THIRTEEN
THERE WAS A single donut left in the box when I got back to the office. I helped myself to the donut and turned to Briggs.
“Ranger needs to talk to Gardi,” I said. “Can you get him into St. Francis?”
“That could be tough. From what I hear the floor is crawling with FBI. They won’t even let hospital security in.”
“Someone must be getting in,” I said. “Doctors, nurses, housekeeping, food service. What would be our best shot?”
“Housekeeping. I’m sure everyone going into that room is gowned and masked, so that’s an advantage. I can get you suited up, and then all you have to do is go in with a stack of towels and sheets. Late afternoon is best. Unless Gardi’s having an emergency, he should be alone. Doctors do rounds in the morning, and nurses do paperwork around four o’clock. Usually, security doesn’t stay in the room. They hang outside the door. The problem is with Ranger. Housekeeping’s all women. They work in pairs, pushing a cart filled with supplies.”
“I could be a pair with Stephanie,” Lula said. “Ordinarily I don’t like being in a hospital, but this would be different. This would be like one of them doctor shows where I’d have a chance to give an award-winning performance. I could perform the snot out of this role.”
“Are you sure you can’t get Ranger in?” I asked Briggs. “He needs some specific information.”
“I can suit him up,” Briggs said. “And I can tell him how to get on the floor. I don’t know if he can bluff his way past the FBI. If I was protecting Gardi, I’d be reluctant to let a big guy I didn’t know get into the room.”
“But being we’re ladies we wouldn’t have those problems,” Lula said. “We could go about our business like we were invisible.”
“Maybe,” Briggs said. “I think it’s a crapshoot.”
“Do you know what Ranger needs to get out of Gardi?” Lula asked me.
“He wants to know who gave Gardi the polonium.”
“If you need information from Gardi you want to try to get it sooner rather than later,” Connie said. “He’s not doing well.”
St. Francis is walking distance from the bail bonds office, but we had Connie drive us. I called Ranger on the way and told him the plan.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” he said.
“If I get caught you’ll be my one phone call.”
This was met by silence on Ranger’s side, so I disconnected.
Briggs took us to a back entrance that was used for maintenance purposes. The door had a four-digit thumb lock. He tapped in the combination, and the door opened.
“They never change the combination,” he said. “This isn’t exactly the world’s most secure hospital.”
We followed him down an empty corridor to a supply room. We pulled scrubs on over our clothes, grabbed sterile gowns and masks, and Briggs rolled a laundry cart over to us.
“Connie said he’s in isolation on the third floor,” Briggs said. “Ordinarily he’d be in the lockdown ward for prisoners, but they don’t have the ability to segregate him there. Tell the guard at the door you’re here for the contaminated linens. Make sure you’re wearing double gloves and the mask. If the guard has any sense, he’ll walk away from the room when you go after the linens.”
“How do you know all this?” Lula asked Briggs.
“There’s a protocol for patients getting radiation. It’s nasty stuff. The drill with the laundry is that one of you stays just outside the room with the laundry cart and one of you goes in and empties the hamper and checks the bathroom. There are a bunch of security cameras past this point, so I’m going to stay here. You want to put your masks and gowns on now, and don’t take them off until you’re back here, out of camera range.”
“We need names,” Lula said to me. “I’m going to be Shaneeka. Who do you want to be?”
“Judy.”
“Say what? That’s a lame name for a secret-agent nurse.”
“I’m not a nurse. I’m pushing a laundry basket.”
“It don’t matter. You still could take pride in your work. I think you should be Shandra.”
“Okay, I’m Shandra.”
We followed Briggs’s instructions and took the service elevator to the third floor. Three men in rumpled gray suits and wearing earbuds were at the end of the corridor.
“Showtime,” Lula said, setting her sights on the three men.
“We’re going to keep a low profile,” I said to her.
“Sure,” she said. “I know that.”
Lula stopped in front of the men and looked into the room. The door was closed, and on it was a sign with the international symbol for radiation.
“Shandra and me are here to get the contaminated linens in this room,” she said. “We’re sort of new at this, so you might want to stand back in case we accidentally spew some bad shit out at you.”
All three men took several steps back.
I pulled on double gloves, took a large heavy-duty orange plastic bag with a radiation symbol on it from the cart, and went into the room.
Gardi was in bed, hooked up to a bunch of tubes that were dripping stuff into him. His eyes were closed, and his skin was the color of wet cement.
“Hey,” I said to him. “How’s it going?”
He half opened his eyes. “Great.”
“Sorry about the polonium.”
“Shit happens.”
“I heard someone set you up.”
“You heard wrong. I set myself up. It was a business deal. I needed money. Bad. Now I’m a dead man.”
“There might be an antidote.”
“You got one in your pocket?”
“Just saying. Who gave you the polonium?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Ranger.”
“Figures. Look, I got nothing personal against him, even though he ruined my dinner with my friends.”
“Then help me out here. Who gave you the polonium?”
“Some guy with a weird tattoo on his neck. I told the FBI, and they looked at me like I was nuts. I don’t think they believed me.”
“Does this guy have a name?”
“I didn’t get one. He approached me. Said he knew I needed money. Said he had a lot of money and needed a job done.”
“What did this guy look like?”
“Average height and build. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. Caucasian, but I couldn’t see his hair. He had on mirrored sunglasses, but I could see he had a scar above one of his eyes. He had some kind of accent. Sort of British. And he had that tattoo on his neck.”
“What did the tattoo look like?”
“It was a skull with a flower.”
“And he told you he wanted you to deliver the polonium?”
“Yeah. He said if I got it on me it was deadly so I should be careful. I guess he got that right.”
“But you agreed to do it anyway.”
“It was a lot of money. And it seemed safe. The canister had a timer on it. I pushed the button, and I had a half hour before it spewed out the shit. Except the stupid thing got busted in the scuffle with the Rangeman guy, and it all leaked out on me.”
I went into the bathroom and gathered up his towels. “How did Skull and Flower pass the canister to you?”
“He got me a hotel room in New York. The Gatewell. The canister was in the room when I checked in.”
“And the money?”
“Cash. Delivered to my … financial partners.”
“Jeez, Emilio, this sucks.”
“Is my hair falling out yet?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“If I beat this thing, I’m debt free.”
“Yeah, well, good luck.”
I left the room and shoved the orange bag of linens into the cart.
“We all done here?” Lula asked.
“Yep. All done.”
We put our heads down and walked the laundry cart to the service elevator. We got off at the ground floor, pushed the cart beyond the point where there were security cameras, and shucked our masks, gloves, gowns, and scrubs. We left the cart in the hall and exited the building. Connie and Briggs were waiting at the curb. A black SUV that I suspected was a Rangeman vehicle was idling across the street. Lula and I got into Connie’s car, and she drove us back to the office. The black SUV pulled up behind Connie’s car, and Hal got out.
“Ranger would like to see you,” Hal said.
I got into the SUV, and Hal drove me to the safe house on Bender Street. I took the elevator to the third floor and found Ranger at his desk.
“You didn’t have to make your one phone call,” he said.
“No. I got in to see Gardi, and so far no one’s come after me.”
“How is he?”
“He looks terrible, but he was coherent. He’s been talking to the FBI, but it sounds like they don’t think the information is worth anything. Gardi doesn’t have a name. He said it was a business deal. He needed money bad, and this guy came to him and offered him the job. Gardi saw the man once. The money was paid in cash to Gardi’s business partners. The canister of poison was left in a New York hotel room for pickup. That’s it.”
“Did he give you a description?”
I told Ranger everything Gardi had told me, from the FBI interrogation to the guy with the scar and the tattoo.
“Let me guess,” Ranger said. “It was a skull and a flower.”
“Yes! Do you know him?”
“Only as Vlatko. Our paths crossed while I was on a search and rescue mission in North Korea, and he was a Russian SVR thug. SVR is the new KGB.”
“Did you work together?”
“No. We were on opposite sides. He was Russian intelligence, and I was point man for a ground troops unit.”
“And?”
“The operation was a success, but it wasn’t clean. Troops were lost on both sides. I was captured and handed over to Vlatko for torture. His specialty was disembowelment. He put a six-inch slice into my belly before I managed to get the knife from him.”
“I thought that scar was from an appendectomy.”
“If the knife had gone deeper, it would have been.”
“And what did you do to him?”
“I stuck the knife in his eye.”
“Wow, that’s pretty horrible. North Korea was years ago. Have you heard from Vlatko since?”
“No. I thought he was out of my life.”
“I guess he didn’t like losing an eye.”
“Go figure,” Ranger said.
“The only other thing I got from Gardi was the name of the hotel in New York. It was the Gatewell.”
Ranger tapped the name of the hotel into his computer.
“The Gatewell is on the West Side,” he said. “It’s a small boutique hotel. I’ll do some research on it.”
“Would that research involve hacking into their client database?”
“That would be illegal,” Ranger said, “and difficult from this location, but we might be able to manage it.”
Hal drove me back to the bonds office. I loaded Briggs into my car, and picked up a couple pizzas. Morelli was just returning from a walk with Bob when I rolled in. Bob rushed over, sniffed at the pizza boxes, and growled at Briggs.
I put the pizza boxes on the coffee table, and Morelli brought a roll of paper towels and a cold six-pack of Bud from the kitchen. He flipped the television on, and we dug in.
“Any luck finding Poletti today?” Briggs asked Morelli.
Morelli shook his head. “He’s out there, but he’s moving around.”
“Big of you to let us stay here, considering the risk,” Briggs said.
Morelli paused with a pizza slice in his hand. “Risk?”
“The probability that you’ll get a firebomb shot through your window is really high,” Briggs said.
Morelli looked surprised. Like he hadn’t actually thought about it.
“If we don’t advertise that you’re here,” I said to Briggs, “no one will know and no one will shoot a rocket through Morelli’s window.”
Briggs looked at the beer. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a Heineken?” he asked Morelli.
“I’ve got Bud,” Morelli said.
Briggs gave out a major sigh of disappointment and took a Bud. “Have you got a beer glass?” he asked.
“You didn’t ask for a glass at my house,” I said.
“My expectations are lower at your house,” Briggs said.
Morelli got Briggs a glass. “Don’t let the curtains on the windows and the toaster in the kitchen fool you. I’m even less civilized than she is.”
It was a nice thought, but I wasn’t sure it was true. I chugged my beer from the can and scarfed down two pieces of pizza.
“I need to go to my parents’ house to get my laundry,” I said to Morelli. “Grandma has my black suit airing so I can wear it to the funeral tomorrow.”
Morelli looked over at Briggs. “What about him?”
“I was going to leave him here.”
“You aren’t just going to take off, are you?” Morelli asked. “You’re coming back, right?”
“Yes. I’m coming back.”