Runaway Heart

FIFTY-THREE

While Jack lay in the hospital bed waiting to be released from Cedars he read the story in the LA. Times. There was a small picture of him next to Sandy's drawing of the chimera-a toss-up which one of them looked better. Russell Ibanazi made a statement about how his beloved reservation had been exploited by the federal government and that he was personally offended by the horrible research that had taken place out there without the tribe's knowledge.

Way to go, Izzy.

Donald Trump was interviewed about his plans to build a new, luxurious casino on the Ten-Eyck land. He was calling it Indian Lakes Resort. That meant there was going to be a lot of concrete pipe going in out there because Jack couldn't recall seeing one drop of water on the reservation.

The paper confirmed that the nuclear devices used had been low-yield "clean" weapons detonated from a satellite in space. A sidebar story on the second page detailed computer-cracker Roland Minton's death. His body had finally been returned to his mother for burial.

At the bottom of the story was a picture of General Turpin. Jack had never seen him before. It said that he ran DARPA but had resigned two days ago. His expression was as hard as Vince Valdez's. Both guys looked cold enough to freeze mercury. There wasn't much info about General Turpin, just a brief mention of a Senate inquest initiated by animal-rights activists who were going to march on Washington.

There was a long story in the Metro section written by the Liar for Hire. The diminutive PR man had profiled Herman and the Institute for Planetary Justice and provided his picture.

Jack had been left in the wake of the story, which was probably not great for the Wirta Detective Agency, but frankly he hated dealing with the press so it was more or less okay by him. He'd been safely tucked away in Cedars-Sinai and, except for a few phone interviews with a reporter at the Times, he had been left out of it. Really out of it… Susan hadn't been back to see him.

Now, three days later, he was getting ready to leave the hospital. His doctor had released him. Jack really liked his new doctor. When he'd asked how often he could refill his prescription for Percocets, the doc said, "Until the pain goes away."

Adios, Carbon Paper… at least for a while, anyway.

Things were definitely looking up. Except that Susan hadn't come to see him.

It was ten in the morning and ten was when the docs at Cedars made their final rounds. Jack's guy came in and wrote him a nice painkiller prescription: forty Percocets.

"You can get this filled in the pharmacy downstairs," he said. "If I were you I'd try and back off a little each day. Percocets can become very addictive if you're not careful."

"Y'know, I've heard that can happen. I'll be sure and be careful."

Then came the ten o'clock parade of wheelchairs-patients being pushed into elevators carrying floral arrangements and get-well teddy bears.

Jack was wheeled out of his room by a nurse and found Miro waiting for him. His face had lost its puffiness but the ugly bruises were still there. He had a temporary bridge where his front teeth had been knocked out.

"Look who's going home today," Miro gushed.

"Thanks for coming," Jack smiled.

"Hey, it's the least Miro can do for his best bud."

They stood at the payment counter downstairs and Jack handled the bill with his Blue Cross card. "Hope I'm covered for gunshot wounds, since I'm America's favorite standing target." He smiled at the girl behind the desk.

"Oh, was this a gunshot wound? Let me see if your HMO reimburses for that." She started flipping pages on his form, then turned to her computer.

"I wouldn't talk too much," Miro whispered in his ear and Jack nodded solemnly.

But Jack was covered, so he signed the release document, then told Miro he needed to stop by the hospital pharmacy to get his pain prescription filled.

"We can do that later. I need to drop you at your apartment so I can get back to the office by noon." Something about the way he said it shot a warning up into Jack's fuzzy brain. Cops had world-class bullshit detectors. Miro wheeled the chair out of the hospital into the parking lot, then helped Jack into his yellow Ford Escort.

"Wait till you see all the flowers at your place. Smells so sweet, Miro couldn't believe how gorgeous." He had slipped behind the wheel and back into third person as he started the engine.

"Yeah, flowers are always nice," Jack managed.

Jack's apartment was off Sepulveda in the Valley-a duplex that had seen better times. The apartment was in the back. Miro pulled into the drive and parked, then ran around to help the patient out of the front seat. Jack's arm was in a sling and his back was killing him. He needed more painkillers and he needed them now. He had the prescription slip in his pocket, but Miro had pushed the wheelchair right past the hospital pharmacy, then had driven past the corner drugstore. For a best bud this was not good behavior.

"Hey, Miro, you gotta take me to the pharmacy down the street."

"In a minute Miro will get that done. In an itsy-bitsy minute. Soon as Miro gets you settled."

"Okay, but my shoulder is killing me. So's my back."

"Stop being a noodge."

They were standing at Jack's busted screen door. Miro took the key out of the flowerpot. "Bad hiding place, honey. A cop should know better." He opened up and let them in. The house was full of flowers and people.

Susan was there with Herman, Shane, Alexa, Lieutenant Matthews, Chick, even some guy Jack didn't know who smiled way too much. Izzy was also there, this time looking a lot like Wayne Newton in tennis togs.

"Hi," Susan said as she stood to meet him, then came across the room and took his hand.

"What is this?" Jack asked. He could smell trouble. Trouble and carnations.

"We need to talk to you," Susan said. "Sit down."

"I don't wanna sit down," Jack grumbled.

Susan turned and motioned to the smiling man. "This is Dr. Marion Trent."

"I don't need a doctor."

"Dr. Trent is a drug-intervention counselor."

Jack looked over at Dr. Trent the way you look at a big black spider hanging in the corner of your garage.

Dr. Trent kept the old grin pasted up there, smiling like a Halloween pumpkin. As an intervention counselor he was undoubtedly used to silent disapproval. Jack's didn't bother him at all.

"Okay, so what's the deal here?" Jack said.

"Jack, we're worried about you," Susan said. "And we all care desperately about you. We're your friends."

"It's true," Miro said from behind him. "Your buds."

"Okay… you're my friends. Okay, good." Jack knew what was coming next and it pissed him off. After all, he needed to be in charge of his own life… didn't he? Wasn't he?

"Okay," Jack said. "But this still doesn't tell me what's going on." Although he knew.

"Jack, I think you have a serious addiction to painkillers," Dr. Trent said.

"You do? How can you tell? I never met you before."

"We do, too," Alexa Scully said. "Jack, sit down and listen to us, okay? We have your best interests at heart."

So Jack sat. Alexa was a police lieutenant and the cop in him always obeyed a ranking officer.

Miro perched on the arm of a chair, but he got up quickly because there wasn't much upholstery there and it was like sitting on a split-rail fence.

"Okay, gimme the pitch," Jack said sullenly.

"You're angry," Susan said.

"Hey, you people don't know my problems. Are you forgetting I stopped a Parabellum with my spine a little while ago?"

"Hey, Jack, that was almost seven years ago… seven years," Shane said.

"Six," Jack corrected. But fuck it, even he knew he was quibbling.

"Six then," Shane said. "Hey, pal, six years of popping 'cets and you don't think you've got a problem?"

"No, I don't think I have a problem," Jack said. He was feeling ganged up on and outnumbered. Jack looked at those furrowed brows and said nothing.

"I think you do have a problem," Miro said from a spot behind him.

"I'm not talking to you, Miro. You led me into this ambush."

"Jack," Miro said, "I took a terrible beating to protect you, so if I don't have a right to be concerned about your health after that, who does?"

"Don't pull that old Japanese spiritual ownership crap on me. You know how I feel about what you did, but it has nothing to do with this."

"Yes it does," Miro persisted. "Because now I care what happens to you, honey, and I'm not going to let you throw your life away on some stupid pain pills."

"Listen to him," Chick said. "He's talking sense."

This from the guy who was afraid to drink out of Miro's glass.

What the hell is going on here?

Susan came across the room and knelt in front of Jack.

She took his hand in both of hers. "Jack, you've got to do this."

"Do what?"

"We've arranged for you to be admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic this afternoon. Dad and I are going to drive you there."

"I don't have an addiction. This is crazy."

"You do have an addiction," Herman said. "Listen, Jack, I owe you a lot more than I can tell you. Without you I would have lost everything. Now I'm on the cover of Lawyer Magazine. I'm so hot now I'm on fire. Judge King is even going to rehear my motion to reduce the fine. Childbirth may have mellowed her. I'm going to see to it that before I leave town your problem is taken care of."

"Don't do me any favors, Herman," Jack growled.

"Honey…" Susan this time, not Miro. He looked over at her. "I love you. In front of everybody I'm telling you I want us to be together… always. But not unless you get this problem taken care of. If you want us to be together you're gonna have to take it from here."

Miro slapped his hands together. "Miro loves it! A proposal."

Jack looked around the room. Shane and Alexa nodded. Chick was staring at his shoes, but as Jack's gaze fell on him he looked up, his ham-red complexion shiny in the hot room. The two of them locked gazes. "Do it, man."

"It's the right thing," Izzy said. "You do it and I'll write a song about it.

Cats gargling his name on the Sound Machine. How could he say no?

Then Lieutenant Matthews stood. He'd said nothing thus far, so when he spoke everybody turned to look at him. "Jack, listen. You get straight and I'll work on something downtown. Maybe we can get you assigned to work for us as a special consultant."

"Or you can come to work for the Institute," Herman suggested. "We've got an opening for a new detective. We'll never do better than Jack Wirta."

Two job offers and a marriage proposal and all he had to do was go see the former First Lady for a couple of weeks. It hadn't been a grand slam because Miro hadn't offered him a partnership in Reflections.

Jack did want to ditch this problem. He did want to get off the 'cets, but there was something very humiliating about all of this.

As Chick once told him when they were in Homicide, "If ten people tell you you're drunk, don't drive."

Cop logic.

So there you have it. Jack Wirta, America's foremost chimpanzee detective in a twelve-step program. Somebody call Swifty. Get this to the AP.

They parked at the Betty Ford Clinic in Palm Springs, and Herman got out and retrieved Jack's overnight bag from the trunk. Jack's back and shoulder were killing him but he was starting to feel slightly better about all this. Maybe he could finally get this problem under control.

"Jack," Herman said. "I was serious about wanting you to join the Institute for Planetary Justice."

"Really?" Jack didn't think he wanted to join the Institute unless they could rename it.

"I'm serious," Herman said. "Right now I'm working on a new class action suit against the Department of Energy and six oil companies. I could use some help."

"Gee, Herm, I don't know. My car uses lots of oil. I count on those guys."

"This is big," the heavy attorney said, waving his hands around like he was cleaning a plate-glass window. "Get this, Jack, I think the government conspired with the oil companies to steal the patent rights from the estate of a man who designed a paint that acts as a solar panel. I don't have to tell you what would happen if they used solar-energy-generating paint on cars."

"They'll get hot and explode?" Jack said, trying to look unsophisticated and dumb, something he could usually accomplish without effect.

"No, no. They'd run forever-without fuel. Think what that would do for the economy, for the environment… for the planet.

"Right… right, for the planet. Yeah, I can see that."

"You and Susan and I could make a difference here. You could be a part of this. We could reverse global warming."

"I'll give it some thought," Jack said.

Then Susan took his hand and led him up to the front door of the clinic where a tall, thin woman named Elizabeth Donovan was waiting for him. Jack had been expecting the other Betty.

"I'll be right in," Jack assured her. Elizabeth left and he turned to Susan.

"I'm so proud of you," she said. "And Dad is serious, you know. He really wants you with us."

"Is he always like that? I mean, does he always look like he's selling used cars?"

"Yeah, even though his ticker got fixed he still has a runaway heart."

"Right," Jack said. "I can see that."

"So gimme a kiss and call me every day."

Jack did as he was instructed: he took Susan Strockmire in his arms and kissed her. His love for her poured over his tortured body, soothing everything, making him whole again.

"I want to do it," he said.

"Do what?" she looked puzzled.

"Marry you." He was still holding her. "I want you to be my wife. I want us to grow old together. I want Izzy to sing at our wedding."

"I accept, but wouldn't Barbra be a better choice?" Then she smiled and kissed him again. This one lasted a long time. She pulled back and studied him. "You're my hero," she said softly. "Now, get in there and kick some ass."

So Jack Wirta, newly engaged hero, turned, but instead of riding into the sunset he walked into the Betty Ford Clinic. The door closed and Elizabeth Donovan took his arm.

"Mrs. Ford is in her office and wants to meet you. You'll really like it here. This month will just fly by."

Month? Nobody said anything about a month! But she had a death grip on Jack's arm and was leading him down the hall. There was no turning back. He had a job to do.

He'd ride off into that damn sunset later.