“What day is this?” At least that would give him somewhere to start.
“Saturday.”
“That’s helpful.”
She didn’t respond.
The bar crowd supported her statement, they had a pretty typical weekend feel. The tables were scarred with so many carved grooves that it was hard to find a clear spot to safely balance a beer glass. The bar menu, left by the middle-aged waitress who wore jeans and a flannel shirt that did nothing to show off her unremarkable figure, advertised greasy items.
“Which Saturday?”
“The one three days after your show.”
“Impossible.” Three days? At least two weeks, maybe three had passed. He’d woken at least a dozen times in his little cell. He’d had meals and been questioned by a long line of strangers.
“No way in hell.” Now she was just messing with him. What had he stepped into now?
“Common routine, drug ‘em up and down. Screws with your REM states pretty badly around day three or four. Another three days and you’d have been hallucinating anything they wanted you to,” she sipped at her beer. Apparently thirsty from so many syllables in the same conversation.
Three weeks in three days. Had he just gotten back three weeks of his life, or just lost three days? And how was he supposed to know?
“This is just surreal enough for the old light bulb joke: How many surrealists to change a light-bulb?”
She looked at him, but declined to ask the obligatory, “How many?”
“Two. One to fill the tub with pimentos while the other paints the giraffe.”
She shrugged and went back to picking at her fingertip. After a moment she peeled a layer of skin off her index finger. He could feel his gorge rising. A sip of the beer, something nasty and cheap, worse that the Tiger Beer he’d shared with Phillip, did nothing to settle his stomach.
“Do you have to do that here?”
She inspected her finger and held it out for him to see. At first he looked away, but then, when she persisted, he looked at it more closely in the dim light cast by the Budweiser sign in the window by their table. A flap of skin was peeled part way back, but the fingertip beneath it was untouched. The flap was circular. She reached out and pulled it the rest of the way off before handing it to him.
A thin piece of some material that felt like skin. When the light caught it just right he could see whorls and ridges on its surface. A fingerprint. Not her own, he guessed.
“Whose?”
She pointed at his chest before starting work on the next finger.
Scary woman. She killed two men, blew up elevator motors, and convinced him to follow her, but leaves only Jeff Davis’ fingerprints behind.
She wasn’t there.
He’d been the one to break out of prison on his own. He’d, he swallowed hard, he’d killed the two men. At least his fingerprints had. Maybe if he lay his head back on the table he’d wake up to discover it was made of stainless steel rather than carved-up wood. And this would all be a nightmare. Safe back in his cell.
Of course, the cell had been a nightmare all on its own. He’d been in three hells in three days: Phillip’s death in the studio, Chicago, and here. Had Dante set him up and he was to pass through the six more circles of Hell in the next six days? He definitely wasn’t up for that.
“Do you have a name?”
“Master Sergeant Shelley Thomas.” She raised her eyes from her effort to clean her fingertips of his identity. Her gaze was as intense as the moment she’d asked about Phillip’s final minutes of life. As intense as Phillip’s in that final moment when he knew he was dying.
“Most people call me Shel.”
CHAPTER 21
“Phillip wasn’t cursing.” For once his voice was under control. The sounds of the bar faded into the background.
She shook her head slowly and peeled off another of his fingerprints, her face unreadable. Almost unreadable. Her very stillness was the giveaway.
“The last thing he told me to do,” he put the scene back together in his head. “With his dying breath, he told me to find you.”
She didn’t even manage a nod. So carefully frozen in place, probably afraid she’d shatter if she looked up from her task.
“And now I have.”
“Other way around.” Her voice was not as clear as he’d bet she wished. He considered pursuing it.
She retrieved the fingerprint he still held, rolled it together with the others in the ashtray, then she flicked a lighter at them. The flame barely licked against them and there was a little puff of smoke. Not even ash was left. He no longer existed. At least not his prints. Or her copy of his prints. Not that anyone would believe him if he had to explain why two men had died in an unfinished Chicago high rise.
“So, why?”
“Why what?”
“Do you always talk so little?”
She shrugged.
The waitress appeared and Shelley ordered a mushroom, onion, swiss-cheese burger and fries.
He couldn’t think clearly and just held up two fingers to get rid of the waitress.
“You’ll be puking it up within the hour.”
“That bad? Then why did you order it?”
“Food’s good enough. How long were you locked up in that room?”
Three days like she’d said? Three weeks?
He’d tried to tally meals and sleep periods, and struggled to make it less than a week, but it didn’t work.
“It had to be about two weeks. No way was it less than ten days.” Some part of him hoped that he wasn’t that disoriented, that his body hadn’t been that drugged and abused. He rubbed his chin. They must have shaved him while he slept. He didn’t remember doing it himself, but he hadn’t grown any stubble either.
“Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Peterson has been dead three days, two hours, and,” she checked a wristwatch that she wore on the inside of her wrist, “about twenty minutes.”
“Colonel?” Okay, that was patently wrong, so now the three days was back in doubt. But she appeared to be level-headed, though she’d also murdered two men in cold blood. Was that level-headed? Was that rational? Never mind justifiable.
Jeff could feel the wall of babble building in his brain so he did what he did best. He shut his mouth and started to look for the patterns. That was his specialty after all. He could unravel data flow problems like nobody’s business. He’d used it for the Army, and EMS, and later to cook. Truly excellent cooking, at least television cooking, was all about managing patterns to the best advantage in an extremely time-regimented environment.
In the Army he’d always spotted the flawed piece of information days ahead of everyone else even if he was smart enough to never brag about it. That was how he’d gone so far in the early cooking competitions that had started his career. His dishes weren’t always the best, but they always hit the judges table at their absolute peak. The basmati rice, the Indian Butter Chicken, and the Zucchini Masala were all done at the same instant. Each served undercooked by the amount of time it would take the judges to note appearance and odors and chat with each other for the required moments of suspense. Fully cooked by their own heat just as they were finally tasted.
He was still the only one who could truly nail the food to the second for the live broadcast ad breaks. Though Julio had been good, he’d depended on his perfect smile on camera to cover many minor gaffs. Jeff was a far better cook, even Julio admitted that, one drunken night when they’d crawled out of Chinatown at four a.m.
Jeff could do what mattered, at the exact right moment. The network had noticed too and he’d eventually landed his own show. He’d been the first chef to go live and the network’s bet had paid off for both of them. Until now.
Three days. They’d messed with his mind. Drugged sleep and waking rhythm. Too many meals, too often. No natural
light. It was possible.
Weird, but possible.
He could see how the pattern would run, how it would wear down a prisoner. Drugged water offered at the end of each questioning session to knock him out. A shot or gas upper for what he took as natural awakening. So, set the three days aside.
Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Peterson. That was past weird and off into bizarre. He didn’t remember his ranks, but Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H was in charge and yelled at generals, and lived to film another episode, so it wasn’t a low rank by any means.
And Shelley had introduced herself with a rank. Sergeant something. He certainly remembered Drill Sergeant Jack Edwards from boot camp, a total bastard, old then, must be dead by now. So Shelley was no slouch herself.
LTC Phillip. Right off the far end of the chopping block bizarre.
CHAPTER 22
The food had arrived without him noticing.
“Okay,” Jeff took a fry and ate it slowly. It was good. Crunchy and soft with good tartar sauce on the side. He grabbed a couple more though he knew he should be continuing to eat slowly. It was the first thing that was real in three weeks, or in three days. Whatever.
“I’ll buy in on the three days thing.” He decided he’d take the missing two and a half weeks as a bonus. Make it into a poisoned glass half-full kind of thing.
“But Phillip hated the military. He got out when I did in ‘75.”
She bit down on her burger more like a college male than a grown woman.
“I guess it doesn’t matter what I think about that.” He bit into his own burger. It was great, made with char-broiled Plains beef. They couldn’t be too far from Kansas City, best beef he’d ever had was in KC after he’d keynoted the Cattlemen’s Association conference.
He set the burger down before he could take another bite. Who knew what the bastards had done to his body? Was this the next step? Had the guys in the prison been faking? Should he stick his finger down his throat? More pain? He couldn’t wait until he stood face-to-face with whoever had set him up.
Some part of him noted that this was the first anger he’d felt in three weeks, or rather three days. They’d locked him up, taken away his rights, drugged him senseless, and gotten away with it. Right up until the moment Shelley had killed them. Some part of him knew they hadn’t been faking. Some other part of him wasn’t the least bit sorry for them either.
“Okay, the guys in Chicago were for real also. But who were they? Why me? And why you?”
Shelley set her burger down. With a deliberation that was quickly becoming her trademark, she finished chewing while she stared directly at him. She held up one finger.
“They were ‘for real.’ No, I don’t know who they were.”
She held up two fingers.
“I only know your name, not why you were there.”
She raised a third.
“I was asked to.”
With that, she retrieved her burger and continued eating.
“And you’re not going to be telling me by who any time soon.” He didn’t bother to make it a question.
She continued to eat.
This one he couldn’t unravel. Not yet, too few pieces.
He continued to chew and looked over at her. She didn’t look like a murderer. Just a pretty young woman in her late twenties at a bar with a man old enough to be her father. Her attention appeared to be on her meal, but that was probably a sham.
What did a murderer look like? He inspected the bar’s patrons once more. The pool table had added a couple of healthy, farmgirl-looking girlfriends and they were all having a good time. Three truckers in worn flannel shirts were hunched over massive piles of ribs. There were some couples. A row along the bar that spoke of regulars anchored to their usual stools.
At the turn of the bar was a kid in all black. Chains dangled from the leather jacket. He wore black jeans and big black workboots. Maybe that was what a murderer looked like. He was the only one who didn’t fit in with someone else.
Even as Jeff inspected him, the kid turned from inspecting the mirror behind the bar and stared at their table. His eyes were dark and scary. His face was so deadpan, it was hard to credit its owner with being alive. He had a thin goatee that tracked around his mouth and chin like a kid who had pushed his face into a chocolate icing bowl and come out a mess.
Without looking up, Shelley waved at the kid. A circular wave. A come join us wave.
“Are you kidding?” he whispered across at her.
“Well, you were staring at him.”
“He was . . .” coming toward them. The boy sauntered over like a bad slasher film and dropped into a chair.
“Hey, Grim.” Shelley greeted him like an old friend seen just the day before. He nodded his greasy hair in her direction. Then he aimed those dead eyes back at Jeff. Eighteen, maybe twenty, maybe ninety. There was no way to tell from those eyes. He was as thin as a rail. He thumped his glass of pitch black liquid on the table, in this light he could have been drinking blood.
“This him?” His voice was deep. Deeper than it should be from such a narrow body. He could sing bass with the Oak Ridge Boys.
“Yep. Grim, Davis. Davis, Grim.” She turned her attention back to her French fries.
“Grim?” His own voice was higher than he liked.
“He’s a knife man. Show him your back.”
The boy turned enough in his seat so that Jeff could read the silvered studs worked into the black leather across his back. “Grim Reaper.”
“Knife man?” he swallowed hard. He was ready to believe just about anything at this point. His burger and fries were churning in his stomach. He was having a conversation with Death. The one with a capital “D” in front of his name. They were doing it in a Midwest bar on a Saturday night.
The kid slouched back in his chair and shoved his booted feet out into the aisle as if blocking Jeff’s only exit.
“Drive a combine harvester when I’m not doin’ the odd job for Shel. I’m the best driver you’re gonna meet. Always liked steel. Blades understand me.” Past the open zipper of his leather coat, Jeff could see a massive knife handle by the boy’s hip.
Grim smiled slightly crooked teeth at him before taking a sip from his dark drink, followed by a sharp grimace. The same expression that had crossed Phillip Peterson’s face the moment before he died.
Jeff was reaching out to somehow stop him or save him, when the Grim Reaper cursed aloud.
“Damn, I need a Coke. Pepsi just doesn’t cut it. We gotta find us a different bar, Shel.”
CHAPTER 23
Jeff managed to keep the meal down until they were almost ten minutes from the bar. Then he’d scrambled out of the car even before Shelley got it to a full stop. Now his mouth and nose burned as he knelt in the gravel and grass roadside.
He spit again and hawked up phlegmy burger-flavored bile.
Colonel Phillip had clearly landed in something nasty and now his last act had snared Jeff into whatever the mess was.
And Mandy was out there somewhere.
“It was what it was,” she’d said.
He could hear Grim and Shelley chatting. They were leaning back against the car and talking about the stars. He couldn’t even raise his head enough to see them.
“It was what it was.” Their ultimate truth test. No matter what preconceptions or hypotheses the observer brings to the experience, the facts are invariable. They were what they were no matter how much you wished it otherwise. Regardless of interpretation or emotion.
And there was more than that.
He spit once more and rocked back on his heels. It was a warm, late summer night somewhere in the Great Plains. At ten they’d moved to a place enough like this for him to know the smell. The little New York cow town, twelve-hundred people and ten-thousand head of dairy cow. Had even lost his virginity to the Queen of
the Maple Sugar Festival, crowned the first ever Queen Sap.
But hadn’t lost his heart until he was twenty-one. He’d lost it to a twenty-year old Amanda Peterson. Had followed his college roommate home to New Hampshire for the last break after basic training and his world had shifted.
He looked up at the starry sky above the newly mown field. The stars had changed since they’d first made love beneath them. The stars were closer then, watching over a different boy; a boy headed to the jungles of Vietnam with the fear of death on his soul.
Her tears, tears that had dried on his cheek, spoke a thousand words.
“It will be what it will be, Jeffrey.” Her voice sounded across the empty fields. And she’d been right.
There had been the experience, the awful moments, the wild moments, facing death of his buddies and his own mortality. But there had also been the silence, the place of peace that she’d taught him about. The inner place that was Jeffrey Davis and not the Vietnam War.
There was the place that was not Jeff the Chef and his carefully etched life with his perfectly honed living room, but was also Jeffrey Davis, the best friend of Phillip Peterson.
His life was what it was, and Phillip’s was, too. But he now owed Phillip a life. The man had inadvertently saved his own.
The stars were different. They didn’t sparkle as they had on that long lost New Hampshire night.
But they shone.
He stood and faced the outlines of the two people now leaning in silence against the shadowed car.
“What’s next?”
THIRD COURSE
TOSSED SALAD
TOMORROW
CHAPTER 24
“What do you mean he got away?”
Mark Anders stood on the black carpet and was sweating. He wished there was a chair to sit in, but Director Stephen Richards didn’t believe in putting subordinates at ease. There was only the wheelchair, the one Richards lived in.
“Two agents down.” He closed his eyes against the memory of the surprised look on Billings’ and Montoya’s faces. Death had at least been fast. “Massive heart attacks. Killed them instantly.” He swallowed hard. It could have been him. The sweat broke out afresh despite the chill in the room. How could the man live so cold?
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