Cape Disappointment (4 page)

Once, while watching an old Glenn Ford movie together, Snake and I invented a test of friendship: A friend is somebody you would trust to help cover up a murder. Not that either of us was planning or had planned a murder, but I have only one friend I would go to for a task like that: Elmer. It was an outlandish way of measuring friendship and an odd thing to remember when so many other memories remain missing. And then I remember the man I'd killed years earlier and what Snake had done for me afterward. The killing had been an accident, but there would have been no way to establish that in a court of law.

Old memories I had no trouble with. It was the recent stuff that was giving me the slip.

As he speaks, my mind begins drifting and I start to piece together some of the events and images from the last few weeks. It is as if some maniacal film cutter has taken all the film stock in my brain and cut it into various lengths, so that there's a two-hour film somewhere on the premises, but it's been completely disassembled. My sense of time is so skewed I'm stunned when I realize Elmer is gone and has probably been gone for an hour.

I sort through random memories. I remember reclining on a bed in a motel room at the ocean. Outside the patio slider I can hear the surf pounding on several miles of flat sand. In the small bathroom Kathy is finishing up her shower, every part of her body glistening except her voluminous dark hair, which she's pinned into a knot on top of her head. She is taking the sort of care women often do after bathing. She spots me watching from across the room, smiles, drops the towel, and strides across the dim room, climbing onto the bed and crawling toward me like a lioness. The playful look on her face is one I don't want to forget.

And then, without knowing why, I remember myself in a small boat, chilled to the bone, riding an endless series of choppy waves. Nearby, other boats of all descriptions and sizes keep us company. The Coast Guard spotlights are bobbing every which way in the dark. Several local fishing boats are there. I've hired a young man to drive me out to the site in his father's boat. We're both wearing rain slickers— he's loaned me one of his father's, which has a hole under each armpit. I am wet and cold and miserable. I hate small boats. I get seasick on a
water bed, so I'm about as wretched as a human being can get. My body is ill, but my soul is worse.

“You want to go back in?” he asks when he sees how queasy I am.

“No.”

“It's your call.”

I'm peering into the depths with a powerful spotlight, searching for something horrible. This is the worst night of my life.

I have a vivid memory of running through the darkness. It's a rural area, and there are two of us. We're dashing through brush, large branches of Scotch broom slapping me in the face. I'm breathing hard, but the man I'm chasing is breathing harder. He runs in spurts while I keep an even pace. We've been racing some minutes now. He's beyond redline and will crap out any second. All I have to do is keep pressing on. He's dangerous. That's all I remember about him. He's dangerous, and I'm desperate to get my hands on him.

Another set of memories— or are they fantasies now?—place me in a small plane, a Beechcraft King Air, a twin turboprop aircraft that can cruise comfortably at fifteen thousand feet, though we're flying much lower. Below us the wind is whipping the ocean into a frenzy. The plane dips its wings, first to port and then to starboard. Then something goes wrong and the plane drops fifty feet in a millisecond. My stomach leaps into my throat. The plane has a single row of seats on either side. Because of the insanely rapid descent, one man falls into the aisle. A woman slides off her seat and shrieks. I fumble to fasten my seat belt. As we dive, pieces of luggage, handbags, and computer cases fly around the cabin as if floating in space. In the cockpit I can hear the pilots. One of them keeps screaming, “What's happening?” The plane levels out for a few moments, then dips steeply again, and again my stomach jumps into my mouth. We're going down. We're going to crash, and there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. A man screeches. Somebody tries to talk on her cellphone, final words to her loved one.

In the cockpit, the pilots have become quiet. I don't take that as a good sign. We're diving in a near vertical descent. Hurriedly, I try to calculate how many seconds I have to live. I'm guessing fifteen seconds, max. When you've got fifteen seconds left, what are you supposed to think about? Is it best to mutter a prayer? Or review your life?

Or are you supposed to declare your love for those closest to you? Frittering away my last moments, I'm in a dither about what to do. I've faced death before, but this time I'm terrified.

ONCE AGAIN
the redhead is standing over my bed. I strain to awaken fully, but it's like swimming through wood chips. Nothing much happens. I cannot feel any part of my body. I know only that I'm flat on my back and it's night. After some struggle, I manage to speak. “Hey.”

She is startled. “Oh, good. I was hoping you would wake up while I was here.”

“I'm awake.”

“Yes, you are.”

I roll my head to the right, and there sits a beautiful young woman with lots of dark hair. Her brilliant blue eyes have puffy sacks under them, as if she's been crying, or losing a lot of sleep. Or both. The redhead is gone. Once again the morphine is playing tricks with my senses. “Are you alive?” I ask the brunette.

She smiles. “Of course I'm alive. Why wouldn't I be?”

“No reason.”

“Are you awake, Thomas? We were talking and then you drifted off. Are you awake now?”

“I think.”

“Would you answer a question?”

“Is there money in it for me if I get it right?”

“What's my last name?”

I have to think about it for a while. It's tough, because I'm not sure I can conjure up her first name, at least not without some time to ponder it. She looks like Kathy and that's what I want to call her, but I've been wrong lately about so many things and I don't want to take a chance. Her last name is even harder. “Driscoll,” I announce, rather proudly.

“Jesus,” she says.

“What?”

“Listen, honey. I know you're on morphine.”

“Kathy.”

“At least you got that right. You're batting five hundred. I guess in any other league that would be good.”

“But not when I'm trying to identify my wife?”

“So you know I'm your wife?”

“Of course I know. Where have you been? You're never here.”

“I can't hang around as much as I'd like. You know that.”

“I don't know much of anything. I got hit in the head.”

“Yes, you did, sweety, and it's not your fault if you have a soft skull. How are you feeling?”

“I've been trying to sort through some memories. Soft skull? Was that a wisecrack?”

“Just a little one. You're the one who always says it. Ever since that woman knocked you out with an alarm clock.” She is standing over me now and leans down to kiss my cheek. “Have you had other visitors?”

“I think so.”

“Ms. Driscoll by chance?”

“Does she have red hair?”

“She dyes her hair red, yes.”

“Snake was here, too. Or Snake's brother. Hard to tell with those two. I'm not sure of anything. I've been having … flashbacks … I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what happened.”

“It might help if you could stay awake for a while.”

“They're doping me.”

“Not that much, they're not. Not anymore. It's that crack you took to your skull.”

“All I know is that at some point … you die.”

“We all die at some point, Thomas, but I'm here for you now.” She kisses me on the lips.

“A woman who can kiss like that …”

“Does that prove anything?” she says, kissing me again.

The redhead kissed me in much the same manner. I have a foreboding about Kathy that I cannot shake. Something terrible is going to happen to her, or has happened. The thought sends a shudder through me, and I wonder if I've been talking to a ghost. We talk a little longer and I strain to believe she is actually alive, that I'm not creating her out of morphine dreams and old memories.

I'M SITTING UP,
feeling more alert than at any time in recent memory, and to make things even better there's a doctor standing in front of me going over my chart. She's introduced herself and I'm having absolutely no trouble remembering her name. Miraculous. She is Miranda Swartz, and she has a beauty mark on her upper lip that gives her a sexy aspect, despite the fact that she's not exactly a beauty queen. She's not quite five feet tall, is thick through the middle, opinionated, blunt, cares not a whit about her appearance, and I'm quickly falling in love with her.

“So, how am I doing, doc?”

“There's nothing here you won't recover from.”

“Can you tell me what's wrong with me? Besides the fact that by the time lunch comes around I can't remember what I had for breakfast?”

“Well,” she says, putting the chart back, “you've suffered a traumatic brain contusion with subdural hematoma, which is basically severe bruising and bleeding of your brain tissue. A steel rod approximately two centimeters in diameter went through your side and came out your back. It chewed off a small piece of your liver and caused a good deal of internal bleeding, which we managed to stanch the first night you were here. Aside from that, you have a broken finger, some superficial
lacerations to your face, hearing loss, and thoracic contusions. And you have a wound in your lower leg, where a splinter of wood penetrated the muscle, which we continue to monitor for infection. What we're most concerned with now is that brain injury.”

“Me too. I need my brain. I use it almost every day.”

A single burst of laughter erupts from her mouth, though her lips do not, I notice, curl into a smile. “I'm going to ask a few questions. I want you to quickly answer each to the best of your ability, and then we'll go on to the next.”

“You mean you don't want me dawdling on a question? Because I'm pretty astute psychologically, and I might be able to glean the answer from you without you knowing it, right?”

“They're not that kind of questions.” She smiles. “And yes, you probably are astute. I know that from some of the things I read about you in the paper. First question. Who's the president of the United States?”

“Well, it's … uh …” The idea that I can't name the president comes as a shock, but I quickly capitalize on my loss as only I can. “I know it's not Calvin Coolidge, and I'm pretty sure both Johnsons are dead. Give me a minute here. I can visualize the face, but I can't quite recall the name. In fact, when I think about it, I'm not even sure the face is right. Just one question for you, doc. Am I dying?”

“I told you, no. Now, what's your name?”

“Can I see the chart?”

“Your name.”

“Black. Thomas Black.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I'm a private investigator.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Wilson High School in Tacoma and then a short stint at the University of Washington before they threw me out. I worked some odd jobs and got hired on with the police department. From there I became a private investigator. Am I getting any of these right?”

“You're doing fine. And where are you now?”

“Here. With you.”

“Where is that?”

“Don't
you
know?”

“Can you answer my question?”

“My hospital room.”

“Which hospital?”

“I forget.”

“What's my name?”

“F.A.O. Swartz?”

“Close. It's Miranda Swartz.”

“That's not fair, doc. You've had your whole life to learn your name, and you only just told me a few minutes ago.”

“What city are we in?”

“Seattle.”

“And what happened to put you in the hospital?”

“I'm not sure.”

“We'll keep working on it, Mr. Black.”

“I'm better at multiple choice.”

“You're amusing, Mr. Black, but you're not well. I'm scheduling another MRI for late tomorrow. Do you have any questions I can answer for you?”

“Has my wife been visiting?”

The doctor stares at me as if wondering whether to answer the question truthfully. More than anything, I am afraid she's going to tell me my wife is dead—because others have told me that, although I cannot remember quite when—but apparently news of my wife's death is not what she's deliberating. “I'm not on the floor all that much during the day, so I couldn't say for sure.”

“But you haven't seen her?”

“No.”

“Or spoken to her?”

“No.”

“Not since I was brought in?”

“No.”

“Has she called?”

“Not that I'm aware of. Mr. Black, I see benchmarks of progress every time I come here. It may not seem like it to you, but you will get well. Will you have all the mental acuity you had before? Nobody can say. Most likely you will. And most likely there will be some short-term
memory loss you'll never recover. For instance, the events leading up to your admission here. We'll just have to wait and see.”

After she leaves, I still can't name the president or the vice president. I begin to think about my wife. I've been thinking Kathy is visiting in the middle of the night, but now I'm not so certain those weren't hallucinations. If my doctor hasn't met her, maybe she hasn't been here. If I can get my brain to work, I'll ask one of the nurses if my wife has been in.