Leo let the girl wipe her mouth first before pulling up his pants, ever the chivalrous gentleman. She was probably stoned out of her gourd, he surmised. But he wasn't going to hold that against her. This time.

  "Was it good?" she asked nervously, but otherwise disinterested, slowly getting back to her feet.

  "Let's say it was serviceable," he obliged her, unceremoniously zipping. "A lot more than I can say for you, my dear."

  Perhaps a little insulted, but mostly confused, she bolted straight for the powder room. Leo straightened his desktop, pondering the poor thing with his guard slightly dropped. She was new here, he considered. And mostly eager to please.

  Still, nobody told her to shove all that shit up her nose.

  "Leo." The meagre knock came mostly out of courtesy as the door slowly inched open for Mel Glint to poke his shrunken, malformed head inside. "Guess who's back," he spoke, beady eyes shifting back and forth.

  Leo did not invite him in. Instead he shot him a deadpan expression, in no mood for a meaningless social call.

  "This a bad time? You want I should...?" Glint trailed off, unsure what to do next.

  Precisely on cue, the girl scurried out of the bathroom with her T-shirt still riding up.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "Nope. We're all finished here."

  The girl kept her head down on her way past Glint, who helped himself to a whiff as he followed her out the door.

  Leo dug the day-old crossword out of the bin and planted himself behind the desk like Caesar.

  After a moment, he heard a dull, but familiar bellow from the corridor: "Can I come in now, Leo?"

  Leo pinched the bridge of his nose. "That depends. Did you bring me what I asked for?"

  A short pause of confusion. Leo could practically hear his slow brain buffering.

  "Um... I went to see Mikey..."

  "And?"

  "There was this mean lady. Who wouldn't let me inside."

  The bloated behemoth sounded about ready to cry. Leo had had enough foreplay for one afternoon.

  "Come in, Goliath," he instructed.

  Seconds passed before the knob slowly twisted. For a two-tonne simpleton with Kibbles n'Bits for brains, he sure knew how to milk a moment bone dry. Goliath skulked in like a child summoned to the principal's office. He said nothing, glancing precariously around the room with sublime shame. Leo looked down at his crossword, bemused. His red pen dug into the newspaper, retracing a pair of intersecting words that did not quite go together.

  The big dumb son of a bitch remained silent.

  "You mean the nurse?" Leo finally pried apart his dopey blank stare, coming quite on his own to the logical conclusion, "Probably means he's still critical." He should have known better then to send an imbecile to do the work of an artisan. Even on a good day, Angelo would have been under heavy scrutiny. And although Leo had not personally witnessed the fiery crash, which had landed the brash young showboater in the critical ward (and now probably the poor house) by all accounts, it was a doozy. 'Awake' didn't necessarily mean 'out-of-the-woods'.

  "Leo, how come you ain't sayin' nothin'? Is it cuz you're mad at me?"

  "Disappointed," Leo corrected. But he wasn't really that either. At least in no one but himself. "Go outside and ask Vic for that list I gave him. They're the names I want you to start on. Deadbeats down to my last nerve." The gigantic mountain backed his way out the door, relieved to be off the man's shit-list himself––so far as he could tell.

  Leo picked up the phone and put in a call to St. Mary's ICU. Having put plenty of people there over the years, he knew the extension by heart. "I'd like to inquire about a patient, Michael Angelo–– Yes, that would be him. Could you tell me if he—? Of course."

  The nice lady put him on hold, and he gritted his teeth on the music rendition of "Blame it on the Rain."

  Some sins were just unforgivable.