“After someone shot at us, wanting to cause harm, obvious they’re protecting something, I don’t feel we need any evidence of our being here, do you?”
“Hon, this is a hospital. You’re acting so paranoid.”
“Say what you want, but I’m still taking it.” Joey kissed her cheek. “Come on, let’s go,” he said as he grasped her hand.
“Hold on a minute!” Jenny withdrew from his grasp. “I’m in pain and you’re rushing me, Joey! Let me at least get my meds, please!” Jenny’s pain was evident in her eyes. He couldn’t say no.
“Okay, okay. You wait for the nurse. I’ll go get us some coffee or something.” He left, Jenny rolling her eyes after him.
When Joey arrived at the cafeteria, it was empty so he decided to sit for a minute and relax, knowing Jenny had to get her medication. He was wracked with guilt about what had happened and kicked himself for not being more aware and taking better care of his girlfriend.
He grimaced as he took a sip of his coffee, pulling up his shirt to examine his side. His ribs were still sore from getting kicked at the warehouse during the delivery last night. There was an ugly, puke-green tinged bruise. Joey had called Kevin to let him know he’d need him to do most of the heavy lifting at work for the next week.
He spread his legs out in front of him, stretching as he thought about Jenny. He knew she was independent, but he also knew she wanted him to step up to the plate and be more assertive in his role in their relationship. Joey thought of their last big argument. It was clear in his mind like it had happened yesterday instead of almost six months ago. It had begun with him acting like a jerk. As usual.
“Why did you leave him if he’s so perfect?”
“Joey, if you must know, it’s because he was a workaholic. You know, before he quit his career to go into the family business.
“You mean when Dad died?” Joey didn’t wait for an answer. “You still love him, don’t you?”
“Joey, how can I convince you? You’re the one I love!”
“Okay, okay! Chill!”
“You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”
“Why was he at your apartment, Jenny?”
“Babe, we talk often. You know, how are you, what have you been up to, that kind of thing.” Joey’s face had turned dark, and Jenny put her hand on his arm before she continued. “He asked why I wasn’t at work and I told him I didn’t feel well so he came over and dropped off some soup for me. Simple.”
Joey bit his tongue. He wasn’t the type to yell and scream. He needed a few minutes to contemplate what he wanted to say. He walked to the refrigerator to bide some time, standing in front of the open door, staring into its cold shelves. He slammed the door for no apparent reason and stormed out of Jenny’s apartment without saying a word.
He heard Jenny open the door and call after him, confused. She should have known a man’s favorite beer was like their DNA.
Brett’s favorite beer, Paulie’s Dark, sat like a neon sign in front of Joey’s face, screaming “Ha, ha, got your girlfriend!” There were a few missing bottles from the six-pack so it was not a quick stopover like Jenny had led him to believe. He’d never found out the truth. All he knew was he loved Jenny and didn’t want to lose her.
He grimaced again as pain shot through his ribs. Then he chuckled. He couldn’t help himself. He and Jenny were a pair. With him and his bruised ribs and elbow and her shoulder, what more could go wrong?
***
When Joey returned to Jenny’s room with their coffees, he found Jenny sitting on the side of the hospital bed talking to a man in an ill-fitting suit.
“Joey. This is Detective—?” Jenny said, gesturing toward the man. She tried to use her dominant side and grimaced when her right arm refused to budge, constricted by the sling, forgetting how painful her injury was.
The detective was a big man. He held a notepad and pen between his beefy fingers as if the items felt foreign to him. Joey saw beads of sweat under the brown fedora, which he’d pushed back from his forehead. He must be wearing a borrowed suit because the sleeves and pant legs were several inches too short. Joey observed the man’s sneakers. Who wore dirty sneakers with a suit?
Something wasn’t right here, and Joey’s gut gave a warning to proceed with caution.
“Detective…” The man paused as if he had forgotten his name. “Jim Morrison.” He turned to Joey and nodded. He didn’t offer a handshake.
“Detective Jim Morrison,” Joey acknowledged in a sarcastic tone. “My dad told me stories about you and The Doors at the Pop Festival in ’69. I mean, he loved you guys.”
“Uh?” Detective Morrison said.
“Jim Morrison? The Doors? Summer of Love?”
“Oh, yeah.” The detective chuckled. “I get that all the time.”
“If you’ve heard this all the time, like you claim, detective, you would’ve responded a little quicker, don’t’cha think?” Joey said. What was this detective up to?
“Joey, quit!” Jenny reprimanded, giving him a quick glare. “Please, detective, continue.”
Detective Morrison cleared his throat. “Um, yes. Well, you can call me Detective. It’s easier.” He shrugged by way of explanation, holding his pen over the unused notebook as if he were about to take shorthand. “Address?”
“Whoa, whoa here,” Joey interjected. “Get me up to speed, buddy. My girlfriend doesn’t give out her address to anyone we don’t know.”
Jenny let out a dramatic sigh. Joey placed his hand on her thigh and squeezed. She pushed him away, angry. She reached over to grab the call button from the cord hanging above the hospital bed. “I need my pain killers. What’s taking them so long?” she said.
“Oh, I thought you were done here. Um, sorry… I can come back later, or contact you.” Detective took a deep, anxious breath, seeming antsy to get away. “What’s your phone number?”
Joey rushed up to Detective Morrison until he was face-to-face with him. “I told you, man. My girlfriend doesn’t give out her address, phone number, or anything to anyone who asks.”
“Joey, please!” Jenny said.
Detective took a few steps back to put some space between him and Joey. His cell chimed, and he reached into his pants pocket, glancing at the screen. He brought the phone up to his ear. “Yeah boss. Everything’s fine. Getting information. Yep.” He continued in the direction of the door to the hallway as he talked and ended the call.
“Okay, well, my boss said we’ll get back to you. Gotta run now. You know, business calls. Crimes to solve.” He nodded at them both.
“Wait!” Joey followed the detective, who flinched at his command. “Sorry, bud, forgot to ask for your business card.”
“Oh, y-yeah,” Detective stammered as he patted his pockets, shrugging. “Must’ve forgotten them today.”
Joey held his hand out toward the detective, who was eager to leave. “We forgot to shake,” Joey said with forced joviality, staring into the detective’s eyes.
Detective had no choice but to take Joey’s hand and Joey squeezed as they made contact.
“Oh, okay. Until later.” Detective waved to them as he rushed out the door and down the hallway.
“What was that about? My God, Joey, how embarrassing!”
“Jenny, listen!” Joey walked over and placed a hand on her arm, careful not to touch her injured shoulder. “I wanted to hold him accountable for a reason.”
“To embarrass me. I know. I don’t know what’s with you, Joey, but I’m about to—”
“About to what?” Joey demanded, frustrated.
“Shh, you’re doing it again!”
“The tattoo!”
Jenny tried to hold herself still, but she was nervous and her foot shook. “What? What are you talking about?”
“The tattoo on the detective’s hand, I’ve seen that design before. Jenny, he’s not a detective.”
“You’re going cuckoo! I’m going home. I’ll call a cab!”
Joey sighed. “W
hy are you so stubborn, huh?”
He wrapped his arms around Jenny pulling her in close. She resisted for a few seconds, but soon relaxed her head onto his warm chest with a sniffle. It’d been an emotional day. After all, they’d spent most of the afternoon in the emergency room after getting shot at with a pellet rifle. He couldn’t blame her for sniffling.
Joey reached over to grab a tissue from the box on the nightstand. He dabbed under Jenny’s eyes, wiping away her tears. “Come on, now,” he said, his voice deep and confident. “We’ll get through this, hon. Don’t worry.” His kiss was tender.
Jenny nodded and sniffed. “Ow!” she yelped as Joey brushed up against her injured shoulder.
The nurse came in carrying a small white paper cup. “Here you go, hon.” She ignored the young couple’s emotional embrace as she handed Jenny the prescription. She hunted around for the medical forms the doctor was to fill out and leave but she saw only an empty clipboard. “Doctors!” she said, shaking her head as she walked out of the room.
After Jenny swallowed her pills, Joey insisted she get into the wheelchair so he could wheel her out to the parking lot. His eyes scanned the area for the detective, but there was no sign of him. He didn’t see anyone who appeared suspicious, but he wouldn’t necessarily know what to watch for either. He’d never played spy before.
I’ll deal with you later, detective. After I deal with Brett and Jim. It’s time for some brotherly love. Joey cracked his knuckles.
Chapter 16
Head Swap with a Chihuahua - San Francisco
Falling at the doctor’s feet and then waking up in a homeless camp after being injected with a drug-filled syringe was humiliating. Someone had wheeled him in front of a burn barrel, thinking he was another homeless person like them.
The homeless man who’d adopted Barry kept talking gibberish about a monster called Headbanger. He claimed this monster roared in the black of night and picked them off one by one. They had a rule. They always paired up with a buddy since some of them had gone missing. They had a theory aliens were kidnapping them for experimental purposes.
Some thought the disappearances must be the work of vampires. Some thought werewolves were eating them. “A smorgasbord of limbs,” said one. Whatever they were afraid of was real to them. Barry wanted them to explain more, but they started speaking gibberish again. The only consistent word among them was the name, Headbanger. They said Headbanger kidnapped people who were new around there. He also loved to devour the young ones, they said.
“What do you think happens to these people?” Barry mumbled, trying to pass the time until he woke up from the drug so he could drive away from this horrible place.
They only shrugged, not knowing. All they knew was when Headbanger was hungry, sometimes there was a loud noise, followed by shouting and gunshots. Often, it was quiet when someone went missing. One minute they’d be alive, warming themselves next to the burn barrel, the next minute, poof, they’d be gone, never to be seen again. They were perplexed, but determined to stick together and stay away from the dark, sinister row of abandoned warehouses two streets over.
“Why do you stay in the area?”
“Look around, man. This is our near perfect paradise. No cops. No one to bother us. We build bonfires and sometimes use firecrackers when we have something to celebrate.” When Barry had asked why they didn’t go to the police when one of them went missing, they doubled over in laughter, his toothless new friend laughing the loudest, his chortling echoing through the dark night.
When Barry was lucid enough to drive, he wheeled himself towards his van. The guys around the burn barrel warned him to stay away from the “warehouse where the monster lived.” Barry wasn’t superstitious, but he found himself glancing over his shoulder as he sped towards his van.
He had a heck of a time trying to find it in the dark. With no street lamps and only the occasional firelight from the burn barrels and fire pits, he got lost a few times on the side streets. He folded his wheelchair, hopped in as quick as he could, and got the hell out of there.
He sighed in relief as he drove away. Listening to their nonsense for an hour had been enough to last him a lifetime. He decided he’d rather be a handicapped man than a homeless one.
***
A few days later, Barry found himself across the street from the doctor’s house. He had called into work sick after going back for a few days after the incident. Since he looked like shit anyway, personnel believed he was ill.
Barry had thought long and hard for the last several days, munching on dry cereal and salted nuts. He couldn’t sleep. He peered into the mirror this morning and saw dark circles under his eyes. He felt a near constant cold sweat at the nape of his neck, and there was a nervous tic in his left eye.
He’d decided if the doctor refused him an operation, he would find some dirt on this so-called doctor and blackmail him until he gave in. If he thought about why he was doing this, it didn’t make sense. Searching in a doctor’s house… for what?
On his first sick day, he had waited for Dr. Farkis to pull out of the hospital’s parking garage again so he could follow him to his house. After following him and finding out where he lived, Barry waited a day to return.
But now, being out in the sunshine, a lot of things he had seen and heard at the warehouse didn’t make much sense. As he rolled up the pathway leading to the unfamiliar house, he thought about his predicament. He was having second thoughts about being here. Did he have experience in blackmail? Hell, no! But how hard could the process be? Go in and find something. Demand money; in his case, demand a new body. Appeared easy in the movies.
But, unlike a handsome actor, he was a simple run-of-the-mill guy who happened to be living, no, surviving, in a body that didn’t work. He didn’t want money, he wanted a life. He didn’t have all the details worked out, but coming here to the doctor’s house was a start. He’d find something – anything – he could hold against Farkis.
Barry left his wheelchair hidden behind some tall hedges near the side fence in the front yard and grabbed his canes. He was slow and stiff as he walked to the front door, using one of his canes to lift up a corner of the welcome mat. He had a feeling the doctor was a ditz, and bingo! he found the house key right smack dab in the middle of the lifted mat’s shadow.
It took him a few minutes to bend over from the waist, false starting a few times to keep his balance. The last thing he needed was to topple over while in the doctor’s house. That would not be a pretty picture.
He glanced around before he put the key in the lock to let himself in. The neighborhood was pretty much like any other upper middle-class neighborhood, where everyone worked during the day, making their thousands. Barry didn’t encounter anyone while he was contemplating on the sidewalk earlier. He glanced around the doctor’s porch but didn’t notice any cameras.
After he got inside, Barry stood with his back pressed against the front door to try and calm his breathing. He’d never done anything like this before, but he thought it was going well. So far, so good.
At first no sound emanated from inside the house, not even a ticking clock. He jumped a little when a rumbling started up, but realized the sound was only the humming of the refrigerator. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart.
The kitchen was off to the right of the front door, so he went in there first.
It was too clean for the unkempt and frazzled doctor; the kitchen granite countertops sparkled. He must have a housekeeper, that would be the only answer to this oddity. Barry pulled his hoodie sleeves over his hands and opened the refrigerator door. He saw only a cube of butter, some eggs, and several orange juice cartons. The freezer contained cartons of mint chocolate chip ice cream. For a second, Barry admired the doctor for his flavorful self-indulgence.
Next to the refrigerator, he spotted a bunch of green bananas in a colorful ceramic bowl, confirming the doctor would indeed be gone for at least a few more days. Why else buy green
bananas?
Going out through the other side of the kitchen, he spotted a study. As he walked over the threshold, he figured this must be where the doctor spent most of his time. The desk was cluttered. Documents bulged from the open drawers as if the doctor printed everything he had ever viewed on the web. This was more like it. I bet the housekeeper isn’t allowed in here, noting the layer of dust coating the book shelf.
Tacked up on a huge bulletin board were hundreds of overlapping photocopies. He moved nearer to examine them closer. What he saw were dozens of medical articles, along with photos. Most were gory, color photos of life-like surgeries. They showed deep, bloody gashes through skin with handwritten notations in red pen. ¾ gash through neck artery did not work; early stage b/f 2nd attempt. There were dozens of photos of pale people with blue lips and grotesque scars around their necks, obviously dead.
Barry placed a hand to his neck and gulped when his mind registered these photos were of real dead people. He felt thirsty, but he didn’t dare touch anything he didn’t need to touch, forgetting his impulsiveness of peeking into Farkis’s refrigerator. Instead, he licked his dry lips and bit the inside of his cheek to keep his mind away from his dry mouth.
There were numerous articles with angry, bold, red felt-tip x’s crossing out the black-and-white profile photo of the authors. He scrutinized the articles closer and read the titles. Nutty Doctor: Why Monkeys Shouldn’t Be Allowed Near This Mad Scientist’s Laboratory, New Scientist. Head Transplantation and Recovery Time, Chemistry, Inc. Two-Headed Mice and its Implications, Washington Post.
On the wall beside the bulletin board was a poster from the movie scene in Mars Attacks! after Nathalie Lake is decapitated and her head swapped with her Chihuahua, Poppy. Did Farkis have a sense of humor?
Barry shook his head. If this guy was nuts, he was so desperate for a new body he rationalized with himself.
He said he had a team of other doctors, didn’t he? Of course he would! Not all the doctors involved in this would be as mad and crazy as he was. No doctor in the universe would be able to operate for thirty-some hours without assistance. The other doctors there with Farkis in the operating room would be sane, right?
Heads Will Roll Page 6
