Oath of Office Page 14

  “Doin’ okay, Joey. Doin’ okay. Listen, Joey, I don’t want to upset you any, but I wonder if you’ve had any more thoughts about what happened at the restaurant.”

  “You mean with my thumb?”

  Lou groaned inwardly. “Exactly. I’m still trying to figure out what you were thinking.”

  Lou caught Joey’s shrug out of the corner of his eye. “All I could think about was how badly I wanted that carrot.”

  The vapid response was no surprise.

  “You didn’t think you might get hurt?”

  This time, Joey turned and gazed across at him. His expression was blank—not deep in thought, not searching for an answer to Lou’s question, but seemingly disconnected from his mind. Lou realized he had seen a similar expression before. Carolyn Meacham stared at him without comprehension moments after she had abandoned her reckless pursuit of the sedan with a broken taillight.

  A parody of Dylan’s classic crossed Lou’s mind.

  The answer my friend is blowin’ in Kings Ridge.…

  The answer is blowin’ in Kings Ridge.

  Joey pointed out the window at a roadside exit sign. “Can you get off here?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Lou replied, grateful to have anything approaching a meaningful exchange. “What for?”

  “I’ve got to get to the pet store before I go home.”

  “I didn’t know you had any pets,” Lou said.

  Joey placed his left index finger to his lips, letting Lou know it was a secret. “You won’t tell Millie, now, will you? She doesn’t really allow any animals in the Dorms.”

  Lou flashed on his discussion with Emily about bending rules. He didn’t feel he had been all that convincing, but at least she had left his apartment with a promise to give Steve a sporting chance.

  “No problem, pal,” he said. “So what do you have? Dog? Cat?”

  “You’ll see,” Joey replied mischievously.

  Art’s Critters was a small storefront operation sandwiched between an optician and a cut-rate jeweler in a modest strip mall. Lou offered to get whatever was needed, but Joey refused. He fished a thin, tattered wallet from his jeans and strode excitedly into the store. A few minutes later, he emerged carrying a medium-sized brown paper bag.

  “Can’t wait to get home,” he said.

  When they arrived at Millie’s, the lunch rush was over, leaving plenty of available parking spaces. The restaurateur was waiting for them just inside the entrance, and burst out the front door before Lou shut off his engine. She was carrying a cardboard box of food. Lou helped undo Joey’s seat belt, then reached across his lap to open the passenger door. Joey set his bag on the floor before getting out.

  “Hi, there, buddy,” Millie said.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  Millie set the box on the ground and gave Joey a quick peck on the cheek. Lou popped the trunk and set the food inside.

  “I just put some snack stuff together for you. You can come over to the restaurant for your meals if you’re up to it.”

  “Oh, I’m up to it.”

  “The report is good. His surgeon thinks we’re looking at maybe seventy-five percent functional recovery. Maybe more.”

  “Joey, you sure you don’t want to stay with me?”

  “No, Ma. You know how happy I am to be in my own place. All I thought about in the hospital was how much I just wanted to get home. I have some pain medicine that I don’t even think I’ll need, but if I do, I can take one or two every four hours, and some infection medicine I need to take twice a day.”

  “He needs to go back in three days,” Lou said. “I think I can adjust my schedule to come out and—”

  “Nonsense. I have people who will drive us. You’ve been just wonderful, Lou.”

  “He’s going to help me get settled in at my place,” Joey said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I’ll be at the restaurant for dinner.”

  “Very well, dear,” Millie said. “You know how I respect your privacy. That’s your home not mine.”

  Millie thanked Lou again, wrapped him in her arms, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

  The Dorms, ten or twelve units, white vinyl siding, black shutters, was nothing special. In fact, despite well-trimmed hedges and several small flower gardens, it reminded Lou of the sort of motel that might have rates by the day, half day, or hour. Unfortunately, it also reminded him of places he once took refuge in when he was in no shape to go home.

  Never again, he thought, violating AA’s most essential day-at-a-time maxim. Never ever again.

  The print curtains looked fairly new, and there were brass numbers nailed to the front of each red painted door. Joey lived in unit number six.

  Carrying his package inside his sling, Joey fished his key ring out of his pocket and unlocked his door. Lou followed with the cook’s small duffel bag and then the carton of food.

  Cozy, he thought. Cozy and surprisingly neat, but small.

  There was a kitchenette and an adjacent dining area with a table for two that Lou guessed most often sat one. The sitting area featured a brown tweed sofa, modest flat-screen television mounted to the wall, and a couple of area rugs that covered part of a parquet floor.

  “Where do you sleep?” Lou asked, noting that what was probably the door to a bedroom was closed.

  Joey pointed to the couch. “It folds out into a bed,” he said. “It’s more comfortable than you’d think.”

  “Oh, trust me,” Lou said. “I know all about foldout couches. What about your pet? Where do you keep it?”

  “Them, not it. They’re in the bedroom,” he said. He nodded toward the closed door. Again, there was playfulness in his expression.

  “So what’s in the bag?” Lou asked.

  Joey pulled out what looked like a Chinese food leftover container and clumsily opened the top a bit.

  Scampering about on the bottom were two small brown mice.

  Ah, pet mice, Lou thought. Harmless enough.

  Still, he understood why the young cook was reluctant to have Millie know about his hobby.

  “Ready to see something cool?” Joey asked conspiratorially.

  “Ready,” Lou said.

  “You got to promise not to tell,” Joey said.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  Joey turned the knob and nudged the door open with his foot. A strange, musty odor immediately wafted out. The first thing Lou saw were two workbenches, with tools spread across the top. There was a small, empty wire cage at one end with a mouse wheel in it. But the main attraction was in the center of the room—a huge Lucite cube, six feet on each side, raised off the floor a foot or so on a heavy wooden platform. Fixed to the top of the cube and plugged into a wall socket by a long cord was what appeared to be a ventilation apparatus. There was also an inch-in-diameter Lucite tube, bent upward at a ninety-degree angle and sealed at the outer end with a rubber stopper and inside by what appeared to be a levered trapdoor.

  Warming lights were clipped to two of the four sides, illuminating a tall, irregular mound arising from the floor at the center of the cube, and looking somewhat like the spired castle of a Disney princess. In one corner of the floor was a dish of water. In another was a mound of what looked like a mix of wood pieces and sawdust.

  A complex mouse habitat, Lou thought. Just the sort of thing the eccentric kid of a hundred knots would build.

  Then he stopped and caught his breath. The surface of the castle was moving.

  “Get it?” Joey asked proudly. “The mice aren’t my pets. They’re the food for my pets.”

  “Pet what?” Lou asked, his voice breaking between the words.

  He remained fixed to where he was standing, unable to advance as he struggled to sort out what he was seeing.

  “Termites,” Joey said simply. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “Termites?”

  Lou could see them now—a sheet of constant motion coating virtually the entire castle. He managed a couple of baby steps toward them.

&n
bsp; Termites—huge termites, some of them half an inch long or more.

  “Joey, I’m not any kind of a bug expert, but I do know that termites eat wood, not mice.”

  Lou tried with minimal success to tie the bizarre scene to the events surrounding Joey’s nearly amputated thumb, and the other strange behaviors he’d observed since coming to Kings Ridge.

  “You watch and then tell me what these guys can and cannot eat,” Joey said.

  He removed his arm from the sling and used it to hold the animal container while he removed one of the mice by its tail and set it in a mason jar with a cotton ball on the bottom. The other mouse he placed in the wire cage.

  “I have to knock this fellow out first,” Joey said. “The termites won’t eat them if they’re dead, and I don’t want them to feel any pain.”

  Lou watched, transfixed, as Joey poured a bit of liquid onto the cotton ball.

  Chloroform.

  In seconds, the mouse was on its side.

  Joey used a long forceps to pick up the limp animal. Then he removed the rubber stopper from the Lucite access tube, set the mouse inside, and nudged it onto the small trapdoor with a thin stick, all the while, softly whistling the theme from The Andy Griffith Show.

  Then, after giving Lou a final look at the ingenious setup, the cook pushed down the lever opening the trapdoor.

  Instantly, the lower third of the princess’s castle flowed like lava onto the inert mouse, covering every millimeter of it. There was a loud clicking noise that reminded Lou of rain pelting against a tin roof.

  More insects—huge heads with black pinchers and yellow bodies—poured or flew around it. The clicking sounds intensified as the swarm became more frenzied. The animal corpse, for surely it was already that, was now encased in a ball of clamoring insects at least three inches around, each trying to burrow down onto the meal. Then, just as quickly as the termites advanced, they began to retreat back to and into the mound. The clicking decreased in volume until it could no longer be heard.

  Lou circled the table, never once averting his gaze from the frightening diorama. He expected he’d see the remains of the meal, mauled and bloody.

  But there was not any blood to be seen.

  What Lou witnessed instead, was nothing.

  There was no mouse left at all.

  CHAPTER 24

  Lou felt leagues better the moment he set foot inside Cap’s Stick and Move. One good whiff of stale gym air with its distinctive blend of sweat, cheap aftershave, and bleach, and he felt he was home. But he still could not forget Joey Alderson’s astonishing termites. Before heading over to the gym, he had made a quick search of the Internet, but could find no entomological evidence that such creatures existed.

  Only they did.

  The image and hideous clicking of that amber-colored swarm totally consuming a mouse in a matter of seconds would stay with him indefinitely. Lou wrote down the name and number of Oliver Humphries at Temple University in Philadelphia, listed as one of the experts in the field of termite entomology. If time allowed, he might give the man a call.

  Joey was extremely excited at Lou’s stunned reaction to his pets, and offered to drop another mouse into the Lucite habitat. Lou politely begged off an encore, but did ask where he had come up with the bugs.

  “I can’t show you today,” Joey had said, a broad smile creasing his boyish face. “But come back on the weekend, and I’ll take you there. I think you’ll be pretty amazed.”

  “I’m pretty amazed right now,” Lou had said, “and a bit horrified, too.”

  Lou concentrated on the young fighters chasing their dreams, and Joey’s nightmare bugs gradually receded toward the back of his consciousness. As always, the gym was a sanctuary for his brain. The grunts, soft thud of boxing gloves, and rhythmic skip of jump ropes across the cement floor were symphonic.

  After changing quickly in the locker room, Lou slipped on his bag gloves and got to work on the heavy bag. Cap was in the ring nearby, training a young fighter who had pretty decent moves. Lou started off with a set of straight jabs, remembering what his mentor had told him about not telegraphing the punch by leaning forward. Then he switched over to a rapid-fire combination set that included a mix of jab-cross, jab-hook, and jab-hook-hook punches. By minute five of his ten-minute set, he was sweating profusely and feeling almost airborne. He tried to focus on his punching technique, but then a surprising thing happened.

  He found himself thinking about Renee.

  Thud. Thud. Renee. Thud. Steve. Thud. Emily. Thud.

  Steve was a decent-enough guy, Lou convinced himself as he walloped the bag with his hardest punch yet. Maybe he was a little dull and set in his ways, but at least he had a big heart and good intentions. Besides, Lou knew sparks were not a guarantee of a successful marriage. Heck, he’d given Renee enough of them to start a matrimonial forest fire, and look where that got him.

  Lou had come to believe that Renee loved a solid 95 percent of him during their eight years of marriage. It was that remaining 5 percent, the addict who lied about his drug and alcohol use, that Renee could not endure. As in many failed marriages, she discovered Lou’s unacceptable 5 percent only after she had said, “I do.” As a recommended part of his recovery, he had done his best to make amends to her. Now, all he could do was to support her in her marriage and continue to push that 5 percent further and further from his life. When the time was right, someone would show up who could help him get over her.

  Thud. Thud. Renee. Thud.

  Lou slammed the bag a few more times, then stepped aside when Cap came over and hit the bag with a beautiful sequence of jabs. He seemed to be exerting little effort, but his punches sounded like gunshots. Throughout the remarkable barrage, he continued smiling.

  It’s good to be the king.

  “Where you been?” Cap asked as he unleashed an uppercut that would have put a full-grown gorilla on its back.

  “Long story,” Lou said.

  “Well, you might want to make it a short one,” Cap said without sounding the least bit winded. “I just got a call from the street that there are two guys lurking outside the gym, snapping pictures of this place, your building, and what I think is your car. What have you been up to?”

  Lou felt as if he’d just been on the receiving end of one of Cap’s punches.

  “I guess stirring somebody’s pot,” Lou said, wrapping his arm around the swinging bag like they were dancing partners. “What kind of guys are we talking about?”

  “They look like muscle,” Cap said. “Thick, beefy guys. The kid who called seemed sure they were packing heat, and I don’t think he’s ever wrong about such things.”

  “So do we invite them up for a workout?”

  “That’s up to you and how interested you are in them.”

  “I’m plenty interested.”

  “Then we turn the tables and follow them,” Cap said after delivering a right cross that sent Lou staggering backwards off the bag. Sooner or later they’ll get tired of hanging around, and probably nervous, too. I’m betting sooner. This is hardly their kind of neighborhood.”

  “How am I gonna tail them in the car that they’ve been tailing?”

  “Leave that to me,” Cap said. He smacked the heavy bag one last time, hard enough rattle the chains.

  * * *

  FOLLOWING CAP’S instructions, Lou grabbed a couple of slices of pizza from Dimitri’s, making a conscious effort not to look around while making the purchase. Outside, the two men in a black Cadillac sedan rolled past, then past again in the other direction.

  “Be careful to act nonchalant,” Cap had insisted. “You don’t want these guys getting suspicious.”

  Lou carried the pizza box upstairs to his apartment. Once inside, he turned on the TV and took out a slice. He felt like a duck in a carnival shooting gallery walking back and forth in front of his apartment windows while eating a slice of four-cheese with mushrooms, but he wanted to be certain he was seen from the street below.

&n
bsp; Again, Cap’s idea, not his.

  Lou’s cell phone rang. He stepped away from the windows to answer it.

  “They’re on the move,” Cap said. “They think you’re in for the night. Let’s go.”

  Lou raced down the back stairwell, threw open the unalarmed fire exit door, and stepped into a narrow alleyway. A beat-up Chevy Prizm, sans hubcaps and the passenger-side mirror, sped down the alley toward him and flashed its lights once. The rear door opened and Lou scrambled into the backseat as the car kept rolling. Then, as soon as he slammed the door, it accelerated.

  Cap was driving, but Lou did not recognize the two twenty-something black men in the car with him. The one sitting beside Lou was clean-shaven with short, tightly curled hair. He was big, as in “needs to buy an extra plane ticket to fly” big.

  “Ah man, I smell pizza. You bring us any pie?” he asked.

  “After we get back to the gym, it’s my treat.”

  “Terrific. I do a large with everything. Hold the anchovies.”

  “Lou, meet Notso,” Cap said from the driver’s seat.

  Notso’s beefy hand enfolded Lou’s like the wrapping on a burrito.

  “Notso?” Lou asked.

  “His real name is Anthony,” the man riding shotgun said, “but his last name is Brite.”

  “Got it,” Lou said, suppressing a smile. “You okay with that, Mr. Brite?”

  “My mother’s the one who first called me it, so I guess the answer’s yes.”

  “And you would be?” Lou asked the second man.

  The man maneuvered around to get a better look at Lou. He was slightly built, a while from his last shave, and was wearing a gray T-shirt, tattered at the neck. His left ear was studded with a lone diamond, while his tortoiseshell glasses gave him an air of intelligence. He reminded Lou of Spike Lee—minus the New York Knicks gear.

  “Name’s George,” he said. “George Kozak.”

  His hand was to Lou’s as Lou’s was to Notso Brite’s.

  “Okay. Notso and George,” Lou said. “Pleased to make your acquaintances. I’m Lou Welcome.”

  “That’s Dr. Lou Welcome,” Cap corrected. “So behave or he’ll take out your liver.”