Chapter 5: Greed

There is torment, and there is torment.

The Friday morning that Vanessa filmed me giving Walker a little head — while he was sound asleep — was also Distribution Friday.

She and I waited until Walk was in his first class — English Lit — before sending him a 7-second video. A certain naked blonde lady — nice tits, little-girl pussy, sucking a very erect cock. Walker’s handsome visage was in the shot as well.

Vanessa grinned, “It’ll unhinge him.”

I grinned back, “Massive brain damage.”

Was I taking a chance? Sending a 16-year old a naughty, and nude, video? Oh, perhaps. But I knew he had nudes of Mindy and Pilar. Maybe — although I wasn’t sure — of Lina too. Wouldn’t surprise me.

He also had bikini and thong shots of Vanessa and me. Top drawer jack-off fodder. Which, quite inappropriately, I got a kick out of. Knowing the kid was beating off to me ... well, my enjoyment could fall into either the ‘Twisted’ column or the ‘Why Not?’ column. I chose the latter.

In any case, Vanessa and I knew Walker would secrete the video in the Hidden file. Now should the FBI swoop in on some citywide sting ... well ... doom for yrs. truly. But short of that, we trusted the kid not to share it with anyone. Anyone at all.

It was a tale of a $5 million dollar robot and a sensor that cost 70-cents.

Daddy underwent his open kidney biopsy right on time — 8:15 in the morning at St. Luke’s. It was called laparoscopic surgery and involved an alarmingly expensive robot that was shaped sort of like a giant spider.

My mother was there in the hospital, of course. My sister, Autumn, and me. The surgeon, a urologist named Doctor Grey, cheerfully told us that he had never performed this particular procedure, “Usually it’s more of a major operation, like removing a tumor or an entire kidney.”

I glanced at my mother; she was surprisingly serene. I figured that she had had that conversation with the good doctor at an earlier meeting. He was so casual, so calm, that it made me relax, unclench, a bit.

He smiled, “I’ll actually be looking through a viewer, looking at a high-resolution screen.” He winked at us, “Like a video game.”

Well. Daddy lay there placidly in that awful hospital gown.

“I’ll make four tiny incisions in his stomach.” He demonstrated, “Here, here, here, and here. Those are for microscopic cameras to take a thorough look-see. And one for a trocar that my partner will use in case there’s internal bleeding.”

He placed a gloved finger on Daddy’s side, “One more incision — that’s where I’ll take a small sample of the kidney.”

My mother said, “Lab results?”

“A couple of days.”

“And you’re looking for?”

“Active infection and multiple myeloma.”

“Cancer.”

“Cancer.”

On the ride from New Canaan to Binghamton to see Bianca Uribe, Flynn Gallagher and I had had plenty of time to talk. On the return trip too. I liked it that he was comfortable with silences; didn’t feel the need to fill up the empty spaces. Maybe I’ll experiment with keeping quiet someday. Maybe not.

When he did speak, it was usually something interesting, “What is the most successful hunter in the animal kingdom?”

I said, “Not counting humans?”

“Not counting.”

“The lion?”

“Good guess — a lion is successful about one in four times. A wolf? Only about 15%. But a cheetah is at almost 60%.”

“Huh.”

I didn’t know why I found that interesting, but I did.

“But according to a Harvard study, the dragonfly clocks in at around 95%.”

“Really!”

“Yep. It can swerve and swoop in unimaginably rapid configurations.” Flynn grinned, “The dragonfly’s brain has evolved to see not only what its prey is doing, but what it’s going to do next.”

“The dragonfly. Huh.”

The kidney biopsy itself was successful. Nothing was accidentally punctured, no excessive bleeding. The five incisions were super-glued shut — something called Dermabond.

They wheeled Daddy’s bed from the OR into the recovery room on the same floor. He was a little groggy for a few minutes. But soon we were all on the elevator going back to his regular room on a regular hospital floor.

He was still hooked up to various monitoring devices, and would be for the next few hours. But, he was encouraged to order a meal — he had been fasting for several hours. He chose herb-crusted tilapia, which actually sounded good. It wasn’t. I took a taste and had never had fish that was that chewy.

But good-natured carping, groaning about hospital food was just a way of passing time until we could take him home.

Then, an alarm started pinging in a monitor above his bed. It must have rung at the nurse’s station too; the one in charge, Peggy, came bustling in.

“His pulse rate is under 40; a cardiologist is on the way.”

My mother gasped. Daddy said, “There, there.”

Doctor Kashyap, with a slight Indian accent, did some stethoscope and blood pressure things, “You have an extra heartbeat. I’ll do an EKG and we’ll take a blood sample every three hours.”

I said, “Wait. An extra heartbeat and a low pulse rate? At the same time?”

“The extra heartbeat is called PVCs — premature ventricular contractions. Could be caused by the anesthesia, or the operation itself. It’s not uncommon, and it’s nothing to worry about at this time.”

My mother said, “And the pulse rate?”

“I’m getting a different reading — in the 60s which is fine.”

“But that damned machine keeps dinging.”

Doctor Kashyap grinned, reached above the bed, and flipped a switch, “There.”

I wanted to scream, “THERE?” but restrained myself. The guy may know what he’s doing. He’d probably been to medical school, or read a couple of books, or something.

It turned out to be a faulty sensor — a 70-cent sensor — that was causing the misread. And, the extra heartbeat was gone the next morning. Still, Doctor Kashyap ordered an echocardiogram, and had a heart-monitor patch installed on Daddy’s chest.

“Wear it for two weeks, make a note of any irregularities you feel, then send it in to the company on ... Thursday, the 22nd.”

When we got Daddy home, home to the Brookside house Autumn and I grew up in, my mother gave him pretend stern, “And what are the three things, Dave?”

Daddy smiled patiently at the woman he’d been married to for almost 40 years, “Stay hydrated, no Ibuprofen, no procedures like a CAT-scan that uses dye.”

My mother nodded, satisfied.

Bottom line? Two lines, I guess. The heart stuff was an outlier. Daddy will see the cardiologist for another checkup in a month or so. Plus, he’ll undergo a stress test, just in case.

And the biopsy lab reports were as good as we could hope for. No infection and no cancer. Daddy did have Stage 4 Chronic Kidney Disease. And now he had only about 25% of his kidney function left. If it went as low as 12% ... well, dialysis would be four hours a day, three days a week.

There is no cure; there aren’t any meds to restore function. Nor are there any in the immediate pipeline. But it could have been worse, far worse. He’ll need to see the kidney specialist and the hematologist every two or three months to monitor how he’s doing.

It’s not ideal, but we’re all thankful that ... well, it’s obvious. I have to credit my mother — she took charge, took over Daddy’s calendar, attended all the appointments, took copious notes, did hours and hours of online research. Came through when it mattered most.

I was surprised, pleasantly so, when Flynn Gallagher called to invite me to his home in New Canaan, Connecticut. “I have Bobby Ray Guthrie as an overnight guest. Thought you might like to sit in on the Bianca Uribe conversation.”

“Very much so.”

I checked the airlines and Flynn agreed to meet me at the New Canaan train station.

Five hours later, a quick hello-hug. Then a short walk to his home. Into his garage. And I got to meet a naked Bobby Ray Guthrie spread-eagled on Flynn’s garage wall. A ball-gag was jammed tightly into his mouth. His hate-filled eyes would have intimidated a lesser girl. Although I did keep a careful distance as Flynn prepared to perform some dark arts on the scumbag.

Flynn might have expected me to be shocked, but I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I stepped into the garage. I looked the naked dirtbag up and down, “So this is Bobby Ray Guthrie.”

“In the flesh.”

“Has he talked yet?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Will he talk, Flynn? He has to be terrified of Eddie Nix and the Creed of the Apocrypha.”

“Yes, well.”

I looked at him, a question in my glance.

He said, “Brother Eddie Nix is in St. Paul. Bobby Ray Guthrie is in my garage. A thousand miles away.”

Bobby Ray was glaring at him, then me, then him. He had mean little eyes, a bulbous nose, and a stair-step chin. A farmer’s tan — face and neck and arms only. His shoulders sloped, his arms were ropy, and he had thick wrists. A strong guy. He had a bowling-ball belly, but I wasn’t fooled. His stomach was hard and solid, just like the rest of him.

I pointed at a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, “What’s that?”

Flynn looked at it — one letter, P, followed by four numerals, 4948. “No idea.”

I took out my cell and snapped a close-up photo. Then stepped back and took a full shot of Bobby Ray. “For my vision board.”

Flynn poked him in the chest and said, “Nod when you’re ready to talk about Bianca Uribe. I’ll take the gag out.”

A look of pure hatred.

Flynn said, “Stand to the side, he may start pissing.”

“Good to know.”

He dug his thumb into the soft tissue under Bobby Ray’s collarbone. The spot where 26 nerves joined into the brachial plexus. As he crushed the nerve bundle, jamming it hard into the bone, he hit one specific nerve — the supraclavicular — which transmits sensations into the spinal cord.

Bobby Ray’s eyes bulged out, he arched his back until it almost broke and made a long, wailing, inhuman screech into the ball gag.

Interesting. He shot an instant erection. I’d never seen that particular reaction. Well, I’d never seen the procedure done before.

My reaction surprised Flynn. After Bobby Ray stopped screaming, I reached up and tried to find that same sweet spot under his collarbone. Flynn guided my index finger to it, and I said, “Hmm.”

He looked at the scrote, “Ready to talk now?”

Bobby Ray nodded vigorously, banging the back of his head against the wall. Flynn pulled out the ball gag, and Bobby Ray took a few moments to gather himself. He began speaking in a surprisingly even tone of voice, “In the holy scripture, Tobit tells Tobias that Nineveh will be destroyed as an example of wickedness. Ours is the Church Militant.” He paused, then smirked at Flynn, “Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck your whole fucking family.”

Flynn sighed and jammed the ball back into his mouth with the heel of his hand. He looked at me again, “Stand back.”

Flynn reached for the collarbone again and pressed the supraclavicular nerve.

After 30 seconds, which must have seemed like 30 minutes, Bobby Ray Guthrie was a beaten man. Flynn worked the gag out and his voice broke as he croaked, “Okay, okay. This Uribe cunt is ... she was delivered to Kansas Fucking City. And that’s all I know.”

After more than two hours all we had was the fact that there was some sort of ‘contract’ to deliver a ‘spic chick’ to a paying customer. And, said customer was supposed to be in Kansas City. Finally, Bobby Ray Guthrie admitted that the transaction involved the Creed of the Apocrypha. The very cult that Clint Callahan was investigating because of an earlier disappearance — Benny Chang.

I told Flynn, “Benny’s parents were Taiwanese — they spelled it Zhang.”

“And you know this, how?”

“The FBI did a deep background when he applied to the Bureau.”

“So, Puerto Rico and Taiwan. Immigrants. Second generation.”

“Yeah, a clue or coincidence.”

Later that evening, two NYC cops — one of them a cousin of Flynn’s — took Guthrie back to a station house in The Bronx.

I asked, “What’ll they do with him?”

“Sweat him some more. They think he’s tied to an insider theft ring out at Kennedy. He won’t see daylight for a while.”

“I think you got everything out of him so far as Bianca is concerned.”

Flynn nodded, “And I believed him when he claimed he didn’t know anything about your guy.”

“Benny Chang. Yeah, I think you’re right. But the Creed...”

“Is linked to both Uribe and Chang. I don’t believe in innocent coincidences, not when it involves felonies.”

“Me either. And I had just assumed Bianca’s disappearance was related to the identity theft.”

“So did I. Anyway, I went back to Binghamton yesterday and did a room-by-room canvas at her dorm — Mountainview College.”

I laughed, “Mountains in Binghamton?”

“Well, it’s on top of a hill. Four buildings with suites. Each one houses four or five or six freshmen.”

“Let me guess — you flashed a potsy. Kept your old badge.”

“Better than my badge — a friend called a friend and a campus cop escorted me around.”

“So, what’d you find?”

Flynn’s tone turned somber, “I think it was a straight snatch. Probably sex-related since the Uribes don’t have any money.”

“Oh God.”

“I got half-ass descriptions from four students. The usual conflicting memories and impressions. Only one of them reported it to a housemother. Who waited another 24 hours to alert the campus police.”

“So, what are we looking for. Or who?”

“Two thugs, maybe there was a driver too. Burly, muscular, white. Calm, almost professional.”

“Doesn’t sound random.”

“No, no it doesn’t. One other thing ... one of the kids said one of the guys might have had a scar or a bruise on the inside of his wrist. She just caught a glimpse — it might have been a shadow, a watch, a bracelet. Who knows?”

“Inside of the wrist? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are. That Bobby Ray Guthrie tattoo. What was it ... a number and some letters? I still have that picture I took.’

“Yeah, one letter, four numbers. Maybe, maybe, maybe there’s a connection to the Creed of the Apocrypha.”

I scrolled, “It’s P, followed by 4948. I thought it might have a concentration camp connection, but I couldn’t find one.”

Flynn was quiet for a moment, then said, “Of course Guthrie is Creed through and through. And so is the boss, Eddie Nix. But I haven’t seen any connections between those sweeties and the neo-Nazis.”

“Me either. But a forearm tattoo... ‘

Thin gruel? of course. But slightly better than no porridge at all. Unless it led the firm of Flynn & Jennings off on some wild gander chase. Make that Jennings & Flynn.

My mother glanced down at her notes, “PET scan — Positron Emission Tomography. In Dave’s case, eyes to thighs.”

I looked at Daddy, “Any discomfort?”

My mother answered, “No. They injected the radioactive tracers, then we had to wait an hour or so while they worked their way through his body. Then they put him in the machine — just 12 minutes.”

The next morning, the radiologist had sent the results to Doctor Shahzad Hassan, the hematologist who had ordered the test. In the way things work at St. Lukes, and probably at most sizable hospitals, his main nurse entered the lab results in Daddy’s My St. Luke’s file. Password-accessible to Daddy. Well, fingerprint-accessible these days.

I said, “Results?”