?That?s right,? Ethan said. ?And I?ve no intention of suing.?
This sincere assurance caused no visible relief on O?Brien?s part. Evidently he believed that even though the conscientious medical care given to Dunny was lawsuit-proof, a plague of lawyers would nonetheless rain down on him.
?Dr. O?Brien, whatever happened to Dunny once his body reached the hospital morgue is another matter altogether, unrelated to you.?
?But I?m not any less disturbed about it than you are. I?ve discussed it twice with the police. I?m bewildered.?
[349] ?I just want you to know that I don?t hold the morgue employees at all responsible for his disappearance, either.?
?They?re good people,? O?Brien said.
?I?m sure they are. Whatever?s going on here isn?t the fault of the hospital. The explanation is something extraordinary.?
The physician dared to let hope tweak a little color into his face. ?Extraordinary? And what would that be??
?I don?t know. But amazing things have happened to me in the past twenty-four hours, in some way all related to Dunny, I think. So why I wanted to speak to you this morning ?
?Yes??
Searching for words, Ethan pushed back from the table. He got to his feet, his tongue stilled by a thirty-seven-year-long reliance on reason and rationality.
He wished for a window. Gazing out at the rain would have given him an excuse not to look at O?Brien while he asked what needed to be asked.
?Doctor, you weren?t Dunny?s primary physician ?
Talking while gazing moodily at a vending machine full of candy bars seemed eccentric.
? but you were involved with his treatment.?
O?Brien said nothing, waited.
Having finished his coffee, Ethan scooped the paper cup off the table, crumpled it in his fist.
?And after what happened yesterday, I?d wager that you know his file better than anyone.?
?Backward and forward,? O?Brien confirmed.
Taking the paper cup to the waste can, Ethan said, ?Is there anything in the file that you?d consider unusual??
?I can?t find a single misstep in diagnosis, treatment, or in the death-certification protocols.?
?That?s not what I mean.? He tossed the crumpled cup in the can and paced, looking at the floor. ?I?m sincere when I tell you that I?m [350] convinced you and the hospital are utterly blameless. When I say ?unusual,? what I really mean is strange, uncanny.?
?Uncanny??
?Yeah. I don?t know how to put a finer point on it.?
Dr. O?Brien remained silent so long that Ethan stopped pacing and looked up from the floor.
The physician chewed on his lower lip, staring at the piles of documents.
?There was something,? Ethan guessed. He returned to the table, sat in the orange torture device. ?Something uncanny, all right.?
?It?s here in the file. I didn?t bring it up. It?s meaningless.?
?What??
?It could be misconstrued as evidence that he came out of the coma for a period, but he didn?t. Some attributed the problem to a machine malfunction. It wasn?t.?
?Malfunction? What machine??
?The EEG.?
?The machine that records his brain waves.?
O?Brien chewed his lip.
?Doctor??
The physician met Ethan?s eyes. He sighed. He pushed his chair away from the table and got up. ?It?ll be better if you actually see it yourself.?
CHAPTER 51
CORKY PARKED ON THE WRONG STREET AND walked two blocks through the cold rain to the home of the three-eyed freak.
Windier than Monday?s storm, this one snapped weak fronds off queen palms, tumbled an empty plastic trash can down the center of the street, tore a window awning and loudly flapped the loose length of forest-green canvas.
Melaleucas lashed their willowy branches as though trying to whip themselves to pieces. Stone pines were stripped of dead brown needles that bristled through the churning air and gave it the power to prick, to blind.
As Corky walked, a dead rat bobbed past him on the racing water in the gutter. The lolling head rolled toward him, revealing one dark empty socket and one milky eye.
The grand and lovely spectacle made him wish that he had time to join in the celebration of disorder, to spread some prankish chaos of his own. He longed to poison a few trees, stuff mailboxes with hate literature, spread nails under the tires of parked cars, set a house afire
This was a busy day of a different kind, however, and he had [352] numerous scheduled tasks to which he must attend. Monday he had been a devilish rascal, an amusing imp of nihilism, but this day he must be a serious soldier of anarchy.
The neighborhood was an eclectic mix of two-story Craftsman houses with raised front porches and classic single-story California bungalows that borrowed from many styles of architecture. They were maintained with evident pride, enhanced with brick walkways, picket fences, beds of flowers.
By contrast, the bungalow of the three-eyed freak sat behind a half-dead front lawn, skirted by masses of unkempt shrubbery, at the end of a cracked and hoved concrete walkway. Under the Mexican-tile roof, the filthy tangles of long-empty birds? nests dripped from the eaves, and the stucco walls were cracked, chipped, in need of paint.
The structure looked like the residence of a troll who had grown weary of living under bridges, without amenities, but who had neither the knowledge nor the industry, nor the sense of pride, needed to maintain a house.
Corky rang the doorbell, which produced not sweet chimes but the sputtering racket of a broken, corroded mechanism.
He loved this place.
Because Corky had called ahead and promised money, the three-eyed freak was waiting by the door. He answered the tubercular cough of the bell even before the sound finished grating on Corky?s ear.
Yanking the door open, looming, one great grizzled grimace with a pendulous gut and size-thirteen bare feet, wearing gray sweat pants and a Megadeth concert T-shirt, Ned Hokenberry said, ?You look like a damn mustard pot.?
?It?s raining,? Corky observed.
?You look like a pimple on Godzilla?s ass.?
?If you?re worried about getting the carpet wet-?
?Hell, scuzzy as this carpet is, a bunch of pukin?-drunk hobos with bad bladders couldn?t do it any harm.?
[353] Hokenberry turned away, lumbering into the living room. Corky stepped inside and closed the door behind himself.
The carpet looked as if previously it had been wall-to-wall in a barn.
Should the day arrive when mahogany-finish Formica furniture with green-and-blue-striped polyester upholstery became prized by collectors and museums, Hokenberry would be a wealthy man. The two best items in the living room were a recliner littered with crushed corn chips and a big-screen TV.
The small windows were half covered by drapes. No lamps were aglow; only the TV screen cast light.
Corky was comfortable with the gloom. In spite of his affinity for chaos, he hoped never to see the interior of this house in bright light.
?The last batch of information you gave me checks out, as far as I?m able to check it,? Corky said, ?and it?s really been helpful.?
?Told you I know the estate better than that candy-ass actor knows his own dick.?
Until he?d been dismissed, with generous severance pay, for leaving prank messages on the answering machine that his employer had dedicated to phone calls from the dead, Ned Hokenberry had been a security guard at Palazzo Rospo.
?You say they got a new security chief. I can?t guarantee he didn?t change some procedures.?
?I understand.?
?You have my twenty thousand??
?I have it right here.? Corky withdrew his right arm from the voluminous sleeve of the slicker, and reached to an interior pocket for the packet of cash, his second payment to Hokenberry.
Even framed by the snugly buttoned yellow collar of his slicker and the drooping yellow brim of his rain hat, Corky?s face must have revealed more of his contempt than he intended.
Hokenberry?s bloodshot eyes blurred with self-pity, and his doughy face kneaded itself into more and deeper folds as he said, ?I wasn?t always a sorry damn wreck, you know. Didn?t used to have [354] this gut. Shaved every day, cleaned up real nice. Front lawn used to be green. Bein? fired by that son of a bitch is what ruined me.?
?I thought you said Manheim gave you lots of severance pay??
?That was soul-buyin? money, I now understand. Anyway, Manheim wasn?t man enough to fire me himself. He had his creepy guru do it.?
?Ming du Lac.?
?That?s the one. Ming, he takes me to the rose garden, pours tea, which I?m polite enough to drink even if it tastes like piss.?
?You?re a gentleman.?
?We?re sittin? at this table surrounded by roses, got this white lace cloth and fancy china-?
?Sounds lovely.?
?-while he talks at me about gettin? my spiritual house in order. I?m not just bored shitless, but thinkin? he?s even a bigger fruitcake than I ever figured, when after fifteen minutes I realize I?m bein? fired. If he?d made that clear at the start, I wouldn?t have had to drink his piss-poor tea.?
?That does sound traumatizing,? Corky said, pretending sympathy.
?It wasn?t traumatizin?, you ass pimple. What do you think I am, some pansy gets his dainties all puckered just ?cause someone looks at him wrong? I wasn?t traumatized, I was hexed.?
?Hexed??
?Hexed, cursed, hoodooed, diabolized, spellcast by the evil eye-whatever you want to call it. Ming du Lac, he?s got hell power in him, the creepy runt, and he ruined me forever in that rose garden. I?ve been slidin? downhill ever since.?
?He sounds like the usual Hollywood fraud to me.?
?I?m tellin? you, that little weasel?s the real juju, and I been spell-struck.?
Corky held out the package of cash, but then pulled it back as the hexed wreckage of a man reached for it. ?One more thing.?