Storm Prey

caught. What does he have? He has you and me—me for the hospital, you for the lady in the van. If he deals ... maybe he gets off with fifteen years. Maybe less.”
    “I think they’re too scared of me.”
    Barakat shook his head. “Scared now. Scared if they’re locked in a jail, with more bikeists in there?”
    “Bikers ...”
    “Bikers. They’ll have friends in prison,” Barakat said. “We won’t. They will deal us. That’s all I worry about now. I pray that Joe Mack is killed by the police, but I’m thinking, for both of us ... maybe we could make it happen.”
    “What’s in it for me?”
    “I have no money,” Barakat said. “I’m slave labor at the hospital, until I finish. Then there are possibilities. But one thing we know. We know that the Macks have a million dollars of medical-quality drugs. If you would help, if we could find Joe Mack ... I could get him to tell us where they are. I know they are not yet moved.”
    Cappy thought again. Then, “How’d you do that? Get him to talk?”
    Barakat spread his hands: “I’m a doctor. I have scalpels.”

    “I GOTTA THINK about it some more,” Cappy said.
    “But you’re not saying ‘no.”’
    “Well, you got some good points,” Cappy said. “I hadn’t thought about ... you know, they could sell me out for doing the woman. I mean, hell, except for the guy they kicked at the hospital, I’m the only one who’s killed anyone.”
    They both pondered it for a minute, then Barakat said, “This is a very interesting name that you have. ‘Caprice.’ In English it means an unpredictable action, does it not?”
    “I don’t know,” Cappy said. “I don’t know if it’s a real word in English.”
    “Yes, it is. I remember it, because it’s also a word in French—a kind of musical composition.”
    “You can speak French?”
    “Yes. And Arabic.”
    “Huh.” Cappy was impressed. ‘All I know is, my old man told me I was named after an “eighty-two Chevy.”
    Barakat smiled at the idea—naming your son for a car—then glanced at his watch. “If we’re going to go, we have to go now.”
    “Better go,” Cappy said. “Tell the truth, I’d like to catch that bitch somewhere. She almost ran my ass over. Just couldn’t believe it; cut me off, then almost ran me over.”
    Barakat laughed: “LA car talk,” he said.
    He was quite taken with Caprice, and slapped the boy on the back as they went out.

    INSIDE THE HOSPITAL, Barakat led him to the closet, showed him how to wear the orderly’s uniform, clipped the ID on his chest. “If anybody asks, you work in sanitation, and your boss, whose name is Rob Jansen, gave you a map and told you to spend the morning learning the hospital. Stay out of the basement. Jansen’s office is there.”
    Easy enough to do.
    Cappy ghosted down the hallways, patients, doctors and nurses, visitors, coming and going, all the time: people lying on gurneys, in wheelchairs, shuffling down the halls, sometimes towing bags of saline mounted on wheeled racks; people staring out of hospital rooms, watching television; beeps and boops from equipment, chimes from elevators, more laughter than you’d think.
    He got a quick sandwich in the cafeteria, actually helped move a patient from one floor to the other, on a cart. Pushed a guy in a wheelchair to an elevator, took him to the cafeteria, the guy breathing oxygen from a bottle on the back of the chair, who said, when they arrived, “Thanks, son.”
    He thought at first that the other orderlies would look him over, but nobody paid any attention to him; after a while, he began to get the feeling that he was effectively invisible. He asked about, and located, the special operating room for the twins. Barakat had told him about the overhead observation room, and he found that, looked it over. Thought: Can’t take her here.
    There’d be too many people around ...
    Started on an idea.
    If he could wait in a doorway, on a hall where she’d pass by, he could shoot her, slam the door, block the door somehow, and run for it. The place was such a tangle of hallways that if he worked out an escape route in advance, he’d probably make it out ...
    But that meant watching her for a while, so he’d know where she went. And watching her meant that a lot of other people would see his face around.
    Maybe he could simply wait for the twins’ operation, and watch her. When she got ready to leave the hospital room, he could run down the stairs, shoot her when she came