Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

by George C. Chesbro

  I was aware that it was probably a mistake for me to be scrambling across the ice, knew that my place was back in the coffee shop defending the greater number, but my reaction had been instinctive, and now I was committed to this course of action. Margaret Dutton was the most innocent of innocent bystanders, and she had shown great courage. She was my patient, in a manner of speaking, and if it hadn't been for Mama Spit and her faith in me I wouldn't have had a ticket to this dance in the first place. I couldn't turn my back on her when there was the likelihood she was about to be summarily executed along with the woman she had ventured out to rescue.

  I was startled when the sounds of laughter and applause suddenly erupted all around me, and then I realized that the hundreds of spectators thought I was part of some special Christmas show, or a drunken dwarf who had seriously lost his way, or both. I kept pumping my arms, struggling to get across the ice to the women and the two men they were struggling with. Margaret was scratching at the eyes of the man in the gray overcoat, and he was drawing back his fist to punch her.

  There was a flash of color and movement above them, and then I saw Veil vault over the wall of the promenade, plummet down through the air, and land with his feet on the backs of both men. At almost the same precise moment I felt a strong hand grab me by the seat of my pants and lift me in the air. There was more laughter and applause, but there were also scattered shouts and screams as it dawned on some of the brighter onlookers that this was no show, and that something was seriously amiss on the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.

  Dangling rather ignominiously in the firm grip of the very unfriendly skater who held me, I thrashed and tried to get to my Beretta, but it seemed I was about to lose not only face and my free ride but also my race against death, for even as I wrapped my fingers around the stock of the Beretta I could feel the bore of my captor's gun pressing against my rib cage. I was about to take a bullet through the heart.

  Then the man cursed, and the gun came away. I looked up and saw Santa, one arm resting behind his back, blithely skating right toward us. My captor cursed again and swerved to avoid the other figure, but Santa just swerved with him and kept coming directly at us. We collided—or, rather, Santa's forearm and my captor's mouth collided. There was the sound of breaking bone and teeth, and my skater and I were suddenly parted, with him going one way and me sliding over the ice on my stomach in the opposite direction.

  My trip in that direction didn't last long. I felt like a hockey puck as once again a strong hand grabbed me, this time by the hood of my parka, swung me around, and began pulling me back the way I had come. I caught a flash of red suit and bushy white beard, and realized that now it was Santa who had me. Everything around me was a blur of motion, with panicked skaters racing in all directions. I felt as if I were spinning at the bottom of some old kaleidoscope filled with rapidly shifting images that made me feel dizzy and disoriented, somehow dreamily apart from everything that was going on around me. As Santa continued to slide me across the ice on my belly, I caught a glimpse of Veil across the way. He had knocked unconscious—or probably killed—both men he had jumped on, and they were draped over the steel railing. Now he was leading both Margaret and the woman named Alexandra back around the rink at the same time as he supported Jack, who was holding a hand to the wound in his stomach. We zipped merrily along, past the man whose teeth Santa had knocked out; there was another man, presumably a cop, standing over him and holding a gun to his head. There were other men with guns, but they were all dressed in civilian clothes, making it impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

  Sharon Stephens, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping open, was standing up on the promenade, her arm around a woman who was wearing a ragged green woolen cap.

  Santa suddenly yanked on the hood of my parka, not quite breaking my neck, lifted me up a foot or so, and then hurled me ahead of him across the ice in the general direction of the coffee shop. I ended up sliding on my bottom until I came up hard against the railing. Santa was following after me at a leisurely pace, but then he abruptly skidded to a stop. His hand went into his suit, and when it came out he was holding a gun, which he proceeded to aim at my head—or a spot just above my head. People behind me screamed as Santa took careful aim and fired. I could actually hear the thwack of somebody standing at the railing directly above and behind me being hit by the bullet. There was a strangled groan, and then a man's body pitched over the railing and landed right beside me on his back, snow falling into his blank, unseeing eyes that stared up into the sky. The man, who was wearing boots, green slacks, and a heavy flannel shirt, was tall and gaunt. Even in death he kept a firm grip on the ice pick in his hand, which was embedded in the ice an inch or two from my right thigh; if not for Santa, that ice pick undoubtedly would now be buried in the back of my skull.

  There were more screams as people who had been standing at the railing scrambled to get away. Seemingly unmindful of the pandemonium all around, Santa unhurriedly put the gun back into a pocket in his red suit, then picked up the lumpy laundry bag he had dropped on the ice and skated over to me. I found myself looking up over the beard and into a pair of soulful brown eyes that looked very familiar to me.

  "Ho, ho, ho, little pilgrim," Santa said. "A Merry Christmas to you.

  It was a drop-dead John Wayne imitation, and it meant that this particular Santa Claus was not pleased with me. "GARTH?!"

  Now my brother pulled off his stocking cap, which had covered his wheat-colored hair, stripped off his false white beard and bushy eyebrows. His eyes swam with feeling, both relief and anger, but his John Wayne imitation never faltered. "That outlaw with the steel toothpick has been keeping an eye on you ever since you and your gang got here, Pilgrim. He must have figured you might have something he wanted."

  I tried to get up, slipped, and fell back on my rear, so I just sat there, continuing to stare up into the stern face of my brother, thoroughly astonished. "Cut the John Wayne shit, Garth. What are you doing here?!"

  It was still John Wayne who answered, which meant my brother was really angry with me. "Let this be a lesson to you, Pilgrim, not to try to cut me out of something like this. You're real lucky you're not dead, you dumb little dogie. I should have let that ornery cowpoke Rogers put that frog-sticker in your skull; it might have improved your thinking. You think you're the Lone Ranger. Well, let me tell you something; I knew the Lone Ranger, and you're not him."

  "Garth, help me up, will you? You've made your point."

  His response was to abruptly drop his laundry bag into my lap, where it landed with rustling and clicking sounds as its contents shifted. "Here's a little Christmas present for your friends, Pilgrim. Round 'em up and move 'em out. There's a string of ambulances waiting for you up at the curb on Fifth, and they'll take you all to the sawbones. I'm going to stay here and help Sheriff MacWhorter and his posse clean up this town."

  I started to say something else, but Garth abruptly wheeled around and skated back toward the center of the rink, which was still a scene of pandemonium and confusion. However, from what I could make out, the police seemed to have things under control, and they were handcuffing men. I sat on the ice next to Raymond Rogers feeling at once deliriously elated and eminently foolish. I opened the top of the laundry bag and peered down at its contents, what must have been upwards of a thousand large black-and-yellow capsules.

  I glanced to my right, where Jack was being attended to by a team of paramedics. On the steps leading up to the promenade, Sharon Stephens and her lost flock were being escorted by Veil, Moira, and a half dozen uniformed police officers. I got to my feet, slung the laundry bag over my shoulder, and went after them.

  Aftermath of a Storm

  The Chill Shop was thoroughly burned, and the government's reaction to the story told by the survivors of Rivercliff was refreshingly candid and swift. In less than an hour after the story broke, the President, flanked by both the Secretary of Health and Education and the CIA Director, appeared on national
television. The President offered no lame excuses, only an apology to the patients and the entire country for what had been allowed to happen, and a pledge that the patients would be compensated. The CIA Director, in announcing his resignation and that of his immediate deputy, took full responsibility for the activities of the Bureau of Unusual Human Resources. However, he claimed that BUHR's existence had been a closely held secret within the Company itself, an operation kept alive by a few old hands, and he had not, in the three years of his term, ever been told of its existence or activities. The Director's forthright statement and behavior were so untypical of the clouds of smoke that usually belched out of Langley that I tended to believe him, and I listened with at least a measure of sympathy to his plea not to blame the entire American intelligence community for the criminal behavior of a handful of bureaucrats who would be going to prison, probably for life.

  Lorminix, while predictably denying all accusations, was having a severe public relations problem, and both Garth and I had been asked if we would agree to serve as consultants to the Swiss authorities as they investigated the drug and chemical cartel. We most certainly would.

  The patients had been granted permission to continue on their present, still unnamed medication until such time as a special task force—headed by Bailey Kramer, who was overnight being hailed as a genius, national hero, and scientific pioneer—could build upon the work Bailey had already done and reformulate the compound so as to provide a medication that would be as effective as the original, but without the original compound's deadly side effects. Early predictions were that the compound, for which Bailey had already received certain technical and procedural patents, would revolutionize drug therapy not only for schizophrenics but also for sufferers of other forms of mental illness as well. Frank Lemengello had accepted Bailey's invitation to become his partner in a company that would produce and distribute the new medication, a venture that Wall Street experts estimated would net both men tens of millions of dollars.

  And, of course, my name and picture, and Garth's, were in all the newspapers, and we were turning down requests for interviews left and right, referring all book and movie offers to Sharon Stephens and her patients, and especially to Margaret Dutton. There was already a television movie in the works, called Mama Spit. I had politely but very firmly refused a request to appear in the film in some cameo role; rumor had it that the producers were trying to get Tom Selleck or Sylvester Stallone to play my part. In return for any cooperation at all, like maybe acting with my brother as a consultant for a ton of money, I insisted that the character of Felix MacWhorter be given a prominent role in the script so as to extol the virtues and valor of the NYPD and his own handling of the situation that had made such a successful outcome possible.

  A week after New Year's, a nationally televised memorial service for all of the patients who had died at Rivercliff was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Garth, Mary Tree, and I were seated in a relatively private viewing area, which I appreciated since I'd had all the public exposure I wanted for a very long time. The service, presided over by the Cardinal, was quite lovely. No chain of events that involved the deaths of so many people and Michael Stout's sacrifice of his own life could be said to have a happy ending, but I decided it was close. Emily and Margaret had happy beginnings. Eleven of the lost flock and their shepherdess were alive, Garth and I were alive, BUHR had been dismantled, and Lorminix was going to have a lot more trouble than it could handle.

  But Garth was still mad at me, which meant I had still not found out how he had found out what was going on, or how he'd obtained the capsules. I was still getting nothing from him but John Wayne homilies, and that meant I was not forgiven.

  After the service we walked out and stood together off to the side at the top of the cathedral's great stone steps, looking out on a fine, snow-dusted New York Sunday in the new year.

  I said, "Come on, Garth. How long is it going to be before you tell me how you got the capsules?"

  "Well, I don't know, little pilgrim," the Duke drawled. "How long were you planning on waiting before calling me to tell me you were up to your ass in Apaches? You had people wanting to plug you, and a couple of them hombres tortured you. I guess you just plumb downright didn't want to bother this old hoss with those details, right? I guess you plumb downright didn't give much of a hoot as to how I'd feel if I came home and found my old pardner had been killed while I was away off up in the mountains."

  "Garth, I just didn't think there was anything you could do."

  "Then the joke's on you, isn't it, you hardheaded little heifer? It was your trusty old pardner here who got the capsules, and if it wasn't for your trusty old pardner here, you'd have a bullet in the heart, or an ice pick in the brain. It seems to me that it's a good thing for you this hoss crashed the square dance. If you'd been sitting in my saddle and I'd done the same thing to you, not told you what was happening or asked for your help, you'd have come looking to carve out my heart with a rusty bowie knife."

  "Look, Duke, I'm grateful. Okay? So I made a mistake in not bringing you in. Does that mean I get this crap from you for the rest of my life?"

  "Could be, Pilgrim."

  "Come on. Gerard called you, didn't he?"

  "I can't rightly recollect who it was who told me that my pardner and a dozen other people he was trying to help were in serious danger of winding up on Boot Hill."

  I turned to my beautiful and famous sister-in-law. Her long, gray-streaked yellow hair gleamed like gold in the afternoon sun, and her eyes sparkled as she stared back at me. She seemed highly amused by the situation, and I had the strong suspicion that it was all she could do to keep from laughing. I said to her, "You know, don't you?"

  Mary Tree's response was an enigmatic, almost apologetic, smile. It meant she knew, but wasn't about to upstage my ham brother, or step on his lines.

  John Wayne said, "I hear tell you didn't even let the sheriff back in there know what was going on until it was almost too late. You must have tumbleweed for brains, little pilgrim."

  I felt the blood rush to my face. "All right, Duke, now you're getting me pissed off. Speaking of brains, it wasn't my mind—or my life—at stake in this thing. I was just a facilitator, Duke. I wasn't calling the shots. These people had good reason to be wary of the authorities, medical and legal. If you'd been in my saddle, Duke, you'd probably have done the same damn thing. Not only that, but I think it's probably politically incorrect for you to refer to me as being up to my ass in a particular tribe of proud Native Americans. So I don't need to hear any more of your shit."

  Garth and Mary exchanged glances, and Mary inclined her head slightly. Garth nodded, then laughed as he put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me. "You did good, Mongo," he said in his normal voice, indicating that John Wayne had finally ridden off into the sunset and I was back in his good graces. "You did real good, and I'm damn proud of you. It was just a little difficult to take, finding out what you'd been trying to deal with alone while I was off falling on my ass on the ski slopes, and you hadn't even bothered to call me. Aside from the fact that I feel an occasional twinge of affection for my brother, it made me feel like a fool. It's my place to be there for you when you need help, just like you've always been there for me. I was really pissed."

  "So I noticed. Not contacting you seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I can see your point. I really am sorry. If you hadn't ridden to the rescue, I'd be dead, and probably all the patients as well."

  "Apology accepted."

  "Gerard filled you in?"

  Garth shook his head. "He told me about your call only after I'd learned about your situation from other sources and contacted him again; you'd asked him not to tell me, and he didn't. Once I'd already learned what was happening, his agreement with you was moot, and he filled me in on Punch and Judy."

  "Then who got in touch with you?"

  "Actually, I got calls from two people. The first was from Felix MacWhorter, who hadn't spoken to me or ha
d a kind word to say in years. It seems you've been doing quite a job of diplomacy with the man, because he thought enough of you to track me down and tell me he was worried about you and thought you could use some help; I'd left a message on my answering machine at the house giving the number where I could be reached in case of an emergency. He also sent me a copy of the Punch and Judy tape, and that told me all I needed to know about Lorminix and Heinrich Muller. I also got a call from Veil."

  I grunted, said, "That figures."

  "He thought you needed more backup. Also, he knew I'd probably hold him responsible if anything happened to you."

  "For Christ's sake," I said, shaking my head. "He never said a word."

  "Aha. That's because I asked him not to. I thought it only fitting that I treat you the same way you'd treated me. Besides, I thought there were certain advantages to keeping you in the dark."

  "Yeah? Name one."

  "It gave me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction. I think better when I'm feeling good."

  "Ho, ho, ho."

  "Besides that, I didn't want you distracted and worrying about me. I know that's why you didn't call; you were trying to protect me. You thought you had all the bases covered here, and you didn't want to risk having me get my ass in a wringer over in Switzerland if you told me about Lorminix and the patients' need for more medication. I shouldn't tell you this, but I'm not unappreciative of your motives."