The Axeman's Jazz

were no prints on the typewriter. But that was of minor interest considering the real news—it was the one on which the Axeman had written his notes.
    I wonder
, thought Skip,
if there’s a suicide hot line I can call.
    Cappello was as close to losing it as Skip had ever seen her. “Did you actually step into Di’s apartment?”
    “That’s about all I did—stepped in to call Di.”
    “And that’s when Di came home? She actually found you in her apartment?”
    “Oh, shit, Sylvia. I’ve been kicking myself around the block about this. I know what a lawyer could make of it—I planted the evidence, but miscalculated; Di came home too soon.”
    “Di’s thought of that too. Count on it.” Cappello spoke through clenched teeth. “Listen, I’m sending someone else to watch Di tonight. You take the night off, okay?”
    If Di’s the Axeman and she gets off because I screwed up, I’m going to die. I’m just not going to be able to get through it.
    In fact, I might die anyway
.
    She was so depressed she didn’t even phone Steve. She went and got a joint from Jimmy Dee, and tried to think of a way out.

TWENTY-NINE
    SUNDAYS WERE GREAT as far as Sonny was concerned. Casualties from the Saturday-Night Knife and Gun Club were more or less taken care of—oh, there might be one or two still lying on gurneys if there was a bed shortage, which there usually was, but they were going to make it. And if they didn’t, it wasn’t Sonny’s fault.
    There could be an auto accident, but there probably wouldn’t be. Some amateur handyman might cut his hand or something. Maybe a kid would fall and break a leg. An old lady could be sitting in church and notice her ankles were swollen. Everybody’d be too hung over to commit violent crimes.
    If every day were like Sunday, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting through the damn rotation. He strode in the back door of the hospital, whistling, in a hell of a mood. Hardly a soul stirred in the waiting room. A tired-looking black woman with a toddler at her heels was shaking an old man sitting in a wheelchair near the wall. He had fallen forward in sleep—no telling how long he’d been waiting. “Daddy?
Daddy!
Oh, my Lord, he’s in a coma!”
    She was hysterical, or maybe nuts, but Sonny was in a great mood. He was supposed to be a healer and this morning he felt like one. He walked over to the woman, thinking to help, and as he did, the old man fell to the floor. Sonny dropped and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one. The man’s wrist was cold.
    The woman was wailing, “I had to go back home, be with my baby. I couldn’t stay; I just couldn’t stay. Now my daddy’s done gone into a coma and I couldn’t be here to do nothin’ about it.”
    Sonny felt as cold as the man on the floor. Woodenly, his arms heavy and mechanical, those of a toy soldier, he started doing chest compressions, knowing there was no use. The triage nurse rushed by, came back with help.
    When they had him on a roller, Sonny leaped aboard, straddled him, and kept working, looking into a pair of fixed and dilated pupils. Futilely they went through the motions—the shock, the IV, the tube; when he saw the flat line on the monitor, he didn’t even wait for the charge resident to say the phrase “DOA.” He stopped working, and left, his own chest constricted. He had thought of going out again, to get out in the air, but he’d forgotten the man’s daughter would still be in the waiting room.
    “My daddy? My daddy?” she said, unable to ask the question.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I couldn’t stay with him; I wanted to, I just couldn’t.”
    “It’s not your fault, there was nothing you could do. It was just your daddy’s time.”
    “My daddy ain’t dead. He ain’t dead! He just in a coma.”
    He probably shouldn’t be dead. Probably wouldn’t be if he’d gone to a private clinic, if he hadn’t been a poor man who’d had to sit for hours in a waiting room, silently slipping through the cracks, dying with no one even noticing.
    He left her without another word, went back outside, stood on the ramp, and took deep breaths.
    It shouldn’t have happened, it shouldn’t have happened
.
    Blood pounded in his ears along with the refrain.
I
t wasn’t my fault; didn’t happen on my shift.
    Why couldn’t he convince himself?
    He went in with a black cloud over his head, engulfing him. Before, he had been quick of step, senses alert, a healer. Now he felt as dead as the man on the floor, as