A Body to die for

in bangles and braids. She was typing on a computer. After pretending to ignore us for longer than was polite, I said loudly, “This must be a public hospital.”
    The woman squinted before smiling brightly. She said, “Sorry to keep you waiting. I was inputting information into our computer system so we could admit an uninsured woman in premature labor.” She had a Jamaican accent. “If I didn’t get that processed, she would have had to deliver her baby on the emergency room floor. Thank you for being patient.” Jamaican, perhaps, but she had the Jewish guilt thing down. One of her bracelets was inscribed with the name Annabelle.
    “Is that your name? Annabelle? Very pretty,” I buttered her up like a turkey. “I’d like to see Leeza Robbins. She was brought in about an hour ago.” This was the closest hospital. She had to be there.
    “Family?” she asked.
    “I’m her sister.”
    “You don’t look like her sister,” she said, checking me over.
    I smiled prettily. “I’m adopted.” Annabelle shifted her weight on her ergonomic swivel chair.
    She toyed with a few of her bangles and twisted a braid of hair. “Well, you can’t go into the emergency room.” Her accent swung back and forth like her braids.
    I said, “I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
    Her eyes flew open and she laughed. “I’d be more than happy to take twenty dollars from you, but you’ll have to wait like everyone else. Visiting hours are between three and three-fifteen.”
    Time check: half past a bug’s butt. Shit, I thought. What am I going to do for forty-five minutes? I said, “I’ll give you forty.”
    Annabelle smiled broadly—big tombstones of perfectly white enamel—and said, “I’ll take it.”
    I turned to Alex and said, “Give her forty dollars.”
    “You give her forty.”
    “Alex, which one of us gives two flying shits about seeing Leeza anyway?”
    She said, “I thought you were her sister.”
    “We’re estranged.”
    “I’ll say,” grunted Alex as he forked over two twenty spots. Annabelle nodded her thanks as she accepted the bills. Then she returned to punching keys on her computer.
    I rapped on the glass. “What now?” I asked. “Click my heels together and say, ‘There’s no place like the emergency room?’ ”
    “You can do that,” she said, not looking at us. “But you’ll have to do it for forty-five minutes until I can let you in like everyone else.” Before I got the chance to protest, she said, “And thanks for your donation to the hospital fund. Public hospitals need all the help they can get.” She swiveled in her chair over to her printer. She tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Alex. “That’s your receipt. And don’t forget—sixty percent of your donation is tax deductible.”
    I hate do-gooders. I scowled so hard it hurt, and found a seat in the waiting area. Alex joined me. He seemed upset. The room was nearly empty—not many emergencies in Brooklyn Heights that afternoon.
    Clang. The outside doors smashed open. Five cops in uniform dragged in a black kid screaming in pain. I’d guess he was about fifteen years old, but it was hard to make a good guess with his face all covered in blood. Annabelle sprang to life and punched through the glass doors. She tried to ask the kid questions, but he was too busy suffering to answer. One of the cops—I thought he looked like the guy I’d used the old ventriloquist ploy on—said, “We caught him breaking into a car on Clark Street. Had to bust him up to restrain him.”
    Alex whispered to me, “Fancy that.” Talk about dumb luck. The kid’s, I mean.
    Annabelle lifted the kid like a sack of coffee beans. I was impressed by her brute strength. She muttered something about police brutality and kicked a switch plate on the wall. Two double doors burst open automatically. While cradling the kid in her arms, she shuffled down a long corridor into a pen with about forty beds crammed against the walls. The cops looked at each other in confusion. One mumbled into his walkie-talkie about the incident, and the rest of them congregated underneath the TV to comment on a “One Life to Live” scene.
    I checked behind the bullet-proof glass windows. No one had come to replace Annabelle. “Stay here,” I commanded.
    Alex said, “I suppose trying to talk you out of this would be a waste of time.”
    “You’ve got to cover for me.”
    “I fronted the forty.”
    “You want a medal or a monument?” I asked.
    “A