Lonnie agrees to meet him at the hospital. As soon as he steps through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room at St. Joseph’s, Jay starts to feel short of breath. It’s the stark scent of industrial-grade bleach and the cold, cold recycled air that tighten his chest, making him feel light-headed. He hasn’t been inside a hospital, or a doctor’s office for that matter, in a year. “Rolly Snow,” he tells the intake nurse, before being sent up to the third floor, to room 312, where the man himself is sleeping, seventeen hours out of surgery now. He’s lying on top of the bedsheets, bare chested. Jay can see the thick bandages, just under his left clavicle but, thank god, above his heart. Marisol, in a rather demure pair of brown slacks and a flowery blouse, is standing to the side of the hospital bed, leaning over the brushed metal railing to sweep damp black hairs away from Rolly’s face. “He’s okay,” she says, barely turning when Jay walks in. Maybe it’s the clothes, or the hospital setting, but she actually looks like someone’s grandmother today, cooing words into Rolly’s ear in Spanish. “He’s going to be okay,” Jay hears again, this time from Lonnie, who is sitting by the room’s one window, a slim rectangle just to the left of the door. For a moment, none of them says anything, just three sets of eyes on the patient and the soft whir of the compression pump attached to his legs to prevent blood clots. Bernie’d had to wear the same. The steady rhythm of it, like a ghost’s breath in the room, used to keep her up, day and night. To Marisol, Jay says, “I’m sorry.”
She won’t look at him. “You’re trouble, both of you.”
“He’s very lucky,” Lon says, which leads Marisol to cut her eyes at the white girl. She suddenly grabs her purse off Rolly’s rolling meal tray. “I’m getting coffee,” she says, sliding the beaded strap onto her right shoulder. “He wakes up, you tell him just like that, tell him I said I’m getting coffee,” she says rather cryptically. Jay watches her walk out, wondering if he or Rolly will ever see her again. He will never forgive himself if he cost Rolly his girl. He inches closer to the bedside, reaching for the tattooed knuckles of Rolly’s good hand. The very warmth of it is such a comfort, Jay nearly cries. “He is lucky,” Lonnie says.
A few moments later, they step outside to let him sleep, leaving the door ajar. They lean against the wall just across the hall from the nurses’ station, Lonnie with an update on America’s Tomorrow.
“It’s a 527, a PAC.”
“A political action committee?”
“It was registered with the FEC early this year.” From her shoulder bag, she pulls a photocopy of a Federal Election Commission report. “This is a list of donors for the first quarterly reporting period, January to March of this year.” She hands it to Jay, who scans it quickly. “Those are some big names, my friend.”
“Yes, they are,” he says, reading.
AT&T
Bush, Dorothy
Bush, Marvin
Carlton, Jeffrey
Chevron Cole Oil Industries
Cole, Richard
Cole, Mrs. Richard
Cole, Thomas
Dorian, Paul
Enron
Fox, Sam
Hunt, Ray L.
Koch, David and Julia
Lay, Kenneth and Linda
Luckman, Charlie
Maddox, Cynthia
Merrill Lynch
Mosbacher, Robert
National Rifle Association
Nunez, Pedro and Rita
PhRMA
Pfizer
ProFerma Chemicals
Philip Morris
Rose, Mark and Leanne
Stoney, Lee
Wyly, Charles
Wyly, Sam
“What does any of this have to do with Wolcott? These people are all donating to her mayoral campaign?” he says, looking down at one name in particular. It would mean he was right all along. Cynthia was double-dealing.
“I don’t know,” Lon says.
Jay folds the paper lengthwise and slides it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “I’ve got to get back to court,” he says, glancing through the crack in the doorway to Rolly’s hospital room, watching for a few moments the rise and fall of his chest. “Can you stay for a little bit?” he asks. “In case he wakes up?”
“Sure thing,” she says. “And I’ll check in with Rob Urrea too. Maybe this list of names means something to him.”
CHAPTER 25
The court has thinned for the day’s second act, with half the seats in the gallery empty after intermission. The Hathornes are here, of course, and the Robicheauxs, both in the front row but on opposite sides of the courtroom. The Chronicle still has reporters present, including Bartolomo, but the usual court watchers and trial junkies got their fill from the autopsy photos before lunch.
Next up: Kenny Ester, the boyfriend.
“Mr. Ester, did you know a person by the name of Alicia Nowell?”
“Yes,” he says, the tears starting. He cries through his entire testimony actually, led gingerly by Matt Nichols into the story of meeting Alicia Nowell in fifth-period trigonometry during their junior year. “She was smart,” he says, “a lot smarter than people gave her credit for, smarter than she even knew, my opinion. I wanted her to go to college, tried to get her to apply to Lamar University, in Beaumont, with me. But she was worried about money, you know. She figured she’d work a little, save some cash, and maybe there’d be a scholarship or something. I think that’s why she wanted to volunteer on a campaign. She thought some school might look at that and put her at the top of the pile.”