Читать книгу Dragonfly Vs Monarch - Charley Brindley - Страница 5

Rigger didn’t die on that night, almost a year before, but something went wrong inside his body. In that bloody parking lot, he picked up some dreadful disease, perhaps something those two deviants left on the ground or in the air. Some alien pathogen that crept into him as he stood looking down at what was left of his life. A timed-release murder, relentlessly gnawing at his insides, destroying him from within.

He didn’t actually know where the disease came from, but in his seething rage at what those two had done to his life, he imagined they were killing him as well.

Ten months passed before he realized or even cared that something was wrong with him. His doctor put him through an exhaustive battery of tests, taking almost a week. The day he met Katrina and Rachel on the street was the day he’d received his death sentence. On previous visits to Dr. Ruth Macintyre’s clinic, her nurses had drawn blood and taken other samples from him. They sent them off to some laboratory for analysis. They ran EKGs, EEGs, CAT scans, stress tests—the works. Later came more blood and urine analysis. Then on that fateful day, his doctor delivered the dreaded news.

“Spongiform encephalopathy,” she told him.

After a half-hour of sitting beside him on her Sears couch, holding his hand, and going into great detail about current research, online support groups, and hope for patients in the future, she told him the hard truth.

“Rigger, in all my years of practice, I’ve never had to tell a patient there’s no hope. There’s always been an array of drugs, surgeries, and other treatments, radiation, chemotherapy for me to choose from. But this time, there’s nothing for me to cut out, there’s no tumor to bombard with radiation, and no infection to fight with drugs.” Dr. Macintyre let go of his hand and stood up to pace the floor before him. “It’s an insidious disease that worms its way into the cerebellum and bores tentacles into every corner of the brain. I’m sorry, Rigger; it’s inoperable, incurable. Go home and make peace with your God or get roaring drunk, it’s your choice.”

She gave him a yellow plastic bag filled with sample vials of Buprenorphine, a narcotic analgesic and powerful painkiller. She also wrote a prescription for morphine, refillable without limit, an anti-depressant, and Nexium and Tagamet to combat the side effects of the other medications.

Yes, he said in answer to her suggestion, he would get a second opinion, and a third. But he knew his days were numbered. He’d be dead in less than a year, according to Dr. Macintyre.

* * * * *

The ringing of the phone jolted Rigger from his soft recliner. The sun was up, but the room cowered in darkness, as if fearful of the new day.

“Hey, Rig.” Pugsley’s voice came from the receiver. “That phone number you gave me to check on? It’s a home for battered women.”

“What?”

“Yeah, but you can’t talk to anyone. They have a series of voicemail boxes where you leave a message. If the woman wants to talk to you, she’ll call you back.”

“Pugsley, that’s all you got?”

“There ain’t nothing to get; it’s a dead end.”

“Even a dove leaves a trail through the mist, if one has the eye to see it.”

“Yeah, well, that may have worked for Longfellow and Hiawatha, but I gotta have feathers. You got Caller ID, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then call that place, leave a message for her, and my bet is, she’ll call back from a different number. That’s the trail of your little bird I need to see.”

* * * * *

Rigger called Pugsley the next day. He’d dialed the number Katrina gave him and left a message, saying he wanted her to come back the following week to clean his apartment. She’d called back an hour later and told him she’d be there on Tuesday.

“Anonymous,” he told Pugsley over the phone as he looked at the display on his Caller ID.

“Great!”

“Great?” Rigger said. “What’s so great about anonymous?”

“Have you received any other calls?”

“No, she called just a minute ago.”

“Then pull the plug on your phone line. I’ll be right over.”

Ten minutes later when Pugsley knocked, Wolf beat Rigger to the door, yipping with puppy excitement. As soon as Pugsley stepped inside, Wolf attacked and gnawed a shoestring on a shiny cordovan Oxford.

Pugsley picked up the dog. “Now, this,” he said as he ruffled the blond and tan hair on the puppy’s head, “is a good idea.” The little dog squirmed and licked his hand. “You need something lively in this place.”

“I guess so.” Rigger smiled. “Too bad he can’t learn to use a litter box.”

“How you feeling these days?”

“Better, thanks.”

“Yeah,” Pugsley said softly. His face hardened into a severe expression. “I can see that.”

Rigger brought Pugsley a cup of coffee as he wired a homemade electronic device between Rigger’s Caller ID and phone line.

“Two creams, two sugars.” Rigger placed the cup on the end table, by the phone. “Right?”

“Yeah, Rig. Thanks.” He took a sip, smacked his lips. “Perfect. Sweet and smooth.” He set down the cup. “Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “first we set your phone to ‘Anonymous.’” He pushed some buttons on his device. “Then we page back on your Caller ID.” Pressing the back button on Rigger’s Caller ID brought up the Anonymous entry from Katrina’s call. “Now we do magic.”

He pressed a button, but nothing happened. Pugsley checked the connections on his box, then on the phone. He laughed when he found the phone was still unplugged from the wall.

Slipping the phone cable into the wall plug, he pressed a button on his device, and they heard the rapid tones of a number being dialed. After a few seconds, they heard sounds of relay clicks at the phone company’s substation, and a second number was dialed. As soon as it rang one time, a phone number popped up on the red digital display of Pugsley’s device. He flipped a switch to disconnect the call.

“If she has Caller ID,” he said, “all she’ll see is ‘Anonymous’ on her end.” He took out a small notepad and his pen. “That’s a different number, right?”

Rigger glanced at the number on the display. “Yes, it is.”

“This little box is more fun that a windy day on the Street of Short Skirts.” Pugsley removed his electronic device and reconnected Rigger’s Caller ID. Five minutes later, his coffee finished, he was out the front door on his way to resume digging.

Pugsley—Appearance – 2, Likability – 10, Attitude – 10, Usefulness – 10.

* * * * *

Two hours later, Rigger got a call from Pugsley.

“Katrina Loraine Raider, twenty-three-oh-one Kimberley Ridge, Number twenty-one, a townhouse, thirty-two hundred bucks a month is the rent—”

Rigger interrupted him. “What the Sam Hill are you talking about? She lives on the street.”

“Twenty-six years old, five-foot-four, dark hair, dark eyes. That sound like your dove?”

“Yes, but—”

“Last month’s electric bill, three-hundred-eighty-two, water and trash, forty-seven, both paid on time, employed at Wellington Labs—”

“Employed?”

“Works the swing shift, six p.m. till two a.m.”

“I can’t believe all this nonsense.”

“She has a degree in–get this–pharmacological ethnobotany. I know you’re going to tell me what that is.”

“It’s the study of how cultural groups use indigenous plants to make medicine.”

“Well, why the hell don’t they just say that?”

“Wouldn’t look good on a diploma.”

“Right,” Pugsley said. “She’s also going to school part-time, working on her master’s degree.”

Rigger was quiet, trying to assimilate all this alien information about a street woman he thought he knew.

“Drives a late model Volvo, dark red, never married—”

“Pugsley, what’s going on here? When I met this woman, she and her daughter were begging on the street.”

“Daughter?”

“Yeah, she has a four-year-old girl.”

“Nope. This babe has no dependents.”

“Pug, my friend, I’ve wondered when you’d screw up and get tangled in the wiring of that computer of yours.” Rigger was relieved in a way. He knew he couldn’t be that far off on Katrina. “Admit it, you struck out on this one.”

“I doubt that. What’s the kid’s name?”

“Rachel. And her doll’s name is Henry Bulyea.” Rigger chuckled. “Maybe you can track down something on her.”

“Her who?”

“The doll, Henry.”

“Her doll’s name is Henry?”

“Yeah, a Barbie doll named Henry Bulyea. I bet there’s lots of info on the Internet about her.”

“How you spelling that last name?”

Rigger spelled it out.

“I’ll call you back.”

The line clicked as Pugsley hung up.

* * * * *

No dependents, Rigger thought as he hurried down the street. He checked his watch again. Pugsley tracked down the wrong woman; that’s the only explanation. Miswired that little box of his, that’s what happened. Dialed the wrong number.

At 12:29, he sat at the bus stop across the street from Miss Wiggley’s Day Care. At 12:30, it seemed as if a large school bus had been tipped up to spill a load of laughing kids into the play yard. Rigger leaned forward, intent on the children–especially the girls, one little girl in particular. It wasn’t Rachel, but like Rachel, she had a flouncy air about her, that little loose-limbed, almost awkward stride, and there was a musical note in her laughter that he knew so well. She could have been Rachel’s sister.

Thirty minutes later, Rigger, empty of purpose and bereft of hope, trudged home, keeping to the edge of the cold afternoon shadows.

Halfway home, in the middle of the block, on a nearly deserted side street, he stopped.

This is creepy. I’ve heard of people feeling someone’s eyes watching them from behind, but I always thought it a bit melodramatic.

He turned quickly and saw someone. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. The person jumped into a doorway. Curious, he walked back. When he came to the doorway, he found it led into a place called O’Malley’s Bar and Grill. The glass-half of the door was grimy and frosted around the edges. In the dim interior, he made out a dozen or so patrons sitting at the bar, sipping their drinks. Three more sat at a beat-up wooden table, playing dominos. They were all men, and it could have been any one of them.