Bitter Paradise

by Ross Pennie

  Bitter Paradise

  A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery

  Ross Pennie

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Hosam ended the call, and from the back of the shop Max watched him scowl into some dark, malignant place. It was like the man was staring into a black hole — maybe Monocerotis or Cygnus X-1 — in a remote sector of the universe. Behind him, the dusky red spatters on the front door looked almost dry. But the splotches on the picture window still glistened.

  “What did he say?” Max called, trying but failing to suppress the shivers. “Is h—” His voice cracked, and all that came out was a frog’s croak. At fourteen, that happened way too often. He cleared his throat with a short cough and tried again. “Is he coming?”

  Hosam seemed incapable of hearing, his mind stuck in another galaxy. But his left thumb was visible in this one, and it was stroking his thick black moustache. His comb and scissors were here too, poking from the pocket of his blood-soaked apron. The front-desk phone was tight in his fist, and there was no missing Marwan’s blood clotted on the keypad.

  “Hosam?”

  After a while, he put down the phone and rubbed the back of his neck, staining it with more of Marwan’s blood. He steadied himself against the desk and jerked his head as if tumbling out of a bad dream. His deep-set eyes, usually a light greyish-blue, had turned as black as the muzzles on Max’s second-favourite Fortnite weapon, the double barrel shotgun.

  Eventually, Hosam blinked. “Yes, Max. Your father, he says he is coming.”

  “Right now?”

  “Inshallah.”

  Inshallah, that was for sure. And though Max never went to church, he hoped God or Allah, or both together, were pulling hard on whatever strings it took to get his dad here fast.

  Max turned to Travis sitting beside him in the row of chairs set against the back wall for customers waiting for a haircut. Max raised the edge of the damp facecloth he’d been pressing against his forehead. “How . . . how is it?”

  Travis leaned in and lifted the cloth for a good look. Squinting into the wound, he whispered, “The bleeding’s stopped. Well, mostly. And I don’t think I see any bone or brain tissue.”

  “Geez,” Max said.

  Travis pressed the makeshift dressing back into place. “You were out of it for a few seconds after you hit your head. I’m betting you cracked your skull.”

  “Thanks a lot, Trav. That makes me feel so much better.”

  A master blogger and Snapchatter, Max’s best bud and video game squadmate was sometimes given to exaggerating details for the sake of his audience and his ratings. Hosam had examined the gash with a more professional eye a few minutes earlier. He’d said Max was going to need only a few stitches and he should keep pressure on the wound. He’d mentioned nothing about visible brain tissue or a fractured skull. But he had said Max would have to come back another day for his haircut. He’d finished Trav’s moments before Marwan’s attackers had rushed in, so Trav’s low fade was already done.

  Sitting next to Travis was Marwan’s twenty-something client. He was rubbing his face with one of Hosam’s damp cloths and struggling to appear calm and manly. But it was impossible to look even close to cool when your high fade was barely halfway done and blood from your barber’s arteries was sprayed across your cheeks. The warm towels that Hosam had draped over their shoulders were supposed to help the three of them relax and stop shivering. But the only thing Max needed right now was the sight of his dad walking through the front door.

  Ibrahim, the shop’s head barber, had been standing at a display case in the back half of the shop immediately before, during, and after the attack. He’d been stocking the shelves with grooming stuff and trying way too hard to act as if nothing was happening. And now, his hands were shaking more than ever as he arranged and rearranged the tubes, bottles, and jars. He seemed to think that rows of perfectly aligned hair products might compensate for the horrific spectacle of his shop’s junior barber splayed on the floor, his blood splattered in every direction.

  Kneeling in the middle of the shop beside their gear, and still working on Marwan, were the two paramedics who’d been there for what seemed like ages but was probably only a few minutes. Max had no idea whether the young barber was dead or alive. Marwan’s blood, in streaks and dark pools, was splotched across the floor, the walls, the arms of his barber chair. His now bloody-cheeked client had been in that chair not twenty minutes earlier when the two men in black hoodies rushed in. One of them, built like a super-tall wrestler, wore a WWE bandana to hide his face. He grabbed Marwan and pinned his arms behind his back. The other guy — skinny frame, tanned skin, long nose — shouted some sort of warning meant for everyone in the shop. Max didn’t understand the words but recognized the language. He heard it here often.

  The skinny guy spat in Marwan’s face then set his jaw and whipped out something from beneath his shirt. At first, Max couldn’t see what it was, but when the guy raised it high above his head, he saw the naked blade of a mean-looking bowie knife. Skinny Guy’s eyes were on fire as the polished steel flashed for everyone to see.

  The man lowered the knife, held it directly in front of Marwan’s face, and muttered something it didn’t take a linguist to know was menacing. The degree of terror bursting through Marwan’s pores was something Max had never witnessed before, not even in the gruesomest scenes in Trav’s extensive slasher-movie library. Marwan blinked at the spit gumming his eyes and nodded eagerly as if pledging to obey any warning his assailants might deliver from now until eternity.

  Skinny Guy smirked then took a long, admiring look at his weapon. He raised an eyebrow and ran a finger the full length of the blade. Three times, he smiled and adjusted his stance, his black Chuck Taylor high tops squealing against the floor. Then, as quick as a samurai, he slashed Marwan’s left arm above the elbow. Before the helpless barber could even wince, Skinny Guy crisscrossed Marwan’s chest with the blade. Marwan screamed, and blood welled through the ri
ps in his polo shirt, turning it from electric blue to magenta.

  When the knife went for Marwan’s neck, Max’s breakfast launched itself into his gullet. The acidic mess of Cheerios and OJ burned his throat, but he managed to force it down again. His eyes were another matter. They refused to let him watch any more of this. His lids screwed themselves into light-tight mode while his hands put vice grips on his chair.

  He’d read somewhere that silence could be deafening, especially when you had your eyes closed. With Marwan’s screams snuffed by the bowie knife, a terrorizing stillness descended like a suffocating blanket.

  After what felt like an ice age, a sickening drip, drip, drip invaded the silence.

  Clothing rustled.

  Something thudded to the floor.

  High tops squealed as they strode across the room.

  Max’s heartbeat slammed into overdrive. The attackers must be closing in. They were choosing their next victim before picking off the witnesses one by one. Suddenly, sitting with your eyes closed was infinitely scarier than not knowing what was happening.

  He forced his eyes open and willed them to focus. All he could see of the assailants was the backs of their hoodies. They weren’t eyeing further victims but hightailing it through the front door. Marwan was on his back, next to his chair, motionless except for the twin arcs that throbbed from his carotids like maniacal firehoses.

  The coppery smell of all that blood hung in the air along with the reek of the intruders’ chewing tobacco. Max had friends who chawed because they thought it was cool. Right now, the familiar stink was the furthest from cool it could possibly be.

  The moment the men were out the door, Hosam reacted as fast as a combat medic in a video game. He grabbed a stack of towels then cut off Marwan’s shirt with his scissors. After a quick look at the wounds, he whipped off his belt and tightened it around Marwan’s half-severed arm. While he was staunching the blood with the towels and the tourniquet, he told Ibrahim to call 911. He had to remind Ibrahim a minute later because the head barber, still clutching his shampoo bottles, seemed suddenly frightened of his own telephone.

  No one in the shop, except for poor Marwan, had made eye contact with the attackers. No one had said a word to them. Now that Max had a chance to think about it, he wondered if the skinny slasher was the guy called Ghazwan who’d worked briefly at the shop a few months back. He’d never cut Max’s hair, nor Trav’s, but had spent most of his time sweeping the floor. He hadn’t smiled and had never said a word in English. As far as Max could tell, Ghazwan spoke only Arabic. The other barbers spoke it too. Hosam had taught Max a few Arabic phrases such as Good morning, Thanks a lot, I’m hungry, and Inshallah, which seemed to fit pretty well every occasion.

  And now, as another round of sirens wailed from close range, the boys looked at each other and braced for a second set of uniformed responders. A blaze of red and blue flashed from a roof rack. Tires screeched. Rubber smoke rose in the air. Two officers rushed in with their guns drawn and told everyone to freeze.

  Ibrahim looked like was going to fill his pants. He put up his hands.

  “They gone,” he told the police, his knees shaking. “The men, they run away.”

  One of the paramedics looked up and told the cops, “Yeah, the premises are clear. The suspects were gone by the time we arrived.” He jerked his head towards Marwan. “This guy’s the only victim. Alive, but vitals unstable. Everyone else is mostly just shook up.”

  “What about those kids back there with blood on their faces?” said one of the officers. His blond hair was buzzed ultra short, and he was glaring at Max, Travis, and the half-shorn guy beside them as if they were a criminal gang. He motioned to his dark-haired partner to stand guard by the door then headed toward the boys, avoiding the thickest patches of blood on the floor. Travis whispered that the click of his boot heels sounded like the Foley work in a low-budget zombie movie.

  Blond Cop set his eyes on Travis, giving him the Stare of the Ignorant. Travis had a purple birthmark that covered the left half his face. There was no denying its conspicuous nature or that from a distance it did look like dried blood. Although it was kind of ugly until you stopped noticing it, Max reckoned that only ignorant people stared at it quizzically, as if Travis was too stupid to know what they were thinking.

  The officer holstered his gun, and Hosam stepped forward. He had removed his bloodied apron and wiped his face, but fine spatter still dotted his forehead and cheeks. “This boy,” he explained, tipping his head toward Travis, “his face, the angels touched it at . . . at time of birth.” A hint of the nice-guy warmth had returned to Hosam’s eyes, and they were looking closer to their normal grey-blue. But Max could tell from the strain in Hosam’s voice that the cop was making the cool-headed barber super nervous. “The medical term is . . . is port-wine nevus.”

  “Huh?” said the cop, ignoring Hosam’s extended hand. A thin scar glowed red under his chin. Max could see the veins bulging on the sides of his scalp.

  “Birthmark,” Hosam told him. “Not . . . not injury.”

  The cop pointed at Max with a gesture that made Max feel like a wad of gum stuck to the sole of his regulation steel-toes. “What about this kid?”

  “Slipped. His forehead, he hit it on the washbasin. Simple scalp laceration. Superficial to the aponeurosis. In need of sutures for the closure of the skin. Also, the boy might be suffering slight concussion.”

  Max was grateful that Hosam hadn’t gone any further into the embarrassingly klutzy way he’d gashed his forehead. He’d tripped while running for cover when the paramedics were at the door, afraid they were the attackers coming back for another round of slash and run. He’d reached forward to steady himself against the basin but lost his grip. His left arm had always been sketchy — weak, short, and skinny. Max knew the proper terms: spastic, contracted, and hypoplastic. At the time of his birth, he’d suffered a stroke. Yeah, he often told the curious, newborn babies can get them too.

  “That’s your professional opinion, is it?” Blond Cop said. “What are you, some kind of medical barber?” He snorted, and his half-grin morphed into a sneer.

  Hosam straightened his shoulders. “In my country, I am a trauma surgeon.” He pulled at the collar of his polo shirt. “Much experienced with war wounds.” He looked down and added, “Too much experienced.”

  The officer made a show of casually looking around to take in the pools of blood, the hyperfocused paramedics loading Marwan onto their stretcher, the terrified head barber now talking to the other cop. “Well, you’re not in the old country,” he told Hosam. “In this country, we make sure injured parties get checked out properly. At a hospital. Where they —”

  “Are having real doctors?” Hosam interrupted.

  The officer’s sneer stiffened. “You got that right.”

  The door opened and Max could barely let himself believe that the slim, six-foot-plus figure filling the opening was his dad, Dr. Zoltan Szabo. His father looked aghast, and his face had turned as grey as his suit. The psychedelic flashes from the cop car parked outside, and the blood sprayed across the shop’s gigantic mirror, did make the place look like a scene from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There was no missing the tears in his dad’s eyes when he caught sight of Max waving from the back of the shop. Max had seen that same look on his father’s face when everyone had thought — mistakingly — that Max had been bitten by a giant, poisonous monitor lizard on Komodo island. That was last November during their trip to Indonesia. Dad’s awesomest coworker — and now fiancée — Natasha Sharma, had been sharing the adventure with them. Travis too. Travis covered the story of Max’s Komodo dragon near-miss quite nicely on his blog. And posted dozens of photos of the four of them with the dragons on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Max had to admit he’d enjoyed that brief bit of internet fame.

  His dad rushed past the cops before they had a chance to stop him. He crou
ched in front of Max, grabbed his shoulders, and gave him a long hug. “Oh my God, Max. Can you talk? Are you all right? Is that blood caked on your eyebrow? What’s under that cloth?”

  Once his father finally let him go, Max briefly lifted the improvised dressing. “I’m okay, Dad. It just stings a little.”

  “Someone attacked you?”

  “I fell.”

  Zol looked puzzled and searched the room with his gaze.

  “Against the sink, Dad.”

  Zol turned to Travis, who was posting on his phone and watching the paramedics wheel Marwan to the ambulance. Max knew that everyone at school was going to lap this up, big time. Too big, maybe.

  “And how are you, son?” Zol asked. “You okay?”

  Travis nodded, raising his eyebrows the way he often did. And as always, he didn’t make a sound. He never uttered any actual words to anyone except in private to Max and his mom. His dad died when he was little, and though Travis liked Zol a lot, he could never speak to him. No one knew what restricted Trav’s use of audible speech, but the doctors said he had a bona fide medical condition called selective mutism. At school, he earned top marks without saying a word to anyone.

  Blond Cop dismissed Hosam with a flick of his hand and started interrogating Max’s father as if he had no right to be in what was now a crime scene.

  But Max had never seen his dad intimidated, and he knew it wasn’t going to happen now. His father had had plenty of practice dealing with cops, politicians, hostile reporters, and angry mobs. He always said it was his job to settle people’s fears by calmly convincing them to face difficult situations with more logic than emotion. As the specialist in charge of the region’s public health service, Dr. Zol Szabo closed restaurants serving rotten meat, caught pharmacists selling counterfeit drugs, and led a team investigating epidemics as scary as flesh-eating streptococci. Once, he busted a factory worker who was infecting people on his shift with condiments laced with typhoid bacteria. Max couldn’t imagine committing such an indignity to Miracle Whip! At the moment, Dad and Natasha were chasing an outbreak of polio that showed no sign of letting up. The cases kept on coming. As Max understood it, the epidemic was a big deal because doctors around here hadn’t seen a case of polio in more than sixty years. The kicker was, the vaccine everyone received when they were little didn’t work against this new kind of polio. And this was one nasty disease. Zol had told Max that when the germ found its way into the spinal cord, it could paralyze a person from head to toe for weeks or months, even forever.