Playing Dead

CHAPTER 13

Tell your mother hello.

You twisted bastard. Playing that sonata from my childhood.

Tell me, Etta, was the picture of a dead little girl in a pool of blood not enough for the day?

Now I was talking to dead people. Why not? The live ones weren’t helping much. So far, Etta Place wasn’t talking back. A good thing. No bossy voice in my head but mine.

The green light on my cell phone blinked insistently as I walked to the truck, the sun rising over the top of the eight-story city jail, already promising another blistering ten hours. I looked at the list of missed calls. Seven of them. Four from Sadie and three from Mama’s nursing home. I glanced at my watch: 6:22. I immediately hit the “send” button on the last call. Sadie answered before I heard the first ring.

“Tommie, something’s going on with Mama. They had to sedate her about an hour ago. She was tearing up her room, like she was looking for something. Her blood pressure is off the charts and her heart is… I think they called it tachycardia. The night nurse said she started acting strangely after a man visited her last night, but didn’t flip out until this morning. Wait a minute…”

Sadie came back on the phone a few seconds later. “I’ve got to go. The ambulance is here; they’re about to take her to Harris in Fort Worth, Tommie… she’s so pale.”

“I’m about fifteen minutes… Sadie?”

She was gone. My whole body started to shake.

The skyscrapers, the red Toyota parked in front of me, the blue sky, the orange sunlight-all swirled together like a kaleidoscope, breaking the windshield into prisms of color. The keys clunked to the floor.

I wondered whether I was dying. This seemed way beyond a panic attack. Four years ago, after the first attack, too embarrassed to tell anyone, I found a list of tips on the internet in case it happened again.

A voice in my head sounding very much like Dr. Phil, my profession’s leading hypocrite, was now reading it off.

“No. 1: Relax and change your breathing pattern,” he boomed in his Oklahoman twang.

To what? Trying not to breathe?

“No. 2. Take a ‘mental vacation,’ ” he continued cheerfully, and I imagined his $16,500,000 mansion and Ferrari 360 Spider.

Desperate to quell Dr. Phil, I squinted my eyes shut and imagined myself with Maddie, down by the pond, tying the Woolly Fur-Bugger, a new fishing fly we’d discovered last week on Killroys’ website. I painstakingly tied the fly in my mind, step by step. My breathing eased slightly, and I moved on to the Pull Back Nymph. By the time I’d finished tying an Embellished Lefty’s, it was all over, my shirt soaked in sweat, my breathing shallow but regular.

The attack lasted thirteen minutes.

I peeled out of the lot and hit the highway to the hospital.

“God, Tommie, you look as bad as Mama.”

Sadie glanced up as I entered the packed waiting room, stepping over two kids playing Pick Up Sticks. “They’re getting her settled. She’s barely conscious, speaking gibberish, but hopefully that’s just the drug.”

I held back from reminding Sadie that Mama was rarely lucid, even without chemicals.

She pulled me by my elbow into a corner and spoke in an urgent whisper.

“That reporter showed up.”

“What?” I followed the direction of her eyes.

Jack Smith, crammed against the wall between an elderly woman nodding off and a manically texting teenager, tossed me a friendly wave.

I strode over, furious, thinking that anger was a good emotion for me to hang on to. It cleared my head of all the crazy crap.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded with enough venom that the old woman’s head popped up. The teenager’s thumbs never stopped moving.

“Sorry, ma’am,” Jack said to the woman, standing.

“In the hall,” I raged. “Now.”

Most of the waiting room, a crowd bleary with exhaustion and worry, stared at our little trio as we stalked our way through. We were probably a welcome distraction-Jack in today’s orange Polo; me, a sweaty, disheveled mess; Sadie, who seemed unaware she still wore the large paint-spattered goggles that she used for blowtorching.

I sagged against the wall, rubbing my forehead. Sadie, arms crossed over her rubber-band-taut body, glared at both Jack and me.

“I waited to talk to you two at the same time,” Jack said. “I just happened to be at the nursing home when the ambulance arrived. Don’t look at me like that, Tommie. You can’t expect a reporter not to try to get information from a primary source.”

“Did you see the guy who scared our mother?” I was thinking, Hell, you probably are the guy.

“No. I wasn’t there last night. I never spoke to your mother. Everything was chaos by the time I got there today.”

“I’d like to talk privately with my sister.”

“Sure.” Jack moved about ten feet away and pulled out his phone.

“Sadie,” I said quietly, “I need you and Maddie to move into the Worthington for a while. I don’t like the idea of you out there in the middle of nowhere. Not until we figure this out.”

“Why don’t we just move into the house with you?”

“Because I think… I’m more of a target. There’s Maddie to think about.”

And you, Sadie. I’d willingly go down in a blaze of glory for my sister. The problem was, she’d do the same for me. And she wasn’t quite as good a shot.

“I’m worried about you.” Sadie gazed at me steadily. “The lavender you smelled. I read up on… olfactory hallucinations.”

“Phantosmia,” I said. “Probably a one-time thing, possibly connected to some migraines I’ve been having since Daddy died.” I forced a smile. “Besides, Hudson says he’ll help me.”

I didn’t say when. Or how.

That sealed it. She broke into a huge, relieved smile.

“OK.” She nodded. “As long as Hudson’s with you. I’m going to head back to Mama’s room and let you deal with him.” She jerked her thumb in Jack’s direction.

“I’ll be there in just a second.”

I turned to Jack, enunciating each word.

“I’m. Sick. Of. Your. Games.”

Two nurses walking by turned their heads and slowed.

“A little quieter, please,” he said. He smiled at the nurses. “Everything’s fine, ladies. She’s just stressed out.”

“You’re a patronizing jerk,” I said loudly as they disappeared into a patient’s room. “Was that quiet enough for you?”

“You call me a lot of names. I’m going to eventually take offense.” He tested a door to his left and pulled me into a linen closet, an insulated cocoon, every shelf stuffed to the top with white-gray sheets, pillowcases, blankets, and towels. Plenty of stuff to suffocate me.

“More than thirty years ago, your mother entered witness protection, along with a young boy,” he said, as soon as the door clicked shut. “Your brother. And a baby. Labeled ‘unspecified.’ ”

His words made no sense. My mother was in witness protection? Tuck? Was I “unspecified”?

“And you know this how?”

“Sources. I laid my hands on some FBI and witness protection files.”

A rapid knock startled us, and the door cracked open. A gray-haired nurse peered in.

“Mrs. McCloud?”

“No, no, I’m not married,” I replied automatically, realizing how inane that sounded as soon as it came out.

“Your sister told us to update you. She needed to run out and pick up her daughter. Your mother is now sedated and her vitals are improving. She’s stable. Why don’t you go get some rest?”

“I haven’t even seen her yet.”

“It’s really best not to disturb her right now.” She hesitated. “Regardless, you need to get out of the closet. We don’t allow this kind of thing in here. It’s not sanitary.”

“No,” I said, horrified. “There is nothing going on. With him. He’d be the last person…”

“We all say that, honey,” she said serenely, piling a stack of sheets and pillowcases into her arms and holding the door wide open for us with her considerably sized right foot.

“Perfect,” Jack said cheerfully. “We can finish the conversation that we started in the hotel.”

I glanced toward Mama’s room and decided to take the nurse’s advice. I moved toward the elevator. Jack followed. We rode down six floors in silence.

“How about this,” he said, as it jerked to a stop on the lobby level. “I’ll buy you lunch.”

“I want to see those files,” I demanded.

Jack held the door while an elderly man wheeled in a teenage girl sporting a signed Texas Rangers baseball cap and the white pallor of chemo treatments.

Another of life’s cosmic mistakes.

I needed to stop my whining.

Find the way out of this maze.

Even if it meant sucking up to this bastard to do it.

“You’re a cheap date. That’s nice.” Jack bit into his third pork taquito, which he’d slathered with about a half cup of Conchita’s extra-hot sauce.

A red river dripped unattractively down his chin, leaving an unfortunate, bloody-looking spot on his sling. I knew his mouth must be in some category of hell, but he showed no signs of it. More braggadocio. He reminded me of a goat roper I once dated who ordered his steak “so rare it’s still alive.”

Conchita’s Taqueria consisted of an outhouse-sized shack with an aluminum roof that barely contained the plus-plus-sized Conchita, much less the giant metal canister of sweet tea, a grill, a small refrigerator, a metal cash box, and three Igloo coolers stocked with ice and Coke, the real kind, bottled in Mexico with so much Imperial Sugar it made your teeth hurt. It was the only soft drink she served.

Conchita was famous for telling new customers: “If you want a diet drink, you are sheet out of luck. Go to Taco Bell.”

Last year, Conchita had sprung for a purple polka-dotted umbrella for one of the three metal tables that sat outside the shack on a blistering patch of concrete. It was the best seat in the house. Today she’d cleared it off for us, yelling out her window at the two startled power suits finishing up their lunch, “Vamos! It eez time for you to go!”

Conchita didn’t hand out this preferential treatment for me, even though I’d been a loyal customer for years. Conchita liked men, preferably tall ones who looked capable of throwing a punch. She’d been robbed in broad daylight more than a few times. Conchita never exactly smiled, but she served Jack with her most charming grimace and threw in an extra-spicy taquito for free.

“So,” Jack said, wiping his mouth. It was clear he hadn’t wanted to talk until his stomach churned happily. I wondered how happy it was going to be around two in the morning.

“So… why did my mother enter witness protection?”

“Tommie, we’re kind of exposed here.”

He gestured to a nearby table of four: a small boy punching at an iPhone, a toddler sucking his pacifier like it was a chocolate milkshake, a tired mother with a pink zebra-striped diaper bag that could hold enough to feed and entertain a small nation, and an irritated-looking Texas grandma.

“I can’t get Wi-Fi here,” the boy whined, shaking the iPhone like an Etch A Sketch.

“Eat your taco, Evan,” his mother said, while the grandmother opened and then shut her mouth, thinking better of it. “Put my phone down.”

“It has little white and green things in it,” he complained, pushing away the foil wrapper. “I want to go to On the Border.”

“Evan…”

“Take them out!” the little Nazi ordered, stabbing his tiny forefinger imperiously at the offending items in his taco.

“Jack, I really don’t think these people are paying attention to us,” I said, watching the mom get to work obediently with a toothpick. “I’m going to make a guess that the little boss over there isn’t mob-connected. So what is my mother’s link to Anthony Marchetti? And why are you so interested?”

Jack peeled the wrinkled Saran Wrap off a half-melted homemade praline the size of a hockey puck. “I’m interested in anything to do with Anthony Marchetti. The trail leads where it leads.” He stuffed his mouth and chewed in an exaggerated fashion. “Sticky,” he said, pointing to his mouth, “but tasty.”

“What did you mean in the hotel when you said that part of the story my mother told me about her past was true?”

“Both her parents died in a fire.”

“Do you know if there was anything… suspicious about it?”

“No. Meaning, no, I don’t think so.”

“For the record, I feel like calling you a name right now, but there are children nearby. How did you know that Rosalina Marchetti contacted me?”

He shrugged. “I told you, I have a source. The FBI is wiretapping her. She’s the wife of a mob boss who’s running games from prison. The Feds have been trying to get at him and his wad of cash for years.”

“You have a source in the FBI?”

“Yep. I’m terrific with sources. Most people find me charming. Smart, even. Phi Beta Kappa. Princeton. Lots of connections.” He grinned. “Don’t look so shocked.”

“Do you really believe Rosalina Marchetti is my mother? That Marchetti is my father? That I was kidnapped? Do you know who Tuck’s father was? He was my brother, wasn’t he? And who’s the dead girl with my Social Security number?” The last question rolled out of my mouth in an unexpected screech.

The boy looked up from thumbing the phone, ticked off.

“Mommy,” he said, pointing at me, “that lady made me lose my place in Doodle Jump. I died.”

“Shut up, kid,” Jack said to him.

The mother had the grace to look embarrassed. The grandmother smothered a smile.

To me, Jack said, “I don’t know who Tuck’s father was. That’s your brother, the one who died, right?” He paused, sounding… sympathetic. “I had a brother who died. Something else we have in common.”

Before I could respond, the toddler spit out the pacifier with enough velocity that it ricocheted off Jack’s cheek. It took only seconds for the pacifier addict to recognize his terrible mistake in judgment. His wail resounded like a tornado siren.

Jack seemed a little stunned, by both the plastic missile and the decibel level a two-year-old can reach. I got up and retrieved the pacifier from under our table while the mother dug furiously through the sixty-three Velcro pockets of her diaper bag.

“Pacifier wipes,” she muttered. “Where are the pacifier wipes? Oh, here they are.” She pulled out a small plastic tub with antibacterial promises stamped all over it.

Grandma was now on her feet. “Christ almighty, you actually paid for those? This is how you clean a pacifier.”

She grabbed the pacifier out of my hand, stuck it into her Styrofoam cup of iced tea, gave it a few good swirls, and plopped it in the mouth of the wailing boy.

Then she grabbed the phone out of her other grandson’s hand and said firmly, “Eat your damn taco.”

The kids shut up.

“Grandma should have a reality TV show,” Jack said.

“Smith, focus on me, OK? I want to see those FBI files. And my mother’s. And my brother’s. Uncensored.”

“Impossible. What I got is already censored. Stuff blacked out.”

I reached into my purse and pulled out a key.

“I recently discovered the contents of a safe deposit box in my mother’s name,” I said. “She never told anyone. Not even her lawyer.”

Jack leaned in, practically salivating.

This dance was one I had practiced over and over again with patients. Give some, get some. However, I was reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that Jack Smith was different, like no one I’d ever encountered. A whole new can of beans, Granny would say. My usual tactics weren’t going to work.

“Tit for tat,” I said. “That’s the deal. And I’m not talking about my 34Cs.”

It was my first pitiful attempt at a joke in two weeks.

Inside, I wasn’t laughing.

Something else we have in common, Jack had said about my dead brother.

What the hell did that mean?