Goofy Foot

by David Daniel

  A gray pickup truck and a green Lincoln flanked my car. At a signal from Rand, one of the older men asked me to lift my arms. I did, and he patted me down. The other one took the yearbook and the Polaroid snapshot Van Owen had given me and handed them to Rand, who looked at both briefly and reached through the open window of his car and dropped them on the seat. Still speaking quietly, he said, “What were you doing?”

  “Trying to find someone.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “I showed your son his high school yearbook. I’m still looking for Nickerson.”

  “That’s his daughter in the Polaroid?”

  “Michelle, yes.”

  “Well, that still doesn’t explain what you were doing here.” A thought crept into my mind: Had Rand been the one who’d talked to Ross Jensen about dropping me? But why? How? “But that isn’t important right now,” said Rand. “What you don’t understand is that my son isn’t to be disturbed. Ever.”

  “I see that now. I wasn’t fully aware of his condition. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s a little late for that. It’s already happened, hasn’t it?”

  I sifted that for hidden meanings. Rand stepped back, his face wrathful in the sodium light from overhead. “You don’t seem to know what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said.

  He turned and climbed into the Lincoln and drove away. I looked to the young bodybuilder, standing to my right. As Rand and I had been talking, the man had slowly been wrapping an elastic bandage around his hand. He flexed his hand several times. I wasted a second wondering why. I saw the blow coming and just managed to twist aside. His fist hit my car window with enough impact to spiderweb the safety glass. The man grunted in pain. I bulldozed my fist into his stomach. A flurry of short punches hit me in the lower back. His companions got into it. One poked stiff fingers under my bottom rib. I fought, even connected with a jaw or two, but I might as well have been swinging a fistful of cotton candy for all the effect it had. Hands spun me around and shoved my head against my car roof: once, twice. Quickly, the older two got hold of my arms and turned me back. I felt their strength, pinning me. It didn’t last long.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. Something wet splashed onto me. I thought I heard more crunching of glass, and another sound, a faint exhalation, like the life being let out of something. Maybe it was me. Maybe I’d been stabbed. I heard a vehicle start up, then a louder crash close by and a tinkle of breaking glass. I lay in a curl on the asphalt. After a while another vehicle roared to life and lurched off with a squeal of tires.

  I don’t know how long I lay there. Sights and sounds were blurry and mostly dark, as if a wire had come loose and wasn’t making a clean connection. I thought about getting to my feet, which meant I had to find them first. They were down the block. When I rounded them up and got them under me, I levered my way to a standing position with the aid of my car. I leaned against the passenger-side door, winded from the effort, and rested. I could hear the white noise of Brockton around me, but it sounded distant, unimportant. Crumbs of safety glass lay around my feet like bright little pebbles. The Probe’s front end was pushed against the steel light pole, which told me what the crash had been. The tire that I could see was flat. I’d have to get out the spare and the jack.

  First, though, I had to learn to walk. I took a step. My legs were rolled gym towels and rubber snakes. I knew what ninety was going to be like, with knees that wouldn’t lock and a shuffling gait and aches in places I didn’t like hurting in. My pants were wet. God. I wondered if I’d brought my bedpan. After a few days I got around to the driver side, noting en route that the other front tire was flat too. Keys. Keys? I patted myself down twice. No keys.

  I got through the big automatic doors and into the hospital lobby. No one paid me any mind; they’d seen and smelled it all too many times before. Someone may have asked me if I had medical insurance. I ignored them if they did. I pushed open the door to the first bathroom I came to and winced at the fluorescent glare. I braced myself on a sink, hoping it didn’t come off the wall with my weight. When it didn’t, and I didn’t fall, and I had managed to keep my stomach down, I bent over. They were those faucets you press down and water gushes for all of two seconds. Cupping my hands under the flow before it quit took some practice, but finally I splashed a few drops of water on my face. I swished some in my mouth and spat it out pink and checked my teeth, which didn’t tell me much. Finally I used the mirror above the basin. I wanted to tell the stranger to step aside and let me look, but he was a gruesome SOB and scared me. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut, his nostrils had a crust of blood, and his lips were rubber hoses. He stank of booze. I was going to tell the lousy lowlife to move it, or I’d move it for him, when behind him in the mirror I noticed something else: a dispenser for sanitary napkins. I turned to see a row of neat little enclosed stalls, not a trough in sight. I took a step toward the door and fell, banging the floor against my head. As I lay with my eyes shut, my cheek against the cool terrazzo, I heard a woman’s voice saying something, asking a question, I think. I tried to say, “Shh,” but I’m not sure it came out. I may have heard the flutter of angel’s wings. Then, nothing.

  28

  Movement coaxed me up from a groggy pit. I was on my back, gliding along fast and without effort under honeycombs of light, and someone was softly tingling harp strings in my ear. An angel in rustling white, with chocolate-brown skin, said, “Dr. Marshmallow is on tonight.” Her words had a Jamaican flavor.

  “Who?” I managed.

  “Dr. Marshall, in the ER.” I was on a stretcher being wheeled into an emergency examining room. The angel wore a nurse’s cap on her crisp dark hair. “He’s good. He’s a mumbler of the natural board of wacky actors and anorexic gymnasts,” she assured me. “So you just hang on, Mr. Rafmataffin. Is that your name? It’s what your carnation says.” She patted my shoulder. “Have you got any equestrians?”

  I floated away on cloud nine.

  29

  “Surf’s up, Dog.”

  I blinked my eyes open to shimmering red and yellow and turquoise blue. It was a Hawaiian shirt with a likeness of Red Dog Van Owen inside. I was dreaming.

  “It’s fine with me. Keep on, if you want.”

  “What?”

  “Dreaming,” he said.

  I didn’t want. My dream had been about nautical drive-by shootings. I struggled and sat up and saw that I was on a recovery gurney in the hospital corridor. Van Owen stood nearby. “Where’re my things?” I asked.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were rolling east in his truck. The air was chilly, and I couldn’t seem to get warm. Each jounce on the worn-down shocks reminded me of where I’d been, though not fully why. “Your car was towed,” he said. “Front end’s pretty messed up. You’ve got two flats.”

  “Dammit, they were only flat on the bottom.”

  “You can let the garage know what you want to do. I know the owner; he won’t rip you off too bad. Mind if I smoke?”

  Cold or carcinogens? It wasn’t much of a choice, but one outcome was more immediate. “Just keep the window closed,” I said. “I’m freezing.”

  He left the cigarettes alone. “It’s probably a reaction. That ER doc wasn’t happy about you leaving.”

  “I wasn’t crazy about his bedside manner.”

  Actually, except for a few bandages and some swelling and scrapes on my face, the rearview mirror didn’t reveal any signs of major damage. Inside, though, my jaw hurt at the hinges, and my voice seemed to hiss with serpents.

  “I’m going back and forth,” Van Owen said, “between feeling like shit for taking you there in the first place and telling myself you’d have gone anyway. What the hell did you have in mind?”

  “You know what happened?” I asked with effort.

  “Some of it.”

  “Let yourself off the hook. You warned me. And I lost your photograph.”

  “I’m not nostalgic like I once was.”

  “Wh
at stinks?”

  “Your eighty-proof clothes. The cop was very interested in you at first. Your car hit that light pole in the parking lot pretty good. You remember that?”

  I shook my head. “But I wasn’t drinking.”

  “I know. You passed a breath test, so you weren’t charged with anything. Yet.”

  I had a vague recollection of notebooks and stern faces. “How’d you get into it?”

  “The cop, Ferry, phoned me. Look, I know you’re itching to share your excellent adventure, but I don’t want to hear any more of it right now, you mind? Listening to you is making my head ache.”

  Fine with me. My central processing unit still felt like jellied consommé; but I needed to know what I’d already revealed. Van Owen said, “You told me that after you left my place you went to see TJ, and his old man showed.”

  I nodded. “Do the cops know that?”

  “No. The emergency room nurse kept them at bay, insisted you were a patient and they could talk to you later. She was pretty feisty. They cleared out.”

  Good. I had no interest in sharing the truth with them; not now, anyway.

  “If you’d listened to me and let it alone, you could’ve avoided all this. Anyhow, the doctor said you should rest—and you’re going to. He shot you up with something.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Save it. Someone’s waiting for you.”

  I glanced over, even started to ask “Who?” but my jaw hurt so much I kept it shut. The night rolled by outside, dizzying me with lights. Soon the wonders of pharmaceutical alchemy took over.

  It was daylight when I cranked open my eyes. I was in the bed in the beach house, with a heap of soft wool blankets layered up to my chin. I tried to sit and groaned, so I lay back. Someone came in on quiet feet from the next room. “You’re awake.” It was Paula Jensen. “How do you feel?” she asked with gentle concern.

  “Except for my head, stomach, and back, I’m good. Groggy.”

  “That’s the Demerol wearing off.” She sat on the edge of the bed and put a cool hand on my forehead for a moment. “The doctor gave you a prescription for more if you need it.”

  Something came to me. I pushed up on an elbow. “Is Michelle … ?”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  I eased back. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m maintaining. Barely. Everything that can is being done. But forget me for the moment.” Her eyes were a tender blue force. “Rest.” She made it sound tempting.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Chet Van Owen contacted me. He said he thought you were working for me. I asked him to bring you here if you were up to it, and I drove straight down. Katie’s at my sister’s.”

  “How’d Van Owen find out what happened again?”

  I had a hazy notion we’d been through this together already; some of it sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure. “A police officer called him. Officer Ferry. After Van Owen dropped you off, I put you in a hot bath because you were shivering so. I gave up trying to get you into pajamas and just buried you in blankets. You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head. Naked with an attractive woman and it was gone. I was living the wrong life. “What time is it?”

  “Just after nine. You really should rest.”

  “I did.”

  “Maybe we should get you to a doctor …”

  “No—I’m feeling better.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “Would you like some breakfast, at least?”

  “Is there coffee?”

  While she went to make it, I got up. In the mirror I could see some bruising on my shoulders and ribs, and knew there would be more to come. There was an abrasion on my right cheekbone, as if I’d skidded on a rough surface. Rand’s men had worked me over pretty carefully, though: nothing I couldn’t have gotten drunkenly ramming a lamppost. It didn’t feel as if any irreplaceable parts were broken. I patted my face with water, brushed my hair and teeth, and put on the fresh clothes I’d brought from Lowell. Making it downstairs was only a minor labor, and seeing Paula Jensen pouring coffee made me feel almost new. She looked as if she’d spent a restless night; she was pale, though her hair was brushed and shining, and in the kitchen sunlight she projected strength.

  “How do you take it?” she asked.

  “Black.”

  “I mean the punishment.” I could smell her minty toothpaste as she stood at my side and set down a cup of coffee. “I brought along some physician’s samples of Relafen—it’s a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, if you need it. It isn’t contraindicated with the Demerol.”

  “Just coffee, for now. You know something about this?”

  “Only what Chet Van Owen was able to tell me.”

  “About medicine, I mean.”

  A smile and a touch of color returned; we were synched into alternating conversations. “I was going to be a nurse,” she said. “Actually started the training program.” She warmed my cup and slid into the breakfast nook across from me with a steaming cup of her own. There was something almost domestic in it. “Stop me if the tale is all too familiar.” But I was happy to listen. She told me about her first year, what it had been like, before she switched her major to English and met Ben Nickerson. “I had this idea I wanted to work on the SS Hope.”

  “And if troubles came, you’d walk across the water to solve them.”

  Her laugh was a dose of medicine. “You knew me, huh?”

  “I was going to save the world in my own way.”

  “By being an investigator?”

  “That just sort of happened. I started out in a uniform.”

  “You were a soldier?”

  “And then a cop.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Every ex-cop thinks he’s a born sleuth.”

  “That’s where you got your skills.”

  “Such as they are. Ouch.” The hot coffee made me wince.

  We went on talking for a few moments—revisiting the past, commenting on the nice day outside—avoiding what was pressingly obvious to each of us: that her daughter was still missing and might be in real danger. I drained my cup and set it down. “Time to put the aforementioned skills to work.”

  “Are you really up to this?”

  I’d have much preferred to go on sitting there with another round of coffee and our funny conversation, but I needed to get moving or I wouldn’t. I pushed to my feet. The room didn’t spin too much. But a thought came to me. “Remember that dream you told me about?”

  “When I woke up and said, ‘He’s dead’?”

  “That one. Is there anything else you remember about it?”

  “Only that it seemed real—and it scares me. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “I don’t want to have it anymore.”

  I patted her arm, then put my jacket on. She retrieved my watch and wallet from atop the refrigerator. It was almost 10 A.M. “By the way,” she said, “you have no car.” I’d forgotten that little detail. “Use mine. I insisted that you be brought back into the investigation. Ross didn’t argue. I’ll stay here for now; Shel may try to call again.”

  I took the keys. I went to the drawer and got my .38. I could have waited until Paula was out of the room, but I figured we all needed the occasional jolt of reality to make our best judgments. I’d had mine last night. She looked at it with nervous fascination as I snapped the holster onto my belt. “Is that a good idea?” she asked. “A gun?”

  “It’s rarely the best idea. Sometimes it’s called for.”

  “And this is one of those times?”

  I drew on my coat to conceal the .38. “I can’t say for sure, Paula. It might be.”

  She didn’t look happy with it, but she didn’t argue. Either she trusted me or had decided I was too pigheaded to argue with. “Are we doing the right thing? I don’t like the idea of you getting hurt.”

  “Let’s fast-track that into law.”

  “I’m serious, Alex.�
�

  She had stepped close. I took her hands in mine and looked in her eyes. There were tears gathering in them, and fear being held at bay. Gently, I kissed her forehead. “That’s how I want you to be. And extra careful. I’m going to be now, too. I wasn’t before. Understood?”

  She nodded. I released my grip, but she held on. I could feel a pull there in the short intervening space between us. “Does anyone else know you’re here?” I asked.

  “Only Ross and my sister. And Van Owen.”

  “All right. Keep the phone handy. I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  She nodded, her eyes bright. “God bless,” she said.

  As I got in the Blazer, adjusting the seat for legroom, I glanced at the mirror. What had fooled Paula Jensen so as to offer me her total trust? Some harsh words for the man reflected there rose in my mind, but I let them go. Maybe it was a time for compassion. Besides, I sensed the most vague outlines of an idea trying to take shape. The headache didn’t help it to form, but I had to hope the idea would come on its own if it had any real substance.

  30

  In the municipal building I passed the big pointing hand. Chief Delcastro wasn’t in, but Officer Ferry was, looking as clean and crisp as ever. I told him thanks for what he had done. “You don’t look too bad,” he said. “Of course, I don’t know what’s under the bandage. What did you do, doze off?”

  “I must’ve,” I lied. “The long hours add up.”

  “Tell me about it. We’re pulling double shifts till further notice.”

  “Which is why I’m here. Does that hot computer of yours contain arrest records?”

  “Everything going back five years. We can deep-dive ’em in a minute.”

  “What about before that?”

  “Hmm. What are you looking for?”

  “Delcastro told me that Ben Nickerson had once been arrested in town.”