“He was still sitting in the chair when I got in the elevator. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s not coming up today. But he’s got your room number now. He seems nice enough. To come all this way to check on you.” Tex watches me carefully over the coffee cup.
I let out a long sigh. “Alright, I’ll talk to him if he shows up. But not for long, because I’m worn out and not feeling up for any visitors except you.”
“Yeah, that would be best. Then he can go on his way. Let him say whatever he needs to and then he’ll move along.”
Tex changes the subject. He asks me about the doctors, the imaging, the timeline. I give him what I’ve got, which isn’t much. The swelling is still significant. They won’t do a full assessment until it goes down. Could be days or a week or longer.
“And your legs...” Tex starts, then stops. He’s looking at the blanket where my legs are making the shape of legs but doing nothing else.
“Still can’t feel them,” I say. “Nothing below the waist. They’re saying it could be the swelling.”
Could.There’s that damn word again.
“How was the drive?” I ask, wanting to talk about anything else.
“Which drive?”
“The one where you followed a medical transport vehicle for two hours on I-10.”
“Well, two hours is a long time to follow a vehicle with your best friend in it,” he says. “You know what you think about for two hours on I-10 with nothing but swamps and religious billboards to look at? Everything. Every single thing I could’ve done or should’ve done. By the time I hit Tallahassee I’d run every scenario ten different ways and none of them ended up here with you in a hospital bed.”
“You could’ve just listened to the radio.”
“I tried,” he says. “None of the stations pick up. That stretch of highway is a godforsaken dead zone. I hate that fucking I-10. Plus, I made the mistake of bringing a gallon of sweet tea with me to drink. Which I did. I was nervous and drank almost the whole thing. And then I had to pee for an hour and couldn’t stop because I was afraid of losing the ambulance with my best friend in it.”
“You knew where they were bringing me. You didn’t need to stay right behind me the whole time.”
“Yeah, I did. No way was I losing sight of those taillights even if I had to pee in the gallon jug with the sweet tea.”
“Jesus, Tex. I don’t need that image in my head.”
“Other than that, the drive was fine to answer your original question.”
“Before you leave, I need you to do something for me,” I say. “Even if you don’t want to.”
“Anything. Let’s hear it.”
“Can you tell me exactly what happened? I need to hear your side of it.”
“You sure you’re up to that right now?” he asks. “It’ll wait. We’ve got plenty of time to talk about that.”
“I’m a cop. I need to hear it.”
He leans back, crosses his arms and stretches his long legs out. “I heard the ruckus from the kitchen,” he says. “Not the words. Just the sound. A fist hitting a body. You hear that sound once and you know it forever. It’s not like the movies.It’s wet. Heavy. And then the sound of someone going down. A body hitting the floor, and then boots.”
He sighs and shakes his head.
“I came around the corner and the first thing I saw was the four of them. All standing. The hallway’s not wide, Mickey. You know that hallway. It’s maybe five feet across and these four guys were filling it, shoulder to shoulder, and they were all looking down at the floor. All four of those bastards looking down at the same spot like they were standing around a campfire. And then I looked down.”
He takes a breath.
“The guy, Benji, was on the ground. Curled up on his side with his arms over his head. I know you probably don’t remember him. He’s maybe five-eight? Maybe a hundred fifty pounds soaking wet. And these four guys, the smallest one’s got sixty pounds on him easy. The big one, the one doing most of the work, he’s bigger than you. And he was kicking the shit out of him. Not shoving or pushing him around. Kicking. Full swings. The leg going all the way back first. He was kicking him in the ribs and his body was jerking with every hit and he wasn’t screaming. That’s the part I keep coming back to. He wasn’t making a sound. Almost as if he knew it was coming. He expected it and there it was. He had his arms over his face and he was taking it and not making a sound.”
“Goddamn them,” I say.
“The surveillance cameras caught parts of it that I didn’t see. After what happened with Ron and Stormy, I put them everywhere except inside the restrooms. Seven cameras. I told the installer I wanted to see every angle and he said ‘Tex,the Pentagon doesn’t have this many cameras’ and I said ‘the Pentagon doesn’t serve alcohol to bikers on a Saturday night, install the fucking cameras.’ Cost me five thousand dollars. Best money I ever spent because those cameras caught everything those four bastards did and every frame of it is now evidence.”
“I’m glad you did. What else happened?”
