"Been trying to get in touch with you all day, Mark. Some old guy was found wandering around, dazed and suffering from malnutrition, with $17,000 in cash inside the lining of his jacket."
"Alive?" I asked, shocked right into eagerness again.
"Just barely. They're trying intravenous feeding to pull him through. I don't think he'll make it."
"For God's sake, let's get there before he conks out!"
Lou raced me to the City Hospital and up to the ward. There was a scrawny old man in a bed, nothing but a papery skin stretched thin over a face like a skull and a body like a Halloween skeleton, shivering as if he was cold. I knew it wasn't the cold. The medics were injecting a heart stimulant into him and he was vibrating like a rattletrap car racing over a gravel road.
"Who are you?" I practically yelled, grabbing his skinny arm. "What happened to you?"
He went on shaking with his eyes closed and his mouth open.
"Ah, hell!" I said, disgusted. "He's in a coma."
"He might start talking," Lou told me. "I fixed it up so you can sit here and listen in case he does."
"So I can listen to delirious ravings, you mean."