Painless (4 page)

Chapter 6

Billy couldn’t take his eyes off of the waitress as she glided toward their table. And not just because she was drop-dead gorgeous. He recognized her from his past, although he’d never met her before.

She was college age, but had a much older aura about her. She wore a black Durazzo’s T-shirt tied in a knot above her mid-drift, exposing flat abs and a gold belly-chain that read
Kaylee
. In case that didn’t catch your attention, her shorts were Hooters-short, barely covering her tanned legs.

She greeted Chuck by planting a kiss on his cheek, and purred, “How’s my teddy bear?”

Billy cleared his throat. “
Uh-um
.”

She turned and met Billy’s gawk. Her eyes were the color of trouble.

“So Chuck, when did you start hanging around with George Clooney?” she asked, holding her gaze on Billy.

Chuck made the introductions, “This is our new tenant, Billy Harper. Billy I’d like to introduce you to Kaylee.”

She shook his hand, letting her soft grip linger. “Billy the tenant, I’m Kaylee the waitress. And B-T-W, I meant the younger version from the
ER
days.”

When the tongue-tied men didn’t respond, she continued, “Can I get you guys something to drink? You look hot.” The double meaning was as see-through as the thin material on her tight shirt. She knew how to get a tip.

“Corona would be great, eh.” Chuck stuttered.

“Make that two,” Billy seconded.

“Two cool drinks for two hot guys, coming up,” she flirted some more, flashed her tip-maker smile, then drifted gracefully toward the mariachi music in the distance.

“I work with her,” Chuck explained, “She’s a…”

“Guilty pleasure?”

“No, she’s…”

“A divorce lawyers dream?”

He shook his head. “She lives down the street from us. Goes to Duke—it’s her last weekend before returning. A little spoiled, but a nice kid.”

“Well, with her…umm…assets, I doubt she has trouble picking up some extra spending money for school.”

“I don’t think she needs the money. Her father is Carl Scroggins.”

“As in Carl ‘Kat’ Scroggins, the music producer?” Billy asked with surprise. “You’re neighbor is Kat Scroggins?”

“Not bad, eh?” Chuck said with a big grin.

“Then what is she doing working in a dingy bar on a Saturday night?”

“She dates the owner, Sal Durazzo. He owns a chain of these places down the east coast and is worth a mint. He’s this wannabe mobster twice her age. In other words, he has the most important element any ultra-spoiled twenty-one-year-old is seeking.”

“Money? Power?”

“No—he really pisses off her father,” he replied with a chuckle.

Billy remembered being the guy who pissed off Kelly’s father. And the more he despised him, the tighter Kelly gripped onto Billy.

Chuck dug into the complimentary chips parked in the center of the table. “So where were we?” he asked, dipping a chip into guacamole and jamming it into his mouth.

“I think you were going to tell me why Beth blames herself for Carolyn’s behavior issues and fevers.”

“No, I think I’m all talked-out about my family. I believe I was about to ask you why you still carry around photos of your ex-wife. Seems a little strange for someone who doesn’t look in the rear-view mirror to avoid the past.”

Billy felt the lump coming on. He reached for a beer that wasn’t there. His voice cracked, “Even if you hide the past away, it’s always lurking.”

Then, like a blonde life raft, Kaylee magically re-appeared, holding Corona bottles with green slices of lime attached to their spouts.

“So I hear you go to Duke,” Billy made mindless conversation, attempting to avoid any discussion of the aftermath of Hurricane Kelly.

“
Shhh
—don’t tell anyone I’m smart. It’ll ruin my image,” she said playfully. “I leave Monday to go back.”

“According to Billy’s secret photos, he went to Ohio State,” Chuck said with a grin. “I, myself, am a proud graduate of the School of Hard Knocks.”

“That was a really long time ago,” Billy deflected.

“I love older guys,” Kaylee replied with an alluring smile. “Do you like smart girls, Billy?”

“I’m not that old.”

“Well, I’m not that smart,” she said, flirtatiously tapping him on the arm. She then sauntered back to the bar and Billy couldn’t help but watch.

Billy never had a problem attracting the opposite sex. But he was never the aggressor. Problem was, he usually ended up with the most aggressive one, not the best one. Kelly popped into his mind once again.

The cold Corona went down smooth on the hot, sticky night. Billy drank two for every one Chuck consumed. He figured if Chuck even gave a distant hint of being hung-over for his daughter’s birthday, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. Which would be a moot point anyway, since Beth would kill him.

Chuck then said, “Your fan club is approaching at twelve o’clock, George Clooney.”

Billy looked up to see Kaylee heading back toward them. He wasn’t sure if Chuck was offering encouragement or providing a warning.

“I know women like her. They use all their powers to get a man in a position she wants him at: on his knees and worshipping her.”

“I think you just had a bad experience. Maybe it’s time to let the old memories go and start some new ones, preferably good ones.”

Kaylee plopped the beers on the table, and this time brought one for herself. “It’s totally dead in here tonight. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna hang out with you studs.”

“Why so dead tonight?” Chuck asked. He then informed Billy that they usually have to turn people away on Saturdays, and the patio was normally standing room only.

She eased into the seat and lit a cigarette. “I think it’s because the married men spend time with their wives and families over Labor Day weekend. Then this weekend they go off on supposed business trips with their girlfriends.”

Billy again recognized Kelly in Kaylee’s comment. The cynical layer of ice beneath the perfect smile.

Then a voice echoed, “Hey good lookin’.”

Billy turned to see a diminutive, pudgy man with three days worth of growth on his face, wearing a Yankees cap. He was worried it was Sal Durazzo, ready to fight for his woman’s honor.

Kaylee turned with excitement, but her face quickly changed to disappointment. “Oh, it’s only you, Hawk.”

“I was talking to Whitcomb,” the portly man said in a gravelly voice, mixed with obnoxious laughter.

Chuck stood, greeting the man with a handshake. “How ya doing, Hawk?”

“I was doing great until I found out that wife of yours scheduled your daughter’s party for tomorrow. Does she not know tomorrow is the opening weekend of the NFL?”

Chuck shrugged. “Beth’s the boss. I just live there.”

“So what’s it going to be, Whitcomb, one of those pretentious let’s top the rich bastard next door parties?”

“Carolyn wanted a princess party, but I think we settled on some nature theme. Monday I go on a hunting trip, and today I helped Billy move in, so I haven’t had much time to think about it.”

It was perfect segue for Billy to introduce himself.

Hawk looked at him like he knew him but couldn’t place him. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so.”

Hawk nodded suspiciously, and then introduced himself as
New York’s number one radio sports talk show host
. He went on to say he was “Whitcomb’s neighbor” and bragged that he owned one of the “big-ass mansions” in the cul-de-sac. Then asked, “So what do you do, Harper?”

Billy didn’t want to go into the novel writing thing, so he mentioned his newspaper column for the
Shoreline Times.

Hawk snorted, “I usually clean up after my dog with that rag. Do you actually get paid for that?”

Billy bit his tongue and forced a grin. He held the pose until Hawk mercifully left a few minutes later, taking his mindless conversation with him. But before he did, he wagged his meaty finger in Billy’s direction and said, “I know you from somewhere, Harper, and I’ll figure it out.”

Billy shrugged. He sure hoped not.

Beer flowed into the wee morning hours. Then Kaylee must’ve decided that her victim had been softened enough to make her kill-move. “C’mon, George Clooney, this might be my only opportunity to be on
Dancing with the Stars
,” she said as she dragged Billy to the empty dance floor on the patio. The bar had emptied to only a few.

“I don’t think my legs work,” Billy protested.

“Don’t worry, I’ll hold you up,” she said.

He looked back for Chuck, only to see him retreating into the sultry night.

“I don’t hear any music,” Billy said, noticing the mariachi players packing up their equipment.

“We’ll make our own.”

She pulled him close. Her smell was intoxicating. Billy noticed her necklace, which spelled out her name in gold. Often people wear a tribute to their god around their neck, and he got the feeling Kaylee Scroggins believed she was to be worshipped.

Billy knew his nightmare would resume the moment the sun rose into the sky Sunday morning. But he still needed the anesthesia to get him through the night.

Like a serpent, her lips touched his, and he felt the numbness once again.

Chapter 7

Dr. Dash Naqui never rested on the Sabbath, always arriving to his medical practice at exactly seven in the morning. His office normally provided him solace, but following a week where his skeletons escaped from his closet and appeared on the national news, it became a fortress to barricade himself behind.

He removed his white lab coat and hung it on the chair behind his large mahogany desk. He loosened his tie, and then began meticulously rubbing his temples, twisting his dark skin. He was a wiry, thin man who looked much younger than his sixty-five years of age, and anybody who ever came in contact with Dr. Naqui would tell you he had the energy of a twenty-five-year-old med student. But this week had drained his energy supply, and added more salt to his salt-and-pepper colored hair. He rubbed his temples harder.

His parents had emigrated from Pakistan to Jersey City, where Dash was born. The name on his birth certificate was Siddique, but his parents began calling him Dash for the way he “dashed” around their one-room apartment with boundless energy, and it stuck. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone called him Siddique.

Dash was also one of the few English words his parents knew, and being first generation American, he bought hook-line-and-sinker into the ideal of the American dream. That being, a great work ethic, combined with a sense of patriotism and sacrifice, a man could rise up and become whatever he chose, no matter if he were born to privilege or what his ethnic background was. Dash Naqui was living proof such a dream existed.

He rotated his swivel chair and peered out from his twelfth floor window at the peaceful Sunday morning in Manhattan. His eyes then drifted down onto Park Place. As a child, his family used to play the board game Monopoly, and he knew that if you landed on Park Place, then you’d arrived. Dash Naqui had definitely made it, establishing himself over the past quarter of a century as one of the world’s leading neurologists.

He was widely recognized as one of the most respected voices on such neurological disorders as Bells Palsy, Epilepsy, and Tourette’s Syndrome. He published books that became bibles on numerous pain disorders and once had a
60 Minutes
segment dedicated to him, based on the countless hours of pro bono medical treatment he provided his fellow veterans from Vietnam. But in recent years, he had focused his passion on trying to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. An insidious ailment that his beloved wife, Claire, had suffered with for the past eight years.

Last week Naqui was in Albany to testify before the New York State Senate, lobbying for a bill to fund stem cell research, including the controversial embryonic stem cell research. Naqui believed this could be the key to finding the cure for Parkinson’s, along with other afflictions. He countered testimony by groups who claimed to fight for something called “Right to Life.” In Naqui’s mind, there was no such thing. Life was not a right, but an honored privilege. And when given such a privilege, he believed a society must be willing to sacrifice life for the greater good. Whether that was in relation to science, battle, or whatever was the next challenge thrown at mankind.

He didn’t get back to his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, until almost midnight. He barely got a wink of sleep, staying up with Claire to the wee morning hours. She had what many in his profession would flippantly call her “bad days.” They never lived it, so they would never understand. But Naqui was never one to wallow in his own misery, and was back at his lower Manhattan office this morning by his usual seven, seeing his first patient at eight. But as the morning’s events unfolded, his mind was thousands of miles away in Iran.

Three months ago, Iran captured twelve men outside of the central desert city of Yazd. It was the only thing agreed upon as factual. The Iranian government alleged it was a joint mission of the CIA and Israeli intelligence to “invade” Iran and “steal” nuclear secrets. The US and Israel denied the allegations, and counter-claimed that the hostages were civilians captured in neighboring Iraq for the purposes of Iranian propaganda. The US maintained that Iran’s motive was to gain leverage in the on-going nuclear disarmament discussions.

When the hostages refused to talk, and the US wouldn’t budge, they were put on trial. Then this morning, not coincidentally September 11, all of the hostages were publicly executed in the streets of Tehran. The US’s first response was just moments away.

Naqui buzzed Wendy, his long time assistant, and instructed her to hold any calls. Then with a regrettable flip of the remote control, he turned on the flat-screen television that hung on the wall of his office.

On the screen appeared Kerry Rutherford, using the White House as a symbolic prop in the background. The morning sun glistened off the silver hair of the sixty-one-year-old, newly appointed intelligence czar. The position was created in the post-9/11 world to be one point of contact for all intelligence agencies to filter information, hoping to eliminate the bureaucracy and ego that doomed past efforts to stop attacks. His official title is U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

Nothing Rutherford said surprised Naqui. The US condemned the “murder” of the hostages without a fair trial, and strongly denied that the hostages were part of the CIA or the Israeli intelligence service.

Naqui paid more attention to Rutherford’s body language, hoping to pick up a clue as to what really happened. He looked into his eyes and gauged his tone, but learned little.

Naqui wandered to the wall nearest to his desk and studied a few of his framed diplomas—undergrad at Rutgers—medical school at Columbia—too many honorary degrees to count. They were a symbol of his work ethic. His eyes then moved to his Vietnam medals, which were displayed like a museum exhibit behind a glass partition. They represented sacrifice.

He was most proud of his service as a medic in Vietnam. Back then, things were black and white—making a sacrifice for America equaled making a sacrifice for the greater good. That’s why he became involved in Operation Anesthesia all those years ago. But as he looked out his window to the spot where the Towers once proudly stood, on the anniversary of their death, he understood that the world would be forever colored in shades of gray.

No matter how many 9/11s Operation Anesthesia stopped, Naqui knew the one they didn’t stop would be the one that lived in infamy. As he watched the Towers burn on that horrible morning, all he could think was that he had let his country down. But what he didn’t count on was that his country—the one he sacrificed everything for—would turn on him.

He could still feel the brutal beating he received by a mob of “patriots,” their vicious insults actually hurting him more than any blows from their angry fists. It happened just days after the attacks during a house call Naqui made to a wheelchair-bound MS sufferer on the Upper West Side. The hangman jury of his peers didn’t know the lengths Dash Naqui had gone to keep their country safe, nor did they care.

“We just don’t think the climate is right to get a conviction in this type of case,” the DA tossed more salt in his wounds that night, while Claire sat shaking beside his hospital bed. The message was clear—Naqui and his fellow Muslims were no longer considered true Americans.

Naqui noticed his hands were flexed in tight fists, reliving the pain. Just the thought of the attack filled him with a hatred he never knew existed. “Not the right climate,” he grumbled to himself.

Never feeling as unsure as he did at this moment, Naqui glanced back at the television coverage of the nightmarish executions. He swore they were being played out in shades of gray.

The questions swirling in Naqui’s mind were not the questions being asked by the reporters on the news coverage. Unlike the media, his most pressing questions were concerning those not shown in the execution photos.

What happened to them?

Could their connection to each other be a coincidence?

He was startled back to reality by Wendy’s sweet voice over the intercom. “Dr. Naqui, sorry to bother you, I know you requested to be left alone, but there is a Eugene Hasenfus here to see you and he is being insistent.”