Notorious Nineteen Read Free Page A

and my laminated ID on the Internet. Seven dollars and ninety-five cents plus postage. They look pretty genuine. Not that I’m lying or anything. They say Bond Enforcement Agent, and they have my name on them. Not my problem if people confuse me with a cop, right?
    I flashed her my badge and my ID, her phone rang, and she moved me along.
    “First floor,” she said. “Room 117. Down the corridor to the right. If no one’s there you can page him on the intercom at the door.”
    I mouthed thank you and Lula and I went in search of Room 117.
    “I’ve only been here a minute, and already I can feel myself getting hospital cooties,” Lula said. “I itch all over. I got the hospital heebie-jeebies.”
    The door to Room 117 was closed. I knocked and someone inside grunted acknowledgment. I opened the door and was surprised to find Randy Briggs in a tan and blue security guard uniform.
    I’ve crossed paths with Randy Briggs on several occasions, and some have been more pleasant than others. Briggs is single, in his early forties, has a small amount of sandy blond hair and a narrow face with close-set eyes. He’s three feet tall, and he has the personality of a rabid raccoon.
    “Whoa,” I said. “What’s with the uniform?”
    “What’s it look like?” Briggs said. “I’m head of security.”
    “You were always a tech guy,” I said. “What happened to the computer programming?”
    “No jobs. The shit’s made in China and the tech support comes from Sri Lanka. The only reason I got this job is because they were afraid I’d pull a dwarf discrimination suit.”
    “They let you have a gun?” Lula asked.
    “Yeah,” Briggs said. “I’m real good at shooting guys in the nuts, being they’re at eye level.”
    It was a small office furnished with a desk and some uncomfortable-looking chairs. There was a dinosaur computer, a phone, a stack of files in manila folders, and a couple walkie-talkies. There were a bunch of handwritten notes and several photographs tacked to a bulletin board behind the desk. It looked to me like one of the photographs was of Geoffrey Cubbin.
    “Are those the ones who got away?” I asked Briggs.
    “That’s what they tell me. I haven’t been on the job that long. I’ve only had one go south on my watch.”
    “Geoffrey Cubbin.”
    “Yep. The night nurse checked him at two A.M. and reported him sleeping. The next entry on his chart was at six A.M. and he was gone, along with his clothes and personal effects.”
    “Is that what his chart says?” I asked Briggs.
    “No. That’s what the paper said. Jesus, don’t you read the paper?”
    “So how’s this dude manage to walk out of here if he just had his appendix yanked out?” Lula asked. “That gotta hurt. Maybe it was that he died and got rolled down to the meat locker and no one thought to look there. Oh no, wait a minute, he wouldn’t have gotten dressed to die.”
    “Cubbin was looking at about ten years of eating prison food and stamping out license plates,” Briggs said. “You could get past a little pain to walk away from that.”
    “I’d like to talk to his doctor and the night nurse,” I said to Briggs. “Do you have their names?”
    “No. And I’m not getting them for you either. I’m here to uphold hospital confidentiality. I’m the top cop.”
    “Looks to me like you’re the bottom half of the top cop,” Lula said.
    Briggs cut his eyes to Lula. “Looks to me like you’re fat enough to be a whole police force.”
    “You watch your mouth,” Lula said. “I could sit on you and squash you like a bug. Be nothing left of you but a grease spot on the floor.”
    “There’ll be no squashing,” I said to Lula. “And you ,” I said to Briggs, pointing my finger at him. “You need to get a grip.”
    I whirled around and swished out of Briggs’s office with Lula close on my heels. I returned to the lobby and called Connie.
    “Do we know who operated on Cubbin?” I asked her. “I want to talk to the