The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  Mr. Daisy. Thanks for that.

  “Sorry. I joke when I'm nervous.”

  “Well, I'll have to keep an eye out for that.”

  I looked at him and couldn’t help but smile because he kinda nailed me. Eventually, he returned the smile and the mood lightened.

  The detective continued: “You recognize him, this guy you say knocked you out?”

  “Nope, never seen him around.”

  “Is there anybody you know that would do something like this? It's kind of… elaborate."

  "No."

  "Made any enemies recently?”

  I crushed my shoulder blades together trying to get my back to crack because it was really killing me sitting in the metal chair. “Detective, I don’t have the first clue who he was or what any of that was about.”

  “Were you drinking last night, Mr. Daisy?”

  “Okay, enough with the Mr. Daisy stuff, Matlock,” I said and he put his hands up, surrendering. “Yeah, of course, I’d been drinking but I wasn’t outta my mind.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Clower opened the file Sgt. PaintwaterTeeth gave him, glanced at it, and then punched at the keys for a couple minutes more.

  “Is there a reason why you didn’t call us right away from where the reported incident took place? You called your friend for a ride but didn't call us.”

  He looked at me as if he’d just asked the name of my three previous employers, but I knew this was the point that bothered him most. The truth was I didn’t know why, other than I'd nearly died and at the time wanted nothing more than to go home and just forget it happened.

  I'd built a life that delivered no surprises. When that one came, I'd been out of practice, ill-equipped to deal.

  Detective Clower watched me for a moment, and I was suddenly hit with the irrational fear that he was about to leap over the desk, slap on the cuffs, then lock me up.

  Suddenly, I was anxious to just leave.

  I said, “I don’t know if there are prints or fibers or DNA or anything in the van but maybe you guys could be checking that?”

  “What for?”

  “To get the name of the guy,” I said, shifting in my chair. “This scared the hell out of me, and he's still out there. The guy just about killed me!”

  “I understand how you’d be afraid.”

  “Afraid? Man, I was… I was terrified. In my own home, I was terrified.”

  I stood up because the chair was killing me and I needed to stretch. Then, I walked to the window next to his desk and leaned against it, stretching my arms upward.

  “I don’t cause any problems. You checked me out, for sure, and there’s nothing there. I’ve settled into a nice everyday routine: I pay my bills, I don’t litter, sometimes I give the bum in the square quarters, and I’m usually on time for work.”

  “Dexter—“

  “Then, last night I come home, and I’ve got Ninja Alex Trebek who drugs me, puts me in a van and sinks me in a quarry,” I said, pulling away from the window. My hands were shaking. “And he knows things about me, my past, and I don’t, for the life of me, have any idea how or why.” I flopped back into the chair and leaned forward. “I don’t bother anybody. I don’t need anybody bothering me.”

  “Okay, I hear ya,” Clower said and nodded.

  Suddenly, I was struck with an idea. “Hey, maybe you can run the plate or the VIN number or something and see if it’s registered to this guy? I mean, if we can’t get prints or anything off—“

  “Yeah, we did that.”

  “Okay, cool. Well that’s a start.”

  “Yeah, sorta.”

  “Can you tell me the guy’s name? Maybe I’ve heard it around, recognize it.” Truth was I wanted the prick’s name because I had an idea of how best to use it. Not the sort of thing Detective Clower would like hearing about, however.

  "Sure."

  Again, he spun the computer monitor my direction. I recognized the face on the screen instantly, but it didn’t seem possible.

  “We ran the plate,” he said. “Says here the owner is you, Mr. Daisy.”

  Staring at my own face on the screen, for the moment, I forgot all about the metal chair and the shooting pains in my back.

  Chapter Three

  The two men watched as the other looked up from a handful of notes he'd taken. Both, independently, wondered how the Scotsman could write so tiny into the little book, no bigger than his palm.

  As the gray man (they were all gray men, the seated man if just slightly more) read back what he wrote, the tremor of his hand brushed the book through the air in small circles, as if keeping beat to music too low for anyone else to hear.

  When he looked up at them, he said, "You needed me here f' this? There's little here! Nuh-thing!"

  "I beg your pardon that is not nothing. It's--"

  "It's a beginning," the shorter man chimed in. The old Scot had only joined the Group a few years earlier-- following a sudden vacancy-- but, while the short man prayed (oh god, he prayed) they were successful in their singular task, he quietly hoped the Scot was dead before that happened. "It's the beginning."

  "Fine. Fine then, go and start the inquiry process," the Scotsman said. There's little time--"

  "Good Christ, no. You must be joking."

  "It's just the beginning."

  "More than anything, we have to be delicate. This is it. This is our shot," this other man said and wiped his lower lip with the flat of a thumb. "Our last shot."

  "Why d'you need me, then? Why call me down into your wee shit-pit, here?"

  So crass. "We need approval to expand our consultant's… latitude for gathering the necessary, uh, research," the short man said and smiled. "Needs just a three."

  "Latitude?" The Scot whispered something under his breath that sounded like either a curse or a prayer. "Latitude needs full consideration. The full Group. All eleven, no? We can't take it upon ourselv--"

  "Now, you want to delay?" The short man said, adding a weak smile.

  "I don’t wan' this biting me if your man takes too much latitude!"

  "It only requires three."

  "It's just the beginning. These protocols were established long before you joined the group, sir. Long before any of us did. A Three Vote is all that's needed to move through the minor transitions. Otherwise, we would committee ourselves until our deaths." He chuckled and pulled gently at an ear lobe, a soothing gesture. "Then, the beneficiaries would not be any of us but rather some later Group. This is just a minor transition."

  "We just need three."

  A single nod from the Scot. He waved a hand. "Aye, then. Sure. Yes. Get on with it."

  "Approved, then."

  "How much longer is this all going t' take?"

  A shrug from the short man. "As long as it needs to, but not too long," he said. "It's the beginning. Finally, it's the beginning of the end."

  Chapter Four

  “Maybe it’s a present,” Pavan said, lifting a collection of nacho cheese and popcorn from the plastic tray with two curled fingers, and pressing it into his mouth. The theater was dead at the moment, between shows.

  I guess you could call Pavan a good guy: pretty honest, never stiffs you with the bar tab and is often infected with this type of unbridled optimism. It’s good to have those kinds of people around to lift the spirits. Unless you’re in no mood for spirit lifting.

  At the theater, Pavan and I joke that we are slaves to the "dots." Beneath the stairs leading to the second floor is a panel up on the wall. The panel has two horizontal rows of small bulbs. Each vertical pair of "dots" represented one of the movie houses. A yellow on top, a red on the bottom.

  At that moment two yellows and a red were glowing.

  One movie had just started rolling the credits and people were starting to leave. For the other one-- with the yellow and red-- the credits had rolled, movie’s over, lights are up full.

  The new guys leap at the yellow dots-- weaving in betwee
n exiting patrons to pick up the trash.

  Me and Pavan wait for the red dots.

  And, then, usually a little longer than that.

  I hadn't slept much that afternoon and was still recovering from my previous night. Back hurt, chest hurt. The gash on my hairline was small but still stung a little.

  We stared at the bulky rectangular panel hidden under the stairwell. It looked like something Spock might have poked at on one of those early low-budget days of the original Star Trek.

  Me, I wanted to crawl under the stairwell and sleep, but it was too early yet. Pavan was going on and on about the van.

  "Seriously, you go down to the cops in Fulton County and flash them your I.D. and they gotta give you the van, right?” His floppy hair was dancing like sea oats in a summer storm. “That detective said it was in your—“

  “I don’t drive. What do I want a van for?”

  “Then sell it on eBay or something!” Pavan had shoveled in another clawful of fake cheese and popcorn. I wanted to look away from the horror show he was putting on but couldn't.

  “You know what's in that goo?” I said frowning, not because I was angry, but because I was trying to hold back the nausea. He was hideous.

  He stopped chewing, made an orange letter “O” for a mouth, then he said, “Dude, don’t tell me.”

  “Well, just know there’s no cheese in that cheese,” I said and nodded to theater seven. “Judi Dench film is out.”

  "Yep," Pavan said. "I need to be mentally prepared for anything here."

  Old people don’t buy stuff at the candy counter. They sneak in way more crap than kids do. Two months earlier, I'd gone into one of those chatty Kenneth Branagh films that old folks love and came out with the T-bone of a T-bone steak. Who sneaks a steak into a theater?

  The T-bone was now hanging up in the maintenance closet and used to open import beer bottles.

  We walked slowly toward a sea of gray people.

  “Listen, I know you’re all weirded out because that dude did all the stuff to you…” he stopped and suddenly shivered. “Dude, he knocked you out, right? While you were in dreamland, maybe he did some weird sex stuff—WHOA!”

  I’m not a violent person but at the moment I had Pavan by the collar. His feet were dangling off the ground, his back pressed against a Coming Soon poster of a movie's remake I purposely avoided the first time around.

  I wasn’t angry at Pavan.

  Well, okay, I was kinda pissed about the implication the Black Knight might have finger diddled me in my sleep but, really, it was more about feeling I’d lost control of what had been a very controlled life.

  Some old woman nearby said something, but I didn’t hear her words. Just her tone.

  Embarrassed, the fire in my eyes drew back to a flicker, and I turned away from my friend, slowly lowering his feet back down to the carpet. I felt more stupid with each passing second.

  “Hey man,” he said, shaking just a little. “I got some little green monsters in the ice machine. Why don’t you just take five and have one. I got the Dench film.”

  As I tried to straighten his polyester vest, I saw that my little psycho Charles Bronson move had smashed the tray of cheese and popcorn into his stomach. He looked a little like one of the victims in the first Alien movie.

  “Aw, Pavan,” I said, suddenly my voice bubbling with more emotion than I’d expected. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, walking toward where all the old ladies were coming out, some dragging old men who looked like they’d been given a prostate exam by a Bengal tiger. “I got this one. Not like there’s any soda cups or popcorn bins in there anyhow.”

  “Yeah, I know. Dench film.”

  “Sure, just a lot of empty plastic baggies and shit. Kleenex and stuff.”

  I nodded, avoiding his eyes.

  Not knowing what to do next, I just took Pavan’s advice and headed toward the Heinekens in the ice machine.

  “Hey, Dex,” he called down the hall and I turned. He looked so small that far away, and I felt even shittier for grabbing him. Some best friend I was.

  "Yeah?"

  “You know we really should go down and get your van.”

  I nodded. “Okay, man.”

  “Because, if nothing else, we get my cousin to run the VIN; see who had it before you did. Even though, you know, you didn't.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. Maybe that person remembers selling to your ninja guy. Might have a name or something.”

  I stopped in my tracks and thought about that for a moment. Then, I turned back toward the theater where Pavan was standing, suddenly not willing to dump it all on my friend.

  “Goddamn Perry Mason, that’s a hell of an idea.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his mop of a head swaying a little. “I thought so.”

  AFTER WORK, I HAD no intention of sleeping at my pad, but I couldn’t go another day without fresh clothes.

  There’s a level of stink, and I was close to it, that goes beyond rank. The sort of smell that makes old people weep and newborns curse under their breath.

  Detective Clower had asked if I wanted to file a report about what happened but, I thought, what was the point? The cop didn’t seem to really believe me, and I wasn’t one to go crying every time somebody pissed in my Wheaties anyhow. Maybe it was a one shot deal.

  Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.

  Clower had given me a card with a work and cell number, and I was going to call him up to see what it would take to get the van. But it was after eleven. It could wait until morning.

  After finishing up at the theater, we walked the three blocks back to my apartment. Then Pavan and I hung down at the Marietta Square for a half hour, staring up at the windows above Wicked Lester’s. We sipped a couple warm beers from the stash he always kept in the trunk of his car.

  “You think he’s coming back?”

  I looked at Pavan, shrugged. Two couples that looked like they’d just left the theatre—not the movie theater, but the live theatre on South Park, just off the square—were sitting on the edge of the fountain. I couldn’t hear them talking, but for my own benefit I imagined they were negotiating the terms of a wife swapping and that helped me forget about the possible terror waiting for me in my apartment.

  Pavan belched, grimaced, and smacked his lips.

  “Man, let’s just go up there.”

  “Yeah, you first, Batman.”

  Watching the couples, laughing together like normal people, I tried to put myself in that scene. Couldn't. Not anymore.

  "What's that like? Your hearing thing." Pavan asked out of the blue. Knowing him as well as I do, it must've been hard for him not to ask before that moment.

  "I dunno. Mostly, I don't know what it's not like, right? I mean, it's sorta always there. Like some movie or TV show I just watched and think about every now and then."

  "You don't have no TV."

  I laughed. "Yeah, maybe I should get one. I need some new shows in my head, maybe."

  "So…" he said, and I felt bad he was struggling.

  "Listen, go ahead. I'm fine with talking about it to you," I said. "I'm sorry, man. I shoulda said something. You're my best friend and, you know… I just shoulda said something."

  "Yeah, fucker. I could have used you for phone numbers and shit that I’m always losing." He laughed. "So, you remember it all at once then, like all these voices in your head? That would be crazy! It'd be like waiting for a concert at the Georgia Dome, right, but the band never ever plays! Just the crowd blah blah blah all the time."

  "No, not like that."

  "Good 'cause that would be horrible! All that blah blah blah blah blah!"

  I turned to my friend and said, "Just how high are you?"

  "What?" He smiled. "Just a little bit."

  "Okay, just checking," I said. "It's… it's like there's index cards of the stuff I've hea
rd and I just… go to them."

  "Insects cards? Whoa, I couldn't handle that--"

  "Not insects car--"

  "All buzzy buzzy and shit in your head, Christ, how do you--"

  "NO, man. In-dex cards. Little cards you write stuff down on. Like filing it away."

  Pavan nodded, blinked. "You know, I'm not a big filing guy."

  "Really?"

  “Yeah, I have my secretary take care of that shit for me,” he said and tossed his empty beer can at the trash, nearly beaning a squirrel that had been balancing on the can. Clay St. Claire, the Marietta Square bum, popped out from behind the bushes.

  “Hey guys,” he said, eyeing the can in the trash. “You got anymore of those?”

  “Yeah,” Pavan said. “I’ll have another in about ten minutes. You wait there I’ll toss it to you.”

  “No, not empty ones.”

  I said, “You can’t give hobos beer, Clay. We'd be breaking the law.”

  “True.” Pavan nodded, took a swig.

  “And we can’t give you dough for beer because that’s panhandling. You’d be breaking the law.”

  “Also true.”

  “But if you take those empties and trade them in for cash, well, our trash goes down, the environment gets a break and after a couple days you get your beer.”

  “Whatever happened to charity? The humble act of giving to your fellow man,” Hobo Clay said and held his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “What would Mother Teresa say?”

  “If Mother Teresa was alive today…” Pavan scratched his mop of hair with his beer can, “she’d probably say something like ‘motherfucker get me outta this casket.’"

  "Oh, damn."

  "Yeah, probably something like that.”

  I laughed so hard I thought beer would shoot out my nose but it didn’t, which is good because it’d surely burn like hell and would be a terrible waste of beer.

  Clay yanked on the lapels of his dark, dirty coat, shot Pavan a look and stumbled back into the darkness.

  "So you've got your entire life on little cards which you can pluck out anytime you need 'em?"