There Will Be Killing (9 page)
“And now as that medicine takes effect you are going to feel very relaxed and comfortable and yet you will be able to hear my voice clearly and be very clear in your mind. Isn't that right, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Dr. Moskowitz, I feel very relaxed and very clear.”
“Excellent. Okay now, just getting to know each other a bit, remember I told you that I am from New York City. And you come from. . .?”
“I'm from Kansas, Doc, a Jayhawk, was in the reserves there until I graduated and got commissioned.”
“Ok, Kansas, and you don't mind that I call you Kansas, do you?”
“Oh no sir, you can call me Kansas or whatever you want, just don't call me late to dinner. Especially if it's a nice, juicy steak.”
The chuckles that joined Wilson's in the sterile room would have been bizarre if bizarre hadn't become the new normal. So normal that Izzy continued the conversation like they were just having a nice cook-out in the backyard while the adults enjoyed a good beer and the kids pushed each other into a pool.
“We are on the same page with that, Kansas. You know I'm a new guy here, only about a week in. What about you?”
“Oh, I just got back from R&R in Hawaii with my family, and so I am over half done, Doc.”
“That's just great, were you in Honolulu?”
“Yes and then my wife and I were over in Maui for five days and then I had to leave. That part was hard. . .” Wilson's voice caught. His mouth trembled. “It was hard to say goodbye.”
“I know, Kansas, I know how that feels, too. But you got past that hard part, and then you came back. What happened then?”
“I led a long range patrol out and. . . and. . .”
Wilson's breathing started to change; he was breathing hard, close to a pant.
Izzy noticed J.D. lean closer, draw a question mark with his finger.
“That is right, you were leading a long range patrol out,” Izzy said, keeping his voice as gentle as possible, trying to lure Wilson back. “You led a patrol out and you were in the jungle and right now I am going to inject just little more medicine.” Izzy felt Washington's hand return to steady his againâit had stopped shaking, started again. God this was so scary, never knowing when the tremor would suddenly come on, but he couldn't think about that now. He just had to do this and get it right.
The additional medicine successfully injected, Izzy continued, “Go ahead now, Kansas, you were taking the patrol out and. . .it's okay, just breathe and let the memory come to you now, it is right there.”
“Yes, sir, it is almost dark and weâand we have an NVA patrol pinned down in front of us, at least I think we do, and I move us forward and it is an ambush. We are surrounded on three sides and we are getting cut down. Shit,
shit
, I have lost the radioman â¦Collins, take the radio, dammit, get the radio and call in for air, right now, and it is y15 by 1.2 and. . .
yes, yes right, get the hell here now
andâand. . .”
Silence in the room, everything silent except for Wilson's agitated breathing as they all waited and waited until he suddenly cried out.
“Waitâwait! Here it comes, here comes air! But. . .oh no. No. NO.
NOOO!
It is right on top of us, I fucked up, oh God, I fucked up. . . I must have called in the wrong. . . They are all dead, all dead, all dead, all dead. Do you see what I have done? I am just walking around and picking up parts of them. Collins's arm and Petey's leg and boot and Jerry's head and hands andâand. . .”
Wilson sobbing now, sobbing with a sound that they all wanted to look away from as he wept, “They followed my orders and now they are all in pieces and all dead, all dead because of me.”
Izzy had never heard such a mournful and terrible voice, not even in yesterday's hell. It was as if all the dead Wilson blamed himself for were in the room with them.
Izzy glanced at J.D.
J.D. shrugged, signaling he understood his questions were no good here. The loss of lifeâmore specifically, Jerry's severed head and handsâwas not the work of a monster, but human error. A dead end for J.D.; a very dead end for Wilson.
“You know, Kansas. . .” Izzy tried to remember what little he had been told about the way things worked on the ground and hoped his knowledge of the mind would compensate for any errors. “The air support people, they make mistakes too. You know it is not precise, not perfect, what they do, so it is entirely possible that it was their mistake. Remember, your radioman was down and Collins, he could have said the coordinates wrong, or the man on the other end could have heard it wrong. Come on now, Kansas. You know all that. Don't leave me now.”
But he was despite the last of the injection. Wilson's face was changing again and Izzy, all of them in the room, could see Wilson leaving and going back to the place in the back of his mind where he was safe and numb and could somehow deal with the anguish of the horror of believing he had called artillery in on his own troops. Maybe back home, Izzy told himself, back in a hospital close to his family, Wilson could come back, come back little by little, to live again with the rest of the living.
“Wilson,” Izzy said quickly, grasping for any remnants of Kansas that would get him back to a place where he could sink his teeth into a well-deserved steak, “Wilson, I am here and I know you can hear me, and I know you will remember what we talked about, that there is a good chance you didn't do this. You have to let yourself consider that, okay? It could have been Collins or it definitely could have been the Air or it could have been the pilot, any and all of those are real possibilities, Kansas, and you can forgive them and forgive yourself, let yourself come back and go home to your family. They need you and you can be there for them again. I know you can. But for now, Kansas, rest. Just rest.”
Izzy pulled out the needle.
There was silence as they all walked out. Behind them Wilson laid in a fetal position surrounded by ghosts. His eyes stared, unblinking, from his once again frozen features, pleading forgiveness of dead people only he could see.
The same line viewed from different sides.
âLao Tzu
Beating and whipping were never enough for my stepdad. I realized it was the torment he somehow enjoyed. Whippings as I say were always delayed, waited upon until he was ready, but I later could see that it was watching you squirm, beg and anticipate what was going to happen to you that he relished watching. The other end of the torment though could be more painful than the actual punishment.
The creaky old house we lived in was built late in the 1800s and there is a door outside that leads down into a cellar. A cellar is not a basement. Some other kids had basements with pine paneled walls and nice linoleum floors and ping pong tables. No, a cellar is a hole in the ground. This one went down under the house. You walked along old thick wooden planks that were sitting on pounded dirt. Then down five more steps that were creaky and now you were in the bottom of the cellar. In the summer it was chilly and musty and kind of damp smelling. In the winter it was freezing cold and wet and the packed earth felt kind of slimy. The reason I remember it so well is that I was locked up down there a lot. Especially, when I was little or maybe I just remember being more scared when I was 4 and 5 and 6. I would be put down there after punishments until bedtime and anytime when they would leave.
I guess my mom thought I was safer down there and locking me up was as
g
ood as a babysitter as far as my stepfather was concerned. He figured you couldn't get in as much mischief if it was black dark, after all you wouldn't want to move around “or the monsters and snakes will hear you and know where you are little man.” Then the light bulb would go out and I would watch the filament stop glowing and then the darkness would be complete. Sometimes he would quietly wait just outside the cellar door and then suddenly bang and yell and scream, “Oh my god, here they come, they are eating me!” and I would scream and start crying for my mom ⦠then he would laugh and say “she's not here but the monsters are. Shhh. Be quiet or they'll get you before she hears.”
So then I would cry real quietly and whimper for a long time. In a way, the crying part was better because at least it felt like something different than when the crying stopped. Because then began the fear and the endless waiting. While I was crying my eyes were closed and I could hear me crying and. . .and then when I stopped came the quiet. The dead silence of the grave like walls. I would begin to imagine the worms coming out of the walls. The rats and snakes and spiders beginning their slow slithering and creeping towards me in the absolute darkness.
Then my stomach would growl because I was hungry and I was afraid the slithering things would hear it and know where I was and come eat me. Then I tried to imagine how I would surprise the slithering things and chop them all up into little bits and stir them into one of my mom's tuna casseroles and feed it to my stepdad while I ate the leftovers he brought back from the restaurant where he had a nice dinner while I was in the cellar.
Izzy wasn't quite sure what to do with himself after dinner in the officer's mess. If he had received a new letter he would have gone to the beach and had another picnic instead. No letter, no picnic, but still he changed into some civilian clothes in the hope he would feel like a regular guyânot that he'd ever been a regular guy with nearly perfect recall. But while it had served him extremely well academically, he would be deeply grateful for some selective memory now.
He knew Gregg had a gift wrapped in a curse of sorts, too, an acute sense of empathy that no doubt drove him to suddenly materialize outside the villa where Izzy paced.
“Want to walk a bit through town?” Gregg asked, dressed in his civvies now, too.
“That would be great. Maybe we could discuss what we haveâor really don't haveâfor our `assignment.'”
“Sure you don't want to go to the library again instead, do a little more research?”
Izzy groaned. “There have to be more pages of porn on the base than everything on psychiatry and psychology combined.”
“At least the porn gets used a lot.”
They made their way down a noisy street, past noodle vendors, and begging children. Izzy could feel his nice white Izod shirt with the little alligator on the front clinging to the sweat popping out of virtually every pore, the kind of sweat he'd never felt before in New York. Surely, they could manage in minutes at Columbia what they hadn't managed here at the crap library, which yielded little more than a worn Freedman and Kaplan Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry and an equally worn DSM IIâ
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
, the bible for mental health professionals.
Murder, serial killing, and mutilation were not his or Gregg's areas of expertise and they had turned up virtually nothing but stuff on medical restraints, new psychotropics, brain injuries, and leftover blah-blah-blah from the Korean War.
The way things were with Gregg and J.D. made Izzy reluctant to even bring up his name, and J.D.'s response when they suggested a phone call to a couple of the top researchers or even to the FBI for consulting help, had not exactly declared them The Three Musketeers.
You two are the consultants, I told you that. I also told you that n
o
body is supposed to know about this and so far your best idea is to call the states and then the FBI? Why not just call in the media and see what they think about it? Come on, I read your CVs, you are supposed to both be brilliant. So. Be brilliant.
Izzy didn't feel brilliant. He felt like he would explode if he didn't unload.
“Gregg, can we talk?”
“Sure. What's up?”
“I'm worried. I feel like I'm barely hanging on here. My hands shake, have tremors. Without Sergeant Washington I could not have completed the procedure on Wilson. Sometimes I think I'm doing okay, but then I'll start shaking again. Honestly, I'm afraid something's really wrong with me. If not physically, then at least psychosomatically. It's not something I want to tell Rachel about. I don't want her to know what a mess I am. But you, I can talk to. Be straight with me. As a clinician, what are your professional thoughts?”
Gregg turned down another street, a quieter street with trees moving in the moonlight breeze off the sea. “Actually, what I think is that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are just fine, normal, doing your best like the rest of us. I feel just the same inside as you, hanging on, counting the days, thinking about going home. Your hands are just talking for you, being honest about how crazy and scary and insane this all is. . . that shooting your first day, the thing we are in with J.D., those are just some nice big frosting on the usual cake here, which is crazy enough. So I say, the future will take care of itself once you get out of here. Meanwhile, you're not nearly as much of a mess as you think. And don't worry, your hands will settle down.”
Izzy let out a big breath. Gregg thought he was okay. He wasn't totally losing it after all, it just felt like that, and Gregg felt the same way and. . .that's right, his hands were being honest while the rest of him was just clenched up, pretending everything was normal when it wasn't.
“Have you got any hobbies?” Gregg asked.
“Guitar. Classical guitar.” Izzy's fingers suddenly itched to let loose on the strings of the world-class, handmade concert-quality instrument he had received for his bar mitzvah. “Why?”
“Because I can tell you that the guys who make it through mentally here have something good to doâlike I surf, keep a journal. It would help those hands of yours to apply them to some kind of outlet, too.”
“Makes sense. Unfortunately. . .” He didn't want to get into the fit his mother had thrown when she found out he'd left his priceless guitar with his artsy, bra-burning choice in a life partner. “Rachel is keeping it for me since we decided to postpone our wedding.”
“That must have been a tough decision.”
“It was,” Izzy lied. There hadn't been a lot of back and forth to the decision making process. Her suggestion and as usual he hadn't argued. Arguments upset his congenitally nervous stomach. “We were planning to honeymoon in Spain. I was going to take some advanced lessons while she toured the museums. Rachel's really great that wayâwilling to put things off to do it up right. She's an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
“Nice,” was all Gregg said before nodding toward a tasteful marquis down the block. “Look, there's The Racquet Club. I've heard all kinds of crazy stuff about that place. Let's go check it out and. . . no
.
Don't tell me. . . ..”
As a turquoise 57 Chevy with a white ragtop pleated down glided beneath the long black awning that fronted The Racquet Club's entrance, Gregg staggered back several stepsâ
Only to surge forward and pick up his pace when one valet opened Kate's passenger door and another opened J.D.'s with a deep bow.
“She didn't return my call today.” Gregg's uniquely beautiful voice sounded more like K.O. growling at a rodent. “Or yesterday. Or the day before. I am going to kill that son of a bitch J.D. He has got some nerve trying to move in on
my
territoryâ”
Izzy grabbed Gregg by the back of his shirt while J.D. dropped a kiss on the back of Kate's neck as they proceeded inside.
Gregg spun around, nostrils flaring, eyes flaming blue.
Izzy backed off, hands in the air. “Hey, pal, one good deed deserves another. I'm just trying to do a little damage intervention.”
“What? So I can `marvel at my own magnanimous generosity' or whatever the hell Robert David advised? No.
No.
Not this time. I don't know what happened after the bastard took her home in that car that doesn't belong here but I have waited more than half my life for that woman and it'll be a cold day in hell before I let him have her.”
“I understand.” In truth, Izzy did not. He had never loved anyone so passionately as to be stupid with it. He cherished Rachel's letters, their history, like the touchstones to reality they were and he loved all the things she was and he wasn't. But ultimately, despite his parent's belief to the contrary, even Rachel was a logical choice.
She brought color and a sense of the avant-garde to his life. He brought other things to hers. Hell, who wanted to be married to themselves? Certainly not him.
Logic was perhaps the one thing that could save him long term. And Gregg, short term, hopefully, though that seemed doubtful given the ragged edge to his voice, demanding, “Do you really? Understand?”
“Perhaps not,” Izzy slowly admitted. “But Gregg, if you would allow me to return the favor of your counsel, I highly suggest we leave before you initiate a public scene that can only end badly and will not impress Kate. That's not how you get what you've been waiting for.”
Gregg's breathing reminded Izzy of Wilson confronting the dead; but then Gregg closed his eyes, took a deep breath. When he opened them again he looked at his clenched fists with the kind of regard reserved for a visitor from Mars.
“God, I'm sorry.” Gregg lightly self-slapped a tanned cheek, then the other. “I don't know what got into me. Maybe this place just makes us all act crazy. I am so sorry, Izzy.”
“I liked being called God better.”
Gregg laughed with the jangled sound of nerves. “You MDs and those deity complexes.”
“Just give us an inch and we'll demand eternity.”
Attention moving to the 57 Chevy being driven off by a valet, Gregg gave a middle finger salute and called “Hey, Cyclo!” to flag down one of the little motorized cabbies with seats attached to the scooter.
“Now where?” asked Izzy, just glad to get away and fast, didn't matter what direction.
“Pawn shop,” said Gregg. “Find some guitars.”
Kate was fully aware she had more than crossed the fashion rebel line by wearing a traditional Vietnamese aoi dai, a flowing silk dress split to the hip over slinky silk pajama pants. She also knew the combination of her upswept blonde hair and golden skin was dazzling in the graceful, white ensemble reserved for women of another culture. She had wanted to be both breathtaking and scandalous, and judging from J.D.'s response, she had scored on both counts.
They proceeded into the club where parted doors revealed a luxurious lobby with plush elegant rugs and rattan furnishings, slow moving fans and huge pink peonies with other fresh flowers that scented the air with sweet ginger. J.D. smelled even better. His cologne was subtle and understated, the smell of money well spent.
“This is so nice,” sighed Kate with just the right come hither dusk in her voice, the perfect complement to their plush, intimate booth rounded in a corner. “I feel like we're sitting in the middle of a Graham Greene novel. Do you read him?”
“I read
The Quiet American.
That was enough for me. I prefer Kipling.”
“Somehow that doesn't surprise me. Let me guess. . .” She fingered the two mysterious silver bracelets J.D. wore on his right wrist.
“
The Jungle Book
. That would be your favorite.”
His hand came down, brought hers to his mouth. It was her wrist actually, the interior of it, that he discreetly skated with his teeth. Although she was a surgical nurse and understood the marvel of human anatomy, her immediate, hot, fluid response was more a mystery than the bracelets.
Did Phillip have any idea what he was doing when he orchestrated their introduction? Surely not. Yet Phillip never,
never
did anything by accident.
“Yes,” J.D. confirmed, having moved his mouth from wrist to just behind her ear. His breath tickled it, smelled like cinnamon, touched with the Gauloises they had shared en route to the club. “The Jungle Book is my favorite. And who would be my favorite Kipling character?”
“Bagheera,” she breathed out, only to inhale enough lust fueled air to qualify for a hormone spiked mickey. “The black panther.”
“No.” He paused, eased back, putting some distance between them. “Do you have anything for me?”
His chameleon behavior was disorienting. Kate tried to get her bearings by feigning interest elsewhere, only to see. . .
She squinted in the dimly lit and very large supper club, for lack of a better term.
“I think I just saw Phillip.”
J.D. followed her gaze, cast his about like a minesweeper, apparently turning up nothing before returning his attention to her.
“Are you still sleeping with him?”
Kate blinked. First her eyes were playing tricks on her, now her ears. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. I asked if you were still sleeping with Phillip. He would only send you here as payback for not, or a reward if you were, but his intentions would never be paternal.”
“I. . .well, I. . .” Her throat was dry. She took a long sip of the
Soixante Quinzes
J.D. had ordered for her. Kate put it down, locked him in visual combat. “That is none of your business, J.D.”
“Perhaps not.” His attention dipped, lingered on her chest. “Yet.”
Kate wasn't sure whether to throw the rest of her drink in his face or plant hers in his lap.
She finished her cocktail in silence and ordered another instead.
“We have a patient at the mission,” she finally said. “We turn no one awayâespecially not an old friend of Dr. Donnelly. He's the mission director.”
“Yes, I know. And what is the patient's name?”
Some spy she was. Kate didn't want to cough up. “Professor Nguyen,” she muttered, quickly followed by an assertive, “I like him. He pioneered research in malaria here, at the Pasteur Institute.”
“Yes. A credit to his profession.” J.D.'s smile was enigmatic, both approving and somehow not. “Anything or anyone else I should know about?”
“Gregg left another message inviting me to the beach party they're having in a couple of days. I'm not sure I should go.”
“Of course you should goâwith me.”
“I don't want to rub his nose in it. It's unnecessary to be unkind. Especially to Gregg.”
“We'll be discreet.” J.D. leaned in, confidential. “Listen, Kate, I know what Gregg means to you. I like the guy, tooâand I need him.”
“Why?”
“For consulting purposes on a case I'm not at liberty to discuss. And neither is he, so don't put him in a compromised position by asking questions. Understood?”
The look J.D. gave her made her stomach flutter, and not in a good way.
Kate started to challenge the dictate, but hesitated. She had a feeling of being out of her depth and, besides, Phillip could arrange to have her sent home as quickly and easily as he had gotten her here. She wasn't ready to leave. Smart girls knew when to push, when to back off.
She nodded.
“Now, about the party,” J.D. continued, “I need to explore a lead and could use your help, have you spend a little girl time with Margie and Nikki, see if they might divulge anything I haven't been able to pick up about Peck.”