NOS4A2(156)

As soon as he heard Vic’s voice over the earpiece, he’d felt the blood rushing to his head, had felt his pulse banging in his temples. His head had started to get heavy, as if his skull were full of liquid metal instead of brain tissue. What was worse, though, was that the room began to move in his peripheral vision. That sensation of the world beginning to rotate around him made him motion sick, and he had to stare directly down at the table to block it out. But then his head got so heavy he tilted over and kicked his chair out from under him.

It wasn’t a heart attack, was it? he asked the doctor while she listened to his throat with her stethoscope. Because if it was a heart attack, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

No. Not a heart attack. But you may have suffered from a transient ischemic attack, she said, a pretty black woman with a smooth, dark, ageless face.

Yeah, Lou told her. I figured it was either a heart attack or a transient schematic attack. Transient schematic attack was my second choice.

Ischemic. It’s a kind of mini-stroke. I’m hearing a hollow whoosh in your carotid artery.

Ah. That’s what you were listening to. I was just about to tell you I think my heart is lower.

She smiled. She looked like she wanted to pinch his cheek and give him a cookie. What I’m hearing is serious plaque buildup.

Seriously? I brush twice a day.

Different kind of plaque. In your blood. Too much bacon. She patted his belly. Too much butter on your popcorn. You’ll have to have an angioplasty. Possibly a stent. If you don’t receive one, you could suffer a major, even fatal stroke.

I’ve been ordering salads when I go to McDonald’s, he told her, and was surprised to feel tears stinging at the backs of his eyes. He was, nonsensically, relieved that the cute little FBI agent wasn’t around to see him crying again.

Now Lou grabbed the brown paper bag in the chair and wiggled into his underwear and jeans, pulling them on under his hospital johnny.

He had passed out after talking to Vic; the world had gone greasy and slick, and he couldn’t hold on to it. It squirted right out of his fingers. But up until the moment he passed out, he was listening to her. He understood, just from the pitch of her voice, that she wanted him to do something, that she was trying to tell him something. I have to make one stop, and then I’m going to go see a man who can get some ANFO for me. With the right ANFO, I can blow Manx’s world right off the map.

Tabitha Hutter, and all the other cops who were listening in on the call, heard what Vic wanted them to hear: They heard “info” instead of “ANFO.” It was like one of Vic’s Search Engine pictures, only a picture made of sound instead of color. You didn’t notice what was right in front of you because you didn’t know how to look—or, in this case, listen. But Lou had always known how to listen to her.

Lou yanked off his johnny, pulled on his shirt.

ANFO. Her father was the man who blew things up—took out ledge rock, tree stumps, and old pilings with ANFO—and who had blown Vic off without a look back. He had not ever even held Wayne, and Vic had talked to him perhaps only a dozen times in a dozen years. Lou had spoken with him more often, had sent him photos and video of Wayne by way of e-mail. He knew from things Vic had told him that the man was a wife beater and a cheat. He knew, too, from things Vic had not told him, that she missed him and loved him with an intensity perhaps matched only by what she felt for her son.

Lou had never met the man but knew where he lived, knew his number—and knew that Vic was going to see him. Lou would be waiting when she got there. She wanted him there, or she wouldn’t have told him.

He stuck his head out through the curtain, looked down an aisle made by rows of hanging sheets.

He saw a doctor and a nurse—a female nurse, not Bilbo—standing together, running down items on a clipboard, but their backs were turned to him. Lou carried his sneakers in one hand, slipped into the aisle, turned right, and pushed through a pair of swinging doors into a wide white hallway.

He wound his way through the building, moving in a direction that felt like it would take him away from the emergency-room entrance. He tugged his Vans on as he went.

The lobby ceiling was fifty feet high and had big slabs of pink crystal hanging from it, giving it a Fortress of Solitude vibe. Water splashed in a black slate fountain. Voices echoed. The smell of coffee and muffins wafting from a Dunkin’ Donuts made his stomach clutch with hunger. The thought of eating a sugared jelly doughnut was like imagining putting the barrel of a loaded gun in his mouth.

I don’t need to live forever, he thought. Just please for however long it takes to get my son back.

A pair of nuns were getting out of a cab, right out in front of the revolving door. That was damn close to divine intervention as far as Lou was concerned. He held the door for them, then climbed into the backseat. The rear of the cab sank on its springs.

“Where we going?” the cabbie said.

To jail, Lou thought, but what he said was, “Train station.”


BILBO PRINCE WATCHED THE CAB LURCH AWAY FROM THE CURB IN A gush of filthy blue exhaust, noted the number and the license plate, then turned and walked away. He drifted down halls, up stairs, down stairs, and exited at last through the ER entrance on the opposite side of the hospital. The old cop, Daltry, waited there, having himself a smoke.

“He took off,” Bilbo said. “Like you said he would. Caught a cab outside the lobby.”