Mr. Gower. The name echoed in my mind. Mr. Gower.
I took another sip.
Don’t hit me, Mr. Gower, that’s my bad ear
.
I had it. That’s why it sounded so familiar. Frank Capra’s
It’s a Wonderful Life
. I’ve always been good at Trivial Pursuit. It was the name of the shopkeeper George Bailey worked for as a kid, and later he appears as a disgraced wino in a bar.
I took another swallow of my too-strong drink.
Because Mr. Gower was an ex-pharmacist who Jimmy Stewart hadn’t been around to stop from mixing up a prescription with poison.
I stopped the rim of my glass against my lips and it tapped a tooth. I felt funny. And not the good kind of funny.
I was also remembering where I’d seen this old man twice before on separate occasions. The first time that morning, almost running into him in the lobby of the Bowery Plaza on my way out. The second time on Tigger’s computer monitor, “I was in the background in a photo taken by Craig Wales before he died.”
I turned to the old man and asked, “Whadyousay?”
“
I said nothing.”
“
Fuck.”
His face seemed to balloon out of proportion and fritter. His ears looked much too big, like tiny fetuses on either side of his head. I didn’t like looking at him, but I couldn’t stop. It was fascinating, like communing with a sentient lava lamp.
“
Diden you jes…” I lost my train of thought, it had derailed and flung passengers and luggage all over the tracks.
I looked around for the conductor and instead saw the blond kid FL!P by my side.
“
You don’t look so hot, dude.”
“
Nigh…Thor…neither do I.”
The old man said, “We should help him get some air. Take his other arm.”
I said in Brooklynese, “Out you pixies go. Through the door or out da winda.” Shit, now what movie was that from?
They escorted me outside, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I couldn’t figure out why I was still hearing Patsy Cline singing. If I was hearing it at all. It could’ve just been inside my head like everything else.
I tried to put my feet up and rest, but I was still standing.
Somebody or somebodies huddled me into the backseat of a car.
“
Wear…?”
I forgot what I’d been about to say.
Couldn’t have been very important then.
Nothing was very important then.
It gave me a chance to close my eyes and forget.
Sweet forget, how I’ve missed you.
Chapter Eighteen: HIDE NOR HAIR
I came to in a strange room. It reminded me of what it was like to be a baby again, you fall asleep one place and hours later wake up somewhere else entirely.
I sensed I wasn’t alone. I cranked open my eyes. When you live alone, you’re used to waking up alone, so waking up now with two people staring down at me was disturbing.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. I was strapped down to some makeshift operating table. Also disturbing.
Why had I immediately made that snap judgment of ‘operating table’? Because of a chemical smell in the air? Or the greenish glow from a fluorescent ceiling fixture? Or was it the fact that the old man, Mr. Gower, had a pair of latex gloves on and was opening up the package of a brand new syringe?
The blond kid, FL!P, was fidgeting on a metal stool, playing with a set of scales on the marble countertop.
Mr. Gower said to him, “I’ll need your help with this part.” He fitted a new needle onto the tip of the syringe.
FL!P hopped off the stool.
I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up.” I was trying to gather my wits, but it was like reconstructing a blown-apart dandelion. “What’s on the menu?”
Mr. Gower said, “Lie still, we are going to ask you some questions.”
“
Ask away. Don’t delay another second. But whatever you’re doing there, stop! You don’t need that, whatever it is. I’m more than willing to tell you whatever you want to know.”
Gower ignored me, spoke to the blond kid.
“
Roll up his sleeve.”
I started to struggle. It was only a makeshift set-up, how sturdy could it be?
Pretty damn sturdy. I only got about a centimeter of give out of the straps.
“
Hold up!” I said. “Listen, kid, this isn’t good, don’t do this.”
“
Just tell us where Michael Cassidy is,” he said.
“
Done!” I said.
“
You know where she is?”
“
Of course.” And this time I wasn’t lying, because suddenly I
did
know. Knew all along, I guess, just never put it together. Amazing how the threat of death can galvanize one’s mind. Something that had been bothering me earlier finally came into sharp focus. The stuff emptied from my pockets after Michael Cassidy hit me on the head in Owl’s hotel room. Now I knew exactly what’d been missing: the room’s magnetic card key.
“
Where is she, then?”
“
I’ll take you to her,” I said. “Right now. Just get me out of this thing. There’s no need for—”
“
His sleeve,” Mr. Gower blandly repeated himself.
“
But,” FL!P began, “I…I think he’s telling the truth.”
Mr. Gower remained perfectly still, holding the hypodermic needle shoulder-high, thumb on the plunger, while at the other end a milky dribble hung suspended. He smiled benignly.
“
This will only make certain that what he tells us will be the whole truth. It’s perfectly harmless, I promise you. I believe he might even enjoy the trip.”
“
Don’t listen to him, kid! Undo these straps and I’ll take you right over to Michael Cassidy and…and…Law Addison, too!” I said in desperation, falling back on lying since the truth wasn’t setting me free. “Yeh, that’s right, both of them together. Right now.”
Mr. Gower shook his head sadly.
“
See what I mean? That’s a lie. We’ll never know the truth unless we do it my way.”
“
What do you mean a lie? How the fuck do you know?”
“
His sleeve.”
“
Stop saying that!”
He stopped saying it, but only because the blond kid was capitulating. He had his hand on my sleeve and was tugging it back, revealing my bare, exposed, naked arm.
“
Okay,” Mr. Gower said, extending the needle “this will only take a—”
“
Look out, kid!”
I don’t know why I shouted it, reflex I guess, seeing that needle as Gower aimed it at the kid’s upper arm. I had no love for FL!P, but I absolutely hated needles. I didn’t want to get stuck by one and didn’t want anyone else to get stuck either.
Why he believed me, I don’t know. Must’ve heard something in my voice, the urgency, because the kid responded like a whip, flinging himself backwards. He landed on the floor, skidding out of view, screaming up, “What the fuck, old man! You almost stuck that into me!”
“
I told you to hold him still,” Mr. Gower tried to explain. “You moved.”
“
You tried to stick me! What’s in that?”
“
Harmless, I tol—”
“
Then stick yourself with it! Sh-uh’ya!”
“
Please talk sensibly, just come back here and hold his arm again.”
“
Hold this!”
FL!P sprang back up on his feet, holding his skateboard close to his chest like a narrow shield. Then suddenly his arms shot forward with the skateboard jutting straight out. Its edge caught Mr. Gower below the chin in the soft flesh of his throat.
I heard a crunch.
Mr. Gower dropped the syringe. Mr. Gower made hissing noises and scuffled his feet. Mr. Gower sat down on the floor. He didn’t get up again.
The kid was wild-eyed, he was mumbling, murmuring, “Y’see that, y’see that, motherfucker?”
I didn’t want to interrupt, but I urged steadily, “Undo the straps, undo the straps.” He must’ve heard me, because he dropped his board and his fingers began working at the buckles. I heard the wheels of his skateboard freely turning, the steely sound of its ball bearings a familiar one to me, the same sound I heard before something hit me in the basement stairwell.
The kid kept mumbling, “Y’see that, y’see that?”
Yeh, I saw it. And I saw how the wound looked on the old man’s neck, same as the one I’d seen on Luis’ throat.
Unrestrained, I sat up on the table, rubbing my wrists, and asked, “So who is—who was this guy?”
“
I never met him before tonight. He came up to me at the party, said he had a way to get you to tell where Michael Cassidy and Law Addison were hidden. He knew all about it, so I thought, what can I lose? All he wanted was help lugging you up here. But he didn’t say nothing about shooting you up with drugs. Or me!”
I stood up, looked around the place as I worked the circulation back into my wrists. It was a mini chemical lab with scales, test tubes, beakers, and Bunsen burners. In addition to equipment were the varied and variegated ingredients for cooking up drugs, including nail polish remover, industrial pesticide, and several household cleansers. There were also piles of tiny glassine envelopes, the sort the post office gives with stamps, and for the same reason: to keep out moisture. The envelopes contained chunks of white powder, the finished product. It was scary what kids will ingest in any white powder form, never stopping to question what made up the substance they snorted, smoked, shot up, or swallowed in a pill, just as long as the longed-for numbness ensued.
Mr. Gower, or whatever his name really was, looked to have been some kind of low-level cook. And judging by how he’d showed up at the hotel this morning, he was probably the person who’d been on the other end of the phone when I’d walked in on Michael Cassidy. He must have been one of her drug suppliers, quite possibly the one who’d concocted the hot bag that took Craig Wales’ life. And he’d been ready to do the same thing to FL!P, and then surely to me, too, once I’d given him whatever information I had. I wouldn’t be shedding any tears over his death.
There was a knock at the door then. A knock that developed into a heavy pounding. BANG BANG BANG.
The kid turned to me, “Who’s that?”
“
It’s probably whoever told Gower here to off you and me.”
The knocking got louder, then stopped being a knock. The doorframe trembled. Whoever it was was trying to kick in the door. Three or four more like that and he’d succeed.
I spun around, saw a window with a fire escape outside it.
“
That way,” I said.
We flung it open and crawled out onto the rusted fire escape. We were on the third floor of an apartment building. Outside it was full-on night, the streetlamps blazing orange.
The kid scrambled down and I was right on his heels. He didn’t bother releasing the ladder at the bottom, just grabbed onto the last rung and dropped down to the sidewalk below. I did the same, and as soon as my feet touched pavement I started running.
The kid was fast. Ordinarily I never would’ve been able to keep up with him, but I’d heard other feet coming down the fire escape behind us—its whole framework shaking—and it gave me wings.
I wasn’t even sure in what direction we were running until we ran out of island. We were on East Sixth Street and East River Drive when I yelled to the kid to hold up. He was headed for the overpass that traversed the drive and gave access to the athletic fields of East River Park.
He stopped halfway up the walkway ramp and looked back. Not at me. He seemed to be searching in the distance, back the way we’d come.
I needed to get close enough to grab him. If what I now believed was true, he’d not only killed Gower, he’d killed Luis, too. Gower could rot for all I cared—but I was going to see FL!P got nailed for Luis.