The 6th Target - James Patterson [50]
“Leonard! Len, where does it hurt?”
He mumbled, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying over the roar of concern all around them.
“Can you raise your arms, Len?”
“My chest,” he groaned. “Call my wife.”
“I can drive him to the hospital,” a man was saying over Yuki’s shoulder. “My car is right out front.”
“Thanks, but that’ll take too long.”
“Look, the hospital is only ten minutes —”
“Please. No, thank you. EMS brings the hospital to him, okay?”
Yuki pulled her satchel toward her, emptied it onto the floor, and located her cell phone. She blocked out the well-meaning guy behind her, pictured the traffic jam, the three hours’ wait outside the emergency room — which is what would happen if anything but an ambulance took Len to the hospital.
That was the mistake they’d made with her dad.
Yuki gripped Len’s hand as she listened intently to the ring tone. She hissed, “Come on, come on,” and when the 911 operator answered, she spoke distinctly and urgently.
“This is an emergency. Send an ambulance to Restaurant LuLu at 816 Folsom. My friend is having a heart attack.”
Chapter 68
CONKLIN AND I WERE WORKING phone leads on the Ricci/Tyler case when Jacobi popped out to the squad room, said to us, “You two look like you need some air.”
Fifteen minutes later, just before seven p.m., we pulled up to an apartment building near Third and Townsend. Three patrol cars, two fire rigs, and the medical examiner’s van had gotten there before us.
“This is weird. I know this place,” I told Conklin. “My friend Cindy lives here.”
I tried to reach Cindy but got a busy signal on her cell. No answer on her home phone, either.
I looked for but didn’t see Cindy among the tenants standing in tight knots on the sidewalk, giving their statements to the uniforms walking among them, looking up at the brick face of the Blakely Arms and the pale curtains blowing out of windows on the fifth floor.
Cindy lived on three. My relief was sudden and short-lived. Someone had damned well died prematurely in Cindy’s building.
The doorman, a middle-aged man with a sloping forehead and frizzy gray hair springing out from his hatband, paced outside the main door. He had a fading flower-power look, as if he’d been beached by the ’60s revolution. He told us that his name was Joseph “Pinky” Boyd and that he’d been working at the Blakely Arms for three years.
“Miss Portia Fox in 5K,” he told us. “She’s the one who smelled the gas. She called down to the desk a half hour ago. Yeah,” he said, looking at his watch.
“And you called the fire department?”
“Right. They were here in about five minutes.”
“Where’s the complainant? Miss Fox.”
“She’s probably outside here. We cleared the whole fifth floor. I saw her . . . Mrs. Wolkowski. Terrible thing to see some-one dead in real life, someone you know.”
“Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Mrs. Wolkowski?” Conklin asked the doorman.
“Nah. She was a bit of a crank. Complained about getting the wrong mail in her box, scuff marks on the tile, stuff like that. But she was a pussycat for an old girl.”
“Mr. Boyd, were you here all day?”
“Since eight this morning.”
“You have surveillance cameras?” I asked.
“The tenants have a picture phone for when someone buzzes the bell, and that’s it.”
“What’s downstairs?”
“Laundry room, garbage, bathroom, and a door that leads out to the courtyard.”
“A locked door?” Conklin asked. “Is it alarmed?”
“Used to be alarmed,” Boyd told us. “But when they did the renovation, it was made into a common space, so the tenants got keys.”
“Right. So there’s no real security from downstairs,” I said. “Did you see anyone or anything suspicious in the building today?”
Boyd’s laugh was tinged with hysteria. “Did I see anyone suspicious? In this building? This is the first day in a month that I didn’t.”
Chapter 69
THE UNIFORMED OFFICER standing at the door to apartment 5J was a rookie — Officer Matt Hartnett, tall guy, looked a little like Jimmy Smits. Sweat beaded his upper