“I’ll bet,” said Trixie. There was a long pause. “Zack, are you okay? You sound funny. Is everything all right?”

“There’s a lot going on for me right now. I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, overwhelmed.”

“I don’t doubt it. Listen, if there’s anything I can do, you call me, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and we said our goodbyes.

I handed in my story by noon and told Nancy I was going to take a cab over to Brentwood’s.

When I got there, I found the place cordoned off with yellow police tape, although there were some guys there, putting plywood sheets over where the windows used to be.

I ducked under the tape, went in through the front door, which was wide open, and found Arnett Brentwood with a list of stock in his hand, checking it against what was left on the hangers.

“Mr. Brentwood?” I said. He was a small man, short and slight, but even in the aftermath of what had happened, was dressed meticulously in a black suit, white shirt, and tie. We had met once before, but he did not immediately recognize me. I told him who I was, and where I was from, and that I had found Lawrence the night before in the bedroom of his apartment.

“I am very sorry for him,” Brentwood said. “Sorry for his family. Please convey to them my sincerest concern and best wishes for his recovery.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

“I would like to do it myself, but as you can see…” He opened his arms wide, gestured at the destruction inside his shop.

“I was the one who called it in,” I said, “to 911. I was supposed to meet Lawrence here, and when he didn’t show up, I went looking for him.”

“These people, the ones who broke into my store, these are the people who tried to kill Mr. Jones?”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“It’s all over for me,” said Brentwood. “I have been hit before. The insurance people, they say they won’t cover me anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”

And he looked away, thinking that I would not see the tear that was running down his cheek.

“You tell Mr. Jones I am sorry,” he said. “And you can tell him that I am finished.”

21

MY NEXT STOP was the hospital. But not to give Lawrence the message from Mr. Brentwood. I’m sure he felt bad enough without hearing that his client was being forced out of business. I’d been thinking of him all day, had called the hospital a couple of times and managed to get nothing more out of the nurses than “critical but stable.”

With the Virtue still at Otto’s, I grabbed a cab in front of the Metro building and asked to be taken to Mercy General. After inquiring at the front desk, I found out, not to my surprise, that Lawrence was in the intensive care ward. There was a sign outside the ward that told me ICU patients could only have two visitors at a time, and they had to be family. I found a nurse, told her who I was.

She reiterated what the sign said. “I’m sure you’re very concerned about Mr. Jones, we all are, but it’s family only.”

“Is there anyone with him right now?”

“I believe his sister’s in there. She flew in from Denver.”

“I’ll wait for her.”

I peered in through the window of the door to the ICU. There looked to be about a half dozen beds in there, and at one of the two far beds, which were up against the window that looked out onto the parking lot, a black woman was sitting in a chair. A curtain pulled partway around the bed kept me from seeing who was in it. All I could make out, under the pale blue hospital bedding, was the shape of legs and feet.

She was an attractive woman, in her late thirties I guessed, with gleaming black hair and a tailored blue suit, and every few seconds she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. She reached out and held the patient’s hand, leaned in a bit, cocked her head slightly to one side, as if she was trying to hear something the patient was saying. She tilted forward out of her chair, and now I couldn’t see her head as she disappeared behind the curtain.

I took a chair by the door and waited. About fifteen minutes later, the ICU door opened and she stepped out, walking slowly, her head hanging like she had a bag of rocks tied around her neck.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Ms. Jones?”

“No,” she said. “My name is Letitia McBride.”

“I’m sorry. But was your name Jones? Are you Lawrence’s sister?”

She nodded, hesitantly. McBride was, I surmised, a married name.

I got up and introduced myself. “Lawrence is a friend of mine. I came by to see him, but they won’t let me in, not being a relative and all. I understand you flew in from Denver? The nurse told me.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Do you mind my asking you how you know my brother?”

Maybe, when your brother is gay, and a man you don’t know approaches you and says he’s his friend, you need a bit more information to understand the nature of the relationship. I obliged, telling her I was with The Metropolitan and had been doing a story on Lawrence, but that in the short time we’d hung out, we’d become friends. And that I had been the one who found him and called 911.

“Thank you,” she said, and reached out and touched my arm. “The doctors said if he’d been found any later, he would have lost too much blood.”

“How is he?”

Letitia McBride’s lips pursed out, she breathed in deeply through her nose, and her eyes moistened. “He’s hurt real bad,” she said. “They say the next day is critical. He’s a fighter, you know? And he’s fighting now, more than he ever has before.” She blew her nose into a tissue. “My baby brother.”

I tried to smile.

“Our mother, she drove a bus for the city, worked all kinds of shifts, some right through the night, and our dad, he wasn’t home much because he was working two, three jobs, trying to make enough to support us. They loved us, we never doubted that, but we were on our own a lot, and I always looked out for him, making him dinner, making sure he got to bed on time. One day, this big dump truck smashes into our mother’s bus, back end came right through the window, and we lost her. After that, Dad, he had to work even harder to support us, and I was looking after Lawrence all the time.”

“Is your father still alive?”

She shook her head. “He passed on, oh, ten years ago now. Lawrence was never able to tell him.”

“Tell him?”

“About being different,” she said, looking at me cautiously.

“About his being gay.”

She nodded. “Maybe, if it was now, attitudes are different, you know?”

I nodded.

“But even now, our dad probably wouldn’t have understood. And you know what? Lawrence would never have held that against him. ’Cause he knew our father was such a good man, with a good heart. It wouldn’t have been in our father to understand something like that. Lawrence would have accepted that, wouldn’t even have bothered his father with it. Lawrence doesn’t need anybody’s acceptance. He’s who he is.”

“I know,” I said.

She shook her head again, then appeared thoughtful for a moment, like she was trying to remember something. “Mr. Walker, what did you say your first name was?”

“Zack.”

“Oh my.”

“What?” I said.

“Lawrence, he’s been kind of in and out, you know. They’ve got him on painkillers. But he’s been asking for you. He’s been saying your name.”

“Asking for me?”

“He keeps saying ‘Zack.’ And things that don’t make sense.”

“Like what?”

“You should see him. You should come in.”

“I don’t think they’re going to believe I’m family,” I said.

She smiled at that, and it was a beautiful smile. Letitia glanced over at the nurses’ station, didn’t see anyone looking our way, and led me through the door into the ICU.

We slipped quietly past the other patients, who were in varying stages of disrepair, and when we got to the far side of the room, I could see around the curtain.