Chapter Forty One:

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – San Francisco, CA – 5:45 p.m.

Illuminated by lights from the overhead crane system, a copper brown container marked tex TGUH 759933 0 45G1 was loaded onto a cargo ship docked at Pier 80. Amidst shouted signals and the mechanized thrum of the cranes, the container disappeared into the mass of stacked boxes of generally the same color.

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – Los Angeles, CA – Cedars-Sinai

Mrs. Huang's words still hung in the air of the waiting room like a neon sign. The air conditioning felt like the thermostat was set on 'freeze your butt off' and Inez had only managed had to fall into a light sleep when the night duty nurse woke her.

"Detective Strate is awake and alert," she said.

"What time is it?" She was wiping the sleep from her eyes and couldn't make out the hands of the wall clock clearly in the ambient light.

"A few minutes after nine."

Inez picked up the light blanket from the floor, where it had slid off her, and shuddered again from the cold. She rubbed the goosebumps off her arms and checked to see if either Daisy or Kay had been roused. It appeared they had not. Today had been a long one for them as well.

"You said he was alert," she whispered. "How alert? Enough to answer some questions?"

"I believe so. He was full of questions himself."

"Thank you. Could you tell him I'll be right in? And don't wake them yet," she said, grabbing her tote and the light sweater she had forgotten to put on and indicating the other two women in the room, "I'll let them know after I talk to him."

Although she knew they would disagree, she needed answers more than Kay and Daisy.

When Inez walked into the room, Enos was sitting up in bed eating room temperature pudding and drinking chocolate milk. Looked like he had already finished his sandwich.

"What? They wouldn't bring you any buttermilk? I thought you had a standing order for that wherever you've been before."

"I asked em'." He tried to smile but smiling required more upper facial muscles than eating pudding and it made him grimace. "They said skim or chocolate," he said.

"You definitely look better than when you showed up at my door early this morning."

"I musta been a real sight, then. I got a look at my face in the mirror." He said. "At first I thought it was the accident with Thompson but the doctor says I got cobblered last night but wouldn't tell me anymore. I don't remember any of it."

"She explained to you that you have a concussion? You know as well as I do what that means."

He nodded.

"So what do you remember?"

"I kina remember you askin' me the same thing this mornin.' I think it was this morning, or was it afternoon?'" He stopped to mull it over again. "Anyway, I was tryin' to think of the last thing I can recollect clear before I woke up for that little bit. What day is it again?"

"It's Saturday night at," she looked up at the wall clock and noted his accent was a little more Hazzard than usual, "Nine oh eight."

"An' I been here since when?"

"About three thirty, three forty five this morning."

"Possum on a…," he muttered, and laid his head back on the pillow. "I been thinkin' about it since the doctor left. I remember the raid and the accident and the fire. And Thompson's broken arm." He closed his eyes and spoke more slowly and deliberately. "And I remember Soonie was mad at me for not callin' her. And she was, umm, hollerin' at me in Korean." He opened his eyes again. "You ever been hollered at in Korean? S'not like English or Spanish, it's much more…like my granny when she'd catch me doin' somethin' stupid and dangerous…"

"E…" Inez said, softly.

"Huh?"

"Do you remember anything after that?"

"I'm tryin' to, Inez. Every time I think it's comin' into view, it skedaddles."

If it hadn't been so serious, Inez would have smiled. She hadn't heard him say 'skedaddle' in a long time.

"E, do you need a minute?"

"No, I'm okay. Just takin' me a bit longer to put it all together s'all," he said and took a deep, cleansing breath. Then he wished he hadn't because it just made his nose hurt. "I remember workin' on paper work about the raid and checkin' on how the girls were doin.' Did I set in on a couple three interrogations?"

"Four, but who's counting? You're doing okay, just keep going at your own pace."

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, or as hard as he could with one side of his face still red and swollen. "I got nothin' else. I can't remember anythin' after that until I woke up the first time. And, I don't remember that very well."

"That's more than ten hours ago. When I asked you this morning what you remembered, you didn't remember anything after the accident – the Wednesday accident. You're making progress. You were conscious when you got to my house, at least according to the medical definition, and you still don't' remember that? Or how your face ended up…like this?"

He shook his head slowly to keep from getting dizzy. Then stopped. "I remember…did I go to Soonie's apartment?" He was speaking in his L.A. voice again.

"I don't know. Did you?"

"I did. It was Wednesday night." He frowned, "I broke her mother's pearl necklace."

Inez resisted asking how. She had read the 'don't ask what you don't want to know' look on Kay's face when she had asked about the necklace.

"What about Thursday?" Inez asked.

"Uh-uh. What time did you say it was again?"

"Around nine fifteen now. I need to show you a sketch of a man you were seen speaking to outside your apartment on Friday night." She pulled a copy of the sketch out of her tote and showed it to him. "Do you remember talking to him?"

E shook his head. "No…but he looks like somebody I used to…wait…that's a guy Turk and I knew. Informant. Got him out of some hot water way back. Haven't seen him in years…"

E was less Hazzard now, but starting to drift off-subject again and Inez steered him back on topic.

"Name?"

"I don't remember, but Turk would."

"Okay. We'll check with him. At least we're starting to get somewhere."

"Does Soonie know I'm here?" he asked. "Her brother. He's missing. I need to call her."

"I know, E. And you don't have to call her. She's been here all day," Inez said. She pictured Kay "trudging" through a median to find anything with an LAPD insignia.

"Can I see her?"

"I doubt that I could stop her with anything less than a bullet."

Both Soonie and Daisy were awake and eager for word when Inez returned from Enos's room. No matter what Inez thought about what she had done, it wasn't easy for her to tell Daisy that firstly, E did not remember her being in L.A. at all and that secondly, he was asking to see Kay.

And that pretty much sank Daisy's Boris and Natasha undercover-at-a-fancy-ball theory. The other skill she had learned in graduate studies was how to recognize confirmation bias. She had been indulging in that with reckless abandon.

It was her second wake-up call. Two in one year had to be a record. She even saw a sympathetic look on Kay's face. What was worse is that she had heard the nurse say to Inez on their way out of the waiting room that he had woken up calling for 'Soonie.'

That was the punch that counted.