Eye Wit (24 page)

“I need to warn you that once a kidney is available, he will need more surgery and more days in the hospital to recuperate. Like all transplants, kidney transplants are a little risky. He could have an adverse reaction to the anti-rejection drugs and it’s always possible that his body will reject the kidney he receives. That happens less often with kidneys than with other organs, but still….”

Most of Yoko’s discomfort was emotional but there was physical discomfort, too. She was staying with Dan at his apartment, spending nights on Dan’s couch because she was a restless sleeper. Dan didn’t need more bruises. Her place was a no-go. Her walk-up on the fourth floor would be way too much exercise, even for a determined Dan.

At least Yoko’s research project with Dr. Bertolli was on schedule. She’d managed to complete the first part of the iris biometrics study, an analysis of vision test results for the children in the study. Now she was waiting for other researchers to complete their analysis of the adults. The iris biometrics study was critical, because it would be the basis for police and other agencies’ programs to help protect children and seniors.

At night, as she tossed and turned on the couch and listened to Dan’s even breathing in the next room, she tried not to think about what difficulties might be ahead. We’ll get through, she told herself, again and again. And so far, that seemed to be the case. But lord, she was tired.

Hans Reiniger, the Gypsy, hadn’t been as fortunate as Dan. His injuries had turned out to be even more massive than Dan’s, his spleen ruptured, one of his kidneys completely destroyed. His sternum had deflected the arrow’s course, causing multiple injuries. The balloonist had been close to death more than once.

“So is it okay if I pick you up on my way to the hospital?” Dan asked, ending her reverie.

Yoko sighed. The hospital. God. She’d already lived through far too many angst-ridden hours at Dan’s bedside. No more, she thought. No more.

“Why do you need me there?” she finally said, hoping to avoid more time listening to the hisses and clicks of the formidable array of equipment she knew she’d find in Reiniger’s hospital room.

“What? You don’t you want to hear Reiniger explain why he was floating above Marco Fellini’s rooftop in a hot-air balloon and carrying a Luger? I figured you’d want to know. I mean, you were the first person Hans saw when he crashed. Hell, the guy even spoke to you.”

“Dan, the guy must have known he’d be prosecuted unless he thought he could do whatever he planned to do, fly off like a bird. Hot-air balloons aren’t allowed over lower Manhattan and that permit Reiniger gave the cop in Union Square was fake. Besides, it was for a demo
in
the park, not a flight
out
of the park and over….”

“Yoko, obviously he knew what he was doing when he planned his junket and faked a permit. He’s experienced at flying a balloon, that’s clear. It was a major risk just to get a crew to help him take it to the park and set it up. I want to find out why he took those risks. There’s gotta be something behind all his clever maneuvering….”

Dan paused as if he finally understood Yoko’s reluctance. “Look, my love. Here’s the deal. We need answers and this might be our only chance to get them. The docs say the guy’s fighting for his life. It’s now or never.”

Yoko relented, as deep down she knew she would.

At the hospital, a shiver ran through Yoko at the sight of the balloonist surrounded by life-support machines. Memories of Dan fighting for his life flooded back. She forced herself to focus on Hans Reiniger, who appeared to be asleep. The nurse at his bedside gave them a warning look as she expertly inserted a catheter.

“The patient has a morphine drip that he can operate when he wants. Be brief. He’s in no shape to talk.” At the door she muttered, loud enough so they’d hear, “I can’t believe you’re bothering the poor fellow.”

Dan pulled up a chair for Yoko on one side of the bed. He walked to the other side of the bed and quietly introduced himself. The man in the bed didn’t move.

“Mr. Reiniger, my companion is Dr. Kamimura,” Dan said.

The man’s eyes opened. He looked at Dan then slowly turned his head and stared at Yoko. She was struck again by the amazingly vivid blue of his eyes. His pupils were almost normal, an indication he’d been on the morphine for some time. When morphine is first administered, the pupils become very small. Gradually, they return to a normal size. Hans frowned slightly, keeping his eyes fixed on Yoko’s.

“I know you, don’t I?” His voice was barely audible, his breathing almost as labored as when she’d first seen him lying in the wreckage of the balloon.

“I was on the street where your balloon crashed.”

“Yes, I thought I’d die then,” he whispered. “Be reunited with my Brigitta. You’re beautiful. May you find a love like ours.”

The Gypsy’s eyes closed. He reached for the button on the device nestled by his hand and squeezed it. Yoko heard a click and watched the morphine level sink a fraction. She looked over at Dan, who shrugged. Was Hans listening? What happened when morphine flowed into your body? Hans had been on morphine for some time. What did that do to your clarity of mind? How intense must the pain be for the doctor to give you freedom to self-medicate with such a powerful drug, even if the drip was restricted to infinitely small doses?

Yoko tried again. “You spoke to me. You said you thought you’d cleared the top of the building.” On the other side of the bed, Dan nodded encouragingly.

Hans opened his eyes and looked at Yoko. She bent close to hear his voice. “Your ancestors are Asian. You live in the city, you know what it’s like to be in the minority.” His finger on the morphine button relaxed and his eyes closed.

Dan cleared his throat. “We’re from the police. We want to ask you some questions.”

Hans lay in the bed, eyes shut, thin face calm. In the brief moments since he’d pressed the button for morphine, the harsh sound of his breathing had eased. Yoko wasn’t sure the Gypsy was actually breathing. Was he? It was hard to see if his chest was actually rising and falling. Yoko looked at the heart monitor in a panic. The pulsating line crossing the monitor wavered, its peaks flattening. The machine beeped loudly.

A nurse came in at a run, others on her heels.

“You have to leave.”

Yoko and Dan waited outside the room. The voices inside were muffled, peaking in bursts. People hurried in and out, faces tense. Minutes ticked by. Finally, one of the doctors came out to where they sat on two cold metal chairs.

“The patient is unconscious. You won’t be able to visit him again.”

The next day, the hospital notified the public that Hans Reiniger was in a coma.

The day after that, Herr Félix Tolliver of
Zürich
,
Switzerland
, faxed a very long letter from his client, Hans Reiniger, to the
New York Times
and to the NYPD.

37

A week later, eager to find out the status of the District Attorney’s case against Sophia Fellini and Jessica Ware, Yoko met with Zoran at the Elephant & Castle on Greenwich Avenue, around the corner from St. Vincent’s hospital. They’d been meeting at the Elephant & Castle since Dan’s hospitalization—the restaurant was as close to the hospital as Zoran’s OCD would permit. Hospitals were dangerous, too many people who were sick with germs of hideous origin. Zoran could handle armed criminals, lunatics with Uzis, druggies and gang leaders, but hospitals were a different story. Zoran agreed with Vinnie Baldoni, every hospital was its own “Germ City.”

Originally, Zoran had suggested regular meetings so that he could offer Yoko moral support and those meetings had continued even after Dan’s discharge from the hospital and return to duty at the precinct. The OCD detective was a mysterious mix: paranoid germaphobe, major control freak. Even though Dan was out of the hospital, Zoran still insisted on meeting Yoko at the restaurant.

Yoko agreed to continue meeting Zoran because she wanted to find out what was happening with the D.A.’s case. She knew Zoran had his own agenda at the meeting, one that would need to be addressed first—she’d have to wait her turn and hope Zoran would talk quickly.

She ought to have known better. Zoran not only had his own agenda, he had his own timetable and it was immutable. He began the meeting by reminding her why they weren’t meeting at a place named the Greenwich Avenue Inn.

“If Charles the First had not made a trip to Spain in 1623 in search of a marriage treaty with the Spanish princess, the Enfanta de Castile, we might have been meeting at the Greenwich Avenue Inn,” he intoned. “Such is the British habit of corrupting words, the elegant Spanish name, Enfanta de Castile, became the Elephant and Castle when a publick house was opened in 17
^th
century London. The New York restaurant that opened in 1973––this one––replaced the ‘and’ with an ampersand.”

“Yes,” Yoko said. For the umpteenth time in Zoran’s now familiar narrative. It was easier to agree with her pedantic colleague and friend than point out he’d told her this before or that those details were on the back of the menu, as she’d discovered a year ago, when she and Dan had met at the Elephant & Castle to talk about the woman Yoko had seen murdered on East 23
^rd
Street, literally in front of her. That hadn’t been exactly a date, but that evening Dan had walked her home and kissed her for the first time. A stolen kiss on the cheek, but the memory of the way his hand caressed her face still created a rush of emotion in Yoko. His deep-set brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes were so close to her own brown eyes that their lashes touched.

“A butterfly kiss,” Dan had said, promising it would be the first of many.

She was only dimly listening but realized that Zoran was segueing into what sounded like another pedantic foray into obscure information.

“Dante tells me that the New York health care proxy form is an important legal document.”

Yoko blinked. “Yes,” she said. Zoran was circling the topic he wanted to discuss. She’d pay attention. This was important to Zoran.

“You know that Dan and I have been partnered as detectives at the 13
^th
Precinct for a little over five years.”

“Yes.”

“You also know that he is divorced and despite his former wife’s attempt at reconciliation in the recent past, Dan has made it very clear that part of his life is definitely finished.”

Yoko nodded.

Indeed she did remember, vividly. Dan had been sheepish, a striking contrast to his usual breezy manner, when he explained that his ex had travelled from Seattle to visit her brother in Philadelphia.

“She wants to explore getting back together,” Dan explained.

The news had been a double punch to Yoko’s gut, forcing her to face that she was dangerously close to falling in love with Dan. Yoko’s ex had been the opposite of honest and truthful so Dan’s openness about his ex-wife’s visit was a welcome contrast.

But Dan hadn’t called during his ex-wife’s visit, a visit that had stretched and stretched beyond a week into a second interminable week. By the time Dan finally did call, Yoko’s hurt had turned to anger. She ignored the messages on her answering machine, even the one that said his ex had flown back to Washington State and he’d been called out of town on police business.

“Nothing’s changed. I was a fool to let her persuade me it had,” Dan had said. “After she left, I was sent out of town on special training.”

Sure, Yoko had thought. Sent to a place without telephones.

The messages had stopped. Then, as Yoko was walking home after work one evening, a police car pulled up at the curb and Dan got out.

He was close enough to Yoko that if he moved another inch or two, his mouth would be on hers. He did lean forward, a butterfly kiss brushed her cheek.

“Let’s eat, and talk, please, Yoko.”

How, Yoko wondered, could you feel blissful and miserable at the same time?

That break-up, the first in a stormy string, happened before the case of the murdered woman was solved, before Yoko became a civilian consultant to the one-three, before she knew any of Dan’s buddies at the precinct. After the fact, Yoko learned how Dan and Vinnie had meticulously planned Dan’s casual appearance as she was walking home. Later, he denied he’d planned on spending the night. More Irish blarney?

Zoran’s next words brought Yoko back to earth with a bump.

“Although you and Dan had been spending a great deal of time together at the time of the attempted reconciliation with his former wife,” Zoran continued, “that was when he asked me if I would consent to be his health care agent.”

“Makes sense,” Yoko said.

“You are aware that the health care proxy form gives the person chosen as the agent the authority to make all health care decisions for…”

Yoko interrupted. If she wasn’t careful, they’d be there all night while Dan’s partner explained every last detail about health care proxies.

“Zoran, I understand what the form means and I appreciate you telling me this but I don’t believe Dan is going to need any health care decisions made for him right now. He’s able to discuss his options with the doctors from here on.”

Zoran nodded gravely. “Quite. However, I did think it necessary that I make you aware of the situation. When Dan was taken to the hospital, it was clear almost immediately that the need for me to step in as a health care agent was not imminent. Dr. Nicosian, who knew about the content of the health care proxy form, was there with him much of the time. Had there been any question about appropriate treatment, Dante would have acted as an intermediary and brought me the questions from Dan’s doctors. My answers would have been in accordance with Dan’s wishes.”