Samantha took a breath. She knew Jessica was right, but she was still mad. She felt like she was getting a hamburger when she had been promised a steak. She made herself say, “Sorry, I’m tired and cranky. I’ll be better after I have a beer,” and tried to mean it.
Amber was hurt and angry, but wanted the weekend to go well, so she sucked it up and made the appropriate conciliatory noises herself.
It took more than an hour for the girls to get ready to face the city. It only took twelve minutes after that for them all to have a Hurricane in their hand at Pat O’Brien’s.
By the time she was halfway through her drink, all of Samantha’s irritation was gone. Amber held onto it a little longer, but not much. After one drink, they left the bar, arm in arm, swearing their eternal devotion to each other and promising never to fight again.
Friday February 14th
3:30 P.M.
Aldous did not look much like himself. His head was covered in an oversized jester’s hat, which neatly obscured his crown-of-thorns tattoo. His lack of eyebrows and his eyes were concealed behind mirrored aviator-style sunglasses. Around his neck he had a few strands of cheap beads. He was wearing khaki pants, a white button-down shirt, and thin-soled shoes. Without his thick-soled boots, and the lifts he wore inside them, he stood a relatively modestly tall six foot three. He was still tall without the lifts, but not overwhelmingly so. The persona of Aldous was gone, replaced by one of a generic tourist. People who thought they knew him would not have recognized him. He was carrying garbage bags: two empty black ones and a full white one.
He had left his French Quarter apartment a couple of hours before, dressed much more like himself. He had changed into his generic tourist outfit in a public bathroom at the French Market. He stayed in the stall long enough so nobody was left in the room who had been there when he had come in. All of his normal clothes, the leather pants, the boots with their lifts, his jacket, had gone into a black garbage bag. Once he left the market, that garbage bag had gone into the trunk of a car he kept parked in a garage on the south side of the French Quarter.
Then he had started wandering, as randomly as he could manage, until he found an apartment building that looked right to him.
Aldous picked an apartment at random and knocked on the door. Nobody answered, which was exactly what he was hoping for. He was good at picking locks, but he didn’t need those skills on a door like this. A piece of plastic cut from a milk jug was a perfect key when slid between the doorframe and the latch.
The apartment was a mess, which suited his needs perfectly. He set the garbage bags down inside the door. After a quick check to make sure there was nobody in the apartment, he pulled a wedge from his pocket and slid it under the door, to ensure that nobody would interrupt him.
He quickly stripped off the street clothes, and carefully put them in the black garbage bag. He was left wearing a custom fit latex suit covering him from neck to toes. Only his head and hands were exposed. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and that left only his head exposed.
He found the bathroom and took a very thorough shower. The goal was to remove as much forensic evidence from himself as possible. He got out of the shower and looked around the apartment. To his delight the place was messy and whoever lived there had cats. The cats were evidently in hiding, which was fine with him, since he only cared about their fur. He rolled around on the bedroom floor, trying to coat himself in as many cat hairs, human hairs and carpet fibers as he could.
He was mildly fuzzy when he opened the white garbage bag and removed his next outfit. Work pants and a work shirt still sealed in cellophane. That’s the nice thing about work clothes, they come from the store fairly well insulated from microscopic evidence.
Next out of the bag came a novelty baseball cap with a fringe of long blond hair attached. It was in the bag of the store it had come from, which he had carefully taped shut as soon as he had bought it. It was an exact match to one he had given to Dexter as a gag gift for Xmas. The true gag was much more complex than the implication of someone losing their hair, and the true gag was only now beginning to come into motion. The longer the game took to play out, the more fun it was for Aldous.
Socks and shoes came from the bag. The socks, like everything else Aldous was wearing, were pristine, still wrapped in plastic, but the shoes were not pristine, even though they were new and unworn. Aldous had spent a few minutes modifying their soles in a public park one afternoon, before sealing them in a bag.
The garbage all went into the black bag. The last thing into the bag was the wedge from under the door. Donning the mirrored glasses, Aldous stepped out into the apartment’s hallway.
Aldous spent a good forty-five minutes wandering aimlessly through the streets, before making his way to the parking garage on the north side of the French Quarter where he kept a certain midnight blue 1969 GTO. The car was stolen, but had plates that weren’t. The car he had stolen from Dexter. The plates were from a once similar GTO that was rusted out behind a house on the bayou. The non-functioning car and the house both belonged to someone named Boaz Pendleton. Boaz Pendleton was another way of saying Aldous Andmour, but before it was all over people would think that it was an alias for Dexter. It was all part of the little game Aldous was playing with Dexter.
Friday February 14th
4:00 p.m.
Kelly knocked on Jeremy’s door. She was holding a dry-cleaning bag stretched over the backpack that was slung over her right shoulder. It was four in the afternoon and she was a half-hour late. Jeremy already had the hand truck loaded. The gig was supposed to start at eight. The bar provided the PA, so the band only needed to bring its own gear, which was still a pretty big pile of stuff.
“Sorry I’m late. The dry-cleaner couldn’t find my dress.”
“Not a problem, I needed the workout.” Jeremy didn’t really mind, but Kelly did guilt so well, he hated to keep her from it.
“Well, let’s get going. Tonight is a big night.”
Kelly slung her backpack on top of the cart and hung the dry-cleaning bag off the end of the cart. “Hell yes, the House of Blues during Carnival is a big night. Even if Mardi Gras is still weeks away and even if we are just the opening act.”
“Nah, that’s not it. It’s a big night because you get to meet her.”
Kelly raised an eyebrow. “Her?”
“My angel. I’ve had a busy couple of days.”
“Do tell.”
“Oh, you know the story, it’s an old one, but a good one. Boy trips over girl, boy falls for girl.”
“Jeremy, you know you aren’t allowed to fall for anyone unless I approve.”
“So you’ll meet her, and you’ll approve. Trust me on this.”
“I reserve the right to reserve judgment.”
“Of course you do. It’s your prerogative, but trust me, you’ll love her.”
It was only a fifteen-minute walk from Jeremy’s house to the House of Blues, even pushing the heavily laden handcart. Jeremy spent the time giving Kelly the basic run down on Sarah. He was just about to tell her about his Whisper Garden project when they got to the club and had to get to work setting up for the show.
Set up wasn’t too bad, as band set ups go. Five guitars, two basses, two guitar amps and cabinets, one bass amp and cabinet. A pedalboard of effects for the guitar and another for the bass. Even the drum kit was relatively easy; Steve played synth drums, so his set up was pretty much a matter of unfolding the frame that held the dinner-plate-sized pads, and setting the pads at about the right angles. Steve, of course, would re-adjust everything in the five minutes before the show. The last thing onto the drum frame was a laptop computer, which had a wireless network to another laptop, which was sitting on top of Kelly’s amp.
Once the band had really jelled, Jeremy had forked out the money to buy most of the bands equipment. He bought good stuff; the band’s rig was mostly w
ireless. That meant fewer tangles and more mobility onstage, but everything still had to be plugged in right. By six-thirty everything was set up and they had gone through a (very) basic sound check. All they could do was make sure everything was connected properly and labeled correctly on the sound-board. A real sound check would be impossible without all the musicians, and even then levels would have to be changed once there were people in the room, so a rough sound check was good enough to get the show started.
Friday February 14th
4:30 p.m.
Ward Barker looked at the man seated on the other side of his desk. Most doctors have desks, but not many examine patients in one room and then discuss the diagnosis in another, especially without giving the patients a chance to get dressed in the meantime.
Ward had found that a patient who was sitting in their underwear in front of a huge desk was not very likely to argue with a diagnosis. Ward’s desk had been carefully chosen to be huge and imposing, as had his chair. The man on the other side of Ward’s desk was far from being huge and imposing. He was a skinny man, and he hurt.
The pain in Aaron Flynn’s back prevented him from sitting straight, but even if he had not been in pain already, he doubted there was a comfortable way to sit in the small hard chair in front of Doctor Barker’s desk. Just as the desk had been chosen to be imposing, the chair had been chosen to be uncomfortable. Ward had purchased it from an antique shop. It had originally been a schoolhouse chair, made in a time when it was believed that an uncomfortable seat helped keep children’s minds focused on schoolwork. The chair was scaled to fit an early-century schoolboy uncomfortably; for anyone larger than that it was a mild form of torture.
In fact, almost every aspect of Ward’s office had been designed to keep his patients intimidated. The large window behind his desk was bright enough most times of the day to make it uncomfortable for a patient to look Ward in the face. When a patient looked away, the walls were covered with Ward’s diplomas and certifications. Ward was a highly certified physician. He had been known to attend workshops for the sole goal of having another piece of documentation on the wall, even if it wasn’t relevant to his practice.
He did all of this to help intimidate his patients, to plant so many ideas in their heads that he was the doctor and that they were merely his patients so they wouldn’t think to argue when he told them that they were fit to return to work.
Two weeks prior to meeting Doctor Barker, Aaron Flynn had tried to catch a box of falling office supplies. He had reached too far and torn up his back, specifically his left rhomboid muscle. It was a classic soft tissue injury – very painful, but almost impossible to prove. Doctor Ward Barker considered it to be his job to only approve continued insurance payments for patients who could absolutely prove their injuries. Ward worked for an HMO, and though it had never been stated explicitly, no memos, no voicemails, no form of incriminating paper trail, the HMO had made it clear that his success would be judged on how many claims he could deny.
Ward had no doubt that most of the patients coming to his office were attempting to defraud the company. He had seen too many come in dressed in athletic clothing and still sweating from the basketball court to believe in the basic honesty of mankind.
Ward had seen enough clever fakers that it had become easy for him to tell someone like Aaron Flynn that he could find no evidence of injury, and that Mr. Flynn should go back to work in the warehouse. Long ago he had come to the conclusion that he was doing everyone a service by denying all unprovable claims. Ward told himself that if Mr. Flynn were really in as much pain as he seemed to be, he would seek another opinion and fight the diagnosis. Ward considered himself to be a filtering step in the process. Most of the frauds would go back to work, and eventually the truly injured would get treatment. By denying everyone he helped keep costs down for everyone.
Aaron Flynn, a thin but basically fit man, was shocked by the doctor’s diagnosis. He couldn’t walk without pain, he couldn’t stand without pain, he couldn’t even sit in the doctor’s office without pain, and yet the doctor was telling him to go back to work. He tried to look in the doctor’s eyes, but the glare from the window left the doctor silhouetted. He tried to find the words to argue with the doctor, desperately searching his mind for something more eloquent than, “I hurt.”
Ward could tell that his patient was not happy with the diagnosis, and he had learned to not give his patients time to think. He said, “We are done, Mr. Flynn, and I have other patients to see. You’ll find your clothes back in the examination room.” The dismissal worked, just like it almost always did. One time a patient had threatened him with violence, until Ward had pointed out that if he was capable of sticking his foot that far up his butt, then he was certainly capable of a day of work.
Flynn shuffled out of the room. Ward had lied to Flynn; there were no other patients. He let himself out the back door and was off the property before Flynn could hobble out the front door.
It was four-thirty in the afternoon on Friday, time for Ward to celebrate another week survived. Afternoon traffic was hell, so he pulled his BMW Z3 into a bar’s parking lot to let things settle down some. Two Manhattans later, Ward was a bit calmed, but he quickly found that traffic was not, so he took another stop at a different bar and another couple of drinks to amend that problem. Two hours, three bars, and six drinks after he had left his office, Ward’s car slid into the driveway of his Esplanade Avenue house.
He grabbed a beer and plopped into the big recliner in his media room. The first thing that cable presented him was Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Normally he found horror movies funny, but as he watched, his house started feeling bigger and emptier around him. He watched for about two minutes before he started to flip channels. Five minutes later he decided that there was nothing on TV, and he didn’t feel like sitting around the house.
The good news was that living on Esplanade, the eastern edge of the French Quarter, meant there was always something to do in easy walking distance. By seven-thirty he was looking for trouble on Bourbon Street.
Friday February 14th
6:00 p.m.
Dexter got home early in the evening and started to think about food. It felt strange to be cooking for just himself, but Jenni and Amy were gone for the weekend. Jenni had a swim meet and Amy was chaperoning.
Dexter decided that there was no point getting too fancy – an omelet would suffice. He opened a beer and started to work. After getting out some eggs and vegetables, he discovered that one of his knives was not in the rack.
He was vexed. He took pride in being meticulously organized. The only place a knife should be was in its rack, in use, or being washed. He had washed all the dishes this morning. The knife should be in its rack.
He checked the sink to see if someone else had used the knife, and blasphemously left it to rust before washing. There was no knife in the sink. It made no sense. Where could one knife be? Both Amy and Jenni knew better than to use one of his prized knives for anything other than cooking. That had been resolved after a school project that involved cutting cardboard. (That case of knife abuse still bothered Dexter when he thought about it.)
Nothing else seemed to be missing. Where could one knife be? After looking everywhere, including the trash can (which had been emptied), Dexter’s best theory was that either his wife or daughter cut something in preparation for their road trip, and left the knife on the counter. Somehow it had been knocked from the counter into the trash, and then the trash had been taken out. A simple explanation, though he didn’t relish the notion of digging through the trash to find it. Nevertheless, he went out and searched his garbage. It wasn’t there. He wondered if one of the aluminium-can scavengers had taken it.
Despite the delay looking for the knife, it was a relatively fast meal, and by six-forty-five, Dexter had one omelet and two beers in his belly.
Feeling a little lonely, he sat down with a Civil War history and
started to read. Before long, he was done with feeling lonely and was starting to feel antsy. The wife and kid being gone opened certain possibilities for him.
Amy didn’t approve of him smoking pot with a teenage daughter in the house. Dexter felt that on that issue Amy was a bit of a hypocrite … he knew that she had started smoking at fifteen, but he also knew better than to argue with the mother of his daughter.
Dexter kept a small stash under the bottom shelf of the bookcase he used for his cookbooks. It was a little inconvenient, but it was pretty much impossible to find by accident. He also kept a Colt .45 hidden there, for much the same reason. He felt that there were circumstances in which it might be useful, but Amy did not approve. He figured if he ever came home and found the house being burglarized, he could knock over the bookcase, pull out the bag of pot and the gun and offer the crook a choice … take the pot and leave everything else, or get shot.
Dexter only smoked a few times a year, usually on holidays at friends’ houses (Amy didn’t even really mind that, she would occasionally join him on a friend’s balcony on New Year’s Eve or Halloween), but the mood was on him, and he could see no reason not to. While he was pulling the books off the shelf he realized that it was a holiday. Valentine’s Day certainly counts as a holiday, even when your wife is out of town.
He rolled himself a couple of joints and then meticulously replaced the stash, the shelf, and the books. He sat on the sink next to the kitchen window and felt a little like a teenager as he tried to make sure that most of the smoke went outside.
The Whisper Garden Page 8