HARRY BRAITHWAITE sat in a molded plastic chair outside of the ER at Immaculate Heart and watched Mr. Horton scare the shit out of the duty nurse. They’d been sitting in the waiting area for some time now (Harry was beginning to feel like he had a molded plastic butt), but had received precious little information. Horton loomed in front of the admissions desk and stared through the smoked lenses of his sunglasses. His voice was a pair of stone slabs sliding over one another.
“Mason. Jeremy.”
The duty nurse, Angie Hawkins, pretended to be unimpressed. “Sir,” she said to her double reflection in his sun glasses, her thin mouth pressing tight at the corners, “as I’ve already told you, you’ll have to wait until called.” She made a show of scanning the other people in the waiting room over Frankenstein’s shoulder. “There are other people here that we have to take care of too.”
“Mason. Jeremy.”
Harry tried not to smile as Horton’s back expanded like the hood of a giant Cobra. Harry had three kids of his own and had been in this very same emergency room on more than one occasion. He was all too familiar with the type of tight panic a man can feel when an injured loved one has been placed under the care of strangers who don’t show much concern. You wait quietly, like a good little bill-payer, because the people in the white uniforms and shiny black name tags have the power. Harry didn’t know anything about this big man who claimed to be the boy’s uncle, but he liked him well enough. Anyone who loves a child as Horton loved the strange boy who’d darkened Harry’s door earlier that day was worth liking. Besides, it was just so damn gratifying to watch him scare the smug right off that nurse’s face.
“Sir, I told you—”
“Mason. Jeremy. M. A. S. O. N.”
Horton inflated a little further and Angie Hawkins backed a step away from the desk as if pushed by his aura. She flicked a glance at the off-duty police officer stationed at a small podium by the front door. He sat up straighter, then got up altogether, as if the force of her stare had somehow activated him. The cop, a head shorter than Horton and soft as a pillow, walked up and put a hand on the bodyguard’s shoulder.
“Everything okay, buddy?”
Harry’s jaw dropped. “Oop, here we go,” he muttered as Horton’s head revolved, the muscles in his neck a nest of organic pistons.
Horton looked at the cop and very slowly removed his sun glasses. “Problem, officer?”
The cop pulled his hand away and let it rest on the butt of his service pistol. “Not if you leave the lady alone and have a seat.” The cop stared into Horton’s eyes, brown at green, and sighed. It wasn’t like he didn’t have people he loved. “Listen, you chill out and I’ll walk back and see if there’s anything to see, okay?”
Horton’s head snapped back an inch, and for a moment his mind was a blank. He blinked and softened, a hard giant into an affable bald guy. “Yeah?” he said, wary. “You’d do that?”
The cop smiled. “It’s not busy. I’ll be back in minute.” He tipped the nurse a wink and headed toward a door to the side of the admissions desk.
Horton called after him. “His name’s—”
The cop turned and deadpanned. “Mason. Jeremy. M. A. S. O. N.”
Horton turned back to the waiting area. His lips twitched at the audible sigh of relief from Nurse Hawkins. Amazing. There really were some good cops. He never thought he’d live to see one. Horton sat down next to Harry.
“My Tiesha broke her ankle falling off the front stoop when she about that boy’s age,” Harry said, staring off into times past. “Screamed like I don’t know what, a screech owl maybe. I went to the Blue Ridge Mountains to visit my daddy’s folks when I was a much younger man, and I heard a screech owl.” He stopped, and for a moment Horton could almost hear Harry’s memory. “I rushed Tiesha in here and we waited while her poor ol’ ankle swoll up like a melon. Took ‘em an hour to do anything for her.” Harry laughed. “I wish you coulda’ been with us then, Mr. Horton.”
Horton wanted to laugh too, but couldn’t. “Mr. Braithwaite,” he sighed. “I’m grateful to you for coming along. I know you have a life of your own and were sort of just dragged into this.”
“What is this anyhow?” Harry asked, shoulders up, hands cupping the question. “Is there something wrong with boy?”
“Jesus, I hope not.”
Harry was careful. “So he’s not...”
“What, retarded or something? No.”
Harry waited a second. Oh, hell with it. “You ain’t really his uncle.”
Horton smiled. “No. I’m his bodyguard.”
And Harry got it. He didn’t need to know the particulars of Jeremy’s identity to understand that his parents were important. Horton had brought him along so he could ensure Harry’s silence in the matter. Now it would come: money or intimidation. Harry nodded, waited for it.
“I need your cooperation in something, Mr. Braithwaite.”
Harry sighed. “Cut to the chase, Uncle Bodyguard. You need me to keep my mouth shut about the boy.”
Horton stared at, into Harry. “Yes,” he said. “What will that take?”
Harry wondered what Horton saw in him then. Was he someone that a man like Horton could scare into being quiet, or someone who would need money in exchange for silence? Harry didn’t want to be either of those people. “A phone call.”
Horton’s brow lifted.
“To my boss,” Harry said. “I’ve been on the longest lunch break in history.”
“Done,” Horton said. It felt like a fat man had just got off his chest. “Listen, Mr. Braithwaite—”
“Harry.”
“Harry then, okay. I, um,” Horton looked at his shoes. They needed polishing. “I totally fucked up. I’m supposed to watch this kid.” He looked up. “Take care of him, you know, and I let him get away from me. Now, something—I don’t know what—is wrong with him and...,” he trailed off, not really sure where he was going with this.
Harry saw him struggling. “You need me to keep my mouth shut when the boy’s parents get here, that it?”
“Yeah,” Horton breathed. “I guess that’s just what I’m saying.”
Now, this was a hard point for Harry. The boy had said those awful things about his Tiesha and the boy’s father. He wanted to know more about that, his blood was still up. “Mr. Horton? That boy of yours said something before he passed out.”
“Yeah?” Horton had always been under the impression that Jeremy knew little to nothing about his father’s business. Not because the boy wasn’t smart enough to figure a few things out here and there, but because he didn’t want to know. Now the kid had shorted a circuit and shown up on some strange man’s doorstep. Horton wondered how much information Jeremy might have and how much he might have leaked. He liked Harry, but that didn’t make Horton any less loyal to Frank Mason. Horton kept it off his face, but Harry’s next few words would be the deciding factor in whether he went home or went nowhere forever. “What’d he say?”
“Horton!”
Harry Braithwaite and Mr. Horton looked up as the sliding glass door sprang out of Frank Mason’s path. It was probably his imagination, but Harry could have sworn they moved a little faster for Mason than they had for him and Horton. This had to be the boy’s father. This was a man who needed bodyguards for himself and his family, or at least believed he did. His suit and manner said it all. It hit Harry right away that a man would have to be a fool, bodyguards or not, to step to a person like this. It took him a second to get it, but by the time Mason had crossed the lobby to where they sat, Harry realized that Mason had to be the angriest person he had ever seen who was not crazy or on something. Mr. Horton got to his feet as if he’d been called to attention.
“Where is he, Horton?”
“He’s in the triage area, sir. They’re looking him over now.”
Mason burned Horton with a look and walked over to the admitting desk. He stared down at
Angie Hawkins. “I’m Frank Mason, the boy’s father. Can you tell me what’s going on here, please?”
Angie had been a little nervous about the big guy with the sunglasses, but this man made her cold with fear. She watched another man with sunglasses in an expensive suit walk through the sliding glass doors and come up next to the first goon. They stood, hands clasped and watched Mason. Jesus, who the hell were these people? “The doctor’s in with him now and just as soon as he comes out...”
Mason stared at her. He held his tongue. He would be patient now. Patient with Angie Hawkins. That was her name. It was on the little rectangle of plastic over her left tit. He wondered how loud she would scream if he cut it off. Mason exhaled through his nose and smiled. “Doctor?”
Angie ripped her eyes away to look at the duty roster and the world solidified. God, it was good not to have to look at him for a second. “Doctor Riley’s on today,” she said, keeping her eyes on the clipboard. “He’s the neurologist on call.”
“Thank you, Angie.” The sound of her name yanked her face up as if he had put a finger under her chin. He stole her eyes again. He saw her screaming, the blood darkening her uniform. For a moment, Frank Mason was sure she saw it too. “You’ve been very helpful, Angie. I’ll just wait over here then, shall I?”
Angie didn’t say anything. She looked back down at her clipboard. She just needed a moment alone to blow her brains out and everything would be fine. Or, maybe she’d just take up smoking again after work.
Mason walked back over to Horton and Sinclair who had come in after parking the car. Sinclair moved to stand next to Mason, leaving Horton in the dock. Horton thought the other bodyguard looked so much like a toady on a school yard that he almost laughed. It would have cost him his life. Not from Sinclair; the little fuck didn’t have the balls to take on Horton, but from Mason. Sinclair would just be the weapon; Mason would pull his trigger.
It occurred to Horton that he hadn’t had time to get a story straight with Harry. He couldn’t chance glancing down at the other man, but sensed Harry sitting, watching.
“Well, Horton?” Mason demanded. “Sinclair said you only told him that you and Jeremy were here and nothing further.”
“I would’ve explained more, but they don’t allow the use of cell phones in the hospital, sir. There’s a pay phone by the admissions desk, but someone was using it, so when I did use my cell, I had to be quick. I would have stepped outside, but I didn’t want to leave—”
Mason waved him off. “Fine, fine. Now what in the merry motherfuck happened to my son?”
Horton shot brain waves at Harry to, please God, go along. “I was watching the boy from inside the school as I usually do when he’s on recess when he jumped the back fence and got into a cab.” Horton knew Mason would smell an out and out fabrication, so he spiked the punch with some truth.
“Where were you when he was jumping the fence?”
“Running after him, Mr. Mason,” Horton countered. “He reads by the big oak tree toward the back of the school yard, so he already had a hell of a good start on me. If that cab hadn’t been waiting there for him, I would have been able to get him.”
“The cab was waiting for him?” Mason’s fists bunched and released, bunched and released. Horton could see them in his peripheral vision, like a pair of beating hearts. He stared straight into Mason’s eyes, but kept his focus away from his employer’s pupils, too easy to fall in. Instead, he focused on the corners of Mason’s eyes, crimson and alive. “Yes sir, it must have been. I think Jeremy must have called for it on his cell phone.”
“All right.” Mason looked around the room, back at Horton. “You followed him then?”
This is where Horton had to get creative. He used a trick he got from a book by an ex-CIA agent on how to fool polygraph machines. Horton visualized the fictional activity as he spoke, seeing it in his mind just as he would were he remembering an actual event. It slowed the telling down a little, but only enough to make it appear as though he was being careful to report every detail. “Yes, sir. I had to run back to get the Lincoln out of the school parking lot, and lost some time there, but was able to catch up.”
“Horton?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re hiding something.”
Horton’s scrotum writhed. “Sir?”
Mason showed his teeth, an android approximation of a smile. “You’re lying to me because you’re afraid. You’re smart to be so. But give me the information now, and cover your ass later.”
Horton exhaled. His mental movie projector had blown its bulb. “I, uh—”
“‘Scuse me,” Harry said, standing up. “He’s not sayin’ everything ‘cause he’s protectin’ me.”
Mason, Horton and Sinclair all focused on Harry.
“And who the hell are you?” Mason shot.
“I’m the cab driver, Mr. Mason, sir.”
Horton did not raise his eyebrows.
“Why is he protecting you?” Mason asked.
“Well,” Harry said, and looked at his feet. “Mr. Horton was able to catch up to me ‘cause I had a bit of a accident. Your boy started havin’ some kinda’ fit right there in the back seat and when I turned around to check ‘im, I ran up over the curb.” He held up his hands. “Now, he didn’t get hurt from that, no sir. It wasn’t that big a crack-up, but I think Mr. Horton’s worried that you gonna’ be some kind of upset with me seein’ as how the boy was in my cab when it happened.”
“He wasn’t injured in the crash?”
“No, sir. He had already blacked out by then.”
Mason’s eyes grew large. “What?”
Horton rushed in to cover the rest. “We don’t know what’s going on yet, Mr. Mason, but apparently, Jeremy started spouting some strange nonsense, like the time he had a fever the winter before last. Mr. Brandt, here, told me all about it when I got up to his car. He was kind enough to come to the hospital because he thought he might be able to help.” Horton motioned over his shoulder at the double doors. “We told the nurse what we knew and now we’re just waiting for the doctor to come out and tell us something. I told Mr. Brandt he should go on.”
“But I wanted to make sure the boy was gonna’ be all right,” Harry added.
Mason looked at Harry. “Brandt, huh?”
Horton willed Harry to go with it, already impressed by his quick thinking. Harry smiled. “Yes sir, Hamilton Brandt.”
Just as Mason opened his mouth to say something, a man in a physician’s white coat held open the double doors to the triage area and stuck his head out. “Jeremy Mason?”
Frank Mason pushed past the small group, saying “I’m the boy’s father, Frank Mason. Are you the doctor?”
Dave Riley held out a hand. The lines around his mouth and eyes said he’d seen more than his share in forty-six years. Mason took the hand and pumped it once just to get the goddamned thing out of his way. If it had been a rat, he’d have stepped on it.
“My man said Jeremy had some kind of seizure?”
Doctor Riley glanced over at the other men, an older black man and two hardcases who looked like they could be in the Secret Service. He had no trouble guessing which two belonged to Mason. “Well, we’re not entirely certain what’s happened with your boy at this point.”
“Is he all right?” Mason said. Fucking doctors never just came out and said anything. Made you fish for the slightest bit of information. “Is he out of the woods or what?”
“He was unconscious when he was brought in, but he’s come around now and appears to be nothing more than a little confused. Understandable in this case.” Doctor Riley paused, glanced at Sinclair and then gave Mason the most penetrating stare he could muster. It felt like shooting a brick wall with a pellet gun. “Do you keep any drugs in your home, sir?”
“Nothing other than alcohol and aspirin,” Mason lied. He did in fact keep a supply of morphine and a couple diffe
rent broad spectrum antibiotics in two separate emergency kits, but one was locked in the trunk of his car and the other in a safe hidden in his office. One could never be too careful when one ran the risk of being shot on a daily basis. “You think the boy’s on drugs?”
Doctor Riley scowled. He didn’t like the way Mason referred to his own son as “the boy.” It sounded too much as if he were speaking of a possession in need of repairs instead of his child. “It’s always a possibility with young people, especially these day. And, it could account for his strange behavior. Speaking of which, has he done or said anything unusual before this incident?”
Harry, listening patiently along with the others, remembered Jeremy hopping backward off the front steps of his house, belching that tepid breath. What the hell kind of drug would do that, goblinol, satanodrine?
“The boy is a model child,” Mason said. “I can’t remember him doing anything out of the ordinary as of late. Horton?” Mason didn’t turn around. “Has my son being acting out of character recently?”
Horton thought for a second. “No, sir. Not to my knowledge.”
Mason fixed his gaze on Doctor Riley. “Mr. Horton is in charge of my son’s security,” he said. “He keeps Jeremy under nearly constant supervision. It would be impossible for someone to even approach my son with illegal drugs.”
“I see.”
“So, what does that leave us with, Doctor?” Mason asked. “Is he crazy?”
Doctor Riley held up his hands. “The worse thing we can do is jump to conclusions, Mr. Mason. We have to exhaust every possible physical cause before we assign blame to some kind of neurosis or personality disorder. There are any number of somatic explanations for your son’s behavior.”
Mason crossed his arms. “Such as?”
“Well, since we’ve ruled out the possibility of drug use or injury—he’s not had a head injury or any type of brain trauma that you know of, hypothermia, anything?”
“Nothing. The boy’s never even broken a bone.”
“Fine,” Doctor Riley said. “That’s good. It narrows the field. I’ve already ordered a series of x-rays and a I think an MRI would be a good idea as well. However, the easiest course of action may just be to ask Jeremy.”
“Good, then I can see him now?”
Doctor Riley smiled. “Of course.”
Mason turned. “Horton, take care of our friend, Mr. Brandt was it?”
“Yes, sir,” Harry said.
Mason grunted. “Sinclair, you’re with me.”
Doctor Riley showed them back into the emergency room, past rows of empty beds and gleaming machines. The walls sprouted myriad tubes and faucets. The dark, square eyes of sleeping monitors reflected their passage toward a drawn curtain in the back corner of the room. Mason stepped in front of the doctor and yanked the curtain back.
The boy lay asleep, his hair a little sweaty and his skin pale. Mason noticed the blood stain on his shirt and pointed. “What the hell’s that? No one said anything about any blood.”
Doctor Riley stepped up and said, “He had a nosebleed, but apparently it stopped by itself. Nothing to worry about as of yet. It may not even be related to his outburst, but if it is we’ll determine how.”
Mason looked at his son, his only heir. This was his life extended. An injury to his son was an injury to Mason’s immortality. Nothing could be allowed to harm the boy. Nothing. Mason did not think of himself as a loving father in the sense that he felt a great deal of emotion. He had never been an emotional man. It was just his nature and he forgave himself that. He had to satisfy his need to be a good parent with his ability to protect and provide. His love for the boy was a practical love, a love of action. His own father had not spoken to young Frances Jr. of love, not once, but it was the old man’s efforts that started him on the road to success. A road he now owned.
Mason leaned in closer and listened to the boy’s slow, even respiration. A circle of dried blood crusted Jeremy’s left nostril. His eyes roved behind his lids, busy, seeking. They rolled and stopped, as if he looked up at his father through closed eyelids.
“Jeremy?”
What opened its eyes and stared up at Frank Mason was not his son. Mason pushed back from the bed, his movements activating Sinclair. The bodyguard slid up to his boss’s side and opened his suit jacket without thinking about it.
The boy on the bed, eyes sly and flat, pegged Doctor Riley. Dave Riley’s stomach cramped and his solar plexus turned to lead. Something about the way the kid was looking at him, that sly half-smile bending his chapped lips, made Riley sweat. A drop of sweat ran out of his armpit and counted off his ribs. The boy sat up in bed, his movements languid, reptilian. He turned his face to Frank Mason. “Daddy?” grated over its tongue, too low for a boy of ten. “Will you play a game with me?”
Mason put the back of his hand over his mouth and nose as a stench filled the room. It was familiar. After a moment he recognized it as burnt flesh and hair. Images of the shotgun victim, images of Howard. “Jeremy?” he said behind his fingers.
The boy shook his head, a look of deep regret on his face. “Your maggot’s run away, Frances. He squirms down deep in the meat.” Jeremy wrapped his arms around himself and hugged as if snuggling into a warm coat. “The meat, the meat, the meat,” he sang to himself in a voice now high and feminine.
Mason turned and had to restrain himself from grabbing the doctor by his lily white coat. He took a breath, calmed. “What is this? What’s wrong with him? How can he sound like that?”
“Thickening of the vocal chords due to swelling or even some clotting from the nosebleed,” Doctor Riley said, going into medical mode. It felt better to be doing his job. He was a neurologist for God’s sake. This getting the creeps stuff was foolish. He stepped around Frank Mason and addressed his patient. Jeremy stared at him, expectant and amused. “Jeremy, I’m going to ask you some questions.”
“I have a question,” Jeremy said through an enormous, toothy grin.
“Yes?”
Blood gelled through the gaps of Jeremy’s teeth and pattered into his lap as he gurgled, “Would you care to be blood brothers, Doctor?”
Sins of the Fathers Page 20