The Elephant of Surprise, Page 2

  “It’s not that interesting when you make it up.”

  “Boy, are you in a mood.”

  “You should have seen that poor girl’s tongue,” Leonard said. “They almost cut it out.”

  I was glad I hadn’t seen it. “My jeans are dry,” I said.

  “Will you shut up?”

  It took us an impossibly long time to reach the hospital. The lights were on there. Backup generators, I presumed. That would seem right for a hospital. But not all the lights were on, and some were not that bright. We went and sat in the lobby in the comfortable waiting-area chairs under dim lights. Leonard began to snooze, and then he began to snore softly.

  Except for a middle-aged lady at the desk, we seemed to be the only ones in the hospital.

  I pulled out my cell and called Brett, told her what had happened, told her we’d be home when we got home.

  “Still have lights here, but it’s scary out there,” she said. “Chance and Reba and Buffy Dog are here with us. We had dinner and then they couldn’t go home, or didn’t want to.”

  “They’re safer there. Did Reba eat you out of house and home?”

  “Just complained about the food. She wanted McDonald’s. I told her she was free to go to town and buy us burgers.”

  “Bet that shut her up.”

  “Nope. She said give her the money and the car keys and she’d go.”

  I laughed. Reba was a smart-ass kid we had kind of rescued. She lived with my daughter, Chance, and Buffy the Biscuit Slayer, also known as Buff, Buffy Dog, or the Buffinator.

  Brett said, “Will the girl be all right?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. They sewed her tongue up, gave her some pills. She’s sleeping upstairs.”

  “Poor thing,” Brett said.

  We passed a few more words and closed out the conversation. I turned to ask Leonard if he wanted to call his boyfriend, Pookie, but he was still asleep. Probably best not to call Pookie and ruin his out-of-town visit. Nothing he could do right then.

  I put the cell away just as I saw a large tree limb tumble across the parking lot at the side of the hospital and slam into a car hard enough I could hear the impact. At least it didn’t set off an alarm.

  The wind began to howl and the rain became even more fierce. Lightning cracked and thunder rumbled, shaking the glass in the hospital windows.

  I could envision, somewhere out in the Gulf, a vicious, unseasonable storm, perhaps a hurricane, sending in its reserve troops, giving us a taste of what it could do just to remind us that compared to nature, we weren’t as important as houseflies.

  5

  When I awoke in the hospital waiting area, I checked my watch. It was seven in the morning. Leonard was still asleep. It was dark as night, and the rain and wind hadn’t let up an ounce. In fact, it looked worse out there. Meaning there was nothing to see but absolute blackness. The sun wasn’t going to shine that morning, maybe not all day.

  The same middle-aged lady was at the front desk. I went up there, said, “You certainly are putting in the time.”

  She smiled at me. She looked weary.

  “I’m supposed to be gone,” she said, “but the rain is so bad I’m better off here in the hospital than on the road, and my replacement is better off home. I figure before the day is done, we’ll have a lot of new occupants. A storm like this, it makes things crazy. If only the rain would stop. Better yet, the wind.”

  “Lady we brought in last night. When can we check on her? We were told she’s in a room on the third floor.”

  “No visiting hours yet, but way things are, it gets nine, you can go in, unless there are any medical concerns.”

  I thanked her and sat down again, and that’s when I saw a big man come in the front door carrying a long, damp cardboard box. He had it tucked up under one arm. He wore black clothes. He had a black plastic rain cover over his hat.

  I recognized the man from his size. It was the big black man that had gotten out of the SUV with a pistol. He was even bigger than I’d thought, looked like a weight lifter, not a bodybuilder, kind of guy who could dead-lift a battleship. His face was as expressionless as a mannequin’s.

  He hadn’t seen us last night, had seen only my car, maybe a shape hanging out of the window firing at the SUV, so he had no idea who we were. He hardly gave us a glance. He adjusted his hat with a touch of his hand and walked past us and the desk, toward the elevator. I had a good idea what was in the box.

  The lady behind the desk might’ve thought about saying something to stop him, but she didn’t. Not the way he looked. She just watched him pass. I thought that was most likely a good choice.

  6

  I shook Leonard awake, said, “Hey, the guy that took a shot at us just walked in.”

  “What?”

  “He’s over by the elevator. Had a long cardboard box with him. I don’t think it was curtain rods.”

  “Damn.” By that point he was on his feet. We both headed toward the big man as he stepped into the elevator, but moments later the doors closed.

  We went back to the desk, but the woman was gone. A bathroom break, maybe. We couldn’t just hang out and call the police for backup. By the time they got here, it would be too late. That guy was there to finish the job he and whoever he was working with had started.

  “How would he know where to go?” Leonard said.

  “This is the logical place for her to be. Phones here work, so he called and convinced someone who didn’t know any better to give him her room number.”

  I heard the front hospital door slide automatically back, and I saw another man enter. He was short and thin and white, wearing black clothes. He had a hand in his coat pocket, a bandage across his forehead, and he walked with a bounce.

  Leonard saw him too.

  We didn’t wait to figure him out. We made the stairs before he made the elevator. “I think those two may be an unmatched set,” Leonard said.

  We charged up the stairs to the third floor, where the girl was, trying to beat the elevator. There was supposed to be a cop up there, and the thought of that was some relief. I hoped he hadn’t decided to drift off or take a bathroom break.

  When we got to the third floor and rushed out into the hallway, we saw the cop in a chair. He was a young, curly-headed white guy. He was posted about midway between us and the elevators, next to the girl’s room. He was sitting up straight in the chair, his uniform crisp and his badge shiny. He had his hand resting on the butt of his pistol. He looked as alert as a hungry cobra.

  The elevator dinged.

  We rushed toward the cop. He had seen us around, knew we had brought the girl in, so he wasn’t overly concerned.

  “Guy in the elevator,” I called out. “He’s got a gun.”

  The cop stood up, looked puzzled.

  I said what I had said again.

  The elevator door opened before we could reach the cop and the girl’s room.

  The elevator was empty.

  “Shit,” Leonard said. “He got off on another floor.”

  I thought, Yeah, that would be an idea. He didn’t know us, but he might have suspected protection for the girl, and since I’d stood up as he headed to the elevator, he might have assumed I was part of a protection detail.

  In a way, I was, but I’d been doing a piss-poor job, and Leonard had been napping.

  “What’s going on?” the cop said. We had reached the door to the room he was protecting.

  “Someone has come for her,” I said.

  That’s when the big man came around the corner. He must have gotten off the elevator on a lower floor, used the stairs on the opposite side we had taken. The gun was no longer in a box; it was a shotgun, twelve-gauge was my guess. He handled it with familiarity.

  The cop pulled his gun. Leonard pushed the girl’s door open and went inside as I ducked down and the shotgun ripped. The cop, gun in his hand, lost his head, so to speak, and I was peppered with brains and blood and falling shot.

  As the po
or cop fell, his handgun slid back toward me, our only lucky break so far, and I grabbed it, darted inside the room as another blast from the shotgun splintered the wall and pocked part of the door.

  Once I was inside, the door swung shut. There was a small square of glass in the door and I saw the man fill the space on the outside. I flicked the door latch and scuttled backward with the cop’s gun tight in my hand. I knew then how those three pigs felt when the wolf came to their door.

  I took a quick look behind me. The girl was in the hospital bed. She was unconscious, probably drugged into peaceful sleep. Leonard snatched up a chair and swung it against the large, wide window, but the window held its own. He swung at it several times, but the chair kept bouncing off it.

  I saw the big man push his face to the glass in the door. I jerked the gun up and fired and the door glass shattered. He had seen me move and had moved himself, and just in time. He moved fast for being about the size of the Statue of Liberty.

  I turned, said to Leonard, “Stand aside.”

  I shot a hole in the big outer window, heard it crack; the cracks started at the hole and spiderwebbed in all directions. Leonard hit the window with the chair again. It finally fell apart with a crunch and a tinkle of falling glass. The cold wind and rain blew in.

  “Watch for that motherfucker,” Leonard said.

  I glanced back at the door. I didn’t see the man. I didn’t see his shadow. I felt the cold wind and rain dampening my back.

  I looked over my shoulder at Leonard.

  Leonard set the chair down beneath the window, turned to the bed, jerked back the covers, lifted the IV bag off the IV stand, dropped it on the girl’s chest, and picked her up. All she wore was a hospital gown, not the best clothing for the outdoors, since your naked ass hung out of the back of it, but it might beat dying in bed.

  Holding her close to him, Leonard put his foot on the chair he had placed beneath the window and then stepped out into the swirling storm.

  7

  The shotgun roared and the wood in the door jumped apart, made a gap large enough to ride a donkey through. That guy was packing some serious ammunition.

  I hurried to the window. The wind and rain pushed at me. My hair and clothes were soaked in an instant. I trembled in the cold. There was a wide ledge beneath the window. Not something you’d want to have a pachyderm walk, but wide enough. I could see Leonard moving on it like a tightrope walker, one careful foot in front of the other, carrying the girl, going away as fast as he safely could. The ledge might have been wide, but it was wet as a snail trail.

  I turned and looked at the door. Nothing yet. The big man was being cautious, now that he knew I had a gun.

  I stepped up on the chair and went after Leonard, nearly losing my footing immediately. It was actually slimier than a snail’s trail.

  I put my back to the wall and inched along. Leonard made the corner of the building and turned out of sight. Carrying a girl, even a small one, walking on a ledge with a wet wind blowing hard enough to roll an army tank was no small feat.

  What the fuck was he, a mountain goat?

  I turned my attention back to the window. The gun was in my right hand, and I held it across my chest, kept my left hand down and against the wall, kept scooting.

  The man stuck his head out the window. I snapped off a shot, and I could tell from the way the blood jumped like a dark arrow into the night that I had hit him. But I knew too that I had just parted his hair, because his hat jumped off and the wind caught it and carried it away. Had it been the shot I had hoped for, he wouldn’t have been able to pull back.

  I turned the corner around the edge of the building, crossed in front of one window and then another, and finally the ledge widened. Down below I could see another roof from a building that had been added on at some point.

  That’s when I caught up with Leonard, standing with the girl held tight to him, looking down at the roof below. It was at least a twelve-foot drop, and there was a lower concrete roof below us to another building, but it didn’t look inviting.

  I yelled out, “Don’t do it!” but the wind snatched my voice and hauled it away.

  Leonard looked down at the lower roof for a moment, then turned and continued along the widened ledge. I was moving along faster and caught up with them. When I did, Leonard said, “What now?”

  I looked where he was looking. The ledge continued around a corner, but the question was, how did we get off of it without taking a swan dive? The best we could do was keep moving around the hospital.

  There was a window near us. I said, “Hang on.”

  I pointed the pistol at the window and hoped no one’s bed was right under it, that a nurse wasn’t standing there doing something or other. The room was dark, so I figured the latter wasn’t likely. I shot at the window, and it cracked. I leaned against it, and then I kneed it, and when I did, it gave and shattered and fell apart into the room. I felt a sharp pain in my knee but nothing to write home about.

  8

  The hospital room was empty, but it wouldn’t take long for the big man or the little guy we had seen downstairs to find us. Not if they were serious, and I had a feeling they were.

  I went over and locked the door, looked around the room.

  There was a wheelchair folded up near the wall. The room smelled of disinfectant.

  Leonard placed the girl on the bed and looked in the closet. There was another ass-open gown in it, like the one she had on, and nothing else.

  “I need something to fight with,” he said.

  “Might I recommend a chair.”

  There was one by the bed. Leonard went over and got it and held it by the backrest.

  “What we got to do is get her out of here,” Leonard said.

  “I’m just waiting for our gyrocopter to show up.”

  The copter didn’t show, but a shape appeared at the busted-out window. It wasn’t the big man. It was the little man we had seen come in downstairs with the bandage on his head, most likely covering an injury from the SUV taking a dive. He was stone-faced and wiry and had his hair cut so close to his head, he might as well have gone on and shaved it. His coat flapped in the breeze.

  I lifted the revolver, but he sprang across the room like a kangaroo on crack, kicked me in the chest, and drove me back against the wall, sending the revolver skittering across the floor.

  I was scrambling to my feet as Leonard swung the chair at him. He swung it low, but the man dropped down so quick, and was flat on his belly so quick, it was like he had turned into a snake. As the chair passed over him, he leaped forward, grabbed Leonard by the windbreaker with one hand, and used the other to hit him with a hammer fist in the forehead. I think he was going for the nose, which would have been smarter, but Leonard lowered his head a little, and just in time.

  If Leonard’s forehead hurt the little guy, he didn’t let on. He grabbed Leonard’s windbreaker with the other hand, swiveled, and threw Leonard over his hip, threw him so well and so high, Leonard’s feet nearly touched the ceiling; a foot or so higher and he might have needed an oxygen mask. Leonard came down on the tile floor with a smack so loud, I felt the pain myself, felt it crawl up my ass and up my spine and come to a throbbing rest at the base of my neck.

  I was on the guy by then, delivering a front kick to the side of his leg, but he moved, swung his leg out of the way and up, hook-kicked me in the temple. I was surprised to find myself on the floor.

  As I tried to get up, he kicked at my throat, but I was able to throw a hand up and merely get my palm whacked, but that was no walk in the park either. It hurt so bad I considered gnawing my hand off at the wrist.

  Leonard, who I thought might be napping, had recovered and was up. He leaped on the little guy from behind, wrapped his legs around his waist, hooked his heels into his thighs, threw his arms around his neck, and fell backward with the guy trapped between his legs.

  That didn’t last long. The little guy squirmed out of Leonard’s grip so fast and so clea
n, it was like he was part eel. He recovered his footing and kicked out at Leonard, who was still on the floor.

  I found the pistol, but by then the little guy had produced one of his own. It was going to be which of us could pull the trigger faster. Or that would have been the case, but Leonard stepped in with the chair again, knocked the little man’s hand down. The gun went off and the shot hit the floor and bounced against the ceiling, went on up through the thin tiles. The gun itself was knocked from his hand.

  By then the little guy knew it was time to leave. I had the gun, and he had air. He pulled his injured hand against his chest, scooped his dropped pistol up with his good hand, backpedaled gracefully, as if he always went places walking asswards.

  He made the window, threw up a leg like a back kick, and set it on the ledge without even looking. Then he pushed off on his other leg and was suddenly standing on the ledge, looking in the wide space where the window had been. He grinned at us. I was going to try and shoot again, but Leonard fucked that up. He stepped into my line of fire and threw the chair.

  It was a good toss, though. It hit the grinning asshole right in the face and knocked him off the ledge.

  “Bingo,” Leonard said.

  9

  Not quite bingo,” I said.

  The little guy’s hands were clutching the ledge.

  “Goddamn monkey,” Leonard said.

  He wide-stepped toward the window, and as the little man lifted himself up and his face rose into sight, Leonard smacked him one with a good straight punch. The little man’s head went back, but still he clung. Leonard slammed his fist down on the little man’s right hand, striking the fingers.

  That made the little man jerk that hand free of the ledge, and when Leonard hit his other hand, his fingers loosened and he fell.

  I ran over and leaned out of the window with Leonard. The little man had taken that twelve-foot drop like a cat, had landed on his feet and was crouched down, looking up. The rain was washing blood from his face where Leonard had busted his nose. He grinned at us.