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Copyright © 2000 by Joseph Hullett

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

KILLING RAIN, KILLING FIRE COPYRIGHT © 2000 by Joseph Hullett

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photographic reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author or publisher.

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that all material in this work, being fully protected under the copyright law of the United States, the British Empire, including Canada, and all other countries of the Copyright Union, is subject to royalty. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, video, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved.

All inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to ANSWER PUBLICATIONS, 28241 Crown Valley Parkway, Suite F-463, Laguna Niguel, California 92677-1400.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Electronic Edition published 2000

Answer Publications

28241 Crown Valley Parkway, Suite F-463

Laguna Niguel, California, 92677-1400

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Joseph Hullett is author of the 1993 Julie Harris Playwright Award winning drama THE PLEDGE. His other full-length plays include CROSSING THE LINE, SKIN FOR SKIN, WISH YOU WERE HERE, CONFIRMATION, and TRUE BELIEVER.

In addition to the Julie Harris Award, his works have garnered the Ventana Publications Play Award, 2^nd prize in the TRUSTUS Theatre National Playwrights' Competition, runner-up for the Lee Korf Award, 4th Prize in the West Coast Playwrighting Contest, and selection as a finalist for the Pittsburgh New Play Contest and the coveted Heideman Award given by the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville.

Hullett's plays have been presented from New York to Los Angeles. THE PLEDGE was featured at Theatre-Studio's 3rd Annual New York City Playwrights' Festival. WISH YOU WERE HERE premiered last December at Southern California's Chance Theater where CONFIRMATION will premiere during the 2001 season. His work has been chosen for the Albany Civic Theatre Playwrights Festival; the El Camino Real Theatre NewPlays Series; the West Coast Playwrights Six at Eight Series; the Trustus Theatre Playwrights' Festival; and the Original Theatre Works Summer Theatre.

Hullett's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A collection of his most popular stories MEN WITH WOMEN is also published by Answer along with his theatrical works. A psychiatrist, Hullett lives in southern California.

A NOVEL

BY

Joseph Hullett

Laguna Niguel, California

"Hello."

Breathing. Some must choose.

"Hell-o-o? Pinel Investigations."

Nothing.

"I have time if you do, pal," I drawled.

"This is Dr. Sharfstein. John Sharfstein, I'm -- "

I squeezed the receiver.

"I know who you are."

Breathing. A sigh.

"Veronica is dying, Mr. Pinel. She wants to see you."

I heard a fly buzz against the closed office window and somewhere down the hallway a door slammed.

"Mr. Pinel? Are you there? Mr. Pinel?"

I noticed I was standing with keys in my hand.

"Where is she?"

"Nothing is imminent. Don't -- "

"WHERE!"

"University Medical Center, but -- "

"Twenty minutes."

"Wait, Mr. Pinel. Wait! Don't go -- "

I slammed down the phone, stole a second to lock the office door behind me, ignored the balky elevator, and raced down four flights of stairs to the lobby. I darted through traffic to the lot across Main, fired my Blazer, and aimed it toward the hospital.

It was winter -- rainy season in southern California. Days of low, dark skies. Days of cold drizzle. Downpour pattered my roof and windshield. The wipers blinked away a blurring film of rain with a pulsing whoosh-slap-whoosh-slap-whoosh-slap. The droning defroster burned a growing hole through the windshield fog. I trapped a chestful of air in my lungs then let it hiss out through pursed lips.

I careened left at First and slewed right on Bristol. The Blazer's oversized tires groaned as I weaved through sluggish lines of cars clogging the wet, San Dismas streets. I glanced at the watch Veronica had given me … what? Two years ago.

3:15.

And life goes on, right? I punched a number on the car phone and waited through the ring. Counting seconds, I mouthed the words etched around the steel bezel of the Timex -- words that had cost Veronica more than the watch itself -- ALWAYS THERE.

"Cervantes," barked a voice finally. Cervantes was ex-FBI, now security boss for Sav-Aide Pharmacies. He had hired me to bust a counterfeit prescription drug scam orchestrated by one of his own people.

"It's Pinel."

"Don't tell me you're blown, man. Don't say it!"

"I won't be there tonight," I said.

"Won't be there! What is this?"

"Call Irv Castle, Anaheim. He's honest."

"Irv Castle my ass! We've spent a month on this sting. You can't just -- "

"I rigged a wire this morning. Irv can take the pictures."

"Bullshit!"

The phone clicked as the carrier switched cells.

"Just bring him up to speed. I'll still testify."

"Testify to save your license! Listen, Pinel -- "

"Irv is quick. He'll -- "

"If you punk out on me -- "

"I'll call as soon as I can."

"I'll sue your ass, Pinel! Hear me? Pinel? PINEL!!"

I pushed the disconnect button.

San Dismas Drive was a half mile north. I wheeled left on Memory Lane.

For real. Memory Lane.

Great.

Memory Lane.

Stay on Memory Lane too far and things get sordid fast. Past San Dismas Drive, you're on Garden Boulevard -- dives and down-and-outers, peep shows and porn shops. Near Harbor, whores troll the sidewalks. Farther yet in Little Saigon, store signs turn abruptly from English into Vietnamese, a sight that, for twenty-five years now, still makes my arm hair stand if I notice it unexpectedly. But the hospital -- Veronica -- was a different trip. I turned right on San Dismas just past the flooded River channel.

The gutters were streams. Rain snarled the traffic. Cursing, I inched forward in abrupt starts and stops. I heard the baying of caged dogs as I crawled past the county facilities on the right -- the Pound, the Branch Jail, Juvenile Hall. Olivewood came next, the county shelter for abused and abandoned children. Veronica worked there. I had met her there.

When I opened my eyes, a space had cleared ahead and horns honked behind me. I jerked forward past the Juvenile Justice Center -- a steel-barred parking structure and a seven story juvenile courthouse. The architect -- there must have been an architect -- had topped the court tower with a huge, green-glass dome through which heaven could watch the Babel within. The buildings were painted in pink-beige and blue-green pastels -- anemic, chalky-looking colors, like tinted whitewash, like water colors. I almost expected the paint to run in the rain, revealing the ugly, gray concrete underneath.

Across the street sprawled a shopping mall where a movie marquee pleaded 'A L SEATS $1.50 ALL THE T ME.' Spray-painted gang graffiti -- placas -- spread up and around the marquee pedestal. Scrub off the placas, bleach them out, paint over them -- they reappeared next day, as impossible to eradicate as parasitic vines.

Beyond the mall, the soaring, lighted cross of the Crystal Cathedral vanished in low clouds. Farther away, dark and almost invisible in the rain, stood the giant "A" outside the stadium where the Angels sometimes played.

I turned onto Medical Center Drive and stalled in more frozen traffic. I remembered when the University Medical Center was just a hospital -- the Orange County Hospital -- a few buildings and plenty of open space. All the space was gone now. I crept past a dozen new buildings, past trailer offices and construction shacks, past gaping holes in the ground and steel skeletons silhouetted against the rainy twilight.

Alongside the main building -- the homely, old County Hospital slathered with new makeup -- I swerved into an MD ONLY slot and jumped from the car. Bounding up the emergency room ramp to the automatic sliding doors, I thudded against the glass, staggered backwards with a curse, and massaged my nose. A scrawled note taped to the glass read: BROKE. SLIDE BY HAND OR USE ANOTHER ENTRANCE.

I shouldered back the heavy door and barged through a huddled throng of waiting poor, bleeding poor, moaning poor, manacled poor in orange, jail jumpsuits, black poor -- not many black, brown poor mostly -- columns of ragged men compressing wounds, splinting broken bones -- rows of wailing women (Ai! Ai! Dolor! Dolor!) their abdomens swollen with poor children to be while around them skipped poor children who were -- laughing, musical, open-mouthed children still innocent enough to sing.

I rushed down a short hallway to the main lobby and interrupted an elderly university cop and a gray haired volunteer lady gabbing across the information counter.

"Pinel!" I snapped. "Veronica Pinel."

"IF you'll wait a moment," the woman began huffily.

"She's dying, you cow! Pinel! Which fucking room!"

The ancient policeman tottered back a step and gripped his baton. The volunteer nervously whirled her Rolodex, looked up, and stammered, "There's … there's no one -- "

"Pinel, goddamn it! P-I-N -- " I stopped. "Sharfstein. Veronica Sharfstein."

She flipped a few cards nervously.

"Cardiac telemetry unit. Six South. Room 6-2-19."

I pressed my fingers into my temples. "I'm sorry."

"Tower car. South side," the woman said.

I lurched at an elevator and dashed between closing doors. The car trembled and rumbled upward.

Toward Veronica.

Who was dying.

The elevator jolted to a stop. I squeezed through the opening door and followed corridor signs to the Cardiac Telemetry Unit. At the nursing station, two white-uniformed nurses sat chatting, their backs turned to a row of flickering monitor screens. The monitors bleated now and then with the translated cries of nearby broken hearts.

Next to the chart carousel stood Sharfstein. I recognized him from a Banner photo -- I saved it; it's in a drawer somewhere -- a picture from his wedding at the Four Seasons. The photo shows Ronnie, bare-shouldered, huddled in the circle of Sharfstein's arm. On her ring finger gleams a marble sized diamond that proved to the society flak that 'Newport's most eligible heart surgeon could afford whatever he wanted.' A caption read: Someone to Watch Over Me.

Sharfstein looked up and must have recognized me, too, because his eyes clicked immediately to the room directly across from the nursing station. Frowning, he tossed a blue binder on a desk and hurried to block the doorway. He grabbed my arms before I could bowl past him, and -- surprisingly -- he packed enough meat behind his thin, white, surgeon's hands to stop me unless I knocked him down.

"We have to talk first, Mr. Pinel."

"Get out of my way."

"She's not conscious now anyway. Comes and goes. Listen to me a moment. Wait. Wait! Listen … no, just listen!"

Snorting, I allowed him to lead me away from the closed door.

"Veronica has been frank with me, Mr. Pinel. I know about your marriage, your divorce … your, uh … incident at the Four-to-Four."

"She told you everything, did she?"

"She told me enough."

He stopped, brooding something. I watched the second hand on a wall clock slide past the number two heading toward the three.

So he knew enough.

About Veronica and me. About the incident.

I let him choose.

Sharfstein chose.

"This tragedy … " he began hesitantly, struggling against a pressure inside.

"What happened?"

"Nothing's under control anymore," he spluttered. "It's like no one's minding the helm. It's like -- "

"What the hell happened?" I snapped.

He took a deep breath.

"A tragedy," he said. "A terrible tragedy, but with you involved -- a greater tragedy, perhaps. Things will happen. Bad things. I didn't want to call you, but … "

I felt a shudder, like the low rumble that surges through a building when the air conditioning kicks on.

"What happened?" I said coldly.

"She was ra.. " his breath caught. "Assaulted."

The temperature inside me plummeted. I waited, stone silent, frozen.

"Jogging on the River Trail," he said hoarsely. "You must have seen the newspapers?"