Cracked

by Barbra Leslie

  Then he sat down on the edge of my bed and cried. Hard. Not like, I didn’t get the promotion and my wife is leaving me kind of crying, but it’s the end of the world as I know it kind of crying.

  “Oh, Darren,” I said. I sat up, with difficulty, the pain in my head stabbing in different directions. “Darren. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Danny,” he said. “Don’t ever do this to me again.”

  “Get hit on the head?” I said, fingering the bump back there. Ouch.

  “Take off and not tell me where you’re going. Disappear, Danny.” He was crying full out now, like he was eight years old. “I can’t do this by myself. Don’t leave me by myself.”

  We sat like that for a while. I patted Darren’s back like Mom used to do, and promised him that I would never, ever leave him again. That even if I was going to do something stupid, I would tell him, or bring him. For the rest of my life, amen.

  I knew even as I said it that it was a promise I might not keep.

  “She didn’t look like her, Beanpole,” Darren said, trying to clean his face up. I was so proud of him for not apologizing for crying, or trying to hide it. My heart was swelling so much with loving him that I thought I would burst. “I mean, it was Ginger. Don’t get any wrong ideas. But… it wasn’t our Ginger.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked quietly, still stroking his back. I was frozen inside, but I didn’t want to interrupt his flow.

  Darren shrugged. “She looked… homeless. Not cared for.”

  “But she was in a morgue. They must have cleaned her up.”

  “I don’t know,” Darren said. He got up and walked to the end of the bed. “Danny. Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? I love you more than any other living person.”

  “I know,” I said. I did, all of a sudden. And it made me want to live.

  “She looked like you, Danny,” he said. “She looked like you do, right now.”

  I looked at my hands. “Darren. I still haven’t seen the note.” He wandered to the window and looked out, not saying anything. He glanced outside the room.

  “Detective Miller is here. I think he wants to be the one to show it to you.”

  Danielle, my sister, the note started, and I laughed and cried. Ginger had always loved Elton John’s song “Daniel.”

  I’m sorry that it had to end this way. I know it’s going to hit you hard, and I wish I could change what’s happening.

  You have chosen a way of life. I wanted to see what you saw. I wanted to change my life. I wanted to take it all back. Except the boys. Okay, Danny? Not the twins.

  I’m in so much pain, Danny. I’ve tried so hard to be strong like you.

  Take care of the boys. Please. I don’t know if Fred can.

  You are the wind beneath my wings. Ha, ha. Except that I mean it. You are.

  Love and Kisses,

  Ginger

  P.S. Find Jack.

  Ginger had written it. It was weird, and I would have to process it later, alone, but it was most definitely her handwriting, and the in-jokes were Ginger. The music stuff, the “Danielle, my sister” and “wind beneath my wings” stuff. The syntax was hers, though it rang a little strange. But she was being made to write it, sometime before that needle went into her arm. It didn’t make much sense to me, not really. But she was still writing to me, even if they were telling her most of what to say. She was talking to me.

  I had to find her boys.

  “Detective Miller,” I said, looking up at him after reading the note a few times. “I want to tell you something, and I want to know if I can trust you.” Darren had gone to call our brothers and tell them I was all right. Or alive, at any rate. Detective French wasn’t around, for which I was grateful.

  Miller rubbed his palm across his forehead a few times quickly. “Danny. I don’t know if you can trust me.”

  “What a shitty answer,” I said.

  “If you’re about to confess that you know something about your sister’s homicide and want me to keep it in strictest confidence between the two of us…”

  “Get over yourself,” I said. “If I did – which, of course, I do not, idiot – I wouldn’t tell the likes of you.” My head was pounding worse than ever. Didn’t they dispense pain medication here? In this establishment?

  “Okay, then,” Miller said, crossing his legs. He looked like he wanted a cigarette. Join the club, my friend.

  “What have you figured out about Ginger’s life? I mean, in the six months or year or whatever?”

  Miller sighed and uncrossed his legs, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Danny. I don’t believe you had any part in your sister’s murder,” he said.

  “Why, thank you,” I said.

  “But I do believe that you were involved in her death,” he continued.

  “Oh,” I said, after a pause.

  “For some reason, Ginger became Danielle,” he said. “She managed to get I.D. in your name. We’re still working on that, but it’s not that hard if you have money and connections. She lost a lot of weight, changed her appearance.”

  “She was still prettier,” I said.

  Miller shrugged. “Personal taste,” he replied.

  “Bless,” I said, smiling. It hurt my face to smile. I stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Bless your heart. We used to say it back home.”

  “Danny,” Miller began slowly. He took my hand. Oh dear. “In light of your nephews’ abduction, Fred’s lawyer was able to get him another bail hearing, and he’s been released. He had to surrender his passport and he’ll be wearing an ankle monitor. But other than you and his lawyer, no one visited him in jail. At the moment we can’t prove he had anything to do with whoever snatched his sons.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t think straight. No surprise there.

  “But the DNA,” I started, and Miller nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “And without giving everything away, that’s obviously a big part of the prosecution’s case. But he was her husband,” he added. “It’ll be easy enough for him to explain that away, I would think.”

  “But you still think he did it,” I said.

  Miller squeezed my hand. “Danny, I’m really sorry, but I’d bet my life – and more importantly, my pension,” he smiled, “that Fred Lindquist killed your sister, and that he’s the mastermind behind his sons’ disappearance.”

  “One way or another, we have to get them back,” I said. I would think about the rest of it later. Ginger was gone. Right now, we had to make sure her boys were safe. Somehow, in my addiction and my grief for Ginger, I thought that they would be fine, that this was all some very bad practical joke, or a misunderstanding. The boys knew who took them. The police had said that. So if the boys knew the woman, she would take care of them.

  It wasn’t until now, until Dom’s death, that I realized that this might be different than that. Bigger.

  “We will,” Miller said. “I have a feeling that this is going to get a lot harder for you, before it becomes easier. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not really.” I tried to shift, make myself more comfortable. It wasn’t working.

  “Danny,” Miller said again. “We think whoever kidnapped the boys was also involved in Dominic’s death.”

  “And they drugged me,” I said.

  “You took tainted drugs,” Miller corrected. “You chose to buy and consume drugs, and they were mixed with animal tranquilizers. We haven’t proven that it was meant for you.” He squeezed my hand. I hadn’t realized that he was still holding it. “The drugs could have been meant for Dominic Pastore alone,” he continued. “After all, he’s the one who was murdered. But whoever killed him, saved you.”

  My head was coming off my body. “What?”

  “Danny. Didn’t anyone talk to you about this yet?” I shook my head. “That needle in your arm was basically an amphetamine cocktail, with adrenaline. You were meant to come to. In fact, I’m not sure why you didn’t wake up when they were killin
g Dominic,” he said. “But whoever did this didn’t want you to die.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Not yet,” he agreed.

  I thought for a second. “Was it the same person who hit me in the head at Fred and Ginger’s place? In the bathroom?”

  Miller shrugged. “We found nothing, other than a ladder and a few footprints under the nanny’s window. But the nanny’s been gone for a month now.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why has the nanny gone? They have twin boys. They have a butler, for Christ’s sake. And a driver, and a maid, and a gardener. Where’s the fucking nanny?”

  Miller looked at me. “We’re checking into it,” he said.

  “Did the coroner finish a toxicology screen on Ginger?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered slowly.

  “And?”

  “Heroin. But much too pure. It probably would have killed a seasoned junkie, let alone a first-time user like your sister.”

  I breathed. “Could you ask the nurse to get me something for my head, Detective?” I said.

  “Call me Harry,” Miller said. He looked like Columbo again today. I almost liked him again today. He got up and went to the door, out to talk to the nurse. “Hey, Danny?”

  “Yo,” I said, my eyes closed.

  “You up for this?” I opened my eyes, and he looked at me. He reminded me of Darren, for a minute. “You’re at the centre of a very big shitstorm.”

  “Harry,” I said. “I was born for this. Couldn’t you tell?” I shut my eyes again.

  “Yes, Danny, I could tell,” he said. He started to open the door.

  “Hey. Harry,” I called out. He turned around. “Watch out for my brother. He’s not as…” I waved my hand.

  “Tough as you are?” Miller said. He was smiling but serious.

  “Something like that,” I answered. Miller paused in the doorway.

  “I have a lot more questions for you,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “And I have a lot more for you, too.”

  “But right now?”

  “Yeah. Sleep.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. I could feel Miller watching me for a minute before he slipped away.

  * * *

  I woke up hours later. It was dark, but I wasn’t alone. Miller was sitting in the corner of my room on a chair. He smiled at me.

  “You seem pretty accident-prone,” he said. “I thought I’d better keep an eye on you. Besides,” he added, “I’m not much of a sleeper.” Join the club.

  I held my hand out and he took it. I pulled him closer, so he was sitting on the bed. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. He pushed some hair off my forehead.

  “I like you,” I said. “I don’t know why.”

  “Thanks. I like you, too.”

  He kissed me, and it was nice. More than nice. And under the circumstances, very, very weird. I liked the faint taste of nicotine in his mouth. There was something strangely familiar about it. About him.

  But there was nothing about him that reminded me of Jack. That was a good thing. And a bad thing.

  “Lock the door,” I said.

  And he did.

  * * *

  Sex in a hospital bed is about as comfortable as it sounds. Even while it was happening, I felt like it was more about forgetting than any real feelings of desire. I was half aware that I was using Miller as a crack substitute and he was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve that. In the real world, when my twin sister hadn’t just been murdered and my nephews hadn’t been abducted by someone posing as me, I might have even fallen for the guy.

  If, you know, he wasn’t a drug-hating cop and I wasn’t a cop-hating junkie.

  I pretended to sleep afterwards. When Miller left the room, I tried to clear my mind. The last two days had taken their toll on me – aside from the hit on the head, I had consumed my fair share of crack mixed with a substance that could have killed me, and then a nice injection of an amphetamine cocktail. My new friend had had his tongue torn out of his living body, two feet from me, while I was unconscious a few feet away. I had six stitches in my foot from broken glass I had run through in the motel parking lot. My sister was dead – really dead, apparently, though I had hoped otherwise.

  And it seemed that I had just had a quickie in my hospital bed with the detective in charge of the investigation. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing, and I knew enough about my own addict psychology to know that he was a drug substitute. But I still felt disgusted with myself.

  I knew that eventually, despite the police telling them to stay away, it would only be a matter of days before my other brothers would arrive at my bedside. Between all three of them and the power of their collective charm and influence, they would find out everything they could from the police about the investigation – both Ginger’s murder and the boys’ disappearance – and they would probably find me a nice rehab facility down here. Drug rehabs were a grown industry in Southern California, and having me stuck in a hospital bed after my little adventure at the Sunny Jim would give them the perfect opportunity for me to detox and get talked into some facility in Malibu that catered to entitled drunks, trust fund coke fiends, and oxyheads.

  I could be protected, guarded, cleaned and polished. And returned to what? My apartment in Toronto with my cigarette-burned old couch and walls that reeked of smoke. No job and no real friends left who weren’t addicts.

  No Jack. No Ginger.

  I remembered the pledge I had made with Darren on the plane. I was going to kill whoever was responsible for this. There was even less hesitation in my heart now than there had been then. Not only had this happened to Ginger, but it had happened because of me, and whoever did it was watching me. Closely. I had no idea why, but whatever it was about, Ginger had known. She knew, long before she was killed, that something was going on that involved me. She hadn’t just been involved to try and save me from a future full of crack. She was my twin sister, three and a half minutes older. She had died, in part, so that I wouldn’t have to.

  I was sure of it. My heart started to pound.

  I ripped the sheet and blanket off myself and tried to stand. My foot was bandaged – the stitches. Where were the painkillers? I sat back down and pushed the button to ring for the nurse.

  “What’s the problem?” a stout, middle-aged woman said, approaching me a minute or two later. Her skin was the color of mahogany, and had the same sheen. She was beautiful. If a little cranky.

  “Can I get anything to help with the pain?” I asked. “My sister was murdered and my nephews have been kidnapped and I have to help.” I was babbling. I was sincere and yet somewhere in the back of my brain I knew I was playing her, and felt ashamed. But I knew that if she knew the whole story, she would forgive me. “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Wanda,” the woman answered, pointing at her name tag. She motioned, slightly impatiently, for me to lean back on the bed. I did, and she gently took the dressing off my foot and looked at it. I said nothing. She then checked the chart hanging at the end of my bed, and moved closer to check the dressing on my head. She snapped her pen decisively.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ll get Dr. Ortiz to pop in and check you out. See if we can do something for you.”

  “Wanda,” I said. “How long will that take?”

  She looked at her watch. “This hour? Forty, forty-five minutes. You’re not critical, you know,” she said, looking at me. There was a lot behind that look. Nurses know drug-seeking behaviour when they see it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do know. But,” and here, I’m ashamed to say that I cried a little, and I didn’t have to try. It was a new, but honest, skill. “Wanda. I’m scared. My sister’s dead. I’ve been through a lot. I need some help,” I said. “You have family?” I asked her, reaching for the tissues on my bedside table.

  “Do I have family,” she asked the ceiling. “Honey, you don’t even know,” she answered. I nodded,
encouraging. “Four kids, four sisters, a mama, and a daddy in a wheelchair,” she said.

  I stopped crying and smiled. “Shit,” I said. Wanda laughed.

  “Shit,” she agreed. We looked at each other.

  “You love your family?” I asked her.

  “What do you think,” Wanda said. She played with her I.D. badge, which was pinned to the pocket of her scrubs.

  “I don’t know. But I do,” I said. “My sister Ginger was murdered, and whoever did it is either trying to kill me, or pin it on me, or send me a message,” I said. “I’m not from around here, you know.”

  “No kidding,” she said dryly. “I could tell by your tan.”

  “Ha,” I said, smiling at her and looking at my deathly pale limbs. “I’ve made some mistakes, these last couple of years. I need to make things right. For my sister.”

  Wanda was still as a statue. She looked at me. “What do you want,” she said.

  “I just need some painkillers,” I answered. “Nothing too strong, but not by IV. Just a couple of Percocet before rounds.”

  “Just Percocet?” She looked at me. “Do you know how regulated narcotics are in hospitals these days? I do know that you have a protective detail at the door, so I guess I believe your story. At least some of it,” she said. “But I am not putting my job on the line for you.”

  “Fine,” I answered, throwing the bedclothes back. “Tylenol then. Lots and lots of it.”

  10

  I wasn’t sure Wanda would come back, or if she did, if she would have Miller or the cop at the door with her. I gave it 50-50 odds whether she would rat on me so I couldn’t leave.

  In twelve minutes – but who’s counting – she returned with a heated blanket, inside of which she pulled a set of Hello Kitty scrubs. And two Tylenol.

  And gave me a look that said I had better not complain. So I smiled, popped the Tylenol and pulled on the scrubs.

  “He’s gone to the washroom,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me. “If you’re going, go.”

  “Will you get in trouble?” I didn’t know why I was asking, as it wasn’t going to make a difference to whether I left or not.

  She shook her head. “I’m the mean-ass bitch around here,” she said. “They would never believe I helped you. Besides, not my job to be anybody’s warden.”