government.
During that time I had casually ridden a ballistic path of workaday death and risk that I accepted as an inevitable part of my personal trajectory. My acceptance didn't change until the day I realized death wasn't only for the other guy. My finger grew more reluctant on the trigger then I started to wonder where people went when they turned into one more seeping sack of organic soup waiting for the cell walls to burst and feed the waiting bacteria. I struggled with the durability of consciousness and realized it was the only thing that mattered. If you're unaware of being alive, then dying's not all that different. Did death represent the irrevocable loss of that individual or could a disembodied mind prevail? If it prevailed, was it our soul? Questions led to more questions. Was consciousness our soul peeking dimly through the meat-ware of the human body? Did bad people have good souls sabotaged by bad meatware?
No memorable epiphany stands out; no discrete single event redirected me from killing to healing. The process ran more like dust accreting on one side of a balance scale until one day it tipped, propelling me out of one life into another. Medical school turned me into a better than competent but less than brilliant neurosurgeon. Nevertheless, I reveled when I opened a cranium and moved my fingers and instruments among the living stuff that made someone who he was. Making him well felt even better, especially when I had cut away a tumor or relieved a pressure and had returned a profane, vile patient back to the congenial, likable person he had once been.
The most poignant cases came from the families of patients accused of the most hideous crimes, criminals whose malevolent creativity produced horror that seemed to verify the existence of evil.
'Please tell us it's a brain tumor,' the families would plead. 'Or an artery blockage or same sort of lightning storm in the brain cells.' Something, anything that could be seen, touched, treated, removed, that would confirm that this loved person was not evil, only suffering from a merely physical lesion, which would absolve them of crime and guilt.
On occasion, surgery located such a physical epicenter, but even more often, I suspected a physical cause I could not prove. Locating a physical cause often allowed the sort of treatment that frequently led to normal lives. The lack of an identifiable, biological lesion was a shortcut to jail terms or execution. This bothered me because in many of the successful cases I located physical causes that would have gone undetected fifty years ago. Will people we jail and execute today be saved fifty years from now by more advanced diagnostic technology that will find the physical evidence?
Of course, taken to its logical absurdity, this led to the speculation that no one was ever guilty of anything since every act had a purely biological origin that precluded free will. Despite the lack of answers, the questions fed my notion of good souls trapped in bad meatware.
As I built an astoundingly lucrative surgery practice alongside my teaching and research at UCLA, I began to consider the tissue beneath my hands as a philosophical duality-spirit and flesh-which threw me into conflict with the scientific mainstream, which believed-with faith as absolute as that of the most ardent Bible-thumping Baptist- that consciousness came solely from the brain's electrical activity, all matter, nothing transcendent, which they couldn't prove any better than the average Baptist could prove the virgin birth.
What did it mean? Even more significantly, did it mean anything at all? I had worried this issue around and around for years, confusing myself half the time and often coming back to things I had written about it and realizing I did not quite understand my own words.
Instead, I tried to make sense of the attacks on my boat and at my house and finally fell asleep concluding that it all pointed straight back to Mississippi, to Vanessa and Darryl Talmadge. A convicted white racist murderer sentenced to die in the gas chamber. I certainly hoped Jasmine knew why in hell her mother would want to save a man like that.
CHAPTER 24
I awoke to Vince Sloane's worst scowl.
'Up! C'mon, wake up!'
Sloane shook my shoulder.
I struggled to remain in a significant dream, desperate for its fleeting epiphany where answers outnumbered questions.
'Shit.' I opened my eyes.
'Glad to see you too,' Sloane said.
Jasmine stirred.
Looming over us, Sloane offered two large Styrofoam cups glaring with the orange-and-black logo of a small convenience store a block away we called the 'Shop and Rob' because of the way crooks frequently used it as their personal ATM.
'Time to go home,' Sloane said as he shoved a cup at me. 'Wherever the hell that is for you these days.'
I took the cup and caught his disapproval. Vince was a solid, trustworthy man with a time-honored and still- admirable set of ethics and personal principles that he always hoped others would live up to, while recognizing most would not. He reminded me of that Marine division motto: 'Your best friend, your worst enemy.'
Beyond Sloane, Detective Darius Jones obscured the doorway like a walking roadblock. His deep black skin trended toward blue; sweat beads glistened on his forehead and a murderous stare distorted his face. He avoided my eyes, looking first at Jasmine, then back toward me. Back and forth, pendulum regular. When I finally caught his gaze, Jones glanced away and made a perfect poker face.
What the hell was that all about? I looked over at Jasmine, who sat up straight in her chair, leaving a warm spot on my shoulder. She had obviously read a message on the big detective's face. I thought better of asking her about it, for now.
I pried the plastic top off the coffee and took a gulp. A palsied shudder ran down my spine and cinched my scrotum tight like a drum. The coffee was everything I expected, I took another gulp, then stood up and stretched.
'You and I need to have a little chat.' Vince looked toward the door, then back at me. 'Alone. I'll drive you home.'
'But-' I looked over at Jasmine, who struggled to throw off the fatigue and jet lag. She shivered for a moment, then tugged the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Vince caught her eye, waved the coffee about, then set it down next to her.
'No buts.' Vince gave me his authoritative sergeant's tone and I almost returned a 'Yes sir,' but knew no matter how I said it, he'd hear sarcasm. I nodded.
'Good.' He nodded toward Jones, who stepped forward and addressed Jasmine.
'I'll give you a ride to your hotel, Ms. Thompson,' the big detective said, his voice deep, formal, and professional. His assassinating stare had vanished, which made me wonder if I had imagined things in waking up.
Jasmine stood, let the blanket slip into the plastic chair, then combed her fingers through her tight curls.
'Thank you for the coffee,' she told Vince. And thank you,' she said to Jones. Then, to me: 'Call me after you get some sleep.' My gaze held her face, but my peripheral vision caught anger flashing across the big detective's face again, quick and bright like fractured shards of sun glinting off polished chrome.
'Count on it,' I told her, and felt all sorts of regret when she picked up her purse and left the room with Jones.
Vince made his way over to me, picked up the blanket from the chair and folded it. I took that moment to drink as deeply as I dared of the Shop and Rob coffee.
'You know I don't mess in people's business,' he spoke so softly I had to strain to hear him.
'Sorry?'
He cocked his head to the now empty doorway and continued to fold the blanket. He always took care of equipment. Put things where they belong and you'll know where to go in an emergency.
'Your friend.' He finished the blanket. 'Look, you've known me long enough to know I don't care what color a person is or any of that.'
