by Jude Hardin
“What is this all about, Nicholas?”
“Shh. We need to keep our voices down, in case someone’s listening.”
“Who would be listening? I gave Max Marlin the go-ahead to bug your studio, but not our house.”
“He bugged my studio?” I said.
I didn’t know whether to be emotionally distraught or severely pissed. I decided to let it go for the moment.
“Do you have something to tell me or not?” Juliet said.
“All right, here I go. My new student, the one who called a week ago Sunday and gave me two hundred dollars to skip breakfast, isn’t really a student at all. Her name’s Diana Dawkins, and she’s an operative for a clandestine government organization called the Circle. Very few people even know this agency exists, Jules. Even the president doesn’t know. Their mission is to track and eliminate what they call vampires, their code word for enemies of the United States. Because of some of my past investigations, I was considered a potential recruit, and that’s why Diana came to me. She’s in trouble.”
Juliet had a doubtful expression on her face. “What kind of trouble?” she said.
“Someone is planning to assassinate the president, and they’re trying to frame Diana for the crime. She thinks it might even be someone within her own organization, so she doesn’t know who she can trust. She offered me a very large sum of money to help her, and I couldn’t turn it down. Well, I could have, but I didn’t want to. It’s enough to change our lives.”
“This is the best that you can come up with?” Juliet said. “That you’re working for a secret agent? Don’t make me laugh, Nicholas. You think I’m stupid? You think I was born yesterday?”
“It’s true,” I said. “It’s all true. I used the phony Perry Wendell Davis credentials to inspect a company called Aero-Fleck Audio. I smuggled out pictures of coded documents. All top secret. I’m not making this up. This is really happening, and if you ever utter a word of it to another soul—”
“Where’s all this money she’s paying you?”
“I’ll get it after the job is finished. I guess. I even have a tattoo between my toes on my left foot. It’s a little red dot. They call it the blood tattoo, and there’s a microchip implanted beneath the skin there.”
Juliet laughed. “OK, I’ll bite. Let me see this blood tattoo of yours.”
“You can only see it under a special light,” I said.
“Of course. A special light. How convenient. Do you know how incredibly ridiculous all this sounds, Nicholas? Do you even know?”
“I know it sounds crazy. But it’s the truth. I swear.”
“Why did you go to California?” she said. “To see her? To see Ericka?”
“I thought we were over that. I thought we agreed never to mention it again.”
“But you keep lying. What am I supposed to think?”
“You’re my wife. You’re supposed to believe me. I went out there to find Terry Vine. I thought he’d taken the briefcase containing the Perry Wendell Davis credentials. It was crucial that I get that stuff back. And like I told you on the message I left last night, you can never, ever, tell anyone about Davis. I’m risking both our lives just talking about it now. About all this shit. These are secrets you’re going to have to take to the grave, Jules. Trust me on this.”
“So did you find Terry Vine when you flew out there?”
“Yes. I knew he was going to be at the Rose Bowl yesterday. I was searching the place up and down when I got lucky and ran into him in the men’s room. He didn’t have the briefcase, of course. Max Marlin had it. But I didn’t know that at the time. For some reason, Terry confessed to taking it, and he even gave me an address in Orange Park where I could pick it up. I went to the house he and his stepfather were supposed to be living in, but all I found was some old lady with a bad dye job. Toting a shotgun, no less. Terry’s going to get a piece of my mind when he gets back.”
Juliet smiled, but there were tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Now I know you’re lying,” she said. “About everything.”
“But I’m not. Why can’t you just believe me?”
“You want to know how I know you’re lying?”
I was getting weary with her distrust.
“I’m all ears,” I said.
“I know you’re lying, Nicholas, because Terry Vine doesn’t exist.”
The bathroom was getting stuffy. I reached over and switched on the exhaust fan.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Of course he exists. He’s my student. I see him every Thursday at four-thirty. I loaned him a guitar.”
“Max looked through your books, and there is no record of payment from anyone named Vine.”
Max this, Max that. I still couldn’t believe that pinhead had violated my space. And the kicker—my own wife had paid him to do it.
“I’ve been carrying Terry for free,” I said. “Because of his home situation. And because, like I mentioned before, he reminds me of myself at that age. He’s a very talented kid. He can go a long way if he sticks with it.”
“I checked on you a few times myself,” she said. “Before I hired Max. Nobody comes to your store at four-thirty on Thursdays. You disappear into the studio room for thirty minutes, maybe to make secret phone calls or something, but nobody comes and nobody goes. Think about it. Is anyone else ever around when you’re with Terry? Has anyone else ever seen him?”
“Of course. Lots of people.”
“I checked the high school. There’s no student named Terry Vine. There never was. Why don’t you just admit it, Nicholas? You invented him. He’s a figment of your imagination.”
“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of, Jules. Totally outrageous. I loaned him a guitar. Do you think I imagined that?”
“What guitar?” she said.
“The nineteen seventy-four Fender Telecaster Deluxe,” I said. “Natural maple finish, two humbuckers. I loaned him that and the hardshell case. I sit there and watch him play it every week.”
“Nicholas, you sold that guitar five years ago.”
“What?”
I felt my lips begin to tremble. Like a little kid, right before he starts bawling. My vision blurred and the room started spinning and I kept hearing those words over and over again.
You sold that guitar five years ago…
You sold that guitar five years ago…
You sold that guitar five years ago…
The world fell away and a trapdoor opened beneath me and I fell screaming into a bottomless pit of blackness.
THURSDAY, APRIL 26
The past two days have been just horrible. Nicholas has had some sort of breakdown. He’s in the hospital, on the psychiatric unit, and the doctors are trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. They’re trying to figure out why he’s been having delusions and hallucinations. My poor husband is very sick.
I feel so bad that I accused him of cheating on me. That was never it. I feel bad that I suspected him, and I feel bad that I hired a private investigator. I guess I was a little crazy too.
Right now the doctors are calling it post-traumatic stress disorder, but they think there might be some kind of bacterial infection as well. They don’t know. They’re pumping him full of antibiotics just in case. The good news is they think it’s temporary, that he will get better. He’s not going to be a paranoid schizophrenic for the rest of his life. Thank God for that.
It was bad enough that he invented Terry Vine, the guitar student, but the recent addition of the secret agent was just over the top. Diana Dawkins. I wonder where he came up with that name. And the whole story, with the blood tattoo and the plan to assassinate the president and all. Just amazing. I’m glad we discovered this illness before anyone got hurt.
Or killed.
In the ambulance, on the way to the hospital, Nicholas kept talking about Kurt Von Lepstein, the CEO of a company called Aero-Fleck Audio, who was murdered behind a Chinese restaurant on Wells Road.
“He was chasing me,” Nicholas said. “And Di told me to pull into the parking lot of that restaurant—that Chinese place that had gone out of business. I was talking to him, and all of a sudden he had a wooden stake in his back. I was there, Jules. I watched him die.”
“We heard about that on the news,” I said, trying to present reality to Nicholas.
The news reports said that Mr. Von Lepstein had a history of helping homeless people. He would go out of his way sometimes to find them and give money to them. He was a good man. Unfortunately, he tried to help the wrong person, and his altruism ended up getting him killed. Days later, they finally found his wallet a couple of blocks away, minus the fifteen hundred dollars he’d withdrawn from the bank that morning.
Nicholas was convinced that he had been there when Von Lepstein died, but he kept getting mixed up on the date and time. It was obviously another part of his elaborate delusion, another piece in his psychotic puzzle. My poor darling. I hope he gets better soon.
I went to see Jet today. I changed her dressings, and we chatted some. I get paid for the work, but my visits are usually as therapeutic for me as they are for her. They seem to take the edge off of everything else that’s going on in my life, if only for a little while. Maybe her problems help me put mine in perspective. I think that’s it.
She’s still very worried about her estranged husband being out of jail. He hasn’t tried to contact her, but every day she fears that he will. She still has the gun I gave her, just in case. She doesn’t want to kill him, but she will, she says, if he tries to hurt her again. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
I woke up with the worst case of cotton mouth ever. My lips were crusty, my tongue sore. It felt as though someone had sucked me dry with a shop-vac.
I looked around. I was in the hospital. All four side rails on my bed were in the raised position, and my gown was soaked with sweat. There was a pitcher of water on the bedside table, but when I reached for it I discovered that my wrists and ankles were strapped to the bed frame.
I didn’t know why I was there, or why I’d been restrained.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Cut me loose. You hear me? I need a drink of water. I need a drink in here. Now!”
My voice was hoarse and raspy, and I wondered if anyone had heard me. I was about to start shouting again when a nurse walked in. She wore blue scrubs and white Reeboks. Shoulder-length blond hair. She was very young and pretty. Her nametag said Kim, RN, BSN.
“There’s no need to shout,” she said. “If you need some help, just press the call button. It’s right there on your bedrail.”
I looked at the rail. There was a red button that said NURSE CALL, and there was enough play in my wrist restraints to reach it.
“Sorry,” I said.
She poured some water into a Styrofoam cup and stripped the paper wrapper off a flexible drinking straw. She raised the head of my bed and held the cup to my mouth. I drained it in three swallows.
“Do you want some more?” she said.
“Yes.”
She poured another cup. I drank half of it, and then told her that was enough.
“You were thirsty,” she said.
“Thirsty isn’t the word. That was good. Thank you.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag filled with an intravenous medication. She spiked the bag with a tubing set, primed the tubing and piggybacked the solution into the bag of saline hanging beside my bed on a rolling pole. She adjusted the settings on the electric pump and opened a clamp, and a few seconds later the medication started dripping into a vein on my left arm.
“What’s that?” I said.
“It’s your antibiotic.”
“Am I sick?”
“The doctor thinks you might have an infection. You had a fever yesterday, and the lab came and drew some blood cultures. The doctor started you on the Zosyn after that.”
“What day is it?” I said.
“Thursday.” She looked at her watch. “It’ll be Friday in a few minutes.”
“Why am I tied up?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“I didn’t work yesterday, but they told me in report that you had been very combative when you came in. The restraints are for your safety, and for the safety of the staff.”
“Why don’t I remember any of that?”
“They gave you some medication to help you relax. It might have affected your memory.” She paused. “You’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“I hope nobody gave me any narcotic pain medicines.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Because I had a problem with that stuff a while back.”
“Allergic?”
“Addicted.”
“I think it was just some Ativan, but I’ll check. I’ll make a note on your chart and send a message to the doctor and the pharmacy. No narcs. And I need to go over some questions with you, to finish up your admission paperwork. Your wife answered most of it, but there were a few things she didn’t know.”
“I could really go for some coffee,” I said. “Do you think you could take these things off? I’m not combative now.”
I was being extremely polite, but it was an act. More flies with honey and all that. Truth be known, I felt like taking the IV tubing and choking her with it.
I needed a drink. Every cell in my body was screaming for alcohol. It was almost midnight Saturday, and I hadn’t had anything since the bottles of Samuel Adams Boston Lager at the Holiday Inn in Pasadena. That was Tuesday, the day I went to the motocross meet at the Rose Bowl. I remembered that. It had been over forty-eight hours. A long time when you’re used to drinking every day.
“You promise to behave yourself?” Kim said.
“Yes. I promise.”
She untied all four of the restraints.
“I’ll see if there’s any coffee,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She left the room. While she was gone, some things started coming back to me. Apparently Terry Vine wasn’t real. I remembered Juliet proving that to me when we were talking in the bathroom at home. It was hard to believe, but the Telecaster Deluxe had been the clincher. When she reminded me that I’d sold the guitar five years ago, the fantasy came crashing down like a house of cards. If the guitar wasn’t real, then Terry wasn’t real.
And if Terry wasn’t real, maybe some other things weren’t real either. Like Diana Dawkins.
I reached down and put my finger in the crevice between my left pinky toe and the toe next to it, feeling for a bump or a lump or any indication that there might be a microchip implanted under the skin. Nothing. I couldn’t feel a damn thing.
There was no denying it. I’d lost my fucking mind.
A cheap-looking white plastic handset rested on the nightstand, same as the one in Max Marlin’s room. Max Marlin was real. Juliet had seen him. She’d talked to him. Maybe we were in the same hospital. I pressed the NURSE CALL button, and a male voice came over the intercom.
“May I help you?”
“What hospital is this?” I said.
“Orange Park Medical Center, sir.”
“What floor am I on? What’s my room number?”
He told me. Same floor as Max.
“Why am I on the ortho unit?” I said.
“It was the only med/surg bed available. Once you’re medically cleared, you’ll be transferred up to five.”
“What’s on five?”
“The psychiatric unit,” he said. “Your nurse will be in to talk to you shortly.”
I thanked him and he said you’re welcome and then the intercom went dead.
I picked up the phone and punched in Winston Fell’s cell number. Winston is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I call him Papa. He’s a retired cop, twenty years older than me. We go fishing sometimes. We’ve always gone fishing. It’s what we do. We go fishing and we drink Pabst Blue Ribbon all day. He uses a bamboo fly rod he m
ade himself, and he can still cast into an area the size of a snare drum. He’s a night owl like me, so I figured he would still be up. He answered on the third ring.
“Hey Papa,” I said.
“Nicholas? What the hell you doing, young man? Long time no see.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
“What?” He sounded genuinely concerned. “Damn, boy, I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“I’m on the fourth floor right now,” I said. “But they’re going to transfer me to the psych unit once they rule out any physical problems. Can you imagine that?”
“Sure I can. I’ve been saying that’s where you belong for years.”
I laughed. “Listen, I was wondering if you could bring me something.”
“What do you want, a woman? I’m not doing it. Hell no. If I get caught, I’ll have to face the wrath of that feisty little lady of yours. No way.”
Papa was crazy. He was the one who belonged on the psych ward.
“I was wondering if you could bring me a pint of bourbon,” I said.
He was silent for a beat.
“You want me to smuggle booze into your hospital room?”
“I need something to take the edge off. You know how it is. And I’m sure as hell not going to ask for a pain shot.”
“No, you don’t want to do that,” he said. “But I’m sure as hell not going to bring you any bourbon either.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll smell it. I’ll bring you some vodka instead.”
“That’s what I like about you, Papa. Always thinking. Yeah, vodka would be great.”
“But I can’t bring it tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been knocking back a few myself. I’m really not in any shape to drive. I can stop by in the morning. Where are you?”
“Orange Park Medical Center,” I said. I told him the room number. “What time do you think you’ll come?”
“Eight or nine. Something like that.”
Damn.
“It’s going to be a long night,” I said.
“Sorry. Best I can do.”
“All right. Well, I’ll be here. Thanks, Papa. I appreciate you.”
