Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth Read Online Free

a hand. “They got Foundations for everything these days. Some rich guy with O-negative blood probably kicked the bucket and left all his money to this Foundation, and this is the way they figure out to spend it.”
    Harsh had listened. It was all right with him if some bughead Foundation wanted to throw its money away, but it was a shame, he thought, to see any of it going to a cop.

THREE
    The hospital was as noisy a place as Harsh had ever been in. There was continual tramping up and down the hall, talking, bottles and bedpans clanking. When finally he couldn’t stand it, he yelled, “Shut the goddamn door!” Someone hurriedly closed the door, after which it was quieter, but not much. The sun was shining; if he had just felt better, it would be a good day to walk out of the hospital. The way he was now, stuck in the hospital bed, he was helpless, and anyone who wanted to do a job on him would have a free hand to do so. He was thinking of the policeman. If Harsh could get out of the hospital, he could find a private room and sack up there with no cop in his hair, stay there until he was in physical shape to cope with the situation. He could even get hold of Vera Sue if he got the notion. He fancied the idea of Vera Sue for a nurse. If a man was red-blooded, that was the stuff that would cure him.
    Harsh tinkered with his left arm, feeling the cast with his fingers. It felt like a sack of concrete that had set. The arm throbbed. Could he make it out of here, he wondered, if he gave it another try? He’d better, Harsh thought. The cop was a beaver, a guy like that might hear about D. C. Roebuck being found dead in a field not all that far away and put two and two together. He picked up his left arm with his right hand and inched it toward the edge of the hospital bed. The cast weighed a ton. His hand sticking out was swollen and bluish. He clenched his teeth, worked his legs around, got them hanging off the bed. It was a high hospital bed, a long way down before his feet found the cold bare floor. He rested, panting, studying the plaster cast on his arm, noticing it was shaped so it could be carried in a sling. He pulled one of the sheets loose from the bed and tried to tear it, but his strength was not up to that, so he folded the whole sheet and knotted it in a sling that was big as a tent. His belly hurt from lying bent over backward on the bed. Okay, he thought, here it goes. He stood and took two steps and went down on the floor with a crash that shook the building and put out his lights.
    Awakening, Harsh found he was back in the hospital bed. He was getting nowhere fast. He had a hazy impression he had tried to get out of the bed numerous times and each time had crashed on the floor, but that was probably all imagination. He wondered how long he had been lying there, whether it was hours or days. Then he heard a conversation outside his door. It was a nurse and the policeman, John. The cop was arguing. “Nurse, the Doc said he should be over the shock from the fall by now. He said it was okay for me to go talk to him if I wanted to.”
    The nurse put her head in and looked at Harsh. Unfortunately she caught him with his eyes open. “He seems to be awake. But we’ve had him under medication two days, so I don’t know what shape he’ll be in to talk.”
    The officer pushed past her. “I’ll give it a whirl.”
    The cop closed the door in the nurse’s face and came over to look down at Harsh. “You ever been in jail, Harsh?”
    “Officer, I’m awfully sick. I can’t talk to you now.”
    The officer ignored this. “Where were you in jail, Harsh? Come on with the answers.”
    “You sure are a guy who gets it wrong, Officer. I never been in anybody’s pokey.”
    “Yeah? Then why has a detective showed up around here making inquiries about you, Harsh?”
    “I don’t know anything about any detective, or anybody like that.”
    “Neither do I, but I plan to find out. All I know, you’re being