“What’d he look like?” Tommy asked, wanting to be sure.
“Big. It was costume night, so he had big sunglasses, a hat, and fake mustache on. Big guy, though. Anyway, Bobby saw him coming and went to the bathroom. The guy hassled me, said he was looking for someone. Then he went into the bathroom and came out after a minute. He left, then Bobby came out and said he was sick and wanted to leave.”
“Did he say what happened in there?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah, he said the guy was a cop from his station house who had been bothering him. The weird thing was that the guy was coming off like he was some anti-gay hardass, but I was watching him in that club, and the way he talked to me, I think he was into it. He seemed to be interested in me, and what was happening in there.”
Tommy took a moment to process everything he’d heard before he spoke. “I need you to do something for me, Mike. If the cops find out about you and question you, don’t tell them about that. And, never, ever tell anyone that you told me any of this. Understood? Can you do that, for Bobby?”
Mike looked over at Bobby. “I understand. You can trust me. I just want him to get better. I miss him. I’ll do anything for him. Including taking out that son of a bitch that hurt him, if he had anything to do with it. Sounds like he did, from how you’re reacting.”
“Alright, then. You mind keeping watch here while I go to the cafeteria for some grub?”
“No, of course not. I’d like some time alone with him. I got things to say, even if he can’t hear me.”
Tommy left and took the elevator down to the hospital cafeteria. He filled his tray with food but was too sick and distraught to eat. After dumping it into the trash, he poured himself a large Styrofoam cup of black coffee.
After paying at the register, he walked to the farthest point he could find, to be able to sit alone. As he sipped his coffee, staring at the wall, he heard a voice behind him.
“Mind if I join you?” Carmen asked.
“Sure,” he responded.
“I went up to the room and was told you were here. I heard about Bobby. I’m so sorry, Tommy.”
“He’ll be okay. He’s a tough kid.”
“It’s pretty serious. We always have to hold out hope and be positive. But I have to tell you, Tommy, he’s hurt pretty badly.”
He slammed his fist on the table. “I said he’s going to be okay!” He looked at her and fought off the memory of the shame and embarrassment of their night together and her subsequent rejection of him at the chemo session. He wasn’t attracted to her anymore, and he didn’t want to be around her. He found that he resented her presence, something he never would’ve thought possible.
She looked at him, and he could sense her gauging him. Tears started to form in her eyes. She got up, kissed him on the cheek, and left without saying a word.
27 Date Night
Unable to find a clear spot on the coffee table filled with stacks of money, Jackson placed his drink on the floor.
“Careful,” Carson said. “This carpet cost me a mint. Had everything replaced when I moved in.”
“And you had to go with pure white, of course. Don’t you worry?” Jackson asked. “You’re a city cop who drives a Porsche 911 and lives in a luxury condo. Don’t you think that looks a bit suspicious?”
“Well, I don’t have friends, and you’re the only cop that’s been here. If it comes down to it, inheritance and lots of overtime, that’s my story,” Carson said, laughing. “I’m sticking to it, and you are too, right?” The smile left his face as he waited for Jackson’s answer.
“I’m in this as deep as you are, so there’s no problem there. Let’s get this counted up so I can get the hell out of here. Besides, this Borata thing is much more likely to take us down than any of this. That was a major fuck-up, Carson. I’m worried.”
“It’ll be fine. Just keep your mouth shut and stick with the story. We were trying to help him, trying to help him gain respect for himself, from his old man, and around the station. He insisted on taking the lead. We had no way to know the plywood was faulty. It could’ve happened to either of us. The mattresses were there from the bums that use the place to crash. You straight on all that?”
“Yeah, sure. We still have to worry about his crazy-ass old man coming at us.”
“That fucker’s too sick to get out of his own way. You see what he looks like now?” Carson began cleaning up the table. “Okay, you do need to get the hell out of here. I have a date coming, and I have to put all this away and take a shower.”
Carson grabbed a handful of the stacks of bills and held them to his chest. “I love it. We earned this. We put our lives on the line every day, right?”
“Whatever you say,” Jackson answered. “I’m only in this to put my kids in a better school and retire early. I’m getting nervous.”
Carson stopped what he was doing and stared at his partner. “We just talked about this. You getting nervous makes me nervous. You’re not getting any funny ideas, are you?”
“Of course not. If one of us goes down, we both go down. You know that, it’s our deal. Do we have to be into everything, though? It’s getting too big. It was one thing when we agreed to tip the dealers and hookers off that there was going to be raids. But now we’re directly involved with their business. It’s risky. I don’t want to get too greedy; this isn’t what we talked about in the beginning.”
Carson thought about it for a moment. “I get a little worried sometimes too. Too many do-gooders around the station. I’m off the job for a while anyway, so I’m sure they’re watching me. Maybe we should dial it down for a while. I was gonna back off anyway when I get my promotion and start making better cash. Maybe we should start wrapping it up now. Quit while we’re ahead, especially with the attention this Borata thing is bringing.”
“You’re running the show, Carson. If you want to do that, I’m okay with it.”
Jackson left, and Carson stood at the window, looking down over the lights of his city. Fuck that. Maybe I’ll just cut Jackson out. Why should I quit? I have cover from up the ranks, as long as I provide a cut. I could run this whole fucking deal if I wanted to. Who’s going to stop me? He went to the bar, poured a large glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter, and drank half of it down.
He put the stacks of cash away carefully in the safe he had hidden in his bedroom’s walk-in closet, and then showered and dressed for the visitor he was expecting.
He used the remote control to start his favorite psychobilly country music mix, dimmed the lights, then lay back on the leather couch and closed his eyes.
The door made only a slight noise as it opened, and a tall, muscular black woman with an oversized afro moved stealthily into the apartment. The music blared as Carson slept sitting up on the sofa, his back to her. The woman opened her purse and extracted a pair of pantyhose, positioning herself carefully behind him. She paused as a song ended, waiting for the next to begin.
A thrashing of guitars, drums, and banjos began, and she continued toward her target. When she was within reach, she pulled the ends of the pantyhose tight between her fists, looped it over Carson’s neck, and twisted it tightly.
He tried to escape, tugging at the hose around his neck. Realizing it would do no good, he reached back and grabbed her arms, pulling her over him and onto the couch. The larger woman landed on top of him, taking the advantage by pinning him down with her weight. She continued to hold the ligature firmly until he started to gasp, and then she loosened it slightly.
She reached down and yanked up the skirt he wore, then yanked down his pantyhose. He stopped struggling, semi-conscious, as she let go and reached for her purse, removing a tube of lubricant as he paused for a moment to wait. It was the one part of the fantasy that he still wasn’t comfortable with. She entered him from behind and rode him until they were both spent.
Carson sat up, his face still shades of purple and red, coughing and trying to catch his breath. She sat next to him, replacing her wig and heels.
“Did I do alright, Detective Carson?” she asked. “Like you said?”
He reached over and slapped her hard across the face. “I fucking told you, call me Susan when I’m in character!” He slapped her again. “Do you fucking understand, faggot? Now get your black ass out of here. Get it right next time, or you’re done.”
“You gonna tip or anything?” she asked sheepishly.
He cocked his fist back, and she backed away until she was at the door, and went out as quickly as she could.
28 Trials
The car ahead of him crept slowly into the parking lot. Tommy could see just the top of the woman’s head of pure white hair, and the blue handicapped parking tag hanging from her rearview mirror.
“C’mon, little old lady, let’s go,” he said to himself. In the old days, I’d be laying on the horn heavy by now. He took pride in the fact that he was being patient, and took pity that at her advanced age, she had no one else to drive her to the hospital. And not much money, judging by her car.
They approached the handicapped parking, and she put her blinker on to signal her intent to take the last remaining spot. He took note that only half of the vehicles occupying the other spaces had the appropriate designation to use them. As she slowly moved toward the space, a sports car approached quickly from the other direction and flew into the spot. The woman kept looking.
A man jumped out of the sports car in a jogging suit, his sunglasses propped on top of his head. Tommy rolled his window down. “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked the man, as he walked by at a fast clip. “You don’t look too handicapped to me, pal.”
The man turned toward him. “Just running in quick to pick up a prescription, sorry dude,” he said, moving even faster toward the entrance.
Tommy resisted the urge to get out and confront the man. I got no juice now. He’d put me down fast, then probably sue me. Looked like a damn lawyer. He pulled into a spot farther down the row and popped his trunk. Opening a large toolkit, he selected a pair of heavy-gauge nails from a tray of assorted fasteners.
As he passed the man’s vehicle, he knelt down and angled a nail from the blacktop into the front and back of a rear tire, ensuring at least one would find its target whether the man pulled forward or backward. Satisfied, he entered the hospital.
Tommy looked around at the items in the exam room: plastic representations of body parts, both normal and diseased. Pictures on the wall of the same. All were painted in gay, bright colors. He remembered being in the doctor’s office as a little kid, intimidated and afraid of the same pictures, sculptures, and the seemingly medieval instruments of pain and torture lying on trays.
He moved to the window and saw the sports car sitting at a tilt near the parking lot exit. The man in the track suit was circling it, gesturing animatedly while talking into his cell phone. He watched as the old woman’s car moved slowly by and pulled into the street. Karma’s a bitch, Tommy thought, and then erupted in laughter at the sight.
The office door opened, and Doctor Mason entered. “What’s so funny, Borata? It’s good you still have your sense of humor. It helps to fight the disease.”
“Just people,” Tommy said. “Stupid people.” He sat back down on one of the plastic chairs.
Doctor Mason scanned his charts, then put them away and sat down next to Tommy, now wearing a serious expression. “Alright. To be honest, the trials did well for you. Your body reacts well to them...it’s been a good run. The scans have been pretty clear, or at least we’ve been able to stabilize some of your lesions and tumors so that they don’t grow. The ones in your brain that we’ve been zapping are also clear.”
Tommy asked a series of rapid-fire questions. “What about after this trial is done? You said it’s been a good run. It’ll run out of juice like the others, right? Didn’t you say it would only work for a while, until the cancer figures out a way around it? What about the last trial drug you mentioned, the Forbaxatel? That one’s the holy grail, right? Any news on my mutation results?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Which gets me to my point. I said that the scans have been pretty clear, but now we’re starting to see some progression. I’m sorry, Tommy, but you didn’t test positive for the mutation we’d hoped for, the one you need to get into the Forbaxatel trial.”
“Which means what? The rocks you talked about, crossing the river and all that—I’m out of rocks? Stuck in the middle of the rising river, going to drown?”
“Our job is to keep you going until the next one. There’s always more coming out of the research labs.”
He began to feel desperate. Bobby might need help, I may need to care for him for a long time. “Doc, you said I’ve reacted well to other trials. C’mon, let’s take a shot at this Forbaxatel one. What do I have to lose, right?”
“It’s not my decision, Tommy. The drug companies control everything. The data drives their decisions and the research, and they have criteria as far as who they want to measure.”
“What if I go somewhere else to get it? You talked it up as some kind of miracle drug. What if I go to Mexico or something?”
“It’s a trial, and not widely available. In fact, we’re one of the few institutions that have it. Again, I’m sorry. Let’s stay the course. We’ll have other options eventually.”
Tommy looked around the room again, weighing his options. So tired of all of this. “I’m getting tired, Doc. I feel so bad sometimes, I don’t know what I’m doing this for. The trials are better than chemo, but the side effects, being cold all the time, skin cracking open, rashes, sore muscles, sores in my mouth, it’s hell. What kind of way of living is this?”
“Hard living, but it beats the alternative, right? Again, we’re just waiting for the next breakthrough. Then maybe it gets easier.”
“I appreciate your positivity, but this is wearing me down. What about people that don’t want to stay on the chemo, sick all the time, or die a slow and agonizing death? Isn’t there some other option, some way to die with dignity? Some shot or pill to take to end it on our own terms when we’ve had enough?”
The doctor looked at him with interest. “Not officially. It’s a social and religious hot button. There’s a doctor...Kevorkian...he was actually doing that. They called him Dr. Death. The right-wingers demonized the guy and charged him with murder. You might remember, it was all over the news.”
“Yeah. Actually, I remember the way it was portrayed. I was with the rest of the cops in my attitude toward it back then—lock the guy up, he’s nuts. Now I got a whole different perspective. That’s what I’d like. Maybe I can just go it on my own. Get a cabin up in the woods somewhere, bring my shotgun...”
“Tommy, don’t say those things in front of me. It starts a whole other protocol.”
“Jesus,” Tommy said. “I guess we’re not as free as we like to think, after all.”
The doctor only nodded in response.
Tommy began to worry about the doctor reporting him, and getting him locked away in some kind of psych ward. “Anyway, I’m not saying I’m ready for that yet. I’m just wondering about options for when things start to get real bad. Until then, I got things I need to do. I just need a little more time. Can you juice me up again with the B12 and steroids, so I have some energy? Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Sure, that much I can do,” Mason responded.
He remained silent while the doctor finished working on him. A prescription pad on the nearby counter caught his eye.
After his appointment, he went to the cafeteria for his meeting with Molletier. He found the man sitting alone at a table. A plate of untouched food sat before him, and he held a cup of steaming coffee between both hands.
“How’d yours go?” Tommy asked.
“Big news. I’m dying,” he answered.
“Yeah, yeah. We know that. Join the club. Anything else?”
“Remission is over. New stuff growing in the garden inside of me. Back to chemo soon.”
“Jesus, I
’m sorry. Not much better for me. I have to find some way to keep my energy up, just for a little while. How the hell do you do it?”
“Ancient Asian herbs.”
“I’m going to need some of those, then. We have work to do.” Tommy filled him in on everything that had happened with Carson and Bobby.
The sensei listened attentively. “What are we going to do, then?” he asked when Tommy had finished.
“I’ll come up with a plan. I’m not comfortable talking here. We’ll get together soon at my place,” Tommy said.
29 Balloons
Tommy returned the following day and made his way through the hospital entrance. So sick of this place. He carried a bag with some pictures and items from Bobby’s room so that Bobby would feel more at home when he finally broke through the coma. He hoped it would happen while he was there. That was why he was spending every moment he could alongside his son.
As was his habit, he stopped at the coffee shop and stood in line. By the time he had reached the front, the young employee had his order ready. “Poppyseed bagel, toasted, strawberry spread, and a large black coffee, Mr. Borata,” she proudly announced.
“You got it, kid. Right on the ball. Kids like you have a bright future in this world. Go out and make it a better place,” Tommy said.
The colorful items in the hospital gift shop window caught his eye, and he entered. “Can I help you?” the woman behind the register asked. Her tone seemed hostile, as if he had come into her home unannounced. He looked at her, and she put down the book she had been reading. Her face was overly made up, in defiance of the years that had overtaken her, and her expression was dour.
“I’m just looking around if that’s okay,” Tommy replied.
He browsed, aware of her eyes on him, and after a time he became annoyed. He selected a bouquet of bright Mylar balloons and approached her. “What’s the problem? You got a bug up your ass, lady?”
Vigilante Angels Trilogy Page 26