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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 7505293" data-attributes="member: 73653">Reverberations - Session 3cDolf jogged at a quick pace and checked every alley he found. It didn’t take long for him to discover a particularly filthy and miserable-looking man slumped against a wall. He wasted no time producing the pipe from his plastic bag. He offered the man $100 to smoke what was in the pipe, no questions asked.The man may have been a junkie, but to his credit, he still balked at the offer. It was only momentary, and the promise of money won out over the potentially dangerous mystery high. Couldn’t be too much more dangerous than some of the stuff he’d done. The man asked for the money upfront, but de Jaager countered with an offer of half in advance, and half after. Dempsey would undoubtedly disapprove of the delay for negotiation, but de Jaager felt the man might be too sketchy. He handed over the pipe, a $50 bill, and a Bic lighter.The man eyed the residue on the pipe and searched the Dutchman’s face for any sign of trickery. Seeing only impatience, the man shrugged and took the biggest hit he could. Dolf nodded and thanked the man as he traded the second $50 bill for the return of the pipe. He told the man to keep the lighter.He had enough time to jog halfway back to the Talbott before a scream from the alley drowned out the light traffic on State Street. He felt a sharp pang of guilt, but he didn’t let it slow him down. If Dempsey were still alive, he’d be in desperate need of medical attention. Dolf yelled in a loud whisper to ask the Irishman if he was still alive. The response over the earpiece was hushed and delayed.“Aye. I’m still alive. Not going to die without a bottle in my hand. I think the thing left. I’m heading down to the lobby. Get me to the hospital.”Dolf decided not to mention what he’d done, but he did tell Dempsey he’d have the Cherokee running. He also asked Clark not to move from the camera feed. That suited the DEA man just fine. Crack went another can of Red Bull.The hotel lobby was empty, and the clerk at the desk was preoccupied with stringing together a chain of paperclips, so Dempsey made it out to the vehicle without causing a scene. Dolf drove to the hospital and stopped in the ER drop-off zone. It was probably for the best if an Irishman walking like a broken Slinky arrived without an escort. Besides, there was blood all over the front seat of a rental vehicle. They couldn’t possibly return it that way.Dempsey shambled through the doors and down the hall to the ER desk. The nurse on duty was quite professional, and she didn’t so much as flinch. Then again, it was the graveyard shift at a hospital in Chicago. He probably wasn’t even the worst thing she’d seen that night. He was able to fill out the paperwork well enough to be admitted, and the nurse assured him he could take care of the rest of it after surgery. Two orderlies helped Dempsey onto a wheeled bed and took him down the hall. He tried counting the ceiling tiles as they passed, but he only made it to five before losing consciousness.Dolf looked online for an all-night auto detail shop and decided to go with The Guild of Mute Mechanics. They sounded like they could keep a secret, and they were open at all hours. He paid the $400 in advance and handed the keys to a fair-skinned man of indeterminate ethnicity, and then he went across the street to a diner designed to look like an oversized train car. He drank an hour’s worth of coffee while watching out the window. As soon as he saw the Cherokee appear in the parking lot across the street, he threw a few dollars on the table and left.Once back at the hotel, de Jaager told Clark everything that had happened before falling over on his bed and immediately passing out. Clark tossed an empty can on the pile, opened another Red Bull, and kept working. Spider J had gotten what was coming to him, and Dempsey had taken the heat. Maybe it was the Red Bull, but Clark almost felt like he could fly.</blockquote>

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