by Dan Taylor
“Hazy?” Doc rolls his eyes. “Your haziness is going to result in my kid growing up without a father.” He lets his hands drop. “I refuse to be part of this.” He gets up and starts to leave.
Gerry looks momentarily impotent, frozen to the spot, until she reacts to his leaving and pistol whips him. Doc reels back, landing on the sofa.
He says, “Ow, that really hurt!”
I say, “Before you hit him, you should’ve told him it wouldn’t hurt a bit. You know, like—”
“Bedside manner,” Grace says. “That’s a good one, Jake. Any other jokes before we’re shot?”
I think a second. “I’m all out.”
Gerry resumes, “Will you two shut up. I can’t concentrate.”
“Sorry,” Grace and I say simultaneously.
A second later, another one comes to me. “I got one. Gerry, tell him it’s going to need stitches.”
Okay, I’ve made my decision. You’re first, Jake.” She points the gun at me.
To my surprise, Doc pipes up, and in a strange tone of voice. “No, kill me first. I suppose I deserve it. I did hang around where I shouldn’t have.”
Huh?
And then Grace. “No, me. I couldn’t bear to watch either of them being executed. You’ll have to do me first.”
Gerry’s as confused as I am.
I suppose it’s my turn. It would get real awkward, otherwise. “No, shoot me. I can’t really think of a reason why it would be advantageous to be shot first, but I think it’s a good idea nonetheless.”
Despite my shoddy reasoning—and yes, I made it unconvincing on purpose, hoping she’d shoot Dr. Barnes first—I’ve convinced Gerry.
She pulls back the trigger and aims the gun at my forehead.
I think of many things during the final second of my life—didn’t I just say this?—but the main thing is that I’m dying a hero. I also cower, closing one eye in a goofy way, and my left leg’s got a mind of its own. It’s shaking like a defecating leaf. But still, a hero.
Then, just as Gerry’s finger’s starting to squeeze the trigger, I find out why Grace and Doc were arguing over who should be shot first. They were stalling, giving someone a chance to creep into the room. I didn’t see him, as I’m on the left-hand side of the sofa, and a wall was blocking his entry through the short hallway to my living room. But now I see him.
A police officer who I vaguely remember has his weapon trained on Gerry, and he utters the sweetest words I’ll ever hear in my life: “LAPD! Drop the gun, shit face, ma’am.”
31.
DOC, GRACE, AND I cheer, and we throw in a few high-fives for good measure, but we’re not saved yet. Surprisingly enough, Gerry doesn’t drop her weapon. She keeps it pointed at me. Then she says, “What’ll happen if I don’t, Detective? You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?”
“I’ll do whatever’s necessary to stop you shooting Jake Hancock and these other people.”
He used my name? I take his appearance in anew. I know this guy. I knew him by Officer Dukes. We worked together to take down a trio of criminals who abducted my sister and nephew.
I say, “Congratulations on making detective, Dukes. I’m really happy for you.”
He says, “Now’s not the time to have this conversation, Hancock. Kind of in a situation here.”
“Oops, sorry. I’ll butt out.”
Then he says to Gerry, “Drop the weapon, Hayley Toothridge. I’ve shot many women in my time on the force. Even some children.” Number one of the top five things a cop shouldn’t have written on his tombstone.
Now it’s Grace’s turn to butt in. “I’d do it, lady. The guy looks really serious. A jail cell is better than a box.”
So does Dr. Barnes. “The mortality rate for gunshot wounds is around twenty-seven percent, which doesn’t sound high, but still, if I were you, I’d do it.”
Gerry says, “Gee, compelling arguments, guys—especially yours, Doc—but I think I’ll do this instead.” With catlike speed—are cats particularly fast?—she turns around, so that her gun is pointing at Detective Dukes.
That’s evened things up a bit. Great.
“Are you seriously pointing your gun at a decorated police officer right now?” Detective Dukes says.
Gerry answers, “I am. What are you going to do about it?”
I expect him to countdown from five. Or distract her by looking over her shoulder or some shit—that’s what I would do. But he does none of those things. In fact, he does nothing. They stand there, not saying anything.
Grace starts to elbow me in the side. I turn to her, and she motions for me to tackle Gerry. It’s a shit plan. Not only could I end up getting shot in the process, but I could cause Gerry to shoot Detective Dukes.
But Grace is right. Someone needs to end this stalemate. I slowly rise from my seat and start to creep over to my hi-fi. I’ll distract her with whatever CD’s in there. Okay, I crawl. But creep sounds better. As I am, I feel really faint. I’ve probably lost a lot of blood. Crawling to my hi-fi, hoping to distract a lady with a gun so that a real man can take her down doesn’t sound courageous, but keep in mind the blood loss.
Almost there. Just a few more feet. The world is going black. By world, I mean my apartment. My head’s swimming.
Nearly there.
That thing that happened in Vine and Dine happens again. Everything seems far away. And sounds are like they are in my dreams—like a guitar effect in a prog rock song, all echoey and strange.
I’ve made it. Thank God. I make a dive for it, pressing the ON button in the process. And then I press PLAY. The sweet sound of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch fills the room.
Just before I black out, I hear, “Gerry, what are you thinking?”
A voice I’ve never heard before. A posh-sounding British guy.
Then everything goes black.
32.
WHEN I COME to I’m in a room I don’t recognize. Lights shining down from the ceiling blind me. But I can sense someone else is in the room. Whoever it is leans over me, blocking the lights, and I see that it’s an impossibly attractive woman. Cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon and hair as red as…well, it’s red.
“Ugh, am I dead? Am I in heaven?” I ask.
“Not quite, Mr. Hancock. But it was touch and go for a while there. How are you feeling?”
My eyes adjust. Now I can see that she’s wearing a nurse’s uniform. A nurse, right? Mr. Deduction.
“Okay, I guess. Where am I?”
“You’re in the Agency medical facility. You’ve just had a major operation.” She shines a light in my eyes, checking them for some reason.
“Do I need glasses?”
“No, but I’m afraid your sense of humor didn’t make it.”
“Ouch. Do I at least get an A for effort, considering I’m still groggy after the operation?” Which was what, by the way?
She ignores my question and goes around to the end of the bed, picks up the medical chart hanging there. And then asks, “Any tingling sensation in your feet or anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Feelings of anxiety or sweaty palms?”
“No.”
“Rapid heartbeat or cotton mouth?”
“No.”
“Then my uniform isn’t nearly tight enough.”
She puts the chart back.
“Hey, that was pretty good for a medical practitioner. B for effort. With a bit of work, say, over a bottle of wine, we could make you a hoot.”
“It’s tempting, but I’m washing my hair.”
“Okay. Maybe some other time?”
“Maybe. Sit tight. Andre will see you now.”
Then she leaves.
Andre? The enigmatic boss of the Agency who I’ve never met?
A couple seconds later a mid-fifties dude with a Cat Stevens beard comes into the room. “Mr. Hancock, we meet again.”
Okay, now I’m confused.
It’s the same voice I heard in my apartment before I blacked
out.
I say, “Mm, I guess you must be Andre. And I’ve never seen you before in my life. I would’ve remembered the beard.”
“Oh, this. I forgot about that.” He rips it off. “How about now? Does my face jog your memory?”
“You remind me of Colonel Sanders, but otherwise, no.”
“Fascinating…” His voice trails off.
“What is?”
“We’ve spoken on a couple of occasions, shared drinks.”
“I thought no one ever meets you, from the Agency, I mean. Apart from Gerry, that is.”
“That’s kind of true, yes. But only last week you worked for the Agency, and for the first time you worked with me directly.”
I do love fried chicken and small talk, but it’s time to get some answers. “Then why don’t I remember? What’s going on?”
“I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of some unfortunate circumstances. Let me explain.”
The next couple minutes, Andre tells the story of how I was employed by the Agency to investigate the death of Cole Baxter. Of how I went to Oslo, Norway, to ‘bonk the secrets’ out of a recruitment agent who had gotten Cole a gig in an observation station erected by the Russians. The Agency suspected her to be a triple agent and complicit in his death. I found out what happened to Cole, returned to L.A., but lied about Cole being dead upon my return.
“Okay, so I’ve got a few questions,” I say. “Cole’s alive. I got that right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did I lie?”
“We’re not completely sure about that, but we assume you made him a promise to keep the secret of his being alive.”
“That doesn’t sound like me. I’m the last person you want to tell a secret.” I think a second. “You still haven’t answered the teeny, tiny question of why I don’t remember any of this.”
He sighs. “Ah, this is where it gets a little messy. It turns out Gerry was having an affair with Cole Baxter.”
“Wait a minute? Gerry wanted to sleep with someone from work, and she didn’t choose me?”
“As hard as that is to believe, that’s what happened.”
I think a second. “Is that why Gerry was hell-bent on shooting me?”
He sighs again. “Indeed it is.”
“Help me connect the dots here, Andre. Gerry wants to kill me because—what?— I didn’t bring back her boyfriend from Oslo?”
“Gerry wanted to kill you because you found out a lot more than she expected.”
“What did I find out?”
“That Gerry had masterminded the whole thing to punish Cole for reneging on a promise to take her to a cabin by Big Bear Lake for a…weekend vacation. The Russian observation station was just the location of a scientific experiment. Gerry knew this all along, but she lied to the Agency, so that we’d send someone out there on a reconnaissance mission. That someone was Cole, of course. She phoned ahead, blew Cole’s cover to the already mentally unstable scientist he would be working for when undercover, and got him tortured and held captive. Cole managed to escape, but before he did, he found out that it was Gerry behind it. Fearing for his life, he staged his death and ran off to Europe to hide. You learned all this. Are you sure you don’t remember any of it?”
“Not a thing. I think I’d remember a plot as outrageous as that.”
“Fascinating. Anyway, on with the story. You returned and implied to Gerry that you’d learned the whole escapade. What Gerry did next was silly, but she assures me it will never happen again.”
“What won’t happen again?”
“Wanting to cover up the whole mess, she drugged you and another Agency employee, so that you’d forget. With powerful forgetting agent XJMeMO3”
The other Agency employee? The guy who was freaking out at the motel the day before me.
I put the rest of it together myself: “But I was onto Gerry, anyway? Or was at least getting close enough to make Gerry nervous?”
“That’s right.”
“Fast forward a bit. What happened at my apartment after I blacked out?”
“One of your neighbors buzzed me in, an elderly lady. When I entered your apartment, Gerry was engaged in a Mexican standoff with a police officer. Detective Dukes was able to neutralize Gerry after you heroically distracted her by playing the hip-hop music. We managed to calm her down and we’re on the road to forgetting about this whole silly thing.”
“What do you mean by forget the whole silly thing?”
“Just tying up a few loose ends, Mr. Hancock. Nothing, really. No one’s in trouble, but we’ll give Gerry a slap on the wrist, believe me.”
I try to sit up, to argue that Gerry deserves more than a slap on the wrist. She at least deserves to be fired, if we’re keeping the law out of this. But as I do, I realize something. I’m not able to sit up.
I frown and then ask, “If no one’s in trouble, then why am I handcuffed to the bed?”
33.
“IT’S JUST A precautionary measure, Mr. Hancock, that’s all.”
“A precaution against what?”
“There are a couple things we need to discuss before I can unlock them. Let’s start with this operation of yours.”
“Let’s.”
“Since birth you’ve had a heart defect. Dr. Eddie Barnes and the surgeon who operated on you are surprised you managed to survive to the age of thirty-seven. It’s a miracle. Anyway, last night one of the world’s leading heart surgeons fixed your heart.” He smiles a creepy smile. “You’re fixed, Mr. Hancock.”
“Then what’s the but?”
“There’s no but, at least not in relation to your prognosis. But I would like you to keep in mind the life-saving operation I provided for you while you hear what I’ve got to say.”
“Go ahead. I’m all buttered up.”
He pauses, thinks a second. Then he sits on the end of the bed. “Gerry is a really important part of the Agency. She’s a lady with very specific skills. I suppose you could call her the heart of the Agency. What I’m saying is that Gerry is far too important to throw away as an asset just because of a few silly little mistakes.”
“Poisoning me and another guy? Getting Cole Baxter tortured and held captive? Then going on some wild killing spree to cover up her mistakes? There’s less crazy in a jar full of wasps high on LSD.”
“She’s assured me this is the last of this silly behavior.”
“What does Gerry have to do with me being handcuffed to the bed?” I think a second. “Wait, what happened to Grace?”
“We’ll get on to that, Mr. Hancock. And I want you to accept a few inevitabilities before we unlock you.”
Suddenly being handcuffed is the last thing on my mind. I have a bad feeling about this. “Where’s Grace?”
“Calm down, Jake. I need you to be calm before I carry on.”
“I’m calm.”
He stands up. “You’re clenching your teeth. It can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“Sit back down and tell me where Grace is.”
He sighs and then does. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”
“As good a time as any to tell me what?”
“Grace is in the building, in a temporary holding cell until she’s…feeling better.”
“Why is she in a cell? She hasn’t done anything wrong. And what do you mean by ‘feeling better’?”
“You’re completely right of course, Jake. It’s unfortunate she got mixed up in this thing. Life for her will return to normal in no time.”
“Then let her go.”
“We can’t. Not until she’s forgotten the whole thing.”
My heart leaps into my throat when I realize what he’s done. “You didn’t?”
“I’m afraid we had to, Jake. Grace is recovering from the effects of XJMeMO3.”
34.
I THRASH AROUND for ten seconds or so, screaming “noooooo!” until I lose my breath.
Andre tries to calm me down by stroking my hair—creepy�
�but I kick him away.
Then he says, “You have to understand that our hearts are in the right place, Jake.”
“The only thing you have in the right place is your penis.”
He frowns, confused.
Then I explain, “It’s on your forehead. Okay, I kinda see why you didn’t get that.”
He sighs. “I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Jake. It’s the only humane thing we could’ve done.”
“I get it. I’ve had a heart operation. You can stop with the idioms containing the word heart.”
“May I?” He asks, then indicates the edge of the bed.
I nod begrudgingly.
“Grace knows far too much. Stuff that could destroy this organization. Surely you understand?”
“You could’ve sworn her to secrecy. Grace doesn’t seem like a snitch. And you know what? Maybe it’s right that Gerry faces up to her ‘silly little mistakes.’”
“I wish that could be a solution. I really do. My butler Jimothy is rounding up everyone who you’ve come into contact with today: Grace’s husband, Rebel; the guys at the squash club; and anyone else Grace and Gerry told us about. Dr. Barnes we already have. My boffins assure me that the problems you encountered—remembering certain bits and what have you—won’t happen when the drug is taken orally, and on an empty stomach. And we explained everything to the LAPD, made them a handsome donation for a new break room. All this is going to go away. They’ll all be returning to their normal lives, and the Agency will carry on as normal.”
As Andre sits on the edge of the bed, twiddling his thumbs, wondering whether he should stand up, I contemplate the consequences of Grace’s being drugged. She would forget about me, about ever having met me. And you know what? I’m cool with that. Maybe she’s better off without me.
I start to accept what he said, but then I remember the promise I made Grace. About how I was going to help her through her eating disorder. And I think about the wider consequences of her forgetting today. She’ll forget everything that happened with her husband, and go back to her miserable life at the diner. The whole cycle of physical and mental abuse resulting in the worsening of Grace’s eating disorder will continue to turn. Until what? Grace dies? Something might happen in the future to upset the status quo, but do I really want to leave that to chance?