Garden Street. The kitchen and the larger of the two bathrooms faced an inner courtyard.
Pulling an Amstel Light from the refrigerator, Trent popped the top and took a long, satisfying gulp. He thought the beer might calm him down some.
He was anxious and edgy from the hour of Miami Vice. Even reruns got him riled up enough to want to hit one of the local bars to see if he could scare up some trouble. He could usually find a homo or two along Cambridge
Street to rough up.
Trent looked like a man who was looking for trouble. He also looked like he'd found it more than a couple of times. A stocky, muscular man of twenty-eight, Trent wore his bleach-blond hair in the severe, flat-topped hairstyle popularly known as a fade. His eyes were a piercing crystal blue.
He had a scar below his left eye that ran back to his ear. He'd gotten it from being on the wrong end of a broken beer bottle in a barroom scuffle in
San Diego. It had taken a few stitches but the other guy had had to have his entire face rearranged. The guy had made the mistake of telling Trent that he thought he had a cute ass. Trent still got hot every time he thought of the episode. What a creep, that goddamned fag.
Trent went back to his bedroom and set his beer down on top of the TV. He picked up the military-issue.45 pistol that he'd 'cumshawed' from a Marine for amphetamines. It felt comfortable in his large hand. Gripping the pistol with both hands, Trent leveled the barrel straight at the TV screen with arms stiff and elbows locked. He spun around to point the gun out the open window.
Across the street a woman was opening her bedroom window. 'Tough luck, baby,' Trent whispered. He aimed the pistol carefully, lowering the barrel until the front and rear sights lined
up perfectly, targeting the woman's torso. Slowly, deliberately, Trent pulled the cold steel of the trigger.
As the firing mechanism clicked, Trent called out 'Pow!' as he pretended the gun kicked in the air from its recoil. He smiled. He could have drilled the woman if he'd put in the clip. In his mind's eye he saw her hurled back into her apartment, a neat hole through her chest and blood squirting out.
Laying the pistol on the TV next to his beer bottle, Trent grabbed one of the vials of Marcaine from the bureau. Tossing it in the air, he caught it with his other hand behind his back. He calmly sauntered back to the kitchen to retrieve the necessary paraphernalia from its hiding place.
First he had to remove the glasses from the shelf of one of his kitchen cabinets next to the refrigerator. Then he gently lifted the plywood square that led to his secret cache: a small vault of space between the cabinet's back and the exterior wall. Trent brought out a single vial filled with yellow fluid and an array of 18-gauge syringes. He'd picked up the vial from a Colombian in Miami. The syringes easily came into his possession through his hospital job. He carried both vials and the syringes back to his bedroom along with a propane torch he kept under the kitchen sink.
Trent reached for his bottle and took another swig of beer. He set the propane torch on a small tripod he kept folded under his bed. Taking a cigarette from the pack by the television set, he lit it with a match.
Trent took a long drag, then lit the propane torch with the cigarette.
Next, he took one of the 18-gauge needles. After drawing up a tiny amount of the yellow fluid, he heated the tip of the needle until it glowed red hot. Keeping the needle in the flame, he picked up the vial of Marcaine and heated its top until it too started to become red. With deft, practiced moves, he pushed the hot needle through the molten glass and deposited a drop of the yellow fluid. Next was the trickiest part. After disposing of the needle, Trent began to twirl the vial, slipping it back into the hottest part of the flame. He kept it there for a few seconds, long enough for the puncture site to fuse closed.
He continued to twirl the vial even after.he pulled it from the flame. He didn't stop until the glass had cooled considerably.
'Shit!' Trent said as he watched the very end of the vial suddenly dimple into an unwanted depression. Though virtually unnoticeable, Trent couldn't risk the blemish. If someone was careful enough to notice, they'd discard the vial as a defect. Or
worse, someone on the ball might get suspicious. Disgusted, Trent tossed the vial into the trash.
'Dammit,' he thought as he grabbed another vial of Marcaine. He'd have to try again. As he repeated the process, he became more and more intense, angrily cursing when even the third attempt ended in failure. Finally, on the fourth try, the puncture site sealed properly; the curved tip maintained its smooth hemispherical contour.
Holding the ampule up to the light, he inspected it carefully. It was close to perfect. He could still tell that the tube had been punctured, but he had to look carefully. He thought it might have been the best one he'd ever done. It gave him great satisfaction to have mastered such a difficult process. When he'd first thought of it a number of years ago, he'd had no idea if it would work. It used to take him hours to do what he could now do in minutes.
Once he had accomplished what he'd set out to do, Trent returned the vial of yellow fluid, the.45 pistol, and the remaining vials of Marcaine to the hiding place. He replaced the false back of the cabinet and put the glasses back.
Picking up the doctored Marcaine vial, he gave it a good shake. The drop of yellow fluid had long since dissolved. He turned the ampule upside down, checking to see if there was a leak. But the puncture site was as he expected it to be: airtight.
Trent gleefully considered the effect his vial would soon have in St.
Joseph's OR. He thought particularly about the high-andmighty doctors, the havoc he would wreak in that lofty quarter. In his wildest dreams, Trent couldn't have settled on a better career.
Trent hated doctors. They always acted as if they knew everything, when in reality many didn't know their ass from a hole in the wall, especially in the Navy. Most of the time Trent knew twice as much as the doctor did, yet he had to do their bidding. In particular, Trent loathed that true pig of a Navy doctor who'd turned him in for pocketing a few amphetamines. What a hypocrite. Everybody knew the doctors had been making off with drugs and instruments and all sorts of other loot for years. Then there was that real pervert doctor who complained to Trent's commanding officer about Trent's alleged homosexual behavior. That had been the straw that broke t he camel's back. Instead of going through some stupid court-martial or whatever the hell they were planning to do, Trent had resigned.
At least by the time he got out, he was properly trained. He
had no trouble getting nursing jobs. With nursing shortages widespread, he found he could work anywhere he pleased. Every hospital wanted him, especially since he liked working in the OR and had experience in that area from his stint in the Navy.
The only trouble with working in a civilian hospital, aside from the doctors, was the rest of the nursing staff. Some of them were as bad as the doctors, particularly the supervisors. They were always trying to tell him something he already knew. But Trent didn't find them as irritating as the doctors. After all, it was the doctors who conspired to limit the autonomy
Trent had had to practice routine medicine in the Navy.
Trent put the doctored ampule of Marcaine in the pocket of his white hospital coat, which hung in the front closet. Thinking about doctors reminded him of Dr. Doherty. He clenched his teeth at the thought of the man. But it wasn't enough. Trent couldn't contain himself. He slammed the closet door with such force it seemed to jar the whole building. Just that day, Doherty, one of the anesthesiologists, had had the nerve to criticize
Trent in front of several nurses. Doherty had chastised him for what he referred to as sloppy sterile technique. And this was coming from the moron who didn't put on his scrub hat or surgical mask properly! Half the time
Doherty didn't even have his nose covered. Trent was enraged.
'I hope Doherty gets the vial,' Trent snarled. Unfortunately, there wasn't any way he could ensure Doherty's getting it. The chances were about one in twenty unless he waited until Doherty was scheduled for an epidural. 'Ah, who cares,' Trent said with a wave of dismissal. It would be entertaining no matter who got the vial.
Although Jeffrey's new fugitive status heightened his indecision and confusion, he no longer had the slightest inclination toward suicide. He didn't know if he was acting courageously or cow ardly, but he wasn't about to agonize further. Yet with all that had happened, he was understandably concerned about the pos sibility of a new round of depression. Thinking it better to throw temptation away, he t ' ook the step of getting the morphine vial from the briefcase, popping its lid, and flushing the contents down the toilet.
