by Jim Nisbet
Stanley was taking all this in, but hardly dared to hope that everything seemed about to be swept into the past.
“…On account of all this and I’m worn out and heartily sick of you, and because most of us think you already more or less got what was coming to you…” Corrigan’s smile appeared, showed some brown teeth, then went away again. “…I’m not going to prefer any charges against you, if the D.A. lets me get away with it, which he probably will.”
Stanley blinked.
“The story in the paper stands as is.” Corrigan pointed at the Examiner. “It just doesn’t look good, to be prosecuting a guy who’s a hero twice over.”
Stanley blinked some more.
“Ain’t that just ducky?” Corrigan added, watching him.
The room was as still as a photograph. Beyond the door and down the hall an elevator arrived with a ping.
“I hope I never see you again,” said Corrigan. But…” He rolled his eyes toward Iris and sighed heavily. “I probably will.”
Stanley steadily maintained his out-of-focus nose between his good eye and Iris.
“I guess that’s it for criminal nephrectomies, Sims. For the time being, at least. Always a pleasure, and thanks for your help.”
Sims and Corrigan shook hands.
“Good night, Iris,” said Corrigan, leaning over her shoulder to plant a kiss on her cheek. “You have a ride home?”
She must have nodded yes.
“I’m outta here, then. I always get in a nice nap at the ballet.” Corrigan patted her shoulder and he straightened up.
“So long, hotshot,” he said to Stanley, and left the room.
Dr. Sims watched him go. “Well,” he said, as the door closed. He retrieved his pen and turned a few pages on the clipboard. “Let’s see, here.…” He whistled three tuneless descending notes as he scanned a page from top to bottom. “Okay. You going to stay a while, Iris?”
She must have nodded yes.
“Hmmm.” Sims checked his watch and made a few notes on the clipboard. “Shananne will be by to administer the night drill in about half an hour. She can get all she needs off this. Well, Mr. Ahearn.” He drew a few lines under his breast pocket. “Miraculously, you’re doing fine. Quite a constitution you’ve got there. We’ll have to make a study of it before you run it into the ground. Maybe we can get a grant. Defer some of these pesky bills you keep piling up.” Sims made a toothy grin, then erased it. “Some excellent help you’ve got here, too. To have so fierce an advocate as Nurse Considine —” he indicated Iris with the clipboard, as he hung it at the foot of the bed “— you’re a lucky man.”
Still Stanley kept his nose between his good eye and Iris.
Sims opened the door. “I’ll be by in the morning. Want me to dim the light a little?”
Neither Iris nor Stanley responded.
Sims dimmed the light anyway. “There. Like a cozy banquet for two at Ernie’s.”
The door quietly closed itself behind him.
“Oh, yes.” The door opened again. “That catheter can come out tonight, too.” The door closed again.
Startled, Stanley turned his head towards the disappearing Sims.
This brought Iris into view.
Chapter Thirty Two
THE DOOR SWUNG SILENTLY CLOSED, AND SIMS WAS GONE.
Stanley kept his head tilted. The focus of his eye oscillated nervously between the plane of his nose and Iris’ face and the closed door and the dark television and back.
A thin grim smile crept over her mouth. The whites of her eyes were webbed with fine red veins, like suet.
She let him wait.
Something rolled heavily past the closed door, toward the elevator lobby at the end of the hall.
A phantom thumb counted phantom fingers in space. One, two, three, four. One, two, three. One, two. One.…
“When I came to,” Iris began, “they had nearly severed your arm. They used a Stryker saw — you’ve probably never seen one. Cuts bone without tearing flesh? I was surprised they had it.”
She reflected. “Djell and Lopez. What a pair. Once they had the arm severed they took a break. Did some cocaine. While they were chopping it up they argued about the best way to get the gun out of that woman’s mouth without blowing her head off.”
Her laugh was a mirthless puff of air inching a dead leaf along a sidewalk.
“Finally they began by cutting the tape that held her head to the gurney. Then they tried to roll her over so the arm would be straight up over her mouth. They figured this would at least take the dead weight of your finger off the trigger. The two of them, trying to be real careful, both of them holding onto the arm, turning the woman — they were not at all sure what they were doing. They bickered. It being so hot under the light, the tape got even stickier. Blood had run down your arm and all over the tape, too. Everybody was sweating prodigiously. It was difficult for them to find loose ends of the tape, and when they did it was dicey to peel away. That was good duct tape.
“So they slit the tape down the back of her head, along the nape of her neck. But tape stuck to her hair and face, and it still held the gun in her mouth. The dead hand was taped to the gun. The dead finger still curled around the trigger. They were afraid to touch it. There was so much blood on the gun they were afraid to try to uncock it. While they were arguing, it became obvious that neither one of them knew the least thing about guns. The safety, for example, wasn’t even mentioned. Guns had been the department of the two dead guys.
“All they knew was it had already killed twice and now it was cocked and loaded and stuck in that woman’s mouth. After a lot of talking and some yelling they went ahead with the decision to rotate the arm straight up over her. I don’t know why. They told her to turn her head with it. But the rest of her was still taped to the gurney. Her eyes got big and started to blink. She tried to say something but you couldn’t understand her. And at some point enough torque developed.…”
Stanley winced.
“You liked her, didn’t you?”
Stanley half opened his mouth to say nothing. Just perceptibly, he nodded.
“Yes. You liked her. She seduced your mind or something. Anyway, that cannon blew the back of her head right through the gurney. And all over the floor. It sounded like somebody hit the gurney with a sledge-hammer.”
Somebody slammed a metal door…
Stanley realized that his breath was whistling in and out of his half-open mouth.
“They went nuts, as you might expect, and they weren’t paying any attention to me at all. The surgeon went hysterical — straight into hyperspace. He’d just killed his own wife, after all. The anesthesiologist immediately started crying. He cursed over and over again, in Spanish. I’m not sure what it meant.
“The doctor ran out of gas first. He gulped air like he’d surfaced from a deep dive, and when he’d caught enough air he started wailing and screaming all over again.
“Eventually they stopped and just stood there, in shock, silently weeping.
“And there was you, of course. You.…”
Stanley blinked the single eye. Me.
“Blood was everywhere. From your arm and your eye and from the woman. All over everything. Before the anesthetic took effect on your arm Djell had actually initiated your transplant incision, so you wouldn’t get suspicious, and that was bleeding too. As soon as they realized your arm was dead they quit on the nephrectomy and went right into the amputation. He was pretty good, that guy Djell. I mean, think about it. Your gosh-darned hand is taped to a loaded .45 in Djell’s wife’s mouth. Your finger is on the trigger. The hammer is cocked. And this guy amputated the darned arm without setting the gun off. Darn, I said to myself, that’s a darned good surgeon.”
“Yeah,” Stanley said softly, locking his lone eye on one of hers. “How’s your nephrectomy scar?”
Her smile faded momentarily, then quivered back into life. She kept her gaze, however, directly on Stanley.
Loathing, he real
ized. Her loathing bathes me. Me, the despicable.
Yet there was an aura around the hatred, a backlight. Emanating from what?
Oh, Stanley realized suddenly. Look at that.
Desire pooled the hatred in her eyes like an oil slick around a wreck.
Now, he thought, we’re getting the proper perspective. Until now he’d seen or heard nothing that made sense.
But now he could see that Iris hated and wanted him — both. Hated him and wanted him completely, passionately, and absolutely. Instead of fissioning her into a hopeless case, the twin emotions had fused her into a guided missile. No compromise would be possible.
To Stanley, this dual compulsion made sense.
Don’t do it, babe, he wanted to tell her, it’s not worth it. But he was the wrong person to be explaining to Iris the futile cocktail of loathing and desire — he was, after all, a mutilated expert. But while he had plenty of expertise he had no credibility. Trust was not a tent under which he might seek shelter from the gale of her volition. Forever gone was the hour when she might have listened to him.
He wondered if Sibyl had ever detected in his eyes — when he still had two of them — the drive he now saw in Iris’.
Would Iris notice the condescension he now felt? No. She wasn’t looking for it in Stanley any more than he had been looking for it in Sibyl.
Her mouth was perfectly caught between a smile and a snarl. The smile made the snarl look triumphant. The snarl made the smile look… carnivorous.
“My scar’s fine,” Iris said simply. “How’s yours?”
“I don’t know. Do I have one?”
“Yes.”
“Is there… Is there a kidney… under it?” He laughed. It was the briefest, most false laugh he’d ever heard himself laugh. “Is there… an aster there? Too?”
She smiled. “No, Stanley. There is no aster sewn to your back.”
His single eye began to water. “Where is it, then? My… Your — I mean… That kidney…?”
She dropped one hand and patted the side of her wheelchair, just over her right hip.
Stanley raised the eyebrow over the good eye.
“Right where it belongs,” she said.
“You got it back?”
She nodded.
“How?”
“Sims, of course. Djell might have been okay, but Sims is the best in town.”
Stanley nodded sadly.
She abruptly leaned forward and Stanley involuntarily started. “Listen up, now,” she said, lowering her voice. “We’re not finished.” She sat back in the wheelchair and resumed her conversational tone. “It’s hard to explain, but they finally got over it.”
“Who?”
“Djell and Jaime.”
“Got over what?”
“His wife’s death.”
“They got over it?”
She smiled.
“They got over it,” Stanley repeated, more or less to himself.
She waited.
After a minute he said, almost inaudibly, “I don’t understand anything.”
“True. We’ll fix that in a minute. But it wasn’t long before they were doing a lot better than you would have been doing, under the circumstances. If it had been your wife, I mean.”
She smiled with relish.
He struggled to avoid imagining what it must have looked like.
Iris opened her hands. “Amazing resilience — the kind that gets people through medical school. Always the first step in dealing with grief, they talked for a long time. And what they decided was, this was the end. The game was over. They were finished. Without Sibyl they were washed up, true. But also, they were never going to be able to get rid of so many bodies. Somebody was going to notice something. There were too many loose ends. Vince and Sturgeon, for example, had families.”
“God almighty.”
Iris nodded. “Just regular guys. So they came up with a solution and called it their Big Casino.”
He saw dozens of playing cards, blowing along a street.
She nodded. “The Big Casino. Based on a quick calculation, and counting the organs of a guy I didn’t even know was there.…”
“Ted?”
She looked at him, disingenuously interrogative. “Was that his name?”
He said “Ted Nichols” before he realized that of course she knew the name. She just wanted to hear Stanley say it.
“Counting Nichols, the dead wife, you, the two guys, they figured they had close to a million dollars worth of organs. The money was practically at their fingertips. All they had to do was harvest, deliver, get paid — and get the hell out of the country, straight into retirement.”
“That’s incredible,” Stanley whispered. “Impossible. I can’t believe they thought they—”
Iris flicked a hand. “Struck me as pretty bold, actually. After all, it was either go for it or roll over and die. So, anyway, they got your arm disentangled from that… well, that mess, really.”
Stanley was feeling a little faint. He inhaled deeply.
“Breathe from the diaphragm and you might not puke.”
Though it did him no good whatsoever, Stanley tried to yawn. He often yawned, right before he vomited.
“Try to take it easy,” Iris said. “Lie back. Convulsions won’t do that catheter any good at all. But finally they got the gun separated from what was left of her head. The arm comes with it and they’ve this weird appendage all wrapped in a towel cause by now there’s a lot of gore. They covered the woman with a sheet. Now. What do you think these two clowns did next?”
Stanley could only shake his head and yawn involuntarily.
“No, really,” she said, tenting her fingers beneath her chin and watching him. “You knew them better than anybody alive, probably. After they got the gun detached from this pulp on the gurney, what do you think is the first thing the one guy says to the other, the very first?”
“I don’t know…,” moaned Stanley. “I don’t know!”
“We got a lot of work in front of us. Put that thing with the others. He was referring to your arm and the gun taped to it.”
For a second Stanley didn’t get it.
Iris nodded. “So Jaime lays the arm — your arm, Stanley, your thing — all wrapped up in a bloody towel and still taped to the gun, on top of the black guy you killed, who is stacked on top of the white guy I killed, who are both laying on the floor — right next to me.”
Now he got it.
“I’m playing possum, of course. Which wasn’t too hard. I am hurting pretty bad by then, I can tell you. But there’s no accounting for what shock and adrenaline can enable a body to put up with.” She burped.
“Excuse me,” she said, daintily patting her mouth. “Some of these darn drugs…
“Jaime goes back to the gurney, and the both of them stare at the woman’s sheeted cadaver for a bit. The husband, Djell, says, God knows I loved you Sibyl. And I know that you would have wanted us to get on with our business according to our best lights, and mourn you in our own good time.
“In Cabo San Lucas, for instance, said Jaime.
“Better it should be Rio. She would want all these organs — and here he sweeps the room with his hand — put to best use.
“Now Stanley,” said Iris, “this is very serious. This sweep of his hand — along with the two cadavers and you and the wife and the guy I didn’t even know was there yet, the guy in the van — this sweep of his hand included me. You understand? This sweep of his hand included my organs going to best use. Got that?”
Stanley nodded dumbly.
“So let’s get on with it, Djell says. And the Jaime guy says, Not much anesthesiology going on here. And Djell says, Good. You can assist me. Shaky hands don’t differentiate shit from chocolate to a cadaver donor. Not to mention warm ischemia. And Jaime says Who’s first? and Djell says, We might as well continue with this one. He’s all wired up. And Jaime says You want I should bring him out of it? Let him watch? After all, he— and he point
s to the dead wife.
“No, Djell says then. It won’t bring Sibyl back. And besides, it’ll slow us down. Are you with me, Stanley?”
Stanley blinked.
“Good. I want you to know exactly how it went, Stanley. I am just thinking it was pretty extraordinary of this guy Djell to let bygones be bygones like that, in the name of efficiency, when he says to Jaime, It’s a lot of work. We’re going to be at it for the rest of the day, at least. True enough, Jaime agrees, and he starts pointing at you and counting his fingers. He points at the dead woman and counts some more. He doubles his figures for the white guy and the black guy and adds more for the guy upstairs, which I didn’t understand at the time but finally he throws a few of his nasty fingers at me. Wow, Jaime says. This is twelve kidneys — Ten, corrects Djell, pointing at you. Amyloidosis. Oh yes, says Jaime. But twelve lungs. Yes, Djell confirms sadly. And twelve corneas, continues Jaime, and six livers as well as spleens and pituitary glands and whatever else you think we can handle. —Oh my god! he slaps his forehead Tickers — there’s six tickers! We’re never going to have to work again!
“If and when we get out of this pickle, stipulates Djell, we’ll never be able to work again, either. Okay. Onward. Let’s fortify with some blow…
“And the next thing you know these guys have sniffed up about fifteen grains of cocaine apiece, they’ve rolled you over, Stanley, and are about to initiate a cruciate abdominal incision. I believe you saw some photographs of one recently. Otherwise known as the Big Zipper.”
Iris paused. “Stanley? You following me? You look a little gray.”
Stanley felt a little gray.
“Anyway, there isn’t that much more to tell. I had to do something or I was dead meat. You too, of course. And it was easy. The gun was right there. Before they knew what had happened I had the drop on them. You know, it was a funny thing, that arm of yours being still attached to the gun.” She smiled. “It was just like a stock. You know those old pistols they used to make, where you could attach a stock to them and kind of turn them into a short-barreled rifle?” She raised an eyebrow.
Stanley’s mouth was filling with bitter saliva.