A Sheepish Grin

 

“Goddamn am I hungry, and who in their right mind lives this far from the city? The drive alone would make me go mad and to do it every day, screw that”’ He thinks to himself as he pulls into the emergency parking lot at St. Joe’s.

 

The hospital is massive and takes up a whole city block; it looks more like some corporate high rise complex than it does a health care facility. Tall palms line the different entrances and exits throughout the complex. The buildings, they tower overhead reaching at least thirty stories. There is a skywalk up above connecting one building to another. People can be seen walking through. A helicopter is making its decent onto the structures roof. Guys wearing red jackets are passing out tickets and valet parking peoples’ cars.

 

“Better have some good insurance Harry!” I say out loud too myself as I am walking through the main emergency entrance towards the triage desk. “Good morning mam!” I say

 

“May I help you?” the exquisitely beautiful candy striped nurse asks.

 

“Damn, if you only knew” I think inwardly “Yes, mam, a young man was just brought in here a little while ago, shot and beaten real bad, my name is Detective Pat Barnes from MC Homicide, my colleague should have called ahead to set up a private room for this kid. Where might you have put him, miss….” As I start looking over the desk at her name tag making sure to Google down her cleavage….”Jessica?”

 

“I am sorry, his name was?” she politely asks.

 

“Oh, I guess I could have just told you that and saved the story for later” I respond “Harry Bacchante, ma’am”

 

“Ok, let me see, it looks like they have him in the ICU up on the 25^th floor.” She says but recants “I’m sorry, you said you were a detective, could I please see some identification, this patient seems to be placed under protective care!”

 

“Yeah, he should be, I made the order, but here you go sweetheart, and by the way the picture does me no justice whatsoever!” flirtingly.

 

“Thank you sir, and the picture is fine, but you do look better in person” she responds with a sheepish grin.

 

“Oh, why, thank you Miss Jessica, aren’t you just a doll. Here allow me to give you my card, my cell is on there and I can be reached anytime.”

 

“Really, anytime huh?” inquisitively she asks

 

“You know it! Thanks again, have a great day!” I tell her.

 

“You do the same as well Detective.” She says with a cheese eating smile. “That’s room 2581”

 

“Oh yeah that might help, by the way, which way to the cafeteria, I am starving?” I ask

 

“Take the elevator to the third floor; it’s dedicated to lounge rooms and food, drinks and the sorts. You should find everything you need there.” She replies

 

“Thanks dear, but I doubt everything” as I recount the view of her cleavage and begin to fantasize about licking her hard n*****s. Maybe dripping some strawberry sauce and whip cream, hmm, damn I am hungry. Concentrate, Pat.

 

I head for the elevator and take notice of the people sitting in the waiting rooms, this is definitely not the county hospital, although there seem to be some miscreants, and mostly this place seems to cater to the rich and distinguished people. It better, to pay for this place, geesh, it looks like a resort foyer. Getting inside the elevator just convinced me this place is a resort and as I get out on the third floor the place is wide open with what appears to be a food court with everything from Subway© to McDonalds© and one gigantic salad bar that could probably feed an entire village in Rwanda.

 

Seems a little ironic, here you go, please clog your arteries while you are here to ensure that you come visit real soon. Goddamn the wastefulness of people. Oh well, I am famished and if I want to think clearly to interrogate this kid I need some nourishment. Ah, yes, Panda express©. I order myself the Kung Pao Beef and scarf it down just as quickly as I received it. There is nothing like spicy Chinese food for breakfast. I head back over to the elevator after relieving myself in the men’s room, which had a towel man, how do they pay for all of this? I catch the elevator up to the 25^th floor and look around; I see the Uni’s standing outside the only room being guarded.

 

“Hey boys, how’s it hanging?” I ask

 

“Not too stiff, unlike the bags you guys filled this morning.” The rookie Peterson wittingly snaps.

 

“Yeah, no s**t, I heard one of them was cut into half, is that true?” Ofc Davis asked.

 

“Yeah, two pieces, like a damn butcher shop boys” I try to anecdote. “How’s mister ninja now, is he conscious? Has he been talking at all?”

 

“He’s in and out, they gave him some morphine for the pain, he just got out of operation to stitch up that shot wound, missed everything vital, that is one lucky little f****r right there.” Peterson says.

 

“Well, I don’t how lucky he is, he might be luckier dead than alive. Thanks guys, I am going to go sit with the tyke and try to ask some questions, how much longer is your shifts?” I ask

 

“Next crew is here in 45 minutes boss” Davis answers “Good luck!”

 

As I enter the room I see even more evidence that this place is a flipping resort. The room is nearly the size of my flat. It has a little kitchenette, complete with microwave and mini refrigerator to the back of the room, next to it is a gigantic full size bathroom, I guess it would have to be to be handicapped accessible, and outside the door there are two brown faux suede couches that look like pull-out sleepers and to top it all off an extremely nice flat screen television that is currently playing Sportscenter on ESPN. I can’t imagine what the daily costs of this room happen to be, I don’t think I want to know, it will just depress me.

 

Harry is lying in bed with his head raised a little bit above his body. He is all clean from the blood that covered nearly all his body when they brought him here. His face has begun to bruise that nasty yellow jaundice color that reveals some hard hits were taken. This kid really did take quite the beating.

 

He has stitches covering the top of both eyes and down his bottom lip. They have put a cast on his right forearm which must have been broken. The shot wound is covered up but you can see that the bleeding hasn’t subsided because the gauze is starting to soak through. There is a tube up through and back down his nose hooked up to a breathing machine, I wonder to myself why they have that hooked up, can he not breathe on his own?

 

The wires are everywhere and the IV unit is hanging above his left side continually dripping the saline solution into his veins, undoubtedly mixed with a nice dose of morphine to take care of what I can only imagine an insurmountable amount of pain.

 

I sit down on one of the couches and stretch out a little bit. I notice they are talking about this weekend’s football games on the show and here they mention the home team, who are paying like they haven’t played since 1975. Everyone has been talking about it lately, the disbelief, the mixed emotions of finally winning after all these long seasons of having your heart ripped out and stomped on from prior seasons. Then there are the naysayers, ‘Oh, wait and see, they will choke’, without even an attempt at contemplating victory instead just accepting loss and defeat. Forever and always the pessimists, not me, I think we are going to go far this year and prove wrong all the hecklers and dipshits.

 

I start thinking about what Harry said to me before he was wheeled out on the gurney, ‘you have to find her’. Why would he say find her? Maybe she wasn’t there, if she were, she would most definitely be showing some signs just as poor Harry here is unwittingly enduring. Where would she have gone to? What did these two get their selves into? Where in the world did that guy get the stamina to overtake those two goons? Dumb luck? Then I start thinking about the scene at the house. It was ransacked, completely torn apart. They were there first, they had to be, they were looking for something and I think Harry here came home to surprise these guys. Maybe that is how he had the upper hand on them, took care of the first guy buy slicing his innards out onto the floor and then the other guy probably shot at Harry, then beat the living s**t out of him to get some answers as to what they were looking for…what were they looking for? I grab my phone.

 

“Herner!” I exclaim

 

“Hey boss, how’s the guy doing?” he asks

 

“He’s alive, for now. What news do you have for me?” I ask

 

“Not much yet, we are still out here trying to piece this s**t hole together. I have finished spreading throughout the neighborhood though, and that house you wanted me to question, the Bentleys, father Mike, wife Lacy and their two daughters, college girls, Hannah and Cara. They seem to know absolutely nothing, boss.” He explains

 

“Really?” I am dumbfounded. Why were they looking at me that way? I can’t bring myself to accept what he is telling me. Maybe I’ll go back later and check it out myself. “What about our foreign friends, any word on them?”

 

“Yeah, get a load of this Pat, Jimmy called me up just a few minutes ago, right before you called actually, we were able to ID the two as one Ivan Rasmussen and the other is named Sergei Tovlich.” He tells me.

 

“Tovlich?” I ask “Tovlich, why do I know that name?”

 

“Cause boss, one of the guys from the three that bought it last month, his name was Isaac Tovlich. Cousins!” he says with a bit of excitement in his voice.

 

“No s**t?”

 

“That’s right, and that isn’t everything, I had county pull deed records to find out ownership of this house and you will never believe it…Dmitry Tovlich, older brother of said Isaac.” He says to me

 

“Really?” I am taken back a little. “Ok, Bob, something is definitely stinking up the high side of the outhouse on this. We need to get hold of this Dmitry fellow and ask him some questions. Maybe we can bring him down to the station and hold him there for a while and question him.”

 

“Absolutely, you want me to go pick him up now?” he asks

 

“Not exactly, let’s find him first and put a couple stakers on him and follow his a*s, make sure he doesn’t plan on leaving and if he does make any attempts at leaving, then we pull him in, ok?”

 

“Sure”

 

“The kid is starting to wake up, I’ll call you back shortly, get to it, alright?”

 

“I’m on it!”

 

Harry is moving around on his bed, he seems to be in more pain, his face, what muscles are able to move, are contorting.

 

“Harry, how are feeling? Can you hear me? Do you need me to get something for you?” I ask the poor guy. I don’t know why I am feeling empathy for this kid. For all I know he could just be another dirty rotten scoundrel that got into the wrong side of the bed with cold feet and starting walking all over these guys backs. But, I see something in the kid, I think I can anyway. I have been doing this long enough to know how to judge people, but I can’t kid myself either, sometimes people are just f*****g crazy.

 

His eyes, swollen and blackened, barely able to open, he shifts his head towards my voice and looks through one eye at me and says “Sara”.

 

Damn, he must really care about this girl. It’s all that is on his mind. His eyes begin to roll back into his head and he succumbs again to the pain. I should just let him get some rest today and come back maybe later tonight. I got plenty to look into and sitting here isn’t doing me any good especially if Harry is out cold. I hear the door know turning and Ofc Peterson pokes his head through.

 

“Detective, just wanted to let you know we were changing shifts, you have Roker and Jimenez out standing guard for the remainder of the night. Was there anything I could get for you before I go?” he politely asks.

 

A*s kisser, I think to myself! “No, thanks though, I am heading out as well. This kid isn’t going to wake up anytime soon and even if he does, he will be so dumb-numbed from the meds; it probably wouldn’t be useful anyway. He came to for a minute in there and all he said was his girl’s name.” I explain

 

“His girl, why isn’t she here?” he asks

 

“I ask myself the same thing, and apparently they are in this together, so we need to find her quickly, she could be in a lot of danger.” I say, more thinking out loud.

 

“Danger” confused “what do you mean?”

 

“Huh, oh, sorry, I was thinking out loud. Don’t worry about it Peterson! Go home to your family. I am going into the station. Have a good night!”

 

I head towards the elevator with all kinds of thoughts and pretenses running through my mind. What does the Tovlich’s interest in these two mean? The deal that went sour last month, did these two have anything to do with that? How could they? Three people shot straight between the eyes. Now, two others sliced and diced like a Saturday Kung Fu marathon. There is most definitely a lot more to this story than meets the eye. I still can’t quite put my finger on it though. I need to go back and do some research.

 

I start walking towards the exit of the emergency room and notice my little daydreamer Jessica isn’t at her desk. She must have left for the day, which sucks. I would have loved to get another glance at those melons, those damn juicy melons.

 

“Detective” a voice calls out

 

“Well! Hello there miss Jessica! I was just thinking about you” I grin

 

“Oh! Really! “She smiles “well, I was just wondering if that offer still rang true”

 

 “What offer?” dumbfounding I ask her, kind of embarrassed for forgetting.

 

“Silly! Your phone number...anytime?” she says facetiously

 

“Damn right! Anytime sweetheart, well, obviously not right now, I do have a tidbit of work on my hands, but I will probably be working into the wee hours tonight!”

 

“That’s alright, I like late night!” with a nasty little smile on her face “you better get to work Detective.”

 

I feel the seam in my pants start to rise and can’t help to think how much I would love to tear that up. “Thanks, Jessica, enjoy your evening then!” as I turn back towards the exit.

 

“You can call me Jessie”

 

“Night Jessie”

 

I leave the building. The sun is setting but the day is far from over.

 

Author's Note

all criticism welcome