Private Detective: BENNINGTON P.I.: A thrilling four-novel political murder mystery private detective series...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  Speaking of which, how the hell did some guy in wheelchair get up the stairs?

  “Alberto, how’d you manage to make your way up here?”

  The former Army Ranger stared back at me looking just slightly offended at the question.

  “Same as anyone else, I went up the stairs.”

  It was too late to argue the point. I figured that if the guy wanted sit there and stare at the door so I could go back to sleep, more power to him.

  “Tell you what, Alberto you’re welcome to stay the rest of the night here if you want. As you can see, the place ain’t much, but for now, mi casa es su casa.”

  Alberto made no response at my admittedly feeble grasp of the Spanish language, instead turning his wheelchair quickly around and facing the apartment door, where he remained unmoving.

  I watched him watching the door for a minute or so, and then, shaking my head, lay back down, sleep soon overcoming me once again.

  24.

  You know, waking up with a clear head is highly recommended. Over the course of some thirty odd years working in D.C., I rarely had the experience of doing just that. Drink, drugs, and whores are not conducive to an early to bed, early to rise lifestyle, clear head be damned.

  And not only was my head free of a pounding hangover, but the small studio apartment was filled with the scent of cooking breakfast: eggs, link sausage, toast, and fresh brewed coffee. Sweet Jesus there are few things in this world better than that smell!

  I sat up on the couch, working the sleep from out of my eyes, and looked into the kitchen to see Alberto dropping two beautiful over easy eggs onto one of the few plates I kept in the apartment.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bennington. I figured you could use a decent breakfast. Dedra told me you tend to burn the candle at both ends.”

  I stood up and walked slowly over to the narrow breakfast counter that separated the kitchen nook from the rest of the apartment.

  “I suppose Dedra would know. You hear anything on how she’s doing?”

  Alberto shook his head as he slid the plate of food toward me, his hand having to reach up from where he sat in his wheelchair.

  “Nothing since yesterday. I do know the congresswoman is checking in with the hospital staff personally at least once a day for an update.”

  I had half the plate devoured before looking down at Alberto, who was finishing the last of his own plate of eggs and sausage.

  “Thanks for the breakfast. Where’d you get the food to cook?”

  Alberto was rinsing his plate in the sink as he answered.

  “Had it delivered this morning. One of the benefits of the T3 Group Mr. Bennington. The longer you’re with us, the more you’ll know about the services it provides operatives. They want us focused on the assignment, not on when our next meal is coming.”

  While I mopped up the last of the egg yolk with what remained of my toast, I noted just how powerfully built Alberto’s upper body truly was. Last night, I could just make out the outline of his shoulders, but now in the light of day, I could more fully appreciate just how well the guy was taking care of himself despite his obvious physical challenges. His wrists and forearms were corded layers of muscle upon muscle, and his short sleeve shirt seemed to struggle to contain the equally powerful looking mass that made up his upper arms and chest. I was certain that if Alberto Diaz got a hold of you, those hands of his could rip most people apart in a matter of seconds.

  “So what now, Bennington?”

  I put my fork onto my plate and washed the last of the breakfast down with a satisfying swig of richly roasted coffee.

  “Hey Alberto, just call me Frank, or just Bennington. No need for formalities. I assure you, I don’t deserve them.”

  Alberto wheeled himself from the kitchen area shaking his head.

  “Not true, Mr. Bennington. Your work on the Global Electric assignment was excellent. You handled yourself well, got the information to the T3 Group, and lived to tell the tale. I think you underestimate just how fast you’re learning how this all works. I know Dedra is impressed by you.”

  I felt my eyes conveying far too much pleasure at hearing how Dedra was impressed by me and attempted to look toward a wall as if Alberto’s compliment meant far less than it did.

  “Yeah, well I had a lot of help with that first case. Kind of came into it with a lot of the heavy lifting already done, so I think the jury is still out on how effective I really am at this stuff.”

  Alberto turned his wheelchair to face me, his eyes boring into mine.

  “I know incompetence all too well, Bennington. It cost me my legs, so cut the self-deprecation crap and let’s get to work. I’m here to help, and don’t let these wheels fool you. If the shit goes down, I’ll be there to keep you safe, understand?”

  I found myself nodding back at Alberto, impressed with how certain he was of both my abilities, and his own.

  “The priest should be checking in soon. Until then, I guess we just hang tight here.”

  Alberto’s eyebrows rose slightly at the same moment I realized he might have no idea who the priest was.

  “The priest, he’s Dedra’s former doctor. He was utilizing alternative methods to treat her cancer, and then was shut down. The hospital he worked at put him on leave. We’re pretty certain it has to do with relationships between figures inside the FDA, Congress, and a very large pharmaceutical.”

  Alberto was quiet. I could almost see the wheels turning inside of his head.

  “So the priest cannot treat Dedra without access to the hospital he worked at?”

  I shrugged.

  “Not sure. First, he needed the formulation. You know, like the recipe for whatever this treatment was. The good news is we tracked that formulation down. We have it, but you’re right, we don’t have a facility for Dedra to receive the treatment, and we know that the hospital she’s currently in, sure as hell won’t let us just walk on in there and give it to her. So I’m waiting to hear back from the priest to see what our next move is on this.”

  Alberto tilted his wheelchair back and then forward, repeating the process several times as he mentally processed what I had just told him.

  “How’d you get this formulation you mentioned? Did you have to steal it from the hospital the priest worked at?”

  I shook my head.

  “No, there is a guy who worked with the priest, he had it memorized. We located him, and he gave it to us. So that part of the puzzle is solved, but that still leaves us---“

  Alberto reached inside of a leather pack secured to the back of his wheelchair and withdrew a ringing T3 cell phone.

  “It’s the congresswoman.”

  I sat silently, listening as Alberto received the latest update on Dedra’s condition, my hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching as I made out the details of just how poorly she was responding to the chemotherapy.

  “I see. Yes, congresswoman, I’m with him now. We are waiting to hear back from a priest who was giving Dedra treatments earlier. Yes, that’s correct. Where have they moved her? Isolation? Intensive care unit? Ok. Uh-huh. So she’s been unresponsive for the last four hours? Brain swelling. I understand. We’ll check in again later today to confirm assignment status. Very good. Thank you.”

  The interior of the apartment felt like a tomb, the air having grown stale and thick upon hearing Alberto’s conversation with the congresswoman. My hands were trembling slightly, and a sheen of sweat covered my brow.

  “Frank, she’s hanging in there, ok? She had a bad night, a bad reaction to the treatment, her body was retaining fluids, but they’ve stabilized her, are bringing the brain swelling down with steroids, but have her isolated because her white cell count has apparently dropped to very low levels and so she can’t fight off even the simplest infection.”

  I stood up and walked to the opposite end of the room, where I placed my right hand against the wall. The faint sound of rain could be heard falling outside.

  “We need to go find Father Barnes
. He should have called me by now. He needs to know what’s happening to Dedra. We need to do…for God’s sake, we need to do something.”

  Alberto slowly wheeled himself toward me.

  “You know where we can find the priest?”

  I nodded slowly, my eyes closed tightly as I rested my head against the apartment wall.

  “Yeah, I know where he should be.”

  Even as I said it, my subconscious whispered that Father Barnes would not be found at the hideout inside the monastery basement.

  Something was very wrong.

  25.

  Alberto had a cab pick us up outside my apartment to take us the short drive toward the Catholic monastery. I watched in appreciative amazement as he easily navigated the stairs with his wheelchair, the large wheels bumping softly onto each step, his pace nearly as fast as I could walk down them. When the cab arrived, he lifted himself into the backseat, and then grabbed the chair and folded it in half, his massive arms easily lifting the chair and handing it to the cab driver who placed it in the trunk.

  As we approached the monastery grounds, I saw the former Army Ranger withdraw a simple rosary and kiss it as he cradled it gently in his right hand before tucking it back under his shirt.

  “So this guy you’ve been working with on this assignment is really a priest, huh?”

  I found myself chuckling at the question, knowing most who saw Father Barnes would have no choice but to ask the same thing. He certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of a Catholic priest.

  “A Jesuit priest actually.”

  Alberto’s eyes widened momentarily.

  “Oh yeah? Those guys can be bad ass. Soldiers of God, you know? You ever hear the story of the six Jesuit priests who survived Hiroshima?”

  I shook my head, having never heard of such a thing. Alberto’s face grew excited, his large, deeply calloused hands extending toward me as he prepared to tell the story.

  “I first heard it told to me when I was a boy. Our parish priest marked the occasion. There were six Jesuit priests living in a small parish in Hiroshima. They had just finished saying Morning Mass and were all there when the atomic bomb went off. Every building around that parish was destroyed. Just flattened, right? But these six priests, they walk out unharmed, every one of them. And after that, they were examined by American medical personnel, and had no radiation poisoning. They all went on to live normal lives. They claimed God had shielded them from the bomb, and allowed them to just walk on out of that parish without injury. Soldiers of God man, soldiers of God.”

  “Bullshit. C’mon Alberto, you’re putting me on.”

  The former Army Ranger poked me lightly in the chest.

  “I don’t joke about God, Bennington - never. There’s more too you know, more to the story.”

  I waited silently for several seconds before relenting.

  “Ok, what’s the rest of it?”

  Alberto’s face again grew animated, his eyes expressing the wonder of a child on Christmas morning.

  “There was a second bomb after Hiroshima, right? In Nagasaki.”

  I nodded my head, already sensing where the story was heading.

  “Yeah, Nagasaki.”

  “Well, there was a Jesuit priest in Nagasaki too. Same as Hiroshima, it was just a small, humble little parish. The bomb dropped, and both him and the parish survived.”

  I looked over to see the cab driver staring back at us, his eyes holding a similar wonderment in them to Alberto’s.

  “That story…it really is true?”

  The cab driver’s accent was unmistakably Middle Eastern. He was an older man, with a kind face, and soft toned voice. Alberto leaned forward and tapped the back of the driver’s seat with his right hand.

  “Yes it is, as told to me in the House of God my man.”

  The cab driver offered a thin smile as he nodded his head.

  “That is a good story. That is good to know.”

  As we exited the cab, and Alberto positioned himself back onto his wheelchair, the cab driver repeated that phrase to us several times, and then hugged Alberto before driving away.

  “I do believe you just made that guy’s day.”

  Alberto shrugged and began wheeling himself toward the monastery.

  “We just go on in?”

  I jogged to catch up and pointed toward the fence and the row of overgrown shrubs to the right. It was the same hidden entrance into the property Father Barnes had shown me the day before.

  “Follow me.”

  Alberto rolled into the shrubs along the fence line, snapping apart any branches impeding his progress. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

  I pushed on the hidden gate, grunting at the force required to open it, recalling how much more easily the priest had moved it open.

  “Over there, see that railing? There’s a set of stairs leading down to a door. It’s been raining, so the ground’s a bit soft, the chair might get stuck. You need me to push you?”

  Alberto’s eyes tore into me, his mouth curling into a snarl.

  “That won’t be necessary Bennington. I can leave my chair here, right? Nobody can see it from the street.”

  I looked down at Alberto, knowing my face betrayed my confusion.

  “Yeah, but I can just push you.”

  As I moved toward the back of Alberto’s chair, his right hand gripped my left forearm while he continued to glare up at me. His fingers exerted just enough force to let me know he could likely snap my arm in two if he wanted without even trying.

  “I tell you what old man, how about we see who gets to that stairwell first?”

  Before I could protest, Alberto reached behind him and removed the leather pack, then secured it onto his back before jumping out of the wheelchair and onto the ground, the stumps of his legs sticking straight out in front of him as his entire body was held up by his hands and arms. He looked back up at me and smiled, though the tone of his voice was all business.

  “Loser buys dinner. Go!”

  The sight of Alberto bounding across the property on his hands left me temporarily paralyzed. I had never seen such a display of unique athleticism before. Both hands would hit the ground on either side of him at the same time and push his body forward, his legs rocking up and then down each time.

  Damn, he’s fast!

  Then I remembered Alberto had just called me an old man, and if he won, expected me to buy him dinner. I was about to get my ass handed to me in a running race by a guy who had no legs.

  Ah, hell no.

  I took off after him, my legs moving under me somewhat awkwardly, unfamiliar with the act of a full on run. The ground was indeed soft and wet, my leather shoes soon covered in water and a trace of mud.

  Son-of-a-bitch is halfway there already!

  Now I was genuinely pissed. What seemed ridiculous just a moment earlier was quickly turning into reality. I was losing to a paraplegic.

  My arms and legs were dancing to entirely different tunes as each appendage seemed quite dedicated to doing its own thing. My running gait looked many times more awkward and pathetic than Alberto’s ‘look Ma, no legs’ method. Despite my near total lack of athletic ability, I had managed to nearly catch up to the legless wonder. My face broke out into a manic grin as I pulled even with Alberto and let out a triumphant shout.