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“Beats me,” Paulie says with a shrug. “I just know they moved him here yesterday. Something about some tests.”
I open the door slowly and peek inside. Lele’s sitting on a chair near Rinaldo’s bed, and he’s sitting up and shoveling manicotti in his mouth.
“Come in, Evan.” Rinaldo raises his fork in the air and uses it to motion me forward. I enter, closing the door behind me.
“Lele, a moment please.” His voice is deadpan, and Lele just nods and walks out. Her eyes are red, and I assume he’s told her about Felisa.
I stand at the foot of his bed with my hands clasped behind my back. He takes a couple more mouthfuls of the meal Lele must have smuggled in for him and then finishes with a long drink of water.
“Lucia is going to handle the rest of the funeral arrangements for Felisa. Lele’s going to help her out.”
I nod and bow my head.
“How is your investigation going?”
“Found some ties between the accounts that have missing money and Joshua Taylor,” I tell him. “We definitely have him linked with Marcello’s gang but can’t locate Taylor anywhere. I’ve got a few leads I still need to follow up on. Now that we have account numbers, Jonathan’s trying to trace him through those.”
Rinaldo nods. He presses his lips together as he pushes the tray table out of his way and sits up a bit more.
“Evan, I need to show you something. Reach over there and grab those papers.” He points at a plain manila folder on the table off to his side, and I retrieve it for him. He opens the folder and takes a deep breath as he thumbs through the papers. Once he’s found the one he’s looking for, he hands it to me.
It’s a hospital report with a bunch of test results. I know enough about medicine to recognize those regarding bone reabsorption and endocrine system functioning, but the results mean nothing to me.
“What is this?”
“The doctor found something during surgery,” he tells me.
“Found what?”
“Bone fragments.”
I narrow my eyes.
“They operated on your leg. Of course they found bone fragments. That’s where you were hit.”
“Bone tissue would be more accurate,” Rinaldo says. “More precisely, bone tissue in my blood.”
I glare down at the test paper again, trying to make some sense of it. Rinaldo is obviously trying to tell me something without actually saying the words, but I can’t seem to figure out what it is. I scan the paper more carefully, reach for the rest of the folder, and read over some of the other tests as Rinaldo watches me closely.
Bone in blood—I can see the results from other tissue samples, but they are normal. It isn’t actually bone but something similar, something warped. On the bottom of the last page, I see the term osteosarcoma, and my body goes cold.
“Bone cancer,” I say quietly.
“Exposure to oxygen when they operated has accelerated its growth.” Rinaldo’s voice is calm and factual. “It’s in my blood, endocrine, and lymph systems. Apparently, all that money I spent at the chiropractor trying to fix my back was pointless. I should ask for a refund.”
He laughs, but I can’t bring myself to find any humor in his remark. All I can do is stare at the page as my organs feel as if they are sinking into my feet. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can see all the indicators on the test page.
“Maybe they’re wrong.” I tap my finger against the paper. “You need to have more testing done. It could be a mistake—mixed up records. Hospitals fuck up all the time.”
I meet his eyes, and my chest tightens.
“They saw it during surgery, Evan. That’s why they did the tests.”
My vision blurs as I stare at the words on the pages.
“Does Lele know?”
“Yes.”
