Head Games

by Thomas B Cavanagh

I opened my eyes and the digital clock on my nightstand read 3:42. My head was killing me. The headaches were always worse in the mornings, gradually improving as the day wore on. Bob was raging this morning. My skull felt like it was in a pneumatic press.

  I swung my feet onto the floor and inhaled sharply, concentrating to keep my head up. Leaning down increased the pain. Putting my head between my knees would be enough to make me pass out. I braced myself and shuffled around the room with my eyes half-closed. When I reached the other side of the bed, I noticed that Cam wasn’t there. The door to the bathroom was ajar and a thin bar of fluorescent light spilled onto the floor.

  I inched closer to the door and saw Cam’s bare foot through the gap. Her toes were painted a deep burgundy. I heard sniffling.

  I took another half step. In four years of marriage I couldn’t recall a single time I had heard Cam cry. She had gotten emotional, sure, but I was now hearing true, old-fashioned sobs for the first time. I had a pretty good idea why she was crying. And why she was doing it in the middle of the night when she thought I was asleep.

  I stood there for another moment like some kind of audio voyeur, listening to her cry, before I turned around and slipped back to bed. Bob would have to wait. I closed my eyes in a futile attempt to reclaim sleep. It seemed like a long time before Cam came back to bed, but for all I knew it was only a few minutes. I heard the bathroom light click off and felt the bed sag as Cam crept under the blanket. I didn’t hear any more crying. Not even a sniffle.

  I assume I eventually did drift back off to sleep because when I opened my eyes, the sun was peeking through the blinds. I reached a hand back and didn’t find Cam so I knew she was up. Bob was wishing me his favorite “good morning” by continuing the headache from earlier.

  Slowly, I swung my legs out of bed and steadied my hand on the nightstand. Two deep breaths and I pulled myself up and found the bathroom. As I walked, I felt the nausea from the pain welling and I made it to the toilet just as my guts erupted.

  As I came out of the bedroom and into the three-foot-by-three-foot nook that pretended to be a hallway between the two bedrooms, I paused. Just around the corner, Cam and Jennifer were at the kitchen table. I heard spoons clinking on bowls and cereal-box liners being crinkled. I pressed back against the near wall so they wouldn’t see me.

  “You should just ask him,” Cam said, obviously chewing.

  “I don’t think he wants to talk about it,” Jennifer said.

  A pause. “Probably not. But you should ask him anyway.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look, he has cancer and that sucks for everyone, especially him. But you’re allowed to have questions,” Cam said. “He may not want to answer. But you have a right to ask.”

  “I don’t even know exactly what kind of cancer he has.” I heard Jennifer open and close the refrigerator.

  “You mean what kind of brain tumor?”

  “Yeah,” Jennifer said. “I mean, I suppose there’s more than one.”

  “There are lots.” I heard Cam sigh.

  Now Jennifer paused. “Is his bad?”

  “Yeah. Not the worst, but it’s pretty bad.” Cam cleared her throat. “There are four classes of severity and your dad’s is a class-three, the second-worst. It’s malignant, which means it’s life-threatening and he’ll eventually die if it isn’t treated.”

  “Do they know…,” Jennifer said. “I mean, when do they say…” She didn’t know how to ask the question.

  I imagined Cam shrugging, a gesture I knew well. “Maybe a year. Probably less. And the last few months won’t be very nice.”

  There was a fairly long silence, maybe thirty seconds or more. I couldn’t tell if they were still eating. I didn’t hear any more clinking or chewing. Jennifer finally spoke.

  “So what’s he gonna do about it?”

  Another pause. “That’s the question you should ask him. That’s what we all want to know.”

  I jiggled the bedroom door handle and closed it loudly enough that I knew they would hear it. Then I turned the corner and stepped into the kitchen.

  “Morning,” I said.

  They greeted me and I noticed that both of them had only eaten half of their bowls of Cheerios. Jennifer put hers in the sink.

  “I have to get ready for work,” she announced, and disappeared into her bedroom.

  Cam studied me. “How you feeling?”

  I poured a cup from a pot of coffee that Cam had thoughtfully made. “Peachy.”

  “Headache?”

  “Just the usual wake-up call,” I said, then sipped.

  She crossed her arms, considering something. She looked typically stunning this morning. Black pantsuit, probably Gucci, which made her blond hair even brighter.

  “I want you to take something,” she said, standing and opening a large black briefcase on the counter.

  “Cam, you can’t do that.”

  “I know I have some in here,” she said to herself. “Ah. These.” She held out two small, blue boxes of pharmaceutical samples. The product label read Zuraxx.

  “You do remember that I’m a cop.”

  “Ex-cop. Like ex-husband.” She continued holding the boxes out. “Are you going to arrest me or take the pills?”

  Handing out prescription-medication samples to anyone except doctors was an excellent way for her not only to lose her job as a pharmaceutical sales rep but also wind up in a cell. But, after a moment’s hesitation, I took the pills from her.

  “They’re new,” she said, closing up her briefcase. “For migraines. If they work, I can get you more.”

  “Thanks.” Cam knew that the prescription painkiller that my neurologist recommended was about a hundred bucks for a week’s worth, with no generic alternative. They worked pretty well, but I didn’t have an unlimited supply of cash, so I often skipped a dose.

  “Hey, Jen!” Cam called. “You almost ready? I’ve got an appointment.” She turned to me. “I offered to drop Jennifer at the mall for work.”

  Jennifer emerged from her room and headed for the front door. Cam gave me a peck on the cheek and squeezed my arm.

  “When are you off?” I yelled after them, meaning Jennifer. But they both turned back. Cam smiled as if she were remembering the familiar morning scenes of our marriage: me coming in from a graveyard shift and her rushing out the door to appointments.

  “Four o’clock,” Jennifer said.

  “You need a ride?” I said.

  “Dunno. I’ll call if I do.” And then they were both out the door, two estrogen blurs rushing down the stairs to the parking lot.

  I stood there for a moment, struck by the sudden silence of the apartment, empty except for me and Bob. I decided a shower would be the first order of business, followed by a hearty breakfast of Zuraxx and coffee.

  When I stepped back into the little hall alcove, I saw Jennifer’s door half-open. In her room, I noticed a small stack of CDs on the dresser. I debated a moment, assessing the level of privacy I was about to invade, and stepped into her room.

  She had been here less than twenty-four hours and the room was already a disaster: clothes strewn all over the bed, a quantity of cosmetic supplies to make a movie star jealous, hairbrushes, lotions, Seventeen and Teen Beat magazines, and shoes. More shoes than she could wear in a year. I stepped over to the dresser and flipped through the CDs. The second one in the stack was Welcome to the KlubHouse by Boyz Klub.

  I studied the faces of the four young men who smoldered on the jewel-case cover. One of them was the prodigal TJ, although I had no idea which. Turning the case over, I read the titles of the tracks. They all seemed the same to me. I couldn’t tell which were ballads and which were up-tempo, if they even classified music like that anymore. At the bottom of the back cover was a colorful invitation to join the official Boyz Klub Fan Klub.

  As I looked at the case, my eye was caught by Jennifer’s open purse sitting on the dresser next to the CDs. Before I could even stop myself, my finger w
as poking into the purse. I rationalized that I was looking for drugs, making sure my little girl was clean. But the truth was that I was snooping for information. Some clue or totem that would help me understand what kind of person she was. I didn’t know my daughter very well, and that realization had left a dark, empty spot in the center of my chest, made more pronounced since yesterday afternoon. And our relationship wasn’t exactly a TV sitcom where I could plop down on the couch and say, “What’s on your mind, kitten?” Finding a copy of Catcher in the Rye or a SAVE THE WHALES button or a love note from a boy might fill that emptiness just a little, might help me decipher just who this Jennifer Garrity was. And, hey, I also wanted to know if there was a condom in there. I’m not sure if I wanted to find one or not.

  I didn’t find one.

  My probe was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jennifer in the doorway.

  “I can’t believe you!” she shrieked, eyes wide with rage.

  “Jennifer—,” I replied lamely.

  She charged into the room and snatched the purse. “You find anything good?”

  “Sorry.”

  “How ’bout my work ID?” She held up a name-badge pin defiantly. “It’s a good thing I forgot it or I wouldn’t have had to come back and help you go through my personal, private things.”

  “Jennifer—”

  “You wanna know what’s in here? Huh? How ’bout some gum?” She threw a pack of cinnamon gum at me hard enough that my chest stung. “No? Not what you wanted? How ’bout lipstick?” She chucked a metallic tube of lipstick at my head. I barely dodged it and heard it smack loudly into the wall behind me. “Not the lipstick? I know! You want my goddamn tampons! Here!” She hurled two tampons at me, and, inexplicably, I caught one.

  “I hate you!” was her final comment on the matter before she turned and ran out of the apartment.

  I took a deep breath. Looked down at the tampon in my hand. I placed it carefully on the dresser next to the CDs, which I restacked into a neat pile. I stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind me.

  I popped two of the Zuraxx and drained the cup of coffee. A minute later the phone was in my hand. A minute after that I was talking to George Neuheisel.

  “George,” I said. “It’s Mike Garrity. I’ll do it. I’ll find the kid.”

  * * *

  “It’s so fucking unprofessional, I could vomit.”

  Other than a perfunctory greeting, those were the first words I ever heard from Mario “Eli” Elizondo. He was a short guy, maybe five-five. Maybe. He looked to be on the downside of forty, close to fifty. His hair and the mustache and goatee around his thin mouth were unnaturally black. A little too black for the wear on his skin. He was trim and wiry and gestured in jerky motions when he talked. His eyes were dark and narrowed into slits when he paused to think or waited for you to answer one of his questions.

  He was sitting behind his barge of a desk. I was across from him in another of Global Talent’s many imported, luxury ass-rests. The office was stupidly large, like something out of a movie. The wall to my right was almost completely glass, overlooking the buildings and parks of downtown Orlando. The opposite wall was a giant grid of state-of-the-art electronic gear. Television monitors, stereos, receivers, speakers, whatever. I had no idea. I don’t know my woofer from my tweeter. I just knew there was some serious change invested in that wall of media.

  The wall behind the desk was covered in photos of celebrities managed by Global Talent, celebrities that Global Talent would like to manage, and other celebrities that Eli had happened to grab for a quick photo op. Sprinkled in throughout the photos were framed gold and platinum albums from Global Talent artists.

  I wasn’t sure if Eli expected some sort of response to his statement. I looked over at George Neuheisel, who sat next to me, for some guidance. But his undivided attention was completely focused on his boss. Apparently, George didn’t want to miss any of the wisdom from Mount Eli.

  “Yeah,” I offered.

  Eli nodded, jerking a finger toward me. “He knows what’s at stake here. He knows very well. That kid—” Eli stopped himself as his face flushed with sudden anger. “That kid doesn’t have a grateful bone in his body. When I found him, he was making eight-fifty an hour singing songs in the park dressed like a fish. A fish!”

  George nodded. Amen, Reverend.

  Eli continued, “Now look at him. He’s a millionaire. A millionaire!” The arms were jerking wider now, opening up. “How many twenty-two-year-olds have fourteen million in the bank? Not too fucking many, let me tell you.” I knew the little speech was over when Eli slammed both palms down on his desk with a flat smack. His nostrils were flared as he looked from me to George and then back to me.

  “We’ll find him, Eli,” George said. “Don’t worry.”

  Eli nodded, more to himself than us. “Tell me how.”

  George looked at me expectantly. As a point of record, George and I had not yet discussed the details of the case. About five minutes after I’d walked into the office, George announced that Eli was thrilled I was coming in to help and wanted to meet with me right away. So here I was. I had no idea how I was going to find the kid. I wasn’t a PI. I suddenly felt I had made a big mistake accepting the job. I was in over my head.

  “I’ll need some background,” I said. “Everything you have on him. Addresses, phone numbers, bank accounts, credit cards. A guy like this, with the financial resources at his disposal, could be very tough to find. He could be drinking a daiquiri in Tahiti right now, paying all cash, and we’ll never find him.” Eli’s eyes narrowed at me. “The way to find a guy like this isn’t to follow the money. If he’s smart, there’ll be no money to follow. You find a guy like this by talking. Friends, family, girlfriend, bandmates, rabbi, whatever. Someone knows where he is, and that someone can be convinced to tell us.”

  Eli was motionless for a moment before he nodded again. “And how exactly,” he said deliberately, “do you convince them to tell us?”

  I shrugged. “Depends. Maybe we come up with a magic number with a dollar sign in front of it. Maybe we lean on them a little. Maybe we buy ’em a puppy. Everyone has a different button.”

  Eli nodded knowingly, his face expressionless. “Who do you want to talk to first?”

  “Dunno. You tell me. You know him. Who should I talk to?”

  Eli and George exchanged a look. Eli’s head bobbed once.

  “His mother,” George said.

  Now it was my turn to nod. “I’ll need a list of everyone you can think of and how I can get in touch with them. Plus, I’ll need to get into his house or apartment, if possible.”

  “George’ll arrange it.” Eli took a breath. “Will you want to interview the other Boyz?”

  “The band?” I said.

  Eli’s head went down and up again.

  “I would think so,” I said.

  “Okay. I suppose you will. We’re just in final rehearsals, and with TJ missing, everything’s been kind of tense. George’ll get you in touch with them so it doesn’t interfere. The last thing we need right now is another distraction.” Eli leaned onto his desk. “We’ll need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Any personal information you get about the band must remain private. For their own safety. They have some pretty enthusiastic fans.”

  “You wouldn’t believe if I told you,” George said.

  “Plus,” Eli said, “the band has a very specific image. All information released about them is tightly controlled. Disclosing any information about any of the Boyz outside our standard communication channels is off-limits. Even a little inconsistency or inaccuracy can tilt the image and jeopardize a hundred-million-dollar sponsorship deal. This tour must not be compromised.” The eyes narrowed again. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”

  “Everything stays in the family,” I said.

  Eli smiled. His teeth were perfect and white and in no way grown in his own mouth.

  CHAPTER 4

  TJ Somme
rset loved his mother. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bought her a forty-five-hundred-square-foot cottage on a golf course in exclusive Isleworth. Located in southwest Orlando, Isleworth was the home of sports stars and movie actors, surgeons and magnates. It had to be quite a culture shock for Mrs. Sommerset, formerly of a rented duplex in lower-middle-class Pine Hills.

  George arranged a meeting time and, presumably, a clearance through the impressive community gate. The guards were polite, but I saw them eyeing my beat-up truck as it sputtered past.

  I had been inside the Isleworth gates once before, investigating a racketeering case while on loan from the Orlando Police Department to the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, or MBI, a multijurisdictional task force that covered a variety of Central Florida vice and organized crimes. The guy we were investigating ended up being found guilty of laundering a boatload of heroin money through a series of successful T-shirt and souvenir shops in the more touristy parts of town.

  A perfectly manicured road wound through the community, with colossal Mediterranean-style mansions sprinkled on either side. Some were on the water. Most were on the golf course. A half dozen or more PGA heavyweights lived in here somewhere, including Tiger Woods and Mark O’Meara. Baseball stars with winter homes, movie actors with local roots such as Wesley Snipes—the neighborhood was a veritable who’s who in Central Florida.

  I followed George’s directions and pulled into a long brick driveway that could have been a road itself. The drive led up to Mrs. Sommerset’s humble abode, a six-bedroom cottage overlooking a lake. A moment later I was stepping up the cobbled walkway to the front door, wondering just what the hell I was doing.

  I rang the bell, which chimed three deep, resonant notes as if from an ancient European cathedral belfry. A few seconds later, one of the ornate, oversize double doors opened to reveal Mrs. Arlene Sommerset.

  The surprisingly lovely Arlene Sommerset. I didn’t know what to expect, but I guess I’d pictured someone older. I pegged her a few years past me, mid to late forties, and soft-featured in a pleasing, feminine way. Her hair was light brown and cut short but stylish, as was her outfit of khaki capri pants and a white T-shirt. Her brown eyes looked both young and old at the same time. She had a disarming, sincere smile that she offered as soon as she opened the door.