“Whose name you want?”
“Yours.”
“Doc. Tic-tock doc, the mouse and the clock.”
“Doc. Do you live over there?”
“Not hurting anybody. Keep myself to myself, right? Check? Double check.”
“Check. Were you at home when the ambulance got here?”
“Just walking by.” Those ruined eyes did their skittering dance again. “Just walking.”
“Where to, where from?”
“Nothing, nowhere. Nohow.”
“You were just walking from nothing to nowhere, and happened to see the ambulance parked there, maybe twenty feet from where you live?”
When he smiled, he offered Eve a full view of the unfortunate results of really bad dental hygiene. “Yep. Yep. Check.”
“I don’t think so, Doc. I think, you were tucked up at home. Wrapped up warm on a cold day like this, not walking around without more gear. I bet you’ve got more layers over there you put on when you head out to look for spare change, when you go out to find some funk.”
“Just walking,” he insisted with his voice creeping toward a whine. “Didn’t see nothing, nowhere, nohow. I don’t see good. I got a condition.”
Yeah, she thought, called chronic addiction. “Wait here.”
She went to her car, checked the glove box. As expected she found a couple pair of sunshades either Roarke or Summerset had stocked as she constantly lost them.
She imagined either pair cost more than Doc saw in ten years of panhandling on the street, but grabbed one. She walked back, waved them at Doc.
“Want these?”
“Sure! Sure!” Something desperate came into his abused eyes. “Wanna trade?”
“Yeah, but not for your sunshades. You can have these if you tell me what you saw. No bullshit. Tell me the truth, and they’re yours.”
“I know a true! Stop clock, tic-tock—true two times every day.”
“How about that? No.” She pulled the shades out of his reach. “I want the true about what you saw here. About that ambulance.”
“I didn’t go in. Just looking. Just walking.”
“Who got out?”
He stared at her, bumped his shoulders up and down.
“Okay.” She started to turn away.
“Make the trade!”
“There’s no trade until you tell me. You tell me the truth, I give you the shades. That’s the deal.”
“White coats get out. What you think? White coats in the am’lance. Not gonna take me, no way no how. I set down.”
He skimmed his palms on the air in a downward motion. “Don’t need no white coat, no am’lance.”
“How many white coats got out?”