Desperate Souls (14 page)

“Whatever you say,” Jake said.

“Help is on the way,” Larry said right before injecting Jake’s ass with the morphine.

The drug kicked in before Jake got into Larry’s BMW. Numbness spread through his body, followed by tranquility.

“I thought you’d like that,” Larry said.

For the first time in a year, Jake found himself thinking of cocaine.

Stop it,
he commanded himself. He had to be careful every day, and he knew it was dangerous to lose control of himself even for an hour.

They took the Long Island Expressway past Hicksville and Old Westbury and Huntington to exit 49 South 110, Amityville.

Larry parked beside a three-story, modern-looking medical facility in a section of the lot reserved for physicians. “How about I just drop you off here?”

“Not a chance,” Jake muttered.

Larry walked around the BMW and helped Jake out. “You know, I make house calls to special patients, of which you barely qualify, but I don’t normally provide ambulance service.”

“It does the soul good to walk an extra mile once in a while,” Jake said, grimacing as they limped onto the sidewalk.

Larry supported his arm. “You couldn’t last a mile. I’d have to carry you.”

The MRI technician, a young Chinese woman with glasses and a pony-tail, led Jake into the magnetic resonance imaging room. Larry had cut out as soon as Jake had been registered, and a nurse had given Jake a hospital gown and disposable slippers and had shown him to a small locker room. Now he stood in the quiet room, gazing through the soft lighting at the mammoth MRI machine, which resembled a giant womb, complete with its own fallopian tube, a sliding table on which he was expected to lie. The machine was constructed of vacuum-formed plastic, giving it the appearance of NASA technology.

“Lie down on the table, please,” the technician said.

Jake hobbled over to the giant donut in the middle of the room and positioned himself on the cool plastic table, his eyes focusing on the overhead ceiling panels.

The technician placed a plastic headset with foam earpieces on his head.

“This is going to take about forty-five minutes. Are you claustrophobic?”

“No.”

“Good. Some patients find this procedure very upsetting. It’s a tight fit inside the scanner, and the noise is pretty fierce. The headset is so I can talk you through the process.” She grabbed Jake’s wrist and guided his right hand to a button a few inches below his hip. “That’s a panic button. If for any reason you decide you can’t take any more, press the button. I’ll switch off the machine and pull you out. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

She retreated from his field of vision, and he listened to her footsteps recede. “Here we go.”

He heard a hum and felt a vibration through the table, which carried him headfirst into the scanner. The room vanished from his view, replaced by the bright tube. It was impossible to determine the distance from his face to the top of the tube, but he guessed it to be about six inches.

I
can handle this,
he thought despite the disorientation he felt.

Then his shoulders entered the tube, and he felt the tube pressing his arms against his torso.

Tight fit is right.
He felt like a nail driven into a cement block.

His heartbeat quickened, and he took a deep breath. It seemed to take forever for his entire body to enter the tube. Then the table stopped vibrating, and he heard his own breathing amplified.

Slow down.

“Are you okay?” Over the headset, the technician’s voice sounded distant.

“Yes,” he said, closing his eyes.

“You’re going to hear a loud noise for two minutes,” she said.

Swallowing, he waited.

A deafening roar emanated from the scanner, and he imagined a subway train running over him.

Jesus Christ!

His brain rattled inside his skull. He no longer heard his breathing because it was impossible to hear anything over the roar. He couldn’t even construct a thought. The noise continued, and he had to open his eyes. Staring at the ceiling inches from his face, he pictured a construction worker manning a jackhammer on the other side and half expected the power tool to burst through the plastic and burrow between his eyes, splattering the tube with cartilage and gore.

Stop it.

The noise stopped, but his body continued to shake. His breathing came in tortured rasps.

“Are you okay?”

He calmed his breathing. “Yes …”

“This will last for six minutes.”

Oh, God.

The roar resumed. Sweat formed on his brow. He felt the immense machine pressing against him from every direction.

Don’t open your eyes,
he told himself.

He opened them.

The bright ceiling seemed only four inches away now instead of six.

What the hell?

Perhaps he had misjudged its distance from him. The noise continued. He felt trapped inside—

A coffin!

Panic seized him. “Hello?”

He could not hear himself over the roar, nor could he be certain that he had even spoken.

“Hello?”

He raised his forearms so that his knuckles brushed across the coffin lid. He could not press his palms against the lid, but he managed to fold his arms over his chest for what little purpose that served. The ceiling pressed against his nose.

The panic button …

He worked his right arm down again, then felt along the side for the panic button. His fingers clawed at the heavy-duty plastic.

No button!

Then the lights flickered and died, enshrouding him in darkness. He heard a rhythmic sound over the scanner’s roar:
thrum … thrum … thrum …

He tapped the headset.

Drums!

The tube continued to shrink. He turned his head to the left, so the ceiling would not crush his nose. He tried to position his arms in such a way that he could press his palms against the surface, but the narrowing circumference prevented movement of any kind. He felt thick, sinewy snakes entangling his ankles. Tears filled his eyes, and he screamed for his life.

Sheryl!

The constricting scanner pinned his arms to his sides and crushed his ribs.

Jake felt light on his eyelids. Opening them, a blurry shape loomed overhead. Murky sounds.

Underwater?

Fire burned his nostrils, and the technician’s face came into focus.

“What happened?” His throat felt hoarse.
From screaming,
he thought.

“You passed out,” the technician said. “I don’t understand. You had a panic attack, but you never pressed the button.”

He took a deep breath. Panic attack? He didn’t think so. Someone had attacked his mind … or his soul. But he had survived, goddamn it. “Couldn’t find it…”

“I’m so sorry. Would you like a sedative?”

He considered the offer. The pleasant numbness provided by the morphine had begun to wear off. “Sure.”
Why the hell not?

Scarecrows walked the Polo Grounds in broad daylight. The Washington Heights public housing projects occupied land that had once been Polo Grounds IV, the stadium which had served as home to the New York Giants, Yankees, and Mets. The four towers—surrounded by West 155th Street, Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and Harlem River Drive—contained 1,616 apartment units.

“Look at ‘em go,” Frank said from the passenger seat. “They’re even uglier in the daytime.”

“Frigging skells,” Gary said behind the wheel. God, how he hated them. Downtown, the Black Magic dealers and druggies only came out at night, but here in the hood …

They had parked on 155th, which afforded them a clear view of the drug activity in the grassy lawns between the towers.

“Just looking at this depresses me,” Frank said.

“I know what you mean.”

“We gonna do this or what?”

“You bet.”

They got out of the car and didn’t bother to lock the doors. They crossed the wide street, ignoring the oncoming traffic, and vehicles slowed to allow them to pass. They carried themselves like the cops they were, and two hardened white faces around here meant one thing: NYPD. Birds chirped in the gray trees. The scarecrows showed no fear of the narcotics cops; they just moved around them and resumed their previous course.

Gary homed in on a trio of corner boys occupying a single park bench painted dark green and bolted to the asphalt. One boy sat on the bench. Another sat on the bench back with his sneakers on the bench. And the third stood on the patch of cement upon which the bench rested. Gary and Frank walked right up to the boys, who barely registered their presence.

They’re lit,
he thought, gazing at the emaciated boys’ unblinking eyes.

Frank said, “Good afternoon, fellas. Maybe you can explain to us what you’re doing here.”

The corner boys ignored Frank.

He took out his shield. “I’d like to know what the fuck you’re doing here.”

Blank stares. Empty eyes. Silence.

Gary let loose an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, men. Which one of you is in charge?”

They stared past him.

Fuck.
Gary felt his blood growing hot. “You,” he said, pointing at the boy sitting on the bench. “You look comfortable. Stand up.”

The boy ignored him.

“Son of a bitch!” He didn’t want to punch the kid—God only knew what diseases they all had—but he couldn’t help it. Before he could control himself, he had clocked the kid in the jaw.

“Yeah!” Frank said.

Oh, great.
He knew he was out of control when his partner approved of his actions.

The kid looked at him for the first time, his eyes cold. That look sent a shiver of fear down Gary’s spine. The kid didn’t even rub his jaw. He just went back to staring across the yard.

Gary took out his handcuffs, which gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. “Okay, tough guy. Get on your feet and show me some ID, or we’re taking you in.”

No reaction.

Gary grabbed the kid’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. He spun him around and shoved him forward onto the bench, planting his left knee in the small of the kid’s back as he locked the bracelets around his wrists. The kid weighed even less than he had thought. Glancing sideways at the other two boys, he said, “Do I need to read him his rights?”

Ignoring him, they stared straight ahead with unblinking eyes.

“Come on,” Gary said, jerking the kid toward the street. “Say good-bye to your playmates.”

Frank surveyed the vacant expressions of the remaining boys, then spat on the cement.

The kid did not resist as Gary guided him through the yard. None of the scarecrows paid any attention to them. Crossing the street, Gary felt his anger lingering. He didn’t care what people did to make money, but he had no patience for people who disrespected his authority. He intended to enjoy what this kid had coming to him. Frank opened the back door, and Gary shoved the kid inside. Then the two detectives got into the front.

“It gets creepier up here every day,” Frank said. “I don’t know how people live like this.”

“You got that shit right.” Gary started the engine and pulled into the oncoming traffic, which provoked a honking horn or two.