Death's Savage Passion by Jane Haddam

of stuff I’m going to have to get you out of later.”
    “It’s not about the taping,” I said.
    “Clients are suicidal,” she said. “Some half-assed movie producer tells them he wants to take all their merchandising rights in exchange for fifty thousand flat and he has to have story rights on top of it for a ten-million-dollar movie, and the client just sits there and nods like a drunk ninny.”
    “I don’t want to talk about the taping,” I shouted. Footsteps hurried to my door, stopped, hesitated. The nurse was trying to decide if there was something wrong with me.
    Dana, too, hesitated. “What could you possibly want to talk to Marilou about?” she asked me. “What could anyone in their right mind want to talk to that lobotomized pharmacopoeia about if it isn’t business? You don’t even like her.”
    I got another cigarette. I needed Marilou’s direct line. Without it, I wouldn’t get through. The switchboard would assume that if I didn’t have the number, I was not to be taken seriously. I didn’t want to tell Dana what I was thinking—this mess had started in her offices, after all—but if I didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t give me the number.
    “It’s about the other day,” I said reluctantly. “I know everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I know what I saw—”
    “If you mean Miss English,” Dana said, “forget it. She called me.”
    Sarah had apparently been running up quite a phone bill from Connecticut.
    “You’ve been talking to Phoebe,” I said.
    “I’ve been talking to the police,” Dana said. “For days. I know what you think you saw, McKenna, but, well—”
    “Have you talked to Marilou Saunders?”
    “Well,” Dana said. There was another little pause. There was a cough. There was the sound of shuffling papers. “I’ve got a call coming in on the other line,” Dana said. “I can’t talk now.”
    “Give me Marilou’s direct line,” I said.
    “No,” Dana said. “Don’t forget your appointment at Faces.”
    The line went to dial tone.
    I put the receiver back in the cradle. I picked it up again and dialed the general number for the Network. I got (in chronological order) a switchboard operator, a division receptionist, and a “Wake Up and Shine! America!” secretary. All of them told me how much Ms. Saunders appreciated my support. I hung up again.
    The problem with telephones is that they leave you too vulnerable. People can hang up on you. People can stare at their desk calendars or the Times daily crossword and forget you’re there. If I was going to get anything done, I was going to have to get out of the hospital and back on the street. Or back in office buildings, which in New York amounts to the same thing.
    I swung my legs over the side of the bed and headed for my private bathroom. The first priority was a shower. The second priority was clothes. The third priority was getting out before Phoebe could show up and stop me.
    I had not considered the problem of money. Money is necessary everywhere, but in New York it is lifeblood. Nobody hitchhikes on Columbus Avenue. Nobody picks up hitchhikers on Columbus Avenue except police interested in making arrests for soliciting.
    I stood in the middle of the room thinking about money and the alternatives to money. There was money in my apartment. I always kept a hundred dollars taped under one of the kitchen cabinet shelves in case I got robbed on the street. Unfortunately, my apartment was on Central Park West in the Seventies and Brandon Hill Medical Center was off Lexington in the Thirties. Total walking distance: two and a half miles. On a normal day I can do two and a half miles and not feel it, but this was not a normal day. I didn’t feel weak, but I was going to before I went half that distance, and the walking wasn’t going to be the worst of it. I would have window-shoppers to contend with. And traffic. And the lights at Columbus Circle, which are arranged to make it impossible for pedestrians to get