The Love You Crave (A Donovan Creed Novel)

by John Locke

  Jeff and I enter the building. The small leather bag slung over my shoulder contains toiletries, a change of clothes, and a gun. The suitcase in my hand contains what’s left of the cash after paying Bob for the flight and his overnight expenses.

  I look around till I spot what I’m looking for, an old man and his wife. Jeff heads to the reception area to strike up a conversation with the two ladies working the desk.

  As I approach the elderly couple I say, “Which of you is getting scanned this morning?”

  The woman has a patch over one eye, and her other one is rheumy and filled with cataracts. Nevertheless, she thinks she knows me.

  “I’d know you anywhere!” she squeals.

  “You would?”

  “You’re that movie star, what’s-his-name!”

  “No.”

  “You are! I’d know you anywhere!”

  I wink at her and say, “Please, I’m trying to stay in character.”

  She giggles, displaying the whitest set of dentures I’ve ever seen. It makes no sense anything on the planet earth could be this white! Herman Melville spent the entire Chapter 42 of Moby Dick trying to explain how white the whale was, but Moby had nothing on this lady.

  White teeth aside, she’s right. I do strongly resemble the famous movie star whose name currently escapes her, except that I’ve gone back to my original black hair color. When Doc Howard, Dr. Petrovsky, and their team of surgeons reconstructed my face, attempting to give me a new identity, they used a movie star’s photo as a guide. Personally, I liked my old face better, though I did have an enormous scar on it back then.

  “I love your eyes!” she says.

  Of course she does. They’re back to the original jade green color I was born with, now that I’ve stopped wearing those ridiculous blue contact lenses.

  “I’m Mildred,” she says. “But you can call me Millie. And this is Walt. He’s the one with the nine o’clock appointment.”

  Walt appears to be near death, but raises his eyebrows as if to say hi. I don’t speak eyebrow, so I just say “Hi Walt.”

  Millie winks at me with her one eye. Or maybe she blinked. It’s hard to tell. She says, “If I were twenty years younger…” then her voice trails off.

  If she were twenty years younger she’d what? I wonder. Twenty years younger would still make her fifty years older than Miranda!

  I sit beside her, despite the fact I think she’s coming on to me. She pats my arm. I wonder if there’s an eye underneath the patch, then decide I don’t want to know.

  “I can’t believe it’s you!” Millie says.

  I get that a lot. You’d think people would come up with something more intelligent, but inevitably they say, I can’t believe it’s you.

  Who else would I be? Who else would anyone be?

  But wait. Millie’s not finished.

  “Is it really you?” she says. “Are you really sitting right here next to me?”

  She’s making as much sense as Ricky Ricardo singing You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.

  Then again, I recently asked a woman if she was okay after watching her walk into a lamp post and fall on her ass.

  Before her head blew up.

  “What’s in the suitcase?” Millie asks.

  “Money.”

  “Aw, you shouldn’t have!” she says, jokingly.

  “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Shoot!”

  “Are you and Walt rich?”

  Millie starts cackling.

  Even Walt’s eyebrows manage to smile.

  “I’ve got a proposition for you,” I say.

  “Didja hear that, Walt? He’s propositioning me!”

  This time I don’t try to interpret Walt’s eyebrows. I say, “Millie, I’ve got a five-forty appointment to be scanned today. If you’re willing to swap appointments with me, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars cash.”

  Millie gasps.

  I look her in the eye. “What do you say?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars…and a kiss!” She says.

  Oh no, oh hell no! I’m thinking. But what I say is, “How lucky for me!”

  Millie doesn’t just kiss me, she tongues the shit out of me! And hers is not an ordinary tongue, either. It’s a flippin’ freak of nature! It’s long, thick, and dry, and feels like sawdust wadding up in the back of my throat. I have to fight to hold back the gag reflex. As she extricates her tongue, her dentures dislodge. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but moments later, she speaks to the receptionist with me standing there, and before you know it, I’ve got Walt’s appointment.

  I ask Jeff to check the inner offices, where I’ll have to change into one of those silly hospital gowns, even though they’re only scanning my brain. While he’s in there, I tell Norma the receptionist that if my scan turns out to be normal, I’m going to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I hand her the small gift-wrapped box.

  “I haven’t told anyone about this, not even Jeff,” I say.

  “Why not?” Norma says.

  “I want it to be a surprise. Will you hold it for me, just until I come out?”

  “Well, I’m not really supposed to hold items for patients.”

  “Please? It would mean the world to me!”

  “We have lockers.”

  She tries to hand it back to me.

  “Please? I’m not comfortable leaving it in a locker. It’ll only be twenty minutes.”

  She sighs. “Okay.”

  “Can you put it in your pocket?”

  She sighs again. “Fine.”

  “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  “I promise,” she says, rolling her eyes.

  “I hope my scan is normal,” I say.

  Norma looks doubtful, but says, “I hope so, too.”

  I get the impression she feels bad for my girlfriend.

  52.

  BEFORE HEADING INTO one of the dressing rooms to change into my hospital gown, I check my messages and notice Kimberly called.

  I press the play button, and frown as I hear her angry words. She waited until five minutes before the deadline to call and has the gall to be mad at me for not being available.

  Great.

  I see she left me a second message, minutes later. Probably worked herself into a rage after thinking about it a while longer. Her mother used to do that. I stare at the screen a minute and decide to ignore the second message. I just don’t have the strength for her sullen attitude right now. She can chew me out later.

  Jeff says, “You want me to hold anything for you?”

  “No, but I’d like you to guard my locker while I’m in there.”

  “Will do.”

  “Are you okay spending the night?” I say. “If not, I can get you a flight back to Vegas.”

  “I’m good. I’ll find something to do.”

  “Okay, then.”

  The technician joins us for a short chat. I tell him not to freak when he sees the chip in my brain. “Let me know if it’s operable,” I say.

  “We just shoot the pictures,” he says. “We don’t interpret them.”

  I nod, then follow him into the scanning room, and take my position on the table.

  “Just do twenty minutes worth,” I say.

  “It doesn’t work that way. You’ll be here the full forty minutes,” he says.

  Great.

  53.

  “YOU WEREN’T LYING,” the technician says. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  “Do I get some sort of prize?”

  “If you do, it won’t come from us.”

  “Story of my life,” I say.

  I exit the room and find Jeff standing with his back to my locker.

  “Any problems?” I say.

  “Were you expecting any?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

  “They had you in there forty minutes,” he says. “Is your brain that much larger than you thought?”

  “Yeah.”

 
; “Did it hurt?”

  “Nope.”

  I think about pressing the button now, to see if the MRI worked, but then a scary thought crosses my mind. Specifically, I wonder how much damage I might do. Assuming the chip in my head has been erased, I’m safe. But when I press the button on the ceramic device four times, two hundred and twelve chips are going to explode, wherever they are in the world!

  Some of the chips are bound to be attached to explosives.

  Plastic explosives—plastique as we call it—is soft and easily molded by hand. How easy? Explosives engineers call them “putty explosives.” So a group of terrorists on the same plane can each walk into an airplane lavatory carrying small bits of plastique and add their bit to the others that have been placed underneath and behind areas that aren’t easily visible. Like under the sink. Push a chip into the plastique, and you’re looking at a bomb that can be detonated from virtually anywhere in the world.

  Even this locker room at the MRI center.

  Here’s how my brain works: what if the airplane lavatory scenario is in place on Miranda’s flight? When I press the button, maybe the plane explodes, and I wind up killing 300 innocent people, including Miranda, simply because I’d been hoping to kill a couple dozen terrorists. Would I be able to live with myself?

  I doubt it.

  So there’s that. On the other hand, the longer I wait before pressing the button, the more time the terrorists will have to set bombs in and around high profile targets!

  Want to see how the dark side of my brain works?

  What if I’m being set up?

  What if George was a terrorist, and the whole lady-walking-into-a-lamp post event was staged for my benefit? A good mastermind could have put that into play. Now that I think about it, George was awfully quick to tell me there was no need to meet his arms dealer. What if there was no arms dealer? What if his terrorist buddies have truckloads of plastique stashed all over downtown Las Vegas? Or maybe the airport? What if the plan was for me to press the button four times and cause the destruction of tens of thousands of innocent people?

  I’d love to be the one to press the button. I just wish I could believe the only ones who’ll get hurt are the bad guys. Unfortunately, in real life it doesn’t always work that way.

  I get dressed and sit on the bench in the locker room, check my phone messages, see that Miranda has texted me her flight information. She’ll be here in two hours and forty-five minutes, which means she hasn’t left New York City yet.

  I look at Jeff. “You want some breakfast?”

  “If it’s real breakfast,” he says.

  “What’s real to you?”

  “Rooster knees and grits.”

  “A diner?”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Bennie ought to know a place.”

  Jeff calls Bennie to tell him we’re ready to be picked up.

  “No problem,” Bennie says. “I’m just around the corner.”

  I retrieve the gift-wrapped present from Norma, the receptionist, and shake it to make sure the device is still inside. Everything feels right. Is that a good or bad sign?

  See how I live?

  Back in the locker room I open the gift box. The device is there.

  Why am I so paranoid?

  Because it’s all going too easily.

  My guard is up.

  Jeff and I head outside. My eyes are scanning the campus, expecting an ambush. I watch the car drive up, wonder if it’s filled with armed agents bent on retrieving the chip. Or killing me. Or both.

  IUC’s more of an urban campus, which means there are few trees to hide behind. The gun is no longer in my bag, it’s in my pocket, in my hand. I feel like an old-time gunslinger, ready to start shootin’ the minute some owlhoot draws a bead on me.

  Then I feel like an idiot when it turns out the car is perfectly safe.

  Jeff appears to be looking at me strangely.

  I wonder if my present state of mind has something to do with the chip being de-magnetized. Maybe that did something to enhance my paranoia.

  I climb in the limo. Jeff scoots near the front to explain to Bennie what type of diner he’s looking for. While he’s doing that, I call Lou.

  “What’s up?” Lou says, cheerfully.

  “I need to cancel the flight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I changed my mind.”

  “What about the chip?”

  And there it was.

  I say, “I don’t recall telling you anything about a chip.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You must have.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then how would I know?”

  “How indeed?” I say. I must’ve sounded strange because Jeff turns to look at me.

  “You okay?” he says.

  I study Jeff a moment. I’ve known him for six years. I generally trust him, but he’s an odd duck, and I don’t trust anyone completely. Maybe it’s because I was lying on the table, vulnerable, for forty minutes, and haven’t recovered from that loss of control yet.

  Lou hasn’t come up with a response, so I click the phone off and concentrate on Jeff. From where he’s sitting, I can’t disable him without a full-scale encounter. In other words, he’s too far away for me to strike him before he can react. By the same token, I’m too far away for him to attack me.

  Not that he seems the least inclined to do so. Instead, he’s trying to touch his nose with the tip of his tongue.

  I’m pretty sure Jeff’s safe. He sees me staring at him and says, “What?”

  “Are you still dating that girl, the one with the weird job?”

  He laughs. “The hair boiler?”

  “Right. Tell me again what she does?”

  “She dumps tons of animal hair into giant vats of boiling water until it curls. She dumps the hair in the pot, stirs it, drains it, dries it.”

  “I remember she was very pretty,” I say.

  “Still is.”

  “There was some reason she had trouble getting dates.”

  “The smell.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Picture the smell of wet, burning, animal hair. She boils it all day long.”

  “Boiled hair soup!”

  “Exactly. The smell is always in her hair. It even seeps into her skin.”

  “Would you ever let her cook for you?”

  “Yeah, but not soup.”

  “And you’re able to overlook the smell?”

  “That’s why we get along so well. I like the smell! Why do you ask?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Just making conversation?”

  “I guess.”

  I spot Kimberly’s voice message on my phone. This time I listen to it. Just as I’m done, I get a text from her. She’s in Dallas, waiting on her connecting flight. But it’s on time.

  “Jeff, we need to cancel breakfast.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My daughter’s on her way to Vegas.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “What about Miranda?”

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  He grins. “Want me to meet her at the airport for you? Make sure she’s okay?”

  “Not on your life!”

  I press the speed dial for Miranda. She answers, saying, “Donovan, I’m so sorry! Our plane’s been delayed. But I’ll be there before one o’clock.”

  “Honey, that’s actually good news.”

  “I don’t understand. You don’t want to see me?”

  “Of course I do! But I just found out my daughter’s on her way to Vegas to pay me a surprise visit.”

  She laughs. “That would’ve been awkward.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Damn right you will,” she says.

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Me too.”

  54.

  BOB KOLTECH GETS us back to th
e private airfield. I pay him the balance I owe him, and he tries to hug me. I back away. He tries to shake hands. I bump his fist, instead. I like Bob, but I don’t allow anyone get a hold of me if I can help it.

  “How’m I gonna show my love?” he says, frowning.

  “By being available for me, day and night.”

  He grins. “Count on it.”

  Jeff and I climb in my car and I head straight for McCarran International, knowing Kimberly will be landing any minute. I find a spot in short-term parking and tell Jeff to catch a cab to PhySpa to check on George’s corpse.

  “If it’s ready, what should I do?”

  “Start without me.”

  He smiles. “Thanks, boss.”

  Jeff is at least a little stranger than the rest of us.

  Moments later I’m in baggage claim, talking to Lou on my cell phone.

  “Why wouldn’t you take my calls?” he says.

  “I was on a plane.”

  “I thought you changed your mind about needing a plane.”

  I ignore the comment. I should probably be more concerned with what’s going on with Lou, but I’m so excited about Kimberly’s visit, and so happy about her friendship offer, I barely care. Lou’s after me? Big deal. Not so long ago my life was in the hands of a cage full of monkeys!

  “I notice you called me three times,” I say. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to come clean.”

  That surprises me.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  “Darwin wanted your itinerary.”

  “And you gave it to him?”

  “He’s my boss. You keep forgetting. You fired me, remember?”

  It’s true. I do keep forgetting. But I don’t forget why I fired Lou. He tried to kill me. But I forgave him. Not completely, but enough to let him continue working as my facilitator. Since he and I both work for Darwin, it’s not a great idea to keep the relationship going. But Lou is irreplaceable, so I can’t imagine finding someone else. Whoever I get would have to be a personal secretary type of person, with no government contacts. And he or she would have to understand what I do for a living, and…well, it’s a tough gig.

  “You weren’t going to tell me about Darwin,” I say.

  “I hoped to prevent it. It’s not like he’s using the information to kill you or anything.”