Snitch World (17 page)

She assessed him frankly.

“Am I right?”

Room 833 was as far away from the elevator bank as a room could get, and it was private, as Klinger couldn’t help but notice. He’d only ever been on hospital wards that consisted entirely of parallel rows of beds. When Klinger had been forced to spend a little time in hospital, privacy hadn’t been an issue.

Klinger loosened his tie—yes, Marci had bought him a red tie, and a blue shirt to go underneath it.

“Don’t tell me,” he had told her, as they stood before the bank of elevators in the street-level lobby, “how long it’s been since you’ve tied a man’s tie.”

“Since they paralyzed my father.” She looked him in the eye, then looked back at the knot. “Except his, I tied real tight.”

Klinger, who had never worn a tie in his life, jutted his chin to one side.

“Just remember,” she whispered.

“A thousand bucks,” he remembered.

She slipped the phone into the side pocket of his jacket. “The Gavel,” she reminded him. “Cocktails at five o’clock.” She winked. “On me.”

Klinger walked down the hall, past the nurse’s station, past an empty gurney, past a couple of televisions, and pushed open the door to 833.

Phillip couldn’t have been thirty years old, but he looked older. The fluorescent lights didn’t help, but his complexion was unnaturally wan, preternaturally sallow,
and one big purpling where it wasn’t a yellowing contusion. His left ear was twice the size of its mate and mostly bandaged. His exposed right arm had a couple of tubes leading to it, with bruises apposite to their needles. He wasn’t breathing correctly, and he was being helped by a mask over his nose and mouth, a tube from which led to an erratically clicking machine on a stand next to the bed. A wire draped over his shoulder led to a dill-pickle-type call button parked on his chest. A TV remote lay on the bedclothes, but the television, which hung over the entrance door, was turned off.

Phillip’s room was a corner unit, too, with not one but two windows. A ceiling-to-floor curtain hung from the bed’s right side, apparently to shield the patient from the northern exposure which, despite rainwater coursing down the window, flooded the room with light.

It was two-thirty in the afternoon, and Phillip seemed to be sleeping.

As he waited for Phillip’s subconscious to notice his presence, Klinger took in the details of the room. A chair, upholstered in slick green Naugahyde, stood to the bed’s right, Klinger’s left. On one wall hung a picture of the Transamerica Pyramid. There was a door, presumably to a bathroom, in the wall to the left of the bed. The slide track for the curtain entirely circled the bed, but only the curtain to its right had been deployed. The headboard of the bed had been cranked up so that the patient assumed a half-sitting posture. The usual clipboard hung from a hook on the foot of the bed. Several magazines devoted to the exigencies of celebrity culture lay atop a bedside stand, along with a thermometer bottle, a couple of brown prescription pill bottles, a clock radio, a nail clipper, a comb, a box of disposable tissues. Next to the little night table were a stainless steel tree hung with dripbags and next to that a roll-around rack of electronic gear.

Klinger had a look at the labels on the pill bottles. The first contained an antibiotic. The second label mentioned thirty forty-milligram ampules of a brand-name synthesis of opium-derived thebaine.

These latter pills would bring thirty-five dollars apiece on the street. Without so much as a backward glance, Klinger cracked the cap, dispensed four ampules into the palm of his hand, dropped them into his shirt pocket, replaced the cap on the bottle and the bottle onto the night-stand, and was standing at the foot of the bed, retrieving the phone from his jacket pocket, when a nurse stuck his head in the door.

“Did you say your name was Officer Clemens?” he asked.

As if holding the phone away from the north light in order to study its screen, Klinger didn’t bother to turn to face the nurse. “Is Clemens on this case too?”

“In other words,” the nurse said, as if annoyed with the obtuse answer and the wasted moment that went with it, “you’re not him.”

Tentatively touching the phone, Klinger gave it a moment before he shook his head. “No. I’m not him.”

“Shit,” the nurse said, and went on his away.

The door to the hall closed silently.

“This is the longest,” a muffled voice said, “that I’ve gone without e-mail in my adult life.”

Klinger looked up. The patient’s eyes were open, and he was looking hungrily at the phone in Klinger’s hand. “Somebody took my phone,” Phillip said.

“Good afternoon,” Klinger said. “Phillip Wong, I presume?”

“It is I,” Phillip Wong replied. “Or what’s left of me. Phoneless and e-mailless me.” Phillip looked at Klinger, frowned uncertainly, looked at the red tie, shook off the thought and asked, “And whom do I address?”

Well, thought Klinger, you almost remembered me. “Detective Schnorr,” Klinger said without hesitation. “SFPD.”

“The police?”

Klinger nodded. “The police. And how are you feeling, Mr. Wong?—May I call you Phillip?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks. Call me Reese.”

“What day is it, Reese?”

“Friday,” Klinger answered. “All day.”

“And how long have I been here?”

Klinger considered this. “Eighteen hours, maybe?”

“I got a headache.”

“I’ll bet.” Klinger took up the clipboard and had a look. Much of the language and notation were opaque to him, but he knew what a concussion was. “You took quite a whack.”

Phillip tried to nod, but he winced instead. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“What’s the last thing you do remember?” Klinger lifted the first page off the clipboard.

Though it no doubt hurt, Phillip’s expression soured. “Marci,” he said bitterly. “Fucking Marci on the fucking phone.”

Klinger looked up from the clipboard. “And Marci is … ?”

Phillip sighed. “An associate.” His sigh made a lot of noise inflating his ventilator. “An associate from my job.”

“I see.” Klinger replaced the clipboard on its hook. “Do you remember where you were, or what you were doing, while you were talking to her?”

“Sure,” Phillip said. “I was eating pasta and drinking wine at the … At the …”

“You had dinner in a place called Il Bodega di Frisco,” Klinger told him. “Is that when you talked to her?”

“That’s right,” Phillip said. “I love that place. There’s never anybody there.”

“Interesting,” Klinger lied. “I wonder how they stay in business?”

“They run a sports book out back,” Phillip said offhandedly. “I—.” He shut up.

Klinger nodded a jaded nod. “We know all about the sports book.”

When Phillip’s eyes widened, the disparity in pupil size became obvious. “How come you—?”

“Are you kidding? If we took down all the gambling in North Beach, there wouldn’t be a joint up there left to eat in. Not to mention to drink in.” Klinger put one of his desert boots up on the railing at the foot of the bed and rezipped it. “What I really want to know is, how’s the food at Il Bodega di Frisco?”

“After a week of eating sandwiches at your desk three times a day,” Phillip said, “it’s goddamn excellent. Especially the wine. They got a deep cellar under there somewhere.” He squinted. “You ever eat sandwiches three meals a day?”

“Sure,” Klinger said. “All the time. I never drink wine, though,” he added truthfully. He placed the palm of his right hand over the lower-left side of his stomach. “It aggravates my digestion. But I drink a lotta coffee. Coffee and hot pastrami with the works—pickles, pepperoncini, onions, lettuce, mayo, mustard—.” Klinger smiled contentedly. He sounded just like a cop. “What else?”

“Sprouts,” Phillip suggested. “Avocado.”

“Although sometimes,” Klinger confided, “I go for a giro.”

“I can’t handle lamb.” Phillip made a face. “Too greasy.” “You drink enough coffee?” Klinger dropped his foot back to the floor and chopped the side of one hand against the palm of its opposite. “Cuts right through the grease. I don’t care what you’ve been eating.”

Phillip groaned.

Five seconds passed in silence.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Phillip said.

Uh oh, Klinger thought. Aloud he said, “You want a wastebasket?”

Phillip smacked his lips and moved his head back and forth.

“No good if you puke inside that mask,” Klinger submitted nervously. “Maybe I’ll get a nurse,” he lied.

Phillip held out a hand. “Give me a minute,” he managed to say. “Give me …”

Klinger gave him two. In the intervening silence, while keeping one eye on the patient, Klinger paced the room. On the cover of a celebrity magazine a former governor of Alaska was astride an ATV and showing a lot of leg. Out the north-facing window, despite the mist, he could make out the top of the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The crisis passed. “Okay,” said Phillip weakly. “I’m okay.”

“How about some water?” asked Klinger.

Phillip nodded.

Klinger took up a plastic flask from the bedside stand. A glass tube protruded from its mouth, and the tube had a dogleg in it. “Is this water?”

Phillip nodded. Klinger held the flask in one hand and aimed the tube at Phillip’s head with the other.

Phillip pressed the mask to his face, took several deep breaths, then moved the mask aside. Klinger quickly fit the end of the glass straw tube to Phillip’s lips, and Phillip drew a long draught through it.

Nodding, Phillip pushed the straw aside, refit the mask over his nose and mouth, pressed it into place with palm of one hand, and inhaled greedily enough to concave the transparent contours of the mask. The machine to which the mask was hooked ticked determinedly. Then Phillip exhaled loudly, as if exhausted. Beads of moisture
flecked the inside surface of the mask. “Thanks,” he managed to say.

Klinger replaced the flask on the table, then indicated the upholstered chair. “May I?”

Phillip nodded eagerly.

Klinger took a seat, retrieving the phone from his jacket pocket as he did so.

“You’re racked up and you need your rest, Phillip. I won’t keep you much longer. Is this your phone?”

Phillip’s eyes brightened. “Sure looks like it.”

“Is there some way you can tell for sure?”

Phillip nodded so that the tubes festooning him rattled. “How?”

Klinger handed him the phone. Phillip held the phone, swiped a finger over its screen, then again, then again. He looked happy. The transformation was something to see. “I’m surprised it’s not dead,” he said, watching the screen. “Did you charge it?”

“It was dead when we found it,” Klinger said easily. “A guy in the precinct has the same model. He loaned me—you—a battery.”

Phillip nodded. “Where’d you find it?”

“Well get to that in a minute. It’s password protected,” Klinger added.

Phillip nodded again.

“The thing is,” Klinger continued, “there’s a chance the guy who mugged you made a few calls after he stole it. He might have been that stupid, anyway. That’s if you’d left it on when he stole it, of course.”

“I can check that,” Phillip said. “Easily.”

“Yeah,” Klinger said. “I’m sure you can.”

“Here we go,” Phillip said. As Klinger watched, Phillip held the phone in front of him in his left hand, then, despite the resistance of the various tubes inhibiting his
agility, placed the first three fingers of his right hand across the face of it. The phone emitted three escalating tones.

“Wow,” Klinger repeated truthfully.

“It’s my phone all right,” Phillip said.

“Your password has to do with fingerprint recognition?” Klinger realized, amazed.

“Three-fingerprint recognition,” Phillip nodded. “It’s an open source app that I modified,” he added modestly.

“Wow,” Klinger replied frankly.

Phillip tapped the screen, waited, tapped again, waited, and tapped again. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the call I took from Marci. Initiated at 8:37 p.m., terminated at 9:05 p.m. Pretty much the whole time I was trying to enjoy my meal.”

“Marci’s the associate you mentioned?” said Klinger.

Phillip nodded. “But I see no other incoming calls, and no outgoing calls. Not that night, anyway. But,” he added, “there’s … eleven incoming calls that went to my InBox starting at … one-thirty the next morning.”

“Can you tell who they were from?”

Phillip nodded. “Marci … Marci … Then, yesterday, all kinds of people …” He tapped the side of the phone. “Then, this morning, Marci again.” Phillip Wong sighed. “All work-related. Speaking clinically,” he added, “I don’t have too many friends.”

Klinger pursed his lips. “Okay. But he still had the phone on him.”

Phillip didn’t look up from his screen. “Who did?” “The guy we arrested this morning for …” Klinger hesitated.

Phillip waited a few seconds, then, his forefinger in midswipe, he looked at Klinger. “For?”

“… Driving a stolen vehicle,” Klinger decided. He shrugged. “It was a complete fluke. A coincidence.” He nodded. “Guy has a long record, this is a high-end phone,
and he had a cheap one in his possession that seemed way more obviously his speed. One of those pay-as-you-go phones you get out of a vending machine.”

Phillip made a face.

“Also,” Klinger went on, “he was in possession of several freshly dispensed ATM twenties whose serial numbers,” he pointed at Phillip, “we traced to the North Beach branch of your bank.”

“You know,” Phillip frowned, “I vaguely remember using an ATM recently …”

“And so you did,” Klinger nodded. “At something like ten-forty the night you got mugged. So,” he indicated the phone, “our boy was driving a stolen car and in possession of stolen property. Too bad about the outgoing calls, though. If he’d been dumb enough to call his mother on your phone, it would be pretty easy to stick him with a couple of extra charges, and felonies at that.”

“Like what felonies?”

“The stolen vehicle’s a good one. And your ATM money. The phone was stolen too—right?”

“Right,” Phillip nodded gravely. “Definitely.”

“Okay,” Klinger put out his hand. “Would you mind giving it back to me?”