In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  “Do you have a house key?” he asked in the long-suffering voice of a wet and tired Good Samaritan.

  “Sure. Why?” They had thrown my pocketbook out after me, and it lay in the dirt a few inches away. I groped for it, moving my head and body as little as possible. But before my fingertips made contact with the leather, I stopped trying. They’d taken my car, with the key still in the ignition. The key that was on a ring of all my keys, including the one to my front door. I felt still further violated. Robbed, jacked, battered, and locked out—while they, whoever they were, could get in and out of my home at will.

  “Should I call a locksmith? Or a friend who has a spare?”

  “I have a spare in the window box. In a little metal box in the dirt.”

  He nodded. “Okay, then.”

  “So I can go home?”

  He shook his head. “Let a doctor look at you, take some X rays. I didn’t think women played macho games like this—don’t be a fool and run a risk like that. What if you’re bleeding internally?”

  That is how we wound up at our original destination—University Hospital—after all, but in the emergency room, not Woody’s. Luckily, this was a different hospital and emergency room than I’d visited yesterday, although I was questioned about my scratched cheek and peculiar eyelashes. The E.R. doctor, a cute Malaysian with a great deal of energy and an indecipherable accent, cleaned my cuts and bumps, scanned and probed and looked through my skull via my eyes, her eyes, and a great sci-fi scanning machine. I tried not to think what portion of this high- and low-tech attention my insurance might pay because I already had several contiguous headaches and I didn’t need any more.

  “She was unconscious,” Five said.

  The diminutive doctor nodded. “Finned hullbet.”

  What relevance had halibut, or any fish for that matter?

  “Fainted!” Five finally said, his voice filled with the excitement of discovery. “Is that what you said? That she fainted?”

  The doctor nodded vigorously. “Hull real bet. Scare.”

  Scared. I’d fainted when I was hurt real bad. Got it.

  “Bet!” she said again, looking sternly at Five. “Real bet! Cheek bet, too.”

  “No,” I said. “Like I said, the cheek happened…another time.”

  “Too much times!” She glared at him.

  It took me a while to get it. “He had nothing to do with this!” I said. “He rescued me.”

  “Good,” she said. Or maybe it was, “Like I really believe that. Another fool defending her abuser.” But she declared that I was only superficially damaged and I could go home. Or that’s what I think she said. Either that or she warned me that I only had a few minutes left to live and I might as well enjoy them in familiar surroundings. In either case, she let me leave, and she gave me a prescription for an enormous amount of painkillers. She was either setting me up as a drug dealer or assuming I was going to be around, feeling rotten, for a long time. Both options translated into having a future.

  “You should get a second opinion,” Five said when we were back in his car. “They shouldn’t let doctors who can’t speak English deal with the public. Injured people need to know what’s going on. And who knows in what godforsaken rice paddy she was trained?”

  “I got the message. I’m alive and likely to stay that way,” I said. “That came over loud and clear. And she had to pass her boards here, didn’t she?”

  “I still don’t think she knew what she was doing,” he said huffily.

  “Is that the sound of sexist horror? As in what could a girldoc possibly know?” I asked. Maybe it was ungrateful of me, given his TLC, but my knees—and their ability to jerk at the sound of a putdown—hadn’t been injured at all. And the rest of me was too weak to stop them.

  He gritted his teeth and drove on. Right to the police station.

  “Now this is silly,” I said. “Can’t I call this one in? Don’t they come to your house, like in the movies?”

  “Old movies, I think,” he said. “Besides, we’re here. Get it over with. The sooner they know, the faster they can find it.”

  “It’s a collector’s car,” I said sadly. “One of the most stolen models. I’ll never see it again. And I just paid the body shop. In cash.” But I nonetheless followed him in.

  “Carjacked,” Five said from behind me. “Assaulted, too. You can see.”

  “License number?” the policeman asked.

  Oh, boy. I had always meant to learn it. I remembered a Z, and maybe a four. But I wasn’t really sure of either. Words make sense. Numbers and isolated letters don’t, didn’t stick even in my preconcussed brain. I’ve thought of getting a vanity plate just so I could remember the thing, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Much to my mortification, I had to dig through my wallet. I pulled out my driver’s license, which didn’t tell me what I wanted, and finally found my owner’s registration card. “There,” I said, pointing to my license number.

  “You’ve had the car for how long?” Five asked as the cop filled in the form.

  I tried to remember. It had been my brother-in-law’s in an early phase of his devolution from an interesting young man to a staid suburban lawyer. So how long ago was that? My injured head resorted to my mother’s no-numbers calculations. Had Sam sold it to me before my niece was born? Yes, because my sister was still working at Bloomingdale’s, getting her employee’s discount, and I bought a leather skirt through her just before I bought the car, which I remember, because of a guy I was dating then who… “Eight years, give or take a few,” I finally said. “A while.”

  Five’s rugged cowboy jaw dropped. “I told you that doctor was incompetent. You have brain damage. I don’t mean to alarm you, but you need more tests.”

  “Scary when they lose parts of their minds,” the cop said with a pink-cheeked joyful expression.

  Sure, and his brain was probably clogged with the stats for every team throughout its history, the obscure sports records that flash across the screen. He’d know which left-handed player had the most four-yard gains since the Nixon Administration. And he’d think that was a proper—normal—use of intellectual storage space, and that he had every right to look at me as if I’d been administered a lobotomy by my muggers. But this didn’t seem the time to say that I consider numerical jock-glop a serious collective aberration.

  I thanked both of them for their concern—but I was not woman enough to admit the truth of what I had never known and how little I cared about not knowing it.

  I wanted to go home, to rest on my frayed couch, do ordinary pleasurable things like hear the cat purr and harass him by kissing that place between his ears. To hold the intact parts of Mackenzie and he mine, and for both of us to be glad we were still alive and even had some working parts left. And to figure out what I was going to do about transportation from now on.

  The merry policeman, so gleefully worried about my reduced mental capacities, didn’t seem concerned about ever finding my car again. “Probably moving it out of state even as we speak,” he said. “They’ll change the serial number and advertise it as privately owned, and those babies move fast.”

  Melancholy filled me at the thought of never seeing my beloved wheels again. I needed whatever was left. My place, my belongings, my life.

  The men, in some misguided show of chivalry, drilled me on whether I remembered my phone number (yes), my Social Security number (no), my birth date (yes), and my Philly Prep employee number (no! Why fill brain cells with things you can look up and check out?)—at which point I whimpered and said how much my cheekbones ached and how very, very tired I was.

  They seemed to understand the irony of worrying about my brain’s decline while the rest of me expired around it.

  Five drove me home and found a parking space about a block away. I said I could make it on my own from here on, but he’d been schooled in Western gallantry and escorted me.

  My unprepossessing rented sliver of a shelter looked wonderfully inviting, although
when I rang, nobody answered. Not that anybody was expected to, but it would have been a comforting surprise if the somebody had been back there by now. Even after I’d dug in the planter box—twice, because I’d forgotten which side was the hiding place—and found the spare key box and used it, not only was Mackenzie nowhere in sight, but he hadn’t even remembered to leave a light on. I felt abandoned, and grateful for Five’s presence. I flicked the switch next to the entry.

  “Will anybody be with you, in case?” Five asked.

  He hadn’t given up on finding out my living arrangements. I was still mildly flattered by his interest. “The cat,” I said, letting the game continue.

  He stood in the doorway, about a foot away from me, looking unsure of himself. “Are you all set? Not apt to do anything crazy, like take a run or something? Have everything you need?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Stay a moment. I’ll make tea. But please close the door. The cat occasionally bolts if he sees an opening.” When I’d found Macavity, years back, he’d been dazed and mangled by an encounter with a fender, but he always acted as if given another round, the car would be the one to limp off.

  It seemed that Mackenzie had been here, and had left a souvenir of his stay, or a trap—because I nearly fell over his crutches, propped against the side of the sofa with a note attached. How touching to be remembered. “Free at last,” the note said. “Great God Almighty—give these to Tiny Tim! See you soon. Got news.”

  No mention of when soon might be. Was he actually going to work an entire shift his first day back? More likely he was out hanging with his homeboys, catching up on missed murders. I’d better get used to uncertainty as to his where and whenabouts.

  “Maybe I’d be in the way,” Five said, with a none-too-subtle glance at the crutches and then at his watch.

  “Don’t you want tea?” My painkillers had kicked in to the point where the throbbing was like distant, annoying drums and the pain an arm’s length away. Also, my mouth was incredibly dry. As soon as it was back to normal, I’d find the words to properly thank Five. “Or something stronger? I’d better not, because of the pills.”

  “I’ll pass.” He checked his watch again. “I have to leave in a few minutes.” He carefully stepped around the crutches—but not before he’d read the note—and settled in on the sofa after offering to make me the tea. I needed to prove my competence, or at least my ability to boil water. Macavity, who’d been warily observing from the middle of the staircase, descended and tentatively approached the visitor.

  It was almost the domestic scene I’d envisioned, just with an understudy playing a key role. But that’s how it often would be from now on with Mackenzie, whether or not I liked it.

  And deciding whether or not I liked it took too much effort for this particular night.

  The kettle puttered its way to the boil, the cat seemed to be giving me a grace period before begging for more food, and the answering machine light blinked. Three more messages. Mom was back on-line.

  “Do you mind if I play this back?” I asked. “My mother was told that I’d been taken hostage, and we’ve been playing telephone tag. She’s in Florida and will be going to sleep soon, so in case I have to return—”

  “Of course, go ahead.” Five and the cat were sizing each other up.

  “I’m not going to mention tonight’s episode if I do call her,” I said. “Hope you don’t consider that lying.” I pushed the replay button.

  It wasn’t my mother, it was the elusive C.K. Mackenzie, trying to be less elusive. “Where are you?” he asked, although he must have realized I’d have to be right there, in the kitchen, in order to hear his question. Once again I experienced the odd Mackenzie-Five tension. Should I slam off the machine? What would that suggest? Or was leaving it on the ruder option? Meantime, I would love to know if and when Mackenzie was coming over.

  “I’m celebratin’ my regained mobility with some of the guys—one nonguy, too,” his voice said. “Thought I’d catch you at home first and bring you along, but you aren’t back, obviously, so listen, I don’t know when we’ll be finished here.” I could hear loud laughter in the background, the chunk of glasses and distant music, too.

  “So don’t count on my showing up tonight, okay?”

  There was my answer. I saw Five make note of that as well. I put down the teacup I was holding and leaned over, but by then Mackenzie’s tone had changed. The message wasn’t done.

  “Mandy,” he said, “here’s the thing. Don’t be angry, but yesterday, I asked the guys to see what they could find out about Mr. Slick.”

  Who? I couldn’t connect. Look, my head had been pummeled earlier tonight, and its wiring was still a little loose, flopping around and heavily coated with drugs. But that was enough of this, anyway. Too long a message, not what I’d expected, and too much like eavesdropping on the part of Five, who had stood up and was looking mildly amused.

  “Excuse me. Not my mother, and I’m being rude,” I said. “Let me just—” I leaned toward the machine.

  “No.” Five smiled oddly and slowly shook his head. “I want to hear.”

  I filled with a slow-motion, dreamlike horror. “What do you mean? Why? What—”

  “—and the short answer is,” Mackenzie’s voice said, “I was right. He’s bad news. Extremely dangerous. Stay away from him, okay?”

  “Enough,” I said. I reached out to stop Mackenzie’s voice, but Five’s hand landed on mine.

  “Let the man finish,” he said in a soft but chilling voice.

  “He’s your basic right-wing, hate-monger proselytizer for nutcase neo-Nazis accused of already bombin’ a synagogue—killed two people—an’ burnin’ a black preacher’s house,” Mackenzie said. “They have a paramilitary camp in central PA, train kids to shoot—that kind of thing. He’s the Johnny Appleseed of hate. Can’t make anything stick so far, but he’s been watched awhile now, since—”

  “Please,” I said. “Let’s—”

  Five smiled.

  “—before he left Idaho.”

  I looked into the frigid eyes of the man across from me. “Surprise, surprise,” he said with no emotion. “Surprise, surprise.”

  Twenty-Three

  OUTSIDE, THE RUMBLES AND CRACKLES OF THE STORM moved closer, and the front window’s curtains were briefly lit from behind.

  Inside, the atmosphere was even more electrical and tense.

  My visitor, a distracted and sickly smile pulling at his mouth, kept his hand clamped on mine, attentively listening to Mackenzie describe him as a pathologically crazed hate monger and killer. Talk about an awkward social situation.

  And Mackenzie spoke on. “Woody’s conscious again, an’ it looks like what happened to him involves Slick, through his disciples. Obviously all set up before we conveniently provided alibis by bein’ with him.

  “Woody tried to quit them, and this was his punishment. Do not talk about any of this to anybody at school. Do not swap theories. Hope you get back from wherever you are—soon. Stay safe.”

  The call had come at eight P.M., when I was in the emergency room. A second call, again from Mackenzie, had come in at nine, just about when I was reporting the theft of my car to the police. “Where are you?” he asked again. “I’m gettin’ worried.” And a third call. “Me again. Hope you’re havin’ fun, wherever, whatever, but…” He left his sentence and the idea dangling at 9:37. Fourteen minutes ago.

  And that was that. Except for the rangy man on the other side of the kitchen room divider, his hand clamped on mine. He seemed to notice what he was doing, and he surprised me by letting go.

  “I’m sure there’s some mistake,” I said. “Some logical explanation. Besides, lots of people come from Idaho….”

  Five sighed and shook his head. “I’m really sorry this had to happen to you.”

  “What?” I asked, not really wanting to hear his answer. The phrasing of his words reverberated inside me. I had heard it as an expression of sympathy before, in the letters my class wro
te to Woody. More specifically, Tony’s and Guy’s letters. Woody’s closest friends. Or maybe Woody’s watch guards and Woody’s centurions? Had they actually done that to him? Thought it had to happen to him?

  “Sorry you had to hear that,” Five said. “That your friend feels that way about my mission. He’s wrong, you know. He twists things around to make us sound awful, but we’re nothing more than patriots, good solid Americans, trying to make this a better place for him, too. Like it or not, this country was founded by revolutionaries, and revolutionaries will save it.”

  “Save it from what?”

  “From pollution—disintegration—mongrelization. A complete loss of identity. Look at us—look what we’re becoming! We are murdering ourself, just the way John Adams said. He said there never was a democracy yet that didn’t commit suicide.”

  “That’s disgusting.” How could the second president of the U.S. be so cynical? “That’s wrong. We haven’t.”

  “We are. That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”

  “How are you saving anything? By doing—that—to Woody? How could that make anything better for anybody?”

  “He needed a lesson.”

  “A final lesson? A fatal lesson?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps the lesson would be for the others. They needed an example of what happens to defectors. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Woody should never have gotten involved with that girl—I warned him. Her people—”

  This was what Mackenzie had sensed last night. This was why he felt Five’s questions were a sham. The concern hadn’t been for the Truongs, but for himself, for Bartholomew Dennison the Fifth. Five had needed to find out what April’s family knew about her disappearance and whether it included him, or Woody’s affiliation. Her abduction had not been a part of his plan, not something he’d orchestrated, and what it meant or could mean must have driven him crazy. That was why he asked all the questions.