by Tom Schreck
“Ask Duff. He works with dope fiends,” Rocco said.
“Duff, can you trip on a banana peel or nutmeg and do they make you puke?” TC said.
“In college I got drunk and tripped in a guy’s puke. It was disgusting,” Jerry Number Two said.
“I think you can on nutmeg but not on banana peels,” I said.
“There,” Rocco said.
“There what?” TC said.
Kelley was watching one of those strongman contests. Two guys were racing while carrying the engine block of a Ford van, and both of their huge heads looked like they were ready to explode.
“Talk about altering consciousness … ,” I said, nodding at the strongmen.
“I’d have to smoke a lot of nutmeg before I tried something like that,” Kelley said.
“Bananas. You eat the nutmeg, you smoke the bananas.”
Kelley gave me a look and I decided that I didn’t need to explain any further.
“Hey, you know what I heard?” I said.
“What?”
“That those karate guys down at the Y are dealing steroids.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. That shit’s all over.”
“Do you guys ever go after steroid dealers?”
“It’s a low priority. It doesn’t have the same ramifications of, say, crack.”
“I think the shrink from work is on it. He works out with those guys.”
“Could be. You’d be surprised how many people are on the juice.”
Kelley finished off his Coors and slid the empty in front of him. AJ had a new one in front of him without a word.
“I was talking to the Caretaker and—,” I said before Kelley interrupted.
“You what? What are you doing with that scumbag?”
“He was telling me that the guy dealing drugs at McDonough is a preacher or a priest or something.”
Kelley just shook his head and watched the TV. The strong guys were now trying to bend perfectly good iron bars.
“You have any idea who he’s talking about?” I asked.
“You’re the private eye. You figure it out,” Kelley said without taking his eyes off the strongmen.
That was my cue to change the subject or, in Kelley’s case, move on to no subject at all. We watched in silence as the strong guys put harnesses on and got prepared to try to move an eighteen-wheeler twenty feet before they herniated their nuts all over the pavement. I settled up with AJ before that happened and headed home.
The next morning I took a ride over to the high school. I wasn’t sure why I was going or what I was trying to accomplish, but I thought if I immersed myself in the school atmosphere I might get a better feel for what’s going on. Call it wanting to feel the school spirit.
I parked the Eldorado and walked around the block to the front of the school. There were cops on every corner scanning the playground and keeping an eye on everyone coming and going. I noticed there were far fewer kids mulling around and everything was much quieter than I had been accustomed to. I didn’t feel like being labeled a suspicious person of interest, so after a cop looked me up and down from a half block distance I decided not to try to talk to any kids or go in the school. Instead I just observed what was going on and tried to make sense of it.
I was thinking back to when I went to McDonough and how being a teenager really sucked. Oh, you’ll hear people tell you it’s the best time of your life, but I think that’s a bunch of horseshit. I had a face like a pizza, I was terrified of girls, my armpits were soaked by nine fifteen every morning, and I went through the day with one boner after another. No wonder kids do drugs.
I was almost back to the car when I saw a familiar SUV pull into the faculty lot. It took me a few seconds to place, but then I realized it was Dr. Abadon. Since the steroid thing, I wasn’t sure what to make of him. I mean, he was a clinical psychologist, an expert in human behavior, and a devout Christian, and he was into steroids—it didn’t fit. The fact that he even associated with the karate guys didn’t register with me either. There was no question that Mitchell and Harter were assholes, and for that matter not real bright, and I couldn’t understand why they would become friends. It seemed to me that Abadon’s education and religiosity should put him on a higher plane, but the more I thought about that the more I reasoned that there was no real reason that had to be true. Maybe it was something simpler—like he liked Mitchell and Harter’s workout equipment.
Regardless, I had some work to do. The last time I saw the doctor I threw a cup of coffee at his head and that wasn’t right. Sure, I didn’t need to hear the shit about being knocked out, but my response was out of proportion.
“Doctor, hey wait up,” I yelled. He froze for a second and then turned toward me. He looked braced for something.
“Look, Doc, I want to apologize for the other day. I was way out of line.” I extended my hand.
He looked down at my hand and half smiled. Then, he paused for what seemed like a long time.
“The Lord tells us to forgive others as we will want to be forgiven,” he said, and he finally shook my hand. He smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes.
“Yeah, well, like I said, I was out of line,” I said.
“Yes.” He continued to smile with his mouth while his eyes looked through me.
“What are you doing here, Doc?”
“I do a weekly consultation and supervision with the social work staff. As you might imagine, there’s been more work to do lately.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
There was an awkward silence while neither of us said anything.
“How do you like working with teenagers?” I said for no other reason than to break the awkward silence.
“Teenagers are in the midst of God’s development. It’s imperative that they get set in the right direction,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess. Look, Doc, I gotta run.”
Abadon just nodded. As I walked away, I noticed that he had the cross pin on his tweed suit coat.
I’m not sure what I accomplished, but I know I didn’t feel right in that way that is tough to identify. It feels a little dirty, a little guilty, and a lot confused. I decided to do my best not to think at all and threw in Elvis. I headed back past the high school and thought how wrong it is that the police would have to guard a school to this degree. I thought about the fear the kids and the parents must be living with, and I thought something had to be done.
Elvis was into the chorus of “One Night of Sin” when I made the left up Albany Street and headed toward 9R.
30
I called Rudy and had him meet me for lunch in the park. I sweetened the deal by promising him a Big Dom’s Double Special sub, which delivered on its ad-copy promise to “Bust any belly!” We met at a bench by a fenced-in area designated for dogs. I figured Al could use some quality time with his peers.
Just outside the gate of the dog run there was a very well-put-together woman who looked to be in her late thirties. She wore a pink velour sweatsuit, the kind that isn’t really designed for sweating, and her shiny shoulder-length black hair formed a nice contrast against the powder pink. She was on a mat in the grass doing some sort of yoga-Pilates-who-knows-what routine, and it didn’t really matter because she was lying on her back scissoring her legs wide open before closing them. I did my best not to stare.
“Excuse me,” I said in my softest nonthreatening-male voice. “Is it okay if my dog goes in with your dog?”
“Sure.” She gave me a halfhearted smile and about a millisecond of eye contact.
Her dog was a Corgi, one of those low, cute, and sissified dogs that are favored by British royalty and about the same height as a basset. She had a pink collar, the same color as the scissor kicker’s suit. I looked back over at her master who was now on all fours doing some sort of kickbacks, an
d I suddenly felt a little perverted at the imagery that popped onto my mental movie screen. The first reel was only slightly blurred by the glint bouncing off the ring on her finger that featured a stone bigger than any doorknob in the Moody Blue.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“Matisse, after the artist,” she said, this time with zero eye contact.
“I love Matisse,” I said. This failed to get a response. I loved Matisse without knowing him, as I love all of mankind.
The dogs were done sniffing each other and Al had moved on in a different direction to do some olfactory forensic work on a pile of organic material left by a previous visitor. Thank God, that’s when Rudy showed up.
“All right, kid, what is it this time? You sprang for a Double Special, you must want something,” Rudy said while he manhandled the wrapping the sub came in with a force that might have gotten him charged with assault.
“What happens if a doctor is caught dealing drugs?” I said.
“He gets arrested and loses his license forever.”
“Why would a doctor making a zillion dollars take that kind of risk?”
“Well, first of all, your premise is off. Doctors don’t make that kind of money anymore.”
“Yeah sure …”
Rudy’s second bite got him into trouble. The oil dribbled on his chin and a spiral of an onion slapped up against it. It didn’t seem to bother Rudy at all, and I could tell he really loved his meal—his face was starting to sweat.
“Look, kid, we have a gazillion dollars in student loans to pay, we have a gazillion in liability to pay, we have to pay dues in every organization we’re in, and insurance companies do all they can to disallow payment. You add in an ex-wife, like in my case, and what you have to pay attorneys to defend you and your staff to support you and I’m not much better off than the guy who made this sub.”
The oil actually dripped off his chin and onto his shirt. Rudy shifted the sub into one hand and used the other hand to run through his hair. He now had kind of a Big-Dom’s-meets-Pat-Riley coif thing going on.
“So a doc might deal for the money?”
“Of course, but there’s something else. A lot of guys get into doctoring because of messiah complexes. They feel they deserve tons of money, and when they don’t get it, they get resentful and they start to take. With some it’s insurance fraud, with others it’s becoming an easy touch for prescription hounds.”
“But why illegal drugs?”
“I don’t know, they see how easy it is to become addicted and they see an easy market. They see how they can control people.”
I sat and thought or at least tried to think. Rudy was chewing with his mouth open and it reminded of the second-grade trip I took to the Bronx Zoo. I remember we got to the pen with the wildebeests right at feeding time and watched and listened to them devour a bunch of cabbages and apples.
“I think the shrink at work, Abadon, is dealing to the kids he’s counseling at McDonough. He hangs out with the steroid heads, and a dealer I was talking to said his supplier was a man of God or something.”
“Kid, slow down.” He wiped his face with the back of his hand and smeared oil over one cheek. “This is the guy you threw the cup of coffee at?”
“Yeah, he’s a self-righteous, born-again type.”
“Hey, I’m not crazy about the born-again crowd either, but—”
Rudy was interrupted by screaming from Scissor Legs.
“Get him off, get him off!” she screamed.
I jumped off the bench and saw Al furiously humping away at poor Matisse. He was lost in the moment and failed to respond to the shrieks from Lady Scissor Legs. She was traumatized, but I didn’t pick up trauma from Matisse. Actually, Matisse looked like she was having an okay time.
I bounded over the fence and ran toward Al who, for the first time, actually gave me a menacing growl. I grabbed him by the waist and pulled him off, but as I did it, Al’s head snapped around and nipped my little finger. I dropped him and he ran after Matisse, who by this time had been scooped up by her traumatized master.
“Matisse, Matisse!” was all that came out of her mouth. She was too traumatized to see Al running toward her.
Al muddied her pretty pink suit in an effort to get after his new true love, and as her master turned away to shield her, Al did the next best thing—he started to hump away at her leg. Hey, at least he had good taste.
I pulled Al off and apologized profusely. I got a teary “hrrmph” and the pair hurried away.
“Kid, you lead an interesting life,” Rudy said.
I had Al back on a leash but he wasn’t in a good mood. He sat and I had to pull him over to the bench.
“So how do I turn this doctor in?” I asked.
“Turn him in? It’s like any other criminal activity. You can’t just turn him in, the cops have to get proof. Usually, docs who get involved in this short of shit cover their tracks pretty well. They’re smarter than the average street jerk.”
“Ahh shit.”
Rudy thanked me for the sub and patted Al on the head as he got up to leave.
“Al, sometimes it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all,” he said as he headed to his car, oblivious to the oil spots that made an asymmetrical polka-dot pattern on his shirt.
31
Being a modern-day Robin Hood was complicated. I had set out to graciously defend my buddy, Hackin’ Howard, from the injustice of being falsely accused only to be thanked by him confessing and threatening me. Now, I’d uncovered what I believe is a dirty shrink dealing drugs, maybe even to the kids under his care. So do I continue to search for Howard with the legions of law enforcement professionals doing the same thing, or do I try to expose the born-again criminal poisoning the kids? These are the tough decisions facing today’s superheroes.
I cracked open a Schlitz and lay down on the couch, propped up enough to not dribble my beer. I flipped through SportsCenter, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, and Law & Order Criminal Intent, past Lifetime, which was showing a movie about a guy who disguised himself to seduce his ex-wife and steal the kids, and to an infomercial about a product in which you could put your clothes in a plastic bag and suck all the air out to make it really flat. Then there was a show about really cool motor homes, a black comedienne’s special, and a show about animal cops in Detroit. VH-1 was showing something about the best one hundred booty songs, and Bravo had that guy with the bad beard interviewing a skinny actor with greasy hair whose name I didn’t know. Finally, I turned to the local cable news channel, my default channel to nap to.
Al had joined me, making a fort out of the crook in my knees and rolling up in a ball. The news was doing a traffic report, which I found absurd because Crawford was a medium-sized town without any real traffic problems, but the reporter did everything he could to emphasize that everything was moving along without any major slow-downs. The enthusiastic traffic guy was about to turn it over to the up-to-the-minute-Doppler weather guy when the anchor abruptly broke in.
I got that weird chilly feeling.
They split the screen with an on-scene reporter. She was in a field with an ambulance, several police cars and a lot of activity behind her. You could see guys with those windbreakers with the big “FBI” on the backs milling around her. She was a bit shaken, more so than a reporter should be.
“… One body recovered consisted only of a torso, and it was drained of blood through a series of punctures on the sides of the torso. It was the body of a teenage girl. The second body was decapitated and emasculated but the limbs were intact. In both cases, the missing body parts were not found by the bodies … ,” she said.
I sat up, which forced Al to do the same. I could feel the sweat on my palms and I had the instinct that I had to rush and do something, I just had no idea what. I g
rabbed my coat with the intention of heading to AJ’s when the phone rang. The chilly feeling, which hadn’t gone away, multiplied, and I had a weird premonition about who it was going to be.
“Duff? It’s me. What I told you was the truth, and it is imperative that you mind your business,” Howard said.
“How—” It was too late, he was gone.
I flew the Eldorado to AJ’s and didn’t have a cogent thought the whole way. It was like my mind overheated and couldn’t function properly. I was going to see Kelley; I didn’t even care about drinking.
The Foursome were at it, having been watching the special reports all afternoon. Even their mood was somber, but it didn’t make their conversation any less idiotic.
“I thought it was because Berkowitz’s father was named Sam,” Jerry Number One said.
“No, it was his neighbor’s Rottweiler,” Rocco said.
“Labrador,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Rottweiler,” Rocco said.
“His father was a dog?” TC said.
“Son of a bitch,” Jerry Number One said.
“No, he was psychopharmic and believed the Labrador was talking to him,” Jerry Number Two said.
“Rottweiler,” Rocco said.
“What did the Rottweiler say to him?” TC asked.
“Labrador,” Jerry Number Two said.
“He didn’t say anything to him. Dogs can’t talk, stupid,” Rocco said.
“What about those dogs that sing the Christmas carol?” TC said.
“That was spliced,” Rocco said.
“Most dogs are today. It helps with the overpopulation,” Jerry Number One said.
Kelley was there and he wasn’t watching TV, he was just staring straight ahead drinking his Coors.
“He called me,” I said.
“You need to call Morris right now, no bullshit,” Kelley said.
“All he said was that he was telling the truth and that it was imperative that I stay away.”
“You need to call Morris, now.”
