“We know his complexion is currently pale. Even a local using SPF 50 would show a slight skin coloration.”
Okay. I'm with him again.
“We also know Wheezer felt insignificant in your presence. In his last communication, the shooter suggested that you'd never remember him. I suspect he was something of a loner, not one of the ‘cool kids.’ In fact, Mook told Danny that Wheezer was a loser.”
“A loser?” Becca seems surprised.
“I always thought we were the losers,” jokes Olivia.
“We were,” Becca says. “Except Jess. Jess was always cool.”
“I was not.”
“Dude, you were a lifeguard.”
Jess shrugs, and we all rack our brains trying to remember ten summers ago and some loner or loser who drifted into our lives.
I've got nothing. I look around the room.
Nobody has anything except lost and unhappy expressions on their faces.
“Keep thinking about it,” Ceepak says. He checks the time. Four thirty. I don't think he's concerned about the chief's deadline. I think he's worried about the forty-eight-hour rule. Ceepak once told me that if you don't solve your case in the first two days, chances are you never will.
The clock is ticking.
“I think it would be wise for all of you to remain in protective custody for the remainder of the weekend,” Ceepak says. “We'll post police officers outside your residences. It would be best if you stayed indoors.”
“Me, too?”
“Yes, Danny. I'm pulling you out of the field. I need you to focus on Wheezer. It's how you can best aid the investigation.”
I nod. He's right.
A speaker up in the ceiling bongs a series of chimes.
“Code Blue. ICU. Code Blue.”
The voice is incredibly calm, but I know Code Blue means there's some kind of medical emergency in the ICU. I hear people run up the hall outside our door.
They're running to the ICU.
Where Katie is.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Isit on a couch and stare at a curtain.
The couch is another one of those teal and speckle jobs that are supposed to calm people down. The curtain is a thin cotton sheet pulled across the glass window into Katie's ICU room. The nurses let Ceepak and me come this far only because we have badges. The other guys had to hang back in the visitors’ room.
The doctor rolled the curtain across the window because he didn't want us to see them in there pounding on Katie's chest.
Ceepak is sitting next to me on the couch. When the radio clipped to his belt squeals he turns it off. He has about five billion other things he should be doing right now. Instead, he sits with me. I have my head in my hands.
“She's strong,” he says. “She'll make it. This is not her time. Today is not her day.”
I know it's a string of clichés, the kind of things people say in made-for-TV movies or something. But Ceepak's seen stuff, watched his buddies being blown to bits in Iraq, seen others who pulled through. Maybe he knows what he's talking about. Maybe he can tell who'll make it, who won't.
A doctor comes into the hallway and lifts his mask.
“She's stabilizing,” he says. “She lost a tremendous amount of blood and her BP became dangerously low.”
“But she's gonna make it?” I ask.
“She's stabilizing.” That's the best the doctor can do right now. He slides his mask back up and goes into Katie's room.
“Danny?”
It's a nurse. Someone I know (of course). Christine Lemonopoulos.
“Hey.”
“How you doing?” she asks, genuinely concerned. Christine and Katie are friends. I think they go to chick flicks together, and one of them is always in charge of the Kleenex.
“I'm hanging in there,” I say.
“Ma’am?” Ceepak says to Christine.
“Yes?”
“Will it be all right for Officer Boyle to remain here in the hallway?”
“No problem. Just, you know-don't get in anybody's way, okay, Danny?”
“Sure. I'll just, you know, hang here.”
“Cool. Can I get you guys anything? A Coke or something?”
“No thanks,” I say.
“We're good.” Ceepak isn't thirsty either.
“Hang in there, Danny.”
“Yeah. You, too, Christine.”
“Thanks.”
We're both going to try.
Five P.M. Ceepak is still on the couch next to me. The doctors pulled open the curtains when they had Katie's Code Blue situation under control. She's still unconscious but I guess she's Code Green or whatever color it is when you're doing better.
“Shouldn't you be out there looking for that minivan?” I ask. “Tracking down the surfer gloves?”
“Soon,” he says. “Don't worry. Our guys are on it.”
“I'm okay here,” I say, trying to give him permission to hit the streets.
“Danny, did I ever tell you about the Christmas choir when I was a kid? Midnight mass?”
Okay. Now he's being totally random.
“No. I don't think … no.”
I've only heard maybe one or two stories about Ceepak's childhood, which I know is more than he's told most people. His past is basically unavailable for public viewing because he didn't have a very good one. His dad was a drunk who used to beat up his mom and drove Ceepak's little brother to suicide. Somehow, I doubt his Christmas tale is going to be one of those Hallmark Hall of Fame numbers where somebody discovers the true meaning of the season and saves the day for all the crippled orphans in town.
Ceepak sinks back on the couch.
“My father used to play the drums,” he says.
“You're kidding? Drums?”
“He was in a rock band in high school. Played some in college. Nightclubs. Bars. Places that paid with free beer. Anyhow, my father kept his drum kit stowed in our basement. Every now and then, he'd go down there and make a racket. I could tell how much he'd been drinking by how badly he kept time, his lack of any discernible rhythm.”
I can just imagine it: Old Man Ceepak, toasted out of his gourd, drumming away, smashing and crashing cymbals. I'll bet it sounded like all hell broke loose in that basement, like when a two-year-old gets a toy drum for his birthday and gives everybody a free concert and a migraine.
“Was he any good?” I ask.
“Not really. But this one Christmas, when he swore to God he was sober, when he promised my mother his drinking days were behind him, he decided he'd show her what a good man he had become by volunteering to play drums for our church's Christmas choir.”
“And you were you in the choir?”
“I was nine. I believe participation was considered somewhat mandatory.”
“Don't tell me: you guys did ‘The Little Drummer Boy?’ ”
“Of course.”
“And your dad? He did a drum solo?”
“Such was the plan. Christmas Eve, I helped my father haul his drums up to the choir loft. Set up the kit. It was all good. At least when we rehearsed.”
“What? He'd started drinking again?”
“He never stopped, Danny. He just told my mother he had. He lied to her. Made me lie to her as well.”
“No way. You lied to your own mother? On Christmas Eve?”
“At the time, I would have told you I was protecting her from the truth.”
“What happened?”
“Midnight mass. Hundreds of parishioners pack the pews. All of sudden, there's this tremendous commotion up in the choir loft. Drums topple over. Cymbals crash to the floor. Microphones squeal. My father was so drunk he slid off his stool and took everything down with him.”
I probably shouldn't laugh. So I just chuckle.
“It only lasted a few seconds. My father climbed back onto his stool and was able to pound out the requisite pa-rum-pum-pum-pums. After mass, my mother asked me about the noise, asked me what happened.”
“What'd you tell her?”
“I told her the choir director tripped on a microphone cord.”
“You lied?” I'm amazed.
“The children of drunks grow very accustomed to telling lies, Danny. It quickly becomes one's hardwired first response.”
“Come on. Give yourself a break. You were just a kid.”
“I know.”
“You didn't want to ruin Christmas for your mom.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe I was afraid of what my father might do to me if I told her the truth. In any event, I am not proud of my actions that evening.”
“You were nine years old!”
“Yes. And it was a minor transgression. However, if I had told my mother the truth that Christmas, perhaps she would have seen my father for what he really was. Perhaps she could have escaped.”
“Man, you're blowing it way out of proportion.”
“Perhaps. But actions, no matter how slight or insignificant, have ripple effects, Danny. Unintended consequences.”
I think I understand where Ceepak's going with this.
“So you think something small we did back in nineteen ninety-six, some ‘minor transgression’ turned into a big, major deal for this guy Wheezer?”
“It's a possibility. ‘You'll never remember. I'll never forget.’ ”
“Yeah.”
“Try to remember, Danny. Try hard.”
Ceepak stands.
“Stay here. Keep an eye on Katie. Get some sleep if you can. Try to remember.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Around seven P.M., Christine brings me a pillow.
Around seven fifteen, I fall asleep sideways on the couch.
Suddenly Christine is shaking my shoulder. It's morning. “She asked for you.”
“Whaa?” I forget where I am, why my breath stinks. Why is Christine waking me up? Are we even dating?
“Katie,” she says and shakes my shoulder some more.
My brain sputters, I blink. It's like the grumpy superintendent inside my skull shuffles over to the circuit breaker box, flicks the switches, lights me up for another day.
“Katie,” I mumble. I remember Katie.
“She asked for you.”
“She's awake?”
“Come on.”
Christine takes my hand and leads me into Katie's room.
Katie's eyes are open. There's a thin smile on her dry, cracked lips.
“Danny.”
“Hey.”
I reach for her hand. Christine nods. It's okay.
I take Katie's hand into mine and would squeeze it but I see they have an IV needle jabbed in near the thin tendons. So, I stroke her hand instead. I rub it gently, like I'm petting some newborn kitten.
There's a bunch of water blurring my eyes. I've got a lump in my throat the size of a meatball. I can't believe I'm seeing her emerald green eyes open and looking back at me.
“Danny.” She sighs, closes her eyes, and smiles like she's having a really good dream.
“Let her rest,” Christine suggests.
“Is she …?”
“Yeah, she is, Danny. She's going to be okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. I'll go grab you a chair. You can sit with her.”
She drags a vinyl chair into the room.
“Thanks.”
“She's on the mend,” she says. “But she needs to rest.”
About a half hour later, the doctor comes in and sees me sitting next to Katie's bed.
“How is she?” he asks.
“She, you know, recognized me.”
“So I heard.” He scribbles some stuff on the clipboard hanging off the foot of her bed. “That's very good news.”
The doctor leaves. I resume staring at Katie while she sleeps.
Every now and then, her green eyes flutter open, focus on me, and she smiles. Then, her eyelids flicker shut and she drifts off. I think a couple of those IV bags are pumping down pain medicine, the kind that makes you drowsy. Katie should definitely avoid operating any heavy machinery for the next few days.
My mind is spinning. I wish I'd had one of those dreams last night where all is revealed. A dream where the real Wheezer stands up like in that old TV game show To Tell the Truth. No such luck.
Maybe one of the other guys figured it out. Probably Olivia. She's the smartest. I check the cell phone clipped to my belt. No new messages. The others have probably all gone home with their police escorts. They're sitting somewhere right now like I am, with the word “Wheezer” running around their heads like a hopped-up hamster.
“Wheezer.” I whisper it. “Wheezy, Wheezer, Weasel.”
It's becoming a chant, like saying the rosary, which is something I forget how to do but I remember it involved a lot of mumbling of the same words over and over.
“Wheezer, wiener, weenie, wienerschnitzel, weenie, weasel, wheezy, wheezer …”
“Danny?”
Katie. I must've been mumbling louder than I thought.
“Hey.” I push myself out of the chair and move up to her pillow. I slide a sweaty strand of red hair out of her eyes.
“Don't,” she says.
“Sorry.” I take my hand off her hair. Guess her forehead hurts.
“Don't.”
I'm not doing anything.
“Don't do what?”
“Don't tease Weese.”
Her eyes close. She drifts back to sleep.
I remember.
Weese.
“Wheezer” is George Weese.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
August something-or-other, 1996.
Summer days all kind of blur together in a lazy haze. But that one day, whenever it was, was different. Not hugely different, just different enough.
I think it sent out those ripple effects Ceepak warned me about.
It was almost the end of August, during “Back to School Savings Time.” The TV was already running that Staples commercial about the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” The old Christmas song plays in the background while a happy dad pilots his shopping cart up and down the aisles, chucking in paper and notebooks and pens and all the supplies his sad little children need before they head back to school.
What we did to George Weese that day was really no big deal. Honest. It was just one of those stupid things bored kids do, especially kids who are fifteen and sixteen. When you're that age, you never realize that some of what you do is pretty awful. I was, basically, a teenage boy trying to figure out how to become a man-I mean, besides the obvious hormone and hair stuff.
I wanted to be my own man, not just somebody's son.
My friends and I hung out on Oak Beach almost every day. We lived in our own little world. We all had summer jobs and, like the song says, “Money got made, money got spent.” We laughed and listened to music and cruised the boardwalk and chased girls we didn't even know. We were trying hard to be cool and we thought we were.
George Weese was not.
Weese was the opposite of cool. He was a loser. A dork. He was the Wheezer.
“He sits behind me in home room,” Mook told us. “I swear, that big nose of his? It's stuffed with boogers. He wheezes when he breathes because the air can't make it past the booger boulders.”
I remember when Weese stumbled up the beach toward our spot that day. He wasn't coming to visit us. He was just passing through.
“Here he comes!” Mook goofed. “Can you hear him?” Then Mook did this funny bit where he sounded like a donkey trapped inside Darth Vader's helmet, all raspy and asthmatic, rattling a “hee” and a “haw” with every breath. Mook cracked us up.
Weese was tall and gangly, with a farmer's tan on his forearms-the rest of his skin was basically the same goose-pimply white as raw chicken. He was one of those guys who always squinted but never thought about buying clip-ons or wearing a baseball cap to shield his eyes. And he couldn't seem to coordinate his knees with his ankles. His big floppy feet kept sliding sideways in the sand, and
when he'd stumble, his glasses would slip and he'd have to push them back up the bridge of his humongous nose. Mook was right: you could hear the air whistling and wheezing and whining through his nostrils every time he breathed in or out.
To make matters worse, that day George Weese was wearing these white swim trunks with an elastic navy blue belt looped through the waistband. He looked ridiculous, like he was wearing underpants or a kitchen trash can liner with a blue plastic tie-cord.
“Nice undies, Wheezer,” Mook said when Weese came close to the plot of sand we had claimed as our own that day.
It was about four P.M. I remember Jess got off duty at three, I finished at the Pancake Palace around two, everybody was done working for the day, and the six of us were basically chilling, swilling sodas, wondering what we wanted to do until it was time to head home.
Mook, our self-appointed cruise director, decided what we'd do first: we'd have some fun with a wimp named Wheezer.
He blocked Weese's path up the beach.
When Weese tried to step around him, Mook moved sideways, got in his way again.
“Where you going, Wheezer?”
Weese didn't say anything. Some girls two blankets over started to giggle. Mook loved it.
“Oops. I think they can see your weenie, Wheezy.”
Weese looked down at his swimsuit. The white polyester fabric was thin, almost transparent.
“It's a teeny weenie,” Mook boomed. “More like a gherkin. One of those teeny-weeny itty-bitty pickles.”
Jess laughed. I did, too.
“You been jerkin’ your gherkin, Wheezer?” Mook was on a roll.
“That's against beach rules.” Jess stood up, dusted some sand off his red swim trunks. “Gherkin jerkin’ is strictly prohibited on all public beaches.”
“Yeah,” I added. “It says so on all the signs. Right after ‘no glass bottles’ comes ‘no weenie whacking.’ ”
Mook laughed at my new spin on his joke and we slapped each other a high-five. Jess knocked knuckles with us. I felt great. We were guys. Tough guys, topping each other, saying shit that was funnier than hell.
Becca and Olivia giggled and tried not to be obvious while they stared at Weese's crotch. Poor guy. His swim trunks weren't just white-they were two seasons too old. Extremely tight.
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