Trouble in Mind

by Michael Wiley

  The KelTec weighed against Kelson’s ribs as he climbed from the BMW and walked to the alley. Bicho usually opened shop at nine in the morning and disappeared around noon or after the last stragglers stumbled up and laid balled dollar bills in his palm. Now it was midnight, and the street was empty except for a van idling at the curb a half block away and a man smoking a cigarette outside a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The kid shivered in the cold.

  ‘Where’s the boss?’ Kelson asked.

  Bicho nodded him into the alley – off video but in the sightline of Toselli at the far end. Kelson followed the kid past a pile of broken wood pallets and an upended trash barrel to where the light dimmed. Another two steps would dissolve him in the dark.

  Kelson stopped. ‘Where’s—’

  ‘You got the money?’ Bicho asked.

  Kelson pulled a wad of fifties and twenties from inside his jacket. He fanned the bills so the boy could see. ‘Your turn.’

  But Bicho swept his gun from his pocket. ‘You’re a cop.’

  Kelson’s fear felt like a blade on his neck. ‘Huh?’

  ‘A narc.’

  Undercover cops trained for moments like this – in sessions paid for by taxpayers, in conversations with other undercover cops, in sweaty nightmares. Kelson forced a grin. ‘All right, all right, you don’t want my money, I know people that do.’ He stuck the bills back in his jacket – and his hand came out with the KelTec.

  The sound of gunshots slammed against the alley walls. The noises came so fast that one seemed to overtake the other in a single explosion.

  Kelson and the boy crashed to the cold pavement.

  Last thing Kelson saw, Bicho’s pip of a gun flashed in the dark alley.

  Last thing he saw, his own hands flung from his body as if his arms detached at his shoulders.

  Last thing, he was falling, falling, and the fifties and twenties scattered in the windless air like a blizzard.

  Narcotics cops swarmed from their posts, their boots and vinyl glinting in the dark, their guns hot in their hands. One cop radioed for help and swung his pistol left and right in case Bicho had armed friends. Others rounded the wall into the alley and ran to Kelson. He had a neat bloody pock in his forehead. He looked dead. Coming from the far end, Toselli reached the boy first. Bicho had a hole like a melon in his chest. Toselli saw right through to the bloody pavement. He drew a sharp breath and shouldered through the other cops. For a moment, it looked as if he would slug Kelson to bring him to life. Instead, he slapped him with an open palm, the meat of his hand cracking against Kelson’s cheekbone, spraying blood.

  One of the other cops said, ‘What are you—’

  Like a diver plunging into a black lake, Toselli sucked a breath and mashed his lips to Kelson’s. He gave him life from his own lungs. When he came up – eyes wet with tears, lips oily with blood – he drew another breath. Then he plunged into another kiss of life, another gift of what only God could give if you believed in God and something just as miraculous if you didn’t.

  For twenty minutes, as an ambulance zigged through city streets toward the alley, Toselli breathed for Kelson. When other cops offered to take a turn, he ignored them. He bucked off the supporting hands they rested on his back. More than a lover, more than a father, Toselli claimed Kelson’s body as his own.

  Then the ambulance crunched over the ice and garbage into the alley, its siren screaming between the brick walls of the abutting buildings. Toselli stopped and stared down at Kelson. Then Kelson, as if responding to his friend’s fierce will, breathed once on his own. That was the second time Toselli saved him.

  The paramedics strapped an oxygen mask over Kelson’s face and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.

  The siren screamed again, and the ambulance backed from the alley. Far, far away, Kelson heard a metallic voice – something singing, something of bells.

  FOUR

  Two years after that dark, bloody night, the white walls in Sam Kelson’s office were bare. His desktop was bare too. A plain light fixture hung from the middle of the ceiling. A gray metal file cabinet stood against the wall behind his desk chair. A gray all-weather carpet covered the floor. A woman sat in the client chair across the empty desk from him.

  She was dressed all in pink.

  ‘If I hire you, can you be discreet?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Kelson said.

  ‘I can’t trust you with a secret?’ She said her name was Trina Felbanks, and she’d called Kelson’s office at nine that morning and come in at ten.

  ‘Not if you want to keep it a secret,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  So he told her. Even if he didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t help himself. ‘I used to be an undercover cop. Narcotics. For eight years, my survival depended on how well I lied. One night, I didn’t lie well enough. A seventeen-year-old street dealer shot me in the head.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman said. She looked about thirty, with short red hair parted at the side.

  ‘Left frontal lobe,’ Kelson said. ‘In the hospital and later at rehab, I laughed for no reason. I walked into doorframes. I said everything that crossed my mind. The bullet cored the part of my brain that let me keep my thoughts to myself. The doctors call it disinhibition. They say they don’t remember ever seeing it as bad as with me. I’ve also got something called autotopagnosia.’

  She looked uncomfortable. ‘You don’t need to—’

  ‘Actually, I do. I can’t help myself. I’m much better now. I make it through doorways ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I watch whole movies without sobbing. I’ve still got the disinhibition, but I’ve stopped yelling at people on the sidewalk and screaming out my window when I drive. Mostly. Still, if you ask me a question, I’ll answer every time. If you don’t ask a question, I might tell you anyway.’

  She stood up and backed toward the door. ‘Thanks for your honesty,’ she said. ‘And your … openness. But I think I’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m good at what I do,’ he said. ‘Very good. That’s the truth. The department put me on disability and gave me a payout that covered my mortgage. For eighteen months, I—’

  ‘Stop,’ she said.

  He didn’t even pause. ‘I lived with my wife and daughter in my paid-off house. I insulted telemarketers. I swore at the mailman. I propositioned the pizza delivery girl. I was obnoxious in every way you can think of. Then my wife kicked me out.’

  ‘Enough,’ said the redhead.

  ‘So I rented an apartment – a studio with a separate kitchenette, but enough for me – and I set up this office, got a private license, and advertised myself to do jobs like the one you’re going to pay me to do.’

  The woman asked, ‘Do you always talk so much?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does it annoy people?’

  ‘My wife divorced me. My eleven-year-old daughter seems to like it, though.’

  ‘Right.’ She looked around the office. ‘You’ve had this office for a while? When are you going to—’

  ‘Wall art gives me a headache,’ he said. ‘Clutter does.’

  ‘At least you could replace the carpet.’

  ‘Outdoor carpet scrubs clean better than indoor. Blood and—’

  ‘That’s more than I want to know,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She came back and sat. ‘Do many of your clients bleed on your carpet?’

  ‘I don’t have many clients,’ he said. ‘But one never knows.’

  ‘And if one did know, one would tell me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I guess that’s reassuring – in a way,’ she said. ‘Do you have a gun?’

  He tapped the desk. ‘I keep a laptop and a stapler in the top drawer, a picture of my daughter in the middle, and a Springfield XD-S semiautomatic pistol in the bottom. I’ve strapped a P3AT KelTec under the desk.’

  ‘You’re very forthcoming. Do some people appreciate that?’

  ‘No.’

/>   ‘Have you ever shot anyone?’

  ‘Sure. The seventeen-year-old who put the hole in my head.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Alive. Which is more than I would be if I hadn’t shot him.’ He told it all – all except the one point that never came unbidden to his lips, which was strange since that point, that question, haunted his thoughts more than anything else. Who shot first – Bicho or Kelson?

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a try.’

  ‘Because I shot a seventeen-year-old?’

  ‘Because you seem trustworthy. And because you apparently will do whatever it takes.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said.

  She pulled an envelope from her purse. ‘My brother is selling prescription drugs to his friends. Hydrocodone. Fentanyl. Anything he can get his hands on. I want him to stop.’

  ‘Where does he get them?’

  ‘He’s a pharmacist.’

  ‘That’s bad.’

  ‘I know it’s bad. That’s why I want you to stop him. Scare him before he gets caught.’

  ‘Is he a user?’

  ‘That’s the funny thing. He knows what the drugs do. He barely touches them.’

  ‘He sounds like a jerk. He needs a kick in the ass.’

  ‘I don’t want you to hurt him.’

  ‘I only hurt people who hurt other people.’

  She gave him the envelope and he looked inside.

  A loose-leaf sheet of paper said Christian Felbanks worked at Lakewood Pharmacy on West Fullerton. He had a condo within walking distance, on Ashland. A photo showed a pale thirty-six-year-old with thinning dishwater-blond hair and glasses. An index card gave the name and numbers of the woman who sat across from Kelson – Trina Felbanks, a local phone, an email address.

  She reached into her purse and asked, ‘Do you mind if I pay you in cash? Unlike you, I value discretion. If Christian ever learns I hired you—’

  ‘I’ll tell him if he asks,’ Kelson said. ‘Can’t help it.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ll deny it. And you’ll have nothing to prove it – just a personal knowledge of who I am, which anyone can find out.’

  She laid a stack of twenties on the desktop, and a low pain niggled in Kelson’s skull above his left ear. ‘That works for me,’ he said, and swept the bills into a drawer.

  She stood up to go, but before she reached the door, Kelson said, ‘Wow.’

  She stopped. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Sorry – Just admiring your … all of you.’

  ‘You were checking out my ass?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘When I was a kid, I had a dog like you,’ she said. ‘Is this how it went with the pizza delivery girl?’

  ‘It’s how it started.’

  She began to leave again, then stopped. ‘The thing is, you’re not bad yourself, for a man who got shot in the head.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ Kelson said. ‘My left eye sags. The surgeons did their best.’

  ‘Your face has character,’ she said.

  ‘So there’s hope for me?’ he said.

  ‘You mean, like with you and me? You’re really asking that?’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘No, Mr Kelson,’ she said. ‘There’s no hope for you. Try again with the pizza girl.’

  ‘The restaurant put me on a list,’ he said. ‘They won’t deliver to me.’

  ‘Good move on their part,’ she said, and went out the door.

  FIVE

  Kelson sat alone in his office. Pleased he had work. Pleased he hadn’t embarrassed himself any more than he usually did. Then he took the Springfield from the desk drawer, released the magazine, and rolled it in his palm. ‘Some men knock on wood or cross their fingers,’ he told the pistol, and he rolled the magazine a second time. ‘Some men hold their breath as they pass cemeteries.’ He felt the cool metallic weight. ‘Some wiggle the doorknob when they leave the office.’ He snapped the magazine in again and said, ‘Me? I’ve got you, babe.’ He tucked the pistol into his belt holster and put on a jacket.

  Outside, the March day was bone-chilling. Worse than the bitter dry days of January. When, at the end of the month, the first promises of spring blew in, they would be, like the rest of the month, cold and wet. Kelson loved March days anyway, as he loved all the seasons in the cold, hard city, and as he loved the millions of people who lived and died there.

  ‘It’s a great day to be alive,’ he said to the garage attendant before riding the elevator to the third floor. He drove a burnt-orange Dodge Challenger – fast and sleek, though it looked as if he was trying to compensate for something, which he was. He bought it a month after he got out of rehab. ‘This car is more than a pretense,’ he’d told the bewildered Dodge salesman. ‘It’s an ambition.’

  In the garage elevator, he patted the pistol on his side. His therapist advised against guns. Brain injury victims have trouble with impulse control, he said, and the Percocet Kelson took to control the pain doubled the risk.

  Kelson reassured the therapist. ‘Even if I want to kill you, which I have the training to do with or without a gun – with a spoon, say, or the pen you’re using – I wouldn’t do it.’

  For his next session, Kelson was assigned a new therapist. Her name was Sheila Prentiss, though she went by Dr P. She had a sense of humor and kept a gun of her own under a seat cushion during all therapy sessions.

  The first time they met, she asked, ‘You ever hear of a guy named Phineas Gage?’

  ‘I busted his brother for crack on South Jefferson,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Must’ve been a different one. A hundred and fifty years ago, Phineas worked on a railroad gang in Vermont, blasting rocks. One day, a charge went off early and shot a three-foot iron bar through his skull.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Kelson said.

  ‘The rod destroyed his left frontal lobe,’ Dr P said. ‘He survived. He even kept his memory. But he acted like a bastard to his friends. Became foul-mouthed. Started fights. Still, the newspapers wrote him up as a medical miracle – a living, breathing man with a hole in his brain. But compared to you, he was an amateur. It’s hard, I know, and it will stay hard, but believe it or not, you’re a lucky man. Your injuries are localized, and, of course, you got good, quick care.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘It seems your disinhibition mostly affects your verbal functions. That’s rare, though not unheard of. See this?’ She pointed at a diagram on her desk. ‘That’s your frontal operculum. It controls your ability to use language. And see this?’ She indicated a point to one side of the operculum. ‘That’s where you took the worst damage. We don’t know exactly how this works, but it seems this area regulates how much you say, which also means how much you don’t say. With your wound, the function is severely diminished.’

  ‘Will it get better?’

  ‘Will your brain figure out how to work around it? Honestly, we don’t know. I hope you won’t be offended if I say it will be interesting to see.’

  ‘You’ll give me cheese and electric prods.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’ll be your lab rat?’

  ‘Except no one will experiment on you,’ she said. ‘You can walk away and never come back. I admit, though, I would like to administer periodic tests, to see how your cognitive function changes.’

  ‘Cheese and electric prods.’

  ‘We’ve got something we call the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale,’ she said. ‘We can measure your behavior with it.’

  ‘What does it look at?’

  ‘Motor control, attention deficit, impulsive behavior.’ She folded the diagram, got up from her desk, and put it in a file cabinet.

  ‘Nice ass,’ he said.

  ‘Verbal impulsivity. Some of these things we’ll measure by talking to your friends and loved ones – to see how your current behavior compares with how you
behaved before your injury. They’ll be our informants.’

  ‘Don’t call them that.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’ve worked with informants. CIs. They tend to die when people figure out what they’re up to.’

  ‘OK, we’ll just call them friends and family. We’ll talk to them about interpersonal relations. Sexual behaviors. We’ll determine areas of dysfunction so we can work on them.’

  ‘You’ll talk to my friends about my sexual behaviors?’

  ‘Your wife.’

  ‘What if I was already dysfunctional before I got shot?’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge,’ she said. ‘We can also counsel your friends and family about your lack of impulse control and the possibility that not everything you say will accord with reality.’

  ‘You’ll tell them I’m a liar?’

  ‘Anything but. You’ll almost certainly tell them the truth from your perspective, but they’ll want to confirm that your perspective matches reality – at least on the big issues. Otherwise, you might say hurtful things to them. They’ll need to make allowances for who you are now.’

  ‘How about when I look in a mirror?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Since I got shot, I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know who I expect to see, but it’s not the man who looks back at me. He’s a stranger. It freaks me out.’

  Dr P said, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Doctors aren’t supposed to say that,’ Kelson said.

  SIX

  Kelson drove over the gray streets to Lakewood Pharmacy, parked one slot over from the disabled spot, and went inside. An olive-skinned woman with a very round face and a very long black braid came to the prescription drop-off. She wore a white lab coat, and her nametag called her Raima Minhas. She smiled and asked, ‘May I help you?’

  Kelson smiled back. ‘I need to talk to Christian Felbanks.’

  ‘Mr Felbanks isn’t in today,’ she said.

  ‘No? Right, of course not.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I like the braid.’

  Her smile tensed. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What’s it … mean?’

  She frowned at him, turned to the man in line behind him, and asked, ‘May I help you?’