The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [126]
So, Annie thought, this is “Ms. Skippings,” the managed-care supervisor of Golden Days who’d been described so unfavorably by the old patients on the lawn. The woman glared suspiciously at Annie’s naval officer’s uniform and at Raffy with his long hair in a ponytail and his tight chinos and floppy pink flamingo shirt. “Yes? You are?”
“Just leaving,” Annie replied politely, which likely would have been the end of it if Raffy hadn’t started slamming his fist on the elevator button, yelling, “Run!”
Skippings stiffened, barricading their way. “No visitors on Floor Five. You’re here to see…?”
Annie didn’t like her tone and turned sarcastic. “Well, certainly not Dr. Parker since he was nowhere to be found.”
“Dr. who?”
Annie gestured widely at the empty hallway. “In fact, where are any doctors? If my father is ill—”
“What’s the patient’s name?”
Annie paused. “…Buchstabe, Ronny Buchstabe.”
Skippings began flinging through the pages of a folder she carried.
Raffy, grabbing at Annie, pulled her behind him. “We’re not here for anybody. We accidentally by mistake went to the wrong floor. ¡Perdón! ¡Perdón!” His finger pushed at the down button. “Come on!”
Skippings’ springs, already tightly wound, snapped with a sudden nasty thought. “The Miami Herald!” she exclaimed.
Raffy nodded, “Absolutely not. Good-bye.”
“I told you people I’d have you arrested for trespassing. We’re doing nothing we need to be investigated for!” She poked the slender Cuban in the sternum.
Flaring, Annie stepped between them. “This is a military matter now.”
Confusion momentarily unsteadied the tall blonde woman. “Military matter?” Recovering, she thrust herself closer to Annie. “I’m chief administrator at Golden Days.”
“Good for you. I like to see women go to the top.”
Skippings now poked Annie on the arm. “Show me the visitors’ badges they issued in reception.”
Annie flicked away the woman’s hand. “I’m with the United States Navy. We skipped reception.”
Skippings widened her mouth. “Excuse me?”
“Look, there’s no need to be such a bitch. We skipped reception. We came up the back steps.” Annie looked over at Raffy, who appeared to be praying to the elevator buttons.
Golden Days visitors did not speak this way to M. R. Skippings. (And patients were too intimidated to speak to her at all.) She let out the steam dangerously compressed in her long throat. “Well, then, we have a serious problem.”
Annie surveyed her. “Pancreatic cancer, serious problem. Genocide in Rwanda, serious problem. Hunger, land mines—serious problems. Whether or not we stopped by reception? I don’t think so.”
But in M. R. Skippings’s pink-stucco universe it was. “Are you refusing to show me those badges?”
Annie grinned. “Are you really actually saying to me ‘show me your badges,’ I mean actually really?” The elevator doors opened. Chamayra stepped out of the car. She looked at them horrified but didn’t speak and trotted quickly away down the hall. Annie shoved Raffy inside the elevator, jumping in with him. Skippings struggled to wedge open the doors.
Annie smiled at her pleasantly. “‘We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!’” The doors closed. “Treasure of Sierra Madre,” she explained to the wide-eyed Raffy as they descended. “I could feel it coming. That’s the correct quote; most people get it wrong.”
He appeared not to know what she was talking about. “I need a moment.” The slender man slumped rapidly down the elevator wall.
Annie leaned over him. “Are you okay?” He nodded weakly as she pulled him up by his armpits. “Raffy, pay attention. I want my father out of this place tomorrow. Let them arrest him and put him in a real goddamn hospital!”
“We’ll do that, first thing tomorrow. You’ll see Dr. Parker; we’ll make arrangements. Before we go to Cuba.”
“We’re not going to Cuba.”
Raffy took a deep breath as the elevator shuddered to a stop at the basement. “That was great, how you said, ‘This is a military matter now.’”
She smiled bitterly. “Well, I’m a con man’s daughter.”
He led her by backstairs up to the Golden Days lobby. “But what