After the all-out tail chase of the day before, and knowing that he had trouble waiting for him as soon as he got into the Suncoast office, John decided that just this once he’d put up with the glares from Annamaria. He could at least get Sally’s stuff before he got sidetracked into some other damn fool thing and wasted the whole day today. Besides, he didn’t trust either those greasy bastards at the towing company or that bureaucratic pipsqueak at the police impound yard as far as he could throw a fit.

So he set his alarm early, got Sally up, and took her with him in the Toyota as he headed for Suncoast and the van in the back shop, well before Annamaria could arrive on the scene. He realized as he and Sally switched vehicles that he could have saved half an hour or more if he’d just bothered to take the van home with him that night, but he hadn’t thought of it at the time. Missing that opportunity just helped him get his daily mood off to an abysmal start.

Still, they made it to the impound yard just as the guy was opening up for the day, and presented him with the appropriate paperwork. “OK, no problem,” he said. “Go back and get your stuff.”

John drove the van back into the yard, where the shattered car was sitting. It really looked like junk, although it also looked like it had been junk before it had been wrecked. There were rust spots and holes in the fender that couldn’t have been caused by the accident; then the wreck had bent hell out of it, and to top it off the rescue squad had to cut a big hole in it with the Jaws to get at Teresa. Getting her out of the car hadn’t been easy.

It was fairly simple to get to the stuff in the back seat – having much of the side of the car gone as a result of the extrication had something to do with that. A lot of the stuff had been loosely packed in cardboard boxes, and had been scattered all over the place from the force of the accident. After so easily gathering all their stuff scattered inside the car, he discovered it wasn’t easy to get into the trunk; somehow the whole frame had been twisted and jammed it. The key didn’t help at all.

John wrestled with it for a couple minutes, then decided direct action was called for. He went to the van, got out the tire iron, and set to work to try to pry the thing open. He wasn’t making much progress when he noticed a big tow truck backing up behind him. “Hey, jackass!” the driver yelled in a twangy redneck accent. “Get out of the way!”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” John replied angrily – the guy had really set him off.

“The boss said to come over here, pick this thing up and haul it to the junk yard.”

“Hey, we haven’t released the car yet,” John told him.

“Don’t fucking matter none, that’s what my boss done told me to do. Now get out of the way so I can get the hell back to the shop.”

John still had the tire iron in his hand and was getting just about ready to use it, and not on the trunk. “Hey, look,” he said reasonably, still holding onto the tire iron in case he needed it, “help us pop this trunk open so we can get her stuff out of it. Shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes. Or, you can go get yourself a cup of coffee.”

That didn’t come close to settling anything. It probably took ten minutes of arguing and twenty bucks before the tow truck driver handed him a big wrecking bar, then went to sulk in the cab of his truck. “Dumb fucking redneck,” John muttered under his breath, just loud enough that Sally could hear him.

“Boy, they sure inbreed them stupid down here, don’t they?” Sally shook her head.

“No shit,” John said. “Turn the key while I get under this thing with the bar.”

It still took a few minutes work to get the trunk open, and it still opened reluctantly. Much like the back seat, the trunk was filled with loosely packed cardboard boxes that had spewed their contents all over the place. They gathered up stuff as quickly as they could and hauled it to the van, trying not to miss anything but trying to get done before the idiot tow truck driver decided he couldn’t waste any more time. He was chomping at the bit to get going even as they hauled the last of the stuff over to the van; as they were getting into the van the tow truck was already backing up to the wreck.

“Boy, I hope there’s nothing else in the car you want, because you’re not going to be seeing it again,” John told Sally.

“That’s fine, I think I’ll be just about as glad to have it out of my life,” she replied.

John was still pretty pissed; he stopped at the impound yard office to have a word with the guy that ran the place. “Get your stuff all right?” the guy asked politely.

“Just barely,” John told him. “That fuckwad from the towing service wanted to haul the car off before we could get in it. Where the hell does he think he can get off doing that?”

“You signed off on the disposition,” the guy said. “So it’s the towing service that has to deal with it.”

“Before we could get Sally’s stuff out of it?”

“Hey, you signed off on it, so it’s theirs now,” he said. “If you wanted more time to get the stuff out of it, you shouldn’t have signed off on the disposition.”

“You said yesterday we had to sign off on the disposition before we could get the stuff out.”

“Yeah, them are the rules,” the guy said. “You know how it is, I can’t bend the rules, or I’d have my boss all over my ass.”

Fucking bureaucrats, John thought but carefully did not say. There was no point in getting on this guy’s case, and at least they had the stuff. That was the bottom line, after all, but if he’d gotten sidetracked, even the least little bit, Sally would have been screwed even worse than she already had been. When they got outside, John just shook his head and said, “Jesus. I hope his kid’s soccer team had their asses well and truly kicked last night.”

“God,” Sally shook her head. “I’ve run into more assholes like him than I want to think about. At least you saved my stuff, even though it isn’t worth much. I snagged Teresa’s teddy bear, and I’m sure she’ll be relieved to have it.”

“Yeah, well,” John shook his head, “at least we got the stuff, but don’t think I’m not going to file a complaint just as soon as I can figure out who the hell to file it with.”

“John, it’s not worth the trouble,” Sally said, trying to calm him down. “My stuff isn’t worth that much.”

“The hell it’s not,” he told her. “It’s all you have, so it has to be worth something to you. That teddy bear is worth it, if nothing else. Besides, it’s the goddamn principle of the thing. That’s nothing but a fucking rip-off operation, nothing more, nothing less. I mean, tell me that ‘them’s the rules’ dipshit doesn’t get a kickback from those crooks at the towing company. They’d have fucking taken you for everything you had, and while it may not be much, where the hell would you be without it?”

Sally tried to cool John down all the way back to his house, with little success. It was just clear as hell that this day was off to a bad start. Something had better go right today, he thought, or the whole day is going to go straight down the tubes.

It didn’t take long to unload the van at the house; if it hadn’t been for the demo units and boxes of brochures and stuff in the trunk of the Toyota it would have served to haul the things. John and Sally carried the stuff into the bedroom she’d been using. John didn’t get a good look at everything, but the impression he got was that it wasn’t worth very much anyway.

“I’ll straighten this stuff out later,” Sally said as they dragged the last of it in. “It’s not like I’m not going to have the time to do it after we get Teresa here. Maybe they’ll let her go today.”

He wasn’t sure, but in the back of his mind he thought that it was already past time to be talking to a lawyer. If nothing else, that trucking company was clearly responsible for not securing the load on that truck properly, and there ought to be something any halfway decent ambulance chaser could do with that. He didn’t know any of those kinds of sharks, but one shouldn’t be hard to find, he thought; just look for the largest ad on the back of the telephone book. Maybe he could sic a lawyer like that on the bureaucrats who ran that part of the health care system. It might loosen things up a little. Might.

At least he should be able to do something with the ambulance bill. After all, it was Bradenton Muni, where Russ Yager worked. He’d filled in for Russ more than once for free, including the day before yesterday; maybe a little back scratching could get done. It was something else he needed to think about.

He shoved the thought to the back of his mind; after all, it wasn’t something that had to be dealt with right this minute. Soon, but not now. “I better get you over to the hospital so I can get to work,” he told Sally. “Better bring Teresa’s teddy bear.”

“I wouldn’t forget that. I sure hope she’s doing better today.”

“Maybe the bear will help,” he said hopefully.

John cooled off measurably on the way to the hospital. The idiots at the impound yard still had him stirred up, but he wasn’t pissed, just constructively angry, which was a big improvement. In their rush to get out to the impound yard they’d skipped breakfast, but he cured that with a run through the nearest drive-through they came to. It wasn’t good, but at least it was food; the coffee was too hot, to cover up its crappy taste, but at least it was something to drink and had caffeine in it, which was a help.

The hospital parking lot was crowded, and there nowhere to park anywhere near close. That was easily solved, especially since he had the van with “Suncoast Medical Supply” lettered on the side; he could use the vendor parking lot and nobody would notice. He led Sally in through an entrance he knew about that normally wasn’t open to the public, and they soon were up in Teresa’s room.

“Hi, Punkin,” Sally said as soon as she saw her. “Are you feeling better today?”

“Yeah, Mommy,” the girl said. “Lots better.”

“Brought you something,” Sally smiled, pulling the teddy bear out from behind her back.

“Oh, it’s Teddy,” Teresa beamed as Sally handed it to her. “Oh, Mommy, thank you! Teddy, I’ve missed you so much!”

John stood back from the two, more or less to evaluate Teresa as much as anything. Granted, her legs were encased in plaster, she had a few bandages here and there, and had a bruise on her face that looked pretty livid. But, get past that, which all was ephemeral, and she seemed to be a pretty decent-looking kid. She had the brown hair he remembered Sally having in high school, and that slightly lispy voice that many young teenagers have. She seemed a little on the skinny side to John, but he doubted she was anorexic; many girls that age are just slender, and they put on pounds later. He could see the mounds of some developing young teenager breasts tenting up the hospital gown a bit, so it was clear she wasn’t going to be as flat-chested as her mother had been at that age. All in all, pretty promising, considering the condition he’d seen her in the day before.

Being snoopy as always, John picked up her chart and tried to figure out the lousy handwriting. From what he could make out, it seemed pretty reasonable. It looked to him like the painkillers had been backed off a lot; the girl’s brightness and attitude seemed to indicate it as well. They might well be releasing her today, or tomorrow at the latest. In his own mind he thought that under normal circumstances it might be a little soon, but he knew all too well that these days the hospital administrators and insurance companies often hustled patients out the door almost before the surgeon got finished with the stitches. With no insurance, they’d probably be even more eager to be rid of this patient, although they’d still want their money.

“John,” he heard Sally say, “you probably ought to say hello to Teresa.”

“Good morning, Teresa,” he replied genially. “I see you’re coming along pretty well. I’ll bet you’re anxious to get out of here.”

“Yeah,” the kid said, with more than a little Southern accent. “It’s boring!”

“It probably is,” John told her, “but they are trying to make you feel better.”

“I know, but still!” she complained. “Are you the man Mommy has been talking about? Where we’re going to stay for a while?”

“I guess so,” he smiled. She was a cute kid, but direct, not that kids often weren’t. “I went to school with your mom.”

“She told me that yesterday,” Teresa grinned. “She said she was really surprised to meet you here.”

“No more surprised than I was,” he smiled. “I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of time to get to know each other.”

“Good. Mom says you’re a nice man.”

“Some people think so, Teresa,” he told her. “Look, I only came by to drop off your mom and see how you were doing. I’ve got to get to work.” He turned to Sally. “You’ve got my number at the office, and my cell,” he told her. “If they decide to turn her loose today, let me know and I’ll get over here as quick as I can. We really haven’t got the place set up for her yet, and I need to make some arrangements. I’ll try to get what I can of that done today.”

“OK, John,” she said. “I’ll try to keep in touch. See you later.”

“Don’t know when I’ll be back but it probably won’t be before quitting time, unless something comes up,” he told her. “Teresa, you get better. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can get out of this place.”

“I sure will,” she said. “I can’t wait!”

There were a couple minutes worth of good-byes before John made it out the door. Not a bad kid, he thought as he walked down the hall. Granted, he’d only talked to her for a couple minutes, but it seemed like she was still sweet and innocent, at least as much as could be expected considering the rough way she’d been brought up. He expected he’d know much more pretty soon, and was actually looking forward to getting to know her a little better.

He’d never even come close to having kids, and thank God for that, considering his history with women. If he thought it was complicated now, how much worse would it have been with a couple kids to deal with? It didn’t bear thinking about. Well, if Mandy had managed to hang on through the rough period, it might have been a possibility, since they’d talked about it a bit before the Ven-Churs business blew up in their faces. In fact, it might have been all right with Mandy, but that was water down the river now.

Thinking about Mandy brought the phone call from Don Paxton a couple days before to mind. He and Mandy had remained fairly friendly, at least once the initial bitterness had blown over, but when she’d finally shown back up back when from whatever rock she’d been hiding under, things were getting hot and heavy with Lisa. There was no going back over the old ground at that point.

He really hadn’t been keeping close touch with her, not for several years now. Once in a while they managed to meet up or have a chat on the phone, but not very often. In fact, John probably knew more about where Mandy was and what she was doing from Emily than he did from her.

He hadn’t known she was getting married again to this Joseph guy until after she’d apparently blown him off. She’d had another husband along in there somewhere, maybe more than one, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t know any details. As far as he could tell, her luck with spouses had been no better than his.

Oh, well, water over the dam, he thought as he walked out the service entrance into the bright Florida sun. It was coolish today, not bad, nothing like as bad as it would be in Michigan this time of year. There were other, more pressing things he had to think about. One of them was to arrange for a hospital bed and wheelchair for Teresa, and that needed to get done right now, in case she came home today – and it looked to him like there was a reasonable chance of that. Well, he had the van, and it would be needed to move them, unless he could get them delivered. Now, who could he call on that would owe him a favor or two, and make a delivery at no extra charge?

It only took a moment’s thinking to come up with Green’s Medical Supply, which was pretty close to his way back out to Suncoast. He’d done Toby Green a couple favors in the past, and he was a good guy. If he talked to him nicely, John thought he might be willing to cut him something of a deal. And then again, if there was to be a delivery, it would have to come sometime during business hours. Knowing the mound of stuff that waited for him at Suncoast, maybe it would be just as well if he used the van to get the items now; after all, he wouldn’t have to unload them till later.

There was a little bit of an art in getting a deal out of Toby. It wasn’t just a case of bopping into his office and asking him for the stuff; there had to be some schmoozing, a couple of semi-dirty jokes, and a bit of discussion about sports. John wasn’t much of a sports nut, and hadn’t been since high school, but spring training was under way around the state, and there was always a certain amount of baseball gossip going around this time of year. John hadn’t ever paid much attention to it, and certainly not in the past couple days with all the other shit going around, but there was an all-sports-talk station he knew he could tune in on the van’s radio. He flipped it on, and listened to it with part of his mind, trying to pick up a few tidbits he could drop in front of Toby. Once he’d started the conversation, Toby would probably continue to tell him more than he wanted to know.

As the sports babble droned away, with John listening desultorily, he tried to think about what else absolutely had to get done next. The big item was the goddamn computer at the office. It had been a pain in the butt last night but at least he’d had some non-computer stuff to do, some of which he’d been putting off anyway, so at least it had been a partially productive evening. There were still some big items lying there needing attention, with the Tomtucknee Regional bid at the head of the list, but there wasn’t much he could do about that until he had his computer back and could look at some spread sheets.

Goddamn computers, he thought. They’re like women. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Well, maybe that wasn’t true; he’d managed to live without a woman in the house the last couple of years and it had worked out pretty well. At least it was less of a pain in the ass than having one there. He conceded he was going to have a woman living with him for the next couple months, but it wasn’t going to be a case of “living with him” living with him – just sort of a boarding deal. He could probably handle that all right. It looked like he was committed to it, whether he liked it or not.

He tried to keep his mind on work stuff all the way to Green Medical, but his mind kept straying to other things. The groceries in the house were getting on the low side, for example. He’d have to do something about that, and pretty quickly, too. Probably he’d have to get something that would serve as a treat for Teresa, something that would help keep her a little happy. She was not going to be a happy camper to have her legs marooned in casts for the next couple months, but that was something she was just going to have to learn to live with.

Finally, John pulled the van into the parking lot at Green Medical. He knew it was a place that handled, among other things, rentals for things like hospital beds, wheelchairs, and other things needed to allow people to recover at home. At least it was closer than most.

Toby was back in his office, pushing some paper around. John knew how that worked; he had to do more of it than he wanted to. “Hey, Toby,” he said brightly as he stood in the office door, “killing more trees, I see.”

“Yeah, shit,” he said. “The fucking government has got more damn paperwork to fill out than you can believe. I swear there’s a department for dreaming up more useless forms to take up the time of people just trying to earn a living.”

“Boy, don’t I know it,” John said. “At least I don’t have to deal with insurance reimbursements, Medicaid, and all that crap.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Toby shook his head.

“Hey, you know I’m an old Michigan guy,” John smiled. “What do you hear about the Tigers?”

“I don’t think Trammel can do a damn thing with them,” Toby shook his head. “He may have been a good player but I don’t think he’s a coach. Besides, they didn’t sign any talent over the winter and lost several good players. If you want to bet money, I’d say don’t bet on them. They’re either at your throat or at your feet, and this year they ain’t gonna be at anyone’s throat.”

“Yep, that’s the Tigers, all right,” John said, glad that he didn’t have to use any of the fragmentary baseball gossip he’d picked up off the radio. “Hey, Toby,” he continued, “I need a little favor.”

Twenty minutes later Toby was helping John load a hospital bed and wheelchair into the Suncoast van. The price was right, too; it wasn’t exactly front-line stuff but it would serve while he needed it. That went better than I expected, John thought.

Now, all I’ve got to do is face down Annamaria.

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