“Yeah. Petticoat used to be in corrections before he was in real estate. Quite a career jump.”
“Where at?”
“We talked about it a little bit during the house thing. I remember he said a couple of places.”
“Happenstance Women’s Correctional?”
“Yes!” Madison snaps a finger. “Happenstance. How could I forget that name? Then there was another one. A male prison.”
“Did he say why he switched?”
“No.”
There was a big corrections officer house cleaning at Happenstance right around then. Male guards and female inmates. It was problem. Mickey wrote a letter and said probably half those CO’s wound up at his prison.
I look off into the distance and two seagulls steal a piece of trash from a third bird. Then those two white-feathered rats peck each other until only one remains with its worthless prize.
“I bet I know why.”
10
0600 hours, Tuesday
I walk into the lobby of the University hospital trying to look as caring and concerned as I ever could.
It isn’t much.
I walk to the bathroom. I’ve done undercover work, but that was for dope. This requires a special Boy George skill I don’t have. I loosen my necktie considerably, undo the top three buttons on my shirt, then untuck the whole thing. Spit shine the toes of my shoes real quick.
A guy walks in behind me, looks at the stalls. I turn around. “Hey, bro, you got any cologne?”
“What?” he asks. He looks like he’s been up all night. His wristband has mother/baby visitor on it. Long labor, I guess.
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“Cologne? I need a spritz...or whatever the word is.”
“Nah.” He gives me a weird look and goes to a stall. I shrug, leave.
Hank Madison gave me an idea about Petticoat’s surgery. I walk to the gift shop. A female employee is just opening the doors for business as I arrive. I blow past her, snatch a GET WELL balloon and a stuffed teddy bear without so much as halt my stride going in. I go to the register and wait for the woman, who is still flipping around the CLOSED/OPEN sign.
She waddles across the small gift shop floor, squeezes her considerable mass behind the counter. She’s already out of breath from shifting about her gigantic weight. I pay and leave. I walk right from there to the Admissions door. Into the waiting room. Another woman is behind a secretary’s desk. I go up to it, bear and balloon first.
“Hello. May I help you?” she asks. Young. Like twenty. Homely but thin. Glasses, straight brown hair.
I’ve had worse. Much, much worse.
“Hi,” I say, squeezing the teddy bear for effect. “My name is Joe Proctor. My romantic partner is Clarence Petticoat. Clarence T. Petticoat. He’s supposed to be having heart surgery today. His mother is bringing him up here—she doesn’t know about us—I was hoping to see him. He asked me to wait until later but I can’t. I just can’t. I—” I have to swallow hard, “—love him too much.”
The secretary begins typing away as I ramble off my sob story. As I figured, what she finds makes her eyebrows scrunch together. She types some more, scans the data. Types a third time.
“Mr...?”
“Proctor,” I say. Lean in.
“Mr. Proctor, you said Clarence Petticoat. Right?”
“Yes.”