get the dressing changed in a little while. You want anyt’ing, ask for me.”

“Could be a big order.”

He gave my forearm a quick squeeze, leaving the full strength of his grip in reserve. Enough to crack walnuts.

“That’s why you call me. I’m big enough to do it.”

I actually slept again for another hour before Sullivan woke me up. He was in civilian clothes—jeans and cotton shirt, with a nylon jacket. He stood over me and shook his head.

“You should have told me,” he said.

“What?”

“You were out. We didn’t know how bad you were hurt. I didn’t know who to call or how to find out, so just for the hell of it I checked the priors database. Found a bunch of charges in Stamford and White Plains.”

“No convictions.”

“Reformed, eh?”

“I got suckered. I didn’t even see him.”

“That was my other question.”

“Hit me from behind. Twice.”

“People at the club thought it might be some big guy with a pinky ring. Was in the head the same time as you, only nobody saw anything.”

“It was full of people.”

“The door was shut.”

I shook my head. It hurt my tongue to talk.

“Don’t remember a big guy, looked Italian, maybe?” Sullivan asked again, “Black hair? Black clothes?”

“Black boots. That was the view from the floor.”

“Any idea why?”

“No.”

“No conspiracy theory?”

“Just some asshole I must’ve pissed off without knowing it. I’m good at that.”

“Cop in Stamford said you were a pro fighter.”

“Long time ago. Not much of a career. Trust me.”

“I don’t exactly, Mr. Acquillo.”

I started to wish I’d taken Markham up on his painkillers. I laid back and closed my eyes.

“I can understand that.”

“You ever find out who did this, you have to tell me. Even if you don’t want to press charges. I need to know who around here’s capable of assault, for whatever reason.”

“I will. If I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”

“Nothing you’d want to be workin’ out on your own.”

“Not interested in that. Can’t anyway. Doctor’s orders. One more shot to the head and I’m a drooler.”

Sullivan left me with a look that was equal parts warning and concern. I didn’t think he believed me,
which wasn’t a surprise. I wouldn’t have either. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the beefy cop. In fact, he was growing on me. I just wanted to keep the bear to myself for a while. He was too important to let go.