Hillerman, Tony by Finding Moon (v4) [html] Read Free Book Online Page A

coffee and sandwiches, Mr. Lee had added tea and fruit to the order and insisted on paying. He had done so with a hundred-dollar bill for which the bellman had insufficient change. Finally Mr. Lee had left, taking his notes.
    “Did you find what you needed?” Moon asked. “Do you know where to find the urn?”
    “Ah, no,” Mr. Lee said. “But I have names now of people to call. Perhaps one of them can help. Perhaps not. Perhaps I will have to impose upon your time again.” He removed his glasses and bowed to Moon.
    “You have been kind to a stranger,” he said. “The Lord Buddha taught that the deeds of a kind man follow him like his shadow all of his days.”
    Moon had gone for a walk then, out amid the roar of jets rising from the LAX runways and the whine of the freeway traffic. He walked twenty-seven blocks in what seemed to be the smog-diffused light of the dying day approximately north by northwest. Then he walked the twenty-seven blocks back again. He’d hoped the exercise would carry him back to some sense of reality—and it helped. He could think again of J.D’s diesel engine waiting in his garage to be reassembled, of Debbie’s disappointment at the missed birthday, and of how the paper—chronically shorthanded—would be handling his absence. He had even decided what to do about Victoria Mathias.
    The next morning he handled most of it in an hour on the phone: having a dozen roses delivered for Debbie, leaving a message for J.D. that all he needed to do now was put in a new set of glow plugs and reassemble the engine, and trying to give Hubbell some ideas for filling up the Press-Register’s annual nightmare—the vacation edition.
    Rescuing Victoria Mathias from the jerk with the California suntan took two calls. The man he knew back home in the Durance General Hospital emergency room gave him the name and number of a heart specialist on staff named Blick.
    “Good to talk to you,” Blick said. “You’ll be glad to hear that Sandra is doing just fine at Pepperdine. Nothing but A’s.”
    Sandra? Sandra Blick? Oh, yes. They’d run a feature about her, with a picture. She’d won some sort of scholarship at the Colorado Science Fair. “I’m not surprised to hear that,” Moon had said, and told him what had happened to Victoria.
    “Where is she?” Blick had asked. “In West General in L.A.? I’ll get you a good man on it. Somebody you can trust.”
    Within an hour, Blick had called him back.
    “I reached the cardiologist you need,” Blick said. “A woman named Serna. Great reputation. She wants to get your mother moved to Cedars-Sinai.”
    “I’ve heard of that one,” Moon said.
    “You should have,” Dr. Buck said. “It’s one of the four or five best hospitals in the country. Now, let me give you the telephone numbers you’ll need. And I’ll tell you how to make the transfer.”
    At West General, Moon found that Dr. Jerrigan was not at the hospital and the doctor who had checked Victoria in was otherwise occupied. His mother was barely awake. He signed the required forms certifying that he was checking her out “against medical advice.” He scheduled the ambulance, collected her medical file, and signed financial forms. At Cedars-Sinai he checked her in and surrendered the file to a nurse at the desk in the cardiac ward. Then he waited thirty-seven minutes. Almost thirty-eight. A chubby woman with short gray hair and a round, serene face appeared, carrying the file he had delivered. She introduced herself as Emily Serna, sat down next to him on the waiting room sofa, and gave him the bad news.
    All indications were that his mother had barely survived a severe heart attack. The circumstances suggested she might soon have another one. If she did, the odds were heavily against her living through it. A catheterization test was needed, an angiogram to determine the extent of arterial blockage and the damage already done to the heart muscle. “There’s some risk with an