Fade the Heat (19 page)

Reagan was one step ahead of him. “Listen, you pompous, horse-faced windbag of a—”

Jack brushed past her. “I…have had…just about enough of your shit, Winter.”

Alarm flashed over the man’s expression. He took two steps backward, until he smacked into the wall opposite the elevator doors.

Jack didn’t relent. He was up in Winter’s face now, so close he could smell the man’s sweat. “You want to come after me, I’ll take that, but you don’t talk your trash to women. And especially not this one.”

A tone sounded, and Jack heard the whoosh of the elevator doors behind him. He heard voices as people stepped out, but he was well past caring what they witnessed.

“I want an apology,” he demanded, borrowing a page from Paulo’s book and thumping a finger against Winter’s chest. “Not for me, but for her—and for my sister, too. For taking up my time with stupid accusations about how we orchestrated these
stunts
just to make you look bad.”

Winter’s blue eyes locked on Reagan, and his upper lip curled. “I see she’s not just any whore, she’s yours.”

Reagan might have been the boxer, but Jack didn’t have such a bad right cross himself. He put it to good use, punching Winter’s face so hard that he heard bone crack.

Fortunately, it wasn’t his, as evidenced by the blood
leaking between the broadcaster’s fingers, which formed a protective bridge over his almost certainly broken nose. The man might have a horse face, but he bleated like a goat.

For about half a second, Jack felt exultant—until a security officer jerked him backward and wrenched his arms behind his back. Then he felt exactly like the idiot he’d been. The last thing in the world he needed was to add an assault charge to his current problems.

What would your lawyer say?
Reagan’s voice teased in his head, while the real version somewhat less wisely told the sniveling Winter he was lucky Jack had decked him before she did.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Jack told the guard, a small but tough-looking Hispanic with a jagged, livid scar across his throat. “I shouldn’t have hit him, but he called my lady friend a
puta.
”

“You gonna hit him any more?” the guard asked, talking over the sound of Winter’s cries.

“I’m done, I guess,” Jack said, his embarrassment rising as one of the nurses stopped and stared at him. It was bad enough that he’d backslid to his days as an adolescent troublemaker, but this incident would be all over the hospital district in no time. And all over the news, too, where Winter would be sure to transform this particular molehill into Mount Everest.

“No, no,” Winter was telling a second security officer while dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief. “I won’t be pressing charges, and I won’t need medical treatment either. This is a private matter, and it’s over now.”

Amazed, Jack jerked his gaze toward the speaker, who caught his eye and asked, “Isn’t it, Dr. Montoya?”

Winter pasted on a let’s-be-reasonable-adults look and extended his free hand toward Jack. “I’m terribly
sorry about your sister, and about anything I said in the—uh—the heat of the moment that may have offended your lovely friend here. Please, let’s put all this unpleasantness behind us.”

Bowled over by the suddenness of the man’s change of attitude, Jack glanced at Reagan, who tipped her head in the direction of the gathering crowd of onlookers. In a flash, Jack understood completely.

If this incident reached the ears of reporters—as it was almost certain to—Winter would rather project a magnanimous persona than allow the public to see him as the self-serving, trash-talking crybaby he was. And Winter was a man who knew exactly how to play the media. Unless Jack shook his hand and mumbled some sort of apology himself, he was bound to look like a hot-tempered thug, the poster boy for every negative stereotype about Hispanic males and their machismo.

Yet Jack found that his pride was the bitterest pill he’d had to swallow in some time.

Such a bitter pill that he almost choked on his words as he got out the apology. But rather than taking Winter’s hand, Jack clenched his own into a rock-hard fist and quickly turned away.

At the sight of Luz Maria, looking so small and fragile in her hospital gown, Jack shoved aside his fury and frustration.

Backing down and telling Winter he was sorry had been as painful as spitting out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, but it was nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to seeing the way bruises and abrasions had blossomed on his little sister’s face. Her eyes were closed, but he couldn’t be certain whether her air-bag-abraded eyelids had swollen shut or she was sleeping.

Unable to bring himself to speak, he studied the bandaged arm that had been elevated on a mound of pillows to reduce the swelling. He’d been told the bones would need setting before a cast could be put on, but the doctors wouldn’t risk putting Luz Maria under until they felt more certain about the extent of her head injuries. For the same reason, she’d been given only the mildest of over-the-counter pain relievers.

No question about it, when she did wake, she’d be hurting. And in spite of the terrible consequences of the mistakes she’d made, Jack wanted more than anything to soothe her, to fold his little sister into his arms the way he had when she’d awakened with night terrors as a child. He needed to rock her and murmur to her, “Shhh…hush now,
mi princesa.
I’ve scared off all the monsters, so you’re safe now, I promise.”

His eyes burned and his vision blurred with the realization that the monsters had come back, fiercer and more ravenous than ever. And this time, he’d been powerless to banish them.
But I will see them punished
, he swore.
I’ll make sure they pay.

A nurse came in, a woman with short dark hair and turquoise contacts that made her eyes look bright as jewels. “I’ll be waking her for a neuro check,” she told him. “Then you can let her know you’re here.”

As Luz Maria muttered a complaint about being awakened, Jack released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. As she answered the nurse’s questions, his sister sounded tired and grumpy—the way she always did when someone roused her after she’d been out late. Though quieter than usual, she seemed like the Luz Maria he knew—until she slitted her eyes wide enough to see him watching.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She turned her head to look away, wincing as though the effort cost her.

The nurse took her vitals, then flashed Jack a tight smile before leaving the two of them alone.

“I’m tired,” Luz Maria said. “I have to sleep now…”

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

“So tired.”

Jack decided to press, at least a little. “Do you remember the accident at all? Luz Maria?”

She frowned, but her lips trembled as if she were fighting back tears. “I know about the baby, Jack. They told me the baby’s gone.”

Bending over her, he softly kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry.”

She shrank away from him. “Are you, really? Or do you just feel relieved?”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “
Madre de dios
, I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“I need sleep, Jack. I can’t…I don’t want to feel—”

“Who did this to you?” he demanded. “Do you know who caused the accident? Who moved you to Reagan’s house?”

Her eyes closed, and she remained quiet for a long while, so long Jack was certain she had fled him in the only way left to her.

He touched her temple gingerly and whispered, “Sleep well,
mi princesa.
”

But before he could reach the door, she muttered, “Sergio…”

Sergio
what?
Had that bastard been the one, despite his claims of innocence? Though he was shaking with rage, Jack swallowed back his questions. With her eyes still closed, he couldn’t know whether his sister was sleeping or awake, yet either way, he feared that a single word might break the fragile spell of her cooperation.

Luz Maria was murmuring again, so quietly that he leaned close to hear the words.

“He said you wouldn’t be hurt. He promised me—he swore it,” she murmured.

Jack wanted to ask, was Luz Maria referring to the fire, the damage to his career, or was BorderFree plan
ning something else—something even worse? And why would the pro-immigration group be involved with faking hate crimes against him?

Or was it something else entirely? He remembered what Sergio had told Reagan last night, before the man had fled.

“
You want to know who torched that building? Then follow the money. At the end of the trail, I’ll bet you’ll find a can of gasoline.
”

As his sister’s breaths deepened into those of true sleep, Jack thought about it. Who would profit from the arson, the bizarre tableau in which Luz Maria had been found, maybe even his own death?

Figure that out
, he told himself,
and you’ve got yourself a murderer. Fail to—and you may be the next one killed.

Jack was already on his way when Paloma del Valle called a second time. “
Apure, por favor,
” she pleaded, begging him to hurry.

Though her daughter, Cristina, had started wheezing, Paloma wanted no part of his suggestion to call an ambulance. “No, no,” she’d insisted before switching to her thickly accented English. “You fix. You fix quick now.”

He thought of calling for an ambulance himself, but since he was no more than ten minutes away, he decided he could get there just as quickly.

By the time Jack reached the Las Casitas Village apartment complex, darkness had descended over Houston. But nowhere he had ever driven seemed as dark as these anonymous, two-story rows of tan-brick apartments built back in the early eighties.

In another age, they would have been called tenements. In any period, they would be termed dangerous,
with pockets of addicts, criminals, and far too many unsupervised, half-grown kids living among families struggling to work their way out to a safer neighborhood. In addition, the lower floors were as prone to flooding as was the adjacent, long-abandoned Plaza del Sol. As Jack searched for a parking space near one of the few working security lights, he could still smell the fetid dampness that lingered from last spring’s record-setting deluge. Moisture remained evident in the weedy low spots—quagmires, really—that surrounded the complex and doubtless provided cover for both rodents and snakes.

It was a damned shame to see the area this way. When Jack was a kid, the Plaza del Sol, with its mostly Hispanic-owned businesses, featured not only indigenous Central and South American crafts, but a variety of stylish restaurants and shops selling merchandise ranging from fashionable clothing to designer kitchenware. Its reputation as a fun and funky alternative to homogenous malls drew a variety of customers from all over Greater Houston, and its growing success had become a tremendous source of pride to the community. The once-blighted area underwent a boom, with numerous apartments, grocery stores, and strip centers crowding around the plaza.

That boom ultimately destroyed it, for as the area was built up, developers covered so much of it with concrete and asphalt that Southeast Texas’s frequent heavy rainfalls had no place to run off. Coupled with a severe economic downturn, three floods within two years had sealed the plaza’s fate.

As Jack climbed out of his mother’s station wagon, he wondered if the rising waters were taking the same toll on the area’s residents. Luz Maria had been the one
to point out to him that many children he’d diagnosed with respiratory problems lived in this neighborhood, and one look at the water-stained, graffiti-laden exterior walls made him wonder if the problem was related to something inside the buildings instead of the general environment.

He’d driven here before, on two occasions when Paloma, a single mother, had convinced him her daughter was too sick for the bus ride to the clinic. The last time, he’d even let her talk him into treating a toddler whose parents feared deportation if they set foot in a health-care facility. But for all of that, he’d never seriously considered the building where his patients lived as the possible source of the children’s lung ailments. Like most doctors, he had succumbed to the temptation to treat the afflicted organ, or the disease, instead of the whole patient—a shortcoming his social-worker sister had been quick to point out.

“
Seeing the whole person is only the first step to solving the problem.
” Her words floated through his mind, but only now did he realize what she had meant.

Near the open, lighted doorway of a laundry room, Jack passed a trio of teenaged boys, two of whom wore hard looks and black T-shirts that appeared to be hand-painted with a silver insignia of some sort. Gang logo, he decided, and he felt his body go on high alert for some kind of shakedown. Years ago, he’d been jumped and robbed at knifepoint in a parking lot outside of med school, and the tension and watchfulness came back to him like a recurrent nightmare.

Yet when he came close enough to make out what the boys were studying so intently, he felt heat rush to his face. It was a physics book, he realized, and the
“gang logo” was the silver panther of the very high school from which Jack had graduated.

“How’d you do it?” the curly-haired one asked another in perfectly unaccented English as he planted a finger halfway down the page. “Come on, ’
mano.
Give it up and show me how to do the problem. If my grades don’t come up, I’m off the team for three more weeks.”

Once Jack passed the trio, he shook his head, disgusted that he’d leapt to the conclusion that a bad neighborhood necessarily spawned bad kids. He’d seen enough gang logos among the graffiti to know the criminal element was here, but even in the worst spots, hope glimmered like a shiny penny at the bottom of a swamp.

Before he could knock, Senora del Valle opened her door and ushered him into an apartment with a stained pink carpet and walls with peeling paint. The furniture looked both worn and inexpensive, and a houseplant atop the TV had turned yellow, but despite the scattered toys, the ratty carpet had been freshly vacuumed and he didn’t spot a speck of dust.

“
Dónde está Cristina?
” he asked needlessly, as her wheezing gave away her location. Following the sound, he went to the kitchen and found the big-eyed nine-year-old sitting at a chipped Formica table, her neck muscles straining with her efforts to breathe. A list of spelling words was laid out in front of her, along with half-completed homework. On her lap sat a worn, stuffed toy owl, which watched over the proceedings.

Though she didn’t bother with her usual perky greeting, Jack was relieved to see her color still looked good. He’d been dreading finding blue lips—a replay of Agustín Romero in the hours before his death.

“How was school today? Did you see any cute boys?” he asked, hoping to gauge the severity of her attack by the length of her response. When she was well, the brown-haired little cutie could talk his ears off. According to her mama, she had never known a stranger and was always getting notes home from
la maestra
complaining that Cristina was chattering away in class.

So when she merely wrinkled her nose and said, “Boys…are gross,” he knew, before he even pulled out his stethoscope or the peak air-flow meter he’d packed, that she wasn’t getting sufficient oxygen.

“Where’s the nebulizer?” he asked the child’s mother as he pulled open the bag containing the premixed solution for the machine.

Paloma del Valle ducked her head, casting her gaze toward the floor. From a bedroom, her younger daughter started crying, and she rushed off to tend the toddler.

“Don’t have it,” said Cristina, and she, too, looked away. “Not anymore.”

Jack bit back a curse, realizing that Cristina’s mother must have either sold the nebulizer or given it away—despite the fact her daughter needed it so much that Jack had bought her a used machine with his own money.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been burned in such a way, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. He wasted a moment wondering if things like this ever happened to suburban doctors, who spoke to their patients across gleaming desks while in covered spaces outside, their sleek black Jaguars waited smugly.

You could do it still
, he told himself. If his current situation didn’t cost him his license to practice in the state
of Texas, Dr. Rick Aldrich had made it clear that his offer to come work in his Galleria-area practice still stood.

But the thought didn’t appeal to Jack, even if he would get the opportunity to work with his old mentor. And even if he could go the rest of his career without making another house call or buying some piece of medical equipment for a patient.

As he plastered on a smile for the girl’s sake, he dug deeper in his bag. “Since you don’t have it anymore,” he told her, “we’ll just have to go with Plan B.”

“Is that…is Plan B a shot?” she asked, her wheezing growing louder.

“Ta-da,” he said as he whipped out an inhaler. “No shot this time, Cristina. Just a couple of puffs.”

And if that doesn’t work
, he added mentally,
you’ll get to take a nice ride in an ambulance—with the lights and sirens going.

They watched him leave the squalid apartment on the East End, watched the little girl with the stuffed owl run after him and hug the doc good-bye.

“Some people never learn their lesson,” said the first man.

The second shrugged broad shoulders. “It’s like they just can’t help themselves.”

“Maybe this kind of thing’s addictive, bad as any other jones. Crack cocaine, video poker, and sticking it to the system to help out little kids: they’ll probably have support groups for all three soon.”

His partner shook his head. “You’ve been in this job too damned long.”

Dr. Montoya stopped to chat with three delinquents, and within moments, the whole damned crew
was pointing and talking over something in a book. When a curly-topped reprobate reached for something in his pocket, both of the watchers instinctively bent their knees and gripped their guns’ butts, their wildly beating hearts pumping adrenaline throughout their bodies.

Instead of the weapon they expected, a pencil emerged from the kid’s pocket. Both men chuckled nervously, sweat breaking out with the speed and severity of a virulent pox.