Milton Ramos
I’m not even going to ask you who threw the shot, because I know you didn’t see, right?”
Milton was talking to the head-bandaged Shakespeare Avenue banger, who was sitting up on his wheel-locked gurney in the trauma room of the St. Ann’s ER.
“Where my clothes at,” the victim ducking and weaving in an effort to look past Milton, standing less than a foot away from him in the curtained-off space. “Call the damn nurse.”
Milton gave it a beat, watching dispassionately as the traumatized tissue around Carlos Hernandez’s bullet-creased temple finally began to balloon in earnest, forcing the thick gauze dressing to slowly rise like a bloody soufflé.
“You know what?” he finally said. “Don’t tell me. Take care of it yourself, or at least let him get another crack at you and finish what he started, because God’s truth?” Milton shut his notepad. “I don’t give a shit.”
“Yeah, see? You going psychological on me.”
“Really, I’m not. I mean this from the bottom of my heart, soldier boy, I don’t give a shit. Just try not to let it go down near a playground or on a basketball court, that’s all I ask.”
Milton never saw the point of the detective squad getting involved in a gang shooting so early in the game like this, knowing that the 4-6 Street Intel Unit, on a first-name basis with every young Morlock out there, had probably already hauled in their informants. By this afternoon they would be not only smart-bombing the streets looking for the shooter but scarecrowing the two beefing crews—Shakespeare Over All and Creston On Top—from any planned retaliation and/or re-retaliation. The fact of the matter was, only two hours after getting creased, Carlos here was already old news, the only thing anybody cared about right now was minimizing the inevitable mayhem to come.
“I tell you what,” Milton said, leaning in and putting a hand on Carlos’s bare knee. “Give me a name and you get one free get-out-of-jail card, on me.”
“I ain’t in jail.”
“Not today.”
“You like putting your hand there?”
“I’d rather put it around your throat.”
Milton turned to leave.
“You supposed to give me your card,” Carlos said.
“I would, but I’m running kind of low.”
Psychology, my balls.
Coming back out into the main reception area, Milton walked past the Latina nurse manning the triage desk and up the center aisle of the waiting area, the benches eerily silent despite a full house. Reaching for the wall-mounted remote button that opened the door to the street, he hesitated, abruptly overcome with a powerful sense of having forgotten something important, the sensation like waking from an intense dream and trying to remember the fading details. He patted himself down—sidearm, notepad, wallet, keys, all there—then turned and started to retrace his steps, walking back past the triage station, getting as far as the door to the trauma room before stopping in his tracks and once again reversing his steps, this time coming back at an angle so that he could take a good look at that nurse without her noticing.
Standing in the near shadows, he stared at her, then stared some more, only snapping out of it when he felt her starting to sense his presence, at which point he put his head down and took off, not looking up until he was back out on the street, the sudden sunlight adding to his hyped sense of disorientation.
It wasn’t until a few hours later, still in a daze as he typed up the Fives on Carlos Hernandez, that he belatedly registered the name tag that had been affixed to her whites, Milton reaching for a pad and writing it down in a chittery hand:
C GRAVES
Wanting to be alone with this, he slipped into the windowless bunk room. Ignoring the two detectives lying belly-up and near lifeless in opposite corners of the fetid cell, he perched himself on the edge of an unmade bed and tried to think it through.
C Graves. The C he got. The Graves, he assumed, was her husband.
“Carmen Graves,” he said, trying it on for size.
So. Married, moved on, a few kids most likely, and a career.
Moved on.
It was enough to snatch your breath.