Riders on the Storm
- Автор: Горман Эд
- Серия: Sam McCain #10
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Pegasus
- ISBN: 978-1-60598-625-8
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Riders on the Storm». Краткое содержание книги:
TV and radio people had shown up at the house around eight o’clock. The girls watched them from the front window. Kate kept asking me if she would get to be on TV.
Mary did a fine job as my public-relations representative. In her blue skirt with the blue buttons running down the right side and her smart white collarless blouse, her makeup modest and perfect, she cordially explained that I would be making a statement very soon but that I had other matters to deal with and right now just couldn’t afford the distraction.
The word “hero” must have been used twenty times in the eight or nine minutes Mary was on the front porch. I was obviously no hero.
I hadn’t expected to find Teddy Byrnes at Anders’s house so you couldn’t say I’d sought him out. And as much as I hated him, I hadn’t been fighting him to rid humanity of a scourge; I’d just been trying to save my own sorry ass. But you couldn’t say that to the press. To them you were a good guy or a bad guy, and if you were a good guy you just had to be heroic in some way.
When Mary came back inside, she said, “You now have a fan club.”
“I don’t want a fan club.”
Kate said, “What’s a fan club?”
Nicole said, “That’s when people have posters of famous people on their walls and buy their records and stuff.”
Kate said, “Have you made a record, Sam?”
So now I sat at my desk smoking more Luckies than I should have and popping aspirins every hour on the hour. My left arm hurt when I extended it and my right side ribs hurt when I so much as took a deep breath.
Jamie said, “Everybody’s talking about you, Sam. I’m really proud.”
“This’ll last about two days and then my fifteen minutes’ll be up.”
“Look at that stack of phone messages and it’s not even ten thirty.”
“I looked at them. And they make me mad.”
“Why would they make you mad?” Today Jamie wore a blue-and-white polkadot dress and a blue barrette that accented the appeal of her fetching Midwestern face and body.
“Because half these people wouldn’t ever have returned my calls if last night hadn’t happened.”
“They just want to congratulate you.”
“The only ones I’m returning are the ones that might mean a little business for us. I’ve been thinking of adding a security service for businesses. We don’t have a local one. Some of the people who called probably need help that way.”
“Boy, you never mentioned that before.”
“I need to make more money. I...” I hesitated. I wanted to hear myself say it. “I hope I’m getting married.”
She had a great kid-sister grin. “That is so cool. Mary is the best woman you’ve ever been with.”
“It took me a long time to realize that.”
“I love her girls, too. I see them whenever I take my daughter to things for kids. Kate is hilarious.”
I’d missed one of the phone slips. Now I sat staring at it. “This one I just saw.”
“Whose is it?”
“Senator O’Shay.”
“I didn’t like him at all. He made me repeat his name and number three times and then he said, ‘This is urgent government business, young woman.’”
“The hell it is. He heard my name on the radio and now he wants me to travel around with him while he’s campaigning.”
“I didn’t like him before anyway. It really burns me up that his two sons don’t have to serve when he’s so big on the war.”
“He’s not going to win.”
“You really think so?”
Her phone rang and by the face she made it had to be O’Shay. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, Senator, he hasn’t come in yet.”
She held the receiver out while he ranted. He went through his “official government business” and then he wanted to know where he could find me and then he said, “A secretary in Washington would have done everything she could to find him. She’d have him on the phone by now. But that’s a level of competence you’re clearly not capable of.”
I grabbed my receiver and said, “Look, you clown. You have no right to talk to her that way and I want you to apologize to her right now.”
“Just who the hell are you to call me a clown?”
“I’m nobody, but I’m calling you a clown anyway.”
“I’ll be damned if I apologize to some stupid little—”
“You’re going to lose, Senator. Big time. And Jamie and I are going to celebrate your defeat.”
I slammed the phone down.
Jamie gave me a round of applause.
“You defended my honor, Sam. That was very sweet. Thank you.”
“Just call me Sir Galahad.”
“See — you can’t take a compliment.”
One of our five or six friendly running arguments.
I spent the next thirty-five minutes on the phone. The last call I made was to the hospital psych ward. The extremely friendly nurse I talked to — I’d said my name right at the top and she responded the way most people do to real live heroes — said that she’d talk with Dr. Rattigan about me visiting Will. And that, by the way, Will was now speaking haltingly but rationally and that Dr. Rattigan was very happy about this. She would call me back as soon as she could reach him. I used my best heroic voice to thank her. This hero stuff came in handy.
Karen called just before noon. “I spent an hour with Will this morning. He’s almost Will again. I’ll let him tell you what happened the other night. He absolutely didn’t kill Donovan. He’s worried now that he might have given Foster the idea that he was confessing or something. He’ll want to talk to you about that.”
“I hope to be up there this afternoon. The nurse I spoke with said she’d check with Rattigan. If Rattigan says no, I’ll call Lindsey Shepard.”
After a pause she said, “I’m going to forgive him, Sam. I love him. I’d planned on forgiving him but last night I got bitter all over again. I want to make our marriage work.” And then she started talking about where I’d been last night. And what I’d done. And how she was so proud of me.
The nurse called me twenty minutes later. I was slotted in at four o’clock to see Will.
Greg Egan was waiting for me, his wheelchair pulled up to the table he favored in “Mike’s,” a sandwich shop three blocks from my office. Waiting with him was Ted Franks. Their bitter joke was that if they put together the legs Greg had lost in Nam and the right arm Ted had lost there, they’d have a pretty tough guy.
Greg had contacted me about a call he’d gotten from Senator O’Shay. He wanted to know if he should go to the press about it. He’d also talked to Will on the phone this morning. That made two reasons I’d been eager for this lunch.
“Hell,” Ted said, “expose the bastard. You’d be doing all of us a favor.”
Ted had a long, intense face sitting atop a lanky body. These days his empty right sleeve — he always wore long sleeves — was pinned to his shirt. As a Jew he’d always felt like an outsider in Black River Falls, he’d confessed over too many bottles of Bud one night, but oddly enough he felt that his wound had given him the kind of friendship and acceptance he’d never had before.
Mike’s was small, the air conditioning kept it at freezer level, and the clamorous crowd loved to shout appreciation to Mike Feldman for the quality of his numerous deli sandwiches. The shouts (and Mike’s return shouts) were part of the ritual.
It got a lot worse if a Cubs game was on the radio. Mike Feldman was one of their messianic fans.
“So this asshole O’Shay calls me and says he’ll be giving a speech at the steel plant in Cedar Rapids. He wants to have a vet onstage with him. What he means is he needs a cripple. There’re plenty of vets we know who like O’Shay and would be glad to do it for him. But they’re not gimps.”