The Devil's Right Hand

by J. D. Rhoades

  Keller smiled slightly at that. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Raymond had finally broken down and taken one of the pain pills, since Delmer was driving. Delmer wasn’t good for much; Raymond sometimes wondered if the kid was a retard. But he sure could drive, and Raymond had employed him in that capacity for several years at the request of Billy Ray, Delmer’s cousin, who was leaning over the back of the front seat, talking to Raymond.

  “Buddy,” he said. “That don’t look good. We better get you to that doctor and get you stitched back up.”

  Raymond shook his head. “A doctor’ll call the cops,” he said. “It’ll quit in a little while.” Billy Ray shook his head.

  “He ain’t bleedin all over my seats, is he?” Delmer asked.

  “Shut up, Delmer,” Billy Ray said. He turned back to Raymond. “We got a call from our friends down south. They was worried when I told them you was in the hospital.”

  “You tell ‘em I was under arrest?”

  “Yeah, but I told ‘em it didn’t have anything to do with the business. I told ‘em it was personal.”

  “Shit,” Raymond said. The last thing he needed was the Colombians getting nervous about him. Paco Suarez was fully capable of having Raymond killed just to make sure he didn’t say anything incriminating while under sedation. It was the kind of paranoia that had kept Suarez alive and out of jail through twenty years of drug wars and government task forces aimed at him. It made dealing with Suarez a tricky proposition, however, especially since all communications were filtered through several layers of equally paranoid and trigger-happy lieutenants.

  Billy Ray went on. “They was asking when we would be able to move some more product for ‘em.”

  “Right away,” Raymond said automatically. “Who’d you talk to?”

  Billy Ray’s eyes flickered towards Delmer, but the younger man was intent on the road. “Geronimo,” he whispered.

  An idea began to form in Raymond’s mind. Geronimo was their nickname for one of Suarez’ chief muscle boys. His real name was Guillermo, but Raymond had misheard it as Geronimo at their first meeting, and he thought the crazy Colombian had actually liked it. He apparently thought it was some sort of Native American honorary title, and Raymond had never bothered to set him straight. Geronimo had access to firepower and people who weren’t afraid to use it. That was exactly the kind of people Raymond needed right then.

  “Good,” Raymond said. “Pull over at this phone booth. Geronimo’s just the boy I want to talk to.”

  DeWayne was out of rocks, out of money, and running out of patience with Debbie’s whining. “Stay in the car,” he ordered. He got out and slammed the door. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “I ain’t gonna stay in no car,” the girl said. “I ain’t a dog. I’m comin’ in with you.”

  “Damn it.” DeWayne said. His nerves were jangling like a multiline phone with all lines ringing. His eyeballs felt sandy and irritated by the morning sun. He felt as if he hadn’t slept in a month. His skin felt scoured and raw. If he concentrated he imagined he could identify each and every nerve ending, and they were all screaming. “There ain’t nothin’ for you to do in there,” he said. “I’m just goin’ in to visit my cousin.”

  “What, I’m not good enough to meet your family?” Debbie said in that whiny voice that bored into Dwayne’s ear like a dentists drill set on high. For one brief moment, he contemplated pulling his pistol out and shooting her right there. The number of other people in the hospital parking lot saved her. Instead, he stood up and slammed the door on her, turned around and walked towards the glassed in entrance. He ignored her squawks of muffled outrage.

  The woman behind the reception desk was a fortyish blonde with an ample bosom barely contained by her blue and white uniform. She eyed DeWayne suspiciously as he came in. “May I help you?” she said.

  “I’m here to visit Crystal Lee Puryear,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster.

  “Are you a family member?” the woman said as she turned to her computer. Her fingers began clicking busily on the keys.

  “Yeah,” DeWayne said, “I’m her brother.”

  The woman’s fingers stopped for a brief second. She kept her eyes straight ahead and her voice neutral. “And your name is...?” she asked.

  The too-casual tone in her voice made a chill of paranoia run down DeWayne’s spine. “Uhhhh--” he said. “Leonard,” he blurted out.

  The woman turned and looked at him. “Well, the computer says you were here yesterday. Don’t you remember the room?”

  The shiver down his backbone shot back up and set alarm bells clanging in his head. “Ahhh--yeah,” he said. “I ahhh--I forgot the number.”

  “Your sister has been released to a--to another facility,” he woman said, still eyeing DeWayne up and down. ”She didn’t tell you?”

  Dewayne smacked himself on the head with the palm of his hand. “Boy,” he laughed nervously, “I’d fergit my head if it weren’t screwed on. Where’d she go again?”

  The woman stiffened and reached for the phone. “I’m not allowed to give out that information,” she snapped. “Wait here, and I’ll call somebody.”

  “No, no,” DeWayne said, “That’s okay, don’t bother. I remember now.” He turned and bolted out the glass doors, pursued by the woman’s shout.

  DeWayne slowed to a brisk walk as he headed for the parking lot. Someone had been to see Crystal, pretending to be him. Or Leonard. He could only think of one person who would do something like that.

  “Keller,” he muttered under his breath. The guy was always there, following him. He needed to do something about Keller. He walked to the place where he had left the parked car.

  It was gone.

  “You fucking bitch!” DeWayne screamed. An elderly couple walking slowly by looked up in horror. DeWayne didn’t care. He ran at the nearest car, kicking the rear bumper in a frenzy. He slammed his fists down on the trunk lid, screaming in rage, then kicked the bumper again. The old couple scurried faster to get away from the madman. DeWayne nearly pulled the gun and shot them, but then he heard the beeping of a car horn. He turned. Debbie was sitting in her car, fifty feet away. She had moved to the end of the row and had been watching him. He could see her laughing.

  DeWayne snarled deep in his throat and ran towards the car. He yanked the gun out of his waistband and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. She started the car, but didn’t pull away. She was still laughing. When he got to the door, he saw that the windows were rolled up and the doors locked. He stood beside the driver’s side window and pointed the gun. “Open the goddamn door!” he screamed.

  “I coulda left you!” she shouted, still laughing, but with an edge of hysteria, so that it sounded more like crying. “But I didn’t! Now you see! Now you see!”

  “See what!?” he yelled. “Goddamn it, you crazy bitch, open the door!” He looked up and saw a pair of uniformed men standing in the doorway. Hospital security. Rent-a-cops, but still trouble.

  “You need me!” Debbie yelled. By now she really was crying. “You need me! Say it!”

  The rent-a-cops had located the source of the yelling and were moving purposefully towards him. Debbie was still screaming at him. “You need me!” she repeated.

  “Fuck it,” DeWayne muttered. “Right now, it’s true.” He bent down, close to the car window. “Okay, baby,” he said, trying to sound placating through his near-panic. “I do. I need you. Now please, sugar, open the fucking door!”

  A smile burst across her face. “I knew it,” she sniffled. She leaned across and unlocked the passenger side door. “Get in,” she smiled at him. “I’ll drive.” DeWayne bit back another snarl. He ran around to the passenger side and slid in. He was barely in the car when she stomped the gas and peeled out of the parking space; the door slammed shut from the forward momentum of the car before he had a chance to pull it closed. They blasted past the startled rent-a-cops, one of whom had to leap out of the way to avoid being
run down. DeWayne looked back and saw them standing there, their mouths half open in shock.

  “So,” Debbie said. “How was she?” her tone was conversational, as if the previous altercation had never happened.

  “She’s gone. They moved her somewhere. They wouldn’t tell me where.”

  Debbie plucked a cigarette out of the pack wedged under the sun visor. “Drug rehab,” she said positively as she popped the cigarette lighter in.

  “How do you know that?” DeWayne said.

  She lit the cigarette, then shifted it to one corner of her mouth. “ ‘Cause they wouldn’t tell you,” she said through the cloud of smoke. “It’s a law. They can’t even say if a person’s had drug treatment. So when they get all secret-like--then you know.”

  “Well, I got no way of finding out where,” DeWayne said.

  She smirked. “I bet I can,” she said.

  “How?”

  She reached over, put a hand on his thigh and squeezed. “Tell me you need me again.”

  She really does have a screw loose, DeWayne thought. “I need you, baby,” he said. The patent insincerity of his voice seemed to make no difference to her. She gave his thigh another playful squeeze. “Wait’ll we get back to my place. Then I’ll show you. I’ll show you why you need me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “You know, Keller,” Berry said, “life is kind of funny. I don’t hear from you for five years, and then I hear your name twice within twenty-four hours.”

  They were walking on a grassy lawn in front of a large white Victorian house. The home was the main building of Rescue House, the drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility where Doctor Lucas Berry, Major, US Army Medical Corps (Retired) was director.

  Berry was a huge man, almost six-seven. His close-cropped hair was streaked with gray. Combined with his broad, square, brown face, the gray hair gave him a distinguished appearance. The feeling of mass that Berry gave was complemented by Berry’s deep, resonant voice.

  Keller thought for a moment before realizing Berry’s meaning. “Crystal Puryear called you.”

  Berry nodded. “Yes. Or at least her doctor at the hospital did. But he was careful to mention your name. Fortunately we had a bed coming available. Otherwise I would have had to bump someone off the waiting list.”

  “You’d do that just because someone used my name?”

  “You don’t hit the panic button easily, Jack. If you thought enough to call for help for someone, they’re in bad shape.”

  Suddenly, incongruously, Berry grinned, which robbed his chiseled brown face of some of its accustomed sternness and made him look almost impish. “Maybe I should put you to work recruiting for me.”

  “Thanks,” Keller said. “I like the job I have.”

  “Hmm.” The sound was neutral, but the meaning unmistakable.

  “You don’t approve of what I do.”

  “It’s not up to me to approve or disapprove, Jack. I just wonder why you keep putting yourself in dangerous situations.”

  Keller shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

  Berry grunted. “Obviously. But that’s not an answer. Why do you do it?”

  Keller stopped and looked away across the lawn at the neatly kept white guest cottages that served as the center’s dormitories. “Why does anybody do what they do?” he said. “Why’d you go from treating shell-shocked grunts to drug and alcohol rehab?”

  “It’s a growth industry,” Berry said. “But you’re still ducking the question.”

  “Maybe because I don’t know the answer. The job needs nerves, adrenaline. If I stop to think to much about what I’m doing and why, it could get me killed.”

  “Not thinking about it is just killing you more slowly.” Keller didn’t answer. Berry sighed and started walking again. Keller followed. They walked in silence to the porch of the main building and sat down in a pair of rocking chairs on the front porch. “Nice place you got here,” Keller said. “The money must be good.”

  “The house was donated,” Berry said. “The place was a wreck when we got it. No one had lived here for ten years.” He ran a hand along the immaculately varnished rail of the porch. There was obvious pride in his voice. “We worked our asses off to get the place in shape.”

  “I can tell.”

  Berry turned to him. “So, Jack, you ever thought about killing yourself?”

  “Why?” Keller said. “Are you suggesting it? Wow, treatments really have changed in five years.”

  “Damn it, stop avoiding my questions. I wouldn’t keep asking if it wasn’t important.”

  “No,” Keller said. “Nothing like that.”

  “You said you almost hurt somebody. Tell me about it.”

  Keller took a deep breath. “I’ve been seeing a woman.”

  Berry leaned back and folded his big hands across his chest. “Someone you met on the job?”

  “Yeah. She’s a cop.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  Keller looked at the lawn. “We were asleep. Together. I had one of the dreams. She was on fire.”

  “Ah.”

  Keller looked back at him. “What do you mean, ‘ah’”?

  Berry waved him off. “Just ah. Keep talking.”

  “I think she tried to wake me up. I woke up with my hands around her throat.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She has a kid. A son. I woke him up. He was crying. I scared him.” As he spoke, Keller involuntarily leaned forward, his hands wrapped across his stomach. When he had finished, he was curled over like a man shot in the gut.

  Berry’s voice was steady. “Then what happened?”

  Keller straightened up. “I left.”

  “She say anything to you?”

  “Yeah,” Keller said. “She asked me what was wrong.”

  “Did you tell her?”

  Keller shook his head. “I just left.”

  “You ran.” Berry said it without anger or accusation; his voice was flat and matter of fact. Keller started to protest, then just nodded. “Yeah.”

  “She mean anything to you? This woman?” Berry asked.

  Keller thought for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What had been going on between you? Before the dream?”

  Keller looked at him. “We were making love.”

  “Before that, then.”

  “We were--she had asked me about my family.”

  Berry raised an eyebrow. “And you told her?”

  “A little, yeah. Just the basics.”

  Berry whistled. “That’s serious progress, Jack,” he said.

  “Yeah, but..”

  Berry cut him off. “You’re starting to open up to someone. That’s good. It’s a damn sight better than the way you were when you saw me five years ago. Then, you were...” he trailed off.

  “What?” Keller said. “I was what?”

  Berry looked straight at him. “You were the walking dead, Jack. You’d cut yourself off from everything. I was kind of amazed when you called. I was amazed that you were still alive.”

  “Yeah,” Keller said. “Well, I guess I’m better now.”

  “A little,” Berry agreed. “But some of the stuff you’ve been cramming down into the back of your head for years is coming out. Believe it or not, that’s good too. It was going to come out anyway, Jack. So does she care about you?”

  “I think so. Probably. Yeah, she does.”

  “Congratulations,” Berry said. “Love and work, Jack. That’s what Freud said everyone needs.”

  “I thought you said Freud was a quack.”

  “Mostly,” Berry said. “But sometimes he hit it right on the nose.” He stood up. “You still against the idea of prescription meds? They’ve got some new stuff on the market that doesn’t have as many side effects.”

  Keller shook his head. “No. I’m still working. I can’t take anything that might slow me down.”

  Berry sighed. “It’s hard to treat someone for anxiety who gets shot at for a living.” H
e shrugged. “Well, you’re not suicidal, at least not any more than your job requires. Come on with me to the front desk and we’ll make you another appointment.”

  Keller stood up. “Okay. How much do I owe you?”

  “I don’t know,” Berry said. “I haven’t done outpatient psychotherapy like this in a few years. I’ll send you a bill when I figure out what to charge.”

  “Thanks, doc,” Keller said. “I mean, for taking all this trouble.”

  Berry clapped him on the shoulder. “You were always my greatest challenge, Jack.” They went inside to the front parlor that had been converted into an office and reception area. As the receptionist penciled in Keller’s appointment, he heard a voice behind him. “Mr. Keller?”

  Keller and Berry turned. Crystal Puryear was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in a pair of ragged jeans and a tee-shirt. Behind her, a group of people was slowly filing out of a room across the hall.

  “Crystal,” the receptionist said, “You know the rules. After group, you have to get back to your room for meditation.”

  “Fuck off, lady,” Crystal said.

  “That’s enough, Crystal,” Berry said in a voice that sounded like it should have been coming from a burning bush on Mount Sinai. Crystal looked chastened. “Doctor,” she said in a small voice, “I just wanted to talk to Mister Keller for a minute. I wanted to thank him.”

  “We don’t allow visitors the first two weeks--” the receptionist started, but Berry silenced her with an upraised hand. “Five minutes,” he told Keller. “On the porch. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Keller walked out onto the porch with Crystal in tow, both ignoring the murderous look from the frustrated receptionist. They sat down in the rockers.

  “You were right,” she said. “I owe you one. So here I am.”

  “So we’re square then,” Keller said.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Mister Keller,” she said. “Everything has a price, and it’s always more than you thought you’d pay. No one knows that better than a whore.” She sighed and looked away. “I ain’t heard from DeWayne. If I do, I’ll let you know. But you have to promise you won’t hurt him. He’s a fuckup, and he’s half-crazy most the time, but he’s all I got left.”