Bad Karma

“What about Melissa Cousins?”

“She was one of them who was pretty messed up. She’s here now, but we’re letting her mother transfer her to a hospital back in Portland.”

“What’s been in the news so far?”

“We’ve caught a break on that. Thanks to that compound being so remote and True Light having stayed under the media’s radar we’ve been able to keep this quiet. We’ll be giving a press conference in the next few days after we’ve sorted everything out. You can get as much credit as you want or we can leave you out of it. Your choice.”

“Did you talk to Mike?”

“Yeah, I did. He doesn’t want any attention.”

“Neither do I. There’s a guy in Denver named John Rude. Credit him with giving you a key tip that led to you uncovering the porn ring.”

“Any truth to that?”

“Yeah, he helped me out. The guy’s dying of cancer, and for whatever reason, it’s important to him to get his name in the papers.”

The morphine had kicked in. Shannon let his eyes close. Daniels was saying something but his voice had become a soft drone. Before drifting off he realized what the police lieutenant was asking him. He wanted to know how he knew something was hidden in the speakers. He tried telling Daniels that Linda told him about it, but he realized that his lips weren’t moving. Then everything seemed to fade away.

It was hours later when he woke up again. Susan was with him. The surgeon who performed his shoulder reconstruction came in and explained to him what had been done. The doctor thought the surgery went as well as they could’ve hoped for, but they wouldn’t know how much strength and range of motion Shannon would get back until after nine to twelve months of physical therapy. Shannon drifted off again after that, holding Susan’s hand.

That evening Eli stopped by for a visit. His long face was more somber than usual and showed deep lines of worry along his forehead and around his eyes. They mostly made small talk, Eli trying to get his long body comfortable in one of the hospital chairs while Susan joined them, sitting next to Shannon on the bed while holding on to his hand as if for dear life. Shannon got a genuine smile out of Eli when he finally told him what the clue mit vergnugen meant.

“I told you that was more than a lucid dream,” Eli said.

“I’m beginning to think you’re right.”

“So why’d the idea of that upset you so much before?”

Shannon shrugged as much as his wounded shoulder allowed. “I think it was because when I finally had the opportunity to look for my mom and my old partner, Joe DiGrazia, I blew it. I couldn’t see past my case to what was really important to me.”

“Bill, you’ll have other opportunities. If you did it once you’ll be able to do it again.”

Shannon nodded halfheartedly. He felt Susan squeeze his hand harder. She changed the subject, asking Eli for ideas about where they could go on vacation once Shannon’s shoulder healed.

“Now that he’s got two pints of my blood in him, don’t be surprised if Bill wants to make a pilgrimage to Yankee stadium,” Eli said with a wry grin. “I’d also expect him to give up his vegetarian life style and start ordering pastrami on rye.”

“Vai is mir,” Shannon said.

Eli’s grin sharpened. “Where’d you pick up Yiddish?”

“No idea. Must be those two pints of your blood running through me.”

Eli hung around until Shannon’s eyelids started to droop, then he let himself be chased out by Susan but not before threatening to return the next day. The hospital had brought a cot into the room for Susan, but instead of using it she balanced herself on the edge of Shannon’s hospital bed, and with her arms and legs draped across him, settled in for the night. With Shannon it was more like a light switch being turned off. One moment he was barely conscious of Susan’s soft breath against his face, then nothing until the next morning when the nurse woke him to change the dressing on his shoulder. Susan’s face crumpled a bit when she saw what his shoulder looked like under all the bandaging, but she forced a brave smile for his sake.

Monday was a better day for him. He felt more alert, and while he had a persistent, dull throbbing ache in his shoulder, he didn’t have to resort to pumping in as much extra morphine as the other day. Keeping to his word, Eli returned later that morning bringing a wheatgrass-mint-pineapple juice for his friend. Susan left them to run some errands, and Shannon gave Eli the full story about what happened at True Light. As Eli listened, his long face grew ashen and an intense sadness overwhelmed his eyes. “What you and Susan have gone through, first with Winters, and now this. What a horror show. But it’s because of you that True Light has been shut down. All those girls who’ve been victimized there now have a chance. You did a lot of good but at some point you need to find peace for yourself.”

Shannon tried smiling. “Yeah, well, I’m going to have nine to twelve months where I’ll have no choice but to do just that.”

“You need more time than that, Bill. You’ve already suffered through enough violence for several lifetimes. I’m hoping you finally give up this PI work.”

“We’ll see,” Shannon said. “The damn thing might just be in my blood, though.”

“If that’s the case, then you should have no problem. Most of whatever blood you had you left behind at that fercockta cult.”

After Eli left, Maguire stopped by for a visit. His round face flushed a deep red as he recounted how he had rolled Shannon’s car to the gate so he could use it to boost himself over the iron fence surrounding True Light, then turned even redder when he talked about what he saw once he got inside the compound. “None of this has been in the news yet,” he told Shannon. “It’s like nobody fucking knows about it except us.” He hung around a little while longer, mostly talking about how good a team they made and how it would be a waste if the two of them didn’t go into business together when Shannon was up and around. He had brought several of his prized PI books with him and left them with Shannon. These included Hammett’s Red Harvest and two more recent books that he claimed were fucking amazing and brought the PI novel up to a whole new level: The Guards by Ken Bruen and The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis. Shannon told Maguire he’d read them and get back to him with his thoughts.

When Susan came back she had a package for Shannon from the university. Inside was Taylor Carver’s thesis. Shannon spent the afternoon reading it. The thesis was written as a fictional novel with an English Masters major named Culver as the protagonist. The “hero” hooks up with a beautiful but screwed-up freshman who was sexually abused by her father for years. Culver later befriends an out-of-work Indian chemical engineer. Over beers they cook up a scheme to have this chemical engineer start a cult which they’ll fund by making ‘voyeur’ porn films using the cult’s brainwashed members and Culver’s girlfriend, who Culver is able to manipulate by playing to her low self- esteem and her pathological need to degrade herself. In this fictional account, they end up opening hundreds of yoga studios in shopping centers around the country to fund the cult’s operations and line their own pockets, at which point Culver publishes a book detailing all this, making a mockery of suburban America and its bourgeoisie culture. The tone of the book was cruel and smarmy, and gave Shannon a good impression of what Carver was all about-a heartless sonofabitch who got off on showing the world how superior he was to everyone else. It also confirmed his thoughts about Linda Gibson. She had no chance in life, not after the way her parents abused her both sexually and emotionally. It left her too vulnerable to a predator like Carver. When he was done reading the thesis he had the urge to load himself up with more morphine, but resisted it. He knew if Paveeth had gotten his hands on Carver’s thesis, he’d have a good motive for wanting Carver dead. It could very well explain why Carver and Gibson were butchered the way they were.

That evening Eli came by for another visit, and later Emily stopped by. Her head was bandaged up, and she stood hands on hips, shaking her head sadly at Shannon.

“A couple of geniuses we are,” she said. “Let ourselves be banged up and shot at by a couple of dumb thugs.”

Shannon couldn’t disagree with her. That night he had the nurse disconnect his morphine drip. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she tried telling him. “It’s too early for this.” Shannon told her he wanted to wean himself off of it sooner rather than later. He had a mostly restless night, but was able to doze off for several hours.