Sunset
By
Al Lamanda
1
Carol laughed more than any person I’ve
ever met. At jokes, comedies, at our daughter when she did something funny the
way little girls do. She loved sunsets, snowstorms and chocolate. If she could
no longer fit into her favorite jeans, she’d cut out the broccoli instead of
the chocolate. She cried at every dog movie, even if the dog lived at the end.
We went to Yellowstone
Park
Carol
lived thirty-three years.
We
were married for eleven of those years.
It
wasn’t nearly long enough.
There’s
a hole in my heart where my life used to be.
A
man invaded our home one morning after I’d left for work. He was sent to
deliver a message. I was to back off the murder investigation I was involved in
or else. The man caught Carol in the shower. He got carried away. He raped and
strangled her in front of our five-year-old daughter.
My
daughter, her name is Regan, hasn’t spoken a word in twelve years. She resides
in a medical facility in the country where they care for her every need. She
plays with crayons and watches Bugs Bunny a lot. Regan will never go to her
prom, wear a graduation gown or have a first kiss.
I
used to visit Regan every week.
I
don’t anymore.
I
drink instead.
2
My day began the way it has for the
past decade or so. I didn’t so much wake up as come to. The night before, I
didn’t go to sleep, but pass out. When my eyes opened, there were sixty seconds
or so of blurred dizziness before I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited up the
remains of a fifth of scotch.
It
burned as much coming out as going down. The taste and odor was foul.
When
my stomach settled, I washed my face with cold water until my eyes functioned.
Then I grabbed a beer from the fridge, stumbled outside, and sat in a lawn
chair that faced the ocean.
The
tide was rolling in. Waves crashed on the beach. Gulls patrolled for bits of
leftovers and anything else they could find edible.
I
sipped beer and waited for results.
The
sun was warm. I glanced at it and judged the time somewhere between eleven and
eleven-thirty. I wasn’t in the Navy. I couldn’t tell time by the sun, the stars
or navigate at night. I just knew where the sun should be at certain times of
the day. I learned from sitting in a lawn chair and looking at it for a decade.
After
Carol died and Regan was in the home, I would sit in our big empty house and
cry myself to sleep on the sofa. The department shrink told me that wasn’t
healthy. He recommended I sell the house and move to a neighborhood where not
everything would remind me of Carol and what I’d lost.
How
do you explain to a shrink that what you lost is inside you, that you carry it
around like the blood in your veins.
On
the card table to my left was a pack of cigarettes, matches and an overflowing
ashtray. I lit a cigarette, sipped beer from the bottle and listened to the
waves crashing on the beach.
The
beer was doing its job, settling things down to a nice even keel.
My
vision cleared. The headache lessened.
A
hundred yards to my right was my only neighbor on the otherwise deserted
stretch of beach. I saw him walking toward me, cigarette between lips, beer in
hand. His name was Ozzie, but I called him Oz. He was black, with snow-white
hair, a scraggly speckled beard and was somewhere between sixty-eight and
seventy years old. I didn’t know for sure and never asked. He was here when I
moved in ten years ago.
I
smoked the cigarette while Oz walked toward the vacant chair on my right. He
brought it over years ago and there it stayed, rain or shine. I guess he had no
reason to bring it back.
“Gonna
eat today?” Oz said when he arrived and took his chair.
“Thinking
about it,” I said.
Oz
looked at the rusty grill in front of the card table. “Coals is still good,” he
said. “We could grill up some burgers?”
I
lit another cigarette.
So
did Oz.
We
both sipped our beer.
“Your
check arrive?” I said.
“This
morning.”
“Then
so did mine,” I said.
We
sipped and smoked.
“You
want to go to town or get the coals ready?” I said.
“Already
been to town,” Oz said. “To get my check.”
“I’ll
go,” I said.
Neither
of us moved until the beers were empty. I stood up. “I’ll change clothes and go
now,” I said.
Ten
minutes later, I came out of my trailer wearing cleaner, but not clean jeans
with a button-down corduroy shirt worn outside. I found the sunglasses I lost a
week ago and slipped them on to cover my bloodshot eyes.
“Back
in a bit,” I said, walking away.
“John?”
Oz called after me.
I
turned around. “Yeah?”
“Don’t
get no rolls with them little seeds,” Oz said. “They hurt my gut something
awful.”
“Right.”
“And
maybe get some baked beans,” Oz said. “You know how much I like baked beans.
“Right.”
***
Three
quarters of a mile from my trailer was the center of town, the town of Bayridge . The town wasn’t
much, but neither was the bay. Kind of gray and gloomy, with a few shops and
stores, a gas station, bank and post office. If you called 911, it generally
meant a one hour wait for an ambulance or county sheriff. That kind of town.
I
hit the post office first for my disability check. Sixteen years of police work
earned me a forty percent pay disability with benefits pension. It wasn’t much,
but I didn’t need much. All I ever bought was booze and occasionally some food.
I
went from post office to bank to grocery. I bought burgers, a Tupperware of
baked beans, some lemon squares, a six-pack of beer and a fifth of scotch. I
carried two large sacks back to my trailer where Oz was working the coals.
“Coals
ready,” Oz announced when I set the two sacks in my arms on the card table.
“Let’s
have a beer first,” I said.
We
had a beer.
Ours
was a no hurry world.
We
hand nothing to hurry for.
While
the burgers sizzled over the coals and the baked beans heated in a saucepan on
the grill, we sipped a second beer and watched the sun crawl across the sky.
“A
game on tonight,” Oz said.
“Who?”
“Yankees
at Baltimore ,”
Oz said. “It’s a network game. They show what they show.”
“I’ll
bring out the TV,” I said.
We
ate our burgers with baked beans and drank more beer until the beer was gone
and we cracked the seal on the scotch. We ate the lemon squares while sipping
scotch over ice in plastic cups as the coals cooled down along with the
afternoon.
We
weren’t drunk, not by a long shot. We were maintenance drinking to keep our
heads clear for the game. The drunk would come later. After the sun had gone
down and we were alone in the dark to face our demons.
And
ourselves.
“What
I like with beans is cornbread,” Oz said as he sipped scotch from his plastic
cup. “I should have mentioned it before.”
“I
would have picked it up,” I said.
“I
know,” Oz said. “My mistake. I’ll remember next time.”
We
drank more scotch and smoked a few cigarettes.
“Them
waves is acting up,” Oz said.
I
listened. The waves crashed against the beach and the rocks at the point. They
produced a boom as they struck and a crackle when they receded. It was a
pleasant enough sound to listen to while drinking scotch from a plastic cup.
My
cup was empty. So was Oz’s. I added ice from the bucket to each cup and
splashed in some scotch, topping each off with some water. Later on, we would
forgo the water, then the ice.
For
now, our buzz was minor and we felt no pain.
Years
ago, I asked Oz how he wound up living in a trailer on the beach. His bleary,
red eyes watered up and he said, “Don’t never ask me that. Don’t never ask me
that again.”
I
didn’t.
I
found out by accident when I stumbled upon an old newspaper clipping in Oz’s
trailer several years ago when, after a hard night of drinking, I helped him to
bed. The old clipping was taped to a bedside lamp. It was frayed and yellow,
but still readable.
Twenty
years ago, Oz was an average postal employee waiting for his pension. Home,
grown kids, wife, the works. Driving home from a family gathering one
afternoon, his youngest daughter in the backseat, a dump truck blindsided Oz’s
van, rolling it several times before it came to a stop in a ditch.
Oz’s
wife died on impact.
A
flattened piece of scrap metal flew off the truck, crashed through the back
window of Oz’s van and decapitated his daughter. Her head wound up on his lap.
A
reason to crawl inside a bottle?
I
never brought it up and Oz has no idea I know.
We’ll
keep it that way.
“Game
on soon,” Oz said.
“I’ll
get the TV in a bit,” I said.
We
lit fresh cigarettes.
“You
old enough to remember the M and M boys?” Oz said. “The wars between the
Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers?”
“I
was a boy, but I remember,” I said.
“Mays,
Mantle or Snyder?”
“No
doubt Snyder was a good player, but he lacked the staying power,” I said. “Mays
was the greatest of them all, but Mantle was the most dramatic in the clutch.
He had a way of getting it done when it counted and he did it with one good
leg. People got excited watching him strike out.”
“We’ll
never see that likes again,” Oz commented.
“No,
we won’t. All three.”
I
got the TV. It was a 19-inch portable with rabbit ears that I set on the card
table and ran with an extension cord. Without cable, all it picked up were the
four networks and some local channels.
Neither
of us cared.
Nothing
on network interested us much except for the occasional movie or sporting
event. Reality shows were comedies without being funny.
By
the end of the third inning, the Yankees were up four to nothing over Baltimore . The Yankees
were a great team. Baltimore
was not.
We
drank some more scotch, making a dent in the bottle.
“I
got some microwave popcorn,” I suggested.
“Buttered?”
“Believe
so.”
By
the fifth inning, the Yankees led nine to one and we ate popcorn and drank
scotch and really didn’t care who won or lost, just that the game itself was a
diversion.
At
the seventh inning stretch, the bottle was low, the popcorn bowl empty and we
lost track of the score.
Oz
fell asleep with one ounce of scotch left in the bottle. I poured that last
ounce into my plastic cup and toasted the ballgame for lack of anything else to
toast. My vision or lack of it was blurred to the point I could no longer see
the score. My tongue was thick and heavy in my mouth. My senses were dull and
reflexes gone.
I
felt no pain.
That
was where I wanted to live. The United States of no pain.
I
steadied my hand enough to light a cigarette and sipped the last ounce of
scotch.
Somehow,
I wound up in bed and when I fell asleep or passed out, I was at peace.
When
I opened my eyes next, I was greeted with a large gloved fist.
3
The upside of passing out drunk is that
you don’t dream.
The
downside is more often than not, when you come to you’re soaked in your own
piss and vomit at the sight of the toilet.
I
knew I was coming toward the surface when I heard faint voices in the
background of my brain. My dulled senses thought it was the TV left on all
night. I began to see light through my closed eyelids.
A
gruff voice said, “I think he’s waking up.”
Another
voice said, “Don’t let him. Give him the dope soon as he opens his eyes.”
Through
the fog and haze, my brain wondered what program that was on the TV.
My
eyes opened. There was a moment of blurred fuzz. My vision cleared and I saw
the gloved hand coming closer to my face. I saw the rag and smelled the ether.
I lacked the strength to do anything about it as the rag covered my mouth and
nose.
After
a few seconds, I was enveloped in black.
***
I
woke up in my underwear tied with rope to a wooden chair in a white room. I
faced an open window. The sun was in my eyes and I had to squint to see. From
what little I could determine, I couldn’t see behind me, the room was empty.
White walls, white blinding sun and me.
“Hello?”
I croaked, weakly.
Even
though my greeting was barely above a whisper, I could hear a faint echo. My
guess was right; the room was devoid of furniture.
“Hey,
c’mon, hello!” I shouted, or did my best to shout.
I
waited for a response that didn’t come.
My
bladder, full of last night’s beer and scotch started to press hard and I knew
I wouldn’t be able to hold back the flow much longer.
“Hey,
it’s going to get pretty messy in here in about a minute!” I shouted.
I
felt my underwear go damp.
“Aw,
Jesus,” I said.
The
floodgates opened and the urine soaked my underwear and ran down my legs. After
a few seconds, a puddle formed under the chair, spread and reached my bare
feet. It took at least a full ninety seconds to empty my bladder. The puddle spread
out beneath me and crept toward the walls.
The
floor was slightly uneven.
“Satisfied?”
I yelled.
Apparently
not, as my request fell on deaf ears.
I
suddenly felt ill. Last night’s beer and scotch leftover’s didn’t want to stay
put. I rocked the sideways until I fell over on my left side. I hit the floor
hard, turned my face toward it and vomited up a vile liquid mess.
When
my stomach was empty, I dry heaved for a few seconds until control returned. I
inched the chair away from the mess with my shoulder.
“Hey,
I’m not cleaning this!” I shouted.
The
door opened and three men walked in. They wore suits and had the look of hired
muscle.
“A
little too late,” I said.
They
walked toward me. I had a good view of their shoes. Highly polished, black wing-tips.
The shoe of choice for organized crime soldiers.
One
of them kicked me in the chin with his shiny wing-tip. “Nobody said you could
fucking talk,” he said.
***
I
woke up naked in a backyard shower stall that was designed to rinse off after
coming out of the pool. Three walls made of concrete, a showerhead on the back
wall. The pool was shaped like an S, with a deep and shallow end. Lush gardens
surrounded the pool. A massive brick barbecue pit sat off to the left. A woman
in a bikini sunbathed on a recliner near the pool. If she noticed me, she
didn’t care a naked stranger occupied the shower.
The
three wing-tips faced me from just outside the shower stall. One of them held a
garden hose with a high-velocity nozzle.
“Say
cheese,” Nozzle Holder said and turned on the water.
The
blast of ice-cold water hit me in the chest like a kick and knocked me against
the cement wall.
“Ain’t
got no soap,” Nozzle sneered. “So sorry.”
I
covered my gentiles from the spray and sank to my knees. Nozzle Holder took
pleasure in his work as he aimed for my face to try to get me to uncover my
gentiles. I turned and gave him my back. The water stung, but not like a high-powered
blast to the balls.
“That’s
enough, he’s clean,” Another wing-tip said.
The
water stopped. I slowly turned around. Past the three wing-tips, the woman in
the recliner hadn’t moved a muscle.
A
wing-tip tossed me a white terrycloth, pool robe. “Put it on,” he said.
I
put the robe on and tied the belt. “Now what?” I said.
“We
go see the man,” another wing-tip said.
The
three wing-tips escorted me past the pool, where the reclining woman had yet to
move, and into the house through sliding glass doors. I said house, I meant
mansion. We walked through a long hallway of polished oak floors to a door. One
of the wing-tips opened the door and shoved me through it.
It
was the room I had occupied earlier.
Someone
had gone to a great deal of trouble to clean it up and done a thorough job. Not
a spot remained on the gleaming oak floor. A chair rested in the center of the room.
“Sit,”
a wing-tip, commanded.
I
went to the chair and sat. “Now what?”
“Hands
behind your back,” the wing-tip said.
I
placed my hands behind my back and the wing-tip cuffed my left wrist to the
slat in the chair. He used two more sets of cuffs to lock each of my legs to a
chair leg.
“This
isn’t because you’re afraid of me?” I said.
The
wing-tips ignored me.
No
sense of humor.
We
waited.
“Sorry
about the mess earlier,” I said. “But I warned you guys ahead of time.”
We
waited some more. Obviously, my wing-tipped hosts weren’t big on small talk, or
any talk at all for that matter.
They
stood like statues, ignored me and kept a close watch on the door.
After
a while, I couldn’t say how long as I had no watch and couldn’t see the sun,
the door opened. Two additional wing-tips walked in. That wasn’t any surprise.
From
behind the two new wing-tips came the sound of a motorized wheelchair and that
was somewhat of a surprise.
The
two new wing-tips parted and stopped. From behind them the wheelchair rolled
closer to me, and its occupant was none other than Eddie Crist.
That
was a surprise. A major league fastball of the Nolan Ryan type surprise.
Even
more surprising than coming face to face with one of the most powerful mobsters
in organized crime history was the fact that he was dying. He wasn’t more than
sixty-eight years old, but some form of cancer and chemo treatments had taken a
major toll on his once large and powerful body.
I
looked at Eddie Crist.
Eddie
Crist looked at me.
He
didn’t speak.
I
did.
“I
can’t wait for you to be fucking dead,” I said.
The
wing-tips closest to me raised his hand as if to backhand me.
“No,”
Crist said.
The
wing-tips lowered his hand.
“I
didn’t kill your wife,” Crist said.
“You
had her killed,” I said. “You turned my little girl into a fucking vegetable,
you fucking piece of shit motherfucker. I hope…no, I pray that whatever cancer
is eating you alive is slow and painful, the kind where you linger for months
on end, rotting from the inside out, you putrid son of a bitch.”
“Are
you through?” Crist said.
“I’m
just getting warmed up,” I said.
“I
didn’t kill your wife,” Crist said.
“You
sent that goon to kill her,” I said. “Explain to me the difference.”
“I
sent nobody.”
“What
do you got, stomach cancer?”
“Pancreas.”
“Good.
That’s nice and slow and painful. There is a God after all, but you’ll never
meet him, you rancid piece of meat.”
“I
don’t doubt that for a moment,” Crist said. “But, that’s neither here nor
there. I had nothing to do with what happened to your wife or child.”
“And
I should believe a piece of shit low-life gangster motherfucker like you, why?
Because you’re sick and dying of cancer. Fuck you, scumbag.”
Crist
sighed. His two hundred pound body now weighed a buck twenty, if that. I could
see his bones inside the red silk robe he wore. He braced his hands on the arms
of the wheelchair and slowly got to his feet.
“You
got cancer bad, huh,” I said. “Good, because if God has…”
Crist
slapped me across the face with the bony side of his right hand. It stung like
hell and spun my head around.
When
my bell stopped ringing, Crist lowered himself back into the wheelchair. “You
used to be a good cop,” he said. “One of the best. The only one who ever got
close to me. Now you’re nothing but a drunken good for nothing bum.”
“Have
your goons free my hand and legs and I’ll save God the trouble of slow cooking
your rotten ass,” I said.
“We’ll
talk later,” Crist said. “After.”
Crist
pushed a button on the arm of his wheelchair and started to roll away from me.
“After what?” I said.
Crist
rolled to the door and out of the room.
“After
what?” I yelled after him.
Crist
turned a corner and I lost sight of him.
“Was
it something I said?” I yelled at the empty, open door.
Three
wing-tips surrounded me.
“What
do you goons want?” I said.
They
bent at the knees and picked me up by the seat of the chair.
“We
go for a ride now,” a wing-tips said.
4
The wing-tips handcuffed my left wrist
to the brass headboard of a queen-size bed in an otherwise empty bedroom. The
bedroom was located somewhere on the second floor of the Crist mansion.
They
took the robe, leaving me naked.
They
left three bedpans.
They
set a small lamp on the floor beside the door and turned it on.
They
left without saying a word.
I
heard a key lock the door.
I
sat up as best I could against the brass headboard. The mattress was void of
sheets. The pillows were bare, but then so was I. On the floor within reaching
distance was a green wool blanket of the type used by the military.
Would
I need it? The room was comfortable enough at the moment. The open window
allowed for fresh air and a slight breeze. Outside was about seventy-five
degrees. After dark, that number would be around sixty.
I
tried stretching to reach the blanket with my right hand, grabbed it and
flipped it onto the mattress beside the bedpans.
Three
bedpans. One to urinate in, another to defecate in, the third for vomiting.
A
handcuffed wrist, a locked door and pretty soon I would require all three.
For
the moment, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do, so I made myself comfortable
and stared at the white ceiling until my eyes closed.
Thirteen
years ago, I was part of a federal task force investigating organized crime. I
was a detective with the rank of sergeant in the Special Crimes Division. My
partner Walter Grimes and I were the only non-FBI in the task force. We were
selected because we knew the Crist crime family, had busted several members
over the years and didn’t have a problem taking our orders from the feds.
You’d
be surprised how many do.
The
task force focused on the war raging inside organized crime. It happens every
fifteen years or so, when a Gotti type rolls in with fire in his balls. A year
of my time was spent on that task force. We had charts like those you see in
the movies of bosses with diagrams to their soldiers. We had video tapes, phone
taps, informants, the works.
We
just didn’t have anything with which to charge Eddie Crist.
Walt
got sick. He took his son fishing one weekend in the spring. He was bitten by a
mosquito. He came down with a mysterious, but toxic staph infection. He
recovered, but it took six weeks, three of which were spent hospitalized.
While
Walt was recovering, I stumbled upon the first real break in the case against
the Crist crime family.
Dead
bosses were popping up like toast all around town and the coast. The word was
Crist had enough and wanted peace. The way to make peace in a mob war is to
kill off anybody who is against your peace proposal.
Crist
was smart. He knew the FBI had a jacket on each and every member of his family
and organization. He imported talent from the old country. Stone cold killers
in wing-tips and silk suits.
Besides
smart, Crist was careful.
He
used his son Michael to make all arrangements. Driving his own car, Michael
drove to the airport where he would meet with the imported talent at various
coffee shops inside the terminal. Crist knew that even if Michael was followed,
there was little to nothing the feds could do about a public meeting inside an
airport.
Walt
was still in the hospital one morning while I was staking out the Crist mansion
from my car atop the hill that overlooks his grounds. With binoculars, I
watched Michael drive off the grounds in his little blue sports car.
I
decided to tag along.
The
ride led to the airport. I parked and followed him inside where he sat at a
terminal coffee shop and met with an imported button man. I watched their
conversation from the safety of the terminal until they parted ways.
They
didn’t make me on their way out.
I
tagged the button man to his rental car and ran his plates. After that, things
fell into place quickly. He had a ninety-day visa and was staying in a rented
house in the suburbs. He made frequent trips to the airport to meet Michael. I
took the information to the task force in the FBI.
We
set up a sting.
With
the cooperation of the airport, every coffee shop, bar and restaurant inside
the terminal was staffed with a minimum of two agents as waiters. It took a
week and three meetings between Michael and the button man to get the goods on
them.
They
met at the coffee shop in the west wing of the airport. A high-ranking under
boss was the target. The man refused to back down on his takeover of the
Hispanic drug market in the city. Crist made him an offer, but he turned a deaf
ear.
Mistake.
The
contract was written.
We
staked out the under boss. He liked to play the ponies. The hit was to take
place at the racetrack during the featured race when the crowd was in a frenzy
and no one would see a thing. The under boss had his people with him, but that
posed no problem for a pro. It wasn’t hard to worm your way through the bodies
and shoot the under boss in the back of the head, then disappear in the scattering
masses.
We
pinched the button man minutes before he completed his task. We pegged him for
seven hits and threatened him with life without parole, if he lived past his
first month in federal prison.
The
feds offered him a deal.
Cough
up Michael Crist and fly home on the next plane out of the country.
See,
if you got Michael, you got Eddie.
Three
weeks later, while the button man sat in a safe house and spilled his guts to
federal prosecutors, a bomb went off in the kitchen and blew everybody to kingdom
come.
I
wasn’t there.
I
was visiting my partner on his last day in the hospital. While I brought Walt
up to speed on the investigation, a man sent by Crist broke into my house to
give Carol a warning meant for me. Back off, he was to say.
He
raped and murdered her instead.
He
turned my five-year-old daughter into a living, breathing house plant.
When
the smoke cleared, I crawled inside a bottle of scotch and called it home ever
since.
My
eyes slowly opened.
My
throat was as dry as an emery board. The sweats had begun. A thirst was building
in my throat that nothing but alcohol would quench. My hands shook a little.
A
while later, they shook a lot.
A
little while after that, the bed was soaked in my stale sweat. I urinated into
one bedpan and defecated into another. I vomited into the third, then diarrhea
set in, followed by dehydration.
By
nightfall, I was in full-blown cold turkey detox. I could barely stand the
smell of myself and tried to keep my nose buried in the pillow. I pissed on the
bed rather than move. There is something very humbling about urinating in your
own diarrhea.
A
little more time passed.
I
had the shakes so bad, my eyeballs rattled. I was cold and sweating at the same
time and covered my body up to my neck with the wool blanket. After a time, I
had to remove it because it soaked up so much sweat, I couldn’t stand the
weight on my body.
I
wanted to scream, to shake, rattle and roll. I kept my mouth shut and didn’t
utter a word. I didn’t want to give Crist the satisfaction of hearing me beg
for booze.
I
tried to focus, but of course that’s impossible when every pore in your body is
craving a drink so badly, you’d sell your soul for just one shot.
Or
two.
A
little while after the shakes kicked in, I fell asleep or passed out. I’m not
sure which, but it didn’t matter. I went in and out for a while, saw or heard a
man hovering over me and heard him speak.
Then
I felt a needle go into my right arm just below the forearm. I opened my eyes
and saw the IV bag above my head.
The
man was giving me fluids. A mixture of water-based electrolytes like in the
hospital. For dehydration. And cramps.
My
eyes closed again and when they opened, the man and his IV were gone.
Sunlight
was filtering in through the window, low against the wall when I came around.
It was early morning, somewhere around seven or so. The worst of it was over. I
had nothing left in me to sweat out. My hands still shook, though not as
pronounced and my nerves were still wired.
The
door opened again and the man from the night before walked in, accompanied by
three wing-tips. The man wore a suit and carried another IV bag. He stopped at
the bed, while the wing-tips stayed in the background.
“Well,”
he said. “You’ve come through the worst of it in one piece. I’m going to give
you an IV and after that, some soup and crackers. I’ll have a small table
brought in so you can sit and eat while the bedding is changed.”
“And
if I take this IV and shove it up your nose, then what?” I said.
“My
three associates here will take measures to correct your behavior and that
won’t be pleasant,” the man said.
“Then
I guess I’ll eat soup,” I said.
My
body absorbed eight ounces of IV fluids. I asked for a cigarette and the man
nodded to the wing-tips. One of them stepped forward, gave me a cigarette and lit
it with a gold Zippo.
“So
what’s your stake in this?” I asked the man.
“My
name is Doctor Steven Richards. I am Mr. Crist’s personal physician. I have
been for twenty-three years. He’s requested I look after you.”
“Why?”
“I
don’t ask why, Mr. Bekker,” Richards said. “I do what is asked and what is
necessary.”
I
sucked on the cigarette. The smoke was hot in my throat and lungs. It wasn’t my
brand, but it got the job done. My hand steadied a little. What more could you
ask from a smoke?
“Crist
wanted me sober?” I said. “Why?”
“I
don’t know,” Richards said. “But, sober you are and ready for some
nourishment.” He looked at a wing-tips. “Bring Mr. Bekker a robe.”
“What
kind of soup?” I said.
“I
requested beef broth with potatoes from Mr. Crist’s chef,” Richards said.
“Sounds
yummy,” I said.
Richards
turned and nodded to the wing-tips, then opened the door and walked out. A
little while later, I ate tasteless, salt-less beef broth with potatoes and
drank weak iced tea at a folding table with chair while a housekeeper changed
the sheets on the bed. I was free of handcuffs, but the three wing-tips stood
close by and watched my every move like a hungry cat on an injured mouse.
I
was the mouse.
By
the time I finished the soup, crackers and tea, the bed was changed and made
and the housekeeper left without saying a word.
“The
doc says for you to take a shower,” A wing-tips said. “And put on pajamas.”
“How
long am I going to be here?” I said.
“You
don’t talk,” the wing-tips said.
“Can
I have some cigarettes and something to read?”
“On
the bed, give me your wrist,” the wing-tips commanded.
A
little while later, the housekeeper returned with pajamas, a fresh pack of
cigarettes of my brand with matches and a hard cover copy of the latest Leonard
novel. She was accompanied by three wing-tips who oversaw the dressing of the
robe ceremony. She wasn’t impressed enough with me to try and sneak a peek.
I
couldn’t exactly blame her.
I
settled in to read the book and smoke a few cigarettes. I tried to concentrate
on the intricate plot lines, complex characters and snappy dialogue of
Leonard’s writing, while ignoring the growing thirst in my belly.
Not
easy to do when your belly is used to a quart or more of hard booze on a daily
basis. I read fifty pages, smoked a few cigarettes, then set the book aside and
tried to sleep for a while.
Of
course, that was impossible.
I
was in the home of the mobster responsible for the rape and death of my wife
and the ruination of my daughter’s life. He kidnapped me, forced me off the
booze and held me prisoner for reasons unknown. I wasn’t treated badly, in fact
just the opposite.
Crist
knew that given the slightest opportunity, I would choke him to death and piss
on his corpse, yet he was cordial to me, even if it was against my will.
He
had an angle.
Everybody
does.
So
what was his?
I
rolled some thoughts around in my mind. After a decade or more after the fact,
what did Crist want with me now? He could have had me killed anytime he wanted
and my body would never have been found. Killing me was out of the question?
Why clean me up just to put me down?
Crist
had cancer and that was a good thing.
Crist
would be dead soon and that was an even better thing.
What
did that have to do with me?
Especially
now.
I
fell asleep, woke up a while later and read some more. I was on page
ninety-seven when the door opened and the housekeeper, along with two wing-tips,
walked in. Housekeeper had a tray with grilled cheese sandwiches, French fries
and iced tea on a serving tray, the kind used for breakfast in bed.
Housekeeper
spoke. “I’ll be back in one hour for the tray.”
I
ate and read. Housekeeper returned after one hour, this time with just one wing-tip.
She spoke again.
“The
doctor said you can eat more solid food for dinner,” Housekeeper said. “What
would you like?”
“Steak,
medium, baked potato, corn and pie with ice cream,” I said. “Skip the iced tea.
Make it a tall Coke with ice. And some rum.”
Housekeeper
glared at me. Maybe she was the cat’s meow at keeping house, but I couldn’t
speak much to her sense of humor.
“Just
Coke with ice,” I said.
Housekeeper
nodded and she and wing-tips went away.
I’d
gone from three bodyguards to two and finally just one. I had gained trust or
wasn’t seen as much of a threat. My money was on not much of a threat.
I
slept, read, smoked and slept some more.
Doctor
Richards, one wing-tips and Housekeeper returned with the steak just as I
awoke. I sat up ready to eat.
“Let’s
have a look at you first,” Richards said.
The
wing-tips removed the cuffs and I removed the pajama top. Richards listened to
my heart and lungs, took my blood pressure and pulse and seemed satisfied I
wouldn’t expire while under his care.
“How
long am I going to be kept here?” I asked Richards.
“I
can’t say,” Richards said.
“What
can you say?” I said.
“I
can say enjoy the steak,” Richards said.
I
did. Immensely.
Thirty-six
hours later, I got my answer.
