Spare Parts: A Ted Mitchell Detective Novel (Ted Mitchell Detective Novels Book 4)

by Jeffrey Kinghorn

  “You talking to me?” I said.

  She said, “To the world.”

  I was through with the monitor and turned to her. “Hearing is one thing,” I said, “listening another.”

  She pointed at me and said, “No shit.”

  “What do you think happened to Reznikov?” I said.

  “He screwed up,” she said, “made himself visible, and got scared.”

  I said, “How’d he do that?”

  “Let someone get too close,” she said.

  “Who?” I said, remembering Garrett Saunders surprise when I indicated it had been me.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It happens. Even to the mighty. You asked. I told you. Don’t know what else to say.”

  “The van is not invisible,” I said, “even if he is.”

  “He was never invisible,” she said. “He was landscape. Who the fuck notices landscape?”

  “Was,” I said. “You do think he’s dead?”

  “Hope so,” she said. “That van’ll turn up somewhere. And I need it.” I lost her again to the phone clipped to her ear. “What?” she snapped as she headed out of the room the way we had come in. “I’m working on it,” she went on. “Set it up. I’ll deliver as soon as I can.” She turned back before actually vacating the room, covered the clipped ear-phone with her thumb, and gave this next to me, “You buried Juice,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You protected her child. I owed you. You get in my way again, your account’s empty.” She barked into the phone again as she disappeared, “I said I’d deliver! What is your fucking problem, man?”

  Numb Nuts continued recuperating and was in no hurry to resume his job as muscle. “Thing about Reznikov,” he said, “he had nothing to lose.”

  “Turns out,” I said, “he did.”

  Numb Nuts tilted his head, with some pain, toward the now absent Rain, “She sure does,” he said

  I said, “So that makes her what?”

  “Dangerous,” he said. I considered that but said nothing. He slumped back in the couch with his hands behind his head. “How’d you get the jump on me?”

  “Your breath,” I said. “You stopped breathing. And instead of relaxing, you tightened up your abdomen. Shoulders went up about an inch.”

  “You want to try again?” he said.

  “Looks like she’s not the only one around here with something to prove,” I said.

  He stood up, slowly. “I’m ready for you now,” he said. “Different result this time.”

  “You’re breathing shallow again,” I said. This alarmed him; he took a moment to check. I continued, “And you’ve tightened your gut, as well. Your weight should be loose, balanced on both feet. You’re using up your energy and your strength to make yourself look hard.

  “I am hard,” he said.

  “Then trust it,” I said, “and relax.” He tried to relax which was another mistake. I was on my feet lofting a roundhouse right into his jaw before he saw it coming and it put him back on the couch. It was like hitting dead-hung meat. I then suggested, “And don’t trust everything people tell you.” I left him tasting blood and working his jaw to make sure he still could. I did not turn my back on him, which was my mistake. I remember taking a step, maybe two, in reverse, and felt a needle puncture my neck before everything went black.

  Twenty-six

  I kept coming to. Kind of. And then going unconscious again. A bit like being overwhelmed by undertow but without the panic. Vacant periods of gone-ness and nothing to report upon returning. There was finally an extended awakening into complete darkness in which there was a sensation of movement.

  A full stop.

  A blast of light.

  Back to nothing.

  The medium on which I traveled in and out was inconsistent.

  At one point I felt myself being lifted and hauled, bouncing on the choppy gait of whoever carried me slung over a shoulder, trotting with gathering momentum as one does when straining under dead weight. This, while still asleep, though perceiving with a growing awareness that overtook the sensation of it’s being a dream. I was rolled onto an unstable surface. My head bounced and flopped to the side.

  Nothing again.

  Starting. Stopping. Turning.

  This sense of coming to bore an awareness of elapsed time and not merely another emerging from oblivion, though oblivion called me. I could not or would not stay gone.

  Another sensation. Pain. A throbbing. Then a lacerating. Then a gaping, burning openness in which pokings and tuggings sustained the pain with additional spikes.

  Stop!

  What the…

  Voices.

  How did he get in here?

  A scuffle.

  The popping and splatting of flesh being struck and absorbing whatever had hit it.

  Jostling.

  Being landed on top of and then slid off of.

  Panic.

  Gun shot?

  Awareness surged beyond pain to a universe of excruciation. Was I screaming? I touched myself and nearly levitated on the fresh searing agony.

  Light again. Intense. Blinding.

  My head was lower than my feet. I could not orient.

  More gun shot.

  I saw my hand held up in front my eyes. It was covered in blood. Another hand grasped mine and pressed it down and held it firmly beside me.

  “Don’t move!” commanded Seldeen. “Do not touch anything.” He came into view over me, his face filled with horror. “You’re on an operating table. You have open incisions. I am going to get you some help.” Tremors built in my body until I thought I might propel myself off the table, quaking. I imagined I presented as a freshly gaffed fish thrown to dance about and die upon the pier. Seldeen leaned away and disappeared from view. I must have managed some indication of an affirmative response because he also released my arm. He moved far enough away to speak into his phone so I could not quite hear what he said, though his tone was brusque and without equivocation. He did not ask; he gave orders.

  The pain grew more intense. Were it sound, it would have been deafening. Whatever anesthesia I’d been given faded quickly. Panic flooded awareness. The fight to suppress it was out of reach. The riot in my mind made mockery of thought. Fear filled my nostrils; it smelled of burning flesh. Seldeen leaned over me again. His face was now drained of the horror he had worn moments before. I found this comforting. “Help is on the way,” he said.

  I said, “I’m opened up, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Both kidneys have been removed.”

  “I’m a dead man.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t leave me.”

  He said, “I’m right here.”

  “The pain is too much,” I said.

  “You’re going to have to take it,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You have no choice.”

  “Shoot me.”

  He said, “No.”

  I begged, “Please.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then give me your gun,” I said.

  Again, “No,” he said. There was nothing to do but become the pain. “Listen,” he said. I wasn’t sure I could. He continued with manufactured calm, “The men who did this to you are dead. I’ve shot them.”

  “Lucky bastards,” I said.

  “I got here just in time,” he said. “They were pulling the second one out of you.”

  “You call that just in time?” The ghoulish absurdity of the moment morphed into laughter. It grew to match the excruciating pain.

  “Stop it,” said Seldeen. “You’ve got to remain still.” I was convulsing. “They burned you as they cut you,” he said. “It’s how they controlled the bleeding. You can survive if you stop. Now. Still yourself.”

  It was not going to be possible. I was lost to the convulsive-like quaking. Seldeen grabbed me by the throat and squeezed. I passed out for a moment and came back on the pain, but the fits and starts were gone. He had thumb an
d finger held to my windpipe and applied indicative compression to illustrate that he could render me unconscious again without effort. I became inert, though what I most wanted to do was flop about so that he would squeeze hard enough to put me out again. I couldn’t manage it. And then I became dependent upon the weight of his arm pinned against my chest, his touch poised for compression on my esophagus, the determination I saw in his eyes that I would make it if I did as he instructed. I said, “Don’t let go.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “They’re bringing a team,” he said. “They’re going to reattach the kidneys.”

  “Where are they?” I said. “Kidneys?”

  “Not two feet away,” he said, “in a stainless steel bowl.”

  “What if they can’t do it?” I said.

  He said, “They’ll do it.”

  “But─”

  He repeated, “They’ll do it!” I believed him. “You’ve just got to hold on.”

  “Right,” I said. A glimmer of hope shone through my fear, easing it just enough so that I noticed it. “Is there a lot of blood?”

  “Stop talking,” he said. “Be still.”

  So I became still. And the pain grew shrill. In time it became something only one word could even begin to describe. Exquisite.

  Twenty-seven

  Adrienne was there when I woke up in the hospital. I had been transported from the Bayou Urgent Care Clinic. A surgeon had re-attached the organs upon arriving at the scene, hoping infection might be prevented. It had not worked.

  Adrienne said, “And there you are.”

  “Where am I?” I said.

  “Ben Taub General,” she said.

  I said, “With or without the goods?”

  “With,” she said.

  “Working?” I asked.

  “Like champs,” she said.

  There was a cover in her voice. “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Infection,” she said.

  “Bad?” I said.

  She nodded and said, “Yes.” Here we go again, I thought. She added, “But you’re going to beat it.”

  “How long have I been out?” I said.

  “Day and a half,” she said.

  I said, “Grace?”

  Adrienne softened with a smile and said, “She’s fine.”

  “Thought I was a dead man,” I said.

  “Quit talking,” she said. “Rest.”

  “I had my way,” I said, “I’d be dead now.”

  “I heard,” she said. “Quiet. Rest.”

  Ever obedient, I went back to sleep.

  No one was there when I woke up. The room was dark. I had the chills, though I could feel the weight of blankets on top of me. It was not summer, but, as always, it was summer-hot in Houston, just not in that room. Somewhere down the hall an elevator car arrived on the sound of a chime. I heard the door open. And then shut. Something was being wheeled down the corridor. There seemed no advantage to remaining awake.

  Seldeen was there when I woke up. He looked the way I felt, thoroughly depleted. He was asleep in the chair by the window through which sunlight filtered in. Louvered blinds were adjusted to mitigate the intensity. He was a very different man from the fellow I had known for so long as the leveling influence in the Mulcahy-Seldeen partnership. After his family’s leaving dismantled him, Mulcahy’s murder animated the broken pieces into a new configuration, brittle where he had once been like willow, cold where once he had exuded warmth. Humor had departed without a trace, a good measure of which vacancy I recognized in my own demeanor, but not to his extent. We were both in extremity. I physically. He emotionally. Would we get ourselves back? Of the two of us, I suspected he might be in the worst shape. But how do you compare pain? He woke on a start and immediately assumed hyper vigilance.

  “In case I neglected to say so,” I said, “thanks.” He waved me off. “What did they knock me out with? It kept wearing off.”

  He said, “Prophocol.” Michael Jackson immediately came to mind. Seldeen went on, “Took a wild guess they’d taken you to that clinic.” Made sense. “It was the only thing I had,” he said. “If you weren’t there, I was going to head up to 1960. Clinic was closer.”

  “Close is good,” I said. “They leave it wide open like the last time?”

  He shook his head more with his eyes than anything else. He said, “Smashed into the glass front door with my car.”

  “They were stupid,” I said, “to think you’d just go away when you came back from your perimeter search and I was missing.”

  “I think they needed product fast,” he said. “There you were.”

  I said, “They panicked.”

  “Yes they did,” he said.

  “I was doing such a good job about keeping my eye on Numb Nuts on the couch,” I said. “He was smarter than I thought. Played me.”

  “It happens,” he said. “I spotted the van.”

  Back in business. I said, “We knew that was going to happen.”

  “East side,” he said. “Ship Channel.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Lost it again,” he said.

  I said, “They make you?”

  “It was too far ahead,” he said. “I couldn’t maneuver close enough to stay with it.”

  “No sign of Reznikov?” I said.

  Seldeen stated, “He was in the van.”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “Because,” he said, “I needed him to be in the van.”

  He was serious. “Understood,” I said. It beat anything else we had and conviction can go a long way in the absence of all else.

  “I found it once,” he said. “I’ll find it again.” No doubt about that, I thought. “How are you feeling?” he said.

  I said, “Wasted.”

  He said, “Look like hell.”

  I said, “So do you.”

  He canted his head a degree and corrected it. “That would be consistent,” he said, “with the way my life is going.”

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Don’t get sleep like this at home,” he said.

  I said, “Not even at my place?”

  “Especially at your place,” he said.

  He smelled like post game locker room. “When’s the last time you had a shower?” I said.

  He said, “Long before the last time you did, I’ll bet.”

  “And a shave?” I asked

  “Before that,” he said.

  I said, “You smell.”

  “Who said you could smell me?” he asked.

  What? Humor? Was his coming back? “I took a liberty,” I said.

  He said, “Well knock it off.”

  I laughed. It hurt. I was going to be glad if I had been wrong about my own absent humor. “It woke me up,” I said. “I was enjoying a nice clean-smelling coma.”

  “I am still camped out at your place,” he said. “I just can’t sleep.”

  “Plenty of bar soap under the sink,” I said.

  “Looks like you’re going to live,” he said, as he stood up.

  I said, “Appreciate the encouragement.”

  He said, “I’m going to shove off.”

  “Take a shower,” I said.

  He said, “Rest up,” as he vacated the room.

  I called after him, “And a shave.”

  Sleep quickly became irresistible again.

  I heard the cadence of prayer but none of the words. A hand pressed carefully but firmly on each of my dressed, surgical wounds. The scent of strong, fresh soap pulled me fully awake. Sister Althea Morgan Pierce stood over me. Her smile was an avalanche that filled my field of vision with wanting it to cascade down on me. “It is done, Theodore,” she said. “It is accomplished.” As before when I lay wounded under her healing touch, I believed her and felt safe in drifting off again.

  Minutes? Hours? Days? Time was only a memory, but when I next returned to the room, it was not o
n the opening of my eyes, but on the clarifying of my vision and the realization that I had been staring at Ebbersole and Taggart for some time without registering that I saw them. They stood on either side of the bed, Ebbersole to my left, and Taggart on my right. I favored the right, not politically or philosophically, just physically. Without application of effort, my head simply came to rest inclined in that direction. Thus, I rested on Taggart and kept having to turn to connect with Ebbersole.

  “Seldeen is dead,” she said

  I cut my eyes toward her, betting the bank she had sunk that eight-ball out of umbrage over my unintentional focus on Taggart in place of her. I wondered if that right-leaning orientation in me was true in all weathers, or if it was some subliminal dismissal of her to which she had grown accustomed to being sensitive?

  It took a moment before her opener was absorbed. It hit hard when it did. I must have given a tell. There was a measure of triumph in her expectant wait for me to close on the news. “How?” I said.

  The initiative hers, she took her time. “Murder-suicide.”

  I said, “What?”

  “Murder-suicide,” she repeated with a covered tone that, of itself, asked, Are you deaf? I thought of Seldeen’s estranged family and the big empty house up in Spring. She went on, “He went rogue.” I now hated this woman and didn’t care if she saw it. “What kind of activity,” she said, “where you two involved in?”

  I said, “Tell me what happened.”

  She said, “I asked you a question.”

  I said, “And I told you to tell me what happened.”

  “Eye witnesses confirm,” said Taggart, “that Officer Seldeen stopped what was believed to have been Reznikov’s customized E150 Ford Van on Main Street.” He had my default attention again. It was a relief to get my eyes off of Ebbersole. In the absence of any physical strength to move, I had momentarily given myself to the pharmaceutically assisted wish that she be consumed by spontaneous combustion. Despite the circumstance, I acknowledged to myself that my train of thought was not professional. For this, too, I was glad to be on Taggart, who appeared to be in command of what little humanity was present in the room. “He attempted,” he continued, “to get inside the van.”