“I won’t.”
“Too bad. Can we talk about the frontal lobotomy?”
“You don’t like the idea?”
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me.”
Nothing. Not even one hee.
“That’s an old joke,” I said.
“I don’t get it.”
You will.
“How’s the hand?” he asked.
“Hurts like heck.”
He stepped between my dangling legs.
Step: Pop open the shampoo lid.
“Let’s have a look.”
“Okay, but I’m warning you, there’s something nasty in it.”
“I’m a doctor, Alfred. I’m used to nasty.”
“You asked for it,” I said. I brought the bottle around fast and blasted both his beady little eyes. Instinctively, he brought his hands to his face. He took a couple of stumbling steps backward. I jumped from the table, spun him around, pinned his arms to his sides, dropped the loop over his head, drove my knee into his lower back, and forced him to the floor. I lay spread-eagled on top of his squirming body and spun the wooden handle of my homemade garrote, each turn tightening the noose around his thick neck, until his cries for help were reduced to choking, barely audible sobs.
It happened very fast, no more than fifteen seconds from the time I squirted him with my pee to me whispering into his beet-red ear, “I’ve got a couple of questions. Here’s the first: do you want to live?”
He managed to nod, the muscles of his clammy neck rolling beneath my knuckles.
“Good. Here’s the next: where is she?”
“You’ll never—ack!—you won’t get past the guards—”
I twisted the broken hanger a half turn.
“Down the hall! Right, right, left, right, first door on left, bottom of stairs—room 202!”
“Okay. Right, left, right—”
“No! Right, right, left—”
“Right, left?”
“Right.”
“Right, left, right . . . right?”
“No, no. Two rights—wrong! It’s right, right, left, right!”
“The last right means you turn right, not ‘you’re correct’ right, right?”
“Right, right! Right correct-right!”
I slid off him and pulled back on the garrote.
“On your feet,” I said. “Slow. Good. Now walk slowly to the door.”
“They’re armed; you won’t get past them,” he gurgled as we shuffled toward the door.
“I’m not going past them,” I said. “They’re going past me.”
03:03:02:16
So here’s the setup: You’re standing in the hallway outside the locked door of the examination room, just kickin’ back with your partner, your OIPEP killer bro, and maybe you’re talking about the kids or where you’re going on the next vacation or the latest episode of Law & Order or maybe trashing MI:3 (like you believe Tom Cruise could be a secret agent or any of that crap in the movie could happen, like Hollywood knows how it really works), and you hear the keypad on the wall go beep-beep and the gears of the locking mechanism rotate on their well-oiled axis. You step back, waiting for the boss to come out with the lobotomy patient, the tall kid with the gray-streaked hair and weird gray-flecked eyes, only the door doesn’t open. The doc unlocked the door but didn’t come out. How come?
You glance at your partner, who looks back at you like Hey, don’t look at me, and you hang there for another couple of seconds, hand resting on the butt of your Glock 9mm, chewing on your bottom lip, trying to decide while you wait for the moment to make a decision for you. A minute. Two. Two and a half. Did Kropp jump him? you wonder. Did he change his mind about coming out for some reason? Why unlock the door if you’re not coming out?
You nod to your partner. We go. He turns the knob. Pushes open the door.
A blur of white flying toward the far wall. It’s Mingus, sitting on the rolling stool, sliding across the smooth floor, his white lab coat flapping as he spins.
And no sign of the kid.
You rush in, guns drawn, and what registers in your head when Mingus screams, “Behind the door, you idiots! He’s behind the door!”?
You freeze halfway in, but it’s already too late. The door slams and there’s no kid. He’s on the other side.
The side with the master control panel.
I smashed one end of the broken hanger into the keypad. On the other side of the door, I could hear them, shouting and cursing, banging on it as if to get me to answer the door. “Shoot the lock! Shoot the lock!” one of the Things was yelling.
I ran down the hall, reviewing the directions. “Right, right, left, right . . . R, R, L, R. Reggie, Reggie, listen, Reggie. Really, really, lame, really!”
A guard was stationed by room 202, his black jumper shimmering under the fluorescents. I hadn’t planned for a guard and there was no time now to develop a plan, so I just went on instinct and my experience in dealing with seemingly hopeless situations: I rushed him.
He managed to free his weapon from the holster before I barreled into him, but there was no time to get off a shot. I grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and slammed my fist into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Then I spun him around, pushed his face against the wall, and twisted his arm behind his back, lifting it toward his shoulder blades until his fingers loosened and the gun fell to the floor.
I picked it up.
“The code,” I said.
“Screw you,” he gasped.
I let go and stood back, keeping the gun pointed at his head. He turned around and leaned against the wall, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
“I’ll shoot you,” I said.
“Yeah, right.”
I shot him in the foot.
He dropped. I stepped over him to the keypad by room 202.
“The code,” I repeated. “Or I take out the knee.”
Ashley was hiding behind the door. She came at me as I burst into the room, holding a metal stool that I guessed she intended to smash over my head. She froze when she recognized me.
“Alfred?”
“You bet,” I said.
The stool fell to the floor and then the girl into my arms, burying her face between my shoulder and the base of my neck. A world of blond under my nose and its sweet atmosphere of lilacs. She touched my cheek.