Free Death Will Get You Sober: A New York Mystery; Bruce Kohler #1 (Bruce Kohler Series) by Elizabeth Zelvin

tuberculosis, and the many other ills that haunted the poor and drug addicted. So God’s dramatic demise had been noteworthy. Charmaine had given theme and variations, with a long coda on how much paperwork such a death generated and the impossibility of getting the staff to stop gossiping and get on with their work. That had given Barbara the opening she needed. She’d offered to cover a night shift, pleading the expense of an ecumenical holiday season—both Chanukah and Christmas—as her reason for taking on extra work.
    “Bless your heart,” Charmaine had said. “We’d welcome you with open arms. Sylvia was so upset she’s taking a few days off, and Darryl is out too. He seems to have the flu.”
    “I know Sister Angel never takes a sick day,” said Barbara, setting the hook.
    “Bark and I are trying to get her to take some time off,” Charmaine said. “She was up all night that night, doing a double shift. You know her. Evil is never off duty, so Sister Angel is always on.”
    “Sister Angel is amazing.”
    “So she is.” A little tartly, Charmaine added, “Everybody says so.”
    “Sounds like you could use some time off yourself,” Barbara said with sympathy.
    “From your mouth to God’s ear,” Charmaine said. “Not that I’m likely to get it.”
    Charmaine, however, did not work nights. Sister Angel was sitting in the small glassed-in nursing station doing paperwork when Barbara stepped off the creaking elevator. The unit was dimly lit so that the patients, who had little enough privacy and all the discomforts of withdrawal, could try to sleep. For a moment, Barbara saw the nun, alone in the brightly lit cubicle, as a starship captain keeping watch in the night. Then the fancy vanished as Sister Angel bustled out to greet her—Look, Ma, I’m hugging a nun!—and exhort her to read or take or use anything she wanted, as long as she put it away in the same place afterward. As always, Barbara was surprised by how small and solid she was. Tonight she wore one of the postmodern abbreviated habits. Barbara had seen her both swathed in full medieval regalia and shopping for secondhand dresses and silly hats in the antique clothing stores on Broadway. She had danced up a storm at the staff Christmas party the year Barbara interned. Sister Angel’s order or community functioned very much in the world. She had her own apartment and seemed to be free to do anything she wanted, except, presumably, have sex. She exuded confidence, implacability, and conscience. And she was leaving.
    “I’m about to go off duty.”
    “I’m disappointed. I hoped we’d get to talk.” On the other hand, it left Barbara free to take a leisurely look for and then hopefully at God’s chart, which she had no earthly reason to be interested in. On the whole, she was relieved when Sister Angel gave her a brisk pat and a mild version of her famous glare, indicating that Barbara was there to work, not to talk, although she was too nice to say so. She left quickly, not bothering with the elevator but tap-tapping briskly down the stairs, unfazed by the dim light and whatever ghosts of violence haunted the stairwell. They wouldn’t discomfit Sister Angel. They wouldn’t dare.
    Barbara stashed her handbag in a drawer that locked and went looking for the chart. The night nurse, a temp who knew little about the detox beyond what she needed to do her job, had wandered in and taken Sister Angel’s place at the desk in the nursing station. She didn’t find anything odd in Barbara’s scurrying back and forth and flipping through the charts in every cabinet. The active files lived in the most accessible drawers, but because so many of the clients were recidivists, the inactive charts were almost equally important. Barbara stooped, squatted, and stretched, while the nurse unselfconsciously played FreeCell on the nursing station’s computer. Occasionally a client in pajamas wandered in, wanting a glass of juice or a pill or the answer