The Extortionist

by Vincent Zandri

  I eat more sandwich and wash it down with a big gulp of cranberry juice.

  “I imagine your job was not without its rewards,” I say.

  “Do you want to know a secret, Mr. Jobz?” she asks, while wrapping her fragile hands around the tea mug.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “What I enjoyed most about being the lunchroom lady had nothing to do with working with food. It was all about the children. Just seeing their innocent faces so full of smiles and laughter every day.” She shakes her head like she truly misses them, and maybe she truly does. “I mean, the food was never much to shake a stick at to be truthful. The school was always on a budget that only grew tighter and tighter as the years wore on.”

  I’m listening. But while I’m listening, I’m also eating the sandwich and drinking the cranberry juice. I feel like if I don’t eat and drink, she will somehow become all the more disappointed, all the more saddened. And she seems like such a nice, lonely old lady, the last thing I want to do is make her sadder.

  “And here’s another little secret, Mr. Jobz,” she goes on. “You remember when the former First Lady initiated a healthy lunch program for all the elementary and high schools across the country?”

  Me, nodding, recalling hearing something about replacing French fries with celery sticks or something like that. I take another sip of the cranberry juice. It’s nearly gone.

  “Well, let me tell you something,” she says, “the children rebelled against it. Maybe school food isn’t the greatest and could be constituted as junk, but what kid doesn’t love tater tots, grilled cheese, gooey pizza, and cheeseburgers? The school board insisted we comply with the new federal program, which meant they wanted me to get rid of all junk and replace it with salads and fruit. I did what I was told for a while, but when all those beautiful smiles on all those kid’s faces became frowns, I defied them, and went back to serving the fun junk food.”

  I’m listening to her go on and on. But suddenly, I’m feeling somewhat dizzy. Or not dizzy necessarily. But almost like I’m in the process of leaving my own body. I’m sitting here in front of her, trying to finish my ham and cheese sandwich, but it’s also like I’m watching the two of us from a perch up on the ceiling, like I’m suddenly caught in a dream. She’s speaking slower, her words sounding low and distorted, like when you play a vinyl record not at thirty-three and a third, but far slower. I can’t chew anymore. I don’t have the strength.

  Then, I feel myself falling. I don’t want to fall, but I can’t help it. Desperately, I try to grab onto the table, but I’m too weak. The ladder-back chair tips, and I tumble onto my side, crashing onto the wood floor. I’m not passed out. I can see, but everything is distorted. I get the feeling that in a matter of seconds, I’ll be passed out entirely. Holy mother of God, did this lovely old lady just slip me a Mickey in my cranberry juice?

  She slides out of her chair, comes around the table, takes a knee directly over me. She begins to dig around my pockets until she finds my wallet. She opens the wallet, stares once more at my laminated UI Fraud Agency ID.

  “Who the fuck are you, Mr. Jobz?” she says somewhat under her breath. “And why the fuck are you here?”

  Suddenly, the sweet old cookie baking lunchroom lady swears like a truck driver. And her voice, while still distorted and slow, sounds different. It sounds younger. She rummages through my wallet, pulling out a credit card here, an old photo there, and sliding everything carefully back into place. When she’s had enough, she slides the wallet back into my pocket, then pats me down until she finds my phone. She pulls it out, tries to access the inner workings. But she can’t get inside. Not without my pin number.

  “Fuck me with a big fat floppy dildo,” she says under her breath, while sliding the phone back into the jacket pocket.

  She jumps back up, not like an old lady, but like a spry teenager. Or someone a hell of a lot younger, anyway.

  Here’s what I’m guessing: she assumes I’m entirely passed out, or else she would not be searching me or talking out loud. She goes into the kitchen for a few seconds and comes back into the dining room with a smartphone gripped in her hand. Thought she didn’t have a cell phone? Thought she didn’t believe in them? She aims the phone at me, takes my picture. Then, she punches a bunch of numbers into the phone and presses the phone to her ear. Waits.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re up to,” she barks after a few beats, “but sending this cop to my house was a bad mistake. You got that?” She hesitates, while the person she’s connected with barks back at her. Her eyes suddenly wide, her expression full of rage. “No, no! You fuck, fuck, fucking listen to me! It’s you who stabbed me in the back. It was my idea to begin with and we were all making bank until you bitches got greedy. And one more thing, you prissy little bitch . . . Hello? Hello? Hung up on me. Yeah, well fuck you too and the horse you rode in on you dried up old cooch.”

  This is most definitely not the same sweet old lady who just whipped up a batch of Toll House cookies and made me a nice ham and cheese lunch with a side of Lays potato chips. I feel myself falling deeper and deeper into this black nothing. But for the moment, I’m somehow managing to hang on to some semblance of consciousness. It’s then she does something that really takes me by surprise. She grabs hold of her gray hair and pulls it off her skull. She’s wearing a hair net over her real hair, which looks blonde and not the least bit gray.

  “This lunchroom lady bullshit is gonna be the death of me,” she says.

  Setting the hair on the harvest table, she goes back into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator and comes back into the dining room with a can of Budweiser beer gripped in her hand. So she did have my favorite beer after all. She pops the tab and chugs half the can, wiping her foamy lips with the backs of her finger. Then she belches, deep, loud, and from the gut. Setting the can on the table beside her hair, she reaches into her baggy jeans pocket, pulls out a red Bic lighter, and what looks like half a joint. She fires up the spliff and inhales deeply, taking all the precious drug into her lungs. I might be slipping out of consciousness, but this woman is most definitely not the sweet can-do-no-wrong Mrs. Carter from the Loudonville Elementary School yearbook.

  “I’ll get those back-stabbing bitches,” she says, “if it’s the last thing I do.”

  She releases a blue cloud of pot smoke that rises slowly to the ceiling. And then—

  When I come to, I’m strapped to a gurney. I try to move my arms, but I can’t. I’m not sure if it’s because of the straps or because I just don’t have the strength. Two EMTs are wheeling me out of Mrs. Carter’s house. But is she really Mrs. Carter? I see her standing by the door, tears in her eyes. Her gray hair is back on her head.

  “We were having the nicest lunch,” she says, in her sweet old lunch lady voice, “and his eyes suddenly rolled up into the back of his head, and he fell off his chair. He was out cold. He wasn’t breathing, so I performed mouth-to-mouth on him. It wasn’t easy for me since I can’t move very well anymore.”

  “You did everything in your power to help, Mrs. Carter,” one of the EMTs says. A big, heavyset African American man.

  “Calling nine-one-one when you did was also smart,” says the second EMT. She’s young and pretty.

  Mrs. Carter steps outside while they wheel me through the open door. I stare up into Gladys Carter’s face as I pass her by. She gazes back with her deep blue eyes. Did Mrs. Carter always have blue eyes? I try to speak, but it’s impossible to make a sound other than a slow, dreadful groan.

  She places her hand on my forearm.

  “Get better, Mr. Jobz,” she says. “When you’re well enough, you can come back and have a real lunch this time. Plus, some of those Toll House cookies I promised you.”

  She’s back to being the loveliest, most misunderstood old lunchroom lady on the planet. Wasn’t this the same woman who was tossing F-bombs like they were chicken fingers in a cafeteria food fight? Wasn’t this the woman who pulled her wig off, chugged down a beer in abo
ut five seconds flat, and who sucked the crap out of a big fat doobie? The woman who openly threatened someone on the phone? Someone who’d stabbed her in the back? Or was I just imaging all that? Maybe it was but a dream.

  The two EMTs act as a team to carry me down the front porch stairs and to an awaiting EMT van. They shove me inside, the attractive female jumping in behind me. The doors close, the big man gets behind the wheel, hits the sirens, and pulls away from the curb. Pretty EMT places an oxygen mask over my face and begins taking my pulse with one hand while pulling her radio transmitter with the other.

  “St. Peter’s Emergency, this is EMT Vanessa Reynolds,” she says.

  “Go ahead, Vanessa.”

  “We’re bringing in a white male, approximately forty-five to fifty years of age. One-hundred-seventy pounds. He appears to have suffered a minor stroke or myocardial infarction. Tough to tell at this point. His BP is eighty-eight over sixty, but his vitals are generally good.”

  “Eighty-eight over sixty,” says the tinny voice on the other end. “He should be dead with those numbers. You sure he wasn’t drugged?”

  “That’ll be for tox to determine,” Vanessa says. “For now, he’s stable. We should be there in four minutes and counting.”

  “We’ll be waiting.”

  I’ve been freaking slipped a Mickey, I want to scream.

  If only I could talk. If only I could summon the words to tell these people the truth about Mrs. Carter and the drug she might have laced my cranberry juice with. But the oxygen tastes sweet, and it’s going to work on my nervous system, combining with whatever drug is left in my body. The road vibrations feel wonderful under me, and I find myself closing my eyes.

  When I come to again, I’m lying in a hospital bed. Henry is standing at the foot of the bed wearing a bright red shirt and matching bright red slacks.

  “Jesus,” I mumble, “can you turn that outfit down. It’s burning my eyes.”

  She smirks. “I can see you feelin’ better, beyotch.” She does that stupid twisty turny thing with her head and arms when she says beyotch.

  “And Jeeze, don’t shout,” I beg. “My head hurts enough as it is.”

  “You been sleeping all afternoon,” she says. “Plus, they got you on Codeine pain killers that be binding your bowels up for two weeks. How is it your head still hurts?”

  A start in my heart. I sit up fast and nearly pull out my IV. A sharp jolt of pain speeds through my nervous system from the needle inserted in the big blue vein on the back of my left hand.

  “Shit,” I say, “what time is it?”

  Henry looks at her watch.

  “I got seven-thirty,” she says. “Why, you got a date or somethin’?”

  “Crap, crap, crap,” I chant, spanking my thigh with my free hand. “You couldn’t be more right. I had a date planned with Brit at six. She was meeting me at Lanie’s. Now, she thinks I stood her up.” Looking over both my shoulders. “Where’s my phone?”

  “Must be with your clothes, Jobzy,” Henry says. “I’ll check the closet.”

  She goes to the closet beside the bathroom, opens the door. Sure enough, my clothes are hung up on a hangar. She digs inside my jacket pocket, pulls out my phone.

  Gazing at it, she says, “You down to about twenty-five percent charge. And you got a bunch a missed calls.”

  “Perfect,” I say.

  She hands me the phone. Brit called three times. She also left two messages. I’m too afraid to listen to the messages, so I just decide right there and then to cut to the chase. I dial her number and wait. It must ring four times before she finally picks up.

  “Mr. Jobz,” she says, “where are you?”

  Back to Mr. Jobz . . . that’s not a good sign.

  “Brit,” I say, “I am so, so sorry. I’m in the hospital. I had some sort of spell or something.” My eyes on Henry. She’s staring back at me, stone-faced. “I hope you didn’t think I stood you up.”

  A long pause. The kind of pause that can’t be filled fast enough.

  “Well, I was getting a little nervous when I was sitting alone at the bar for more than thirty minutes,” she says, “so I left. But forget all that. How are you feeling? Where are you? What happened?”

  I give her the quick version about what happened. My eating a sandwich and drinking some cranberry juice at a house that belongs to an elderly woman whom I was interviewing for my work. Suddenly, I got dizzy, and I passed out.

  “I’m still not sure if my spell had anything to do with natural causes or if I was drugged.”

  “You really think an old lady could drug you like that?” Brit asks.

  I picture her sitting on her couch inside her apartment. I imagine she’s got a glass of white wine in her hand and her bare feet tucked under her thighs, her thick, clean, lush dark hair draping her beautiful olive-skinned face, her green eyes. At the same time, I recall how the old lady pulled her hair off, drank a beer, and smoked some dope. How she went through my pockets and my wallet. But I decide not to get into all that.

  “Anything’s possible when you’re dealing with an alleged criminal,” I say.

  “You’ve got to take better care of yourself, Mr. Jobz,” she says. “You’re not getting any younger.”

  Oh, now that hurt.

  “Please, call me Steve or just Jobz, Brit,” I say. “After all, we nearly had a date tonight.”

  Henry rolls her eyes at the drama of it all. I’ve been waiting for it. She also crosses her arms over her considerable bosom like she’s getting impatient with my swooning over a young lady I barely know. Just then, a short man wearing a white lab coat walks in. I’m guessing he’s my doctor.

  “Brit,” I say, “the doctor just walked in. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay, Jobz,” she says. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out tonight and I hope you feel better.”

  “We’ll make it for another time?” I ask, hoping . . . praying she says yes.

  “Sure,” she says. “Get better.”

  She hangs up before I get the chance to tell her not to mention any of this to my mother.

  My eyes shift to the doctor. Like I said, he’s short, shorter than me even, but slightly built. He’s also Indian, as in Asian Indian.

  “How are we feeling, Mr. Jobz?” he asks in his heavily Indian-accented English.

  “Everything seems to be working again,” I say.

  “My name is Dr. Singh,” he says, holding out his hand. “Iqbal Lamba Singh.”

  I take the hand in mine and squeeze it. For a small dude, he’s got a decent grip. He takes his hand back and shifts his focus to Henry.

  “And I suppose this lovely woman is your wife?”

  Henry’s face lights up.

  She lets loose with, “Ha! Now, that would be the day!”

  “This is Henrietta,” I explain. “My friend and boss.”

  “Oh, well, I am very pleased to meet you, Henrietta,” he says, offering her his hand. “Such a pretty name.”

  “Please, call me, Henry, Doctor Singh,” she says. “Have you been a doctor long?”

  I’ll be damned if she isn’t flirting with the little guy. She’s easily got one-hundred pounds and fourteen vertical inches on him.

  “Oh, yes,” he says, “I have been a doctor in residence at St. Peters for ten years now. It is most rewarding work.”

  “The money must be excellent, too,” Henry says.

  I can tell by the way she’s shifting her eyes she’s searching Singh’s hands to see if he’s got a wedding ring on. By the looks of it, he doesn’t.

  “So, what happened to me, Doc?” I beg, saving him from Henry’s interrogation.

  He turns back to me. “I have good news and bad news,” he says.

  “Give me the good first,” I say.

  “You most definitely did not suffer a heart attack or stroke,” he says. “That is very good karma for you.”

  “And the bad?” Henry says anxiously, like she’s watching a reality TV show.

  �
��The toxicology report came up positive for a drug called Methyl Iodide. That is the bad karma.”

  For a quick beat or two, the room falls silent.

  “Never heard of it before,” I say.

  “It is fairly rare,” he says. “But it is available on the black market.”

  “What’s it for?” Henry pushes.

  “It’s a drug that can mimic the effects of a stroke,” the doctor explains. “And since mimicked stroke situations are difficult to diagnose in an emergency room situation, we might not have looked for it had Mr. Jobz not told us he was . . . how do you say it in America?”

  “Slipped a Mickey, Doc,” I say.

  He smiles broadly. “Exactly, Slipped the Mickey. Such colorful language in America.”

  “I don’t recall telling you anything,” I say. “I just remember being in the ambulance and then waking up in this room.”

  “Oh, you talked a lot,” the Doctor says. “Something about an old lady who took off her hair and became a young lady.”

  “The woman I’m investigating,” I say. “I work for the police.”

  “He also work for me,” Henry interjects.

  “You certainly have a lot of jobs, Mr. Jobz,” the smiling Doc says. “Perhaps that is why they call you Mr. Jobz.”

  “I never looked at it that way,” I say. “But yeah, it fits.”

  “Your body should be free of the effects of the drug by now,” he informs. “I’ve already instructed the hospital staff to draw up your discharge papers.”

  “What about his head?” Henry says. “No brain damage, I hope.”

  “Nothing of the sort,” he says. “The drug, once it’s passed through his system, will have no lasting side effects.” Turning for the door. “It was nice meeting you Henry and Mr. Jobz.”

  “You too, Doc,” I say.

  “Hope to see you again, Doctor,” Henry says.

  The doc might have answered her, if he hadn’t been practically run over by a tall man in a trench coat.

  Miller.

  The old detective tosses a stack of papers in my lap. He also tosses me a pen.