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“Boxer. Run,” he said again.
I patted my jacket pocket, felt my phone, then ran toward the revolving door. I badged all human impediments including the charge nurse at the entrance to the ER.
The attending physician said, “Sergeant, the patient comes in and out of consciousness. I can only give you five minutes with him and if he lights up the board, you’ve got to leave.”
“Okay. Thanks. That should be enough time,” I said, thinking,as long as his memory was present and he could speak I was going to stay with him.
CHAPTER 33
JACK ROBBIE WAS cocooned inside a curtained stall, one of twelve in the emergency room. I badged his nurse and told her that this was official police business.
She let me pass.
Robbie was a bloodless version of the man I’d met just yesterday afternoon. He wore a white cotton hospital robe. There was a cannula in his nose, an IV pole with a drip bag, tubes transporting fluids to and from his body, and a stent draining the bandaged gunshot wound at the back of his skull. His eyes were closed and his vital signs blinked on the bedside monitor.
We were not alone. Along with the nurse who came in to check on him, there was a pretty woman in her twenties wearing a short pink dress, her brown hair loose around her shoulders. This was Pearl Joy, Robbie’s massage girl, sitting by his side.
I introduced myself to Pearl, told her who I was and why I was there, that since I was only permitted a very little time with Jack, would she answer some questions about the shooting incident?
Pearl said, “Let’s go outside.”
We stood in the wide corridor, close enough to Jack’s stall to hear the beeps of his vital signs monitor.
Pearl was very ready to talk.
“Here’s what set Jack off,” she said. “He was going over the weekly book and he was grumbling. He was coming up short and that’s when Mr. Boxer called with another bet. That was way after lunch on Sunday, like, we’re pretty much closed. Mr. Boxer kept doubling down on his losing bets, working some of them off and I have an idea how, but it’s guesswork. So like, I shouldn’t tell you.”
“I know about that, so please go on.”
“Okay, so Jack warned Mr. Boxer that he didn’t want to see him again without being paid back half of what was owed. That he wasn’t taking any more of Mr. Boxer’s bets until that happened. I heard all of that,” said Pearl.
To my great relief, she kept talking.
“Mr. Boxer stopped by with a down payment that was way less than Jack had said he had to have. So Mr. Boxer left and Jack just got very mad. Like Mr. Boxer thought he was a sucker and it had been going on too long.”
Pearl stopped talking as the nurse went into the stall the size of a department store dressing room, apparently checked Robbie’s vitals and came out. When she saw me, she wagged her forefinger, a warning that my time was almost up. Then she left.
“I tried to calm him down,” Pearl said. “You know I really love Jack and he doesn’t take care of himself. He has high blood pressure. But, so, he keeps like talking and getting madder. And then he makes a phone call. And I hear him say something about a wire transfer. Then he calls Mr. Boxer and says, ‘Marty. Sorry I yelled. Where are you?’ And it seems like Mr. Boxer told him where he was. And Jack says, ‘Why don’t you stop by here when you finish up over there.’”
“This is all helpful, Pearl,” I said. “Jack knew where Marty was having drinks?”
“Yes, and he told me. ‘The son of a b. is at Briny’s.’”
I said, “So Jack went there?”
I was trying to imagine this soft hulk of a man lying in wait for Marty as he walked from his shop to his car.
Pearl said, “No, no. He waited for Marty.”
I said, “The wire transfer. It was payment for the hit on Marty?”
Pearl didn’t hesitate.
“Right. Exactly. And as soon as Jack hung up with Marty, he knew he couldn’t change his mind. He was kind of crying and from what I could make out, he said he was so sick with himself, he couldn’t go on. How broken he was, financially and physically and morally. But the train had left the station.”
CHAPTER 34
PEARL WAS SAYING that Jack had commissioned Marty’s killer. It was an admission to a crime but was it enough to charge Robbie with murder? It was all reported speech. Hearsay. Pearl had to tell me who Jack had hired to do the job.
