by Dan Taylor
“I’ll remember to do that.”
“Don’t forget. That engine of yours is relatively deteriorated considering how many miles you have on the clock.”
I roll my eyes. “How could I possibly forget something this big?”
I hang up.
Then I get up off the hospital bed, pop my head out of the door, and look for my nurse up and down the corridor. I don’t see her, so I get back in bed, press that button that alerts her while she’s having a coffee break or whatever.
When she comes through the door, I say, “Nurse Ingrid, I need a notepad and pen, stat.”
54.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN you’re discharging yourself?” Nurse Ingrid asks.
“Don’t feel too bad, Ingrid. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”
She shakes her head. “No, not that. You have a life-threatening deformation of the heart. You shouldn’t leave the hospital. You need surgery.”
“What are the credentials of your guy?”
“My guy?”
“You know, the guy that you know who’ll be doing the surgery. Is he the best in the…region, or some shit?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”
“Never mind. Where are my clothes?”
“Over in that wardrobe.”
I go over to it and start taking them out and laying them on the bed.
Then Ingrid says, “Can you please get back in bed, Mr. Hancock?”
As I put on my pants, I say, “From now until the surgery, the only reason I’ll be getting into bed is to have sex, exhausting sex.” I think a second. “And to sleep.”
“I don’t understand the relevance of anything you’re saying, Mr. Hancock.”
“That’s okay. I do.” I shake my head as I say to myself, “It was the sex all along.”
“What was?”
I turn to her. “The dream. Do you understand, Ingrid?”
“What dream?”
I think about what I said and correct it. “Well, about my heart and the sex.”
“You are unwell, Mr. Hancock. Do lie down.”
“No way. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“There’s no way you can travel.”
But I’m too occupied thinking about the dream to reply. I pull off the gown as she stares at me wide-eyed. Then she says, “I don’t think you’re thinking straight.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought straighter.”
I toss her the gown, put on my shirt and jacket, and then go out into the corridor. I look from left to right. I turn back to Ingrid and say, “Which way is it?”
“Right. But Mr. Hancock, you could black out any second.”
“Thanks for everything.”
I turn right and run down the corridor, past some sort of ward reception desk. One of the administrators stands up, says, “You forgot to pay.”
I stop and go back and take out a credit card. She points to a card machine. The next couple minutes, during which she types the amount due into the machine and I pay it with my card, totally ruins the whole rushing thing I had going on.
And then I’m free.
55.
I TAKE A CAB back to the hotel, pack my bag—checking under the bed to see if any of my socks are under it—and then check out. Then I take the flight back to L.A.
While I sit in business class, I put my dodgy heart to the back of my mind and think about how I’m going to handle the inevitable debrief with Gerry and Andre.
I’m going to call this whole Gerry-getting-Cole-tortured thing a lovers’ tiff and stay out of it. As planned, I’ll report that I didn’t find out anything about Cole’s disappearance, and that Bertha Handvinkle didn’t know anything, despite my trying to bonk the secrets out of her. The way I figure it, this makes the situation a win for everyone. Apart from Andre, that is, who’s lost an agent and quite a bit of cash on my failed mission.
We’ll go back to living our lives.
With the plan formulated, I send a text message to Gerry, informing her of the time I get into L.A. She sends one back, informing me that she’ll have a driver waiting for me outside Arrivals, and that the debrief will happen immediately upon my arrival at Andre’s place. She punctuates that last part with an exclamation mark. I don’t worry about that last part too much. People overuse those things these days.
I put on the headphones I was given, plug them into the armrest, and choose the jazz station. I fall asleep with a surprising grin on my face, considering I’m stuck in a large metal tube, who knows how many feet up in the air, the closest thing on board to a top-class heart surgeon probably some drunk retired podiatrist, and the closest thing to a scalpel a plastic knife.
I dream the dream. I’m on the second branch, wind blowing in my hair. It isn’t that far up, but I’m scared anyway. I was never good with heights, or branches. I’m stooping down, back arched, clinging on to the branch, feeling a little like Gollum, when the wind picks up further. I get vertigo and start panicking, swaying from side to side. The wind whispers, “Don’t look down,” in a ghoulish voice.
I slip on a slimy bit of moss, but manage to grab on to the branch before I fall the couple feet to the ground.
I wake with a start, clutching my chest. But my heartbeat feels normal.
The person next to me puts their hand on my shoulder, and I turn towards them, finding that it’s some sleepy-eyed old dear with a creepy grin on her face; she’s probably one of those baby-aspirin-and-sleeping-pill fliers, waiting for her double dose of the latter to kick in.
“It’s okay, dear,” she says.
I’ve not quite woken up yet. “You know, you should really get up and move around once in a while. I’ve heard bad things about popping baby aspirin on board and not worrying about moving until the next time you’re desperate to go to the can.”
She looks at me, confused. “Whatever do you mean?”
I shake my head, waking myself up fully. “Never mind.”
What she does next confuses the hell out of me. She takes her newspaper out of the pouch in front of her and holds it out for me to take. Then she says, “Here, take this.”
I frown. “Why would I want that?”
“While you were sleeping you kept saying newspaper over and over again.”
“Huh. That’s weird. Did I happen to mention what newspaper?”
She shakes her head.
I take the newspaper from her, and start flicking through it, hoping to remember whatever it is about a newspaper that’s been gnawing at my mind.
I carry on flicking, get to the business section, and fall asleep.
56.
I DON’T WAKE until the airplane wheels touch down on good ol’ American asphalt.
I get off the airplane, collect my bags, and go through to the arrivals lounge to the Meet and Greet, to find none other than McKinley ‘I Could…’ Howard holding up a sign, on which it reads “Handcock.”
I go over to him and say, “Nice pun, Howard, but people usually hold those things up when neither one of the parties knows what the other looks like.”
“I know that. I thought I’d have a little fun with you.”
“Was it as much fun as you thought it would be?”
He shrugs. “It passed some time.”
I start walking in the direction of the exit, leaving my bag for him to drag to the car, and say, “Let’s get this over and done with.”
I walk in front, and we get all the way to the car before McKinley says, “Aren’t you going to bring your luggage, Mr. Hancock?”
I look back at the driver, and then down at his feet, where my luggage should be. Then I say, “You know how long luggage survives out there before it’s taken away by security in a post-9/11 environment? You should really stop being such a dick, you know that?”
“I could…”
I roll my eyes and sigh at the same time, and then rush off and get my luggage.
McKinley Howard’s waiting in the vehicle when I get back.
He pops the trunk, I load it up with my luggage, and then get in the car.
He tosses me the hood when we’re on the freeway, well away from the airport.
Before I put it on, I say, “What about GPS tracking on my cell? You think of that? Or me making a mental note of the turns we’ll take and the estimated distance between them?”
“Good point. Pass me the cell.”
I sigh but do.
“What about the second one?” I ask.
“I’m not too worried about that, Mr. Hancock. You’re the type of guy who forgets bread and milk when he makes a trip to the store, despite having written it on his cute little list.”
“Harsh.”
“But true.”
“Probably.”
A half hour later we pull up at Andre’s.
Gerry greets me at the door. “Jake, is it good to be back in the States?”
Gerry’s clearly nervous about what I know. She’s got this funny little smile on her face, pretending it’s good to see me, even though it’s anything but. And she’s holding her arms in a weird way, like a jock in a high school play who got the lead role and doesn’t have a clue what to do with his arms on stage.
I smile a tired smile, think a second, and say, “The next time you guys send me on vacation…” I try to think of some witty remark about the cost of alcohol over there, but come up with bupkis. So I say, “In fact, don’t send me on vacation again. I like it here.”
She fake laughs. “It’s good to have you back, Jake.”
I go through the doorway, take off my shoes, and leave my luggage at the door, before I say, “Now I know that’s a lie.”
Gerry looks momentarily worried, but she smooths over it by smiling. “It kind of is.”
We start walking down the hallway to Andre’s billiards room.
I say, “Is the big chief waiting for us?”
“Don’t call him that. But yeah, he is.”
We’re silent a second before she asks, “You went dark for a while. I was worried about…well, about the mission.”
I have every intention of keeping this girly heart problem to myself. “You know me. I left the damn cell in the hotel room before I headed out to a bar. And then what do you know, turns out I’m irresistible to the women over there. I go home with some broad, come back the next morning. That’s when I decided to get in contact with you, you know, while I was traveling back.”
We stop outside the door to the billiards room. Gerry straightens her pants suit, delaying something. And not just going in for the debrief.
She asks, “Are you ready?”
“Gerry, these things don’t make me nervous.”
She goes to open the door, but stops herself. “Is there anything you want to tell me before we go in there? Anything you think you might want to run by me before you tell Andre?”
I think a second, dry, tired eyes flitting from one place to the next. I smile. “It’s probably a good thing we keep this bomb threat to ourselves, right?”
She tries her best not to, but Gerry sighs with relief. It’s only small. Tiny, even. Anyone not in the know might miss it. She returns the smile. “We probably should. And just to make things clear, I didn’t give you permission to do that, by the way.”
I wink. “Of course you didn’t, Gerry.”
“I mean it, Jake.”
I wink two times. “Of course.”
“Okay, stop fucking around now.”
“It was all me. I knew that on some level.”
“Good.”
We go through to the billiards room, and Andre’s waiting for us in his iron lung. He gives us a warm welcome. “Jake Hancock and Gerry Smoulderwell. I do hope you two have been playing nice.”
As we walk over, I say, “You know me, Andre, I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”
He turns his attention to Gerry. “Does his flattery get him anywhere?”
Gerry glances at me. “It hasn’t yet. But I give him an A for persistence.”
He giggles. “Good, good. It isn’t you it had to work on, Gerry. It was a Ms. Bertha Handvinkle. Why don’t you make us a drink each and you can tell us all about it.”
I make us drinks, put Andre’s on the table next to him, placing the straw in his mouth. Gerry takes hers and sips it nervously.
After taking a sip and spitting his straw out of his mouth, Andre says, “So, did you manage to get into Ms. Bertha Handvinkle’s knickers, Jake?”
“I did. More to the point, I developed a decent relationship with this woman in a short space of time. A trusting one. We made love many times, one of those times at her apartment.”
“Good.”
“Naturally I searched the place. And I’m sorry to tell you, Andre, that I didn’t find one shred of evidence to suggest she might be involved in the disappearance of Cole Baxter.”
“Ah.”
“After coming up short, I dropped the act and turned the screws, determined to learn anything she knew about a Cole Baxter. She didn’t know of one, she said. Only a Troy Kellerman, which I assume was Cole’s alias. Nor did she know anything about some secret Russian mission in Antarctica. Only of an actual observation station. And I’m sure she was telling the truth.”
“What makes you think that, Mr. Hancock?”
“On top of her apartment not containing a shred of evidence, I also gave her some of the best orgasms she’ll likely ever have. If she had secrets, I would’ve learned them.”
“Hmm, sounds like you did a fine job, Jake. Did you manage to find out about this observation station? Anything at all?”
“Our sexual adventures brought us as far as her office, after work hours. I slipped something into her machine latte after sex and searched the place while she snoozed. I learned that the observation station was run by a Dmitry Bratislova, a Russian scientist with a history of mental illness and domestic violence. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect this Dmitry Bratislova to be involved in the murder of Cole Baxter, after which he abandoned the observation station. I suspect he walked out into the Antarctic desert and never came back. The Russians used a pilot hired through a private logistics firm—Needlessly Skinned Bear Logistics—a Carlov Dnotetskylavskeptich.”
“Nice pronunciation.”
“Thanks. Where was I? Yeah, the pilot. He never returned either. They suspect him to be a victim of this mad Russian scientist, this Dmitry Bratislova.”
“Hmm. What about the helicopter? Why didn’t the Russians find that?”
“Could’ve been recovered by the logistics firm. More than likely.”
Andre sighs. “Okay, Jake. Fine work.”
“Thank you, Andre.”
I glance at Gerry, who’s displaying her usual stoic demeanor.
I say, “Is that all, Andre?”
“Why are you in such a rush, Mr. Hancock?”
I glance at Gerry again. She has her eyebrow raised, equally interested in my reason. Then I say, “I have a personal matter that requires immediate attention, Andre.”
He groans sympathetically. “Not your sister again?”
My sister is battling multiple sclerosis.
“Afraid so. She’s taken a turn for the worse.”
“Okay, I suppose you should get going.”
I put my drink on Andre’s bar, and start leaving the billiards room. Gerry follows. When we’re at the doorway leading to the hallway, Andre says, “Oh, one more thing, Jake. This…gig, it’s yours if you want it?”
I turn and look at him. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll stay on as just a P.I. The spy stuff didn’t suit me.”
“Very well, Jake. Get in touch with Gerry when you’re fit for duty again.”
“You bet.”
Gerry and I say our goodbyes and leave.
We walk silently down the corridor, put on our shoes, I pick up my luggage and we go out the door.
We stand on Andre’s porch, standing side by side, looking at the lone car.
I say, “Guess we’re sharing again.�
�� I wait a couple seconds. “Aren’t you going to curse? Tell me there’s no way you’re sharing a ride home with me again?”
She doesn’t say anything, so I turn and look at her. It’s Gerry, so she’s still bitch-faced and metal-rod-up-her-ass cold, but I can tell she’s fighting back tears. And those things even turn me to mush.
“Gerry, Gerry, what is it?”
She sniffles. “It’s nothing. You take this car. I won’t be much company. I’ll get Andre to phone in another.”
I am beat, so I think hard about it. Even take a few steps towards it before stopping. “No, you take it.” I wince before saying, “It’s been a real shit time for all of us, what with Cole turning up dead.”
Now I’ve really gone and done it. The tears that were hanging on to her are now migrating down her cheeks, carving a path in her subtle makeup.
I go over to her, rest an arm around her shoulder. I shake my head, thinking about speaking cryptically about Cole surviving, but decide against it. “Come on. We’ll share this one. And if it’s ‘I Could…’ I’ll punch him in the mouth if he gives us shit.”
She laughs as freely as she can in her state, wiping snot from her nose. Now I’m sure this whole thing was just a lovers’ tiff. She’s probably really regretting this Cole situation. If only she knew he was still alive…
But I can’t do it. Sure, Gerry wouldn’t go and tell Andre about the cover-up, as she would be worried about if I’d tell on her. Call it bro-code or whatever you want, I’m not a snitch, and never will be.
So all I can do is put my arm around Gerry, lead her over to the car, put my luggage in the trunk, open the rear-passenger door, and move the briefcase that’s lying on the seat so that she can sit down.
I close it, run around to the other rear-passenger door, and get in. The briefcase must’ve been hers, because she’s holding it on her lap.
Turns out it is ‘I Could…’
“Lady’s in a bit of state,” I say, “so drop that routine you’ve been practicing on us, will you, chief? And you can forget about the hood this time. I need to be her shoulder to cry on.”
He looks at her in the rearview mirror, shrugs and starts driving.