The Sleep Police

by Jay Bonansinga

  The adjacent waiting room was a bland, high-ceilinged affair with institutional green walls and tall windows overlooking the giant iron Picasso hunkered down on the plaza. It was a hot day for September, and the sun was blazing down through the Venetians, slanting through dust motes and painting fiery stripes against the sofa on the opposite wall.

  Frank was sitting alone at the end of this sofa, impeccably dressed in a Ralph Lauren jacket of autumn browns, pretending to look through a Time magazine. His mind was elsewhere. It had been a crazy month, a month full of endless interviews, court proceedings, formal hearings and oceans of grief. What did Henry Pope once say about this kind of stuff? “Re-experiencing?” Frank had been re-experiencing the horrors of August over and over again, for IAB guys, for shrinks, for the court. But the worse day of all was Kyle’s funeral.

  They buried Kyle Janus two weeks ago at the Greek Orthodox cemetery in Franklin Park, and hundreds of mourners showed up. Kyle was one of those magic people who was simply liked by everybody. Even Helen Janus was allowed to make the trip south for the funeral, ensconced in a wheelchair and wrapped in a blanket—although Frank was skeptical that his mother knew what was going on. Frank delivered the eulogy, and he broke down half way through it. No one in the congregation knew just how responsible Frank felt for Kyle’s death.

  Now Frank sat in the morning sunlight just outside the judge’s chambers, feeling much older than he looked, awaiting the final word on the Pope case. His superficial wounds had healed. He was rested for the first time in his life, and he just wanted to go back to work.

  He wanted to be a detective again.

  “—Bambi?”

  The voice shook Frank out of his ruminations. He glanced up and saw the big man standing just outside the door to the judge’s chambers, his portly figure silhouetted by the glare of sunlight. “They’re ready for you, Bambi,” Sully Deets said with a sheepish nod.

  Frank walked over to the doorway. “Hope this is the end of it.”

  Deets shrugged. “It better be. I got a busload of open files back at the Twenty-fourth burning a hole in my desk. I need you back on the job.”

  “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, D.”

  The big man smiled. “Hey. You woulda done the same for me, right?”

  “You bet your ass.”

  It was true, Frank would have done the same to help his partner, even in the midst of seemingly indisputable hard evidence—as Deets has done. But Frank was not so sure he could have come up with the same kind of gold that Deets had found. During the days following Pope’s death, Deets’s detective work became the key to exonerating Frank.

  It had started the night of the frantic phone call from the “El” station, the one in which Frank had begged his partner to reopen the thumb sucker files, to look hard at Henry Pope. Deets had been unable to fall back to sleep that night, brooding on the possibility that his partner had been diabolically framed and driving his wife Margie batty with his tossing and turning and mumbling.

  By the time dawn had driven away the night, Deets was up and dressed and making phone calls.

  Over the next five days, Deets had single-handedly built a framework of evidence that not only proved that Frank had been programmed under hypnosis, but also that Pope had possessed the motive and opportunity to commit the murders. Discrepancies in Pope’s work schedule logs, contradictions in alibi witnesses, under-the-counter procurement of deadly sedatives and hypnotic drugs, and residues found in Pope’s work locker and closet at home, all pointed toward Pope’s guilt. But perhaps the most interesting discovery was a little-known bust that Pope had plea-bargained out of years ago: assault and battery during a pro-life rally outside an abortion clinic. When this fact was bolstered by Chloe’s eyewitness testimony, and ultimately driven home by the revelation that every thumb sucker had undergone multiple abortions, the case was iced.

  “Anyway, I better get in there,” Frank said finally, smoothing out his lapel and turning toward the door.

  “I’ll be waiting for ya,” Deets said.

  Frank nodded, then walked through the doorway and into a small, windowless antechamber. There was a skinny black security guard sitting behind a card table next to a massive, oak inner door. The door led into the judge’s chambers. “Detective Frank Janus?” the skinny man asked, looking up at Frank through thick bifocals.

  “That’s me.”

  “Sign in, please.”

  Frank signed the register, then went over to the door and grasped the huge, brass doorknob.

  For most of his adult life, he would have paused in a situation like this. He would have lingered outside the door for just a moment, fearful and neurotic and full of dread, chewing on a straw, or biting a fingernail, or doing any one of the dozen nervous habits he had developed over the years. He would have felt that cold weight in his gut, and he would have braced himself for the worst.

  Not today.

  Today there was a new Frank standing outside the judge’s chambers, with a new stream of consciousness flowing through his mind at all times. It wasn’t anything pathological. Like a multiple personality. He wasn’t hearing voices. There was simply a new personality awakened within him, like a phoenix out of the ashes of all the death and destruction, driving his thoughts, getting him through the pain. The new and improved Frank Janus. Telling him: You’ve done nothing wrong, Frank, you have nothing to be ashamed of, so get your ass in that courtroom and let them ask whatever they have left to ask.

  Frank opened the door and walked into the plushly appointed room, and the door slammed shut behind him with a decisive clang.

  A Preview of THE KILLER’S GAME

  Chapter One

  The clinic was in a low slung, nondescript building at the corner of LaSalle and Huron, and the gunmetal Chicago sky was just starting to look threatening when Joseph Riley Flood arrived for his 9:00 AM appointment. He went inside and gave his name to the receptionist. She directed him into a small examination room just off the lobby.

  Joe sat down on a cold laminate chair and stewed for a moment, wanting to be anywhere else. Arms folded, thick shoulders straining the seams of his hound’s tooth sport coat, he had the air of a hard-ass coach about him, an old jock whose muscles had congealed into hard fat, whose ruddy complexion and henna brown hair were getting grayer every day. He still had the smile, though. The killer Irish smile. He could still light fires with that damn thing.

  Trouble was, Joe hadn’t been smiling very much lately. Just a couple of weeks ago, he had suffered through his fiftieth birthday, and he was none too happy about it. Never mind that his body was coming apart at the seams, and never mind that he couldn’t get within twenty feet of his favorite spicy foods anymore, and never mind that his eyesight was starting to go; the worst part was the simple mathematics of it. Wilt Chamberlain retired in 1974 at the age of thirty-eight, and he was considered a goddamned senior citizen. Jimmy Connors played in the U.S. Open at the age of thirty-six, and he was considered a freak. Joe didn’t like the ring of fifty years old one little bit.

  A nurse materialized out of nowhere and started prepping Joe’s arm for the needle. Told him she needed to take another sample of Joe’s blood.

  “They did that already,” Joe informed her.

  “Who?”

  “Folks at the hospital.”

  “I understand that,” she said, and then pricked his vein with all the tenderness of a deli counter clerk. “This is for follow-up.”

  “Follow up for what?” Joe asked her, wishing he had never contacted the sawbones in the first place. Joe’s bladder had been getting weaker and weaker over the years, and had just recently gotten so bad that he was getting up every freaking hour to piss in the night. Last week he finally broke down and called the Kagan Clinic. They drew some blood, and they X-rayed Joe’s chest, and finally Doctor Kagan himself, the little bald fart, did a full rectal/prostate exam. It was bad enough that the little guy had to stick his fingers up Joe’s ass and massage his prostate glan
d, but after feeling around in there and noticing a pea-sized lump, the fucker had proceeded to ram a metal contraption roughly the size of a cattle prod up there to snip off some tissue for a biopsy. Joe had felt like a freshman con at Rykers.

  “Doctor Kagan will explain everything,” the nurse finally replied, pulling the syringe clear and giving Joe a perfunctory smile. “He’ll be ready to see you in just a moment.”

  She bandaged Joe’s arm, ushered him out into the hall, and led him down to the last door on the right. Joe entered a small private office, which was currently unoccupied, and took a seat across from a cluttered oak desk.

  “Dr. Kagan will be right with you,” the nurse told him and vanished back into the corridor.

  Joe sighed, chewed his antacid and scanned the messy office. Amidst the spindly rubber plants and framed diplomas were stacks of medical journals, file boxes and reference books. At first, the haphazard mess took Joe by surprise; not only was Joe instinctively neat and orderly, he expected a doctor to be similarly organized. But this place looked like a college dorm room after a week of amphetamines and finals. Joe had no time for sloppiness. His job would not allow it. And it made Joe nervous when he encountered it in others.

  He was about to start straightening the desk himself when the sound of footsteps loomed behind him.

  “Mr. Joseph, good morning,” Kagan said flatly as he came in the office, walked behind his desk and settled into his padded swivel. Joseph was a name Joe gave civilians, an alias that he had been using for years. Doctor’s never asked questions anyway, unless they thought there might be a problem in the area of bill payment.

  “How goes it, Doc?”

  “Just fine, thanks,” the doctor nodded genially. He was a delicate little man with a ferret-like face and thin strands of hair combed across his baldpate. He wore a white jacket and the corner of his mouth twitched faintly as he spoke. “We need to have a little pow wow,” he said then. “I appreciate you coming in on short notice.”

  Joe grinned. “Couldn’t wait to get back, Doc. I was really starting to miss having that roto rooter stuck up my ass.”

  Kagan’s nervous smile quickly evaporated. “That’s a good one.”

  “What’s the problem, Doc?”

  Kagan searched the disaster area on his desk for a particular file. “Mr. Joseph, we did a complete work up on your blood a CBC and chem 24. The PSA we did for the prostate turned out normal, point one in fact, which is fine. The biopsy was negative.”

  “I have a feeling that’s not why you asked me to come down here this morning.”

  Kagan kept searching the clutter, then paused and looked up. “On your forms it says your first name is Joe. You mind if I call you Joe?”

  “Please do,” Joe said.

  “Joe, we found something. The blood test. I told Natalie to put the lab report on top of your file but I can’t seem to—”

  “Doc, ol’ buddy,” Joe broke in, his stomach twisting, the back of his arms rashing with chills. It was obvious Kagan was avoiding eye contact. “As they say in the movies give it to me straight, I can take it.”

  The doctor looked up, blinking. There was an endless pause, and Joe could tell the doctor was searching his memory for the proper bedside detente, the appropriate turn of phrase. And for a moment, the chalky taste of Tums in his mouth, stomach smoldering, Joe felt as though he was levitating out of his chair, as though the room were in free-fall.”We got a positive, Joe,” Kagan finally said.

  “Positive on what? HIV?”

  “No, no, not HIV. You show positive on Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.”

  “Leukemia?”

  “Yes, now, before you panic, let me explain a few things. First of all, I’ve had the lab run the test twice, and we got the same results, so we’re pretty sure this is real. But we’re gonna take this one step at a time; I’m going put you in the hospital, and I’m going get a hematologist to look at you to determine whether we need to discuss a bone marrow transplant or radical chemotherapy.”

  Joe suddenly felt as though he were in a bleacher seat at some second-rate vaudeville show, watching some two-bit comedian dressed as a doctor, making bad jokes about Joe’s fate. Maybe it was God Himself making the bad jokes. Perhaps that was why, at the present moment, Joe was overwhelmed with a profound sense of irony. As though he had expected it all along. “I didn’t even feel that lousy,” he said softly, with the mild resolve of someone discovering ants at a picnic.

  Kagan nodded. “It’s not unusual for a person with acute leukemia to feel nothing more than a little run down, maybe a little achy. That’s in the early stages. Your spleen seems okay on the x-rays, but my guess is, it’s enlarged. Have you experienced any unusual bleeding lately? Weight loss? Joint pain? Anything like that?”

  “My gums bleed like stuck pigs when I brush my teeth,” Joe told him. “Always figured it was gum disease.”

  “I understand what you’re saying.”

  “Let me get a handle on this thing, Doc. You’re telling me I’ve got leukemia.”

  “Joe, the test results are usually fairly accurate.”

  “So I’m dead meat.”

  “Now, wait, Joe, slow down,” the doctor raised his hand. “There’s a lot to talk about here. Choices to make. I want you to understand the test results, and I want you to understand the options.”

  “Yeah, yeah, let’s discuss the options.” Joe found himself studying the physician’s face. This was a poker game all of a sudden, and Joe could see that the guy across the desk had all the cards. It was in his eyes. The tell. Joe had a feeling all doctors secretly relish this moment, the telling. Giving patients the bad news. It’s in the moment itself, the switch, the point at which the patient’s life irrevocable turns inside out, and the doctor becomes the sole life line, and his word becomes the word of an Old Testament God.

  Joe was very possibly the only other kind of professional who understood this profound rush.

  “First of all,” the doctor droned on, his words becoming a layer of noise in Joe’s head like a power line creating sixty-cycle hum, “what’s going on in your body, the healthy bone marrow is being replaced by immature white blood cells, and this gradually breaks down the normal production of blood. We still don’t know for sure what causes it. The latest thinking is, it’s environmental, toxins, what have you. But you should know, Joe, this disorder is very common. Over twenty thousand adults come down with it every year. Which is why we have an enormous body of literature and treatment options.”

  The doctor paused as though waiting for the room to applaud, and Joe just fixed his gaze on him. “Symptoms, uh, when exactly does it…?”

  “When does the disease become symptomatic?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Well, basically, there are two types of leukemia: chronic and acute, and we’re leaning toward acute in this case. You’re going to feel fine, and then we might see a little fatigue, and uh, some weight loss, fevers and extreme weakness, joint pain. But Joe, I don’t want to dwell on the—”

  “What are the odds?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “The odds,” Joe said it again, hurling the word at him. “You know what I’m talking about, Doc.”

  “Joe, listen to me for a second. The good news is, a man your age, your health, there’s an incredible array of treatments available. We’ve progressed in leaps and bounds in the past few years. New programs in chemotherapy, new antibiotics, new medicines, we can deal with the pain quite well, and we can extend your quality of life significantly”

  “What are the odds, Doc?”

  “Joe, I really don’t think it’s productive at this point to talk about—”

  “What.” Joe wasn’t even looking at the man anymore. Stabbing his forefinger against the oak veneer of the desk, he punctuated each word. “Are.” Again, with the stabbing. “My.” And finally: the fingertip came down so hard it made a hollow thumping noise. “Odds.”

  The doctor looked at him for quite a long moment, and th
en said in a cold monotone, “Mortality rates with myelogenous leukemia vary from seventy-five to eighty-five percent within the first year.”

  Joe let out a breath, almost a sigh of relief, and then glanced over at Kagan and saw that the little man’s face had gone ashen white. Joe began to laugh. Not a belly laugh, but something edgier, moodier.

  The doctor gaped at him. “Are you—all right?”

  Joe just shook his head, chuckling, waving off the diagnosis as though it were some ironic old joke. He rose to his feet and prepared to make his exit.

  “Wait a second, Mr. Joseph, where are you going? We still have a lot to go over.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” Joe said, heading for the door.

  “Joe, wait.”

  “Duty calls, Doc.”

  “Joe—” The doctor rose and started to come around the end of his desk, but it was too late.

  The Irishman was already half way down the hall.

  By noon, Joe had gathered all his research in an old leather portfolio and had laid it on the passenger seat of his Volvo 850. He drove south down Lakeshore Drive to Grand, took Grand to Columbus, then turned south again, descending into the cement catacombs of lower Wacker. The sky was low and dark, but it still hadn’t rained. Only a blustery wind off the lake suggested that a storm was imminent. Joe had to be careful not to let any of the dossier pages blow out the window-vent as he pulled into an unmarked loading dock and parked. He turned the car off and took one last look at the profile.