The cabdriver was quiet and knew his way. He took Judah Street past UCSF Medical Center, made turns through the Castro and across Market, all the way to Valencia.
Cindy was lost in her thoughts, came back to the present only when the cab pulled up to a side entrance of the hospital.
“Faster for you if I drop you here,” the driver said. “Twenty-Second is jammed.”
That’s when Cindy found that she didn’t have her purse, her wallet, had nothing but her phone.
“Tell me your name. I’ll send you a check and a really good tip, I promise that I will.”
“That’s great,” the driver said, meaning the opposite. “No, listen. Forget it. Don’t worry about it. Good luck.”
Cindy had been to this hospital many times before. She walked through the lobby, passed the elevator bank, and headed down the long hallway, past radiology and the cafeteria; she followed the arrows pointing toward the ER.
The waiting room outside the ER was dirty beige and crowded with people with all kinds of injuries. She found Yuki balled up in a chair in the corner of the room. Cindy called out to her, and Yuki stood up and flung herself into Cindy’s open arms.
Yuki was sobbing and Cindy just held on to her, dying inside because she couldn’t make out anything Yuki was saying.
“Yuki, what happened? Is Richie okay? Is he okay?”
Chapter 100
IT HAD BEEN a night like no other I’d ever experienced. It felt like a military firestorm, gunshots cracking, bullets flying in all directions.
A sixty-year-old shop owner fell at my feet; never said a word, just died.
A drug dealer had been shot dead at point-blank range by an active cop who’d gone completely fucking rogue, and then there were other cops, my friends and my partner, who’d been injured in the line of duty.
I’d fired my gun, shooting to kill.
Maybe I was the one who brought Randall down.
I came out of the ER and found Cindy, Claire, and Yuki huddled together in the small, crowded waiting room. Cindy looked stunned. Yuki had been crying and now seemed distracted, as if she’d turned entirely inward.
Claire had the worn-down look of a person who hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and had not yet gotten a second wind.
My clothing was blood soaked. I wasn’t injured, but I was scared, and I’m pretty sure I’d never looked worse.
When Yuki saw me, she jumped out of her chair and asked, “What did they tell you?”
Brady had caught a bullet in his lung and had taken another through his inner thigh. That shot had hit an artery, and thank God the EMTs had arrived as fast as they had. Still, Brady’s condition was grave. He’d lost a lot of blood.
“He’s in surgery,” I told Yuki. “Claire, you know Dr. Miller.”
“Boyd Miller?”
“That’s him.”
Claire said to Yuki, “Miller is a fantastic surgeon, Yuki. The best of the best.”
Yuki said to me, “They told me that it’s touch and go. Touch and go!”
“He’s strong, Yuki. He’s young,” Claire was saying.
Conklin came into the waiting room from the hallway. His left arm was in a sling. He opened his right arm to Cindy, who threw herself at him. He hugged her hard, kissed the top of her head as she wept, then said to me, “I put Randall’s wife in the chapel.”
I left the waiting room and went down the corridor to the chapel, a sad-looking place that tried to give solace on a financially strapped city hospital’s budget. An ecumenical altar was backlit with subdued lights, and comforting sayings had been written in script along the walls.
Becky Randall sat in a pew with a little girl in her lap, three other kids hanging on to her arms, waist, and legs. She disentangled herself from her children, stood up, and said, “Willie, you’re in charge.”