Chapter 11

Roni was great with a plan. She didn’t know caution or danger, only what had to be done.  She’d toss her hair over her shoulder and get her hands dirty. And by the looks of the mess she’d gotten herself, and us into, I’d say dirty was exactly the word for what she’d done. She’d put on that high, never-care giggle of hers and work her way out of it. Her technique worked on Mick and me, worked on her folks and Cal. It even worked on Tate to a degree.

I think that’s what killed her. Something she couldn’t flip her hair out of the way of and something she couldn’t giggle her way from under.

“Dunc?” Mickey was across the room flipping the pages. “There’s a room.”

“A what?”

“Room.”

I stepped closer to him, knowing I’d need to lean over his shoulder so he could show me. Words never came to Mickey for explaining some things. It was a room to him and any other word was wrong for it. Just the one word. The right one and that was all.

“See here,” he pointed at a tiny square. “See.”

I shook my head.

“Look again.” He persisted.

“Under the eyes?” I asked.

“Yep. We gotta get in that bathroom.”

My exasperation with him, with all of this shit, must have shown on my face. I couldn’t even form the words. And there was Roni in my head, flipping the raven’s wing of hair out of her face and giggling.

I almost wanted to giggle with her. Mickey didn’t get much credit for being smart from too many people, but the truth was the more cryptic the more he understood it. These words in this ledger are simple, little puzzles to him. He just had to put them together. He’d always been able to do that. Broken down into small pieces, Mickey would get just about anything. It was the big picture that was simply too much for him to handle.

“Well we can’t just waltz in there,” I said, still not knowing what under the eyes had to do with a room, but certain he would eventually tell me when he was able to put more words to the thought and spit them out in one big lump rather than one at a time.

I got behind the wheel, fielding Mickey’s questions about why we had to go back to my mom’s.

“Because she can get into the bathroom at The Hive. We can’t.”

“But Dunc. Why would she go to The Hive? She never goes there. Won’t that be suspicious?”

“Because my dad knows people there and they could go together. He’ll do this for me. I know he will.” My dad wanted back in my life and I knew he’d see this as the chance.

Mickey squirmed in his seat like he had to take a piss, and pulled his collar up around him against the cool of the car. Mickey could whine without uttering a word. All of his body language did it for him. He fingered the bruise my mother had left on him once again and looked some kind of pathetic riding next to me, pouting.

“Roni would know what to do.” He kept right on squirming.

I took this as a scolding from him; that on some level Mick was losing his faith in me to solve this. So while I wanted to tell him that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was, or we wouldn’t be doing any of this shit, I just took the jab quietly. He might have been right. I was losing faith in me too, but Roni’s way sure as hell hadn’t worked a year ago.

My God, did I miss her though.  For all her madness she lightened me up, gave me small hopes, included Mick and me in her big dreams. Inside I always knew they wouldn’t work out, but she could suspend my disbelief better than anyone. My disbelief hung on those electric wires right next to all her other wishes – up and out of the way when she was around.

“Wait in the car,” I told Mickey when we pulled up to the house. We didn’t need a Mom versus Mickey scene; we just needed to get this done.

I went in and wasted no time with the psycho family reunion shit. Despite my mother’s efforts to twist and manipulate it into some success on her part, Dad managed to control her long enough so I could tell them what I needed from them.

“You sure are going through a lot of trouble, Boy,” Mom said.

“Wouldn’t you if someone was trying to kill you?” I spit the words at her.

My father stood in the doorway between kitchen and family room. “Your mother would probably just thank them and ask them to hurry and get it over with.”

He had a point.

He stepped forward though and said, “Let’s do this tonight.”

I pulled the ledger from the inside pocket of my coat and walked to the kitchen table. Moving aside an empty vodka bottle, a full ashtray and the rest of the everyday clutter of a drunken housewife, I lay it out for them to see.

Mom swayed over as though she was reluctant, spewing the same negative crap she always did, then became mildly interested, and finally she was reading over my shoulder as I pointed out the clues Mickey’d found.

“Under the eyes,” she said with some recognition in her voice.

“You know what that means?” I was stunned.

“Sure. There’s a linen closet in the women’s bathroom. They keep cleaning supplies and stuff in it.”

“The eyes,” I prompted. Fuck! Is this like pulling teeth or what?

“A poster. Two big eyes are watching the women in the bathroom all the time. It’s always been sort of a joke, Peeping Tom sees all. See? And the poster’s on that door.”

“Ok, so I guess when we go later, you need to go in that closet. For some reason Mickey says it’s a room. So maybe see if it has a panel that opens up to something else, or…I don’t know.” I shook my head, shaking loose the idea that it all seemed a little too far-fetched, and skeptical to me. I wasn’t able to handle a stretch like a secret panel in a linen closet in a dive bar’s women’s bathroom.

“And look for what? You think the murderer is hiding in the broom closet or something?” She snorted like I was the obtuse one, sloshed a bit of vodka to the floor and leaned into Dad, obviously for balance, though she tried to play it off as affection.

“Jesus, Mom. Do you recall ever being clever in your whole life? If you do, draw on that experience and try real hard to do it again.”

“Easy, Duncan,” Dad said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “I’ll have her sober enough to do this by later tonight. I will.”

He pulled the drink from her hand, sat her firmly in a chair and grabbed her by the chin.

“We’ve suspected that there’s not a maternal bone in your body for years. But, you better try to find one and get hold of it, cuz your son is going to die if you fuck this up. Do you understand?”

Her eyes filled up at first and I thought she might cry. I was struck stupid at the sight of them. He, the freshly paroled con, and she, the pathetic drunk. These were my parents, my role models, and tonight, my accomplices. What the hell was I doing?

Mom broke the spell and instead of crying she chuckled. “I can handle it,” she slurred, as she reached for his crotch, got a handful and said, “I’ll use this bone.”

His hand went up high above his head, meaning to bring it down and slap her, and at that she cackled like a fool.

“Be serious you raving bitch!” He deflated though, before the urge to strike was too overpowering. He lowered his hand and shook it off, closing his eyes and sucking in a deep breath.

I grabbed the book from the table and turned to walk out of the house and their fucked-up lives forever when she yelled to me, “Oh baby, come back. I was just making a joke to lighten the mood.”

“Not everything needs to be lightened,” Dad said.

“Get your shit together, both of you.” I pointed at both of them, and while I looked Dad straight in the eyes and he looked back solidly, Mom swayed to some brain music she’d found to escape to and looked away. “And be ready if you’re going to help me. If you don’t think you can, then tell me right now so I can do this another way.”

Mom tugged her kimono and pushed her wild hair from her face; Dad glared at her.

“Don’t you dare ruin this,” he said it in a low scratched whisper, through clinched teeth. Some inkling of paternal love possibly surfacing for the first time since I was a toddler.

When I got back to the car Mickey was slumped and rocking.

“They’re in,” I said. “We’re good to go tonight at eleven.”

He just kept rocking.

“Mick?”

He looked up at me then, “Dunc. I really gotta pee.”

I laughed big and loud for the first time in many months.

“Why you laughing like that?” He asked, looking at me like I’d come unhinged.

“Cuz I thought you looked like you had to pee earlier, but that you were just nervous and whiny.” I laughed harder and couldn’t stop. Tears filled my eyes. My sides hurt. I couldn’t take a breath in.

“Duncan?”

I just kept laughing. I really did come unhinged. For all the times the tears wouldn’t come with grief, they seemed to have found their escape through laughter. The uncontrollable seizure I found myself in scared the hell out of me. I laughed and cried and seized, my face wet with tears, my body full of anguish and nameless emotions pouring out. The butterflies escaped from me. I gasped and got scared that it might not ever end, this massive purge of fear and hate and love and grief, tears and laughter of things lost and found, and all the bubbles I’d created to contain them bursting and flying out of me at once.

Through gasps for air when the barrage started to ease, I told Mickey that no one was around and he could just pee next to the car.

Then we went to make the rest of the plans. My disbelief firmly hanging from wire somewhere in Roni’s world for the duration of the night. I needed her hope to get through this, because my trust and faith resided, by necessity, in three of the screwiest people I have ever known.

Chapter 10

As we sat in the car, I wondered what we should do first. Part of me wanted to race to the store to ask Larson about the ledger. I knew he’d be the perfect one to decipher what the numbers in it had to say to us. But I had to put some time between finding the ledger and knowing its contents. I was still too angry with Roni…and not quite ready to know the truth.

Besides, the fireflies may have returned to Mickey but I felt a whole swarm of butterflies aching in my belly over this new discovery. And when the butterflies are fluttering I tend to be a bit too rash. I didn’t want to go to Larson guns blazing. A little more cleaning would probably serve to calm me down. We had another house to attend to.

As we pulled away from Mickey’s place, I took one last look at the mystery vehicle at the curb. I wondered if I was just being paranoid about it.

“Do you think somebody bad owns that car, Dunc?” Mickey asked. I swivelled so quickly that he jumped in his seat. “What?”

“Stop reading my mind, is what.”

“Well. There’s never any strange cars parked on this street. It’s all old people without visitors here. You know that.”

“I was just thinking that, myself,” I said. “It kind of sticks out here like a pickle at an ice cream party. I don’t like it, Mickey. But why would someone trash your house and then leave the car right there in the open? It’s too easy.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Unless it’s stolen maybe.”

***

As we walked through the front door, my first thought was about the police. I couldn’t believe they were leaving us alone, even though they knew both of our houses had been broken into. I found it rather odd that they weren’t on us like glue, tracking our every move. 

“If Roni hid something here, where do you think it’d be, Duncan?” Mickey asked as I absentmindedly tossed my keys where the front hall table usually sat. They hit the wall and slid down behind a pile of shoes that were flung from the closet. Mickey bent to retrieve them and tossed them in his pocket.

I looked around at the whirlwind of chaos and laughed. “Do you think there’s any possible way that whatever it was wasn’t found? Mickey. Look around you. There’s not a doilie unturned. If Roni hid something here, they found it.”

“Well, maybe you have a hidey hole like the one in my floor? Do you?”

“If I do, I don’t know about it,” I said as we entered the kitchen. “Look at this mess. They even unwrapped the freezer meat.”

“It’s starting to stink up the place.”

“Yep,” I said, trying to stop the gag in my throat from coming up. If the meat had thawed and started to turn, they must have broken in to my place a day or so earlier, while I was still fading in and out of consciousness in the hospital. And yet they waited until that day to ransack Mickey’s place.

“Where do we start?”

I went to the cupboard under the sink and grabbed out a large garbage bag and some yellow gloves. “I’m starting with the meat. The sooner we get this out of here the better.”

“Good idea, Dunc.”

“That’s why I get paid the big bucks.”

“I’ll go upstairs and start there,” he said. Mickey has a weak stomach and the smell was obviously getting to him. He looked a little green around the gills. “I’ll pick up your clothes and stuff.”

***

Two garbage bags later and the kitchen was beginning to look more like its old self. The whole time I toiled I was aware of the lack of noise coming from upstairs. After tossing the second bag out the back door I decided to pay Mickey a visit.

He was sprawled across the mattress, which was half on and half off the box-spring. He was buried deep in the Hive ledger and he wore the scrounged up concentration face that always seemed so painful on Mickey.

“Whatcha doing, bud?” I asked. I tried to sit down on the edge of the mattress, but it shifted like a tanking yacht so I jumped back to my feet.

“Anything. Take it. Follow the. Under the big one. The list. Don’t tell. Deeper.” He mumbled random words and appeared to be lost in thought, unaware of my presence.

“Hey. Mickey!”

He jumped and the listing mattress tossed him to the floor.

“Duncan. I forgot you were here.”

“No doubt. You were lost to the world, Mick.” I gestured toward the ledger, which had fallen from his hold and rolled back up into a tube. “Whatcha doing?”

He blushed pure red and rose to his feet, apologetic. “Just looking.”

“What were you saying, though? Sounded like you were doing a lot of talking.”

“Well, nothing. Only. Only it’s filled with words too, Dunc. Like one of those puzzle things where you have to find all the words.”

I stared at the ledger, my pulse quickening.

“And put them together like. To figure out the secret message. Like a movie star’s name or something. Only it’s a lot bigger, Dunc. Like a story.”

I sat on the floor, picked up the ledger and started scanning its pages. Tiny words where there should be numbers. Everywhere. Placed randomly throughout the pages.

“…and when I got to the part about the ladies’ room. Well, that’s when you scared me.”

“What?”

“The ladies’ room. All the other stuff was all jumbled. But then the part about the bees. I got that, Dunc. I figured that part out myself. The bees were easy.”

I desperately flipped pages, scanned line after line of numbers. Nothing was coherent.

“What about the bees, Mickey? What the hell. What are you talking about?” I didn’t realize that my voice was rising with each word. I didn’t notice that I was screaming in his face and that he was cowering further and further away with each word. Until he was back down on the mattress, pressing himself into it and attempting to disappear from what he thought was my anger.

“I’m sorry, Dunc,” he moaned, flinching away from my hostility. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t be sorry. Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what you mean about the bees. I’m not angry, Mickey. I’m just excited. I’m sorry. But you have to tell me what you mean about the bees.”

“The hive.”

He said it as though it would all come clear to me. Like two words would bring the whole picture into focus.

“Mickey. Jesus. Don’t be cryptic. Tell me.”

He grabbed the rolled up ledger from my fist. It was only then that I realized I had been holding it over his head like a weapon. I tried to give myself time to breathe…to calm down. Mickey opened the book and scanned his way through it until he found the part he had been referring to. He handed it up to me, a peace offering.

In the ladies’. This was followed with a thick barrage of numbers. Where the bees buzz. And another assault of numbers. Under their eyes. And at the bottom of the page, after columns and columns of numbers. Everything.

“Everything, what?” I asked. Mickey relaxed slightly and rose from the mattress.

“Everything, Dunc.” He said. “Everything we need to know. All the secrets. They’re hidden in the ladies’ room at the Hive. She hid something there. And she wanted me to know it.”

His fear now turned to pride and he puffed himself up by the strength of this newfound knowledge.

“Oh my God. But wait. Would she make it so obvious? Anybody who found this would be able to figure that out. It’s too simple, Mickey.”

“Maybe she knew I was the only one who knew about the hole in the floor. Maybe—”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t explain why she would hide something at my house.”

I tossed him the ledger and righted the mattress onto the box-spring. I was just about to pick up an overturned dresser when he grabbed my arm.

“But maybe she didn’t.”

“Maybe she didn’t what? Help me with this,” I said. He grabbed an end and together we hauled the dresser back into place.

“Hide something in your place. Maybe she didn’t have to.”

I shook my head. “Nope. She did a weird thing once, Mick. She went into the house once. That Fourth of July. We had a cookout. Everybody was there. Remember? She went into the house for a shirt, but came out without one. I thought of that a while ago. Maybe she was hiding something then.”

He shrugged. I could see his wheels spinning. “Maybe she just wanted it to look that way?”

“Why would she do that?” I asked. But even before the question was out, the answer popped into my head like a sore. And with it, I felt some of the butterflies releasing. “Because somebody who was at that cookout was a somebody who was involved in whatever it was Roni was involved in!”

I struck my forehead to complete the Eureka moment. Mickey’s face lit up. “And she was only throwing them off the scent, Dunc. What she really wanted to do was make them think it. So they wouldn’t find the hole in my closet floor.”

“Ha! Yeah, Mickey. So they wouldn’t find the hole in your closet floor. I wonder if this means that the ledger doesn’t mean anything at all?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know numbers, Dunc. They make me all fuzzy and stuff. That’s why the words stuck out so much.”

“Well, let’s finish cleaning this mess. Then we have to see Larson. Just in case.” I rolled the ledger up and put it in my back pocket. “And maybe you can go through the rest of the words and see if there’s anything else in it that makes sense.”

Mickey beamed with the pride of one who is needed. “Sure thing. I can do that.”

“Great Mick. Then, when you’re done doing that, maybe you can figure out a way for us to sneak into the Hive without landing in the back of Cal’s cruiser.”

“That would be bad, Dunc. That would be the worst thing.”

I allowed his simple but accurate words to linger there, hang in the air about us as we set to our task of righting the rest of the house. There was nothing more to add to them. That was the pickle we were in. We had come to the point where we would have to break the law in order to figure things out.

And though Cal could possibly and finally have his mind put to rest through the outcome of our crime, he’d be the first to throw the book at us. He’d have the key for our cells thrown away long before he’d ever think to ask us why we did it.

Chapter 8

“Well. Would you look at what the cat threw up,” my mother said as she opened the door. “As I live and breathe.”

 

A fuchsia plastic martini glass swayed theatrically in an outstretched hand while a cigarette dangled from the other. I could hear music coming from the back of the house. Ella Fitzgerald. The Ella usually didn’t come out until the bottle was about halfway polished. I knew it was going to be an interesting visit. I smiled.

 

“Entre-vous, my burnt little Injun.” She moved aside to let me in, slopping what was most probably pure vodka onto the threadbare carpet in the tiny front hall. “To what do I owe this great honor?”

 

“Hello, Mother.” I entered the house and kept walking straight through on my way into the living room, talking as I walked. In order to keep on her good side, I made no mention of the booze or the fact that she was in a kimono in the middle of the afternoon. “They told me you came to see me in the hospital. I just wanted to ask you-”

 

“Honey, honey. Wait. Stop,” she pled, following me a bit too quickly down the narrow hallway.

 

I stopped in my tracks and turned to face her.

 

“What is it, Mother?”

 

“Well. I just thought we could talk in the kitchen.” She grabbed my arm and tried to lead me back to the kitchen at the front of the house. “I could fix you a drink. You look like you could use one. You sound as though you could use one.” She looked me up and down, feigning disgust.

 

“But the bar is in the living room.” I pointed.

 

“Yes, yes,” she said, frantically waving away the living room with her cigaretted hand, “but the vodka is in the kitchen. Come on, now. Don’t be a nuisance.”

 

“What’s wrong, Mom? You seem agitated.”

 

“Well, if you must know, nosey parker, I happen to be entertaining a guest at the moment. Not that it’s any of your business.”

 

“Oh.” I could feel myself blush. I needed no more coaxing. I was in the kitchen in seconds and she was right behind me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were…”

 

“Now you do. No bother. Now what are you here for, Duncan? I know it’s not to bring me flowers or Mother’s Day cards. What’s the scoop, poop?”

 

I flinched away from her questions and looked at her. It didn’t take much to see why Mickey didn’t like her. Even happily drunk, she was caustic. “Can we sit down for a sec?”

 

“Lead the way, Duncan. I hope it’s good, though.”

 

I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and sat down at the kitchen table. My mother sat across from me, sitting her cigarette inside the divot of a near full ashtray. I poured myself a few fingers of vodka, straight. It had been a rough few days. I was also hoping it would help my throat.

 

“What’s the skin and bones of your visit, my child?” she asked when I finished swilling down the vodka and didn’t move to say anything. “I mean, besides the celebration of your rebirth from the fire. I have a live one in the lair and you’re wasting valuable time.”

 

There it was. The first class attitude I had come to expect from her.

 

“Yeah. Like I said, they told me you were at the hospital,” I began. I looked at the vodka bottle and pondered what would happen if I took another drink. With almost no food in my belly, I knew I was risking a drunk. But every other indicator screamed, ‘do it’. I twisted off the cap and poured another couple shots.

 

“Well, did you see the papers?” she said. “My boy, it was a virtual media frenzy. You know nothing ever happens in this town but growin’ and cuttin’. Grass, Duncan. That’s our life here. You made page one; you and that fire. I had to make sure you were okay.”

 

“Yes. Well…did you happen to see anybody, Mom? Someone maybe a little big? Muscular? While you were there, did anybody else come to my room?”

 

“That idiot of yours was spread in a smile like a lunatic right there on the TV too. Looking like a rubbed penny.”

 

“Mom. Don’t call Mickey an idiot. I won’t sit here and listen to you-”

 

“The boy’s as slow as molasses and twice as thick.”

 

I drank down the rest of the vodka, slammed the glass down on the table and stood up. My mother gave me a ‘what did I do?’ look, but the damage was done. I had overstayed the amount of time I could tolerate being around her by a few minutes.

 

“Just answer the question, Mom,” I said. “Did you or did you not see a muscular guy in or around my room while you were there? It’s important.”

 

“Well, Duncan,” she said, looking guilty enough for me to worry about what was coming next. “There was this one person there.”

 

I sat back down and gripped my now empty glass. She knew who it was at the hospital and I knew I wasn’t going to like her answer. I held on to that glass with all my strength, waiting for the bottom to fall out of my day.

 

“Well, that look on your face isn’t helping anything, young man. You make me want to not tell you. I certainly don’t want to be the bearer of bad news on a day like today.”

 

“Mom,” I said, grinding my teeth as I spoke. “Speak now.”

 

“You’re making your mother very uncomfortable, Duncan.”

 

I spun in the direction of the voice and nearly fell off of my chair. Almost unconsciously, my hand went into my pocket and felt for Roni’s picture. It was fast becoming a security blanket of sorts. I had brought it out and placed it on the table in front of me before I realized what I was doing.

 

“Cat took your tongue for a run, did it?” my father said. His enormous frame swallowed the doorway. He had gone into prison big and came out bigger. Much bigger.

 

“That little lady there was no angel, you know. Let’s have a look.” He reached for the picture of Roni and it disappeared in his mitt. “Still harboring a bad one for a bad one, are ya?”

 

I grabbed it back from him, pushed my chair out and stood up.

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, attempting to keep my voice down and failing miserably. I swung on my heels. “What the hell is he doing here?”

 

“I told you to stay in the other room, you,” my mother said, wagging a finger from her martini holding hand at my father and causing the drink to spill over the kitchen table. “Duncan, really. I don’t know what you’re getting so excited for. Last time I looked, I was a grown woman. If I want your father here to visit, there’s nothing wrong with that. You really do have to learn to keep your opinions to yourself.”

 

“For Christ’s sake, Mother. The man’s vile.”

 

“I may be vile, but I’ve come here to help you out this time. There’s more to do in the clink than sit and rotate on my own Goddamn thumb. There’s a lot of information floating around in that dive, Duncan. Information you might be interested in if you can get over yourself for one Goddamn minute and hear me out.”

 

He pushed me back into my chair and I slunk down like a scolded child.

 

“Have yourself another drink, sweetie,” my mother said, pouring another couple of fingers of vodka into my glass. She grabbed another glass from the cupboard, half-filled it with vodka and set it at an empty spot at the table. “Here. You might as well take a seat and join us. I want to applaud you on your wonderful hiding abilities.”

 

My father sat down and took a swig of vodka. “For Christ’s sake,” he said, turning to me. “He’s a big boy. No need to play charades with him any longer. I’m staying with your mother, Duncan. There you have it.”

 

“You know,” I began. “I’d love to reminisce with the two of you. Really, I would. But the thought of spending another minute in this house just makes my skin crawl. If you have something to tell me about Roni, can you spit it out. I need to leave here before I go insane. Although, I can’t for the life of me imagine why you would have any.”

 

“A tart like that one gets talked about in the darkest of places, sonny-boy,” my mother said, stifling a laugh.

 

I stood up again, ready to leave.

 

“Wait now, boy. Think about it for a minute. You know as much as I do that the Hive is the biggest dive in town. Don’t you think them that drinks there would be the same that sleeps in the bunks up the hill? There’s always news from home in that hell, and ten-to-one it’s news from the Hive.”

 

He had a point. Now I had a vested interest and I was willing to sit long enough to hear him out. I decided it was time to stop pouring back the vodka though. I pushed back my glass and offered my father my undivided attention. This brought a slimy smile to his face. He folded his new massive arms across his chest and held court.

 

“That fat puke Tate was cleaning money through the Hive. And your little piece of girlie tail was helping him to do it.” He paused long enough to enjoy the look of shock that spread across my face. “Yep. She was keeping the books on the little side job he had with the big men up in Hannaford. Only, word around the pen was that your Roni was skimming some off the top for herself. Tate doesn’t like to spread the wealth, you see.”

 

“There is no way in hell that Tate is responsible for-”

 

“Hold it there, captain. I ain’t saying that Tate did your little darling. I’m guessing he had nothing to do with that. I’m just telling you what I know, and even that is speculation. I wasn’t even going to say anything until you landed a crispy critter in the county hospital. I put two and two together and figured it measured in at about four.”

 

I looked at my mother, who seemed oblivious to everything except for the martini glass in the one hand and the cigarette in the other. It was just as well. I didn’t want her chiming in with her vitriol against Roni. I got up to leave.

“I don’t know how this helps me, Dad,” I began. “So Roni was keeping books. What does that have to do with me? I already have my suspicions about the fire in my garage and it isn’t anybody from the Hive I’m looking at. It’s Cal that I want to speak to. He’s the only one in this town who has anything against me.”

 

“Are you sure of that, Duncan?” He winked at me.

 

Before I could answer, the doorbell went off. Startled, I jumped just enough for my father to notice and laugh.

 

“You always were a nervous little Nancy, Duncan,” he said. “I don’t know where you got that from, because you sure as hell didn’t get it from me.”

 

My mother came to and went to the door, leaving us in the kitchen alone.

 

“Well if it isn’t the simple hero!”

 

“Shit,” I mumbled, racing to the front door to try to stanch the insults before they overwhelmed Mickey and caused him to flee. “What the hell is he doing here?”

 

“What’s that, Sharpie?” my mother said in a mocking tone. “Get your fingers out of your mouth and stop mumbling, will you.”

 

“Is Duncan here?” Mickey squealed in a way that made me realize just how much I hated my mother. “I gotta see him. Is he here?”

 

He cowered in the doorway, looking three shades of pale. His whole body flinched away from my mother’s dominating pose.

 

“What is it, Mickey? What’s wrong?”

 

He had been crying.

 

“They messed up my house, Dunc. Everything’s all over the place. It’s all tored up like a hurricane hit.”

 

“Oh man. It’s okay. It’s okay.” I put an arm on his shoulder and he crumbled into me for just a split second…long enough for me to get my back up in preparation for the shot I figured my mother would send our way. But to her credit, she said nothing.

 

“We gotta go fix it, Duncan.”

 

“Okay. We will. Don’t worry about it. We’ll-”

 

“I hope this love parade is over soon, fellas,” she interrupted. She was never one to disappoint. I knew she couldn’t keep quiet. “I’d like to shut my door and get on with my life here.”

 

“I think we’re done here, anyway. Tell Dad good-bye.”

 

“Tell him yourself,” he said. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story? I didn’t come to the hospital to tell you about a little ledger full of dirty money, Duncan. There is more.”

 

“Later, Dad. We have to go.”

 

“His little simpleton is upset,” my mother said. “Can’t you tell they-”

 

I turned so violently in her direction that I cut her words off mid-flow. I think that was the closest I had ever come to hitting my own mother. Without another word, I tugged Mickey by the arm and led him to the car. Seconds later the front door slammed shut and my visit home was officially over.

Chapter 6

“You were about this close to intubation, Mister,” the on duty nurse said, waking me from a shallow sleep. She held up a pinch to demonstrate how close I had come to getting a tube shoved down my throat. Her words felt like an admonition; as if I had intentionally locked myself into a burning garage. Tube or no tube, it felt like my lungs were dryer than death and twice as ugly. I offered her a mischievous smile to make up for my perceived sins.

“Your friend saved your life, you know,” she continued, adjusting the nose tube that shot a steady cold stream of air into me. I squinted to read her nameplate. Thelma Reynolds. I hadn’t yet decided if she was kind or mean. Her words said nice, but the harsh bun of grey-streaked black hair pulled to the back of her head and the frown creases around her mouth said otherwise.

“If he hadn’t hauled you out of that garage, I’d be talking to an empty bed right now. Just as well he did… they think I’m crazy enough around here as it is. No need they see me shoutin’ curses at empty sheets and half-fluffed pillows.”

I smiled and looked to the chair at my bedside. “Where’s-”

“Now don’t get yourself back on the talk circuit just yet, Mr. Wiseguy. You’ll need to save your lungs the anguish.” She stood back and looked me over. “There. That’s better. I don’t know how those things go all askew. How’s that for fresh air?”

With her thick arms crossed, her obscenely ample bosom became even more pronounced. I raised my eyebrows in reply, afraid to open my mouth to speak again.

“You’ll be getting a masked treatment in just a few that’ll put you into your second life. Now if you were a cat, that’d be a good thing. I don’t have to tell you that you’re not. After this treatment, it’ll be good as rain if you stayed away from burning buildings for a very long time. Always would be your best bet.

“I don’t have to tell you this, either. But I’m gonna anyway. I always give the most advice to those who can’t argue or escape. Unless you’re asbestos or Satan, it’s best not to be caught dancing in flames. We can only clean your lungs so many times, Mister.”

Again, I felt admonished. I looked to the chair where Mickey had been the last time I was conscious.

“Him? I sent that one home,” she said. “No place for him to be, sittin’ waiting for you to stir. How are those burns treatin’ you?” She unfolded her arms and moved to roll me onto my side.

It was the first time I felt the pain since it happened. As soon as she had made me aware of it, though, it was the only thing I could think of… even from within the medicated cloud I found myself in.

“These dressings will stay on until the next shift change,” Nurse Reynolds said. She tsked a couple times while inspecting my back; touched a few raw undressed places, causing me to wince and pull back.

“That really hur-”

“Ut tut tut. I told you not to speak. It’s gonna hurt. They’re burns. That’s what they do.” She lowered me gently back in place. “Nothing too too bad, though. Now the papers are gonna want to talk to you, too, like they spoke to that Mickey fella.”

It was so hard to keep track of the conversation. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the medication dripping through my intravenous, or the manic way Thelma Reynolds chose to carry on a conversation.

“Your friend was interviewed yesterday by the Tribune,” she said. I gave her a look of bewilderment. “He did save your life, you know. You were locked into that garage good and tight. Someone out there doesn’t think much of you; that’s for sure. They’d sooner cook ya, as look at ya.”

I scribbled furiously into my hand with a non-existent pen, hoping she would understand the international sign for give me a pen and paper.

“Well, they just happen to be right here.” She opened the top drawer in the bedside table and handed me what I needed. “Make it quick, though. There’s more than you here.”

What day is it? Is Mickey hurt? Do they know what happened?

“Well, you’ve been a guest at the hospital for two days now.” Her index finger went over the list one item at a time. “Your friend is fine. He cut himself on the hand… two stitches-nowhere near as bad as your gashes-and burned his elbow. Just a minor burn. I’m not much of a detective, so I can only speculate. You made somebody mad enough to cook you.”

I brought the pen back to the paper, but she decided to keep on going.

“Your mother was here just a little while ago. If you don’t mind me saying, she didn’t look marathon ready. I was tempted to wake you and tell you to make room for her.

“Only one more visitor while you were sleeping. A big one.”

“What did he look-”

“Do I honestly have to knot a grown man’s tongue?”

I jotted fat? down on the paper and raised my eyebrows in response, prompting her to answer the question.

“Well, he was more Arnold big than Fat Albert big. He said he’d be back later when you were awake. Now I have to go. Rounds don’t stop at you; despite the fact that you’re the biggest news this town has had in months.”

As she was walking out, I quickly jotted down a final reply and tapped the pen rapidly against the pad to get her attention.

Thank you.

“Wasn’t a bother,” she said on her way out the door. “I do have to tell you though. Those vows of silence… they’re Thelma’s orders, not the doctor’s. I’ve been doing this for a long time though, so I know what shakes. You best keep to no-speak for the time being.”

She was gone before I could protest. I looked around uneasily, wracking my brain to come up with who it could have been who paid me a visit while I was out. It was obvious I had to leave. I examined myself and couldn’t see any reason why I had to stay. My back was a blister of heat; my head a fog of thoughts; my hand and arm wrapped and throbbing; and my throat and lungs a gravel mess, but I figured it would be best if I took my chances and took a stroll.

Leaving a hospital in the middle of the afternoon was a lot easier than I expected it would be. I hauled my coat on and merely slipped to the stairwell, made my way down the four flights and let myself out. It was moving on from there that would have proven difficult had Mickey not been sitting on a bench in the adjacent park.

Though he looked forlorn to the point of miserable, I was relieved to see him sitting there. I knew that a man in next to nothing but a coat would somehow be less conspicuous if he was with somebody. Besides that, it was a good time to thank him for being at the right place at the right time.

“Duncan,” he said as he spotted me crossing the road. “You should be inside. You should-”

“Don’t worry about that,” I interrupted. My throat screamed in protest and I suddenly knew that Thelma Reynolds was a very smart woman. “How long have you been here? Did you see any big guys coming or going this morning?”

“Nope. But you should be-”

“Mickey. No. Someone was here to see me. Someone big. The nurse told me he was there when I was sleeping. I don’t know who it was and I don’t want to find out. You have to go get the car, buddy.”

I saw the look of terror in his face and quickly recalled the last time I allowed him to take the wheel. We had ended up in the ditch by Coreman’s Creek and I needed a tow truck to haul me out. Instead of calling myself an ass for allowing him to drive, I screamed bloody murder at Mickey for being dumb enough to land in the ditch.

“You’ll be fine. There’s no mud on city streets. Just zip home, get the keys and drive it over. I’ll take over from there.”

“Oh, Duncan,” he moaned. “I’d rather not. I have to work soon, anyway.”

“I’m not sure what time it is, but it looks like hours before your shift starts, Mickey. Don’t tell me you’re going to leave me here in a hospital gown and a coat. I need you now. I need you to help me.”

He stood and pace for half a minute, knowing he was going to do as I asked but not wanting to in a very big way.

“Okay. But if I get caught-”

“You won’t get caught. Nobody’s looking-”

“Cal’s been all over me the last two days, Duncan. All over me.” He noticed the look of panic on my face. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell him a thing. He’s getting pretty angry though. I thought he was gonna hit me, he was so mad this morning.”

I sat down on the bench he had vacated.

“Don’t worry. We have nothing to hide. It’s not like we did anything. We have to remember that. We’re innocent.” Though I had never felt more guilty of a thing in my entire life. I felt like it was me who took the life out of Roni and left her in that field. And I was almost certain that somebody out there was going to sooner or later make it look like I had.

“I’ll be right back. Stay right here. Promise. Promise me you’ll stay right here.”

“I promise. I’ll be glued to this spot.” He looked leery, as though he thought I would dart the moment his back was turned. “Bring me a change of clothes too, would ya Mick. The key’s under the step where I showed you.”

“I don’t like this,” he said as he walked off in the direction of my house. “I don’t like it one bit.”

As soon as he was out of sight I realized I hadn’t thanked him for pulling me out of the garage. It would have to wait.

I felt apprehensive. I was sure that I stuck out like a tiger in a fishbowl. I got up and walked further into the park and found a bench under an elm. I felt slightly less conspicuous there. I nervously awaited Mickey’s arrival while I prayed for the miracle that would get him there in one piece.