Quarry in the Middle - Max Allan Collins [44]
Was Jerry G going to accompany his pop to the doctor’s appointment? That was who this was—Giorgio “Gigi” Giovanni, and I wasn’t guessing, because I had done enough work for that family to have seen all the main players at one time or another, if from a distance.
No—Jerry G was depositing his pop in back of the Town Car, and the butch-hair boy was tossing a smoke to the gravel and coming around to get behind the wheel. They pulled out, Jerry G lingering to watch them go, then he headed back in. The Lincoln had exited the lot—access was strictly in back of the Lucky Devil, on a gravel strip along a row of trees—but catching up was no problem. Besides, I wanted to make sure I always had at least one car between us, and when I fell in behind them on the toll bridge, I had a two-car cushion.
Wearing sunglasses—not a disguise, this was a sunny day—I had followed them through the rolling city to its west outskirts and the medical complex. The Lincoln took a handicapped space, and I pulled around to park as far away as possible, at least for the moment. I watched while the burly chauffeur helped the old man out of the back seat, and walked him up a gently slanting walk to the double doors of the modern clinic.
When they were inside, I moved the car closer—I didn’t take a handicapped space, because I may be a killer but I’m not a prick, and anyway I didn’t have one of those hanging plastic cards that fend off fines. I wanted to be close in case I needed a quick getaway.
This might seem amusing, particularly since several other elderly patients were being helped into the clinic by relatives or whatever, indicating the facility was primarily geriatric. I would grant you few quick getaways had ever been made from this building.
On the other hand, that chauffeur was a big fucker, and the only reason I was walking around after that beating by his bouncer brothers was the Percodans perking in my bloodstream. Plus, that suitcoat hung loose enough that a handgun might be snugged under his armpit, and I was currently unarmed.
He was driving around the supposed godfather of Haydee’s Port, after all, a character with genuine Chicago bona fides—old Gigi only missed getting himself an episode of The Untouchables by maybe a decade.
A sign on the brick by the front doors spelled out the specialty of the house—neurology—and I went on into a small waiting room populated by senior citizens and their keepers. Nobody looked very bright-eyed, including the keepers. Two rows of chairs on either side faced each other, divided by a big coffee table where old magazines went to die.
I selected a Highlights, read for a while about Goofus and Gallant (speaking of pricks, how about that fucking Goofus?), and after ten minutes the nurse receptionist, a plump woman bursting her whites, called, “George Giovanni!”
Giovanni did not react, but the butch-hair bodyguard did, smirking disgustedly as he tossed his Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue on the coffee table, to rise and haul the old boy around and down a hallway at left.
I waited, and about ninety seconds later, the bodyguard returned, alone, and retrieved his reading matter.
I got up, went up to the porcine nurse (what the fuck kind of health message was she sending?) and asked where the men’s room was. I already knew, having spotted it from where I’d been sitting—it was down that same hallway where Giovanni had been walked, and abandoned.
She pointed toward the men’s room, mildly irritated (yeah, those bodily functions are a real nuisance), and I went down the hallway. It wasn’t a big place, maybe four little examining rooms, and they all had patient charts hanging on the door. The second chart I checked said “George H. Giovanni.”
Nobody else was in the hallway, and the fat nurse was busy resenting her lot in life, so I thumbed through the sheets. I’m no doctor, but the