Fifteen minutes later, two narcs walked through the black steel door. Mallow pointed out the pills. The narcs checked one, and then the older of the two said to the man in the chair, “We’re gonna need a lot of information from you, Tommy. You know, to keep you outta Ely. We wouldn’t want to send a couple of Elis to Ely.”
Ely was the state prison.
While the narcs were talking to Tommy Eli, Mallow pulled Lucas back into the hallway. “I’ve got a search warrant coming. Should be here in a few minutes,” he said quietly. He tipped his head toward the metal filing cabinets. “If they bought that Indian jewelry, it’ll be in one of those drawers.”
“Okay. I think I’ll sit down for a while,” Lucas said.
“You’re still looking shaky,” Mallow said.
Lucas shrugged. “I’m all right... Maybe not ready to take on a couple of linebackers.”
“Knocked both of us right on our asses,” Mallow said.
“Got blood on your shirt,” Lucas said.
Mallow looked down at the front of his bright yellow guayabera shirt. “Ain’t that the way?”
—
WHILE LUCAS ANDMALLOWwaited for the search warrant, Bob and Rae had fought through three separate hospital bureaucracies and had come up empty. One the fourth try, at a northside medical center’s emergency room, they asked the duty nurse if she knew of a man who’d been treated for a leg injury and who’d paid for the treatment with a stack of bills.
Instead of shaking her head and referring them to somebody else, her eyes narrowed and she said, “I’m not supposed to talk aboutthat. You’ll have to talk to one of the people in the director’s office.”
She made a phone call and pointed them at the elevators.
Bob said to Rae, “She saidthatlike it was in italics.”
“I noticed.”
A tall carefully coiffed woman in the director’s office looked at their IDs and then said, “We’re not allowed to give out specific patient information without a subpoena. I’m sure you know that. I can confirm that we did treat a man about six weeks ago with a serious leg infection who refused to give us identification and paid us in cash. He said he didn’t have any insurance, and the bill was substantial. Substantial enough that the cash payment was... extremely unusual.”
“Can you tell me what kind of injury it was?” Rae asked.
“Yes. He had a large defect in his calf. The actual injury happened some time back, probably months ago, and apparently had been self-treated. A cyst developed under the wound. Our surgeon had to open the healed wound to drain the cyst. And that’s about as much as I can tell you without the subpoena.”
“Can you tell us if the patient was given any medication that required a prescription?” Bob asked.
“Yes. He was given prescriptions for pain pills and also for antibiotics.”
She wouldn’t answer any other questions until Rae asked, “Can you answer a question about non-patients?”
The woman frowned. “Like what?”
“Was he accompanied by anyone?”
“I believe he was accompanied by a woman, perhaps his wife or girlfriend. One of our security guards reported that she brought him to the emergency room in a Cadillac.”
“Do you do video of the cars at the emergency room?” Bob asked.
“Yes, we do. We archive the tapes after thirty days unless there’s an inquiry during that time.”
“So you wouldn’t have the video anymore?”
“We do not,” the woman said.
Bob said, “We’ll be back with the subpoena.”
The woman nodded. “We’re always happy to cooperate with the authorities, but according to law we have to do the correct paperwork. It can be a pain, but it’s the law.”
