Life Blood ---XIV---Page No--44

An intern was coming out and I snagged him, announced I
was next of kin to a patient, and demanded to be taken through
the official door and into the back. At that moment, the stout cop's
radio crackled. They were being summoned to a Christopher
Street gay bar where somebody had just been knifed in a back
room. She looked at me, as though to say, "This sounds like a
real crime," and then they hurried out for their squad car. Christ!
        The intern, a young black guy, led me past a row of gurneys
and into a private room at the rear of the huge space. Lou was
bandaged all around his chest and hooked up to an IV and a
monitor. He looked better, but I wasn't sure he'd be ready for what
I was about to tell him.

"Hey, how're you feeling?" I asked as I walked in, trying to seem upbeat.

"Fucking cops." He was boiling, his face actually red. "Where do they get them these days? McDonald's rejects?"

"Easy, don't get your blood pressure up." I reached over and touched his brow. It felt like he had a mild temperature. "Let's all just calm down and try to think rationally."

"Yeah, I'm thinking rationally. You saw that fax I got from Williams."

"You think that was Alex Goddard seated next to her, right?"
        "Who else? When she was in her moonbeam phase, she
 must have heard about him and gone up there and ended up in
his clutches. But why did she let him take her down to—?"
        "He told me he has a clinic in Central America. He called it 'a
place of miracles.' And then Colonel Ramos shows up, part of the
Guatemalan diplomatic corps. Put two and two together. That's
got to be where they're taking her."

"Who knows, but I'm going to get the boys downtown to put
out a missing-persons APB nationwide. Gerry'll do it for me if I
ask. Fuck New York's Finest. They ain't gonna do crap anyway."

I listened wondering how to impress my bright idea upon him. The chances were Ramos was taking Sarah back to Guatemala. Probably right this minute. For some kind of unfinished business. Or just to hold her there as an insurance policy that Children of Light would never be mentioned in my picture.

"I seriously doubt a missing-persons alert is going to do any good Lou, because I seriously doubt she's going to be walking the streets of this country. That bastard Ramos is taking her where he knows he can hide her."

"You mean . . . Jesus." He stared at me as though the idea had never crossed his mind. I think he'd just repressed it. "What are we going to—?"

"The only thing we can do. I'm going down there. I'm going to go straight down there and locate Alex Goddard."
        "That's an exceptionally lousy thought process." His voice
seemed to be coming from a great distance.

"Why? Give me one good reason why. You think the police
down there are going to bring charges against a colonel?" I really
could have used some encouragement. "It's the only way—"

"Morgan, you've always been high-strung." He sighed and

then winced. "Ever since you were a kid. I worried about you then
and I'm worried about you now. I don't want you to go down there
and get into trouble. Because believe me, that's a seriously wrong
place to get crossways with the pricks who make the rules. You
don't know your way around that Third World craphole.