A moment later Wilson rose and dabbed a cotton swab across the sole of Thorn's foot, then wiped a dot of blood from the sharp tip of what looked like a dentist's probe.
"I stuck you, son. Stuck it in, wiggled it around. In your big toe, in the arch of your right foot."
"Shit."
"Yeah," Dr. Wilson said. "Shit's the word that comes to mind."
"Can you do anything?" Monica was at his shoulder. "Is it serious?"
Bean Wilson seemed not to have heard. He ran a hand through his white mane, staring at Thorn's legs with a look that seemed to wander off to another time and place.
"What is it, Doc?"
Dr. Wilson blinked hard, came back to the moment.
"You got any kind of pain, son, in your legs or the feet maybe, base of your spine? A throb, a burn, a little tingle, anything at all?"
"No. I feel cold is all."
Dr. Wilson patted Thorn's shoulder lightly.
"Ninety-nine percent of the time I'm working to take away somebody's pain. This is the one percent where pain would be a blessing."
"It can't be that serious," Thorn said. "I just banged something when I fell. Like a stinger in football. You get hit, your hands go numb for a minute or two. Like that."
The doctor nodded, but he wasn't buying it.
"Missy," he said to Monica. "You better go out and tell that driver not to leave just yet. Looks like he's got himself a fare up to Miami."
"You can't do anything for him?"
"Oh, I could do things, sure. Dose him up with steroids, hope it's just swelling in the spinal cord. But he needs more than a country doctor's educated guess. He needs a bright young thing with all the shiny tools. I'll make a couple of calls. I know some good people up there."
Monica touched Thorn on the shoulder, then turned and hurried out.
"It's bad, huh?"
"Bad?" the doctor said. "Well, now, I've seen a ten-year-old boy, he dives into a swimming pool, goes directly to the bottom, smacks his head, everything from his chin down goes dead. Gotta live like that the rest of his days. Puff in a plastic tube to steer his chair. I've seen that happen twice."
"There's always something shittier, isn't there?"
"You bet there is," the doctor said. "From the day you're born till you ride in the hearse, nothing's so bad it couldn't be worse."
Thorn tried a smile. There wasn't much vitality behind it and he could feel it dissolve quickly.
"That's a pretty woman you got there, my friend."
"She is that."
"She love you?"
The smile came back.
"I believe she does. Yes."
"Well," Dr. Wilson said. "You're about to find out for sure."
CHAPTER 10
Just after midnight, Brad Madison was sitting behind the wheel of the white Fairlane, parked on Eaton Street in Key West, sweating heavily. He'd been sweating all day. His mouth was dry. He had a vicious headache. He might be about to die from dehydration, for all he knew. Fine. That was just fine. Bring it on, just hurry up with it.
"Maybe you got the day wrong," Echeverria said.
"It was today. Wednesday. Three o'clock in the afternoon." Brad Madison kept his eyes straight ahead, staring at the front door of the pain clinic.
"Well, hell, she's only nine hours late. Give her time."
Echeverria was finishing up his double cheeseburger in the front seat of the Fairlane parked a couple of houses down from the Eaton Street clinic. Brad Madison's first look at the place. A big Victorian gone to seed. Four stories, with dormers, widow's walk, tin roof, lots of gingerbread curlicues. Maybe white, maybe yellow, it was hard to tell which of the peeling paints was the last one applied. Rusty iron fence outside with arrowhead spikes, a long wooden wheelchair ramp up to the front door. Vines covered the yard and cobwebbed a couple of the smaller trees. A television still played in the front room, its gray light flickering. A couple of the upstairs rooms were lit too. The insomniacs trading war stories.
Brad was immobilized. First time in his career. Sitting in the front seat of the Fairlane all afternoon waiting for Greta to show. Enduring Echeverria's asinine play-by-play of every person walking down Eaton. Old ladies. Gays. Men with their dogs. Echeverria had something to say about all of them. Their clothes, their walk, body types. Most of it was sophomoric, all of it crude.
Three o'clock came and went and an hour or so later it was clear Greta wasn't going to show, but still Brad couldn't rouse himself. Feeling a noose slowly tightening at his collar. His twenty-year career dropping out from under him like the hangman's trapdoor.
Echeverria was eating his third double cheese of the evening. Brad about to retch from the odor.
Echeverria, between bites, was saying, "They could do it if they wanted to. Put the good cholesterol into donuts, pizza, whatever, but they don't."
Brad Madison stared across Eaton at the pain clinic.
Echeverria said, "The AMA, they wouldn't stand for it, curing heart disease. Don't even want to make a serious dent. Where the hell would they be without their three open hearts a day? They'd have to get a regular job.
"Bet your ass they could do it. Extract the good cholesterol from broccoli, cauliflower, all the shit nobody eats. Infuse it into pizzas and Egg McMuffins. The technology's there,
"Same with the corporations. Goodyear's got rubber never wears out, GM has engines that run on seawater. But they're hiding it from us. Same way with the cholesterol thing. Not that we were meant to live past thirty anyway. That's all we're designed for, thirty, forty years. Old enough to fuck once or twice, have children, feed them a few years, then we're supposed to die.
Whole damn thing about living longer, eat the good cholesterol, avoid the bad, stay out of the sun, do this, don't do that, it's contrary to nature. It's totally unnatural to get old."
Echeverria gulped down the rest of his burger and wadded the papers up and dropped them in the sack.
Brad felt his breakfast inch upward. Nothing to eat in sixteen hours. Maybe he'd never eat again. Wither up and crumble to powder like last year's leaves. It was becoming a distinct possibility.
"You planning on staying out here all night?"
Brad stared out the windshield.
"Why not just walk in?"
"That how you'd handle it, Carlos? Walk in, flash your shield, go poke around in all the closets? Blow whatever cover we still might have?"
Echeverria wiped the ketchup off his fingers with a napkin.
"Well, I gotta say, I'm sorry she didn't show. I was looking forward to seeing Greta again. Only got a look at her once or twice around the office before her accident, but the lady's an impression-maker. A body would've made Liberace sit up straight."
"Shut up, Carlos. Just shut the fuck up for a while, can you?"
Echeverria chuckled. He patted his mouth with the napkin, tossed it over the seat.
"Sorry, boss. Didn't mean to offend."
Brad watched one of the upstairs lights switch off. The wind was stirring the oaks and palms along Eaton, playing dizzy games with the streetlights.
"You know, it's funny," Echeverria said. "The knowledge I have of recent events, if I wanted, I could pick up the phone, make a single phone call, I could put a turd in your file you'd never clean out. You wouldn't be able to get a federal job licking the men's room floor. And here I am apologizing for offending you, playing that same old role. Step'n fetch it. Whatever you want, Mr. Special Agent in Charge."
Brad kept his eyes on the house. He'd known this was coming. Expected it all day. A little surprised it had taken Echeverria so long to get around to it.
"Riiiiing, riiiiing," Echeverria said. "Riiiiing."
Brad turned his head and looked at the man. Echeverria held up an imaginary phone to the side of his head. Eyes on Brad as he chirped into the receiver.
"Yes, Madam Attorney General, I know it's hard to believe. One of your most decorated agents, such a breach of professional ethics. Oh, yes, ma'am, it's hard fo
r all of us. But there it is. Last six weeks, unbeknownst to anyone, Special Agent in Charge Brad Madison was running a little undercover operation totally off the books. Only problem is, he was using a real live DEA agent. And now this agent has turned up missing. Poof.
"Yes, ma'am. You're welcome, ma'am, I was just doing my duty. Can't really take much credit, totally accidental. Mother of the female agent calls up yesterday, wants to know when she can expect her daughter back in town, and the DEA operators route her call to me, 'cause of the way Greta's mom explained the case, it sounded to them like a Diversion issue. I mean, yes, even the lowly telephone operators knew whose turf it belonged on. They knew who to refer the lady to. So I take her call, go to my computer and look up Greta Masterson, and find out she's on medical leave. What? There's no record of any current assignment. No undercover operations running in Key West. And I look a little further, trying to be a good soldier, see where the screwup is, so that kind of thing won't happen again, and lo and behold, all the threads lead to the same place. Brad Madison. Special agent in charge. Our illustrious leader has been playing footsie with some doctor down in Key West. Putting an agent at risk—a crippled agent, I might add. All to what end? Is there some kind of personal vendetta going on here? Is this the ugly face of extortion? Well, no, ma'am, I don't know the answers to those questions yet. And yes, ma'am, I'm sure you're pissed and disappointed. We all are. Oh yes."
Echeverria set the phone down in the imaginary cradle in his lap.
Brad was looking at him through the dim light. Big man with a potbelly. Bald with a handful of wispy hairs standing straight up from his scalp like electrified spittle. Echeverria had a wide and bloated face with the deepset, glistening eyes of a much smaller man. His cheeks were laced with bright red exploded veins as if the tiny vines that once grew on his flesh had recently been stripped away.
Echeverria was an ungifted agent whose early career had been on the streets of Liberty City and Overtown back at the height of the drug war. But the number of allegations by crack dealers started mounting until they couldn't be ignored anymore. All the stories with the same pattern. Echeverria had ripped off their stash and left them broken and bleeding. Internal Affairs investigated, but found no hard evidence. Insufficient cause to dismiss. So it was decided Echeverria should take a break from the street, and he was transferred to Diversion. It was the program within the agency that targeted doctors and pharmacists who might be diverting drugs for their own use or profit. Not the sexy side of things. Diversion agents were not even allowed to carry weapons or work undercover. Strictly white collar, office work. Like getting sent down to the minors. Usually a street agent who was shipped to Diversion resigned the agency within a few months. Echeverria stayed. Outlasted all the quitters, stayed and stayed until he bobbed to the top spot.
It was one of the main reasons Brad plucked the Eaton Street case file out of the flow and recruited Greta Masterson. He wasn't about to let a detestable son of a bitch like Carlos Echeverria decide the fate of Dr. Bean Wilson's son. All he owed that old man.
"So where do you want to bed down, boss? Pier House or the Casa Marina? Personally, I prefer the Casa. Sit out there at the bar on the big lawn, get out my nightscope, watch all the blowjobs on the beach."
"I'm going in," Brad said.
"Now? Fucking midnight, the place is probably locked up."
"You stay here."
"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, General."
Brad pushed open the car door. Overhead the coconut palms rattled in a breeze that was thick with the scents of overindulgence. The tang of marijuana and stale booze, the luscious essence of sex. Probably more illegal shit going down on that island at the moment than any other patch of dirt on the planet.
***
"She's gone," a young blond woman in a wheelchair said. "Left first thing this morning. By Greyhound, I think she said."
"Did you see her leave?"
"My name's Ginny, what's yours, handsome?"
"Did you see Greta leave?"
"I don't think so," the girl said. "You see Greta leave, Billy?"
The man lying on the couch didn't answer.
"So who are you, good-looking, Greta's sugar daddy?"
"I'm the man looking for Greta."
Ginny smiled at his amazing wit.
"Well, you could try talking to Randy. He's been in Greta's room all day, went back there as soon as she left so he could sniff her sheets."
A Japanese movie was on the television, some nuclear radiated insect was knocking down Tokyo. The military flamethrowers were having little effect. On the tattered couch a legless man in his sixties snored, gripping a bottle of rum to his chest.
"You wouldn't know it to look at me," Ginny said quietly, "but I still got complete sexual function."
"Which room is hers?"
Ginny's coquettish smile dissolved.
"Last one on the right."
The hallway was lit by two nightlights plugged in along the baseboards. Underfoot the oak floor squeaked and cracked and seemed about to cave in. A radio was playing salsa upstairs. He passed an open elevator compartment just big enough for one wheelchair, passed the door to the kitchen and a darkened office that looked like the doctor's, then a cramped treatment room with a surgical table gleaming in the middle and several monitors standing silently around it. The smell of urine and dead insects soured the air, and there was a faint undercurrent of talcum-scented air freshener. The place was supposed to be a halfway house for vets moving out of the VA hospital system back into the mainstream, but it felt more like halfway down a steep skid into hell.
His heart was fluttering, legs losing their blood supply. He wasn't supposed to be here. Head man of the Florida DEA walking down the dark hallway of some pissant pain clinic. A little spin of vertigo swirled in his chest as if all the tethers connecting him to earth were coming undone. Brad Madison, the hot air balloon, was circling off into the heavenly void.
The plan had been so simple, come down, pick her up, have her back in Miami by suppertime. Maybe share dinner together while he debriefed her. Maybe the beginning of more. He'd been thinking of her these last few weeks. Got out her file, unclipped her photo, kept it in his desk drawer, took it home with him once and brought it back, carrying it around like a schoolboy. He was wondering what she'd say if he broached the subject of a personal relationship. Careful not to hit on her, just raising it as a theoretical, give her lots of room to maneuver, to back off. After this mission was done, was she planning to stay with the agency? Of course, he'd only go forward if she said she was leaving the job. If she stayed, there was no way. Nepotism, sexual harassment. If she wanted to keep working, he'd just have to cool his feelings.
Scrupulous Brad, always playing by the book. Religiously abiding by the boundaries. That's who he was, who he'd always been. Not out of fear of disapproval, or to be a good little Boy Scout, not even because he particularly believed in the wisdom of the rules. But because it was a hell of a lot more interesting to find solutions to insoluble problems while staying within the lines. The net on the tennis court, the basketball rim at exactly ten feet. You lower the rim or take down the tennis net, ignore the lines, you lost the pleasure, the challenge. Picture that pro football receiver running flat out down the sidelines, a wild man, legs churning, the ball coming fast and just out of reach, and the receiver leaping up over a defender, pirouetting, finding some new spectacular arrangement of bones and muscle, a spontaneous ballet in the air, all so he could haul in the pigskin and stay in bounds. That was the beauty of rules.
You ignored them, things turned to chaos. Once you started screwing with magnetic north, you were lost. You wound up like Echeverria. A guy with the moral discipline of a tapeworm.
That's where the vertigo was coming from, the nausea. Brad was outside the lines now. Way outside them. Not sure how to get back. Lost in a trackless territory with a wildly spinning compass.
And Christ, all of it coming unwound so quickly. Echeverria s
talking into his office late yesterday, knowing everything. About Greta, the pain clinic. All of it. Knew Greta was scheduled to return the next day. Smiling at Brad, laying it all out. What do you want? Brad asked him. I want in, he said. There's nothing to be in. I want in anyway, Echeverria said. You're on my turf, Diversion, I'm your new partner. Like it or fucking not. Unless, that is, you want me to go public, make a formal complaint.
So Echeverria had flown down that afternoon, Brad drove. Stopped by to give his respects to Dr. Wilson. The whole time feeling the earth tilting away under his feet. A maggot like Echeverria had him by the short and curlies and obviously relished the feeling. Jesus God. And now Greta was missing. Greta Masterson had disappeared.
Brad stopped outside the last door on the right. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, loosened his tie another notch. Sitting out in the Fairlane all afternoon he'd sweated through the cotton shirt several times, then had to start the car to dry out in the air-conditioning. He smelled like he'd been wrestling with a goat.
He tapped lightly on the door and got no response. He tapped harder without result. Swallowing the lump that was hardening in his throat, he twisted the knob and stepped into the dark room.
Shades pulled down, a little light leaking around the edges. He patted the wall for a switch but couldn't find it. A choking stench in the room.
"Greta?"
He took a step toward the window. Get the shade up, let a little light in. Then all at once there was a shadow looming in front of him. A very tall shadow. Brad's hands shot up, he dropped into a crouch. The tall man's head was bent forward and he seemed to be tracking in a slow circle.
"I'm looking for someone," Brad said. "I mean no harm."
The man continued his slow spin like a pitcher about to unleash his fastball. Brad stiffened, then thought he saw the man feint forward, so he lunged, tackled the man around the midsection, drove him backward a few feet and stumbled over a chair.
He came up slowly. The shadow man was rocking wildly from side to side. Brad took two steps to the window and opened the paper shade.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 9