“Me?” he said, looking down from on high. “I think you are running a little amok yourself, Mr. Jackman. You come here insinuating that our employees knock off people they don’t agree with, and that we reward them for doing so. No, I can’t tell you anything of the sort.”
I saw his hand reach under his desk and heard a motorized hum; I took two steps forward just in case the floor under me was a trapdoor ready to send me on a one-way trip to oblivion. Behind me I heard a door whir open. “John will see you out,” the CEO said, nodding at the guy in the four-button suit who was standing in the doorway. Then he looked back down to his papers.
Smug old bastard, I thought. He thinks he can just dismiss me like I’m not worth bothering about. I wanted to wipe that smug look off that tan face. What else could I say? Something impressive. Benzodiazepine receptors? No, that’s dumb. Cellular effects of alcohol in the brain? Dumber. What the hell did Sherry say to Ryan that night they argued? “Ryan, you know there’s more,” she had said. “Those dissociative disorders...”
“Those dissociative disorders,” I finally blurted out. “Sherry told me all about them.”
Yielding’s head snapped up. Impenetrable blue eyes stared at me for a second or two before Four-button grabbed my arm and escorted me forcibly around the glass, down the elevator, and across the lobby. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight until I was out the door and down the street. I walked along First Avenue, looking backwards till I couldn’t see him any more. Free at last, I thought. But then, three blocks later, looking into a store window, I caught a glimpse of a guy in a brown suit and glasses.
DONNA
I followed up on the Queens address the very next morning. I took the same subway path that Henry had followed the night before: the V train to Queens to Parson’s Boulevard, a right onto 78th and a left onto 160th Street. Halfway up the block I found 7822, a little white house with green shutters on a hill with a lot of other little white houses with shutters. It was neatly kept with a flower bed in front, but all the houses were well maintained. The first generation immigrants who made up most of this neighborhood probably had never had a house before. Their pride of ownership showed.
I climbed up the stairs and rang the bell. A young Latina woman answered the door. “Who are you?” she asked, a trace of suspicion on her furrowed brow, but she allowed me to enter when she saw the badge. She motioned for me to be seated.
“Is this the house of Diego Jimenez?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My boyfriend.” She shifted her position in the chair, unconsciously placing her hand against her lower back for support. It must have focused my attention on her middle section, because only then did I notice the baby bump. I’d say she was in her fifth month.
“And your name, Miss…” I said, purposely giving her a chance to add the “us” to make it “Missus”, if applicable. Apparently, it wasn’t.
“Alicia,” she replied.
“Last name?” I asked.
“Rivera.”
I got right to the point. “Do you know a Henry Jackman?”
Alicia seemed a little confused. “Henry?” she said. “I know an Eduardo.”
“Eduardo Jackman?” I asked, doing something of a double-take.
“Si.”
I wondered first whether Henry had a brother but then his brother would have had to be carrying Henry’s phone. “Was he here last night?”
Another shrug. “He could have been.”
“Yes or no?” I asked.
“No.”
My eyebrows must have shown my doubt.
“Yes.”
My brows shot up higher, asking for more information. But this one was not going to volunteer a single thing I didn’t ask for. “What was Mr. Jackman doing here, Ms. Rivera?”
“He is my other boy friend,” she replied, her head bowed.
That’s somehow what I thought, even though it was hard to picture Henry Jackman as a Latin lover. “He made love to you last night?” I asked.
Eyes on the ground, she answered, “Yes.”
“And where was Diego all this time?”
“He works.”
“At night?”
She nodded. “Si. He mostly works the night shift.”
I tried to chat her up, but she wouldn’t be chatted. Finally, I left, reversing the route the yellow dot had made, back to the subway. Nothing I had seen was of any criminal interest. As far as I could see, though it strained credulity, Henry Jackman was a Don Juan.
* * *
The next time I saw Henry Jackman was in the lobby of the precinct, his collar in the mighty grasp of Sergeant Jones, who was in the process of dragging him out the door. Some of these younger cops can be a bit overenthusiastic in carrying out their duties. I told Jones I would take him from here.
I led Jackman back to my cubicle, where, as usual, I had to have him move the chair a foot before we were able to close the door. What does that do for my credibility as an authority figure, I wonder? I need to talk to the captain about letting me have Mulcahy’s old office. At least that door closes out, not in.
I asked him what his relationship was like with Sherry.
Of course he told me it was great, though the color in his face went from pink to white. Fights? Nothing of the sort, he insisted. They had philosophical discussions. Philosophical discussions?! Now why do I have trouble picturing Henry Jackman having a philosophical discussion?
“Then why was she afraid of you?” I countered. “It wasn’t that you had a violent temper?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he struck back, his lower lip quivering.
I asked him if he knew Jessica.
“No way,” he said, with his usual eloquence. “I never met her. The first time I went to her apartment was when I saw the address in the Daily News. By then she was dead.”
“So, if we put you in a line-up for Jessica’s first floor neighbor, she wouldn’t recognize you?” I asked, just to put the scare into him. It did.
“No!” he shouted. “I never saw either of them in my life!”
In the back of my mind the whole time we talked was the image of him and Alicia making love at 7822 160th Street in Queens. I was tempted to spring it on him, just to see how he reacted, but the cell phone tracking was my ace in the hole, and no good would come of putting a suspect on guard.
“Fine,” I told him. “I’ll take your word for it.” I said he was free to leave, and Jackman staggered out.
HENRY
My Somnolux store was getting mighty low: four more nights. I brought the bottle into work and asked Carl to try to get a renewal over the phone again. He said he’d do it soon as he finished what he was doing: that there was no way they were in yet, but he’d call at ten. Ten came and went. Finally, I just slipped the telephone number under his nose, along with the prescription number.
“Okay,” he said. He picked up the phone and dialed. “It’s ringing,” he told me. Then, suddenly, he pulled the phone away from his head. I thought maybe I had given him a fax number, and it was buzzing in his ear, but no, there was a very loud woman’s voice coming out of the receiver. Even I could hear it.
“Does he think he can just get away with what he did? Dr. Hirsch doesn’t want to hear or see from Mr. Jackman anymore. Never, you hear me?!” Then the phone clicked off.
“Holy shit,” Carl said. “What did you do to him?”
“Do to him? Nothing! I haven’t talked to either of them for a month.”
“You must have done something, Henry.”
“They must have got me mixed up with someone else,” I said, taking the phone out of Carl’s hand.
“Doesn’t sound that way.”
I grabbed the number from the counter and started dialing. “Dr. Hirsch’s office,” a voice said.
“Hello. Don’t hang up. This is Mr. Jackman.” I could already hear the voice start to tremble. “Wait! I’d like to ask you something.” The voice calmed down. “Tell me what I’m supposed
to have done.”
“Supposed to have done?” the voice shrieked. “You assaulted him. That’s what. You came into his office two days ago right before closing hour, and demanded Somnolux. Then, when he wouldn’t prescribe any more, you jumped on top of the desk and tried to strangle him! Thank God he managed to fight you off.”
The voice was so loud I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. “You must be mixing me up with someone else,” I shouted into the phone. “I never would do anything like that.”
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Jackman. Either you remember doing this or you don’t, I really don’t care. But whatever it is, I think you need some real help. And it’s sure not going to be Dr. Hirsch who gives it to you,” she said and hung up. Shit. People always seemed to be hanging up on me these days.
“Man,” Carl said. “That woman was ticked off. You mean you really don’t remember being there at his office two days ago?”
I shook my head. This was getting scary.
“You know, Henry, I’m thinking Somnolux here. Have you been reading up on that?”
“Not really. Hirsch quizzed me on symptoms like eating in my sleep. I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, well, there are lots of symptoms: Sleepwalking. Sleep-driving. Sleep-eating. Shoplifting. Sexsomnia.”
The last one caught my attention. “Sexsomnia?”
“They’re all called parasomnias, where people do complex acts without full awareness. For instance, did you hear about the case where a nurse got into her car after going to sleep one night? All she had on was a nightgown and no shoes. She got into her car in twenty degree weather, had a fender bender, took a piss in the middle of the street, and then got violent when some cops tried to arrest her.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“And,” Carl said, “She’d never had a driving accident before. Or, the one about the woman who - get this - was in a full body cast. She had to have two aides during the day, because she couldn’t get up even to go to the bathroom. But her son came to stay for a few days, and the first night he was there, he found her standing in the kitchen, body cast and all, frying bacon and eggs. But she was asleep! He walked her back to bed. The next night he found her eating a sandwich, having turned the oven on to 500 degrees. She could have burned the house down.”
“Just from taking Somnolux?” I asked.
“Yeah, well, mostly people had reactions when they drank alcohol too, which, you’ll note, the package says not to take. But the nurse out in her nightgown insists she just took Somnolux and went to bed. Only when she got back after her arrest did she find a half bottle of wine on her counter. She says the bottle was unopened before she went to bed.”
“So, she drank it in her sleep.”
“Seems like.”
For a minute we both went back to work, but I was still stuck on sexsomnia, for obvious reasons. “So people take Somnolux and have sex in their sleep?”
“Yeah,” Carl laughed. “There was this case where a man would hit on his wife once a month in his sleep. His wife says she knew just when it was, because he was sexier and more aggressive than when he was awake.” He laughed again. So did I, but it got me thinking.
Meanwhile Carl was still talking. “They say parasomnias happen when the brain is half asleep and half awake. People think that sleep and waking are opposite states, but it’s not really true. The whole brain isn’t in one state or the other. The monitoring and memory parts may be asleep while other parts are awake.” He paused, sticking a label on. “After all,” he said, “parasomniacs do manage to perform complicated tasks like walking and driving and making sandwiches.”
“And sex.”
Carl laughed at my one-track mind. “Yeah. And sex. And parasomnias happen without Somnolux. Somnolux must just bring it out in susceptible people. I mean, people do sleepwalk, children especially.” He went briefly back to work before he looked up again. “You ever sleepwalk as a kid?”
“You know, I seem to remember my mother telling me something about me sleepwalking.”
“Why don’t you call her to find out?”
“Call my mother?” I said, shivering. But I had to find out, so I picked up my cell and dialed their Queens number. Pop picked up.
“Pop, it’s Henry. Did I ever sleepwalk?”
“Hoo, boy, didja evuh. We had to install locks on the daws and winders. Wait. I’ll get y’mothuh.”
“Wait, Pop,” I shouted, but he was off. A minute later Mom came on.
“Hello deah. How’s the eye?”
“Better,” I said. “Pop says you had to install locks on the doors and windows, because I used to sleepwalk....”
“Mr. Sleepywawk, we yoosta call you. You’d wake up at eleven every night and wawk downstairs inya sleep. If no one was theyah ta stop you, you’d open the front door and go out in yaw pajamas. Even if it was the dead of winta. Once, right at the beginning, y’fathuh and I were in bed owaselves, and a policeman rang owa bell at midnight. Seems he found you wawking in the middle of the street. Then theyah was the time...”
“Mom!”
“That you got into bed with y’sista...”
“Mom!”
“Yes deah?”
“Thanks. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Dijuh see the doctuh yet about those blackouts?”
“Uh, yeah, Mom. He said they were nothing.”
“Oh, that’s a relief, well, in that case...”
“Bye Mom.” I flipped my phone closed. “Yeah,” I said to Carl. “According to my parents, I was a mega sleepwalker.”
Carl stopped what he was doing and looked straight at me. “Henry, you’ve got to stop taking Somnolux. Period,” he said. “Case closed. You must be one of those susceptible people. You must have gone to this Doctor Hirsch and assaulted him in your sleep.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’ve got to promise me that you won’t take Somnolux anymore.”
“But what am I gonna do to sleep?” I cried.
“Hey, there are other meds. Go to another doctor. Get Lunesta or something. Or better yet, tough it out. The other sleep meds might do the same thing.”
“I don’t know...”
“Henry, promise me you’re not going to take Somnolux any more.”
“Okay, I promise,” I said, wondering what I should do about the little bottle with four more pills, which was sitting in my pocket.
* * *
I tried. I really tried. I bought a lot of over-the-counter stuff that didn’t do shit. I actually broke down and saw Mom’s Dr. Stevenson, who gave me prescriptions for Lunesta and Sonata, neither of which did anything for me. I would have asked him for Somnolux, but I had promised Carl, and, anyway, I was scared. I didn’t want to be one of those people crashing into telephone poles in their pajamas and peeing in the middle of the street. So, maybe a month went by with me getting progressively sleepier and sleepier, all the time carrying around that little bottle of Somnolux for moral support.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t seen Sherry in awhile. It was hard to go there and see her so lifeless. But I couldn’t keep avoiding her, so early the next Saturday I took the subway up and walked the fifteen blocks to the home. I tried the front entrance but I must have been too early, because the door was locked, so I walked around the building to the back way. Each room had a back door, but I figured it must have been connected to the security system as well, so I didn’t have much of a chance of getting in that way either. I was just standing there, staring through the little window when I noticed the day nurse bustling around in Sherry’s room. I knocked hard on the window. The nurse’s head jerked up, but she couldn’t seem to figure out where the noise was coming from. I knocked again, really hard. That did it. The nurse was coming toward the door. Then she was peering through the window at me. I mimicked opening the door, and she unfastened it.
“Front door locked?” she asked, letting me in. I could see her finger holding down the little tab thing on the inside of
the door. The nurse closed the door gently, releasing the tab just before the door closed. She must have seen me watching her. “Only way to get around the alarm,” she said with a grin.
We both walked back to Sherry’s bed. She was moaning slightly, twitching in the bed.
“She’s been restless lately,” the nurse said.
“Can’t you do something?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But she’s uncomfortable.”
“She’s probably not aware of the discomfort, though.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. She was in pain but probably not conscious of it, so it didn’t count. It made Sherry sound like a head of cabbage. “You don’t know that,” I argued. “You don’t even know she’s not conscious.”
The nurse shot me a look that said she had no time to debate the issue. “Mr. Jackman, all we can do is judge her mental state from what she does. If there are no intentional actions - if all there is are simple reflex responses - we have to assume she’s not conscious. And if she’s not conscious, then how is she aware that’s she’s in pain?”
What could I say? She was probably right. Still.
“Anyway,” the nurse said, turning toward the door. “What could the doctors give her? Something to make her sleep?” She laughed her way out of the room.
I stood there watching Sherry sleep. Her mouth was open and there was drool on her pillow. Every once in a while, she moaned. Sometimes an arm or a leg jerked. She looked uneasy, but maybe I was more aware of it than she was. Anyway, there was nothing I could do. Or was there? I suddenly remembered the little vial of Somnolux I carried everywhere. The nurse might laugh about giving Sherry a sleeping drug, but, hey, it just might calm her down.
I walked over to the doorway and peered out; the hall was empty. I came back over to Sherry’s bed, pulling out the vial, removing one pill and crushing it in a napkin that was lying on her bed table. I opened Sherry’s mouth as wide as I could, folded the napkin, and dumped the contents onto her tongue. Then I closed her mouth. I figured it would dissolve on its own in her saliva, and she’d swallow it eventually. Then I pulled a chair up and sat beside her, waiting to see if her restlessness subsided.
Come Out Tonight Page 14